Drafter's Note: I write this yesterday! Honest. Just didn't get it posted...
It's the last day of the month, and I only just barely have done half of what I set out to do--a post every other day, on average, instead of every day. This, in one kind of light, is failure--but in several other lights, success:
I wrote far more than I otherwise would have.
I was encouraged and buoyed by friends and strangers.
I worked harder at writing than I have in months, maybe years.
But I think the largest success, for me--and the reason that, as of tomorrow (today), I'm taking part in NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) with a goal, again, of writing a post each day--is this: that it has made me remember (not in a sais way but in a connais way--see paragraph four here) that writing isn't all pretty. Sometimes the words don't come like I want them to. Sometimes I trip and fumble and have nothing sensical to put down. And the perfectionist in me answers, "Then stop. Take a break. Wait until the juices pool enough to do this well." But any writer--any real writer--will tell you this isn't how it works. You don't wait for it to show up; you work until it does.
Two quick buttresses to this idea that have come to mind recently:
1) The first is one of my favorite moments in the Old Testament, which I was thinking of earlier this week. The narrative of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea is more familiar--the intricacies of translation will tell you that their sandals hit dry ground. But for most applications in my life, I prefer a similar but different story: those people's children, their sandals having crossed forty years' worth of dry ground in the wilderness, wait on the edge of the place God has promised them. Joshua leads them toward the Jordan River, too strong to ford on their own. They take the first several steps in, and the water remains--slipping stones, sinking silt, frothing rapids. It is not until several steps more that they realize the water isn't climbing their thighs like it should, and several more again before they see bare, wet skin: the waters receded just the same, but this time they had to move first. Had they waited on the shore, afraid of getting their feet wet, expecting the same provision as their parents, they would have died in exile and shame. No less a miracle, but they had to participate to see it happen.
2) I'm reading a book right now, larger than my Bible and nearly as fantastical. As I was just reading, the hot-and-cold enthusiasm of a character is given detail in his pursuit of poetry: that he had an exceptional first day at it, writing feverishly, pages scattering to the floor in the fury. "He was very delighted with everything he wrote," the narrator explains, and this, in a glance, is what the writer longs for, what I long for. But the second day, begun as the first, ends midway through, the poet becoming stuck on a pesky rhyme. "He struggled for an hour, could think of nothing, went for a ride to loosen his brains and never looked at his poem again."
This is how I am--a fury-writer until my toe hits a stone, and then I am distracted, over-busy, too important. And then I wonder why I haven't felt like writing in weeks. I sit on the beach watching the waves, never wondering about wandering into them.
So in this one little part of my life, in this small way, I am walking in. I am writing even when the rhyme doesn't work. I am committing, to myself and to a writing community. Will I fall short? Depend on it. But I will write anyway, because like any muscle, the hurt of overworking it feels better than the ache of lethargy.
I cannot wrap up this little Essay a Day journey without a few acknowledgements:
Thanks to my coworker, Sherlock buddy, and writing co-conspirator Zsofi, who alerted me to it in the first place.
Thanks to the EaD community, especially ringleader Chelsia, for their ideas and craft and accountability.
And thanks to you, who reads this--friend or stranger. Thank you for letting my words take you somewhere, even when the road is broken and winding and littered with typos.
Saturday, November 1, 2014
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Essay a Day #14: Harmonize, Entropy, Light
Drafter's Note: I accepted Essay a Day as a challenge, and that is certainly what it's been. A far cry from the official plan, but if I can squeeze one more essays out after this, that'll be an Essay Every Other Day, which I'm pretty darn proud of.
Today found me without much in the What to Write About Ball Pit, so I lifted a page from a college professor: randomly select three words (thanks, random word generator--less romantic and relational than Fuller's jar of words, but it got the job done) and write until you've used them up.
It's that word that catches me, that confirms this is what we're doing tonight, letting the fingers fall and the characters stamp until everything is used up, an erroneous but alluring image of me panting, hands cramping, semi-collapsing across the table. My need to make writing a sport.
I remember the first time I found this word--how many of its brothers do I remember so clearly? But I remember this one: Mr. Stil's biology class, and one of my early tastes of Holy shit I don't understand this in the least. I was that kid, for all of elementary and middle school--with the exception of math, which I had learned to carve out a hole of energy for, all other learning just found a place in my head and rested peaceably. But now, freshman year, with this oddly funny, oddly attractive man at the blackboard, I have been hoodwinked, and this test has snagged me with hooks of unpreparedness and fear. Stil hands the tests back days later, and I am appalled at the number at the top. I skim through, eager to prove another handful of points should rightfully be mine. And there, maybe halfway down the page, is my chance. I had circled something else--a familiar, friendly word--but his red pen has flagged c) entropy. "I've never even seen that word before," I say, all intellectual fifteen-year-old bravado. And I can see Stil's face, more puzzled than annoyed, as he clarifies that it was in the book, so he certainly hopes I have.
I think this is why I have fond memories of Stil--he was funny and charming, and he understood and accepted that biology wasn't going to be the subject that drove me wild--but still expected me to bring every ounce of intelligence I had to it. Other teachers, surely, had done this, but he did it well. I rose to the challenge with him, and I don't remember what my final score in the class was but I could still sketch you a reasonably passable cell, can vaguely picture the four building blocks floating in a double-helix--the fractures of light that spill across textbook pages and chalkboards ten million minutes ago.
He knew I was a humanities girl, and didn't try to change that--but didn't let me slump in the back row, either. I was allowed to learn like I needed to, to dwell on the things that caught my attention, but I had to learn entropy, too. He expected me to apply this brain to things that made it wince, to what didn't come naturally. He made me work, and called me out when I didn't, when I started to slide. He taught me to educate myself, to harmonize what I knew with what I didn't, to marvel at the way a word nerd's brain will latch on to the tongue twister of deoxyribonucleic acid, never fooled by impostor answer options again.
Today found me without much in the What to Write About Ball Pit, so I lifted a page from a college professor: randomly select three words (thanks, random word generator--less romantic and relational than Fuller's jar of words, but it got the job done) and write until you've used them up.
It's that word that catches me, that confirms this is what we're doing tonight, letting the fingers fall and the characters stamp until everything is used up, an erroneous but alluring image of me panting, hands cramping, semi-collapsing across the table. My need to make writing a sport.
I remember the first time I found this word--how many of its brothers do I remember so clearly? But I remember this one: Mr. Stil's biology class, and one of my early tastes of Holy shit I don't understand this in the least. I was that kid, for all of elementary and middle school--with the exception of math, which I had learned to carve out a hole of energy for, all other learning just found a place in my head and rested peaceably. But now, freshman year, with this oddly funny, oddly attractive man at the blackboard, I have been hoodwinked, and this test has snagged me with hooks of unpreparedness and fear. Stil hands the tests back days later, and I am appalled at the number at the top. I skim through, eager to prove another handful of points should rightfully be mine. And there, maybe halfway down the page, is my chance. I had circled something else--a familiar, friendly word--but his red pen has flagged c) entropy. "I've never even seen that word before," I say, all intellectual fifteen-year-old bravado. And I can see Stil's face, more puzzled than annoyed, as he clarifies that it was in the book, so he certainly hopes I have.
I think this is why I have fond memories of Stil--he was funny and charming, and he understood and accepted that biology wasn't going to be the subject that drove me wild--but still expected me to bring every ounce of intelligence I had to it. Other teachers, surely, had done this, but he did it well. I rose to the challenge with him, and I don't remember what my final score in the class was but I could still sketch you a reasonably passable cell, can vaguely picture the four building blocks floating in a double-helix--the fractures of light that spill across textbook pages and chalkboards ten million minutes ago.
He knew I was a humanities girl, and didn't try to change that--but didn't let me slump in the back row, either. I was allowed to learn like I needed to, to dwell on the things that caught my attention, but I had to learn entropy, too. He expected me to apply this brain to things that made it wince, to what didn't come naturally. He made me work, and called me out when I didn't, when I started to slide. He taught me to educate myself, to harmonize what I knew with what I didn't, to marvel at the way a word nerd's brain will latch on to the tongue twister of deoxyribonucleic acid, never fooled by impostor answer options again.
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Essay a Day #13: Never Single
We are leaving a wedding, driving down deserted Maine
interstates, watching the way the trees pummel across the outer reaches of the
high beams. We talk the way you talk in a dark car on a long drive at the end
of an emotional day, where no topic is out of reach and no sidebar is too long
tangential.
We talk about this woman, our friend, who is even now
alone with her husband in their house, a different kind of dark. We talk about
our own histories, loves, losses, the things we thought we learned already. We
talk so much I forget about the bag of Swedish fish in my purse, tucked away
for a mid-ride surprise.
I say something about being single, and she makes a noise,
something akin to a harrumph. “My husband says you’re never really single,” she
says, “unmarried, maybe, but never single,” and even as we keep talking my mind
stretches and curls around that idea like a cat. I don’t remember where our
conversation went to from there—forty-eight hours gone, but the emotions of the
day had swamped my brain with saline leaving little room for anything else.
Anything else but this: that no one is ever single.
I have my blood family—relations from Vermont to St.
Louis to Oregon—who remind me of where I come from and where we are going, who
pass names and genes and character on to a new generation of towheads and
tomboys who will play Princess and Pioneers, who will have loves and losses and
lessons of their own. After months away, I come home into a strange sort of
peace—not sliding into a glove, exactly, but stepping into my mother’s kitchen,
which is a thousand times better. Come Christmas, there will be too much food
to eat and a surfeit of wrapping paper in every corner, but I will be my own
self in a way I am nowhere else.
I have my local family here—the nieces and nephews who
have lost the quotation marks I used to put around them, the marriage I casually
study and hope one day to mirror, the faith and trust and welcome of tested and
proved belief. On their couch, at their kitchen table, I find the warmth and
breadth of people who have seen every angle of your crazy and love you without
reservation, not in spite of it but because of it. People who accept every
stumble and mistake, but also lift you to the next challenge, the next lesson.
I have my gaggle (no better word) of girlfriends—some married
and others not—who laugh and cry and watch silly movies with me. Some prod me
toward what might make me uncomfortable, some secure me, some let me speak into
their lives as they speak into mine. Some teach me dance moves, or perch by my
stove to watch how onions and water and spices transform into velvety soup. Some
just sit with me, in coffee shops or dark cars, and share life in a thousand
words.
I have relatives, churchgoers, neighbors, Facebook
friends. I have coworkers, cowriters, cojourners—and those that cheer me on
from the sidelines. Adam is right—even in the instant, sitting next to Sara
barreling down 295, I know he is. I’m many things, but single isn’t one of
them.
Sunday, October 19, 2014
Essay a Day #12: What You Don't Say in the Speech
Where is EaD #11? Well, that would be my maid-of-honor speech itself, written last week and delivered last night. Unposted, but reflected on here, in EaD #12.
I married off my best friend yesterday. Of course, I use that verb like I was somehow central in the marrying, when in fact I was just holding her bouquet, or straightening her train, or filling her champagne flute. I gave a speech, but I did not speak words of covenant or ceremony over her and her husband. I did not walk her down the aisle, but I gave her away in the way women have always done: quietly, and with tears.
Thirty-six hours before, her mother and I talk across the marble island of her childhood kitchen, two glasses of wine and twelve years of friendship set between us. "You're unrepeatable," she summarizes, and I say this is true of her daughter, too. She recalls angles that I did not see, bonds forged before I could fully feel them. I remind her that depression is, at its root, utter selfishness--seeing nothing but one's own darkness. I could not see until Sydney told me how my dark was bleeding on to and through her, and it was in saving her that I saved myself. So when I say my best friend saved my life when we were eighteen, it isn't hyperbole.
And these are the things that do not find their way into my speech. You don't bring such demons, leashed and shackled and beaten as they may be, into the glowy carnival light of a reception tent, the hum of happiness nearly palpable at your throat and fingertips.
With her mother nights before, your palm on the cold marble brings you back and you remember your forehead pressed to shower tile, contemplating how hard you could manage, how able you would be to crush your own bones and drain slowly out of the world. But in this happy tent there is no place for that thought, and you don't find it again until later.
Here in the tent, you say things that are equally true, and more powerful than those bleached-out memories. You say that you knew you'd have to lose your best friend to her husband, but you'd assumed it would hurt. No one told you it would happen so smoothly, so naturally that you wouldn't notice until it was done. A pain outweighed by sweetness. Faces blurred not by wine but by joyful tears.
How often does the father say, "I'm not losing a daughter, I'm gaining a son"? Poetry I had loved but not fully understood until now. I was afraid of losing her--a truth I had buried in to-do lists and put-on busy-ness. But in the embers of the night, when I call her new last name and both of them turn toward me, I see the truth of it. What is lost is overcorrected by what is gained--not a second person, but a couple fully balanced and filled out by the other. My best friend as she was always meant to be, her best friend as he always aimed for, the both of them together as a united and singular thing. A love let loose into a world that in return will try to darken and crush and drain it--a love in need of allies and defenders, maids of honor, best friends.
I married off my best friend yesterday. Of course, I use that verb like I was somehow central in the marrying, when in fact I was just holding her bouquet, or straightening her train, or filling her champagne flute. I gave a speech, but I did not speak words of covenant or ceremony over her and her husband. I did not walk her down the aisle, but I gave her away in the way women have always done: quietly, and with tears.
Thirty-six hours before, her mother and I talk across the marble island of her childhood kitchen, two glasses of wine and twelve years of friendship set between us. "You're unrepeatable," she summarizes, and I say this is true of her daughter, too. She recalls angles that I did not see, bonds forged before I could fully feel them. I remind her that depression is, at its root, utter selfishness--seeing nothing but one's own darkness. I could not see until Sydney told me how my dark was bleeding on to and through her, and it was in saving her that I saved myself. So when I say my best friend saved my life when we were eighteen, it isn't hyperbole.
And these are the things that do not find their way into my speech. You don't bring such demons, leashed and shackled and beaten as they may be, into the glowy carnival light of a reception tent, the hum of happiness nearly palpable at your throat and fingertips.
With her mother nights before, your palm on the cold marble brings you back and you remember your forehead pressed to shower tile, contemplating how hard you could manage, how able you would be to crush your own bones and drain slowly out of the world. But in this happy tent there is no place for that thought, and you don't find it again until later.
Here in the tent, you say things that are equally true, and more powerful than those bleached-out memories. You say that you knew you'd have to lose your best friend to her husband, but you'd assumed it would hurt. No one told you it would happen so smoothly, so naturally that you wouldn't notice until it was done. A pain outweighed by sweetness. Faces blurred not by wine but by joyful tears.
How often does the father say, "I'm not losing a daughter, I'm gaining a son"? Poetry I had loved but not fully understood until now. I was afraid of losing her--a truth I had buried in to-do lists and put-on busy-ness. But in the embers of the night, when I call her new last name and both of them turn toward me, I see the truth of it. What is lost is overcorrected by what is gained--not a second person, but a couple fully balanced and filled out by the other. My best friend as she was always meant to be, her best friend as he always aimed for, the both of them together as a united and singular thing. A love let loose into a world that in return will try to darken and crush and drain it--a love in need of allies and defenders, maids of honor, best friends.
Monday, October 13, 2014
Essay a Day #10: Getting This Off My Desk
I love my desk.
My job has been a little frustrating today--nothing special or earth-shattering, I'm not playing "Take This Job and Shove It" or anything--just the little hiccups that make you consider something stronger than coffee at 10:45 in the morning. An "I Love My Job" post right now might be fitting, but I've done that before, and the elements are fairly static.
So instead, let's talk about my desk.
Let's talk about my awesome to-do list, which lives on the desk itself. Taken and tweaked from some ages-past Pinterest idea, I think, the outer eighteen inches of my desk is covered in clear contact paper where I can draw out a to-do list in wet-erase marker, each item with an eager empty box. I love it--it is not only organization but a splash of rebellion, grafitti-ing this office property with hard multi-colored ink. Boxes are checked (or items scribbled out, if more therapeutic means of checking-off are necessary), details circled or annotated, and when the list gets too long (and walking to the kitchen for a wet paper towel is too taxing), the boxes and words just wrap along the bottom and sides. In a word, it's beautiful.
Let's talk about my Legos*. That's right. Legos. All over my desk. I bought them for booth planning--which has actually been quite helpful. I have wads of bricks for shelving, and different wads for furniture, still different wads (these in bright, nearly-brand-perfect green) for signage. My handy wet-erase markers delineate where our booth and its neighbors lie. (My mom bought me a few Lego people--a crazy cat lady, a roller-skated drive-in waitress--for Christmas, but they have still not made the work trip. Sorry, Mom.) Remaindered Legos make up my receptacle for pens and scissors, and even a glance over it makes me an ounce happier--like the castles my brother once built for me, it is absurdly technicolor, similar to nothing in the real world, but it is uniquely Lego and seamlessly impregnable. Those Sharpies are going nowhere.
Let's talk about my organized chaos--or, rather, chaotic organization. I know where every scrap of everything is, but occasionally I am hit afresh by how ridiculous it looks. Like this morning, upon hearing a visiting author come into our office space: I swivel to do a fifteen-second cleanup, tucking this morning's yogurt spoon behind the laptop, recapturing the three escaped pens and securing them back in the Lego fortress. But in so doing, I see this space through someone else's eyes, and should probably be appalled: What's with the barely-balanced stack of cardboard boxes in the corner? Did a breeze blow through, that each pile of papers is fanned out irregularly? Have I heard of folder organizers, whereby you don't have to leave manilas scattered like leaves? Wouldn't a small list work better than those six Post-Its? I hear several teachers' voices in cacophony, explaining how I won't be able to do this sort of thing in a real job.
But it's functional to me, this supposed disorganization, this messy list, these chromatic bricks. When everything else might be going crazy, I know that to spin to ten o'clock is my AMLE folder, while nine-thirty will secure NCTE. I know that the lined yellow Post-It is ridiculous passwords that change too frequently, while the small neon green is a flag for the NCTE book order. This is my home turf, and while anyone else would be terrified of the piles, I am happily at home in them.
And let's not even get into the artifacts of inside jokes, either with others or just with me: the Spy Gnome and BEWARE FEMALE SPIES magnet, the Get Fuzzy cartoon, the card that reminds me to be the Velvet Hammer when necessary, the references to JetBlue and Powell's Books and that great brunch place in Milwaukee. The super hero cape stapled to my chair. The caution sign at the top of my monitor--a formal, typed "Stop. Think."--and the hand-written Post-It below the monitor reading, "DAMN, I'm good." The jester-outfitted llama photo reminding me that you never know what day at the office might be your last. The photo of Benedict Cumberbatch, so upset that he forgot my birthday.
I'm on the road a good deal for my job, and this is what I return to. From fancy hotels and suave restaurants, I come back to what might be a gray-beige chunk of earth peppered with papers. But when I come back to my desk, I come home. I feel the flutter of my cape as I turn to two-fifteen to consult the to-do list. The glimpse of the top of the monitor suggests that I reread that too-sassy sentence, maybe delete it. (And the Post-It below says, really, it never needed to be said.)
* Yes, beloved Lego Corporation, I know they are Lego bricks. I know "Lego" shall ever and always be adjectival. But while my vocabulary has advanced in many ways since age five, this is one of those words I cling to like a threadbare safety blanket. You can pry the term "Legos" from my cold, dead vernacular fingers.
My job has been a little frustrating today--nothing special or earth-shattering, I'm not playing "Take This Job and Shove It" or anything--just the little hiccups that make you consider something stronger than coffee at 10:45 in the morning. An "I Love My Job" post right now might be fitting, but I've done that before, and the elements are fairly static.
So instead, let's talk about my desk.
Let's talk about my awesome to-do list, which lives on the desk itself. Taken and tweaked from some ages-past Pinterest idea, I think, the outer eighteen inches of my desk is covered in clear contact paper where I can draw out a to-do list in wet-erase marker, each item with an eager empty box. I love it--it is not only organization but a splash of rebellion, grafitti-ing this office property with hard multi-colored ink. Boxes are checked (or items scribbled out, if more therapeutic means of checking-off are necessary), details circled or annotated, and when the list gets too long (and walking to the kitchen for a wet paper towel is too taxing), the boxes and words just wrap along the bottom and sides. In a word, it's beautiful.
Let's talk about my Legos*. That's right. Legos. All over my desk. I bought them for booth planning--which has actually been quite helpful. I have wads of bricks for shelving, and different wads for furniture, still different wads (these in bright, nearly-brand-perfect green) for signage. My handy wet-erase markers delineate where our booth and its neighbors lie. (My mom bought me a few Lego people--a crazy cat lady, a roller-skated drive-in waitress--for Christmas, but they have still not made the work trip. Sorry, Mom.) Remaindered Legos make up my receptacle for pens and scissors, and even a glance over it makes me an ounce happier--like the castles my brother once built for me, it is absurdly technicolor, similar to nothing in the real world, but it is uniquely Lego and seamlessly impregnable. Those Sharpies are going nowhere.
Let's talk about my organized chaos--or, rather, chaotic organization. I know where every scrap of everything is, but occasionally I am hit afresh by how ridiculous it looks. Like this morning, upon hearing a visiting author come into our office space: I swivel to do a fifteen-second cleanup, tucking this morning's yogurt spoon behind the laptop, recapturing the three escaped pens and securing them back in the Lego fortress. But in so doing, I see this space through someone else's eyes, and should probably be appalled: What's with the barely-balanced stack of cardboard boxes in the corner? Did a breeze blow through, that each pile of papers is fanned out irregularly? Have I heard of folder organizers, whereby you don't have to leave manilas scattered like leaves? Wouldn't a small list work better than those six Post-Its? I hear several teachers' voices in cacophony, explaining how I won't be able to do this sort of thing in a real job.
But it's functional to me, this supposed disorganization, this messy list, these chromatic bricks. When everything else might be going crazy, I know that to spin to ten o'clock is my AMLE folder, while nine-thirty will secure NCTE. I know that the lined yellow Post-It is ridiculous passwords that change too frequently, while the small neon green is a flag for the NCTE book order. This is my home turf, and while anyone else would be terrified of the piles, I am happily at home in them.
And let's not even get into the artifacts of inside jokes, either with others or just with me: the Spy Gnome and BEWARE FEMALE SPIES magnet, the Get Fuzzy cartoon, the card that reminds me to be the Velvet Hammer when necessary, the references to JetBlue and Powell's Books and that great brunch place in Milwaukee. The super hero cape stapled to my chair. The caution sign at the top of my monitor--a formal, typed "Stop. Think."--and the hand-written Post-It below the monitor reading, "DAMN, I'm good." The jester-outfitted llama photo reminding me that you never know what day at the office might be your last. The photo of Benedict Cumberbatch, so upset that he forgot my birthday.
I'm on the road a good deal for my job, and this is what I return to. From fancy hotels and suave restaurants, I come back to what might be a gray-beige chunk of earth peppered with papers. But when I come back to my desk, I come home. I feel the flutter of my cape as I turn to two-fifteen to consult the to-do list. The glimpse of the top of the monitor suggests that I reread that too-sassy sentence, maybe delete it. (And the Post-It below says, really, it never needed to be said.)
* Yes, beloved Lego Corporation, I know they are Lego bricks. I know "Lego" shall ever and always be adjectival. But while my vocabulary has advanced in many ways since age five, this is one of those words I cling to like a threadbare safety blanket. You can pry the term "Legos" from my cold, dead vernacular fingers.
Sunday, October 12, 2014
Essay a Day #9: Talking to Matt About Movies
If you overheard a phone conversation with my brother and I (or participated in it, like my dear sister-in-law), you might wonder about our relationship. We don't trade myriad details about work or plans or church. We don't delve into our feelings, or compare memories of our dad. These things come up, of course, glancingly, but really, overall, we talk about movies.
Movies we've seen lately--tonight we trade "The Escapist" for "Gone Girl"--and movies that we could, and frequently do, recite ad nauseam. Well-known schticks and accents, running jokes, cross-references. It's a friendly contest of sorts: who can keep it going, making each further reference obscurer but able to be followed; who can make the other break up in laughter; who can segue from Harrison Ford to "Ella Enchanted" to Mandy Patinkin and back again.
When we're around each other in real life, we act like normal people (mostly)--sure, movies comes into it, but all the usual conversations, too. But when we're on the phone, it's nearly impossible to shift away from film for more than a couple minutes. I feel and hear it, alternately, as we try otherwise. A few basic points are made, agreement or commiseration is heard, and then a Sean Connercy impersonation breaks in and we're at it again.
But I was thinking, as I hung up tonight: I don't see it as a problem to overcome. For me, casing the conversation like this is a throwback, an homage to when it was all we had. Back when we were at each other's throats living together, or sitting on the phone with nothing to say after he moved out, movies were what we had in common. The number of childhood afternoons co-opted by Lego reenactments of "Willow" and "The Ewok Movie" would reach into the hundreds. The dozens of phone calls involving the latest James Bond flick, or a re-found classic. This was how we grew up, how we learned how to talk with each other as a child and a teenager, a teenager and an adult, a single and a married. We have rarely lived in the same space, life-wise, and movies have always served to bridge the gap, dating from when Matt could agree that I'd moved up in the world by trading in my love for Prince Philip for Madmartigan.
For most of my adult life, my father and I had nothing to talk about. I would prepare for phone calls, filing away conversation topics we could safely sit on for a few minutes at a time. A call would rarely last more than 25 minutes. There just wasn't anything left to say, I guess. I don't have that problem with Matt. Our conversation bounces between real and recorded life, but there are not holes of silence, no skating around patches of ice too thin to risk.
We will talk about anything. Just don't be surprised when the real life stuff is interrupted--pleasantly, perfectly, comfortably--with Hugh Grant being bumbly, Sean Bean dying, or Sam Neill talking about talking dinosaurs.
Movies we've seen lately--tonight we trade "The Escapist" for "Gone Girl"--and movies that we could, and frequently do, recite ad nauseam. Well-known schticks and accents, running jokes, cross-references. It's a friendly contest of sorts: who can keep it going, making each further reference obscurer but able to be followed; who can make the other break up in laughter; who can segue from Harrison Ford to "Ella Enchanted" to Mandy Patinkin and back again.
When we're around each other in real life, we act like normal people (mostly)--sure, movies comes into it, but all the usual conversations, too. But when we're on the phone, it's nearly impossible to shift away from film for more than a couple minutes. I feel and hear it, alternately, as we try otherwise. A few basic points are made, agreement or commiseration is heard, and then a Sean Connercy impersonation breaks in and we're at it again.
But I was thinking, as I hung up tonight: I don't see it as a problem to overcome. For me, casing the conversation like this is a throwback, an homage to when it was all we had. Back when we were at each other's throats living together, or sitting on the phone with nothing to say after he moved out, movies were what we had in common. The number of childhood afternoons co-opted by Lego reenactments of "Willow" and "The Ewok Movie" would reach into the hundreds. The dozens of phone calls involving the latest James Bond flick, or a re-found classic. This was how we grew up, how we learned how to talk with each other as a child and a teenager, a teenager and an adult, a single and a married. We have rarely lived in the same space, life-wise, and movies have always served to bridge the gap, dating from when Matt could agree that I'd moved up in the world by trading in my love for Prince Philip for Madmartigan.
For most of my adult life, my father and I had nothing to talk about. I would prepare for phone calls, filing away conversation topics we could safely sit on for a few minutes at a time. A call would rarely last more than 25 minutes. There just wasn't anything left to say, I guess. I don't have that problem with Matt. Our conversation bounces between real and recorded life, but there are not holes of silence, no skating around patches of ice too thin to risk.
We will talk about anything. Just don't be surprised when the real life stuff is interrupted--pleasantly, perfectly, comfortably--with Hugh Grant being bumbly, Sean Bean dying, or Sam Neill talking about talking dinosaurs.
Saturday, October 11, 2014
Essay a Day #8: Saying the Same Thing
Well, hey there, Essay a Day community. You thought I'd left you, didn't you. But no--I am here. Neglectful, but not GONE...
Four of us sit around my living room this morning, talking over coffee mugs and still-steaming pumpkin bread. Funny stories about weddings--and one funeral. Frustrations over children and schools. Tissue-less, I provide a roll of toilet paper for some tears.
The last came as one woman voiced a hurt that is still too fresh, years gone in memory, for me to hear without sharing still. (And glimpses of it are still too frequently felt to forget.) How it is possible to be in a crowd and be alone, how you can know people and be unknown, a veteran and asked if you are new? How are those walls so thickly there, and not. How we think we're crazy for feeling them. How not talking about them only adds another layer of glassy brick.
It took me three years, I say. A familiar opening--I've used it before. Three years in this place--in this city, at this church--before I felt immersed in community, a real part of a larger thing. Like I could pick up the phone and meet someone for coffee without a reason. Like I could sit on your couch even after the food was eaten and planned discussion had.
Why is it so hard to establish real, deep community? Blame was quickly assigned to technology, to the speed of life, but this struggle runs farther below the surface than that, and we all know it. Even as we sit, I can picture a similar scene run back through history: the crooked color photos on the wall are replaced with paintings, our sweatpants with layers of smooth, starched linen. Women talking, feeling out where the boundaries are, where the defenses rest. Still more years, and the walls are bare logs, the clothing simple and stained. More, and the walls fade to just dark unknown, and the coffee table becomes a well-kept fire spiraling smoke up into the stars. I don't pretend that this same conversation, peppered with first-world problems, has remained the same for millennia--but I think the underpinnings could be easily recognized. Who are you? Are we this close? Is it okay to say----? And slowly, agreements, body language, laughter, tears--this strange language from outside our purposeful selves graces to the one across the room: Yes.
Claims that the world held on us slowly draws each woman, one by one, from her chair. She puts her mug in the sink, she slips her purse over her arm, she closes the door behind her, each motion an act of preparing, of replacing the armor that this world requires. By the time they are halfway down the street and I am putting the kitchen chairs back at the table, we have already slipped into the rhythm of normal, of guarded, of closed.
Four of us sit around my living room this morning, talking over coffee mugs and still-steaming pumpkin bread. Funny stories about weddings--and one funeral. Frustrations over children and schools. Tissue-less, I provide a roll of toilet paper for some tears.
The last came as one woman voiced a hurt that is still too fresh, years gone in memory, for me to hear without sharing still. (And glimpses of it are still too frequently felt to forget.) How it is possible to be in a crowd and be alone, how you can know people and be unknown, a veteran and asked if you are new? How are those walls so thickly there, and not. How we think we're crazy for feeling them. How not talking about them only adds another layer of glassy brick.
It took me three years, I say. A familiar opening--I've used it before. Three years in this place--in this city, at this church--before I felt immersed in community, a real part of a larger thing. Like I could pick up the phone and meet someone for coffee without a reason. Like I could sit on your couch even after the food was eaten and planned discussion had.
Why is it so hard to establish real, deep community? Blame was quickly assigned to technology, to the speed of life, but this struggle runs farther below the surface than that, and we all know it. Even as we sit, I can picture a similar scene run back through history: the crooked color photos on the wall are replaced with paintings, our sweatpants with layers of smooth, starched linen. Women talking, feeling out where the boundaries are, where the defenses rest. Still more years, and the walls are bare logs, the clothing simple and stained. More, and the walls fade to just dark unknown, and the coffee table becomes a well-kept fire spiraling smoke up into the stars. I don't pretend that this same conversation, peppered with first-world problems, has remained the same for millennia--but I think the underpinnings could be easily recognized. Who are you? Are we this close? Is it okay to say----? And slowly, agreements, body language, laughter, tears--this strange language from outside our purposeful selves graces to the one across the room: Yes.
Claims that the world held on us slowly draws each woman, one by one, from her chair. She puts her mug in the sink, she slips her purse over her arm, she closes the door behind her, each motion an act of preparing, of replacing the armor that this world requires. By the time they are halfway down the street and I am putting the kitchen chairs back at the table, we have already slipped into the rhythm of normal, of guarded, of closed.
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