On an evening not too long ago, Mr. Narcy, in a very un-Austen-esque manner, declared that he needed to learn Self-Reliance. He had been buffeted between cultures, languages and different men, and ultimately, which relationship is the most important? The one he has with that little gerbil turning the wheel inside, the one that IS the wheel.
As Maura traverses the corners of the home in which she grew up, as she sometimes ventures out into her old town, she remembers many a night, during the last year she lived there, spent awake, tormented over the state of things, tormented because she wanted so much more than her daily life provided her. She was raised with images of happiness, of love, and rarely with expressions of the thing itself. So to help herself fall asleep, she used to listen to one Oirish singer, she read the tales of her people, to create new images--images of self-reliant women she would become, to take her away from everything in that old town.
Once she moved, those images seemed false, perhaps because there was more of the thing itself in her daily life, sometimes painfully so, ironically evoking the older times she once thought were so simple, but were, in fact, never simple. In lieu of these images, she found herself connecting to people--a far more dangerous thing, but a far more worthwhile effort, in her mind.
But the years have only taught Maura that years necessarily mark the cutting of the ties that bind us--not forever, but at least temporarily and again, painfully. Is this how we sail through life? If we are wise, we sew ourselves to others, only to have the strings cut, seemingly only so that the Master Marionette can sardonically laugh and remind us of the most important relationship of all--the one we have with ourselves, regardless of what the "self" means to you.
Last night, Maura was again in the same bed, a bed which somehow evokes thoughts of fear, separation, and a life half-lived, lived only in the slow passing of images. But she reached for another image, perhaps in a different vein this time--she pulled up a story from one of her favorite master storytellers, telling history, perhaps for Mr. Narcy, somewhat simplistically.
After a few pages, she was reminded of the only lesson she might be able to clean from this object which possesses her mind at night--the cold virginal bed, sweating under the pressure of too much down comforting, holding someone that is perhaps none of these things. Maura has been learning more about Object Lessons through Woolf and Boland, and perhaps this bed is only useful to evoke the lesson she should have learned from years spent in it--years of fevers, nightmares, gentle sleep, day-dreaming, early morning reading, the bed where things fell apart and maybe, someday, will come back together. Perhaps the only useful part of this image is that Maura is in it on her own. Mr. Narcy and the Other feel the weight of an empty bed, but through it also comes the very idea that Mr. Narcy sought--self-reliance.
We've already been practicing it for years--guess it's just time to stretch the muscle a little further.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
The Little-Ass Bird Sings
Now that the summer days are through, we do indeed pass through places, and I look to the soles of these traveling shoes, and wonder, where we've come, where we are. Blame it on Jimmy and his constant desire to circumambulate the feckin town he loved and left so well, but thoughts of travel have been flooding my mind lately. These thoughts push forward, wanting the pen to take them down, but as Edna O'Brien once said, "Writing is like carrying a fetus." So I must tread lightly, find the right nutrients and promise a good name for protection on the playground. Now, I tread into the first person, because, after all, it doesn't hurt Maura to let a few Others in every now and again in the Levinasian epiphany.
As of late, I have been working on the epiphany story--what it means, what it does, how one does it. (Yes, you all think Jimmy is the only real writer, but hell, the little fecker got most of his wordplay from me anyways. You think a Dubliner would know those things about the sea? Scrotum-tightening, he said. Hmph. He twisted that from a sheela-na-gig-esque comment I mighta made) The wise souls to whom I have been looking for advice on writing have told me to consider the epiphanies I have had in my own life. Aside from the annual celebrations of those fierce kings with their gifts, those magic or magi ones, I dunno, I can only think of one recent realization that necessarily changed the shape of my summer, and it was entirely swept up with Story.
The night before I left Dublin, I wandered to our old place on the Liffey--a place where The Other and myself have left various...aspects of ourselves, a place lit only by traffic lights and car brights, a place a bit too close to the actual waters of the Liffey to ensure any sense of cleanliness. As I sat there, tipsy on the red wine and cigarettes I'd been consuming, feeling sweet off the last good dark chocolate I've have since then, grief stricken over a sudden onslaught of personal emotions I'd been feeling, I thought about the summer before, where I'd sat with The Other, weaving our the stories of years past and future to each other. As I lit the last cigarette I'd smoke on Irish soil, and thanks be to god, on any soil (heh, sorta), I suddenly knew the only way I could return to Amerikay with any sense of wholeness. I had to write a story.
For most of this past summer, I had been writing and re-writing the same story of my life, knowing it to the point where it was more Hail Mary than Nicene Creed (the fecker is long ladies). It included certain characters, and I thought they were necessary. It included certain habits, which seemed defining. It included an outlook. But in that moment, by the Liffey, I realized that I could write another story, and it would be just as true, if not more so.
Robert McKee says the power of the story, the necessity for a story, comes from the fact that humans can only process, nay, experience the power of their emotional and psychological urges through art. In the moment one witnesses death, in the moment one feels or inflicts severe pain, emotions and thoughts are a muddle. But in art, these are united, and the viewer, the listener, feels the enormity of the truth, the beauty.
I remember a certain conversation, held on one chilly playground with the Lightening Rod, where I discussed the importance of a need to create, a need to express oneself, a need to do something new so as to ensure true life--life lived in the present. Well, the present isn't as pretty as it has been the past few months, in tree-top house overlooking the city lights, where the call of the train whistle threatens to call me away again and again. It's darker here, there's more static noise in those energy sucking news boxes, funny faces pop up here and there as I slip through town, ridiculously clad in black on a bicycle with the loudest breaks ever not-oiled by an Irishman. The tea party tempts us, and I constantly consider slipping off to a nearby airport or BART station to visit the Mad Hatter and Alice.
But here I must be. So it's time folks--let's write a new story for this year. And start to believe it, for once. I've always loathed the celebration of the last day of the previous year--maybe it's time for us to raise our glasses to something new, a something of complete uncertainty, of complete tipsiness, a complete acceptance that the Postmodern Experience is IN FACT Life Lived on LSD.
Edna O'Brien once said, “When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious.”
What else are we, ye three wise medieval drag queens? Let's prove her right.
As of late, I have been working on the epiphany story--what it means, what it does, how one does it. (Yes, you all think Jimmy is the only real writer, but hell, the little fecker got most of his wordplay from me anyways. You think a Dubliner would know those things about the sea? Scrotum-tightening, he said. Hmph. He twisted that from a sheela-na-gig-esque comment I mighta made) The wise souls to whom I have been looking for advice on writing have told me to consider the epiphanies I have had in my own life. Aside from the annual celebrations of those fierce kings with their gifts, those magic or magi ones, I dunno, I can only think of one recent realization that necessarily changed the shape of my summer, and it was entirely swept up with Story.
The night before I left Dublin, I wandered to our old place on the Liffey--a place where The Other and myself have left various...aspects of ourselves, a place lit only by traffic lights and car brights, a place a bit too close to the actual waters of the Liffey to ensure any sense of cleanliness. As I sat there, tipsy on the red wine and cigarettes I'd been consuming, feeling sweet off the last good dark chocolate I've have since then, grief stricken over a sudden onslaught of personal emotions I'd been feeling, I thought about the summer before, where I'd sat with The Other, weaving our the stories of years past and future to each other. As I lit the last cigarette I'd smoke on Irish soil, and thanks be to god, on any soil (heh, sorta), I suddenly knew the only way I could return to Amerikay with any sense of wholeness. I had to write a story.
For most of this past summer, I had been writing and re-writing the same story of my life, knowing it to the point where it was more Hail Mary than Nicene Creed (the fecker is long ladies). It included certain characters, and I thought they were necessary. It included certain habits, which seemed defining. It included an outlook. But in that moment, by the Liffey, I realized that I could write another story, and it would be just as true, if not more so.
Robert McKee says the power of the story, the necessity for a story, comes from the fact that humans can only process, nay, experience the power of their emotional and psychological urges through art. In the moment one witnesses death, in the moment one feels or inflicts severe pain, emotions and thoughts are a muddle. But in art, these are united, and the viewer, the listener, feels the enormity of the truth, the beauty.
I remember a certain conversation, held on one chilly playground with the Lightening Rod, where I discussed the importance of a need to create, a need to express oneself, a need to do something new so as to ensure true life--life lived in the present. Well, the present isn't as pretty as it has been the past few months, in tree-top house overlooking the city lights, where the call of the train whistle threatens to call me away again and again. It's darker here, there's more static noise in those energy sucking news boxes, funny faces pop up here and there as I slip through town, ridiculously clad in black on a bicycle with the loudest breaks ever not-oiled by an Irishman. The tea party tempts us, and I constantly consider slipping off to a nearby airport or BART station to visit the Mad Hatter and Alice.
But here I must be. So it's time folks--let's write a new story for this year. And start to believe it, for once. I've always loathed the celebration of the last day of the previous year--maybe it's time for us to raise our glasses to something new, a something of complete uncertainty, of complete tipsiness, a complete acceptance that the Postmodern Experience is IN FACT Life Lived on LSD.
Edna O'Brien once said, “When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious.”
What else are we, ye three wise medieval drag queens? Let's prove her right.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Breaking the Monster's Back
‘Where are you going with those flowers in your hair?’
Where is Maura going with those flowers in her hair? The electrician hanging upside down from the scaffolding posed this question tonight, after Maura spent another Day of Rest teaching wide-eyed Katie Couric want-to-bes about subject-predicate constructions. (Mr. Narcy’s bullet-laced prose is beginning to feel like a warm blanket in comparison.) Maura could feel The Almighty stirring the clouds, mixing the thunder, pondering whether the newspaper’s resident Catholic should be allowed to keep getting away with so many philosophical protestations against the need for weekly mass. But after ending last week with two intense discussions about the point in life she is going to start having those 15 womb-benders, since apparently it is something like deciding when she is going to prison in this Solzhenitsynian universe constructed as of late, she has been considering—where is the dear muse going?
She both loathes and lives on the idea of teleology. But it always begs the question (not logically) about where she’s been, where the entire trinitarian ensemble has been. One thing is certain—they are moving away from this role of the muse, this static position ironically mixed up with longing, a desire for a home, the need for endless self-aggrandizement.
Maura’s trail has been has been charted out, in part, on these pages. The Maura who returned to the dark Galway of her youth is no longer here. The tone, currently a bit more somber, reflects a journey of sorts. A journey that Mr. Narcy and The Other viewed only through late night skype calls, drink-induced Facebook messages and ragged marks on paper, blurred from those rainy nights when Maura thought it was a good idea to light a cigarette from her electric burner and proceed to smoke out her kitchen window. They all viewed their journeys in tiny snippets, marking the characters with epithets so that The French boy, the B.A. Fiction boy and even the boyfriends all seemed like slim caricatures of their true selves. Because all sense of self had been questioned, pushed and maybe even erased.
Now, Maura sits atop a green house full of emotional girls, a veritable whorehouse, where Saturday evening dance marathons shake the neighborhood. She is writing, watching The Other convince the public of the need for social change, with tea in her whiskey, a concoction brought on by The Other’s dangerous rhetorical powers. (Watch out for her exquisite use of silence and the non-look.) Maura sits here and thinks about the journeys the Trinity has been on, what they’ve learned from them.
She went on a few different journeys this summer—one to the one place where all questions of identity and belonging seem obsolete, a place that strips her Romantic longing down to the bare-bones collegiate pretension that it probably is, a place Mr. Narcy rightly notes may someday trap her forever with its barnacle hands. But there were other journeys—coasting out of the bleach-blonde world where sparks flew—the electrical sort—perhaps dangerously, and thus necessarily so, then dragging The Other back to this land of rain and unclear coastlines. The journey was rough—the mixture of new cities, un-sensitively selected Irish music and the desire for more whiskey and beer brought on a maelstrom of tears as the female di-umverate entered each new northern city.
But now the gang’s all here. Mr. Narcy and The Other both recently remarked that they never quite understood the homesick—thus, they never quite understood the perhaps somewhat stubborn one sitting across from them, demanding inspiration and guilt-inducing means of procrastination. Maura never longed for her place of birth, but rather for that place where Romantic longing takes on new meaning.
But the cost of too many journeys can be high—the wanderer never settles, never attaches. Maura only discovered her attachment to Mr. Narcy and The Other when they left. Now, they are here, and all planning their next flight off this boiling hot continental U.S. (The land of beach-blonde film stars is hardly the U.S., more like a non-world that can only be entered when one is armed with a militaristic Narcy-esque goal.)
And yet, maybe for the first time in her life, Maura is not yet itching to leave. Despite tiring of the way in which skinny jeans seem to tighten the scrotums and brains of many of her fellow students, the local dislike of outsiders and The Other and Maura’s inability to be ethereal and flighty enough, Maura must be here, at least for now. Here, geographically, and here, in a sense the Czech philosopher can translate. The Trinity will never be children again, but the joy of a child, the magic of a child, lies in the child’s complete inability to conceive the importance of the past or the future. They are entirely in this moment, this moment where Maura and The Other must cram 5 Chinese girls into Maura’s sex-on-wheels-mobile to find them a proper hotel and give them advice on dating American men. (Clearly they do not understand why Maura and The Other keep fleeing the continental U.S.) The moment when Mr. Narcy stuffs Maura with orgasm-inducing doughnuts after three hours of sleep and a Bon-Ap caffeine high that would put Starbucks’ marketing team to shame, only to stand in Costco’s freezer, debating the merits of different local, organic and oh so eco-friendly mushrooms while Maura searches for whiskey, only to remember that this lovely state does not allow the sale of liquor in grocery stores.
Snow hasn’t yet hit their city, inciting the endless playlists of The Commitments and Joanie Mitchell, the longing for darks ends of the street and rivers that make the Atlantic look like mere puddle in the crossing. But when it does, Maura, The Other and Mr. Narcy will once again feel the pull—the pull back to the cottage where questions of French salonieres, Apocalyptic fervor and depictions of Irish female corporality and their implications for silenced sexuality were all that seemed to matter.
But there is a reason that the triumverate is still here. Here they must remain, forever. Geography an accident, here the station.
Van the Man is breaking the current silence, telling Maura something probably far wiser than her own musings:
“If my heart could do my thinking and my head begin to feel, I could look upon the world anew, and know what’s truly real.”
Thursday, December 18, 2008
The Blue Light in Town
At this moment when Maura, Narcissus and The Other have an extended break from the world of academia, some of them are currently in towns that bespeak past memories, and in the case of Maura, maybe even past identities, which led her to wonder...if identity is not merely just composed of interactions with others...is it also composed of landscapes? And moreoever, can it be utterly dependent on interactions with certain others?
Currently, as Maura plans to pack up her traveling case to come visit the arid lands of her dear friend she has lately been heavily entrenched in the dry, crisp air, torrential downpours and sunny days that constitute the land in which she grew up. While entrenched in this land, thoughts of the past, and of past individuals with which she had seminal interactions, Maura has found herself missing her Jimmy, not merely for the more obvious reasons, but also because it seems as though living up to her best potential as an individual is greatly aided by Jimmy's presence.
When Maura left her seaside hometown (both the historical Maura and the metaphorical one), she left behind individuals who did not wish her absence. But with stubborn focus, Maura insisted until she realized and moved forward with a new adventure, leaving the town of Galway to the fishermen and their wives. Once she was settled in her new life and had established an independent but co-existent relationship with another, she realized how much the very presence of Jimmy, even a silent presence, was in fact necessary for her to speak sweet words and leave the self-encasing and self-prohibiting persona that can be her own skin. When she returned home for a brief stint, she also realized that the presence of some others from her small town seemed to bring her back to actions and thoughts that she seemed to have grown out of, and necessarily so since they brought moments of pain both to herself and others...yet they pulled at her, in an entirely different way than do the strings that tie us. These were more like the strings that bind us than the strings that lift us up, support us, or fling us into new possibilities.
Is it thus possible that our identities are not merely composed of interactions with others, but utterly dependent on this interactions? Once in her life, Maura would have certainly said, No, because for an identity to be strong and capable of withstanding turmoil, it must have some strength of its own. But clearly, it is all but ludicrous to deny this fact. Once these presences end, naturally or out of forced circumstances, does this identity crumble? Or does the skin go out and seek another one to depend on, in any manner of a relationship? It would seem that this is the case.
It seems natural and necessary that the absence of The Other and Narcissus from Maura's life would change Maura's own identity as well. Do we also depend on the absence of another to define our identity? Anyone who has experienced grave loss beyond the momentary lack of another in their life would probably assure Maura, that yes, this is the case. So these identities are a constantly fluxing, momentarily defined thing.
Oddly enough, all this talking about identity has made Maura give much less of a damn about the entire idea. Partially, because there are more important things to worry about with the Oirish tendency for worry, and partially because The Other, Narcissus and Maura need a new topic of philosophical musings for a bit. They can come back to this one later. Maura's fountain pen is getting a bit dry, so she is going to take a break for a bit. Signing off with sincerity - Ms. Barnacle.
Currently, as Maura plans to pack up her traveling case to come visit the arid lands of her dear friend she has lately been heavily entrenched in the dry, crisp air, torrential downpours and sunny days that constitute the land in which she grew up. While entrenched in this land, thoughts of the past, and of past individuals with which she had seminal interactions, Maura has found herself missing her Jimmy, not merely for the more obvious reasons, but also because it seems as though living up to her best potential as an individual is greatly aided by Jimmy's presence.
When Maura left her seaside hometown (both the historical Maura and the metaphorical one), she left behind individuals who did not wish her absence. But with stubborn focus, Maura insisted until she realized and moved forward with a new adventure, leaving the town of Galway to the fishermen and their wives. Once she was settled in her new life and had established an independent but co-existent relationship with another, she realized how much the very presence of Jimmy, even a silent presence, was in fact necessary for her to speak sweet words and leave the self-encasing and self-prohibiting persona that can be her own skin. When she returned home for a brief stint, she also realized that the presence of some others from her small town seemed to bring her back to actions and thoughts that she seemed to have grown out of, and necessarily so since they brought moments of pain both to herself and others...yet they pulled at her, in an entirely different way than do the strings that tie us. These were more like the strings that bind us than the strings that lift us up, support us, or fling us into new possibilities.
Is it thus possible that our identities are not merely composed of interactions with others, but utterly dependent on this interactions? Once in her life, Maura would have certainly said, No, because for an identity to be strong and capable of withstanding turmoil, it must have some strength of its own. But clearly, it is all but ludicrous to deny this fact. Once these presences end, naturally or out of forced circumstances, does this identity crumble? Or does the skin go out and seek another one to depend on, in any manner of a relationship? It would seem that this is the case.
It seems natural and necessary that the absence of The Other and Narcissus from Maura's life would change Maura's own identity as well. Do we also depend on the absence of another to define our identity? Anyone who has experienced grave loss beyond the momentary lack of another in their life would probably assure Maura, that yes, this is the case. So these identities are a constantly fluxing, momentarily defined thing.
Oddly enough, all this talking about identity has made Maura give much less of a damn about the entire idea. Partially, because there are more important things to worry about with the Oirish tendency for worry, and partially because The Other, Narcissus and Maura need a new topic of philosophical musings for a bit. They can come back to this one later. Maura's fountain pen is getting a bit dry, so she is going to take a break for a bit. Signing off with sincerity - Ms. Barnacle.
Friday, December 5, 2008
Dark Corners of Potential
As we all know, the initial intention of this blog was to write the lives of the others. I know that dear Maura has broken from this goal in the last few posts, but given her current situatedness, she began to think about The Other & Narcissus. So she will turn her thoughts back to them...
Due to her itch to move about and settle somewhere with dark corners, barrels of tea, and enough quiet to allow the din of traditional music and her thoughts to meld together and float over her in a wonderful reverie, Ms. Maura has become a whore of coffee shops. She has visited so many that she is now becoming a bit familiar. She has sat in so many seats that she has regular seats in each one...that's a lot of seats.
But looking around, trying to avoid eye contact with the medieval text before her, she thought about what The Other & Narcissus are doing on a night in their respective lands. The sun was coming in on Ms. Maura's dirty locks, and she thought about what The Other & Narcissus would be doing if they were still in the Emerald City, facing the inevitable dust on historical and literary textbooks that arises when one tries to pull a thesis out of one's arse.
And she decided that what they must be up to...must be much better.
So here's what they better be doing.
To start with The Other...Last night, a wonderfully mysterious looking foreign guard knocked on her window to ask a question about the garbage can outside. In Shakespearean moment, this Stranger saw her emerald eyes and dark hair, like that of a mystical selkie, and decided that despite the fact that their countries were miles apart, and perhaps even at odds at times, he loved her. Reaching for her hand, he lifted her down from her window and decided that they must run away together, if only to a pub across town (since he had another shift the next morning, and well, he keeps the streets safe.) Fingering a brandy glass in his hands, he watched The Other's green eyes as they sat, silently in the dark corner of the pub. There was no need for the loud words that scorch The Other's soul, nor was there need for questions regarding The Other's supposed brick walls encasing her. The Stranger was actually a builder in a foreign life, and all who create things also know how to make them fall to pieces. With one look at The Other, he had crumbled her walls. After silent but perfectly attuned communication, The Other & The Stranger wandered through the streets, in a moment as pure as the snow on the ground. As he walked her back towards her apartment, he confessed that his mother was quite traditional, and that she required that his marriage be pre-arranged. The Other nodded and looked down at her big black boots. And so they agreed: both would convince the mother that in fact, they were meant to be and would not see each other until the marriage day in order to abide by the mother's wishes. So now, The Other sits in her room, pen posed above the page, waiting for the weighty words that befall her in moments of enlightenment, thinking of The Stranger and their fateful day.
Narcissus on the other hand...has found himself in the company of another, by slightly more manipulative ways. The company they share is virtual, as of yet, but will soon be corporal and shall I say, embodied. We'll just have to see how that plays out....manipulations don't get as much attention from Maura. She craves the mystery that her own Jimmy offered her. As well as the tension...She forsees that there might be tension for The Stranger and The Other...but sweet tension, troubled by doubt and sharpened by need.
Due to her itch to move about and settle somewhere with dark corners, barrels of tea, and enough quiet to allow the din of traditional music and her thoughts to meld together and float over her in a wonderful reverie, Ms. Maura has become a whore of coffee shops. She has visited so many that she is now becoming a bit familiar. She has sat in so many seats that she has regular seats in each one...that's a lot of seats.
But looking around, trying to avoid eye contact with the medieval text before her, she thought about what The Other & Narcissus are doing on a night in their respective lands. The sun was coming in on Ms. Maura's dirty locks, and she thought about what The Other & Narcissus would be doing if they were still in the Emerald City, facing the inevitable dust on historical and literary textbooks that arises when one tries to pull a thesis out of one's arse.
And she decided that what they must be up to...must be much better.
So here's what they better be doing.
To start with The Other...Last night, a wonderfully mysterious looking foreign guard knocked on her window to ask a question about the garbage can outside. In Shakespearean moment, this Stranger saw her emerald eyes and dark hair, like that of a mystical selkie, and decided that despite the fact that their countries were miles apart, and perhaps even at odds at times, he loved her. Reaching for her hand, he lifted her down from her window and decided that they must run away together, if only to a pub across town (since he had another shift the next morning, and well, he keeps the streets safe.) Fingering a brandy glass in his hands, he watched The Other's green eyes as they sat, silently in the dark corner of the pub. There was no need for the loud words that scorch The Other's soul, nor was there need for questions regarding The Other's supposed brick walls encasing her. The Stranger was actually a builder in a foreign life, and all who create things also know how to make them fall to pieces. With one look at The Other, he had crumbled her walls. After silent but perfectly attuned communication, The Other & The Stranger wandered through the streets, in a moment as pure as the snow on the ground. As he walked her back towards her apartment, he confessed that his mother was quite traditional, and that she required that his marriage be pre-arranged. The Other nodded and looked down at her big black boots. And so they agreed: both would convince the mother that in fact, they were meant to be and would not see each other until the marriage day in order to abide by the mother's wishes. So now, The Other sits in her room, pen posed above the page, waiting for the weighty words that befall her in moments of enlightenment, thinking of The Stranger and their fateful day.
Narcissus on the other hand...has found himself in the company of another, by slightly more manipulative ways. The company they share is virtual, as of yet, but will soon be corporal and shall I say, embodied. We'll just have to see how that plays out....manipulations don't get as much attention from Maura. She craves the mystery that her own Jimmy offered her. As well as the tension...She forsees that there might be tension for The Stranger and The Other...but sweet tension, troubled by doubt and sharpened by need.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
To Strive or Not to Strive: Narcissus' Question
In sitting down to revise a story I have been working on, I thought of an experience in class on which I think The Other and Narcissus would certainly have comments.
I submitted a story entitled Alchemy for a fiction class with a certain surly, Richard Ford, James Dean wannabe, and he decided to discuss it in class. Initially, this man was excited to hear my story, having conceived of it with me in his office before class. He sensed that I knew where I was going. Yet, in class, I discovered that I had failed to meet his expectations, and apparently, ignited some sense of ire in him.
While I had apparently achieved fine writing and imagery, the execution of the story reflected my inability to plot out the story well enough. I had left too many mysteries for the reader, and thus, left them utterly untethered to the story, lost in my words. The more that he spoke, the more he came to the conclusion that I had written a character that was too close to the author, hence. He made veiled references to moodiness, a troubled pysche, and confusion in this character, then expanding this character as an example of how authors fails when they write too close to themselves, because they can't differentiate themselves from the writing. And so they have characters who can't make sense to a reader, because they can't make sense to the author.
At first, I completely understood his point. Then, my own ire was ignited. How dare this man presume that this character, who is going through things I have never gone through, acting in ways I never have, be me? He knows very little of me. Then I started to think about the core of this character - this moodiness and confusion. And well, maybe he was onto something. Or just being snarky without intending to be so. But I am going to say that he was onto something.
I left class not upset - he actually helped me to see many things about the story that had been frustrating me. But he also left me wondering about these questions of identity and the construction of it. For once, I thought I was constructing an other, but was I?
Narcissus expected that I would violently protest his claims about our modern inability to find a home where our identity is clear. That the very home for which we strive is in the striving. And yet, oddly enough, I think I agree with him. I know - the ground is shaking under me as I write this. But the other day, I was thinking about the dualism of Romantic philosophies and that infinite longing. I recently read a passage from Ovid in which he said: It is not enough to want something. If you truly want it, you must long for it. For if it is not longing that pushes us towards our goals, our pursuits, the fulfillment of relationships, then what is it? What do we find in complacency?
Last year, while sitting on a smelly carpet that reeked of tea and honey, we all wanted a sense of complacency to counteract our angst, our desire to leave and figure things out. And always, I looked around us and saw many people for whom these desires seemed not to exist. Sitting in this fiction class, I often see students who seem to not be plagued with these questions. And yet, I, for whom apparently the expectations were high, had failed whereas everyone else was onto something.
These notions of identity and home, striving and clarity that I had apparently not sorted out with my character were suddenly thrown back on me. In the middle of a stuffy English classroom on a rainy day in which my fellow comrades wanted to debate the "hotness" of my character, I was put on the spot: without saying it or intending to do this to me, this man asked if I had in fact figured these things out. My character leaves her daughter in a foreign land and returns home. He asked why she would do that, since the story did not in any way indicate why someone would do that. I replied that my former reasons - illness - were dropped in order so that I could explore other reasons of breaking a string with a family member, particularly a daughter. I then said that I wasn't quite sure why she would do this. Apparently that answer was akin to saying that I had never read as a child because it prompted his verbal attack.
So here I am - back at the striving. I took a few days merely to think about my ideas, my characters, and to read examples of writers who are succeeding where I am not. I have new ideas, and I must now pen them. I have often been told that I must be the best defense attorney for my characters - that they must be so well-crafted that they are hard to judge, as it is hard to judge people that we know intimately. So is there an authentic self that I find either in myself or in my characters? How do you create a character, who should reflect reality, (if one is writing in the realist style that is the order of the day) if there is no authentic self and if the author isn't an authentic self?
I used to think as The Other did that the construction of a self was who one was when no one else was around. Still, I hold onto aspects of that while realizing that the others that we encounter forcibly change us. So I wonder - will I change back once a particular other is gone? I don't think this is quite possible and I haven't since the absence of certain people from my life.
So yes, my dear historian and dear philosopher, I think we just have to keep striving. As we're all seeing, those plans that Narcissus wrote for us did not necessarily come true and they don't have to. But the striving helped forge us into a self that could get through days with which we didn't want to struggle. So, we strive.
I am going to strive my way onto a page right now.
I submitted a story entitled Alchemy for a fiction class with a certain surly, Richard Ford, James Dean wannabe, and he decided to discuss it in class. Initially, this man was excited to hear my story, having conceived of it with me in his office before class. He sensed that I knew where I was going. Yet, in class, I discovered that I had failed to meet his expectations, and apparently, ignited some sense of ire in him.
While I had apparently achieved fine writing and imagery, the execution of the story reflected my inability to plot out the story well enough. I had left too many mysteries for the reader, and thus, left them utterly untethered to the story, lost in my words. The more that he spoke, the more he came to the conclusion that I had written a character that was too close to the author, hence. He made veiled references to moodiness, a troubled pysche, and confusion in this character, then expanding this character as an example of how authors fails when they write too close to themselves, because they can't differentiate themselves from the writing. And so they have characters who can't make sense to a reader, because they can't make sense to the author.
At first, I completely understood his point. Then, my own ire was ignited. How dare this man presume that this character, who is going through things I have never gone through, acting in ways I never have, be me? He knows very little of me. Then I started to think about the core of this character - this moodiness and confusion. And well, maybe he was onto something. Or just being snarky without intending to be so. But I am going to say that he was onto something.
I left class not upset - he actually helped me to see many things about the story that had been frustrating me. But he also left me wondering about these questions of identity and the construction of it. For once, I thought I was constructing an other, but was I?
Narcissus expected that I would violently protest his claims about our modern inability to find a home where our identity is clear. That the very home for which we strive is in the striving. And yet, oddly enough, I think I agree with him. I know - the ground is shaking under me as I write this. But the other day, I was thinking about the dualism of Romantic philosophies and that infinite longing. I recently read a passage from Ovid in which he said: It is not enough to want something. If you truly want it, you must long for it. For if it is not longing that pushes us towards our goals, our pursuits, the fulfillment of relationships, then what is it? What do we find in complacency?
Last year, while sitting on a smelly carpet that reeked of tea and honey, we all wanted a sense of complacency to counteract our angst, our desire to leave and figure things out. And always, I looked around us and saw many people for whom these desires seemed not to exist. Sitting in this fiction class, I often see students who seem to not be plagued with these questions. And yet, I, for whom apparently the expectations were high, had failed whereas everyone else was onto something.
These notions of identity and home, striving and clarity that I had apparently not sorted out with my character were suddenly thrown back on me. In the middle of a stuffy English classroom on a rainy day in which my fellow comrades wanted to debate the "hotness" of my character, I was put on the spot: without saying it or intending to do this to me, this man asked if I had in fact figured these things out. My character leaves her daughter in a foreign land and returns home. He asked why she would do that, since the story did not in any way indicate why someone would do that. I replied that my former reasons - illness - were dropped in order so that I could explore other reasons of breaking a string with a family member, particularly a daughter. I then said that I wasn't quite sure why she would do this. Apparently that answer was akin to saying that I had never read as a child because it prompted his verbal attack.
So here I am - back at the striving. I took a few days merely to think about my ideas, my characters, and to read examples of writers who are succeeding where I am not. I have new ideas, and I must now pen them. I have often been told that I must be the best defense attorney for my characters - that they must be so well-crafted that they are hard to judge, as it is hard to judge people that we know intimately. So is there an authentic self that I find either in myself or in my characters? How do you create a character, who should reflect reality, (if one is writing in the realist style that is the order of the day) if there is no authentic self and if the author isn't an authentic self?
I used to think as The Other did that the construction of a self was who one was when no one else was around. Still, I hold onto aspects of that while realizing that the others that we encounter forcibly change us. So I wonder - will I change back once a particular other is gone? I don't think this is quite possible and I haven't since the absence of certain people from my life.
So yes, my dear historian and dear philosopher, I think we just have to keep striving. As we're all seeing, those plans that Narcissus wrote for us did not necessarily come true and they don't have to. But the striving helped forge us into a self that could get through days with which we didn't want to struggle. So, we strive.
I am going to strive my way onto a page right now.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Maura Takes a Moment to be Narcissistic
Today while I was sitting in the newly renovated café underneath Elliot Bay Bookstore, listening to some tunes that are a new addition to my electronic musical library, a man came up to me. He was probably about 30 years old, or close to it, and had a leather jacket and glasses. He pardoned himself for interrupting and said that he sometimes has the habit of saying things to people if only to say something nice to another. He was very humble and polite about all this. He paused, put his two fingers together in the air, and said, “You are a complete….vision. You look like you stepped out of a Rosetti painting. It’s probably the red hair, but I just wanted to say that.” He smiled and then walked off with a jaunty step.
It was a very nice surprise and actually the second time that I had heard something similar today. The other was from a young homeless man, selling copies of Real Change. While I would have loved it even more if the young man in the café had asked what I was working on, seemed interested, if only by appearances, and then offered the name of a publishing company to read my material, well, then I might have been ecstatic, but well, how much can I ask for.
I tell this story not merely as an egotistical anecdote, or because it honestly touched me as one of the few utterly selfless things that someone has done for me lately for absolutely no reason (no connection to me, nothing to gain—the man walked off and this is not a regular enough place for me these days for him to see me again), but because it led me to think about how people sometimes literally run into one another. How relationships even form. How random they can be—romantic relationships, friendships and casual acquaintances. While walking down here, I was plotting a way to find a third roommate to live with another friend and off in a townhouse off campus. Aside from the few people who already go to our university and who are returning from their studies abroad, I could only think of one other person to live with me. It was a random thought—a girl who I have not seen in maybe over a year, who I have known since kindergarten. We were not always the closest of friends, but I know that she has had a bit of a hard college experience. She hasn’t liked her classes, hasn’t been able to pick a major, hasn’t found good friends or any sense of home in the city in which she lives. It would be utterly random and spontaneous for us to come here and move in with me, maybe even a bit of a Coyote Ugly transformation for one of us (minus the dancing on bar tops, though maybe we can still ensure that). And God only knows where that would take us—she and I living together and reforming a friendship would in itself be an effort for which I had not planned. But it’s an interesting what-if.
I have been quite fortunate to have found such close friends while in university, friends whose absence makes little things a lot more difficult than I thought they would be. While most people might take this opportunity to fall in with a new and exciting crowd that’s utterly different than their old one, on free afternoons such as this one—in which I just need to read for class and plan to write and fun for leisure—I instead always find myself alone, wandering around town. Running into homeless men, leather-clad men with spectacles, the nice man who got me a Coke and smiled. Yes, even I notice that there are few women in these lists. Why? I’m not sure—it would be refreshing and I think a little comforting to have a new female friend to confide in just a bit, at least with which to have fun, drink a bit, watch some television, talk about books. Is it merely my nature that leads me to this solitary life? It’s funny, because I distinctly remember many a day freshman year, before I was writing as much for the university newspaper, before I had as many friends or a boyfriend to see in between classes and work, when I would come down here. And sit precisely where I now sit. How have things changed? Clearly the appearances of things have—the café looks younger, fresher and I look older. And still I sit, and watch.
Sometimes I consider myself to be an outward person—someone who needs to talk to people to sort certain things out. Someone who doesn’t wish to live entirely on her own. But I also develop a certain static, a white noise in my head when I have been around too many people and haven’t had enough time for myself to merely think or daydream or just wonder. I’ve heard that at this point in a study abroad program, a student learning another language usually starts getting this static because of the amount of information that they are learning to process. That would probably be the case for my friends who sit miles across the ocean from me, reading this more confessional (Augustine, be proud) entry, yet I am, for all intensive purposes, home. And yet it somehow feels like a study abroad experience for me.
Oddly enough, I think that I’d feel more at home, more likely to go out and make new friends, if I really were in a certain land right now. I think I know what it’s like to feel almost utterly un-tethered. There were times after a long day at work this summer when I felt it. There are many times these days when I feel it. And I know I will feel it even more acutely once this undergraduate experience is over, something I am not that hesitant to experience so soon.
The other day, I was listening to a song called, The Strings that Tie You, and I started wondering about the strings that tie us. There are some that we don’t pick—our families; some that we do—lovers, friends. Things like work that maybe capitalism picks for us. (Ha). What do you do when certain strings haven’t been cut but others have been stretched for so long that they are in danger of snapping? I’ve always put a lot of importance on “feeling at home” in a place. I’ve heard from The Other that she transitioned more easily to her current city than we did to the one where I still reside. I understand that—it’s still taking me some time to adjust to being here. That question of where home is for the moment (since we’re young and very mobile people, let’s presume that a home isn’t a permanent thing) seems to give people a sense of relief if only because there are certain questions that don’t need to be asked. Perhaps for myself and for The Other, one of those questions is a question of identity. While she has been around certain new friends that pose questions to her of her interactions with the opposite sex, ones that seem a bit obvious, I might presume to say that she might not have the same concerns about who she is that arose in this city in which I muse.
This summer was perhaps one of my quietest summers of my life, spent in a lot of solitude in which I thought, wrote and read quite a bit. At times, surrounded by people who presumably knew me, I no longer felt the need to explain why I might get quiet. Why I might lose my temper at things. Why I felt the need to leave places frequently. Why I wanted the things that I did. Maybe it was because there was a pattern for some of these tendencies in the family I was with. Maybe it was because they were merely not pushy people. But having no need for explanations—is that merely what it is to be “at home”? I feel like Michael Buble is going to burst into a painful, sugary sweet serenade at any moment to complement the potentially ridiculous nature, so I will move on.
I turn to the subject of writing because it’s one that The Other and I have talked about lately, and it’s one that always concerns me. Being in a city setting that reminds me of the alterity of a given “other”, looking for a new place in the city to live, I’ve held on more tightly to writing as a means of grounding myself. And lately, I’ve encountered many people, written sources, and ideas that ask me why I want to write: in some way, yes, I write, in order to make more sense of the world. This mildly solipsistic entry is given proof of that. But I will never lose sight of the sense that I write in order to affect others the way that I have been affected by writing. It’s bringing separate strings together in order to create something that holds someone up. As I walked down here, I really wanted a certain old scarf from home to keep my neck warm. The green one that I have here has several strings coming loose. So I guess the question that I ask for the others reading this, is do we just let them fall a bit loose? Maybe we do. Couldn’t hurt, could it?
I am now laughing because the singer that I am listening to just said, “No one gives a fuck about us.”
What else is true, really? If The Other and I have accepted this vow of being post-Catholics, this singer has a point. “We’re living off somebody’s trust.” Or maybe just our own.
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