Word After Word

When I noticed them, the category headings on my master To Do list alarmed me:

FIND

MOVE

SAVE

What’s going to happen to me?

My favorite list is one I came across once when I was at a dinner at the home of an artist/philanthropist. I went to the kitchen for some reason and I saw the grocery list affixed to his fridge, in pencil, in his elderly script:

Whiskey

Milk

Cabbage

Toilet Paper.

At the art gallery yesterday I bought a silver necklace of flowers falling and B taught me two new words. B and his sister are both meanderthals. They get a lot done, but not in a linear way. I belong to this group. To the untrained eye, perhaps the methods look a bit crudAs Heather likely explained, the “meanderthal’ thing basically describes a weirdfunky sort of ‘non-linear’ (I prefer to think of it as an “integral”) approach in day-to-day routine; much gets accomplished overall, though in what would appear to the outside observer as a randomly chaotic, disjointed (some would say dysfunctional) fashion. A relative visiting me for a couple days seemed quite distraught when observing the order in which I ‘ordered’ the various tasks of my day (wash two dishes, answer 3 emails, frame two paintings, was another dish, start a load of laundry, hang some art in gallery, return two phone calls, shop for a dinner that was two days away, answer 3 more emails and two more phone calls and various other etceteras)…Then friend was equally flummoxed when he realized the magnitude of what had gotten done during my ‘meanderthal-ings”.

As for “ambivert” that’s another strange but useful one and even kind of a weird double-entendre of sorts. It relates primariy to my own confusion. I think of myself as strongly introverted in having a substantial need for plenty of ‘alone’ time; time to create, time to work, time to ponder/meditate/whatever. And yet I apparently have sufficient gregarious/extroverted tendencies that come into play in conducting my business. And when that occurs, it’s genuine enough (rather than “put-on” by necessity). Hence the “ambiversion” (ambivertigo? ambivertosis?). And to further confound the already dodgy-enough conundrum, I’m not even sure whether I’m “ambivalent” about my “vert”-ed-ness or if whether it’s just too “ambiguous” for me to fathom (and hence the “double-entendre” aspect of the whole mess).
e. But we are strong workers. 

B said he and his sister discovered recently they are also ambiverts—people unsure about their Vertedness. An ambivert is someone who is sometimes very happy and energized by people and groups and social interaction; other times ambiverts dread and avoid these occasions. An ambivert needs lots of alone-time. An ambivert is good at both intro- and extra- activities in a kind of ambidextrous and unreliable or maybe unpredictable fashion.

The ambivert was the life of the party for a few minutes and then she watched people for a long time; she went home energized and drained and uncertain. 

I think most humans are ambiverted meanderthals. Though there are exceptions.

I know I want to teach  my students the art of browsing but I haven’t figured out how. I want to make them be happy. I’m like a desperate mother.

The browsing assignment J and I devised isn’t going to work. We road tested it and it failed. It produced standing, not browsing, and it wasted time instead of connecting students with the pleasure of panning for gold. But it seems more important than ever that I learn how to teach this skill.

I read my poetry to a class last week and spoke to the students about why anyone would write poetry and one of the questions was, “Who were your influences?” Without thinking, I said: “Ogden Nash, Richard Brautigan, James Tate, and Emily Dickinson.”

Answering, in a flash I saw myself as a kid, reading Ogden Nash, browsed from my parents’ shelves, and Richard Brautigan—how that book got into my uncle’s study in Possum Trot, I will never know. (Perhaps my cousin’s boyfriend, the one who built a teepee in their backyard and stayed for a year, the one who got her Gypsie Rose, the raccoon she walked on a leash.). Those books fell into my lap. Literally. As did my next great influence, James Tate. I found him browsing the stacks of the library at

The students wrote down those names. And I realized: I’ve given the wrong answer.

These books found me. They weren’t my influences so much as this was: knowing how to be found by what books I needed at any given time. That process, not those people. That’s what influences a writer. 

This is what I want to go back and tell that class: Don’t write down those names. You need your books. You have to get found by your own influences. Mine won’t work for you. You have to read haphazardly and widely and in libraries and used bookstores (shiny bookstores rarely have the depth and weirdness required for real browsing—the waves just don’t break). You have to use your whole body, like an instrument, and slowly troll through the shelves. It’s harder to do this kind of surfing on a computer. It’s exactly like looking for shark’s teeth on the beach; it’s the very best kind of shopping in the world. You’re looking for a “click,” a connection. You can’t know exactly what it’s going to be until you open a page, and at random, reading the lines—boom, a part of the world comes into focus that you’ve always known about, but have never really seen, really known. 

I loved those four authors, and they shaped my work. The arrogant sweetness and plain language and philoso-cheese in Brautigan inspired me and I wrote hundreds of bad Brautigan poems. From Tate, I took oblique-clear, humor-devastation, physical shapes-lunar endings. He showed me how to go to the place where you write poems from. Just simply how to get to that place. From Nash, play!!! Language as something plastic as silly putty.

But they aren’t really my influences. Influences change constantly. Influences are whatever you in love with that day. Browsing is the way a writer works under the influence. It’s a full body collision with books; fingertips are not enough.  Anything you find yourself is better than something assigned to you.

How am I going to teach browsing?  It’s going to be like teaching  empathy or celadon.

And I want it to be like tying your shoes. Something you do every day.

I am taking months to finish my book, instead of using this time to more wisely revise a finished books. I don’t want to finish it.

I like writing it.

When I’m finished, it will be what it is. I want it to be so much more. If I refuse to finish, there is still the possibility genius could strike.

I keep asking: what’s the point, what’s the point, what’s the point. 

I know the answer. be the point, be the point, be the point.  And after Pilates this morning, I am going to do that.

Here is what happened. I lay down with all my clothes on in a room (that used to hold Jesuit monks and then later a sensory deprivation tank but now just has a massage table and comforting music and a normal chair). I told Jan what hurt (foot, low back). She said what do you expect to come out of this experience?

I said that morning, I’d prayed over a woman—something I’ve never done before in my life, and the woman said the prayer was the most amazing thing that had happened to her—she told this to the teacher of the class we were in. She said the prayer he led was the most amazing thing that had happened to her in a long, long time. She asked him for the words to the prayer. I knew something had moved through me when we said the words; and it wasn’t me and it wasn’t the words, either. I told Jan I imagined this might be something like that. And I was open to whatever happened.

She said the body heals itself. It knows what to do, if we can just get out of the way. We don’t have to do anything. (I know. It sounds that way to me, too.)

I closed my eyes. My right knee cap started sizzling—the strangest sensation. This was on the leg that is longer (most people have one leg longer than the other). I have troubles with the whole linkage on that side. (The long leg has to occupy itself with all kinds of dubious activity so that it goes slowly enough to arrive on the ground in cadence with the shorter pert little straight A student left leg.) It’s a tiny imbalance, but it adds up after two score. (When it comes to level, the brain is as dedicated as a tryant to maintaining level and will order the body into the weirdest positions in the service of Level. The eyes, those little flowers on the front of the brain, the only part of the brain that’s exposed, won’t work, can’t read the world unless they are perfectly level.)

At some point during the next moments, the pain in my foot disappeared. The back pain melted—I just let it go. Or something? I do not know what happened, but I am confident all the pain departed. It occurred to me that my old knee injury was likely causing the foot and the back problem—I could feel how they were connected. For the first time in my life.

Duh.

The  kneecap cooled, and then my stomach got really warm. I remembered I have celiac, and two other serious lower gut issues that have required minor surgery this fall. Forgot about that, didn’t tell Jan. Now, my stomach hummed and I apologized to the region for forgetting to mention it.

About five minutes passed. Jan said take the time I needed to come back. I thought: maybe she thinks I booked just fifteen minutes? And now she wants to talk? I opened my eyes. She was clearly done. She stood in front of the window. Her hands were folded. She looked like a saint on a card. “Was there anything you wanted to share?”

I wanted to know what time it was.

An hour had passed.

The next three nights, I slept the whole night and this never happens to me. Ever.

Now, I’m taking a class in Reiki at the convent. I’m curious what it is. 

This laying on hands.

The arms come out of the heart. Isn’t that amazing? I hadn’t even noticed. My yoga teacher showed us the other night. The theme was Heart Opening. The hands and arms, they are involved in the business of giving and receiving. That whole part of the body steers from the heart.

I can’t stop noticing this now.

Everyone is always tight in their shoulders. All the tension seems to lodge there. I am thinking that when we do not say what’s in our heart, when we do not speak with our heart and from our heart, we create a block. Our throat closes a little. The right words aren’t coming out. Of course our shoulders hurt.

With the block there, then words pour down form the head, and wash right on out of the mouth: not good. Worse: the tongue leads. Yikes!

I think the shoulders get so tight because we close off the heart-mouth part of speaking. I think the shoulders loosen when we are saying what we know is true, with compassion. The heart.

The shoulders are kind of the back of the heart.  And the arms are their messengers.

Not a big fan. 

I keep telling my students: write what your heart’s eyes see, for real.  Simplify. Focus on what’s in the scene, not the surface of the language. Don’t pile on these comparisons and jokes that yank us away from.  

We get all gunked up with figures—similes and metaphors straining and twitching. It’s like the work is wearing too much make up, too much jewelry. To the fourteen year old in us it looks beautiful, glittery.  To the adult, it’s just all wrong. Shorts and a nice shirt, please. 

I left a trail of crumbs so I could find my way back to the work. (Each day of missed work seems to require two days of struggling-to-work and they accrue, some kind of terrifying exponential calculus). I knew I’d be away for five days.  So, to ease the struggle, before I left town I placed my favorite memoirs on the chair. A little monument of inspiration. I plunked folders holding my drafted chapters across the floor of the studio, like bright stepping stones. My helpful notes for revision and little post-its (it’s a slippery slope to lamination) sparkled on the desk and the walls. I left the manuscript open to page 104, the copy Jackie’s read using her incredibly useful Track Changes Mode. All the neat grey bubbles, lined up like orderly clouds in the right margin, containing as silver lining her comments: “We’ve gleaned this.” And “Accurate? More like ‘was related to’?” Stopping in the middle of editing a page, Jackie’s comments—wise, friendly—calling out like conversation—I thought I was golden. I thought I’d come back from my trip, five days away from the book, (I took a chapter with me, but I didn’t look at it—still, I thought I’d be okay) and wake up, walk into the studio, and work. Easily.

Two weeks later. 

I’m working again. As of yesterday. It took thirteen days to break the book back open and worm my way in!

Horrible.

It’s like when we leave town, a terrible mighty force swoops into the writing room and snaps the whole project into a 90mm plastic bag and runs it through the Seal-A-Tor machine so its vacuum packed, preserved, impermeable, frozen, unknowable.

I know I could have worked three minutes a day (I have written about this very practice in many different ways) on the book on my trip and thereby created holes in the plastic so it could at least breathe. Little punctures. Like breath. I did not do this.

I came back and I couldn’t feel the book. I saw the crumbs. I knew the route. I saw Jackie’s comments through the plastic. But some force made the gap between me and the book so vast, all I could day after day was stare at the project and think how bad it was. I couldn’t see how to get back into the thing. It was like the book was dead. Each morning, I ran from the room. I closed my eyes and ran.

On the plane on the way back from my trip, the woman in front of me had a little dog in a carrier, that fit under the seat in front of her. When the flight attendant came by, she said, “He has to be in the carrier at all times,” the woman leaned over and put the dog back in and zipped him up—I guess she’d wanted to hold him for take off. We were in the sky nd the attendant came by, checking what he checks and he stood by the woman, looming over our area, and he shook his head. And made a terrible face. “We will land this plane,” he said loudly, so as to activate passenger alarm and mass disapproval, “If the dog is out one more time.”

“He leaped! He popped out! I’m lucky I caught him when I did, this just this minute happened!” She craned around to activate passenger sympathy. “He just leaped up I swear to god.”

The puppy that “jumped” out: I wish the book did that. I wish it sprang out of its little traveling case into my lap there was nothing I could do but start working! It just happened so fast! 

It’s really unearthly hard to build an entire new puppy from scratch. It can’t be done. And that’s what it feels like I’m going to have to do, after I’ve been away and I come back, and the book seems dead, so gone.   

 I know what to do. WORK ANYWAY. I woke up each morning, knowing. It was like the dead thing in the sealed plastic emitted a force field that repelled me into the beyond. Instead of working I have been doing the following. This is the topography of the back of the beyond

–folded contour sheets, art not yet mastered; called R. for training session

–put all my bed linen into tubs, crunching and stuffing contour sheets until training session, created labels for the tubs with my Brother 2000, my real brother, and alphabetized the tubs in the newly developed Linen Land, which has street lighting.

–made chicken coq-au-vin

–researched and purchased hing, osha root, and Bragg’s amino acids

–sorted all winter socks from fall and summer socks (there are no spring socks—spring is for bare legs and frigidosis), balled and alphabetized the socks by heft, color, and blatant favoritism

–researched a trip to Atlantic City, possibly leaving on Sunday, in order to not work on the book in New Jersey, a place I have not yet not worked

–viewed hundreds of Popeye cartoons

–bathed nineteen baths

–wrote my father three letters

–purchased four pair of shoes and returned three

–completed with a high level of detail three customer comment cards at three restaurants

–engaged many, many, many shopkeepers and citizens in extensive conversation about dry cleaning processes, (some) dogs’ craving for munching on an unmentionable substance during winter (no names!) augmented by sturdy lengthy analysis of why the product named “For-Bid” would brag on its packaging Makes Feces Unpalatable!; ubiquitous wheat discussions, discount card expiration complaining, why hidden and strange fees everywhere?, ice scraper locations, the Tuesday night ride—what are they doing?, skin, what’s new in plagiarism, bag rack placement, layoffs of writers in the large office furniture manufacturing businesses, Air Force training in general and what in particular provokes sobbing at basic training graduation (the sound of so many boots), The Michigan Guide to Divorce, how it’s hard to wink at a man if you have to wear a hair net (you both coat), rebounders, the blog, and the vagaries of city tulip planting coverage—was our street fully planted, or not? Were several stretches overlooked completely and if so why? 

These are the topics of avoidance. This is the shape of not writing. This is the dialogue of a terrified avoidant puppy-runner-away-from-er, a sensitive, happy, well-adjusted girl not making art. 

This last trip was so eye-opening and eye-closing—aka I slept and I never sleep, it was, I think, absolutely worth it, this two week wrestling to get my project out of suspended animation, thawed, sprung loose.

I’m going to have devise some kind of new ways to slide back in to the work. I’m not sure how to do it. Those folders and books I laid out—they  made the place look like a mausoleum. I wonder what needs to shift.

Or if there are seasons to writing, making art.

Athletes get injuries. Dancers get strains and sprains. Is this our injury? I’m not convinced. I’m thinking about Mark Morris and “extra sensitive.” I need to think about this more.

Mark Morris, dancer/choreographer: “I don’t stop working. I work all the time. Inspiration is either overrated or doesn’t exist. This is my job; I show up and I do it. I don’t get extrasensitive and go lie down or something.”

Archery.

Basketball.

God.

Love.

Piano.

Salsa.

Soccer.

Writing.

Yoga.

True?  I’m not 100% sure but I’m pretty sure for all of these things, you have to have a teacher and students who are like you, trying to learn and practicing.  You learn all these things by doing them.  After you have started learning, and you know enough to articulate parts of what you can see but do not yet know how to do, then a book may be useful as augmentation, as flotation, as diversion, as icing, as food.  But you have to have a teacher. You have to go and practice the thing, supervised by someone who can tell you what you are doing (mirror) and show you what is possible (expertise).

I wonder if: you can learn cooking from a book. Until this morning, when my good planned food was so so different from what I’d expected (brave kind friend who tasted said “Definitely this would be an acquired taste”) I thought cooking could only be learned from books.

What else can only be learned not from a book and what can’t be at all, I wonder?