Because it's been too long...

J.G.L.

The Abyss

I have a friend who graduated this past winter.  He sits at his parents' house, lives in his same room in the basement, and applies weekly for jobs in the major in which he graduated.  He and I recently have connected; the heaviness of stagnation was smothering him, so I would come over and watch movies until early into the morning.  I would leave bleary-eyed, hoping that I at least distracted him from the emptiness I knew he was feeling on a daily basis.

It was easy for me to see myself as the hero in this scenario.  I was going over to his house as some one who had a real job.  I had come out of my slump, out of my stagnate period.  I could go to his house and try to show him there was a light at the end of the tunnel.

My last day as a teacher has gone, gone really quite a long time ago.  Now I'm back to the almost daily grind of going back to my retail job, having a random schedule, and not knowing what I'm doing from one week or another.  The last day I was teaching was hard for me.  Saying goodbye to students; taking a few pictures; grading final papers.  But the week after my last day was harder still.  That emptiness that crowded into my friend's life was now bearing down on me.  It trapped me and made it hard for me to want to do much of anything (and the more I did nothing, the unhappier I became).

It still has a hold of me in many ways.  Although I knew my teaching job was temporary, it at least reaffirmed what I wanted to do with my life.  It gave me a drive again.  But now my life is in flux, completely.  It's like the day after graduation (which Rebekah so skillfully described, as usual).  Everything about my life has been temporary since that day--where I'm living, my job, my goals.

That light at the end of the tunnel I thought I had achieved has suddenly faded, and now I'm left in the dark tunnel again.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to start eating rat poison tonight.  On the contrary, I understand my position in life is both depressing and envious.  I'm a blank slate.  I'm a feather on the wind.  I can start fresh in almost any direction.  That freedom is what is so nice and yet so oppressive about my current situation.

My daily creed has become, "I can do only what I can do," and that has become a great comfort in my life.  That, and knowing that things will turn out all right in the end.  My story has been written, and even though I can't turn to the last chapter to consult with my future self, I know that whatever is there has been written with a purpose.  And all though I am staring into the abyss, and it is staring right back, I can't forget that I do have a purpose. It may be obstructed some by the seemingly pointlessness of my life, but it's there all the same.  And it's a nice place to put my head at night.

-M&y

(Ps. sorry there is a lack of snark tonight.  It will return soon, this I can promise)

For the graduates

It’s April 1^st, better known as April Fool’s Day, a holiday that has never been a particular favorite of mine. I can pull a prank, sure- and even take one with relative grace- but somehow covering a floor with small cups of water, fitting tape over a toothbrush, or calling random numbers to ask if the recipient’s refrigerator is running has never seemed to be the height of comedy to me. Then again, with pop culture producing such gems this year as the movie Jack and Jill and a resuscitated version of the television show Punk’d, maybe I should just be thankful that things aren’t worse. (By the way, since Ashton Kutcher has officially fallen out of public favor—as a side note, I’m not superstitious, but if I worked on 3 ½ Men I would seriously be thinking of getting out of there—MTV has hired a new host for Punk’d. Here’s a hint: it’s Justin Beiber. Ok, so that’s less of a hint and more of me just telling you, but you know. The Beibs has made an interesting career move (i.e. down). Can I tell you my lifelong dream that just occurred to me in this moment? It’s that Justin Beiber would be on a season of The Bachelor. Which would mostly just consist of the women swooning audibly whenever he came into the room, and him wooing them via song and hair flips.)

Anyway, the whole point about opening with the time of year is to mark it as a moment for reflection. The end of the school year is coming up in May… a year since I graduated from college. And while I’m too aware of our page view count to think of this post as any sort of primer for this year’s graduates, it could, possibly, unexpectedly be viewed by someone completely unintentionally (much like the audiences of Jack and Jill). And I sort of hope that by working through everything I’ve experienced in the last year, maybe a coherence will begin to arise. That, or someone else will feel better that they’re not the only one who doesn’t have it all together yet.

Graduation day was pretty much perfect, really, everything it should’ve been: sunny and floaty and filled to the brim with short goodbyes and pictures and hugs that held the affection of years in fingertips. I hope this year’s graduates feel that immense pride that comes only occasionally and with public acknowledgment, and that they enjoy every single second of it. I also hope they don’t wear red T-strap heels like I did, because those babies will sink right down into the reception field. Take my word for it, your feet will not end up in any pictures; and if they did, people will not be thinking, What cute shoes, they will be thinking, She should have worn cleats.

So the graduation is perfect, as is, hopefully, the party afterward—whether you end up drinking wine in a hotel room late at night with your roommates, going to a friend’s wedding, or climbing the student union with your dormmates in fulfillment of some freshmen-year promise to yourself. And finally you finish saying goodbye… and you climb into your car to drive home, and your stuff is piled so high you can’t see out the back window, which doesn’t matter because you’re crying too hard to be checking traffic, anyway. I mean, it could happen this way, is what I’m saying.

It was a short drive for me, only a couple hours to get home to Kentucky, and by the time I pulled into that driveway back home, my life had changed. It’s widely acknowledged that graduating is a big deal in someone’s life; the accomplishment of four years’ work, the satisfaction (or adequacy) of your GPA or your honors; but I have come to think it is such a huge moment less because of the degree you have earned that day, and more because of what you have to do in the days after.

When I graduated from Taylor University, I left a community in which I was completely immersed and from which I derived a significant- and the most cherished- part of my dignity and identity. Maybe that wasn’t as healthy as I thought it was at the time. I knew who I was and how I fit; and then I left that place entirely and abruptly. I wasn’t prepared to rebase my self-image, self-confidence and self-worth in the context of completely different accomplishments and relationships. And not only was I not expecting that curveball; I had to hit that pitch on top of starting a new job- my first real job ever- and starting from Square 1 with $75,000 worth of student debt. In short, it was like I was being Punk’d by the Biebs.

I entered a workplace and established a daily routine entirely unlike any I’ve ever had, in terms of work and time commitment. For the first time, I’ve begun professional relationships, had clients, and interacted regularly with management. I restarted friendships from long ago and I began to navigate the way to stay connected with my friends from school.

The relationship I cared most deeply about ended in a heartbreaking and deeply dissatisfying way, and I had to figure out how to move on without resentment or bitterness clouding years of beautiful and edifying and sweet memories.

I have struggled to maintain my weight in the light of an entirely different, and much less active, lifestyle. I have changed my eating habits in a somewhat drastic direction (I am now a semi-committed vegetarian; an obvious choice for someone in a landlocked state, I’m sure you’ll agree). I have not been entirely successful; nor have I completely failed.

I moved back into my parent’s house and have been trying to balance pride and financial independence with the realities of loan payments and gas prices and (broken record) taxes. And underneath it all is this feeling that I am still waiting for life to really start.

I have never been perfect, or really beautiful, except in moments; and now those moments are fewer and further between. Life has been hard this year, really hard, and I didn’t come out on top in all categories. It’s hard to feel like I am failing in some way with the questions people ask (Are you working? Do you have your own place? What did you go to school for? Where is your boyfriend? Are you working in your field yet?); but there has to be a point at which what I’m doing is ok. Maybe this is pride pushing against the structures of real life, or maybe I’m more ambitious than I thought I was, or maybe I am missing a grand calling somehow. But how do you know what you ought to do? Providence must use the constructs of timing and opportunity. So, maybe the question is not why am I waiting, but how.

rkb

A thought on the departed

My paternal grandfather, Arthur Briner, died in a hospital in Tennessee. It was sort of unexpected- he was in poor health, but quickly took a turn for the worse with a series of heart attacks. It was uglier than it should have been, and untoward, like death almost always is. Toward the end, he became paranoid, convinced that the doctors were trying to kill him; they put him in restraints and he made calls saying his final goodbyes, sure of the end, a misguided prophet.

It’s been a couple of weeks now since he passed.

I feel suspended.

For a while, I withheld the news from people who didn’t really need to know; co-workers, friends. Not because it would make it seem like it didn’t happen- because it was already an all-encompassing reality. It was management. Like a sociopath who lies compulsively, not to achieve an outcome but to control his environment.

Part of me feels like I’m supposed to wait for a while before returning back to life as normal. And the sadness is pervasive: more than I expected, and more than I feel entitled to. I didn’t… love him enough, and I didn’t respect him enough, and isn’t mourning a privilege reserved for the genuine? It’s hard thinking about him, placing the transparency of my value system over the outworkings of his life. I think a lot about what I don’t know about him, and hope that that part of him contains more love and gentleness and peace than the parts I knew. The way my dad and uncle grieved him- he must have been more to them, once, then.

The sum of a life is more than its end, just like the impact of a book is built by more than the last sentence.

It’s better not knowing, really. I wish the constraints of what I believe about the afterlife were looser. I’m not at all certain that he’s in heaven now, or if he ever believed in God and truth, or if there could be a special dispensation of grace for him. I don’t know what he loved deepest and most, and I don’t know that it was Christ. I do know he would tell me it was his own damn business.

It’s not right, the imperfect, inarticulate way I’m writing about it, and I wonder if words can profane memory. An epitaph online, something I wanted to say at the funeral we never gave for him. The sadness won’t vanish; it’s like darkness, that corners in relentless shadows even when a light clicks on. A new way of looking at the world, a world less one, is in order. A world in which I realize that a person is not defined by what I know about him.

He was solipsistic man. He was a husband and a father, and maybe a better one than I understand, because at the end of the day his wife and sons loved and served him with a loyalty that is as heartbreaking as it is rare. He was selfish, but worried for others; he had his vices, but did not perhaps love them as some do. He ventured to learn. And for all his faults and my faults and the distance placed between us by disrespect, I never for a moment felt judged by him; nor did I feel that he ever wanted anything less than his idea of the best for me. He thought I deserved it, that it was mine for the taking.

Stubbornness and assertiveness are his legacy to me as solidly as the silver airplane bookends and the rosary beads. Knowing what you want and how to ask for it is no small gift, especially for a woman.

I am puzzled by my total disinclination to pray about Grandpa Art and his passing; it's like I feel like there's no comfort there for me, only more confusion and pain. Instead I want to lean on my friends, talk talk talk about it, but when they're there I know I can't say everything, we'll run out of time and space and love for it. So there's just God. But-- I don't think that He knew my grandpa, or possibly that he cared about him. Because nothing characterized Grandpa's attitude so much as one abandoned, fending for himself. A life without refuge.

There’s the connection, though, between God and I, because we both loved him despite himself and despite the inclination and abrasion of circumstance. With personhood there is always something to love. And damn it if we didn't love the man.

rkb 

First drafts from a new year

Poetry as Science

Poetry is aggregation

images and sounds and words

that pulse and settle through the day.

 

Air takes up

light and noise and scent

thinning it all into a pale blue

the spectrum's path of least resistance.

 

The poet gathers the overfull clarity of sky

and with fumbling hands

divides the colors again.

--or--

The Bleak Ordinary

The safety lights from the bridge reflected sharply up from the water in the early morning darkness,

as if determined that today was the day

the languid sun would not overcome their colors

with the bleak ordinary of daylight.

 

That mercenary, tired from wrestling the lower hemisphere,

would turn its back to the earth and burn out another day.

The air was so cold that I couldn't catch my breath

and walked gasping

 

like a landlocked tourist toeing vacation waves

or an overwrought teenager.

Push and click the door open into the office swipe the clock marks I'm here--

 

and the rush of the alarm shower hair ugh drink breakfast bringing lunch? car drive- speed- cop?- speed- garage walk cold air punch in slows

to the measured and exact hours of a day at work on a Friday. 

Happy New Year, from us :)

rkb

(for your blog, or whatever)

“Emotion can come before writing, and after writing, but it must not be present during writing.” Madeleine L’Engle in her book Walking on Water

“If the writer feels it when writing, the reader feels it when reading” - Common Knowledge

As in any pursuit, an incredible variety of emotions may be experienced while in the process of creating a work of fiction. In this little essay-thing, I'll be focusing on my two biggest ones: too strong of an emotional connection with the story itself, and too strong of an emotional connection with the characters. I will try to be as clear as possible about where I see these emotions as streaming from, and in what ways these emotions can get in the way of the process itself. 

It's probably best to begin with the most damning emotion of all: few things are as murderous to the creative process as that intoxicating epiphany that one is in the midst of creating something beautiful. This thought is often accompanied by a thrill (which is itself often accompanied by the sense that this thrill is the only requisite to continue creating that "Grand Work" which one has begun), and an intense self-scrutiny which seeks to discover the place from which this beautiful creation has, thus far, been streaming, in order to prolong the inspiration and avoid a loss of control of the process. 


Writing solely from the intoxication of an adrenalin-addled imagination however, is a sure way to burnout. As soon as the thrill begins to fade, and fatigue sets in, the infatuation with the text vanishes without a trace, and the writer is left wondering what it was that he or she got so worked up about in the first place. But most troublesome of all is this: having experienced that thrill, it's tempting to think that when one does not feel that way, one is doing something entirely wrong.

Seeking to discover the sources of one's inspiration, to lay them out in the simplest way possible to prevent them from vanishing betrays a lack of confidence in one's ability to truly remain inspired. The trouble is that inspiration is a far more holistic concept than we would like to admit to ourselves, and it seems likely that few have the necessary insight to know exactly why it is that they are writing, until after they have written.

It's understandable to wish to create something beautiful. At the same time, it's likely that if we ever do create something beautiful, we'll be unable to see for ourselves that it is beautiful. Though this thought can be terrifying, and though we can feel tempted to try to figure it all out in spite of our lack of insight, it's far worse to cut off the creative process simply because one wishes to step back and figure out why one has suddenly gotten the sense that one has created something beautiful.

Even if our intuition is correct, and we have finally written the most beautiful page or paragraph or sentence we have ever written, we will likely never discover what it was that made it so beautiful, and so we will be unable to move onward. Though every bit of writing can be improved upon, we cannot rewrite it, for fear that we will end up writing out, and losing forever that fiction's as-yet-undiscovered essence. And, depending on our degree of neuroticism, we cannot write further pages or paragraphs or sentences, for fear that they won't give us that sense of having created a beautiful thing. 


It seems more practical to tell one's self that even if creating beautiful things is one's stated goal, the creation of beautiful things is largely out of one's conscious control, dependent on a holistic and intuitive understanding of language, emotions, storytelling etc, and that the thrilling realization that one is attaining one's goals is both irrelevant, and ironically, counterproductive.

The second problematic emotion is too-keen of an empathetic connection with one's characters. Obviously, since we are writing them, if they are to be well-rounded, we will have to utilize many different aspects of our own personalities, and in doing so we will understand where they are coming from. But the goal of writing fiction (that one wishes to share with others, of course) is not to have an inner experience, but to give one. Since the individual reader's response to the text will vary dramatically between readers, and different parts will stand out to different readers, it seems rather narrow-minded to think that more readers will feel that sense of connection if we feel it first.

Personally, I find absolute identification with my own characters to be both emotionally draining and self-indulgent. As before, once one has written something that one feels encapsulates an aspect of one's soul, it's hard to go back and rewrite it, for fear of destroying the essence of the writer's own sensation of connection. 


I see the goal of fiction as illusion. The more the writer writes from a place of pure emotionality, the less his or her own emotions and desires are sublimated into something more complex, and the more his or her hand shows through, and the more the illusion is broken. Storytelling is not about self-expression, but about telling a good story.

However, I like to hope that a good story told well will inescapably capture the uniqueness of the writer's own personality and voice. In a way, self-expression is inescapable. We need not worry about fully embedding ourselves in the personalities of our creations.


James Daniels