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Addendum

I searched on google to see if I could find any information about the woman in my last post, to see if there was a news story that would tell me more about her. There was a house fire a few days ago that killed two people, a 77 year old man and his 69 year old sister. When I did an image search, there was the lady. She was a neighbor. The story said she is a  school teacher. In the image from the news story she looks 10  years younger, but it’s her.

See me, hear me part II

“We see the world not as it is, but as we are.”  – The Talmud – maybe. I don’t like to quote from works I haven’t read but this one keeps showing up in things I have read, which helps me feel like I’m not just grabbing some famous line that is not also an idea I’ve thought on myself.

On Saturday I was parked on a street with a meter that I begrudgingly fed to its limit. The max time allowed wasn’t enough which meant I had to leave the workshop I was attending part way through to go plunk in more money. As I turned to go back to my meeting I heard a woman’s voice shouting to me. As she got closer, I could see she was old. She was using a walker and was about a half a foot shorter than me. Around her neck was a small plastic pouch which I assumed contained her identification and other such paperwork. In her hand was a bus schedule.

I pretty much knew what was coming. She wanted money. She tried to explain about “them telling me I could use my card in Royal Oak but the bus driver says no, it’s no good.” And she was stranded until somebody gave her fare.  Could I please help her? And I said yes with more generosity than I am used to in myself.

She wanted to explain something to me, something about her son being killed near where we were. The streets aren’t safe these days. Had I seen the story on the news? He was playing basketball and all he had on him was $2. Beat him is what they did. Did I hear about those two boys that were killed? Not safe. Makes no sense. She would give me her name and address so I could get my money back.

I asked when her son was killed. I figured any son of hers would have to be at least forty years old and that I hadn’t heard her story correctly. This state of generosity had me a little off-kilter.

“Two days ago. Two days ago.” Her face scrunched up against tears.  “And I came here on the bus. And now I have to go back and tell her. How am I going to tell her?” The story was no clearer. I hugged her. I don’t hug strangers. Or I didn’t used to.

That was it. I gave her the amount she said it would cost for the bus, about twice as much as I figured, and she left saying, “Bless you. Thank you. Thank you.” And I said “You’re welcome,” and went back to finish the workshop.

Later, as I drove home, I had mixed feelings about my encounter. It had felt right to give the woman the money but now a negative cloud was creeping in. And confusion.
Am I an easy mark? Can people tell I’m unable to say no?
For whatever reason, that lady needed the money.
How hard would it be for me to ask a total stranger for money?
Her suffering seemed real. Am I so easily deceived? A bus doesn’t cost that much.
Is she laughing at how gullible I am?
I had the money to give her. That is my blessing.
Why the hell is this such a big deal to me?

We see the world not as it is, but as we are. The negative cloud, the suspicion, was a statement about myself, not about the woman. Sometimes I fail. Sometimes I love. Sometimes I do both.

See me, hear me

(I wrote this with someone in mind but I don’t even know if that person exists. Perhaps I made him up. It seems that I needed the pain in order learn. The pain seemed real but now it’s gone.)

To walk away in the middle of a conversation is to effectively silence a person. Oh, she can talk into thin air and hear her own voice but, without an entity to absorb or even bounce the words off of, the sound she makes is hollow, has no body, no resonance. Another way to silence is to simply dismiss what is being said as gibberish or nonsensical. Or trivialize the importance of an idea or feeling that’s being communicated. Children are often brought under control this way. Let them cry. When they’ve got it out of their systems, they’ll shut up. It is a cruel maneuver to use on someone so vulnerable.

This is what you did the first time, too, when you wouldn’t hear me. When my words seemed to fall out into the room and just lay there not connecting. And I would wonder – What’s wrong with me that I can’t communicate what I feel? You were there, physically, and maybe even heard what I was saying, but you had retreated enough so there was no evidence that what I was saying had substance.

I wrote a story once that kept returning to the flatness of sounds. A woman is dining out and the carpet and table cloth and very atmosphere of the place keep swallowing sound, no resonance is how I put it. Later that evening, back in her hotel room, she tries to tell the man No, I changed my mind, I don’t want this. But her words don’t have substance. He doesn’t hear her because – why? There is no connection between them. He really doesn’t hear because they are not two people together. They are separate, in their own worlds. She created the scene that put her there as much as he did. I have been silenced that way all my life. Silenced by not being heard.

Well, listen to yourself. Hear yourself. If you want people to hear you, you must hear yourself first. See yourself first and then they will be able to see you.

Instead of crying about and explaining not being heard, perhaps I need to concentrate on how it works to connect. What I can do to make myself heard and seen. And how I can hear and see more clearly. Shift my focus. What would I say about me if someone listened? — I want to know you. I want to share whatever time we have joyfully. I want to delight you and I want to be delighted by you and the tender, ephemeral beauty suspended between us, around us. It won’t always be easy or painless but it will be alive and it will have a heartbeat. — If I want that to be what is heard then I must manifest it in my being, in my body. I cannot hide and also be seen. I cannot be quiet and also be heard.

The woman in my story was hiding, was silent so she wouldn’t be seen or heard. She wanted to participate in life but from the safety of a hunting blind. Of course the man did not see her. She wasn’t there. He didn’t hear her because her words came too weak and too late. She was not present enough to speak them loud enough to hear.

Always, I am only partially here, not giving everything in order to save myself for another day. Keep some in reserve, just in case. It’s no way to live.

From what place do I want to speak? From the chord that vibrates when it encounters goodness, vulnerability, the beauty of another person. From the thunder that resounds in my body at the sight of a mountain, a lake, a hundred year old tree. From the hushed place that flutters at the sight of dew on spring grass. Please let me speak from that place. Is this a prayer I ask of myself? Allow me to lay the shield down. Allow me to know I am heard. Allow me to be present.

It weird how the mind/heart works. Emotion crosses the boundary of time as if time doesn’t exist and breaches the limitations of finite form that our intellect perceives as discrete. My rational mind says I’m crazy to equate the deep rejection and loss I felt years ago to an episode forty years later with someone who is not tied in any solid way to my life, who feels little connection to the person I am. But my heart doesn’t care a bit. It finds what it needs to help it understand and heal. It found you even though it knew the experience would be wrenching, would rekindle the enormous feelings of insecurity and sadness that lay buried for so many years. It found you so I could recreate what I felt so long ago and figure out how to come out of hiding.

Thanksgiving

“That’s not that great,” she says pinched faced of the corn casserole everyone downstairs has raved about. “And I didn’t care for that too much either.” She points to the apples, sweet potatoes and orange sauce that took me 2 hours to prepare.
She’s by herself because the stairs might stress her lungs and leave her desperate for oxygen. I’ve seen it, her eyes widened, shallow panting, trying not to panic before she can relax and breathe deeply enough so her body knows it’s not suffocating. It hasn’t been this bad since I called the ambulance two years ago but that was right after heart surgery, before she knew what to expect.
I have a smile on my face as my husband’s family visits and eats in our basement. On the floor I have scrubbed and waxed. On the furniture I dusted and arranged just perfectly. I am beginning to organize the mess in the kitchen. My thought is to get some order here so I am not left with chaos later. Put the food away and rinse the serving bowls. Get the carcass cleaned up, gone. The guests will pass through the kitchen on their way out and I don’t want them to have to see the picked bones, the cutting board slippery with the juices and skin of the turkey they just ate, the gray bits of innards exposed when the meat was pulled off.
My mother has been as pleasant as she is capable of. Maybe because she is sick and afraid she will be alone if she doesn’t behave, if she’s not nice. Maybe the anger and bitterness has receded and doesn’t demand to show its self as in recent years. Maybe she is just too tired to snarl.
I am cleaning cleaning cleaning. Talk and laughter drift up to where I am. My back aches. My mother watches as I scrape plates into the garbage. She helps me with what she can. By the time my husband asks if there is anything he can do there is nothing much left to do.
The guests ascend. I smile, get their coats. Everything was real nice. Delicious. They smile.

changing direction

This post is because of Erin, a woman I’ve never met. Her words reminded me of a need that I’ve tried to ignore into nonexistence. But the need did not go away even when I starved it. Even when I denied it, turned my back on it. I can’t even say what the need is perhaps because I’ve not spent enough time with it to hear its name or feel its shape. But it pulls me when I come in contact with certain things. And Erin’s words are consistently one of those things.
I haven’t written anything here for over three years. The plan then was to explore what writing is, what it means, how it works. I hoped to look at it in some kind of intellectual way and get answers for questions I’d been asking for a long time. For a few different reasons, the quest buried me and I let my unexamined fears keep me still and nearly suffocated.
I just now reread several of the entries here. There aren’t many. One of the reasons I stopped writing was a fear of inadvertently revealing myself, of showing the world (all zero of my readers) something too personal. And at the same time realizing that that fear held me back from reaching my main goal of cutting through the bullshit and showing something real and honest. I was afraid of accidently baring any dullness or ugliness or woundedness in public that I had already refused to look at in private.
So.
Fear keeps me from myself because it makes me go in the wrong direction, away from life, away from feeling anything intensely, away from accepting the dull, the ugly and the wounded parts of me. And then I also lose my strength and joy and resilience because they are all of a piece. I can’t claim one without taking them all. Erin’s writing reminds me how exhilarating it can be to move in the direction of life and that having the answers and having understanding are not at all the same thing. The first one stops the journey cold and the second one leads further and further onward.
So, thank you Erin. I still don’t know what writing is, what it means or how it works but I understand a wee bit more because of you.

Liteature and Composition

 I say I want to “teach writing”. What does that mean and is it even possible? Although I’ve been told a couple of times that I can write well myself, more often than not, I don’t believe it. Many of my experiences and thoughts are just unavailable to me in words. How am I supposed to teach somebody else a skill I don’t even understand?

My sixteen year old son was assigned some reading over the summer – The Awakening by Kate Chopin, Tess of  the D’Urbervilles by Hardy and A Farewell to Arms by Hemmingway. I read Farewell along time ago and was awed by Hemmingway, even if some people label him a misogynistic pig. You know, who in this life doesn’t have some really fundamental, shitty warp on his or her outlook? I like Hemmingway a lot. Maybe it says something about me, liking a man who was so conflicted about women…betrays my schizoid tendencies. But damn, he could write.

Anyway, my son is nonplussed, borderline bored by the stuff he has to read and because I haven’t read the other two selections I am starting The Awakening so maybe I can help him a little. I feel ineffective and unprepared having just gotten my degree in English and not being able to give him an inspirational pep talk about why these novels are valuable.

About one third of the way into The Awakening, I feel the enormity of what Chopin is going for. I love the words, the scenes, the things that can’t be captured straight on. But what is a sixteen year old boy going to do with this? Without a guide he will not even suspect the wonder and magic in Chopin’s words. I will try. But this is some strange subject matter for a mother to discuss with her son. A mother who is still only sometimes at home in her own awakening. I guess this is what human relationships are all about – doing the best with what’s available right now.

Anyway, about teaching writing – My son’s assigned reading is for an English Lit/ Composition class. At the same time I’m thinking about Chopin, I’m reading a blog by a 22 year old junkie. There’s lots of stuff about dope, shooting up, getting sick and scoring again. But it’s good writing. Not Hemmingway. But it’s real, it’s coherent and it’s not boring (ok, well there’s only so many ways you can talk about dope).  For the most part, it keeps my interest and I’ve gone back to it a few times to check if she’s still writing.

I found myself questioning whether a self proclaimed sex worker/junkie would have the wherewithal to write as consistently and effectively as this woman does and I ran smack (ha) into a wall of my own prejudice. Why shouldn’t she be articulate and have the drive to figure things out, the longing and talent to try and make sense out of her life? She hasn’t had the epiphany but she’s searching. And searching is the state most of us spend our lives in. That or merely existing, plodding through as numb as we can manage. This woman is documenting her experience. For who and why? She says it helps her to get the stuff out of her head. Sounds familiar.

But my son is not reading this type of writing for ADV PL LIT COMP. He’s reading “literature.” But what exactly is he supposed to be studying? Do we read Chopin, Hemmingway and Hardy etc… for the lessons they teach us about writing or the lessons they teach us about life? Why do I find myself thinking about a heroin addict in South Florida who lives a life so unlike my own? Why do I find myself wondering at the frequency and fluidity with which she writes and questioning if a twenty-two year old could have such an easy style? Maybe because it doesn’t come that easily for me. Or because I’m twice her age and feel like I know half as much. Isn’t it supposed to get easier as you get older, get more experience etc. etc…

Later – Finished The Awakening. Brilliant as billed.

Later still – My son finished The Awakening and agrees with his friends that the end is dumb. She just walks out into the water to a deeper place than she can swim back from.

Our conversation about the novel was interesting. I talked and he listened (well, I think he did, at least a little). Maybe he heard some stuff that will sit at the back of his brain and wait for the right time to emerge. Like when he finds a woman and has children with her. He’s smart enough to rattle off an “acceptable” version of what the book is about, at least give the answers that would satisfy a majority of English teachers I’ve had (considering he’s in eleventh grade). But the book didn’t touch him in any way deeper than at the surface of understanding (maybe our conversation did?). Does it do anything more for him than reading the twenty-two-year-old-junkie-tells-all blog? I’m thinking about the sense of accomplishment and joy that I’ve seen teenagers gain from being in a garage band. It’s much more achievable than trying to get them interested in the symphony, although many of them do go on to seek out more skilled musicians and complex music. The thing is, one can be taught to appreciate something while at the same time have no skill to do it one’s self.

First Post in a Long Time

Writing this blog presents a new framework for me that I am not quite comfortable with. It’s a twilight, in between, not-sure-of-my-footing kind of feeling. At first I was enthusiastic about it because I like to write and I like to think. The blog was supposed to provide an incentive  for producing a mixture of the two on a regular basis. The trouble is the dual nature of the medium. Although many blogs are meant to be public and are written with the goal of being widely read, that’s not my intention here (although if scads of people are interested in what I’m thinking, well, ok with me).  But while I write for personal clarification and practice, I’m also aware that this is a public space so I need to be as clear as possible in case someone else is reading.  I’m writing for my own edification, or whatever, but I’m also writing for an audience. 

Rereading this, it does not seem like the blog should present a dilemma, but it does. I guess I haven’t clarified my intention for the blog to myself.  In an earlier post I wrote about excercising and practice. One of my intentions with the blog was to get that excercise in my writing, to build skill and endurance for translating my thoughts into words. But then I started to write and think about things that effect me on a personal level. And I wondered “Why am I doing this in a place that anyone has access to?’

A wierd thing happened at around the time of my last post that I still haven’t figured out. I sent an email to  an author, Akhim Yuseff Cabey whomI had read in my favorite literary magazine, The Sun. I thought his essay was fresh and exceptional. And because he listed his email address in his bio, I wrote to him, something I’ve never done before. He wrote back with a thoughtful and thought provoking reply. A positive experience. The thing that I can’t explain is that he referenced my blog in his reply to my email. I didn’t know the two were linked. I wrote to him again and asked how he  knew about the blog but didn’t get a reply to that query. Although this is only one factor in why I haven’t written for so long, I know it has definitely played a part. It’s not that it bothered me that he had read the blog or even that I want to keep my email correspondence separate from what I write here (wel, maybe in some instances) but it did underscore for me the public/private blurring that is a part of Internet writing.

If I wait to post this until it I’ve worked out the ideas, I won’t ever do it. My list of drafts will attest to this.  So apologies if anyone is reading for the abrupt ending. This is another reason why blog writing feels like a twilight endeavor – the ideas are not quite fleshed out, a little gray and indistinct. That’s the nature of how I see this forum and at the same time this goes against everything I’ve worked to do in my writing up til now.