All Things Must Go

I feel as though I am in a tunnel, which is perhaps a fitting metaphor, given all the flooding recently.  Things are moving faster and faster.  Things expected have dropped off and the unexpected looms beyond my vision, outside the tunnel where I can’t see.   We are rapidly approaching some end with the divorce but that end is still very uncertain.  One minute I have a secure base of what I’ll be left with, and the next minute something intervenes, like tax considerations or the availability of an apartment or, this past week, a basement flood that has soaked the carpets throughout my tenant’s home, and all spins wild in the wind again.  It is sort like a slow motion disaster.   Again and again I have to remind myself that in the end it will work out, no matter what, it will.

I am struggling now with what I want to take, hoping that my wishes and his wishes for this or that don’t collide.  We still have no apartment to go into so I have to ‘imagine’ how much space we’ll have.  I have made the girls full partners in the decision about where we will live, as it is important that they feel invested.  It will be the new home, and I think the notion of ‘home’ is very central at their age when your sense of self is so in flux.   

I don’t want too big a place.  In fact, I am determined to go small in order to free us from the past.  But what room dimensions, will there be carpets, will the girls beds and chests fit, should we bring the TV?  I keep ranging through the house looking at things and asking:  do we want this, can we donate or sell it, does he want it? There are also requirements:  the girls need public transportation close by, and we are trying to stay within the school jurisdiction.  It’s endless and drifts around me at all hours. 

Things.  A constant never ending process of ferreting them out of the imagination.  The simultaneous shock of withdrawing from objects that once defined you and watching them suddenly become utterly meaningless. Who knew how powerful our imaginations were?  If I wish for anything it would be for a counselor whose eyes I could look into when I am overwhelmed with trying to make one right but difficult choice after another.  Someone Gandhi-like who would be smiling and gently shaking his head.  “It will be fine, you are doing well.” I am often terrified.   I am afraid that my “precious” will be his “precious,” or worst, that he needs a piece as much as I need it: a sofa, a dining table.  I wish for a glimpse into the new home, the new peace, the new beauty, something to hold out in front of me and move towards. But there is nothing on the horizon right now.   It will be okay.

I have signed up to start a writing class on Saturdays right through the middle of this insanity.  I thought a lot about it.  I signed up last fall but the instructor had to cancel and none of the remaining choices were exactly right.  So I waited.  Then in the winter my brother was so ill we weren’t sure how long he would be alive, whether one or more of us would have to travel to California.  So I waited.  This spring I hemmed and hawed.  No course spoke to me.  I waited.  Summer, the divorce.  The uncertainty. So I waited.  All the time I am thinking that being in a class will give me the access to others who are doing this strange thing.  Their work, our conversations, will inspire, answer questions, clear up uncertainties.  Maybe. But above all else, it’s a matter of desire.  I simply need this connection to the source, as though being in a writing course is being immersed in some life-giving water, or sitting down at a long table to partake in a great feast.   The name of the course:  Beginning or Revising Your First Novel.   It starts Sept 24^th.

Simultaneously, of course, a swirl of fear.  What if?  What if not a single person understands why I've persisted in unearthing these characters and their story?  A writer and an actor, how prosaic.  Will they think I am the writer, I am Toni?  Oh no how horrifically embarrassing – the stumbling block of the inexperienced writer who is so unsophisticated she can’t see the enormous boo-boo she has created.  I fear being dismissed as yet another purple prose writer of syrup, or as a dilettante, overly conscious of every word she writes, naively aping the serious craft the great writers.   I want to be examined and pass some credibility test.  My writing can need much work, the ideas can require some additional moving around, but what I have must be deemed worthy of the additional work. 

I am probably not supposed to admit this degree of anxiety around my writing.  It should help that I know all writers have these same hidden fears.  But every day I have to re-commit to doing this thing.  I have to re-assign the highest value, to review the words and say: yes, keep doing this.  I have to agree to push the insecurity aside and plunge in.

I took several writing courses years ago, one on poetry that was enormously significant for me, although it took many years for me to realize that.   What is different?  I believed then I had a lot to learn.   I wasn't a writer; I was a student becoming a writer.  But now I have put on the cloak of the writer.  I have named myself, claimed the title as my own.  It’s daunting to face this first audience.  But oddly enough, I think even if everyone there says I’m not a writer, I will still believe I am.  I will go back to my desk and try again.  One heck of thing to launch while shooting your old life to smithereens. 

So the writing is idling.  We are in a car parked by the side of the road and the motor is running as we search for the road map.  According to the class description, all of us will be bringing our first chapters to share with the class. And of course I am still ruminating about how deep I should go.  Deep is a significant concept here.  We have light and racing across the surface writing like AC, very readable.  Then we have the big boys and their descendants.  They go deep even when the words are plain.  I struggle to keep what I am writing in perspective.  I can’t be AC.  I can’t write for that length of time on that level.  I've told myself that repeatedly, but wistfully too.  I am sure AC doesn't angst.  She gets on with it, slams it out, turns off the screen, and hits the bed.  I am in the corner nibbling at my nails: do I have the talent to go deeper?  Deeper?  Construct not just a story but a story that says something about things, that lays out ideas and uses the characters and their words to explore them deeply.   I think about this constantly.  Where does my story belong?

 Why does it matter?  It has something to do with how the whole story stretches out in front of me.  It’s like wandering around with one of those level things for hanging shelves.  Straight on, a story that knows what it is.   And then, circle back folks: can a story with heft be centered on a woman trying to get a manuscript turned into a movie?  Forgive the ribbons of questions, but this is what I've been sifting through for weeks.  I am hoping that meeting others who are writing will release this angst.   I think of writers whose work I love.  What choices do they make when positioning a story?  Do they ever say to themselves the things I say?  Do they say:  it’s enough to write a good story, never mind anything internal? 

But then:  what I write is all about the internal, isn't it?

This is why I need other writers.  Not for their answers, but the assurance that hearing their questions will provide. 

Anyway.  This is where I am.

In the poem workshop

So I decided to let you into the workshop this once.  Yes, this is where the poems are made or the narratives that could be poems, if they learned to behave themselves, and not go on at such great lengths.  In any case, the poem in progress below also exists in a slightly more formalized state in Endless Words, the other blog.  The version here is useful as an example of how I build something.  There are sections of somewhat organized verse and around these my comments, suggested verses, directions, etc.  By the end it is more stream of consciousness than anything else.  But that's where the good stuff is found, when you plumb the depths.  

The key is to find the narrow door into that place where the writer's thoughts are not needed, only her ability to listen and transcribe.  I am not an athlete, but I think this place I speak of is roughly the equivalent of 'flow' and also: what occurs during meditation.  Time stops, you're in the moment.  For the writer, the words get her in position to see it coming.  

This particular piece has been dragged around for years, literally.  There is something here, some germ that deserves recognition.  Perhaps it isn't a poem?  Something else. 



Note to self:
you are neglecting the descriptions that will bring the piece alive:
the eternal presence in your heart which you became one with so easily -- so completely outside of any established version of 'god'
the wild hearted self (that king of the hill girl who led all the boys and girls up and down the street with her tales)
DESCRIBE it all in the actual reality of details -- this what you are trying to capture, don't shorthand it



We are sitting under the tree we both love,
looking at our field in the sun and
my hand is wrapped around yours
                   (small and brown the way it was when you were little)
so full of memories,
times that color my life
imbuing it with light and dark
soaking into the grain of who i am
a life with substance,
an ore dug out by hand:
                     (heart full of grief
                      heart full of love
                      heart full of wonder)
shaping me as I shape it.

Although what it was i was given to make
remains elusive.
I begin at the beginning.

Is that when you were perfectly happy?

As close to bliss as I've ever been,
the sun on my head
sweet stain of berries on my lips
barefoot through the fields
whirling in the bright light
belonging to everything

At night the sky filled with stars
pieces of crystal, shattering the blackness,
A great calm spread out over every object
and me, small in my bed,
between white sheets,
love pounding through me
bursting my heart and flooding my soul so
alive and alive and alive:
                   my blood beating to the cricket's song
                   my deer soul hiding  in the soft blue-blur of shadows
                   my bird heart racing across the red sun

Because something knew me, and i knew it.


So you knew a big thing, is that why everything later became harder?

Maybe -- yes, that is true, but that is for later.
My holy creature was all knowing, all loving, absolutely without bounds,
no time, no place,  embracing everything:
Good and evil -- equally raised high.
laughing at the odd and strained pursuits of man,
(especially fear of death) but so good hearted,
It was tender towards all things.

I compared it to the things I learned from adults and
I chose the wordless, Nameless One who gave me love
till I became as complete as possible.

Why was it was important to be as complete as you could possibly be?

Take the self and fan it out,
exposing every mood, every possible thought and action
                   (even those kept hidden because of shame)
in the child, all is amplified
the brightest colors, but also
the deepest pain
knife sharp
because the child has no notion of what to embrace, and what to push away:
It all flows in,
pierces her heart with pain,
lights her heart with passion:
                      (a bloody, pounding drive that must be  expressed)
So she is whole, as the bird is whole, as the deer is whole.
When we are more complete, we are more alive.

Who were you?

I was many things.
Angel sweet, cutting flowers for my altars to the Queen of May.
Stubborn, holding my tongue, accused of theft
 (a small red ruby ring--because they could imagine no one more sneaky than a child who
   refused to speak.)
Cruel, pinching my sleeping baby brother,
deep red on his thigh, and loving the cry
I hid my smirk
Shy, rather than answer the door
watching from behind the window's shade
But also: custodian of a father who couldn't bear to talk to a stranger on the phone
and comfort to a mother puzzling out the absences of her husband. 

And then you got older?

One summer i never put shoes on.
Running into life, we got high on codeine and her mother's scotch
walking home two miles down the center of the road
night after night
tar feet, dirt feet
hand and hand
one with the dark.
Candy was red-headed and had a thousand faded freckles.
Together we broke into houses
hiding in closets when the real estate agents came through.
And dressed as Scarlett O'Haras at the Halloween Ball,
wearing gold brocade curtains we pulled down
and cut up
making golden gowns out of nothing but spit and pins
dancing half the night with metal sticking in our ribs.
We listened to Dylan sitting on her metal fold-up cot.

On the edge of everything,
two of us, in love with life
This was on the outside.

On the inside:
First pain: self-awareness and the break with the blind celebration of Nature.
First long fall: responsibility for my own freedom,
and the bitter bite of guilt this produces.
First paradox: embrace the self/deny the self.

Were you supposed to have thoughts like that?

You ask questions, pull the handle but nothing comes out.
Place them in a bowl in the center of the table,
line them up on the mantle.
They remain unanswered
 (forbidden, hidden or otherwise ignored)
Left outside the life everyone lives
day to day:  they are perfectly content with silence.
The thoughts, they festered:
tired of not being answered, they grew ugly.

Then what happened?

It was November:
gray days, bare trunks
All things waiting for winter and answers.
I pushed the thoughts away with my feet.
There is still time for ordinary pleasures.
I was sixteen and Life should be sweet,
because I was on the edge of blooming
almost wide open, a perfect flower
But one morning
It arrived:
A wall erected across life, slamming down, chaining up of every pleasure,
hands off everything, deny the caress of wind, the warm sun
Give away the boy you loved:
          (he met my mother in the market and together they tried to figure out why)
Silent.  I could not tell them.
All things were torn away,
piece by piece:
Lost in bargains and trades
with the god of compulsion.
Welcome to Crazyland.

I was present at the final collision.
In one corner:
the wild-hearted self, the king of the hill girl
who spun tales for every kid up and down that street
And in the other,
the heart-sick self.
bent and twisted for those incomprehensible demands
giving in and breaking apart the girl with the smirk:
To compensate for the sin of pride.

Wanting to make your own way free of any definition
and
to ease your guilt

While,
in the dark:
a secret life of a secret self
who will not bend to anything,
holding onto freedom by a slender leather strap,
Left only with the unexpected joy of wet grass and the sound of train whistles on summer nights

You eventually get the drill down:
record everything on small pieces of paper,
memorize them just in case,
and every Friday night
seek the momentarily relief of being recognized as faithful
of course, never revealing that this is the last thing in the world you care about – if only you were free to choose)
The dispenser of absolution stinks of alcohol
 (you wonder if he is just as trapped as you).
Keep the pattern, keep some peace.


Breathing space.
You sit out on the plateau for several years,
high school even college is adequate
learning how to negotiate
the passageways in and out
how to unravel those intricately knotted thoughts
by using the magical phrases: “it’s ok to do this isn’t it?” and “if I tell you this, promise you won’t think I’m strange, I just need a little help” friend, yes?
(I can't imagine what the listener actually heard)
so you could and did slip under the walls occasionally
forays into the old freedom,
nights at the Thalia and Chinatown,
and his blue blue eyes and black hair
he tells you “we are Janus two sides of one thing”
(each of these things more precious because you remember when nothing was possible).
So time bears one good fruit:
each thing experienced is a miracle


Interegnum

Racing down the mind's staircase,
going down
and again down
rushing,
it speeds up
there is no control
and you are wrapped in a ball at the edge of something
barely holding on fingernails buried
in the skin of the wrist of the man in the car
and the lights fly by
and the cops stand by
and walk you through the doors
and its night.
your first words are lucid:
“hi, I just tried to commit suicide”
still thinking then this was a place where they helped you
(return you to yourself)
First night
your roommate decided she wanted to kill you
—this woman screaming and cursing at you (her bed opposite the doorway and yours as far from the door as you could be, you weren’t sure this was a good idea after all)
and the nurses running in
and taking her away
Why?
and later on (same night?)
the one they brought in the in middle of the night,
crying and wailing down the hall
unceasingly screams for her baby (dead)
she couldn’t accept that,
tearing herself apart,
and everything around her
until there were restraints
they took her away
(where do they go?)
stillazine,
thorazine,
and milirill
so much
you stopped being aware of moment to moment,
slices now and then: sitting in a circle with the others (some who were there because they were lesbians or drug addicts (all made to confess publically to everyone there as though it was right to humiliate them and you saying you were going to kill yourself – not that hard to say to a group of strangers but also meaningless)

Then breakdown,
refuse to play the lie anymore
reject all responsibility,
return to childhood
and beyond childhood
the blackness of the womb.
Turn away from everything,
loss of soul,
block the senses:
no sunsets, no pleasure in color or sound.
Deaf and blind months,
holding your arms close to your body
seeking the corners of rooms,
always in silence,
unable to explain the sorrow,
not to cry or scream it,
the paralysis of arms that cannot reach out for help,
(for connection with another)
Becoming odd,
strange,
running from the store because you have forgotten the right words to ask for change, afraid what lies around the corner,
terror that you must cross this street,
eat from this plate.


Numb
the surprisingly soft mushy bottom.
No longer the terror of the descent
for it has been accomplished
and there is a bottom, soft but strong enough to support her.

The time for rest,
for calm daily unchanging simplicity.
Simple tasks
well done become glorious: folding diapers just right, making a bed.

How do you define what happens with obsessive compulsive disorder?
Listen then
Welcome to crazyland where everything you are is revolting and
only by denying you can you hold on to peace.
pure pure white
short circuit
all consuming
Contradiction
two realities:
face to face
you,  the young wild tree anchoring anywhere
the energy running through you ready to invent the world
and you, held in check, turned to stone, heart dead
the recognition of this duality
raises you over the heads of everyone around
and you are willing to crush
and you who are willing (eager) to stand on the necks of others to fill
your greedy heart

Link One: From My Earliest Journal

The entry below is from my oldest journal-- more than thirty years ago -- and describes my first trip completely alone -- several weeks on an island off the coast of New England.  I was supposed to be gone two weeks but ended up claiming four whole weeks -- repeatedly calling my boss to advise him I was still not ready to return (driving the sweet man crazy but I think he understood I was in the midst of something important.)  I put it here because it defines where I began, and although the innocence and overwhelming youth present in what is included here embarasses me, I choose to leave it alone -- I like how it captures that earliest time and even today, I can find my present self in these words and these ideas.  I have kept the odd mixture of present and past tense woven thru the text -- again, it describes both the immediacy and the reflection of that time

I arrive Saturday with mixed emotions. Even though I live alone I've never been anyplace where I might be completely alone for so many days. I wonder whether I'll forget what my voice sounds like, whether I should talk to myself to keep it in practice? I'm not very outgoing (except when surrounded by friends) so I know I won't be seeking or even trying to attach myself to any group of people. Will I be lonely, will I stick out? After some days of adjustment it is fine: stretches of aloneness do not vary that much from moments of aloneness. You just have to learn to value the aloneness for itself. I can do things alone and feel things alone that I miss when I'm with people: concentrating on one activity or idea until I'm exhausted, not speaking for hours becomes both a relief and an unquestioned reality.

I ended up meeting several people. The first a bartender at a bar I go to after hearing they have good jazz and the second a jazz band leader. I've never gone alone to a unfamilar bar alone much less sat and talked to a bartender for three hours -- but without the distraction of friends I discover and concentrate on the bartender's motions  -- the movement of body, arm and hand he goes through in making various drinks, washing glasses, filling them with ice etc. The guy who heads the jazz group played with Ellington years ago and once he got to know my taste damned if he didn't break into "Sophisticated Lady" when I entered the place. It is a childhood fantasy come true. The bar is sort of your typical country bar: away from everything, just a neon light glowing in the dark and this heightened by the presence of many tall trees casting blacker shadows. The building crouches at the side of a large meadow which is wonderful when you come out after several hours and can't walk a straight path, never mind a straight line. In front of the meadow is a road, a house or two and then the sea's edge with a small harbour fantastic at night  -- sound of the water hitting the docks - warm lights inside the boats - jet black depth of the water. I don't know if I'm right in saying this but I have no fear of walking alone here at night, actually it is the best time.

My room is blue--that odd blue-violet that I've always loved. There's an enormous bed that appears to be made up of two dis-similar mattresses piled atop a creaking box-spring frame. You must remain in the middle or else you are in danger of crashing to the floor along with one or both of the mattresses. The whole building can only politely be referred to as "old". It is actually suffering from an advanced case of disrepair: when you walk along the hall you feel yourself dipping up and down according to the various contours the wood has taken over the years. At night my whole bed shakes whenever someone walks by. The windows are tall and narrow and have shutters: I usually come home late at night and open them so the light in the morning wakes me. I can see all the way down to the harbour. Speaking of light my room is lit by a single naked bulb that hangs from the ceiling. I can turn it off only by unscrewing it. It is very good to listen to the boats late at night sounding in the fog.


I went bike-riding (10 - 15 miles) a good ride. Up island and then out into the countryside which is still undeveloped, only main roads are tarred, the rest are dirt and frustrating when I try pedeling them but fortunately the "main roads" can go on mile after mile lined by trees and fields. I always ride barefoot -- you can keep in better touch with the bike and how its moving this way (i become 'one' with this small machine even in the city, but that's another tale). I put my radio in the front basket and carried everything else in my pack on my back. There is a great station here that plays perfect song after perfect song and I turn it on while riding -- like running thru music. Everything is beautiful: the smell of the trees, the sun, the big white horses that run in the fields and I end up stopping and lying under a tree for an hour. When I ride bike like this I know I'll never feel completely comfortable in a car: too passive and closed in. Later I stop by the roadside and buy a fudgesicle which I try to eat while riding and end up covered with chocolate drips. I should move here, my soul lives in this place.

Tonight I went for a walk by the beach about eleven pm. The fog had closed in so you could see maybe fifty yards or less. I climb down a small cliff to get to the water and look out all of the ocean a small lip of white water that proceeds the wave and the only sounds the rolling water and the crickets in the dune grass. Walking along I become aware of an enormous dark object out in the sea, at least twenty feet tall. I am frightened until I figure out it is my shadow being reflected on the ocean fog by the lights of car passing up on the roadway. I am a giant dancing on the waves. You have no idea the effect the ocean has on me. When I stare out into it concentrate all my energy on tracing its motion color and sound, it is as if 'I' cease to exist apart from it. It is a deepest experience of peace I know: total oneness. Mountains do something similar but I am not around mountains enough to know their rhythm.

Facing off a large white bug in the sand today -- sprawling on a big pink blanket along a narrow strip of beach. It is warm and there was not much to do beyond watching the sand spin in the wind off the edge of the blanket.

Writing from a new location: a house all alone in the countryside. Outdoors at night on the way to town I can see no more than five feet in front of me and I figure out where to walk by taking off my shoes and allowing my feet to track the cold sand in the dark - I walk into many black puddles that run across the path. I am so tan now that people ask if I am from India or something else  -- all brown blended together with only the whites of my eyes to break the uniform effect. I like where I am but I don't like how I feel. I don't enjoy my need for people. I rage at my seriousness, at the lack of joy the exists in me at times. I feel like a little old man, shrunk at the core, my smile glazing my face a smear of greasy make-up.


Read: The Empty Mirror - Life in a Zen Monastery
Socrates - Dialogue on Death