Writer's Notebook, Day Seven-Hundred-And-Eighty-Four

 I've got a lot of ideas of late that I want to get into my work, but many of them are difficult to even begin addressing, and it concerns me that they are also idea that might be taken as offensive, though that is not the intent.  I have written a few poems that touch on some of these subjects, but my thinking has gotten to deeper layers of these topics, and it feels as if some of the thoughts I am considering are confrontational to things in ways that would be inherently unsettling and potentially destructive to important conversations.  At the same time, it feels as though the inability for some of these questions to be raised in a broader context suggests a limit to who is included.  The Dracula essay I am working on is an example of some of this, though it is a less pronounced example of my concerns.  In this era when we are reconsidering so much of our culture, it still feels that the discussion might be difficult to begin on this subject, that many will dismiss the concerns outright, some for reasons as offensive as the issues themselves.  Dracula is a significant figure in fiction and culture, and Stoker's concept of the vampire is central to the modern concept of that monster, and I fear that many will refuse to recognize why this is itself troubling for me, as a Jewish person, especially when I consider the recent resurgence of vampirism within our culture and the rise of other forms of anti-Semitism, and particularly those forms that use the same monstrous imagery as Stoker relied upon.  Perhaps it is only a fear and not a reality, at least in this case, but their is so much more that seems even more impossible to bring into the current conversation from my perspective, so many things that seem to me essential if the goals espoused so often in this time are genuine.