I was having an email conversation with a friend today – a day off before another grueling multi-day marathon at the tax office starting tomorrow. What a treat to be able to write a friend, a little back-and-forth communication. The art of writing letters is gone. The subtle clues of jagged or flowing handwriting are out out out, but phrasing is still in! We can read between the lines of emails so long as there’s some meat in there. Interesting that it would have taken us all of 15 minutes to have the same conversation in person, perhaps with some far-off gazing as we process the implications of one observation or another. With emails, it takes a little more effort to pick up on the far-off gazes. More effort to say what we mean and mean what we say. We’re far less off-handed. And need to be, because we can’t see the smiles. Really lovely to try, though.
But in person, sometimes especially meaningful elements will come across through an inadvertently dropped phrase, or the repetition of a story told a hundred times, where perhaps only a single sentence of information has been added among many sentences, but oh! That’s the gold there. That’s the “I’ve been circling around this thought for ages and haven’t had it in me to share it with you till now.”
My friend asked if I’d seen the news about the bridge in Boston collapsing. Yes, I have. Also fresh in my mind are the terror attack in Moscow, Ukraine’s struggles, escalations in the Far East, the unabashed cruelty on either side of the Gaza border, and the loss of Navalny, who had always impressed me. I don’t want to go into politics here on my website too much. I have liberal leanings, as you might guess, but I would describe myself as an independent thinker and try not to get too caught up in the hype of whatever.
Oh, and there’s my mother learning how to cope with the nursing home she’s just moved into, her new home. A lifetime of rheumatoid arthritis is no joke!
Fresh on my mind are the seemingly mentally absent drivers who’ve been pulling out in front of my car, and the pedestrians who have stepped directly in front of my car, in the middle of a busy road, at night, while I’m moving. On all of these occasions I’ve had to slam on my brakes to miss hitting a person who apparently has a death wish. Why? I want to ask, Why do you want me to kill you? Is it because you can take me out with you? Are you that lost? How did you allow yourself to get this way?
Author George Saunders recently spoke in an interview about our modern sense of locality. He said that in the past, our neighborhood, our town, or our city would have been what we considered local, but now, it’s an entire world. A world is too big. When our sense of locality becomes too large, our sense of having any power over our lives shrinks. Possibly, our sense of accountably, too.
Do something, they tell us. It helps to do things. Do something for others if you can’t for yourself. Do it for people you know. Find new words for what you’ve been feeling as you go along.
I’m not sitting in a dark place. I’m not, even though it feels as if I’m constantly bombarded with awful information. I went on a walk and discovered there’d been a shootout in my neighborhood while I was away at work. A shootout! A swat team had spooked the offenders off, so they’ve left and now all the neighbors who didn’t move away are happy, happy, happy.
I’m not sad, though strangely, during these last couple of weeks I’ve caught myself mourning people I’ve lost. My grandmother, my father, my dogs, my cats, my ferret, and my coworker who passed away this last year suddenly from a fall. She hit her head. I often think of them in the shower – must be the white noise. I’ve been tearful. But there’s a sense of release, too, of open and unabashed love. They were all beautiful to me.
And as we near the end of tax season, as I work my 10-11-hour days in the office, I mostly feel exhilarated. Tax work is rational work, but I’ve had wonderful fun conversations. My regulars are always asking how the writing is going and cheer me on for my little successes. I hope someday to speak of a big success.
I do wonder – as I’ve had to step away from my own writing for the simple fact that this kind of stress is not the best for generating new content – I wonder what the future holds. Don’t we all? It’s hard to plan, and that’s the real kicker. Many talented writers give up. But wouldn’t that be true of any way of life we could be passionate about? We must do it because we love it. Not… okay, please forgive my tone here… not with a cutesy quip, “I’m just doing it for me and screw the rest of you.” I’ve flirted with this attitude. What writer hasn’t? Rejection is soul crushing and crazy arbitrary at times. But even then, I knew it wasn’t right. My drive is to communicate. Anything worth saying about the human condition is probably best presented in a nuanced form, in a story open to interpretation and told through the point of view of flawed characters we can relate to. I prefer that people think for themselves anyway – I suppose that’s the teacher instinct in me, as I come from a family of teachers. Parents, grandparents, etc. It’s also about entertaining readers while giving them something to chew on, in their own way. To be themselves and to listen. This takes enormous skill, to strike a pleasurable balance between what one has to say and what people are willing to hear. I try. The best authors I know do this well. They challenge me in ways I value.
This last Sunday was warm and sunny, and I spent the afternoon with my husband in his rock garden weeding. The special plants he put there were meant to grow on rocky precipices in Sardinia, or someplace like it in the Mediterranean. The sedum is doing well. The ice plants, ironically, didn’t survive the prolonged freeze we had a couple of years back. In a squat, I plucked out the tender weeds between the rocks, shredding my nails a little. My floppy hat on my head. Pluck, pluck. I pulled out the accumulated detritus of bark and pine needles, figuring the plants had liked it better when it was just rock; fewer tannins, I imagine, but I don’t know. As I continued, flashes of emotion and imagery flitted through my mind. The last time I’d done this, I’d been intensely editing my last novel for weeks on end. My brain kept tuning into that past like a radio signal.
So, that’s a life. My life. Other people live a different sort of life, which becomes very obvious in a tax office. I’ve had people tell me that I am brave, that they just don’t have the courage or time to do what I do. They say they couldn’t possibly deal with the rejection. Actors know this feeling – it’s tough! But I suspect many of these clients are pursuing their own passions. They’ve found a space in which they feel most at home despite the humbling aspects, whatever those might be. A space where they feel alive, where they’re always curious to learn more. I hope so. And for that matter, what should we be saving ourselves for?
