Usually crappy. This is because everything I read by anyone I know, I always believe is exceedingly, objectively better than anything I have written. I am a hypocrite when it comes to self-esteem, self-empowerment, &c.
Thank God for David Foster Wallace. Literally. Thank You, Universe. If there is anyone more talented, and yet more in touch with litost - that feeling of shame when faced with one's own silliness, facile-ness, worthlessness - I don't know who it is. (Except perhaps Milan Kundera, who provided that definition, and used it for a theme, in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. Then, proving that nothing is random and God exists, Wallace quoted Kundera in a story about feeling down on yourself. Geez, I might be tripping.)
What was I saying again? That I tend to believe that everyone around me knows what they're doing, has it all figured out, is supremely confident, at all time, while next to them I look cool and composed on the outside (ha!), but on the inside I am flailing and filandering and completely losing my shit.
A woman I know said that other day that she thinks all social tension and weirdness is a result of fear. I think that is so true. Fear of judgment, misunderstanding, rejection, vulnerability. When I experience awkwardness, I ALWAYS blame myself - because I believe that the other person or people is totally confident. But maybe they're just as afraid as I am.
Carry each other...
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
What I've Been Reading Lately
- Hemingway
- Salinger
- Wallace (David Foster)
- Miranda July
Where does one get their own narrative voice? Simply by practice? Or are some people born with one and don't have to work at it at all? That seems unlikely, as natural as it seems to come to some people. I want my narrative voice to be:
- associative
- quirky
- honest/transparent
- candid
- unorthodox
(Incidentally, that list applies to July and Wallace, and they both have VERY different voices.)
Maybe when I find my voice, that is how I will know I have succeeded.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Heritage
(I wrote this story as an entry to Camera Obscura's Bridge the Gap contest - photos (and winner) depicted here:)
In my dream I was falling, peacefully, slowly, with none of the fear or the rush of a usual falling dream; this was slow, restful; I was surrounded on all sides by something that was helping me fall, something fit to my body like it was made for me, cradling me.
When I awoke it was dark, and I was afraid; the air felt too light to breathe, it felt substanceless; the mattress, too hard, like it was preventing me from drifting into the ground.
At work I was agitated, and I went home early.
Again I dreamt of the fall, the peaceful, bodiless fall, and it felt like I had finally surrendered to gravity, like I had given up a long and tiresome battle.
And again: wake, agitated, work, sleep.
A third night I dreamt; all around me the crystal blue, that strong yet gentle force that molded to my body; nothing had ever felt as accommodating, as supportive yet freeing, as the water.
And then I realized: I was not falling; I was drowning; the water surrounded me and suddenly I was overcome with that feeling that I had traveled too far from the surface; my lungs, my mouth, my insides all crying for air, but my body remained silent and still, acquiescent, amidst my inner screams.
It was then that I knew I was dying, and when I understood that, my insides quieted, and I lay at rest again, and I knew that drowning is peaceful, that water is gentle, that surrender is release.
I woke. It was light. Across the room my alarm beeped. Dazed I staggered over and silenced it, showered, ate, and arrived at work only a minute or two late, with nobody there to notice.
Work: Visitation Services Manager at the Historical Center, Marion, NY. I sat at the front desk alone. I was shaken; I felt vertigo, I felt sure the air was not strong enough to catch me if I fell.
This was disconcerting: as I sat alone at the front desk all morning, no visitors, no coworkers as it was a weekend, I returned to my dream in my mind, and it brought me peace; I felt as I did in the original dream, which was that I was no longer responsible; I could continue to lie in the water and dream.
It registered that I should be alarmed, but as the minutes ticked by on the grandfather clock across from my desk, I began to question: why are we so afraid of death, of our own death, yet we never think twice about those that happened long ago? The death of everyone we know who’s passed, old celebrities, our ancestors: they’re dead, and they’re fine, somehow. Their lives are not besmirched by their deaths. When we talk about them we don’t fixate on the fact that they died. In a way, they still exist: death has not obliterated their identity.
I unearthed the master key from the desk drawer and made my way back into the archives, which were fodder for our next project. We were going to organize all the stories, documents, photographs, everything we had stored back here, into a narrative timeline of our town. It would start and end here at the Center but the timeline itself would take visitors on a walking path over the canal, through downtown, and back.
Ours is a small town, and my family had been here for generations; I had no trouble locating some documents with my family name on them. There were birth and death certificates, marriage licenses, estate sales, all the faded articles you’d expect in a place like this.
I’d never given much thought to my family’s history, save for knowing where we came from, which was here; I knew I was named for my maternal great-grandmother, Joanna, but this fact had always meant little to me, as neither my parents nor I had known her, and I hadn’t known my grandmother. Essentially, I realized, no one I knew had known my namesake.
Now, though, I wanted to know more. I needed proof that they were people, not just registered voters or property owners.
Six o’clock passed and I continued to dig through the archives. In some years’ files I found more municipal proof that my family existed before dying, some old slides and yearbook pages, but nothing to my satisfaction.
Around eight o’clock, I found a file in the corner marked, simply, ‘heritage.’ It appeared to be a catch-all for unfilable documents and other historical debris. At the back, bound together with a clip, was a scrapbook dated 1911-1931, completely intact, by Joanna L. Hoenigger, nee Salinger. My great-grandmother.
It was all there: the births of her five children; the death of one; four first Communions. Recipes, awards, someone’s poetry from the same school I went to. Two sons shipped out to Germany, one did not return. The father had dementia. Postcards and art projects. Lace clippings from baptismal garments and locks of hair and even a grocery list.
I read everything, feeling a sense of kinship with this family that had produced mine, and especially with Joanna. I had almost no connection with her; my grandparents had died when I was young, and my mother didn’t often talk about her past. Yet everything she did affected me, and here it all was, twenty years of memories carefully preserved in a book.
On the last page I found something that made me stop. In someone else’s handwriting at the top of a newspaper clipping was written September 1, 1943. The article read:
The body of a local seamstress was found drowned in Will’s Hallow Creek yesterday morning…Mrs. Dale Hoenigger, born Joanna Salinger of Marion, New York, aged 53. Authorities are investigating the possibility of foul play, although her body showed no sign of struggle.
There were no funeral papers.
In my dream I was falling, peacefully, slowly, with none of the fear or the rush of a usual falling dream; this was slow, restful; I was surrounded on all sides by something that was helping me fall, something fit to my body like it was made for me, cradling me.
When I awoke it was dark, and I was afraid; the air felt too light to breathe, it felt substanceless; the mattress, too hard, like it was preventing me from drifting into the ground.
At work I was agitated, and I went home early.
Again I dreamt of the fall, the peaceful, bodiless fall, and it felt like I had finally surrendered to gravity, like I had given up a long and tiresome battle.
And again: wake, agitated, work, sleep.
A third night I dreamt; all around me the crystal blue, that strong yet gentle force that molded to my body; nothing had ever felt as accommodating, as supportive yet freeing, as the water.
And then I realized: I was not falling; I was drowning; the water surrounded me and suddenly I was overcome with that feeling that I had traveled too far from the surface; my lungs, my mouth, my insides all crying for air, but my body remained silent and still, acquiescent, amidst my inner screams.
It was then that I knew I was dying, and when I understood that, my insides quieted, and I lay at rest again, and I knew that drowning is peaceful, that water is gentle, that surrender is release.
I woke. It was light. Across the room my alarm beeped. Dazed I staggered over and silenced it, showered, ate, and arrived at work only a minute or two late, with nobody there to notice.
Work: Visitation Services Manager at the Historical Center, Marion, NY. I sat at the front desk alone. I was shaken; I felt vertigo, I felt sure the air was not strong enough to catch me if I fell.
This was disconcerting: as I sat alone at the front desk all morning, no visitors, no coworkers as it was a weekend, I returned to my dream in my mind, and it brought me peace; I felt as I did in the original dream, which was that I was no longer responsible; I could continue to lie in the water and dream.
It registered that I should be alarmed, but as the minutes ticked by on the grandfather clock across from my desk, I began to question: why are we so afraid of death, of our own death, yet we never think twice about those that happened long ago? The death of everyone we know who’s passed, old celebrities, our ancestors: they’re dead, and they’re fine, somehow. Their lives are not besmirched by their deaths. When we talk about them we don’t fixate on the fact that they died. In a way, they still exist: death has not obliterated their identity.
I unearthed the master key from the desk drawer and made my way back into the archives, which were fodder for our next project. We were going to organize all the stories, documents, photographs, everything we had stored back here, into a narrative timeline of our town. It would start and end here at the Center but the timeline itself would take visitors on a walking path over the canal, through downtown, and back.
Ours is a small town, and my family had been here for generations; I had no trouble locating some documents with my family name on them. There were birth and death certificates, marriage licenses, estate sales, all the faded articles you’d expect in a place like this.
I’d never given much thought to my family’s history, save for knowing where we came from, which was here; I knew I was named for my maternal great-grandmother, Joanna, but this fact had always meant little to me, as neither my parents nor I had known her, and I hadn’t known my grandmother. Essentially, I realized, no one I knew had known my namesake.
Now, though, I wanted to know more. I needed proof that they were people, not just registered voters or property owners.
Six o’clock passed and I continued to dig through the archives. In some years’ files I found more municipal proof that my family existed before dying, some old slides and yearbook pages, but nothing to my satisfaction.
Around eight o’clock, I found a file in the corner marked, simply, ‘heritage.’ It appeared to be a catch-all for unfilable documents and other historical debris. At the back, bound together with a clip, was a scrapbook dated 1911-1931, completely intact, by Joanna L. Hoenigger, nee Salinger. My great-grandmother.
It was all there: the births of her five children; the death of one; four first Communions. Recipes, awards, someone’s poetry from the same school I went to. Two sons shipped out to Germany, one did not return. The father had dementia. Postcards and art projects. Lace clippings from baptismal garments and locks of hair and even a grocery list.
I read everything, feeling a sense of kinship with this family that had produced mine, and especially with Joanna. I had almost no connection with her; my grandparents had died when I was young, and my mother didn’t often talk about her past. Yet everything she did affected me, and here it all was, twenty years of memories carefully preserved in a book.
On the last page I found something that made me stop. In someone else’s handwriting at the top of a newspaper clipping was written September 1, 1943. The article read:
The body of a local seamstress was found drowned in Will’s Hallow Creek yesterday morning…Mrs. Dale Hoenigger, born Joanna Salinger of Marion, New York, aged 53. Authorities are investigating the possibility of foul play, although her body showed no sign of struggle.
There were no funeral papers.
Monday, January 9, 2012
The Fear of Not Saying Interesting Things
For some reason, this doesn't stop me from talking, but it often stops me from writing.
Lately, though, I've been thinking about the importance of just getting it down. If I have an idea for something, even if I'm not sure I can execute it, I need to just start, and just finish, a first draft. After all, it's a first draft - it's a lump of clay; it doesn't need to look like a, I don't know, Greek god. But I need to get the clay first.
Sorry for the extended metaphor. I find them extremely helpful. This particular one just illuminated the fact that I tend to get down on myself when my first draft isn't the final draft, or something close. How silly of me!
P.S. Just finished reading Miranda July's collection of short stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You. Glorious! Would that I had a voice as distinct as hers, and an imagination as detailed.
Lately, though, I've been thinking about the importance of just getting it down. If I have an idea for something, even if I'm not sure I can execute it, I need to just start, and just finish, a first draft. After all, it's a first draft - it's a lump of clay; it doesn't need to look like a, I don't know, Greek god. But I need to get the clay first.
Sorry for the extended metaphor. I find them extremely helpful. This particular one just illuminated the fact that I tend to get down on myself when my first draft isn't the final draft, or something close. How silly of me!
P.S. Just finished reading Miranda July's collection of short stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You. Glorious! Would that I had a voice as distinct as hers, and an imagination as detailed.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
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