And then it ended, not with a whimper, but a bang. And suddenly all the words that have been stuck inside my head, my shoulders knees and toes, my thoughts, fingertips, dreams – all of them come pouring out, and I’m at the bus stop writing madly in a tiny spiral bound notebook that I fear will run out of paper before I can get all this down, and then I’m on the bus, pen moving furiously, hands covered in ink not leaving sentences long enough to dry, facing motion sickness in the name of art – so brave of me.
"Horrible, inevitable and necessary." Those were the words poet Donald Hall used to describe what it was like to stop writing letters to his dead wife using the pronoun "you" and to start addressing her as "she". Last night I listened to him read passages from his book, Without, about his wife who got leukemia, went though unsuccessful treatment, and died. It was the way he spoke about their relationship and his feelings about her death that just moved me beyond all mortal bounds.
I don’t have a television. I’ve been listening to "This American Life" a lot. It’s a program on NPR and with my fancy new internet connection I can play back any of the shows from the past eight years. The shows are filled with such moments of humanity – I mean humans – and the interviews and vignettes and essays are better reality than any Survivor could ever fake. So I’ve been listening – kick back in a big easy chair and just listen for an hour. Doing that makes me feel like I’m living in the 50’s. Somehow I think our imaginations would be better off if we took away the visual assault of television and its orgy of advertising.
So this Mr. Hall just. God. Granted, I’ve been accused more than once of melodrama and hyperbole, but that’s me. I think big. I’m easily enraptured. I don’t think this is a weakness. But listening to this poet read pieces he wrote about what it was like to curl in bed with his wife as she held his hand and took her last few breaths, in this quiet morning moment, and after she passed, he just lay there smiling and crying, stroking the bridge of her big, crooked nose that he loved so much.
He wrote about how the pond days were the best, he remembered all the ordinary moments the best – those days we have just walking with someone in a beautiful place, relaxed, and we suddenly realize everything is perfect and still for that one moment. I call it my Moment of Zen. I have them a lot. Sometimes I walk around in that state for days. And I know how it can make "ordinary" days stay in your mind more vividly than your biggest party or most frightening event.
He loved his life, his world, this woman with such quiet devotion and indiscretion. It was amazing. As though he couldn't differentiate between what we generally consider "good" and "bad" – it was just an element of the process of living and therefore worthy of all his emotion.
Listening to him shook me up (there was lots of tears and snot – even now writing this and remembering it I’m welling up) and I highly recommend listening to that show, or to any show. Because one after another these programs have been amazing me and making me think about the world I live in and how I react to it.
It had another affect on me, and combined with my past three days of total solitude, I realized how many of my own stories I have to tell and that I want to tell them. And I need to stop being so self-obsessed and afraid because that’s truly a ridiculous way to go through life.
Anyway I remember at one point thinking how my strongest writing is first person narrative, which I believe may be because I’ve been keeping a journal religiously since the fifth grade. And as I mentioned recently, I’m self-obsessed. As Thoreau said, “I would not talk so much about myself were there anyone else I knew so well.” Well, I’ve written plenty of fiction too, and plenty of other stuff about other people, but when it comes down to it, I enjoy telling my own stories in my own voice. And I remember feeling that this was not a valid genre, neither was it marketable, and so I never felt valid in my chosen form, whatever the hell that means. Enter David Sedaris. Man, once I picked up Barrel Fever three years ago, I rejoiced. I have been validated! And then I watched wide-eyed as his books went, one by one, to the top of the Best Seller list and stayed there. And then I discovered David Foster Wallace, and then I realized these guys were on to something.
Long story short, the barricade of my writer’s block that has plagued me for the past seven months has been blown to smithereens by the tanks of “This American Life”, with David Sedaris in the driver’s seat. In my future installment, I will fill you in on my project that I’m now working on, that was my brainchild in August but one I could not put underway until this morning, writing wildly at my work computer, trying to get stuff down fast enough before I forgot it. It involves craigslist but I haven’t more time right now as lunch break is over in 3 minutes.
Go here and listen. I promise it’ll be good.
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