Writing the Unthinkable

So, I'm pretty excited. I've had a fairly productive few weeks. First, this phenomenal piece of art arrived in the mail:

You should buy this book and make Lynda Barry rich

If you can't tell from the photo, it's "Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor" by Lynda Barry, which is, to explain it over-simply, the notes from her decade long-workshop for non-writers, called "Writing the Unthinkable."

Not only is it visually stimulating, but I'm hoping it to be a mental/artistic wake up call too. Lynda Barry's work is always thoughtful/thought provoking (despite, or perhaps because it's couched in the form of "cartoon"), and I love the way it feels so much like a brain dump. Like if you took a cross section of her brain, it would look like this--words and drawings and ephemera right up to the very edges. I love the collages, I love that her work always feels as if she is truly trying to get "at" something. Which is all writing is really. Trying to get at what cannot be gotten at. A feeling, an idea, an abstraction. And I relate to the need/desire to work across multiple media -- the written word, images etc, the layers of meaning each kind of inclusion brings.

I'm so excited to dig into this thing I can't even tell you. I was flipping through it and right on the inside cover is this: What Everyone came to a realization that their certainty was what was wrong."  And this other gem, a few pages later:

I was trying to understand how images travel between people, how they move through time, and if there was a way to use writing and picture making to figure out more about how images work."

I would really love to have her as an instructor. I know I'm getting ahead of myself, but I feel like she's the kind of person who would be able to help me translate all the 'stuff' that's in my head on to the page. I don't think/organize my thoughts in a traditional way, I don't access the info that's rattling around in my head the way most people do. Or maybe, more accurately, I don't think traditional teaching methods were the best-matched method for me. Oh, I did fine in school and I am not saying that I was inhibited in any significant way, but I think that very creative part of my brain just never really found its path. Grad school was helpful. I had great instructors and a community of writers who helped me figure out how to access that part. But Barry is an unconventional instructor and I have a feeling that's exactly what I need. So I'm hopeful I will get something meaningful out of it.

This coincides very nicely with my sudden (and I do mean sudden--inexplicably so) interest in re-examining the novel I've been working on. My last iteration of it was some time ago. I'd started re-vamping it--another draft that was 180 degrees different from the one before. And I got some mileage out of that, but I feel like the first real draft--the draft that I worked on the longest, might just be worth revisiting. I'm excited about it, too. I'm looking forward to digging into it as well. And I'm hoping that I'm in the middle of a very lucky coincidence-- purchasing a book of instruction written by a very non-linear thinker and a desire to start again on a very non-linear work.

I'm excited. Wish me luck.

It takes a village

Last night I spent a delightful few hours catching up with a friend I don't see nearly enough. We met through mutual grad school friends (though we never attended any classes together). While I've been slaving away at short stories, he's been making documentaries and short films (the former premiered at the Maryland Film Festival a year or two ago. Not too shabby).

We had a far-ranging conversation--music (bad puns using Smiths and Replacements lyrics) childhood memories (a larger-than-life Maynard Ferguson album cover, hi fi's in the living room) to familial relationships (we're Catholic, we don't talk about our feelings), to writers, classic movies, Chanel commercials from the '80s (did you know Ridley Scott made those?) you get the picture.

This album cover haunted my childhood. Thanks, Dad.

But we mostly talked about art and trying to make it. It was a great, invigorating conversation--the kind I feel a bit starved for, especially since finishing up grad school nearly 6 years ago.  It's something I've been looking for/trying to re-create ever since.


It's strange--I've always preferred solitude. Maybe that's why I was drawn to writing. It's such a solitary endeavor. And yet...it doesn't happen in a vacuum, does it? We're always influenced by what's happening around us. I am, at least. And I think when I feel like there's not a whole lot going on externally, internally, everything's kind of blah, too. But it's not easy to balance out the need for solitude and the need for group activity. I am definitely introverted -- I need down time to recharge. Even when I'm having a good time with people I care about, at a certain point, I'm done. I'm overloaded. But oddly enough, being in the right kind of atmosphere (i.e. a long, meandering conversation over strong drinks) can recharge me as well.

I at least recognize this weird little high wire act and try to balance out the going-home-after-work-and-just-hanging-with-the-dog with some social activities (even if they don't revolve around artistic conversations). But it's not easy. I joined a literary journal as an editor about a year or so ago. And if I'm honest, I'll say it was because I wanted to stay tethered to a community I felt myself increasingly further away from. I'll go one further and say that I was also kind of hoping to find some kind of inspiration reading tons of other short stories. The good news is that the group of readers the editor has assembled are some of the most talented and thoughtful people I've met in a long time.  The bad news is (well, not *bad*, but...) that I'm just not as inspired as I thought I'd be.

Maybe that's an unfair statement. Maybe this whole post is unfair.  Does it sound like I'm putting the onus for my inspiration on others? I don't mean for it to sound that way. But there *is* something to be said for the community. The interaction and the free exchange of ideas.

The editor of the journal recognizes this--she tries to gather us all together a few times a year. Not just to go over the journal housekeeping stuff, but just to spend time with one another. It's good and I like it. I find spending an evening listening to smart people talk about art is probably one of my favorite things to do.

But I also like to go home, then, and be alone with my thoughts (and my dog, of course).

Why do I expect an alien to burst out of this nice lady's stomach?

Pics or it didn't happen.

Yesterday, a friend and I went to DC for the day and spent some time in the National Portrait Gallery. I was particularly interested in one of the current exhibits, "Portraiture Now: Staging the Self," in which a collection of artists use their work in portraiture to explore and tell the story of themselves--a break from the traditional form of portraiture, which tends to fix an image in place/time. From the NPG website, "...portraiture...becomes a map of finding oneself and others."

 I'm cool with that.

Seriously, the exhibit was interesting, but one artist's ideas caught my attention. Karen Miranda Rivadeneira uses herself and other family members to recreate memories from her childhood, which, in an of itself is kind of unique and fascinating, but one line in her artist's statement resonated with me. She said she "revisits events from my youth that were never recorded."

Events that were never recorded.

When I first read it, it sounded as if there's this inherent assumption that anything worth experiencing is worth recording (or rather, it's direct opposite--if it wasn't documented, it's not worth remembering). And, regardless of what the artist might have meant by that statement, that's how I interpreted it.

Now, I've written previously about memory, this unreliable narrator of our lives (I may have even written about it a lot, in fact), but it's a fascinating subject -- and certainly the bread and butter of my own writing -- so I feel like it's a subject worthy of exploring. The thing is, I can tell right now that I'm not quite able to dig deeply into it yet, so this might just be a preamble kind of post.

Anyway, memory. This big, heavy box of stuff in our heads that's perched precariously on rickety little legs, ready to topple over at the slightest rumble of the ground beneath it. And it topples. All the time. And every time try to sweep everything back inside, we jumble up the contents.

When I was nearly five, we moved into a new house. I have memories from the old house--of being in the backyard on a swing that looked like a flower petal, of learning how to rollerskate from the next door neighbors, of my sister stepping on a nail whilst building  treehouse with the same neighbors, of being held in someone's arms, eating a piece of chocolate while the bigger kids ran races around the block, of building a snowman in the front yard, of sitting in the back of the house, looking out the sliding glass door, watching it snow. And for a long time, I just kind of chopped all of those memories up, thinking that they happened over a span of several seasons. Like I learned to skate one summer and got the flower petal swing another summer and Leslie had to get that tetanus shot another summer. But having moved out of that house when I was not even 5 years old, I'm guessing that my conscious memory only goes back so far. I'm guessing all or most of those memories are from one year of my life.

That's what's so fascinating to me about memories--that we impose layer upon layer of other information on them as years go by, as we grow and change into the person we are. And yet, those very events that we can't seem to remember properly are exactly what form us into who we are. Those memories that we can't rely on. So we're made up of all this ever-changing, unstable...stuff.

What's up with that?

And the whole documenting part. That's where it gets really interesting to me. I think it's also kind of interesting that I interpreted the artist's statement to imply that undocumented = not important. That's probably a whole psychological portal to something deeper in me that I'll have to explore later. But anyway. Documentation. Why do we do it? Because even snapping that one fraction of a second in time isn't going to keep the memory pristine. It may not even capture the memory. So why do we document, sometimes obsessively? Is it that desire to get "at" something? To make something that we can definitely point to, say "Here, this is me. This is the why and the how of me?"  And if so, who, exactly, are we documenting for? For ourselves? For others? For those around us? For those who will find this stuff when we're gone?

Well,  feel like I've kind of gotten off the subject, but I'm still kind of scattered about how I'm feeling. I'd like to spend more time with my thoughts on this. But I'm pretty sure this won't be the last post about it.

Stay tuned.

A portrait in attitude only.

I hate writing, I love having written.

It feels pretty good to be writing again.

I've always agreed with Dorothy Parker's attitude toward writing that I referenced in the title, but for the last year or maybe two, I could barely get past the that first bit.

I've talked about the reasons I couldn't/wouldn't write previously--so I don't think there's much need to dwell on them further--but the fact remains that I wasn't doing it.

I'd try, of course, I'd screw up my courage (because that's what it felt like I needed--courage. Courage, Camille, courage.), and pick up my pen. And then...nothing. Or not anything remotely worthwhile. I felt strangely over- and under-whelmed at the same time. I had zero enthusiasm for the task. I felt utterly devoid on any kind of creative thought, though I knew there was something there, something that needed uncovering. I was just too frightened to try gaining access to it. And that completely paralyzed me. I was like this weirdly overloaded circuit that, rather than burning up, flaming out from the excess, I simply shut off.

It was an awful feeling, this shutting down. Is this what writer's block feels like? I hated it. And because I'm a fairly smart person and like to avoid sucky, painful things, I stopped trying.

Then I tried again. I don't know why, don't know what made this time different. Maybe the not doing something started to suck more than the doing something that sucked did. Maybe I knew, way in the way back part of the brain that exactly nothing would change by doing nothing. That even something that felt terribly inadequate and superficial was better than a blank page. That even something inadequate and superficial might something lead to something that was pretty goddamned adequate. A lot more goddamned adequate than a blank piece of paper at least.

So that's how she kept her tongue so sharp.

At any rate, I don't know if this will last, if this is the breakthrough that I needed or just another false start. It certainly feels different this time. Honestly, I don't care. It's less crappy-feeling and that's a step in the right direction.

I love having written.

NaNoWri...oh no.

So, we're nearly 10 days into November and if you haven't started writing that novel yet, get crackin. You're about 15,000 words behind.

For anyone who doesn't know what I'm talking about, November is officially (someone made it official, I think) National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo (the one and only time you'll ever see me write that), a project that tries to get people to write an entire novel in 30 days. Which is certainly a lofty goal...buuuuuuuuuut not one I can really get behind.

I mean, sure, it's great to encourage people to write, right? We all need some help getting motivated once in a while. And yes according to the website, the organization that runs the program does other good stuff, like promoting writing literary, fostering a sense of community and providing classroom kits for kids. So it's not all bad. But it *did* come up with the word "noveling," so I can't completely forgive them. Seriously, I don't mean to pick on them, except...

Except I think that typing out 50,000 words in 30 days is only part of the process. Granted, it's a big part. But at the end of the month, you don't have a novel. You have a first draft. And that's not a bad thing, but don't kid yourself. It's a draft. And it's going to probably not be great. In fact, I'm guessing (no offense to anyone), it's going to suck. But that's not a bad thing either. In fact, a sucky first draft is a shit-ton better than no first draft at all (says the girl with a partial first draft of a novel moldering in a drawer somewhere).

The point I'm trying to make is that what happens at the end of November, what happens when you hit "save" after you've typed out your fifty-thousandth word is not in any way shape or form the end. It's the beginning. It's where everything starts. You have a first draft, fer crissake. Do something with it!

Actually, *don't* do anything with it. Put it away for as long as you possibly can. Break up with your first draft. Let it down easy, because there's no kinder thing you can do for your writing than give it some space. Give yourself some space, too, while you're at it. Go out and see other novels. Play the field a little. Maybe experiment with a short story or two. Or you know, just take some me time.

Then, when you're up to it. go crawling back to that novel. Tell it how much you've missed it. Take it slow, spend an evening together, getting reacquainted, remembering all the good times you two crazy kids had. Only then can you really make a commitment to getting serious, long-term.

Okay, even I'm tired of this metaphor. But you get the idea. Time and distance are two of the greatest tools for a writer and they seem to be the two things that are most overlooked in the writing process. Perspective is key and you simply can't get useful perspective when you're furiously trying to come up with 1600/day for 30 days straight.

Writing makes me sleepy.

Listen, if participating in the November novel writing program is what it takes to get you motivated, to get you in the proper mindset in order to get what's been spinning around in your brain for I'm guessing years and years, then so be it. Write away. And then come December 1, walk away. Just until spring. Treat it like your favorite houseplant and keep it inside until after the threat of frost is over for the season. Then bring it out and cultivate it, let it bloom and grow (wow, I am *full* of dumb metaphors tonight.)

If I could be a camera...

My great uncle Dave was the historian of the family, the record-keeper, the story teller. He was my maternal grandmother’s younger brother (There were a total of 8 siblings, I think-- at least those that lived past infancy). They were a big, Irish-Catholic family and you know Irish-Catholics are really good at making more Irish-Catholics, so there was a big, sprawling diaspora and Uncle Dave knew everyone, knew how one person connected to another. Knew where the Malloy branch of the family tree sprouted or how the Morgan’s were nearly pruned completely.

We have tons of family photos, too. Which I think might be unusual? The Nolans were not wealthy by any means. In fact, they were literally dirt poor. There are photos of my grandmother and her siblings as children—skin and bones and scabby knees. Posing for the camera while chickens scratched around in the dirt behind them. And those photos--turn over any one you’re were likely to see Uncle Dave’s script on the back. It might be brief and to the point, “Betty and Catherine, 1938” or it might be considerably more vague, bordering on mysterious. “Pinky and Mayday” is scribbled on the front of a photo of two men climbing on what look to be drainage pipes. Turn the photo over and the label –in the same handwriting-- reads “Whitey and Pinky.” Not sure why that guy merited two nicknames…But they were all labeled in some way.

Pinky and Whitey and Mayday and...

Catherine and Betty and some girl named "Florence". Poor thing.

I’m sure my uncle thought this was going to help future generations (i.e. me) understand and know the Nolan family history better. But the truth is, I really don’t. I mean, it’s not his fault and he’s certainly not the only person to believe that a few names and a couple of dates = historical record. Photos don’t tell the whole story, do they? They capture one tiny fraction of a moment in time, but that’s it. The story lies elsewhere.

When I first started looking through the photos—boxes of them had somehow found their way into my parents’ home, most likely as older relatives died and their houses were cleaned out—I was discouraged that I couldn’t really get a sense of who many of the subjects were. My mother didn’t have much more insight either, though she could fill in some blanks. It bothered me that so much history was lost. That my uncle, thinking he was recording information for posterity, really hadn’t done much for the next generation at all.

"Daddy, Money Nolan and Pat Kerns" on the back. Money. Someone's nickname was Money. Not bad.

Except now I realize just how much of a favor he’d done for me. If I knew everyone’s history, if I knew who Pinky and Mayday and Money were and where they sprouted on the family tree, I wouldn’t have anything to write about. If I knew why my grandmother and my Aunt Catherine were sitting on a rattan chair with another young girl named “Florence” in the middle of what appears to be some kind of empty lot in front of a chicken farm, well, my imagination could just take the night off, couldn’t it?

And that’s the key to it—at least for me. I get to make up the history that I don’t know. Yes, of course it’s sad that I don’t have every detail of who these people were and how they came to be in these photos. And sure, it’s selfish of me in a way to gleefully think that I can spin out a tale of who “Money Nolan” was. But all of this is great fodder for the “what if.” “What if” Money got her nickname because she was part of a famous gang of bank robbers during the Depression? What if she got the name because she was a wealthy benevolent benefactor who helped the family fight back against the mine bosses? What if she was a former showgirl in New York and that’s how she got her name? Who knows?  

And let’s face it, history, memory—none of it is every 100% truthful or accurate, either by chance or by design.  And in some ways, when I sit down and fill in the blanks that time has left for me, in some small way, I get to participate in that history, be a part of that life. And isn't that really what a writer is supposed to do anyway?

A Written Ofrenda, A Newish Start

In one of the last memories I have of my father, he is sitting at my kitchen table. Most of my family is there—it’s Sunday morning and I’m making breakfast for them. The night before, we all gathered to celebrate my 40^th birthday. And amid the chaos of people shuffling around my too tiny house with its oversized secondhand furniture, of the dog circling the table, looking for scraps from the weakest links (my mom and brother in law), of dishes clinking, knives scraping, the coffeepot percolating, I turned to see him, quite in the din, flipping through a copy of a literary journal—one that had just published a story mine a few months prior. He was reading that story. Re-reading it, I should say. I knew for a fact he’d read it before. At least once or twice. I knew he’d sent links to friends, at least a few relatives, too. In fact, at his viewing—less than a week later—as people came through the line to offer their condolences to the family (a line, I might mention here, that stretched down the street of his hometown, Steelton, PA. A line of people, standing in the dark, in the cold, icy January rain for him), I had this information confirmed. Mostly by his co-workers—the ones I hadn’t met before—upon learning which daughter I was, always had the same reaction. “You’re the writer!” or, “You’re the one who wrote that story!”

That was nearly three years ago. Ironically, just a few months before (at about this same time of year), I’d made up my mind that I was going to spend my 40^th year finishing the novel I’d been writing for what seemed like decades. I was ready. I was energetic and hopeful about it and looking forward to rolling up my sleeves and finally, finally getting it done. And then…whammo. Fate sucker punched me, two weeks after my birthday.  My father’s death knocked me off my feet. I couldn’t write. I didn’t want to write. In the days that followed, the occasional days that I felt normal, the days that I didn’t feel like crawling into bed at 5pm and staying there until oh, I don’t know, June, I didn’t dare disturb the fragile peace. I turned away from writing. I found no comfort it in.

But eventually, the normal days started outnumbering the sad ones, which is a good thing. And I started to not be so afraid of writing again. But by then, I’d started to realize something—I’d gotten out of the habit of writing. I’d spent the past few years working rather hard to discipline myself to write regularly. At that point it wasn’t anymore a question of wanting or not wanting to write, of being brave or scared or fragile or strong or any of that. I’d simply gotten out of the habit. And not just of writing, but of thinking about writing. Of spending all that time in my head with a piece of writing. I’d gotten so far away from it that I could barely figure out how to start pedaling again. It was weird. And frustrating. And so I stumbled. Many times. I stopped writing, I got blocked. It was ugly. It’s been ugly.

The irony of all of this isn’t lost on me, either. I understand how lucky I am that I knew how proud my father was of me, of my admittedly meager writing accomplishments. I never had to guess how he felt (and not just about my writing, either). Even if I hadn’t known before that moment I glimpsed him at the kitchen table, silently reading that story again, I would have figured it out then. And yet it was his sudden death that pushed me away from the very thing he bragged to his colleagues about. Or perhaps it was the excuse of his death, to be honest. The excuse of it.

Today is October 31, Halloween here in the US. On Sunday, Mexico will celebrate Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. A day to honor those who have passed. And so to honor him, I’ve decided to give it one more try. I think he would be proud.

On the Occasion of a New Year, or, G'bye 2012. Don' Let the Door Hit you in the Ass on the Way Out

How would I describe 2012? In a word: sucky. I've given it considerable thought and that's what I've come up with. I'm pretty knowledgeable when it comes to words--I know a great many of them, in fact. And this one fits perfectly.

Twenty-twelve was a sucky year.

Oh, it started out promising. A new job. A new (personal) decade ushered in surrounded by friends and family.

Then it all fell apart. And what followed was just...weird. Sucky. I won't bore you with details. I think I referenced just what obstacles I encountered in my sparse postings of the last 12 months.

I think it will suffice to say that I was (was? Am) at war. Internal battles rage constantly.

Side One: It's time to get up off the couch.

Side two: No. I'm going to sit here just a little bit longer.

Side One: Get up and do something. Sitting there dwelling on things will not make you feel better.

Side Two: I'm not dwelling on anything. In fact, I'm hardly thinking anything at all.

(It just dawned on me that my transcribed internal dialogues remind me of Beckett plays. Not sure if I should laugh or cry)

And I never felt in control of anything. One day I would feel perfectly fine--getting out of bed and brushing my teeth like a normal person. Then suddenly, the bell jar hovered overhead ("I felt very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo." Sylvia Plath).

It was a year of false starts and insincere resolutions and of not being able to gather enough strength to pull myself out of the water that was slowly, comfortably, heating up to boil me alive.

And yet, it's nearly over--the year, that is. I can't--I won't make any bright, sweeping promises for 2013. Irony has a way of showing up right about the time I do (I learned that lesson the hard way, about a year ago).

So, I'll just close by saying that I'm hopeful I can make the year I'm cautiously entering better than the year I'm happily leaving behind.

“A Meditation on the Contours of Absence”

A few Fridays ago, I had the pleasure of spending time with some of my writer friends. We—a fellow graduate of the program, her husband and one of our instructors—met in Annapolis to attend a lecture by James Wood, a pretty incredible literary critic (New Yorker) who spends some of his time at Harvard. I decided to go less because I wanted to hear Wood and more because I looked forward to the company. I’d been feeling very disconnected from the creative process lately, and I knew whatever conversations might pop up between Jen and Bill and I would be a tonic, even if a temporary one at that.

And so when we learned the lecture had been canceled, I couldn’t help but marvel at my good luck.

We found a corner table in an Irish pub (Annapolis does not seem to be short on them), and ordered a round and the conversation soon turned to writing, and more specifically, why I wasn’t. Which, you know, I’ve covered here in the recent past. It’s not a mystery. I’m overwhelmed and terrified of accessing all the painful “stuff” that comes with loss. That was no revelation. But something else was.

But first, I think I need to back up a moment and talk about this question, “why write?” People have asked me that in the past, and I’ve had this particular conversation with other writers.  It can be an arduous task, even when there’s not the immediate specter of loss looming in every corner. I’m not unique in the art of avoidance. Yes, my writing friends and I agree, the payoff is worth it. When you hit upon something, when that epiphany cracks open the world in front of you, it’s euphoric, but the process. Ugh. The process can be hell. I remember a decidedly non-writing friend of mine, after listening to me complain about a particularly difficult bout with a short story, exclaim--with no small degree of incredulousness-- something to the effect of, “why on earth do you do it then?” And honestly, I couldn’t answer.  As I said, it’s not the first time someone has asked me that, and the only thing I could do by way of response is shrug my shoulders and mumble something like, “I just have to…”

I’ll say here that answer isn’t necessarily wrong. Something, somewhere inside really does have to, though it seems a pretty cruel joke to feel compelled to do something that at times can make mucking out the Augean stables feel like scooping up kitty litter.

It wasn’t until Friday night that I figured it out. We started talking about Ann Carson (who is quite possibly the smartest person on the planet, certainly one of the finest writers. Not convinced? Pick up the Autobiography of Red and then we’ll talk), and Nox, the artifact she created about her brother, Michael, which one experiences, rather than reads. In much too simple an explanation, Nox is Carson’s attempt to get at something—her brother’s life, his death (the news of which did not reach her for several weeks, as Michael’s widow didn’t know how to reach his family),their estranged relationship, all of that “stuff.” And to do it, she not only uses her words, but words in translation, images, photos, scraps of paper—these little bits of her life and his, little scraps of quantity that hopefully add up to something. 

Hopefully. Because it never really does. The title I’ve used, “Meditation of the contours of Absence” is a quote from Meghan O’Rourke’s New Yorker review of Nox. I re-appropriated it here, because that’s exactly what I do, every time I sit down to write. I meditate on the outline of something that isn’t there—be it loss or love or grief or regret or anger or pain. I’m forever trying to get at something that can never, no matter how hard I try, be captured.  I might get close every now and then, but I’ll never actually reach the goal. And that’s a terribly frustrating thing to grapple with. This acknowledged rock that will, no matter how many times I get close to the top, always roll back down. And yet, I keep pushing it back up. Every time.

And every time, I think, This is it. It’ll work this time. 

What is and what should be

It's 8:46 pm on Monday night and I should be at a bar. Seriously, I was invited to some kind of literary/performance something something by a friend of mine. I wanted to go--I've been feeling disconnected from writing in general lately and thought the event (whatever it might have been) would've been a good way to re-connect. And I was all ready. Then, about 10 minutes before I needed to leave, I suddenly wasn't so ready.

I don't know exactly what happened; although it's never been easy for me to get involved in new things on my own. So maybe it was social anxiety. Maybe I was not up to the exhausting task of entering a room full of strangers and either pretending to be perfectly comfortable in my skin or pretending to be perfectly capable of making interesting small talk. Maybe it was something else.

My friend Maxine--who's had her share of grief in the handful of years I've known her (and who has managed to steer her way through it was a grace that I find astounding)--gave me some advice right after my father passed away. She said that I should respect my grief and give it room. And that made perfect sense to me. It was probably the best, most comforting thing I'd heard.  And so maybe that's what I did tonight. I gave the grief some room. Because I think that's what happened. I think this whole weird couple of months reared it's weird head tonight. It does that sometimes. Suddenly something happens. I'm fine one moment, then the next...not so much. And I can't explain or predict it.

And I was looking forward to going out tonight. Like I said, I've been feeling disconnected. I've been trying to write, but I guess I'm blocked or something. But I can't figure out if there's something in my way or if I'm in my way. Lordy knows I've got novels worth of stuff bouncing off the walls of my brain, but I can't decide if it's moving too fast for me to capture, or if I'm just too scared to access it. I don't know.

What I do know is I got knocked sideways a few months ago. One minute it was a brand new year, I was getting ready to start a new job and I had just celebrated my 40th birthday surrounded by great friends and my family. And then, four days later, it all came crashing down. And while I think I manged to crawl out from under the rubble, I'm still a bit shaken and dazed. How long will it last? I'm not sure. Those in the know tell me the first year is the hardest. If that's the case, I've got about nine months under my belt.

Here's to hoping the next year is better than the last.

JD Salinger, 9/11 and Writing as Therapy

In the summer of 2001 my obsession with the JD Salinger and his Glass family stories took a productive (and, some might say,  inevitable) turn when I decided to start my own little masterpiece about a funny/sad/smart/tragic bunch of geniuses. Like Wes Anderson--who would beat me to it with the Royal Tenenbaums that December--I decided to cannibalize/invert/update the story (and that will most likely be the only time I can legitimately compare my work and his...). Instead of a dozen or so separate short stories about Buddy and Seymour or Franny and Zooey,  or Seymour and a bananafish, I mashed them all together into one. There were other differences, too. My protagonist was female (she was the "Franny" character), with three older brothers (Seymour, Buddy and Zooey. I didn't want to completely re-create the story, so I cut out a few siblings--the Walt and Waker and Boo Boo character equivalents would not make an appearance in my book). I set it in real time--2001, but kept the orginal location, however, of New York City.

And so for a few weeks in late July and early August, I began meandering around the story as I was trying to re-imagine it. This is not unusual for me. I am the queen of false starts.  I play with style and format, with tone and voice. I can start and stop a piece a dozen times before I find something that works.

Then one gorgeously clear and blue and calm morning in September I was on the phone with my mother. I can't remember why she called me at work, but I do recall that at one point, near what would be the end of our conversation, she suddenly stopped what she was saying to comment, "Huh. Something is going on at the World Trade Center."

The next thing I can remember is watching the second plane hit. My coworkers and I had gathered around a television set someone's office. I don't recall how we got there, who made the suggestion, or even how we finally figured out that that "something" was a plane smashing into one of the buildings. But there it was. The other thing I remember clearly was how it felt as if the floor beneath me was wobbling as next we heard about a plane hitting the Pentagon, then one falling from the sky in western PA.

What's next? 

Did I mention that at the time, I worked for a government agency in Harrisburg, PA, with a private office and a ton of free time on my hands?

So in the days following --days that are silent in my memory. Clear and blue and sad but always silent. I can recall images --of course those of planes and steel buildings on fire, of smoke, of a tattered American flag and steel girders sticking up amidst the rubble like a broken ribcage--but no noise. I don't recall music or conversation or car horns or dogs barking.

And so I wrote. Page after page after page. I shut my office door and clattered away on the keyboard. Writing. September through December 2001 were probably the most prolific months as a writer that I've ever had (or ever will have). I had to write, I remember thinking. I had to fix the work. You see, I had already started writing a story which was set in NYC. And now, well, NYC wasn't the same. And I knew I couldn't get away with pretending it was. So everything I thought and felt and saw got mixed in to that story. For better or worse. Everything got folded into this story.

I am sure it's terrible. Clearly I was too close to the gamut of emotions I was running through every hour to have any meaningful perspective. Closeness is never good for fiction. Time, distance. Some objectivity. I had none of those things at the time.  But it didn't matter.

I never finished it, not that I think I was supposed to. Therapy, I think, is pretty organic and fluid. You give and take what you need to move on and hopefully, you heal.

We Are Family

I’m overwhelmed. While I recently mustered up the nerve to start working on the novel again, I’ve realized I’ve still got a lot of crap that I need to process.  I mean, I’ve got this huge chunk of unfinished work about loss—devastating loss—and before I experienced my own devastating loss, I *thought* I knew what I was doing with it and how I was going to write it. Then January came and knocked me sideways. My perspective followed suit.

Not surprisingly, it took this long for me to even think about picking it up again. It took me nearly seven months to even consider thinking about thinking about picking it up. And now that I have, I don’t know what to do. From a practical point of view, do I keep moving in the same direction because I hate to see all that work wasted? Or do I toss it and start again?  I have new story to tell, that’s the thing.  I’m not sure what’s been written in the past is the story anymore.

A few weeks ago, I started moving things around, expanded the family. Instead of just two siblings—brother and sister—I added a few more sisters, gave mom more presence (Yet, still no decision on the dad. Why? Not sure if it’s the practical or emotional side of my brain that’s making that decision. Probably a topic for another post…), more stuff to help me write what I know.  

And what I know is that close families are exceedingly complicated organisms. They are somehow fragile and unstable and fraught as well while at the same time they are stronger and tougher and more resilient than anything on earth.

And maybe that’s what I should have been doing all along.

PS: I've got you singing that song, now, don't I?

Loss and other Obstacles. For DDO

This is, admittedly, a misleading title.

It’s been a long time since I sat down at a keyboard to write something that wasn’t focused on injury prevention in developing countries (my day job). And it’s almost exclusively because my dad died. Suddenly and unfairly. So suddenly and so unfairly, in fact, that I remember being left with the sense that his death had been just a misunderstanding and if I could find whoever was in charge we could sort this out and everyone could go home happy, and in time for Jeopardy.

But of course that’s not how it happened. Eventually, we did go home, less one, though I must admit watching Jeopardy was really the only thing I could manage for a considerable amount of time. I think. I’m not really sure exactly what I did in those first few months. There’s evidence I showed up to work. I remember walking the dog in the cold and dark. Playing spider solitaire. I ate a lot of macaroni and cheese . I watched television. Unless the storylines involved fathers or loss. Or losses of fathers.

But what I did not do is write. Or read. I couldn’t. There was something in the way. Some big dark, heavy something. Besides, I knew I would find no comfort in any of it. I didn’t need the catharsis of writing. I’m pretty sure I was uncontrollably catharting all over the place. That avalanche of grief—the sorrow and heartbreak and despair and helplessness, the exhaustion and frustration and regret—still rushed down the mountain toward me no matter what I did. And a lousy pen wasn’t going to stop it.

It’s grief, I know. It doesn’t have a logic. It’s no more logical than, you know, the death that brought it on.  But in a way, it’s strange (ironic, maybe) that my grief at losing him is what ultimately got in the way of my writing.

At his viewing, the condolences from his friends and colleagues (some of whom I was meeting for the first time as they passed through the very long line on that very cold and very icy night) to me could be put into two distinct categories. The first was summed up nicely by a co-worker of his who said simply, “You know, your father never met a stranger.” Which was true. If he didn’t know a soul when he entered a room, he’d have at least a buddy or two by the time he left. Be it a remote airport in Alaska, or a crowded piazza in Capri, my dad loved to make friends.  The other was this: “Oh, you’re the writer! Your dad said you just had something published…”  This was also true. I had published a short story a few months before. In fact, the last memory I have of him, he’s sitting at my dining room table, a day after the family celebrated my 40^th birthday, three days before he was gone, thumbing through the story yet again.

I knew he was proud of me. I have that. There is no mystery, no need to sort out a misunderstanding there. And I know he’d be disappointed, hurt, even, if he knew he was the cause of my extended hiatus. That fact has never been far from my thoughts, even when I was trying to blot out all thoughts.

I’m writing now, as you can see. Is this the first of many? I don’t know. The big, dark, heaviness of grief is still there, and I can’t say if I feel better or worse, but this wasn’t as frightening as I thought it was going to be. 

All bets are...

Okaaaaay. So, it's been, what? Six weeks since my last post? Ooopsie. Where does the time go? Contrary to what you might think, I haven't been spending all my blog-posting time filing my nails or playing spider solitare (though I do kick butt in two suits...). Nay, I have actually been working. Srsly.

I think I mentioned eons ago--you know in my last post--that I'd gotten a freelance job and that started in earnest a few weeks ago. Very exciting stuff and I'm happy to be working on interesting topics and actually getting paid to do it. I also kinda sorta made a bet with a friend back in September--one that I'm sure I'll come to regret in about 60 days or so--that I would finish my novel by my next birthday (which is a milestone. IF you consider 39 the second time to be a milestone! Ha HA!  Aawwww). We agreed that I actually had until the end of January (which is my birth month) to do it. Part of the deal, I should mention here, is that my friend (Timmy!) promised he would not give me sh*t about working on it until the end of the month. So far, he's been holding up his end of the deal--I haven't heard a peep out of him (not even to heckle me about my lapsed blogging duties). Now I have to make good on my end. Because if not, I am so totally getting tsk-tsk'd from Tim (and it's MUCH worse than it sounds. Trust me).

I've made some progress, and good progress at that. Substantial, even. I just hope it's enough.

So, I just wanted to check in with the blogosphere before heading back down to the notebookosphere to make novel magic.

Here I go.

Now I get it...

So, first, getting clipped by a car stinks. It hurts, too. Last Thursday I was trying to cross the street (in the crosswalk, with the light), when a driver started to make a left turn onto the street I was crossing. Since she nicely yielded to the two other pedestrians who were not three steps ahead of me, I (foolishly?) assumed that she was yielding to all pedestrians, and not just a lucky few. Wrong assumption. At any rate, my left side, especially the arm I landed on when the car's bumper knocked my legs out from under me, has been smarting a bit. Typing has been a challenge. But things are better today, and I feel like I can get through a post pretty well.

I haven't been idle while recuperating, though. In fact, I think I've really gotten some good solid work done. I just had to do that work with paper and pen and my good arm.

A few years ago, while I was doing an independent study, my instructor mentioned that the larger piece I was working on was very "Sebaldian" (referring to a writer I've mentioned here before, WG Sebald). I was flattered, of course, but kind of bewildered as well. I didn't understand what he meant. I think part of my confusion was due to the fact that the manuscript I was working on was heavily influenced by Michael Ondaajte's Coming Through Slaughter. I must've been too consumed with that novel to see anything else.

Fast forward a few years. I've read more Sebald. More importantly,--I think-- I started reading Teju Cole's Open City, a novel that feels very Sebaldian in its own right, and Cole has pretty much fessed up to the fact that he's influenced by Sebald. Cole's novel is slightly more accessible than, say, Austerlitz, or Rings of Saturn, and perhaps that's why I recently had a wonderful little epiphany regarding my manuscript.

I realized that my protagonist is wanderer (or a flaneur if you're James Wood), just like Cole's Julian, just like almost all of Sebald's protagonists. She's walking around a city trying to sort things out. Just like the main characters in The Emigrants, or Vertigo. That's what she's doing and I didn't even realize it. And suddenly, I have a focus (and trust me, focus is kind of what I've been lacking with this manuscript for an embarrassingly long time). It makes so much sense to me now and I feel as if there's direction and shape to it. I'm excited about the story again, which is a huge relief. I was getting worried that I would never finish it. I was getting worried that I would never want to finish it. Now I'm excited. Now I'm consumed again. I'm waking up in the middle of the night and scribbling down ideas. Pieces of the story are coming faster than I can get the words on the paper sometimes.

And that's the real reward of writing. This kind of I'm-not-in-control-of-this feeling. The way the story is just emerging, whether I'm ready for it or not. Not all of it is Pulitzer-worthy. Some of the ideas and storylines and scenes are going to be crap. But, boy, does it feel great to feel like the well is full again.

Whew.

Okay, off to rest my pitching arm.

Borne back ceaselessly into the past

"Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an æsthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

And as I sat there, brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning——

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

Nothing really profound or interesting to say tonight. But I do wonder how many contemporary writers have the above, the last page of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, in their minds every time they sit down to write. I know it creeps into mine all the time.

With best wishes, Sasha Hemon

I believe I've mentioned I'm kind of a fan on Aleksandar Hemon, no? And that I was headed to a book festival in Scranton where he was to be a panelist, right? I was hoping, since I knew one of the festival's organizers, that I might manage to get a special introduction, either right before or right after the book-signing part of the panel. Or something. Anything, really, would've been great. Exciting. Blog-worthy.

But Bill, the aforementioned organizer, my former instructor, and the person who got me reading Hemon in the first place, did me and my friend Betsy, who made the epic journey with me (Side tip: Don't travel I 81 N through Pennsylvania on a Friday evening.) one better. Bill actually palmed Hemon and his co-panelist, Teju Cole (another amazing writer. Open City. Read it), off on us. We were in charge of getting them lunch.

So off we went, while my brain sang with terror, anticipation, excitement, to a little cafe down the street. Just the four of us (by the way, I think I've previously described Hemon as a polar bear of a man. I'm kind of happy to say I was dead-on accurate in my description. Cole, on the other hand, looks like Mos Def's little brother. Which is actually meant as a compliment).

We spent the next two hours steeped in a remarkably deep and philosophical conversation, mostly about religion. We talked about Mennonites and Pentecostals and miracle working. We talked about the absence of faith and the strange ways we justify it when we have it, the way some of us cherry pick to concentrate on the beautiful parts and conveniently ignore the ugly bits. We talked about how some people can derive great and pure joy from organized religion, and how sometimes, you should get your kid baptized, just in case. Someone mentioned Kierkegaard. Then Dawkins. Hitchens made an appearance, I think, and Catholic priests. Miles Davis came up a few times (certainly a holy man in some circles). We talked about Bosnia and Nigeria, the intimate act of sharing a cup of coffee and the way war ruptures not only physical life, but psychological life, too. We talked about the motivation to write, the ways in which that motivation manifests itself. And I couldn't help but wonder if these two men thought like this all of the time. I couldn't help but wonder if either of them ever did or said anything mundane, or stupid. Or if they ever shut their big big brains off for a second and just watched Glee or something.

And yes, I told Hemon (who I think I am now able to call "Sasha") that I'd named my dog Bruno, after his first book. He seemed strangely pleased.

To characterize it as an incredible experience is to fall laughably short. I'm still processing the whole thing. I feel fantastically lucky to have spent a few hours with a dear friend and two literary powerhouses who seemed to genuinely enjoy themselves, too (perhaps they are good actors?). I suspect I'll have more to say as time goes on.

Post Script:

The most delightful moment of the conversation came, ironically enough (for me, at least), when Hemon had excused himself to the restroom. While he was away from the table, I asked Cole if he'd grown up speaking English, or if he'd learned it later. He replied that he began learning/speaking English at about six.  Then he said, deadpan, "I think our friend Sasha is coming along beautifully with his English language skills, don't you? I'm sure one day he'll master it."

Thanks, Betsy, for snapping this great photo!

Scranton-bound

I'm trying not to get too excited, but I'm headed to Scranton PA this weekend (wait for it--the seeming contradiction of being excited to get to Scranton will be sorted out...here): The Pages and Places book festival is Saturday and I'll get to hear A. "Sasha" Hemon speak (at the very least. I might get to meet him, too. Like, meet him meet him. Not just stand in a line and have him sign my book while I fumble for some not-crazy-sounding conversational words).

So, yeah. Pretty psyched I might also get a chance to chat with Teju Cole, who wrote Open City. He's the other novelist on the panel with Hemon. He's been compared to Sebald, so I'm fairly sure I'd like the novel. I just wish I'd had a chance to read it before this weekend. Hopefully I'll pick up a copy when I'm there. The panel they're on is called "The City as Literary Influence" which might be relevant, given that I'm working on a large project that takes place in NYC and the more I write, the more the city seems to be as much a character as the humans. Maybe even more so...

There's also a lecture on coal region writers which I'm kind of interested in attending. Being a coal miners (grand)daughter, and having written a story or two about some miners myself, I'd like to hear what the three panelists have to say. The moderator is from Camp Hill, too. Interesting.

The festival should be fun and exciting and informative, and northeastern PA is pretty pleasant this time of year. So, I'm going to run now, and obsess over every.single.word. Hemon has ever written (is it tacky to bring photocopies of all his New Yorker stories and make him sign all of them?) and dig out my book on St. Clair so I have something to talk about with the coal miners.

I can't wait! <squeal!>

Hello, Progress, my old friend

Dear Progess:

You never write, you never call…Are we breaking up?

Progress (nickname: Headway) and I, we are estranged.  Or at least we were. I don’t want to get too hopeful here, but, things seem to be looking up for us. This summer was rough, though. I hardly ever saw Progress—we always seemed to miss one another. Mostly because I was spending more with Time Waster and Boredom (they’re cousins). Terrible of me, I know. Seeing as they are arch-enemies of Progress. But, they were so easy to hang out with. They never demanded anything of me. Nothing but time. They didn’t care if I sat around in my sweats all day in front of the television, watching episode after episode of 30 Rock or Arrested Development. They didn’t mind if spent hours surfing the interwebs—I mean, those kittehs with the funny capshunz? Hilarious!

I tried to keep in touch with Progress. Really, I did. We’d get together every now and then, but…I don’t know. We just couldn’t communicate like we used to. I pretended like it didn’t bother me; told myself that even the most solid and productive of relationships needs a break every now and again. But sometimes, as I climbed into bed after an evening alphabetizing the canned goods in my pantry, or flipping through photographs from my college days, I’d think about Progress. And just before shutting off the light, I’d catch a glimpse of a notebook or some research information or a manuscript—you know, all the great things Progress and I accomplished, and, well, I’d feel a little bit guilty.

I finally came to my senses a few weeks ago. Finally realized that Time Waster and Boredom were just no damned good and I kicked them out. Swallowed my pride and got back in touch with Progress. I was welcomed tentatively, and I guess I deserve that. I could put some of the blame on Progress—never sticking around long enough when things got rough, but really, it’s all on my shoulders.

Oh, sure, Time Waster and Boredom come around sometimes. I’ll see them—I mean, I can’t cut them off completely. After all, they were a big part of my life this summer. But it won’t be the same between us.  No, I’m determined to make it work this time with Progress.

Besides, I’m already midway through Season Five of the Wire.

Your memory is a monster

W.G. Sebald is one of my favorite writers, and, as luck would have it, I picked up a copy of Vertigo this weekend (we talked about this already).  Vertigo is a story so very concerned with memory and the strange evolution of our recollections (hell, Sebald is a writer so very concerned with memory and the strange evolution of our recollections) so it’s pretty fortuitous that I picked up a copy at a time when I’ve started to seriously think (again, finally) about my own motivations for the way I write. When I finally decided to dive back into the strange and satisfying and frustrating pool of writing after lounging on the beach for much of the summer.

Of course Sebald’s grappling with his past is much different than mine; to say it’s much more fraught is to be woefully understated. With a father who was a member of the Wehrmacht  during the Second World War, Sebald certainly had horrifying and confusing demons to contend with and those specters cast a long shadow over all his work. But it’s the way in which Sebald treats those memories, or rather, does not treat them, that interests me. When his father returned from the PoW camp where he had been held until 1947, the family never spoke of his father’s role the war, in the Holocaust. Apparently they never spoke of any aspect of the war and Sebald could only draw conclusions the way many of us did—from the outside looking in. He saw the physical ruined remains of this country—the destroyed buildings, the ravaged countrysides. He saw images from Theresienstadt and Auschwitz. He read history books in school. And so imagine what that kind of circuitous journey does to one trying to piece together one’s past. THAT past. Then, imagine trying to actually articulate it. To describe not only what happened (and you could read every single novel in the canon of Holocaust literature and realize that no one, even the most gifted and eloquent  and brave writers have come close), but your own strange and uncomfortable relationship to it. So, I think to deal with a very charged past, Sebald had to come at it slanted. His stories, littered with images as blurry as the lines he draws between memoir and fiction, are often meditations on the unreliability of memory. The protagonist in most, who goes by the not-terribly-disguised name of WG Sebald (sometimes he’s referred to as “Max” which is the diminutive of his second middle name, Maximillian), is peripatetic,  wandering, rucksack slung over his shoulder, over England and parts of continental Europe. (It’s hard not to see the wandering as a kind of necessary movement, the way a shark must keep swimming.) He visits historical sites and old friends. He takes trains and re-traces the steps of long-dead family members. He includes photographs, hazy, black and white ones, as if their inclusion would somehow make whatever it is he’s trying to access clearer. It’s not clear, though. At least it’s not well-defined (is that the same thing?). But his intent, I think, slowly starts to emerge from the words on the page. He’s clearly a man who was trying to comprehend the incomprehensible.

But isn’t that what recall is, in a way? Our memories are tricky things. We think we have a hold on them, but really, it’s the other way around (like John Irving wrote in A Prayer for Owen Meany, “You think you have a memory; but it has you!”). No matter why; our memories have a mind of their own, so to speak. Our recollections twist and contort, all the while as the light that shines on them dims. It’s so hard to see them clearly.