Writing Quandry

I’m feeling stumped more frequently about writing. I have started several entries, meandered on in linguistic yet self-indulgent feats, come to an awareness that was crucial for me, then realized I can’t possibly post what I wrote because it’s of no benefit to anyone else, and I am so done with that little exercise that even I don’t want to re-read it.

Sometimes I return to earlier writing, as if I’m gazing through old photographs. I marvel at a turn of a phrase, the way something perfectly caught what I needed so keenly to express. I hear my own voice and I respond with relief and joy – a resounding “Yes!” as if I, now as audience member, have finally found a speaker who speaks to me.

Other moments create a touch of nostalgia. “Look what I used to be like” – the awe and familiarity of seeing me and remembering me - but the Me who is doing the seeing and remembering feels simultaneously the same and a very different person from the Me I’m encountering. Just like with old pictures, I’m kinder to myself with a post-hoc analysis than I am in my original experience of my inner world.

I nod and smile sheepishly at other writing that seems facile and stale, like a child’s gift of a macaroni-and-glue Mother’s Day card. We happily indulge the spirit and intention of our little loved one, the effort is so quaint and cute and it must be the thought that counts because what on earth can you really do with this thing? It’s not going to hold up over time no matter where you hang it – the construction paper will fade and the damned macaroni will never rot or disintegrate even after it’s been on your refrigerator door for months, but it absolutely cannot go into the attic or garage with the other things you don’t have the heart to throw away because not even a mother’s indulgence will outweigh rationality when it comes to the unwillingness to tempt critters and insects (who you prefer not to think about because there’s no sleep that will come if you acknowledge who else is living under your roof) but know will find their way specifically to the box marked “Kindergarten” and then what will you have.

A friend gave me a recent magazine with a section devoted to writing, opening up windows to how others experience writing. One author addressed the inherent conundrum of writing as a spiritual practice, which is dictated by three rules:
1. Don’t write what you know.
2. You can’t write what you don’t know.
3. You must write.

We must start by writing what we know, because it’s the only way to get to something new. In his words:

“So go ahead, and write what you know and keep at it until you at last realize you don’t know much and what you do know is terrifyingly trite and stupefyingly boring.”

“Keep writing no matter what comes up. Eventually you will find something in that writing. At first, what you find will be comforting. Throw that stuff away. Keep writing. Eventually you will find something that is deeply, disturbingly troubling.”

“So write simply to write. It’s a discipline. Sometimes what I write becomes part of something I publish, but publishing is never the goal. Writing is the goal. The journey is its own reward; arriving is just a by-product of placing one foot, one word, after another.”

I am, apparently, in great company. My writing quandary puts me right smack dab where others have been. The more I write, the less I have to offer up to others. The more I write, the less I know. I don’t even know exactly why I’m writing. But I am.

It feels as if I’m writing because it’s as essential to feed the expressive/ linguistic/connective “tissue” of my being, the way I feed actual organs, muscles and bones – food, exercise, vitamins, how could I not attend to the body? Perhaps continual attention and focus inward is not really navel-gazing, but a convoluted entry point to something outside ourselves. Maybe I’m writing to encounter that which is so much greater than me. Or maybe I’m navel-gazing and only pretending to be doing something grander.

To date, this is what I know, and this is what I don’t know.

This is the Me I send out into the world, to my friends and loved ones, the people I work with, my neighbors, the people who engage with me in small encounters throughout the day. And this is the Me I send out, my own macaroni-and-glue offering, to that which is so large and incomprehensible but perhaps will accept it with grace and indulgence.


Writing rules and quotes are from Standing barefoot before God: The agony and ecstasy of writing as a spiritual practice. Rabbi Rami, © Ode Magazine USA, Inc., October, 2010, pp. 40-41.

Pearl of Wisdom from a Mom I Know

My son has a friend he met two summers ago at a week-long summer camp. Our families live on opposite sides of town, their house perched at the edge not only of our city but seemingly the edge of the continent, looking out over a span of water that feeds into the Pacific Ocean. The boys go to different schools, are in different sports, and last summer their camp schedules didn’t align. So they’ve seen each other just a handful of times – birthday parties, some afternoon-long play dates, but that’s it.

Yet these two boys were instant friends, a buddy version of love at first sight. Friends like some of my lifelong friends, where it must be pheromones or chemistry or something because without having the time to know someone or to build shared experiences, the connection is undeniable and unbreakable.

My son lights up at the mention of his friend’s name, and the second they are together, they are off – either building, running, shooting, rock scrambling, tossing things, developing and inhabiting an ever-changing fantasy world. They compromise, share, take turns following and leading. Their ideas and laughter build off one another, combine and swirl and head in new directions. Two distinct identities who temporarily form a double helix.

It’s coming up to Spring Break, and I thought it would be a perfect time to try to get the boys together. I asked my son if he would like that, and his eyes got large and if a whole body can smile, that’s what his did, before his “Yes!!” of several syllables rang out. I contacted the friend’s Mom to see if she thought her son would like to get together again, but left it tentative, to give the Mom and her son a way to say that it wasn’t quite right – it’s been months since they last saw each other, not since the beginning of the school year back in Fall – perhaps he wouldn’t want to see my son, perhaps he’d outgrown him, or didn’t really remember, or just grown disinterested in the friendship over the year.

But his Mom told me that her son holds a space in his heart/mind for mine, and that even though they don’t get together often, he still considers him a good friend. “My son is a loyal friend,” she said.

I love that a Mom would not just say this about her child, but would know it. What a fabulous trait to have at such a young age: loyalty. I’d have said the boys fell in love, in the purest form of love that transcends gender and age. They fell in love, and remain in love. But by calling their bond a form of loyalty, she brings attention to perhaps the most important aspect of friendship and loving relationships – loyalty – the string of acts and choices we make to elevate one person over another, to prioritize that person even if we are in a life filled with other tasks, that we uphold our bonds even when it would be easier to let them go.

Oh, what a lucky boy my son’s friend is. He’s being recognized for his capacity to be loyal. Combined with bravery, the capacity for love, diligence, and honesty, loyalty completes the set of traits boys must master in order to become good men.

So here’s to two boys who are on their way.

My son is a loyal friend.

Poem for an Old Chum

Asked to write in verse
To make long thoughts terse

Prose is my genre now
Literary essays of how . . .

How I imagine
How I hope
How I dream
How I regret
How I see within and among and between the lines

(to be exact).

I’m afraid of poetry, turns out.
Early efforts merely an indulgent pout.

Time mellows and memory sifts.
Who writes poetry when the melancholy lifts?

Dedicated to S.E., a dear college chum. Thanks for the challenge!

Starbucks Laptop Men

I’m sitting in a local Starbucks, and today’s Swing music mix (Dean Martin is crooning Volare, just before that was a song from Ella Fitzgerald’s Music and Moonlight), is just barely audible over the milk-steaming and repeat ordering patter at the counter. As I glance around, I feel like a sociologist discovering a new tribe. I’m sitting across the table from someone working diligently from a stack of yellow-pad papers and a book called Strategic Thinking, Acting and Learning. He’s got a Mac, no surprise. Behind him are three men with headphones, laptops and bad facial hair. Is it a pattern? That if you don’t have a home or real office, and are, instead, at Starbucks at 9:19 on a weekday morning, earnestly typing or reading or talking on the phone, or doing all three simultaneously, you’re released from the obligation of attending to a daily shave.

There’s a Mom in the corner, reading The Berenstein’s Book to her two-year old, and a nanny sitting with a venti-size beverage and three kids all under the age of 3. Behind me, another scruffy-faced guy, bending over a tiny little mini-computer, perched precariously on one knee (said knee is visible beneath his calf-length corduroy cargo Dockers – longer than shorts, shorter than pants, perhaps the clothing equivalent of unshaven, two-day stubble). He’s a stout guy who looks somewhat stockier than he probably is hunched over a Lilliputian computer. It’s in the 40’s and we’re supposed to get thundershowers today, so the apparel choice is unique to this gentleman. Oops – the guy just got up and left with one of the kids from the nanny – so she’s only here with two. That makes more sense. The huge amber ring on her right hand, not to mention her youth, gives her away – none of the well-married women in this part of town wear rings like that after they’ve snagged a corporate husband. And he’s a Dad. It’s not the weekend, so he must be a full-time Dad, so there’s somebody at home waiting for this scruffy-faced, stout man with short pants. Someone who just might adore this scratchy bear of a man.

Isn’t life strange? There’s someone at home who loves me, even when I’m scratchy. Last night during a Scrabble game, my husband had all the letters to spell out “borage” – only he pronounced it like “barrage” and wanted to know if it was a word. I didn’t know, neither did our 4th grader, but thanks to dictionary.com, we learned that borage is something – a plant with hairy leaves and stems, native to southern Europe. My husband used the word, opening up a whole new corner of the board for us; we all had a good laugh about how he’s my hairy plant. I love him when he’s scratchy and a day or two unshaven on the rare weekend he takes off from shaving. Maybe we all want a little borage to call our own. Maybe these Starbucks Laptop Men have just rolled out of bed from a late-morning tousle with their ladies, and it’s actually the look of post-coital masculine satisfaction that I’m witnessing. Maybe these guys have the new look that all the gals crave – scruffy and technologically tuned in – and I’m more judgmental than necessary.

Starbucks Laptop Man 1 has been on the phone since I walked in; his conversation voice is low and loud. I’ve barely seen Man 2 blink. Men 3 and 4 haven’t uttered a word; they seem frozen as they stare at their screens. And then it happens – they jump to life. A scraggly woman in wet layers just dropped a furry hat on the floor, and Man 2 pulled the earplugs out of his ears, pointed to Man 3 directly across from him, then down to the floor at the hat, then toward the door. Man 3 understood this abbreviated form of communication, took off his headphones, picked up the hat, and sprinted to the door. Chivalry completed, Man 2 and 3 return to their tableau.

In the time I’ve been here, the predicted rain shower has come. I dawdle when it’s time to leave. Sunbreaks and sheets of water await me if I step outside, but I have to go to work. In an office. Starbucks Laptop Man 1 is still on the phone. The guy across from me hasn’t taken even the tiniest break from his Strategic everything work. It must be important as he occasionally pulls his hands through his short hair.

Just as I’m pulling this to a close, another guy walks in, sans laptop but with a four-year-old in a Sheriff Woody costume, complete with cow vest and red kerchief around his neck. The Dad’s here to meet with Man 2, who introduces Man 3 as being “in training.” They pull up a few extra chairs, the young boy places his Lego car on the table and quietly eats his treat, and the men are now engaged in a triangle of collaboration, communication without headphones.

I think I’ve glimpsed a new world today. Something about the new American male, maybe. Men who have flexible work schedules yet sit in a loud, cacophonous setting with uncomfortable tables and chairs, stay glued to their seats, their computers, their headsets, and basically recreate the existence of a cubicle. Other men who use the flexibility to blend work with parenting, but Woody is actually on his own now, as his Dad is focused on Man 2’s screen. He’s busy and working. It might have seemed like an outing, “Let’s go to Starbucks, Woody,” and his son might have been very excited to go for a hot chocolate with Dad. But Dad is now a Starbucks Laptop Man, and not even this adorable, amazingly well-behaved Sheriff Woody can draw his attention away.

I wonder how this new breed of techno-male will ultimately shake out. Guys who are Skyping, texting, net-surfing, videochatting, You-Tubing, videostreaming, constantly available but never really connected because all connections occur through screens and keyboards. Communication through abbreviations and acronyms, a whole new language in shorthand for texting and chat rooms, complete with ways to communicate that the naughty stuff has to stop (I totally understand P911, but am horrified to learn that something like W9 exists – look them up and you’ll see what I mean).

Then, because I’m me, I wonder, will my son become a Starbucks Laptop Man? Will he bring his son to whatever meeting places exist in 30 years, and offer him a hot cocoa? If he does, I sure hope he sits eye-to-eye with that child, in whatever costume he’s wearing, to talk to him – play with him, read him a story, toss him a ball, look through baseball or Pokemon cards, come up with a plan for an adventure they’ll have over the weekend. My son doesn’t yet have a cell phone, his own computer or email account, and still doesn’t know how to type (despite the fact that some of his homework assignments are to be typed). My husband is about as low-tech as an adult can be. We spend our family time doing really old-fashioned things - talking, reading, playing cards and games, cooking, eating, listening to music, writing and doing homework (why is there so much homework in the 4th grade already?), taking walks and small hikes, my husband and son play ball, my son and I bike, and all of us like to have our friends over.

Of course we use computers, although apparently we do far less with them than many, and of course we watch movies and a bit of TV (NCIS and The O’Reilly Factor for my husband, Barefoot Contessa and romantic comedies for me, and Diners Drive-Ins and Dives, the occasional educational program about space or nature or lions for all of us). I enjoy my over-priced coffee drink as much as the next person, and I wrote most of this posting today at Starbucks on my tiny netbook. But I continue to hold out for whole-person communication, small activities that can be shared, conversations held under blankets, whole afternoons with girlfriends at a day spa or slow moments with old friends, a glass of fine wine paired with kettle-cooked potato chips and sour cream – that kind of thing. I wish the Starbucks Laptop Men well in their high-tech ventures, but I adore the two low-tech, high-connection guys in my life.

Borago officinalis from Wikipedia.com

"Maybe you could write about that . . ."

Last night, in those few precious moments before bedtime when there’s not a single chore remaining for me to ask him about, my son and I were taking just a moment to snuggle on the couch. I asked him to tell me something about him that I didn’t know – something he might not have ever thought to tell me. I was thinking I was being clever and that out would come some juicy things that I should know but he hasn’t deemed important enough to tell me, in that way that guys have of eventually telling fragments and bits of things, but never in the “tell me all about it” way with relational nuances, tips about how each person looked and the emotional feel of the information, that women crave.

“Why wouldn’t you know something about me?” he answered. I think he wasn’t sure if it was a real question. “There isn’t anything you don’t know,” he added, with his usual enormous, grin looking gummier with gaping holes from the teeth he’s recently lost. He snuggled in even closer, burrowing, really, as far as he could get without smushing his glasses.

“Did I tell you what our morning assignment was?” he said, from somewhere near my armpit.

“No,” I replied, animated. There was something. A tiny detail, a 15-minute span of his morning that, although I know in general that each school day starts with an independent writing assignment, he hadn’t told me that day’s assignment. It was to correct grammar, spelling and punctuation in an error-filled paragraph.

Of course, adding this small detail to the rest of what I knew about his day – his George Washington presentation through the paper-bag puppet we’d decorated over the weekend with fabric fragments donated from a much more craft-skilled mother than I am; cardio stations in P.E.; difficulty eating the burrito at lunch because of his new wiggly teeth; his karate class in which he didn’t get a chance to spar but did do a whole session of warm-ups; his struggle to type up the first paragraph of the body of his Easter Island report (the follow-up to the Tikis – check out how cool they looked at the final event)


– didn’t really add much to my knowledge of him. Except that he and I have a relationship where he still talks to me, still trusts me with the minutia as well as the great big messy things of his life, still thinks my input is safe.

He enjoys the fact that I know him. He’s not intimidated by it, doesn’t find it intrusive, doesn’t think there’s anything odd in it. He wants me to know him, as it is one of the ways he has come to know himself. And this knowledge doesn’t seem constraining or limiting to him. It makes him feel good.

This morning, before breakfast, we were talking about how difficult it is to be old and sick and alone (my Great Aunt, at 86, has taken ill – may she be blessed with healing). “Maybe you could write about that tonight,” said my son. He knows Tuesdays are my writing nights. I gave him my big, gummy smile, and a giant hug.

But Mom’s can’t burrow back into their children, so I’ll nestle later with my husband, and wrap myself in this memory, this little parenting victory.
My son knows me, too.

Quake Damage

Last week, on my short morning commute, the radio announcer reminded all in his listening domain that it was the 10-year anniversary of a large earthquake that had hit this area. Ten years - really? Well, yes, according to very simple math, it has been ten years since February 28, 2001. But the math and my memory don’t align.

I remembered the quake as taking place in the afternoon, but I Googled it and learned it occurred at 10:54 am. I was teaching an undergraduate class in Room 154, a state-of-the-art lecture hall of a just-built-to-code campus. The building swayed and swayed and swayed, just like it was supposed to, yet it was unsettling to feel a bit sea-sick on land. I didn’t immediately figure out what was happening, as I’d recently left California, a land where I expected earthquakes, to come to an area of the country I never thought of as having earthquakes. There’s no place to take shelter under a high-tech, multi-media podium, so I went to the doorway. There were too many students to send them under doorways, so I must have sent them under their brand new tables. But I don’t remember telling them to do this. I don’t remember dismissing the class, as I must have, since once you realize the ground is unstable and your lecture hall is in motion, there’s no further pedagogy to pursue.

When the 1994 earthquake hit the San Fernando Valley and reverberated through most of the LA area, I was out running; the fastest way home was to keep running. By the time I returned, the shaking had stopped, so there was no need to get under anything. I did wonder about the windows on the buildings as I was running, but there wasn’t much else to do but go home, even if the city around me wasn’t guaranteed to make it through. The ground acceleration from that quake was what proved most destructive: freeway overpasses buckled and collapsed, businesses, apartments and homes shifted right off their foundations, some without ever having had adequate support for even their first floor.

In my area, most homes lost chimneys, but mine didn’t.
Some of my belongings and appliances took flight and broke; my biggest losses, other than some knick knacks, were a TV that face-planted into the floor and an elegant, long-necked, hand-painted ceramic vase from Les Beaux de Provence. I re-glued it back together – the glue lines are obvious and it looks more awful as time goes on, as the glue has turned to yellow and brown and there are bits and chunks of it still missing, and, true to fate, it’s broken a few more times so it boasts clunky repairs of repairs. But I salvaged this piece because its unique shape keeps a memory alive of a long-ago trip to Provence. My neighbor, an elderly potter, lost almost all of her hand- and wheel-thrown pots, a lifetime of her creative energy.
Not a thing of hers could be salvaged. The inequities of loss were surprising.

So this year is the 10-year “anniversary” of the 2001 quake. My son did the math and figured out that he was in my belly when that quake happened. I have no memory of being pregnant during the earthquake, which, given that I was in my last trimester, the 31st week of a 41½ week pregnancy, you’d think I’d remember that part of it. There wasn’t a waking moment that I forgot being pregnant – so it’s quite odd that in the 10 years that have passed, the only times I’ve remembered the quake I remembered me as if I was only me. I didn’t remember what I must have felt – the fear that any of my stress from the event could have endangered my unborn child. I was certainly worried about other things during the pregnancy, so the possibility of me not being worried about this is inherently impossible. But I don’t remember it.

I remember running to my car to get out of the parking garage before it was “red tagged” – using my learning from the earlier quake as to how quickly parking structures were closed down to check for damage, and the second they were closed, you couldn’t get your car out. You were trapped in whatever part of town your car was in, which is possibly worse than being in your car crawling home with every other panicked citizen, convinced that what they are going home to is more important than what any other driver in any other car is going home for, so aggression and ruthlessness ruled the roads. I have only remembered the part of me in the lecture hall, and me heading out to my car, and the sense of victory that I made it out before they stopped all cars from leaving. And that I couldn’t call my folks right away, as the overwhelming phone activity in and out of the area pretty much shut down communication. I don’t recall what happened when I returned home, nor how long it took me to get there. I don’t have a single memory of which items fell off the walls and shelves, and what got broken. Perhaps nothing? Were classes cancelled for the rest of the week? I don’t recall.

Not long after, my personal life shook and swayed, then ruptured wide open; I plummeted to the mantle between my own outer crust and core. The ground acceleration surpassed my ability to hold on. I let go. I scrambled to get out before being trapped in a structure that would collapse around me, or being swallowed alive in the cavernous breach. Nothing built around me could sustain the movement, the turbulence of the shake up, and sadly, nothing much lasted after the fault line erupted. Shards and broken bits, mainly, except for a fierce sense of having survived, internally, intact. My memory of this quake is indelible.

Despite living through two major earthquakes, I don’t think of myself as an earthquake person. Tornadoes were the natural disaster of my youth, and I have spent more time than I cared to in a basement waiting out tornado warning sirens. Many of these tornado watches and warnings occurred before my parents refinished the basement, so it felt more like the black and white Kansas desolation Dorothy avoided by heading to Oz. I’ve not lived through a hurricane, or flooding, or forest fires that encroach, but a friend of mine was hit by lightning. I imagine there’s no place anyone lives where there isn’t some form of destructive natural phenomena, so I can’t be unique in living through some.

My son is about to be 10 years old. Ten years is the time it took to grow him into the person he is. Ten years is the time it took for my parents to shift from being late-middle-aged, in their 60’s, to old age, in their 70’s. Every adult reading this entry has lived the last ten years, too, and has their own sense of their own hallmark shifts, changes, and tectonic plate movements, let alone the natural disasters they’ve lived through. In these ten years, I have created a mosaic from the broken pieces, shards and holes left from the geographical and emotional earthquakes I’ve gone through. I imagine that everyone I encounter has their own life mosaic – very few of us will live through decade after decade without something shattering, breaking, falling away, being lost to us forever, fundamentally altering our initial selves.

Maybe it’s the glue that makes us stronger - that and our conviction that certain pieces of our lives are worth gluing and repairing and others are worth walking away from – that the act of repairing and rebuilding makes us stronger, more solid and sturdy than we are in our original, naïve, unbroken (youthful) selves. We even come to learn that we will go through many unexpected shifts and movement – the ground will, in fact, shake during our lives - and that we won’t necessarily fall completely through the rabbit hole each time. I now know that I can rebuild after great, unexpected losses, and that I didn’t become bitter or reclusive or afraid to live life fully. I might die in a disaster, but until the moment I am gone, I will build and rebuild a life that make sense to me.