Noise Reduction
quiet reflections on life in a loud worldArchive for February, 2008
This Is A Hard Hat Area
Sorry, had another story deadline today so blog is on back burner. With any luck, that means the post will be that much more interesting and subtle when it’s finished. Should be up tomorrow or Sunday.
Until then, cheers.
A Few Words on Transportation
For reasons I won’t go into, I was feeling a little low last week. Blue, restless, fed up with pretty much everything other than the hobbit’s wild hair and his habit of scooting backwards into my lap whenever he feels in need of a cuddle or some milk. So it was that when I dropped him off at nursery one afternoon, I had no appetite for the hum drum. In other words, I realized that though I could go home and sit in front of the computer, I felt no inspiration whatsoever and it seemed unlikely that the time would be well spent. Instead, what I really wanted to do was get out of my neighborhood and the few neighborhoods I regularly visit these days. Too, I wanted to be among people. And, I was mid-way through a beautiful novel and was dying to dive back in. At the same time, I didn’t want to do shopping of any kind. I didn’t want to drink coffee, tea or anything else I would have to purchase in order to rent a table in a cafe. And I didn’t want to sit outdoors – it is February after all.
Fortunately, I was feeling decisive, and a solution came to me rather quickly: I decided to board the tube and stay on it a while. I decided to go west. I decided go to Kensington.
The ride was great. All around me were flesh-and-blood humans. Adults, children. People reading free newspapers, resting, doing puzzles, playing with their phones. The trained rocked steadily and didn’t make me sick. The novel (Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, in case you were wondering) swept me away like a magic carpet to the turn-of-the-century American South.
When I finally reached the South Kensington station, I realized I had only about twenty minutes to spend before I would have to begin my journey back to pick up the hobbit. This was a bit of a disappointment, but, since I was out of my neighborhood, not consuming, and quite happily swimming along in the stream of London life, I set the disappointment aside and made my way to the Museum of Natural History. I limited myself to the lobby, and this turned out to work perfectly, as it allowed me to spend some quality time with the few but impressive artifacts on display there. I loved it. I was transported many times over. Sitting on a bench beside a giant turtle skeleton, I imagined archaeologists down on their knees in the dirt, digging out those bones with care, maybe fascination, possibly reverence. Tourists taking pictures made me feel I was on holiday. A group of pre-teens in school uniforms being mustered by their teachers reminded me of the sense of freedom I used to get from field trips.
Moving on, I rested my head against a cool stone wall while taking in the next huge creature, a predecessor to the seals we know today. One thought led to another and soon I was imagining the sea off South America, warm and sparkling in the sun and a breeze.
Before leaving, I spotted the stump of a tree. It was a redwood, I think, though my memory for factual details is horrid (sensory details? not so bad, but facts? yikes). In any case it was huge, and from California, which I remember because I, too, am from California, so this particular detail hit home, so to speak. Anyway, it was just a stump, but in the mood I was in, it struck me as a magnificent stump, and all I wanted to do was put my arms around that stump and sit with it a while. It had been an old tree when it died, and its rings were many and beautiful. So varied, so absorbing. Some finely drawn, some squiggly. I thought about trying to count them but instead I just stared at them, and again I was transported, to the redwood groves of my childhood summers, with fog hovering here, a little bit of water dripping there, a carpet of needles underfoot.
I was reminded of this little journey of mine two nights ago, as I sliced two leeks for the pasta sauce I was making. As whole leeks, these two were homely, it must be said, but once they were thinly sliced, they were as beautiful in their own way as that redwood tree I’d seen. Their beauty was a gift, too, because when I started slicing them, I’d been preoccupied. It had been a long day. My writing was not going according to plan, the hobbit was in a teething funk, and the husband was away. The coverage of the U.S. presidential campaigns was becoming ever more petty and dispiriting, Turkey was invading northern Iraq, I’d read two opinion pieces on the U.S.’s use of waterboarding, and I was struggling to figure out what to make of Castro’s resignation in Cuba, the torching of the U.S. embassy in Belgrade and the defeat of Musharraf’s party in Pakistan. All that, and then there were those leeks. So simple but so gorgeous, in vivid shades of green running from emerald to almost white, with fine and delicate rings within rings. I paused. I breathed. I put some music on and moved on to the kale feeling a little more at ease.
Otherwise Occupied
I suppose this is another one of those weeks in which things would have turned out different if I’d had a boss breathing down my neck. Instead, all is still up to me, so things have turned out just as they have. In other words, I’ve not got much for the blog this week, since I spent most of it finishing a draft of a short story I was due to submit to my writing group for feedback. It was the first fiction writing I’ve done since boxing up my novel, and challenging though it was in moments, overall, doing the work was a pure delight. I was so happy to escape into story land and forget the world around me, with all its muddiness and murkiness, its cruelties and confusion. I was so happy passing hours wandering through a world of my own creation, and hanging out with characters who are caring and funny and kind, and perhaps most satisfying of all, refining and refining again my word and phrasing choices. I really do love writing. It is incredibly lonely at times, and in material terms, desperately unrewarding; but, more than any other activity I have ever undertaken, writing offers me chances to feel truly free, transcendentally focused, and, from my fingertips to my innermost being, at peace. The only other activities that come close to affecting me this way are reading beautifully written stories and spending time with the Hobbit, who, thankfully, is still too tiny to be affected by life’s muddiness etc.
So, with any luck, the group’s feedback will enable me to put the final touches on the story and post it here soon. In the meantime, I’m going to spend a little time reading, a lot of time with the lovable Hobbit, and whatever time there is leftover doing my best to live well. Thanks for stopping by. Sorry to have been so brief.
February, Again
Welcome to the first week of February. Tuesday was so-called “Super Tuesday” in the United Sates, and though it turned out to be more exhausting than super, the race is on and I like it. Voters are energized. People are debating. All seems well for the moment in U.S. politics.
Tuesday also was Mardis Gras, a.k.a Fat Tuesday, a.k.a Shrove Tuesday, a.k.a Pancake Day. All that made me think of New Orleans, which made me think of the disaster that was Hurricane Katrina, which made me think of a documentary called Trouble the Water, which was directed by my friends, Carl and Tia. It is about New Orleans during and post-Katrina, and it just won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Festival. You can read reviews here, but really, you should just keep an eye out for its arrival at a theater near you. I, for one, am very much looking forward to seeing it.
Next came Wednesday. Wednesday was the first day of Lent, a.k.a Ash Wednesday. For those of you who don’t know, Lent is the forty days before Easter, a time of reflection and renewal. In a not-too-inspiring sermon on Wednesday night, an amiable but not-too-inspiring priest explained that the word “lent” comes from the Old English “lengten,” which means “the spring” and refers to the lengthening of days in the spring. Hearing that, I thought, Ah, Spring. Doesn’t that sound nice. Then, I thought, Wow, I’ve been observing Lent my entire life. How is it I’m only now learning that it means spring? (Scratch head, adjust sitting position in creaky pew.)
This last thought led me to another thought, about rituals and their virtues. It wasn’t until I took up yoga in my late twenties that I learned the power of doing the same thing many times. The sameness of the ritual – a yoga series, Lent, whatever it may be – throws light on differences both subtle and stark. Every year, I go to Ash Wednesday Mass. Every year the Mass, its meaning and its purpose are the same. Within this sameness and familiarity, I am able to see how I – my reactions, my thoughts, my physical health, my emotional state, the people I am close to, the city where I am living – am different. When, as a child with sleep in my eyes and a hastily thrown on uniform, I went to Mass before school with my parents and siblings, I was more or less just a small and passive physical presence. When I went during college, I was uncomfortable, unsure, even embarrassed. A closeted Catholic for most of my twenties, I felt lonely and almost resentful then, as if my religious inheritance was a burden I wished I could leave by the roadside. At each service however, by participating as best I could at the time, I was nourishing an ever, if quietly, hungry part of myself.
A yoga- and meditation-inspired rabbi named Alan Lew wrote a sermon a decade ago that gets at this same point. (Thanks goes to my husband for bringing it to my attention.) “Practice, Practice, Practice,” the sermon was called, and the practices he spoke about included prayer, meditation, contemplation and acts of service; essentially, “a set of intentional gestures which have the effect of transforming us, of deepening our relation to the sacred.” One thing I like about this sermon is that it is honest about the fact that much of the practice experience is ordinary and forgettable. Sometimes one daydreams. Sometimes one thinks about one’s next meal. Sometimes one thinks about all the things one would rather be doing. But, as Rabbi Lew observes, at least once each time he practices, “a word or a phrase from the prayer service will suddenly sneak up on me and burst into revelation. Each day it will be a different word or phrase, and it will stay with me all day, and I will see its meaning permutating as I go about my life, shedding unexpected shades of meanings on that life and lending it a depth and a density.”
The other night, what struck me particularly was the priest’s mention of spring, of days getting longer, of renewal. It is February. February is not my favorite month. The days are still short and winter is by no means on its way out. But, Ash Wednesday Mass and that amiable priest’s apparently-inspiring-after-all sermon reminded me to enjoy these winter days, because they have beauty and grace all their own, and because they won’t last. Too, they reminded me to not lose hope; spring is coming.
Happiness Anyone?
When I was twelve-going-on-thirteen, my teacher assigned each student the task of producing an entire record album (minus the vinyl and the music). We were to write the lyrics to ten songs, then design and produce the interior sleeve, the album label and the cover. The songs could be about any subject, but, since these were the days of theme albums, a theme was encouraged.
I loved this project. I got totally into it. I was very serious about poetry at that age, and I was excited to have an excuse to do “research” in my older sister’s room, where she kept her extensive record collection. Unfortunately, I don’t have the finished product any more, but I do remember certain details vividly, and the one most relevant to this post is my chosen theme, which was… ahem… Death. Yup. Free to choose any theme life offered, I chose to write ten songs about Death, including one about abortion and one about suicide. (And people think today’s teens are in trouble.) I can’t remember the other eight and honestly, at this moment, I’m not sure I want to. (Honestly, at this moment, I am stunned, not only that there were eight more, but also that my teacher didn’t convene some kind of crisis intervention on my behalf. But that’s another matter.) For the cover, I spray-painted cardboard all black except for a white triangle in the middle, and for the interior sleeve I went, surprise, surprise, with all white, handwriting the lyrics to my masterpieces exclusively in lower-case letters, in black ink of course. Yowza.
This uplifting album of mine came to mind recently when I read an essay by Tracy Chevalier about her “dispiriting” experience judging short stories for the Bridport Prize this year. Underlying the themes of many of them, she wrote, was “a persistent attempt to make sense of death.” She reflected:
It’s not surprising, I think: writers often use stories to work through subjects they don’t understand and are struggling with… In this age of all information all of the time, death continues to be the great unexplained event that happens to everyone. No wonder we write about it so much.
Fair enough, I thought at the time; but as the weeks have gone by, I’ve wondered: what about happiness? Happiness is a great, unexplained mystery, no? I suppose it’s not an event, but it is an experience, and maybe I’m off my rocker here, but I do think it happens to everyone, even the most miserable person, at least once, in some small way. Moreover, happiness is an almost universally desired state. The pursuit of it is acknowledged as an inalienable right in the U.S. Declaration of Independence for God sakes, and it ranks right up there with Life and Liberty. Surely happiness – both its absence and its presence – is an essential element of being human. So why aren’t book shops bursting with happy stories?
It could be simply that Chevalier is wrong. Indeed, in my experience, most writers aren’t using writing to understand those subjects with which we struggle, but struggling with writing to articulate just what it is we know. Given this, and the fairly well-established fact that most writers are miserable so-and-sos – recluses, for example, or people who stick their heads in ovens, drink themselves to death, wade into rising rivers or simply pass days, weeks, months, years doing battle with depression – and it is perhaps not so surprising that most stories are a little gloomy. In other words, maybe writers just don’t know enough about happiness to write convincingly about it.
Another thought is that happiness is a bit like magic, and that when it comes right down to it, writers are a little afraid of it. Maybe we are a little superstitious, or maybe we shy away from happiness because we sense that writing about it might diminish it in some way, as if happiness is like a balloon – probe it and it just might pop, or like a joke – explain it and watch how quickly it falls flat.
Maybe happiness lacks the dramatic tension that writing demands.
Or, perhaps, the lack of happiness in literature has something to do with a reluctance in writers to stir up envy or come off as smug.
There is definitely the fact that writing about happiness without becoming saccharine, trite, sentimental, is downright difficult.
There is also the fact that writing, like reading, is a very private, very quiet act, and so lends itself especially well to exploring experiences and emotions that embarrass, humble, hurt, perplex and worry us – emotions and experiences that is, which most people would prefer to explore in private. I, for one, enjoy sad stories, and I think it is primarily for this reason. There is so much room for feeling in the reading space, and so much safety. Also, as a reader, you can take strong emotions on board at your own pace, pausing when things get too heavy then plunging in again when you feel ready. Happiness however, is a public affair. A vibrant affair. It is like eating, an experience that is almost always richer and more satisfying when shared. Happiness lends itself well to dance, film, music. Happiness demands movement, sound and color.
However, with all that noted, I am happy to also observe that many writers are capable of writing about happiness. For example, the most memorable happy scene I’ve ever read takes place in Anna Karenina (a story hardly known for happiness, I know). The scene occurs about a third of the way through the novel (Part IV, Chapter XIII, in case you are interested), when Levin and Kitty at last are able to admit to each other that they are in love. They are at a party, and they use chalk to write private notes to each other in code. It is very sweet, and, as a way of making up for my preteen album of gloom, I’ve decided to offer just a bit of it as the end of this post -
He seized the chalk with his tense, trembling fingers and, breaking it, wrote the initial letters of the following: “I have nothing to forgive and forget, I have never stopped loving you.”
She glanced at him, the smile staying on her lips.
“I understand,” she said in a whisper.
He sat down and wrote a long phrase. She understood everything and, without asking him if she was right, took the chalk and replied at once.
For a long time he could not understand what she had written and kept glancing in her eyes. A darkening came over him from happiness. He simply could not pick out the words she had in mind; but in her lovely eyes shining with happiness he understood everything he needed to know! And he wrote three letters…
In their conversation everything had been said – that she loved him, that she would tell her father and mother, that he would come tomorrow in the morning.
Ah, love.
