About David Garner
Where to begin? Starting an on-line journal is in many ways the very definition of chutzpah. To presume that what you have to say would be of interest to others (let alone of value) is no small matter. But that is exactly what a writer does. She or he is willing to lay bare their very soul and in so doing “Stand naked in a cold water universe” to quote one of my Jesuit friends from the sixties. In all candor, it’s a lot easier to do this in my eighties than it would have been in my thirties or forties. My views of myself and my writings have changed dramatically. More and more I find myself in agreement with Flaubert when he wrote that “The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe”. These columns are every bit as much an exercise in self-discovery as they are opinion pieces.
I also don’t take myself nearly as seriously as I did prior to time taking its measure of me. I recently told Mikki Earle, my life-partner and one true love, that I was thinking of getting a tattoo. These days I rise in the morning and in no particular order, proceed to put on my eye glasses, put in my hearing aids and dentures, insert my arch supports and take my morning meds. “Mick,” I said, “I think I’ll get a tattoo that reads ‘Some assembly required’.” My point here is that I hope to write with a sense of humor and humility.