Learning My Lesson

I've been wrestling with this piece for years. I wrote it from the heart, snapping words onto the page like so many aces, but that initial winning streak ended quickly. Once out of my imagination, taking form in black Times New Roman on the standard-size page, the subject resisted me, wiggling its form, flipping over just out of my reach like the rat snake that lives in the corner of my garage.

In its first incarnation, this piece was about reading Truman Capote's In Cold Blood when I was 11 years old. Capote's words marked me as a writer, giving me a direction I wouldn't understand until many years later, and I wanted to send up flares to light my path. So, first, I wrote about what I remembered best--encountering the book on top of my father's stack of reading material in our blue-tiled bathroom.As I wrote, I was temporarily content with the word picture I'd created of the precocious reader I'd once been. I revelled in the pictures created by my words, the snap of one lego-like word into the next.

So the piece waited, patiently stored in my computer docs. Years later, after reinventing my creative nonfiction course at a new school, I had the thought to turn my Capote piece into a discussion of essential truth in modern nonfiction. I wrote and researched, pulling in quotes and examples, highlighting the great Oprah Winfrey/James Frey debacle caused by Frey's "lies" in his memoir A Million Little Pieces. Mixing creative nonfiction techniques with scholarship, I created a hybrid of sorts that pushed the boundaries of conventional form. When our scholarship committee sent out a query for writing to be workshopped, I volunteered and sent my Capote piece off for reviewing.

I don't know what I expected. Academics don't always do creative nonfiction well. Brilliant colleagues have been known to lean against my office door, asking "How would you define creative nonfiction again?" Suggestions were made at the scholarship group that I should rework my writing to be more instructional, less emotional.

Ahh...and I knew better, too. A cardinal rule for writing workshops in my classrooms is to follow where the story takes us; so, if a well-intentioned criticism from a well-intentioned participant will derail your story, ignore it! Shortly, most of the creative nonfiction lay on the cutting room floor, and the pathetic remains went back to the document waiting room.

Those who know me well understand that Capote is just under my skin, so this troublesome piece of writing hasn't been far from my creative thoughts. I decided recently to give it another try, this time going back to the original. Then came the query from a former creative nonfiction student, now taking a class in online publishing, for a "piece of creative nonfiction, one" I "might have just lying around" that he might publish in the creative nonfiction section.

I thought the Capote piece might just do the trick, as it indeed has been "lying around." The problem is that I'm a different person now, and I'm finally arriving where Capote has been leading me. Words that sync together with a vaccuum "whoosh" aren't enough anymore. As I write, I the advice I give my students grates in my ears:

Show, don't tell.
Sometimes we don't know what the focus is until we find it.
There must be layers, vertically and horizontally.
The reader must be able to find your personal discovery and a universal discovery.

I am stuck in the mire of my own philosophy.

My piece is no longer straightforward. It has been deprived of sunlight, its leaves a sickly yellow, its twisted roots now drawing strength from the dark underground. My story has becomes less about Capote and more about my father's alcoholism. Bruised images of sponges being stuffed into weeping mouths flicker behind my eyelids, and I write about the shelter words built over me and around me.

I'm stuck in the quicksand of my own writing, my own life, and no matter how hard I try to pull my weighted legs from the muck, I struggle vainly, sinking, sinking, sinking until the wet sand stops my breath.

Yes, Michael?

"Yes, Michael?"

I'm expecting an insightful comment from one of my youngest creative nonfiction writing students. We'd been discussing a rather stressful piece by David Mamet, "The Rake," a well-crafted recounting of physical and emotional abuse doled out to Mamet and his sister, calmly and systematically, by their mother and stepfather. Each time I sink into Mamet's words, my heart freezes as I stand a helpless witness to the thud of a slender back against a hooked shelf, the sharp crack of a brush against a cheekbone. the pool of blood amassing in a dinner plate. I wonder what the students think.

"I was just thinking..."

"Yes, Michael?"

"Well, I just remembered that if I don't call the police in the next ten minutes, there may be a warrant out for my arrest."

"I guess you'd better go call the police, then."

Blushing a bit, he bolts from the classroom, only to return a few minutes later with a smile.

"Are you going to be arrested?" I ask.

"No."

"Is this for the parking ticket you got in the Morgantown Mall parking lot?"

"Yes," again with a grin.

So,this is what I know about Michael. He got a ticket in the Morgantown Mall parking lot for failing to stop at the end of a traffic aisle. The ticket was a big one. He might have been arrested, but he wasn't.

Sometimes he looks uncomfortable in his seat, his long frame compacted into a sharp angular configuration of beige plastic and shiny metal legs. He moves around a lot, probably futilely seeking a better position. Sometimes I worry that my words aren't making their way across the classroom to him, getting stuck in the heads of the girls who sit in front of him. Are my words not interesting enough, either professorly or creative-writerly enough? Am I repeating what he already knows? Have I not blown enough helium into my ideas for maximum byoyancy? Maybe I'm not enunciating clearly, dropping a syllable here and there, so the entire message can't reach him. It's possible that he's a poet, and creative nonfiction leaves him cold. Then again, perhaps these questions are more about me and my rambling insecurities than about him.

For he is a friendly, earnest student. We all look toward him expectantly when he speaks. What might Michael say?

Yesterday, we all learned something else about Michael. We were workshopping student drafts, and I asked "So, what are you thinking, Michael?"

"What am I thinking? What am I thinking?" Pinking inward from the sides of his face, he said "Well, actually I'm thinking that my computer has 17% battery, and it's about to die any minute."

He did go on to share his useful thoughts about the piece of writing we were discussing--stopping in the middle to show us how his computer screen had indeed gone blank, but none of what he said was nearly as interesting to me as contemplating the places Michael's mind travels to while his body is sitting in room 321.

Listening to Annie Dillard

Written after reading a passage from Annie Dillard's On the Writing Life to a creative nonfiction writing class.

When I write, I often do stick to the path, careful not to step on the cracks, to break my mother's back--carefully excavating, mindful not to nick the sidewalls or hit the unstable pocket that will cause the cave-in, the moral collapse of what I know to be true.

Isn't it better to wear my headlamp and carry a backpack full of emergency measures for stopping the holes than to worry, than to turn down--fall down--the shaft with no light?

Light keeps me steady when I follow the direct, marked path. Darkness plunges me into uncertainty--do I turn left or right?--and my words become clumsy in their blindness.

If I stay centered in the floodlights, I can brick my path with molded words, all pointing dutifully to my predetermined discovery. My writer's soul is safe, moving in that predictable pattern, and I will have written well enough.

Shalimar

Response to the "Warm Up, Stretch, and Extend" exercise in A Writer's Workbook by Caroline Sharp: #25...describe perfume.

My mother wore Shalimar by Guerlain. Because she was never without it, I can't separate the perfume from my mother's natural smell, making it impossible to describe Shalimar as a fragrance based in a musk, sandalwood, or floral scent. I search for descriptive words to conjure the perfume's sweet essence, but there isn't enough literary magic for this task. It must be enough to say that the perfume was my mother, and she wore it like a second skin, perhaps even an armor. Shalimar was part of a good night kiss when I was a child, my head against her shoulder as she tucked me into my twin bed. Even in her displeasure at me or in her untamed rages against life, her scent was the sensory backdrop. Shalimar was part of my brother's and then my father's funerals, as I sat shoulder to shoulder with my diminished mother in the stiff chairs lined against the funeral home wall. When I became a new bride and then a new mother, Shalimar wafted toward me as my mother embraced me and held my children for the first time. For fifty years, there were countless moments between us flavored by a fine spray of Shalimar.And, finally, it was there too, as I bent to cradle my elderly mother in my arms or brush a quick kiss against her dry and peeling lips.

Shalimar was often the right Christmas or birthday gift. She was delighted by the expensively elaborate boxes patterned in shiny gold and deep cobalt blue that when opened would reveal the exotic bottle full of golden liquid nestled inside a satin lining. The blue cap sat elegantly on top of the fan-shaped bottle that faithfully continued to dispense my mother's smell. During the years I knew her, she received ornately jeweled tiny compacts of solid perfume, small golden purse-sized atomizers, tall bottles of moisturizing body lotion, and circled containers of richly smelling powder.

Now, for us, there is one last bottle of Shalimar. When my sister and I dismantled my mother's apartment after her death three years ago, there were pieces of our mother that we kept for later. Boxes full of my mother's life sit waiting for us to reassemble the fragments, if only there could be magic enough. The Shalimar, though, is in my bathroom cabinet, the one to the right of the mirror that no one uses. Inside is a fan-shaped bottle topped with the trademark cobalt blue cap. Only half full, the bottle contains just enough magic to bring my mother to me when I need her. All I have to do is put my nose to the exquisite bottle and breathe..

On Writing

Today I searched through books on writing, on the teaching of writing, for a new course I'm offering in the fall. It's an honor for me to teach composition theory to eager fledgling teachers, but it's a daunting task. So much hangs in the balance: how can I reveal to them the secrets of being an inspiring writing teacher, the art of balance on the tightrope? Do I even know the secrets? Can I keep my balance?

I was shamed into writing this post after reading a new blog by a former student who is headed off to earn her MFA at LSU, where she will perform her magic trick for a new audience-- blowing jewel-toned words onto the page, lovely words that cast color and reflect light. She began her blog by saying that she hadn't written since graduation, that one who calls herself a writer must actually write. And so, here I am, writing out of guilt.

Like Sarah, I can't write at home. At school, in my small office full of books and carefully collected treasures, I can write tight academic prose. I can grade papers, create curriculum, solve problems with my words, but I can't string together a line of words that move me...or anyone else. At home, it is only early in the morning or very late at night when the words come to me, albeit limpingly. Here, there is too much distraction...laundry to be folded, dogs to be let outside, dinner to be thawed and cooked. Voices rise and fall with needs and desires. I am not a writer within the walls of my home; I am a mother, a wife, a woman of sand and straw. It is only when I am away from home that the words come tumbling. At the beach, fully formed sentences and paragraphs roll into my brain. On the road, I fill my journal with detailed notations: room descriptions, conversations overheard, life's truths unraveled. If I lived at the beach in a small gray weathered cottage, would my words force the air from the room? If I'd taken that other lonelier path, would I be someone called Joyce Carol Oates or Kate Chopin?

Maybe location has nothing to do with my productivity. It may be that I don't have enough strong magic to blow clear emerald and ruby bubbles into the air. Perhaps the sawdust within me coats my powers, leaving me only enough creativity to wonder what might have been.

I'm putting myself to the test of fire this summer. Am I more than sand and straw? Look for me at Panera or Starbucks or Barnes and Nobles, where I'll be waiting for the words to come.

The Sigh

     "What is that supposed to mean?" 

     I look around, my head in a swivel, to see what unfortunate soul has done something to annoy my daughter.

     "Well?" she snorts, glossy French-tipped nails drumming the table.

     Ah, she's glaring at me, her eyes full of blue flame. I've done it again, I guess. An involuntary sigh, an innocent explusion of breath has escaped from my lips, from deep inside my chest. I've become famous in my family circle for this sigh, to whom it means much more than an exhalation of carbon dioxide. To my daughters and sons this sigh equals negative commentary on their daily clothing choices, their looks at any given moment, their ambition or lack of thereof-- their worth weighed and measured by my single breath.

     The first memory I have of being on trial for my sigh occurred the night my oldest son was born. Never mind the fact that I had just given birth for the first time, that my new-mother hormones raged along with my adrenalin, or that the ragged tear of the almost episiotomy burned all the way to my brain. The important issue that night was that my sighing betrayed me as I watched my mother-in-law surpervise my husband's touching, holding, comforting of the child he'd fathered but was meeting for the first time.

     "Don't sigh at me, Jill!" she snarled, her face contorting with dislike.

     I saw how it was to be between us, then, and the long process of making her invisible began. 

     After that, I didn't think too much about the sigh, until my children became teenagers. They resurrected the charge against me, and it has remained a constant litany. Did they inherit this sigh-detecting gene from their grandmother, who was never quite sure about me?

     I decided to ask my sister about it, thinking that, as a mother and one of two people left on this earth who love me unconditionally, she would debunk the sigh as adolescent angst.  "You do sigh a lot," she said instead.

     So, I stand guilty as charged, although I believe in my innocence. My defense is this: I admit that I sigh, but I don't plan to sigh, and I swear, oh I do swear, that I don't sigh in judgment of anyone. I think, instead of the personal condemnation my children believe them to be, my sighs are a safety valve, a little of life's build-up hissing out slowly here and there, my own despair leaking into the atmosphere.

     My secret despair is not so well kept if it automatically makes itself heard. How can I explain it to them, that this black mess I carry within me has nothing to do with them? I pile things on top of it--happy moments--but the vapors ooze out around them, moving up my windpipe and out through my mouth. Images swirl in the despair--my father stuffing a sponge into my mother's mouth while she kicked at him from the floor--my brother's pillowed head in the cheap gray coffin, wax plugs almost stopping the trickle of blood from the entrance and exit wounds--the sheriff's deputy's quick rap at my door, his large hands bearing a thick envelope of foreclosure --my mother's open-mouthed last gasp for breath as she died alone, the sight of her face molded by rigor mortis seared into my retinas--the simple understanding that life is a series of losses, that nothing is certain, that what you know to be true never is. My sighs are my mea culpa, my gasp for air.

     "Mom?" she asks a bit snottily, tossing her bangs back from her face.

     "Oh, no, did I do it again?" I tease her, passing the sigh off with a smile.

     There are things better left unsaid. 

     

     

     

     

Sometimes There is Poetry

For Bob

I can't sleep at night
for all the pawing by the wolf at the door.
It's been going on for some time--
most nights his howl stalks me,
and I run badly as if starring in a B horror film,
fleeing from chamber to chamber in my mind.

My eyes flip open,
the coins fly off my lids.
I feel it before I see it--
the yellow glare under the door
that slips like cartoon smoke across the floor,
at a right angle up the bed and into my pillowed ear.

And so it goes,
as the wise Mr. Vonnegut said.
Even so, knowing this, sometimes I wake up dead--
the wolf having broken through,
gnawing a vein that then floods the room,
leaving a pool of DNA, just in case I have a second coming.

But, now and then,
there is poetry.
A man at my door brings it to me--
offering alms for my soul,
pouring words and metaphors into my veins,
softly binding my wounds with mistletoe and rye.

He stands in the doorway,
his head cocked to the right,
a Godly smile across the lines of his face--
he recites poetry about the blue child,
and oh Suzanna's waist, some catfish lovin'
and coffee served by a left-handed woman, oh damn!

Sometimes he sits
in the chair by my books,
a man who lives by words, the Word--
and his wife brings me pictures of purple flowers.
On the very best of days, there is a little
soft shoe, along with the poetry, right there in the hall.