As an only child growing up in the middle of nowhere, I needed imagination to get through the stifling boredom of the farm life. I would make up playmates, landscapes and situations to keep myself company and leave the world I knew. Hampl says that our imagination is a vast, powerful thing; memory is not just a "warehouse of finished stories, not a gallery of framed pictures (24). Memory and imagination come together then, and because these elements of persona come together and allow for all sorts of possibilities, we can get lost in the expanse of our own creations.
"By writing about that first piano lesson I've come to know things I could not know otherwise," writes Hampl in her discussion of memory and imagination. When she says that we must all guard our own truths about what has happened to us (class notes), I believe that she's saying if we cannot figure out a way to tell our stories and comprehend the past so that it makes sense for us, no one will be able to. We tell ourselves stories to live (to borrow a line from Joan Didion), and if we have to tell ourselves some little white lies to get through things, that's what we do. Perhaps we begin to believe the truths we've been telling ourselves for so long that eventually we know no other way to tell the story. Then what? Has it become the truth, or is it still a fabrication? Is our cognizance of the untruth a factor in whether or not it's a lie?
"I realized I had told a number of lies," says Hampl on page 25 or our excerpt; when we realize that we're telling a fabricated story that must mean that we know the real story exists out there somewhere, so shouldn't we go after that? If she realized after her initial drafts that she'd been making things up, doesn't she have the responsibility to tell the reader the truth?
I argue that yes, she does, and so does any writer. But like Karr, who pointed out that her memory had fault lines and fissures, Hampl admits to having problems with her memory and the recreation of her childhood stories. In doing so she's being honest with us about the truth of her book, which is a collected organization of memories.
The word memoir comes from memoria, or memory in Latin. Memory means the "mental faculty of retaining and reviving facts, events, impressions, etc., according to dictionary.com. So if memory is the act of "reviving" facts, then no, memoir doesn't have to imply a complete factual story. Definitions aside, I guess I feel like memoir needs to be "real life," since it's someone's life we're dealing with in the story. When I think about my contract with readers I guess I assume they're going to believe what I say is real to have been/be real, so I should just tell the truth. Again it goes back to my question of "why not just call it fiction if it's fiction?"
Both Karr and Hampl lead by example-- when they write a scene to say that time compressed and shifted or that they remembered something in a certain way, they're pointing out their memory problem, and for me, that example is better than any kind of "this is how you should do it" advice.
To safeguard my relationship with readers my intro will discuss the fact that I am writing about a time in my life when I was drugged up and recovering from brain surgery, and therefore my memory was compromised, to say the least. I note that the name changes of hospital staff were made to protect them in their careers; I will note that the time sequence I detail was the time sequence as I lived it, but perhaps it didn't occur that way to those not under the influence of morphine and other drugs. I think that's enough to let people know that yes, this is an accurate portrayal of what happened to me, but I'm not even sure if this is how it happened.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Ignorance as bliss in Hughes' "Salvation"
"My aunt came and knelt at my knees and cried, while prayers and song swirled all around me in the little church. The whole congregation prayed for me alone, in a mighty wail of moans and voices."
Langston Hughes' depiction of this scene toward the end of "Salvation" imparts the biblical idea of hell that many of us have heard since we were younger than the author is in his story.
"Mighty" wails of "moans and voices" are sounds we can hear when we think of "hell" and the atmosphere as it's been written; Hughes' patience and waiting conjures up the idea of purgatory, which is where he's kind of stuck throughout this story. The idea of purgatory, a place where sinners wait until they are prayed out of their limbo, threads through this whole piece, beginning with the happiness of those who have been saved (the adults) praying for others (the children) and ending with his salvation as the church "into a sea of shouting, as they saw me rise. Waves of rejoicing swept the place. Women leaped in the air."
How can one not see the illuminated images of Jesus rising from some glossy portrait into the flaxen beams of heaven?
In our class notes we see that "detail, sensory information and action" are the hallmarks of scene and movement. Hughes uses some dialogue throughout the piece, but what really moves the story, for me, is the imagined lull of prayers and voices that I hear in my head when I think of a congregation in prayer. That noise and reverence, although "holy," hums and buzzes in my skull, pushing me forward and adding to the urgency and tingling sensations the young Hughes must have felt. Added to the power of this feeling is the one recollection of times I've felt conflicted by self or society, much as Hughes is here.
Overall, although this piece moves through the shadows of peaks and valleys created by both Hughes' reactions and the desires of his church, what I find most compelling is that Hughes' salvation comes not so much in way of protecting his soul, but enlightening his mind.
For those who know of Hughes as a writer beyond this piece, it's not stretch to say that he wrote about the freedom and salvation that comes when the mind is loosed of ignorance. In depicting the actions of the little girls who cried and then ran to be saved--fearful for their souls-- and the rest of the "poor sinners," with their "work-gnarled hands"-- it's easy to see that Hughes' final savior is his mind itself, and his own understanding of truth. It's a painful truth for him to learn, that he can no longer believe in Jesus, or the adults who seem so wise, but in the end, his conflicts with the questions he had about Jesus prior to the revival (his aunt tells him all about the "feeling" but his scepticism persists) are answered and he comes to his own beliefs.
As we've looked at memoir from the perspective of the child thus far, we've seen that adults are often wise, confusing and so removed from the realities of childhood that their knowledge seems vastly superior and almost unattainable to the child(ren). But here we have an author who has bucked the conventions of his society and his aunt regardless of what he once thought or wanted to believe. Hughes doesn't tell us how all of this comes together for us; in introducing the characters he does, however briefly, and building the suspense of the moment with the quick snapshots of scenery and action, we come to feel the same flatness and acceptance that he feels.
What this acceptance becomes is not one of Jesus, but an acceptance of "oh, well, I wanted this because everyone told me I wanted it, but now I realize it's not really for me." This is a difficult kind of acceptance for anyone to bear because realizing we don't fit in, at any age, marks us as different, and therefore, potentially unsaved by common knowledge and ideals.
Langston Hughes' depiction of this scene toward the end of "Salvation" imparts the biblical idea of hell that many of us have heard since we were younger than the author is in his story.
"Mighty" wails of "moans and voices" are sounds we can hear when we think of "hell" and the atmosphere as it's been written; Hughes' patience and waiting conjures up the idea of purgatory, which is where he's kind of stuck throughout this story. The idea of purgatory, a place where sinners wait until they are prayed out of their limbo, threads through this whole piece, beginning with the happiness of those who have been saved (the adults) praying for others (the children) and ending with his salvation as the church "into a sea of shouting, as they saw me rise. Waves of rejoicing swept the place. Women leaped in the air."
How can one not see the illuminated images of Jesus rising from some glossy portrait into the flaxen beams of heaven?
In our class notes we see that "detail, sensory information and action" are the hallmarks of scene and movement. Hughes uses some dialogue throughout the piece, but what really moves the story, for me, is the imagined lull of prayers and voices that I hear in my head when I think of a congregation in prayer. That noise and reverence, although "holy," hums and buzzes in my skull, pushing me forward and adding to the urgency and tingling sensations the young Hughes must have felt. Added to the power of this feeling is the one recollection of times I've felt conflicted by self or society, much as Hughes is here.
Overall, although this piece moves through the shadows of peaks and valleys created by both Hughes' reactions and the desires of his church, what I find most compelling is that Hughes' salvation comes not so much in way of protecting his soul, but enlightening his mind.
For those who know of Hughes as a writer beyond this piece, it's not stretch to say that he wrote about the freedom and salvation that comes when the mind is loosed of ignorance. In depicting the actions of the little girls who cried and then ran to be saved--fearful for their souls-- and the rest of the "poor sinners," with their "work-gnarled hands"-- it's easy to see that Hughes' final savior is his mind itself, and his own understanding of truth. It's a painful truth for him to learn, that he can no longer believe in Jesus, or the adults who seem so wise, but in the end, his conflicts with the questions he had about Jesus prior to the revival (his aunt tells him all about the "feeling" but his scepticism persists) are answered and he comes to his own beliefs.
As we've looked at memoir from the perspective of the child thus far, we've seen that adults are often wise, confusing and so removed from the realities of childhood that their knowledge seems vastly superior and almost unattainable to the child(ren). But here we have an author who has bucked the conventions of his society and his aunt regardless of what he once thought or wanted to believe. Hughes doesn't tell us how all of this comes together for us; in introducing the characters he does, however briefly, and building the suspense of the moment with the quick snapshots of scenery and action, we come to feel the same flatness and acceptance that he feels.
What this acceptance becomes is not one of Jesus, but an acceptance of "oh, well, I wanted this because everyone told me I wanted it, but now I realize it's not really for me." This is a difficult kind of acceptance for anyone to bear because realizing we don't fit in, at any age, marks us as different, and therefore, potentially unsaved by common knowledge and ideals.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Membership in Karr's Club
Mary Karr's idea that "the alleged truth of a given voice makes it somehow more emotionally compelling" and "thus announces itself as real" is one that any writer of character-based nonfiction needs to understand. Voice and "precise, original language" are two of Karr's strongest allies in her work. She's got place as character, of course-- the way she describes the skies or the openness of her Texas childhood serves to further
set the reader in the state of wild abandon that her childhood seemed to have been.
But anyone can write about Texas in the 60s, or fractured families, or men getting together for construction jobs and beer drinking. What makes Karr's story her is the way her language defines her particular social circle, family, region and time frame. And even if the "truth" of an event is different from how it happened, the alleged truths of her characters voices are different truths than the stories those voices tell.
What I mean by that is that no matter whether or not Karr's grandpa really died by hanging or her sister really did act in a certain way or her mom really was Nervous and acted out to such extremes doesn't matter, in the way Karr has written it. The events don't necessarily need to be true, because we can understand the kind of person who might have done those things so well simply by "hearing" their voices on the page.
What this does for readers, then, is create a whole world and a whole way of life out of something that may or may not have happened. The use of voice and language as character gets inside the idea of a larger truth of humanity. We are all unique individuals, with our own ways of talking, acting, thinking and rationalizing things. For Karr, growing up the way she did, her ability to rationalize and understand the world around her had a lot to do with the stories her dad told. These stories gave her a place to be in the world, whether it was literally, as in in a corner of Fishers, or figuratively, as in how she came to know her father and family through stories.
What we, as readers, then take from seeing this is that we too can look at the stories around us and figure out how and where and why we fit into certain places in the world. We're all confused and lost and scared at times, and everyone has at least one memory they'd like to erase or forget or otherwise distance themselves from. There are also the great memories of events that have become even more epic as time passes and we begin to remember these events differently each time. In reading a literary memoir like The Liar's Club we all gain admission into our own story and way of telling it comfortably.
set the reader in the state of wild abandon that her childhood seemed to have been.
But anyone can write about Texas in the 60s, or fractured families, or men getting together for construction jobs and beer drinking. What makes Karr's story her is the way her language defines her particular social circle, family, region and time frame. And even if the "truth" of an event is different from how it happened, the alleged truths of her characters voices are different truths than the stories those voices tell.
What I mean by that is that no matter whether or not Karr's grandpa really died by hanging or her sister really did act in a certain way or her mom really was Nervous and acted out to such extremes doesn't matter, in the way Karr has written it. The events don't necessarily need to be true, because we can understand the kind of person who might have done those things so well simply by "hearing" their voices on the page.
What this does for readers, then, is create a whole world and a whole way of life out of something that may or may not have happened. The use of voice and language as character gets inside the idea of a larger truth of humanity. We are all unique individuals, with our own ways of talking, acting, thinking and rationalizing things. For Karr, growing up the way she did, her ability to rationalize and understand the world around her had a lot to do with the stories her dad told. These stories gave her a place to be in the world, whether it was literally, as in in a corner of Fishers, or figuratively, as in how she came to know her father and family through stories.
What we, as readers, then take from seeing this is that we too can look at the stories around us and figure out how and where and why we fit into certain places in the world. We're all confused and lost and scared at times, and everyone has at least one memory they'd like to erase or forget or otherwise distance themselves from. There are also the great memories of events that have become even more epic as time passes and we begin to remember these events differently each time. In reading a literary memoir like The Liar's Club we all gain admission into our own story and way of telling it comfortably.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Speaking of Nabokov
language, syntax and figures of speech, appropriateness, age of voice
At the beginning of this excerpt from Speak, Memory, Nabokov sets the reader into the bedroom and emotion of his boyhood days. He tells us we're in the bedroom, but even beyond that, he lets his images speak for themselves.
"...if it disclosed a watery pallor one better not open them at all and so be spared the sight of a sullen day sitting for its picture in a puddle" he writes of his windows' shutters (423).
From the idea of nasty day as a nasty child he moves into the mental landscape of exuberance and dappled sunlight; the exuberance he felt while outdoors chasing butterflies.
Throughout this excerpt Nabokov meanders back and forth between his childhood memories and the recent present or the present. Although reading about Nabokov-the-child is interesting because I get to see a lifestyle quite different from my own, it is his adult intrigues and activities that hold me. His voice as an adult is a trustworthy one because he has built up a whole lifetime of entomology, and his stories show that. I feel like I can read this for information, come away from the piece and share my new knowledge with others and know its legit. It is literary nonfiction at its best for this reason.
This ability to entertain and inform is crucial for anyone writing a non-fiction memoir. I think of writers like Augusten Burroughs, whom I've loved, or David Eggers, whose work I hate, and whatever factual, informative stuff I might have taken from their books has been lost on me, since I didn't really think they were ever really telling a whole truth in any of their stories. Through his mentally stimulating crafting of his lifetime, Nabokov gives us fact along with emotion.
"'Natural selection', in the Darwinian sense, could not explain the miraculous coincidence of imitative aspect and imitative behavior, nor could one appeal to the theory of 'the struggle for life' when a protective device was carried to the point of mimetic subtlety, exuberance and luxury far in excess of a predator's power of appreciation," he writes of the ways in which butterflies, moths and caterpillars disguised or changed themselves as needed. " I discovered in nature the non utilitarian delights that I sought in art," he writes (425).
His love for art, nature and the craft of his own work shine in this passage, and it is his refined voice that allows for this. Were he to have written of his butterflies and knowledge from the child's viewpoint, we'd never get these insights, nor the detailed knowledge he's shared.
What is lost, of course, is the wonder and first-time innocence of a child out catching bugs for the first time. We don't get much of that sense of not-knowing here, but my guess is that even as a child Nabokov was a rather stoic, although quick and clever, boy. "Losing" this works for me, though, because I have my own sense of wonder and innocent understanding of what it was to chase bugs. What he's given me connects art with the natural world, and that wasn't something I had as a child, nor an adult really, until starting grad school. And even though my memoir doesn't take place in outdoor landscapes or focus much on place and environment, I've learned how to play with emotion in my word choice, sentence structure and composition enough so that I feel like I can relate my own "innocence" at the time of my stroke to the things going on in my voice when I write from the persona I write from.
In Eggers' and Burroghs, we get lots of emotion, lots of clever wit, but who knows how much "truth" we get.
At the beginning of this excerpt from Speak, Memory, Nabokov sets the reader into the bedroom and emotion of his boyhood days. He tells us we're in the bedroom, but even beyond that, he lets his images speak for themselves.
"...if it disclosed a watery pallor one better not open them at all and so be spared the sight of a sullen day sitting for its picture in a puddle" he writes of his windows' shutters (423).
From the idea of nasty day as a nasty child he moves into the mental landscape of exuberance and dappled sunlight; the exuberance he felt while outdoors chasing butterflies.
Throughout this excerpt Nabokov meanders back and forth between his childhood memories and the recent present or the present. Although reading about Nabokov-the-child is interesting because I get to see a lifestyle quite different from my own, it is his adult intrigues and activities that hold me. His voice as an adult is a trustworthy one because he has built up a whole lifetime of entomology, and his stories show that. I feel like I can read this for information, come away from the piece and share my new knowledge with others and know its legit. It is literary nonfiction at its best for this reason.
This ability to entertain and inform is crucial for anyone writing a non-fiction memoir. I think of writers like Augusten Burroughs, whom I've loved, or David Eggers, whose work I hate, and whatever factual, informative stuff I might have taken from their books has been lost on me, since I didn't really think they were ever really telling a whole truth in any of their stories. Through his mentally stimulating crafting of his lifetime, Nabokov gives us fact along with emotion.
"'Natural selection', in the Darwinian sense, could not explain the miraculous coincidence of imitative aspect and imitative behavior, nor could one appeal to the theory of 'the struggle for life' when a protective device was carried to the point of mimetic subtlety, exuberance and luxury far in excess of a predator's power of appreciation," he writes of the ways in which butterflies, moths and caterpillars disguised or changed themselves as needed. " I discovered in nature the non utilitarian delights that I sought in art," he writes (425).
His love for art, nature and the craft of his own work shine in this passage, and it is his refined voice that allows for this. Were he to have written of his butterflies and knowledge from the child's viewpoint, we'd never get these insights, nor the detailed knowledge he's shared.
What is lost, of course, is the wonder and first-time innocence of a child out catching bugs for the first time. We don't get much of that sense of not-knowing here, but my guess is that even as a child Nabokov was a rather stoic, although quick and clever, boy. "Losing" this works for me, though, because I have my own sense of wonder and innocent understanding of what it was to chase bugs. What he's given me connects art with the natural world, and that wasn't something I had as a child, nor an adult really, until starting grad school. And even though my memoir doesn't take place in outdoor landscapes or focus much on place and environment, I've learned how to play with emotion in my word choice, sentence structure and composition enough so that I feel like I can relate my own "innocence" at the time of my stroke to the things going on in my voice when I write from the persona I write from.
In Eggers' and Burroghs, we get lots of emotion, lots of clever wit, but who knows how much "truth" we get.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
McCourt's uncluttered life
The first time I read Angela's Ashes I was going through a severe case of Irelust (I wanted to go to Ireland real bad). My introduction to the brogue and the lifestyle and all of that seems to have come from something beyond this book, but I can't remember what now. A boyfriend, I think, whose family was Irish? Maybe. At any rate, despite the troubles or Troubles, I feel in love with the idea of Ireland, the harsh realness of place that McCourt conjured up for me. Today, I read the book as an adult and think that it wouldn't be at all fun to live that lifestyle-- not that I thought it would be fun when I was younger, but I was more charmed by the exoticism of the whole thing--but I feel so in line with what McCourt notes was an "uncluttered life" in the snipped in our class readings.
I've always been a traveler, restless and full of wanderlust. But I've also lived a real comfortable life, full of all the amenities McCourt never had. My troubles, and thus the stuff of a memoir (who wants to read a memoir about a happy, perfect life?) didn't start til I had brain surgery, but they've given me something to write about. When I could force myself away from the clutter of travel plans and an exciting social life and work to do so. left Chicago last year because I wanted to do just that, get away from the clutter (and excitement) of a life that pulled me from my writing, and when I look back at the stuff I've written (for my memoir) today, I can't believe how cluttered it is sometimes. I think that comes from not really being sure how to tell the story.
McCourt says that the child's voice is "innocent," it can also be messy. Think of a 4 year old and how he tells a story. There's lots of "and then.. and then's" because their train of thought sort of peters off and reroutes itself sometimes. McCourt has managed to stay away from that here, and I wonder if part of his ability to nail the voice and mood so crystal clearly also comes from his writing at 66, after retiring, and after a life-time of telling the stories. He'd had plenty of practice in adopting the persona of young Frank, so he could write with some clarity, and leaving his job gave him time to write without the clutter of work and other papers.
What this does--this perfectly clear telling of the story, from the viewpoint of a child-- for me, is tell the story in a way I can understand while creating two different characters. There's the Frank/teller, who sounds smart and contemplative, and then there's the Frank/kid, who I don't feel like I see quite as well as I see Malachy. I see him of course, but he somehow seems less than childlike to me. It's weird, and I've only just begun to think about what that does for me as a reader. Because present tense is used, I feel a sense of currency in the reading, which might also be what makes me see Frank as less-than child, since I can't separate him in my head as an adult now? I know.. that kind of contradicts the idea of two Franks, but it muddles me all up to think about it. So much for an uncluttered mind as I read!
I've always been a traveler, restless and full of wanderlust. But I've also lived a real comfortable life, full of all the amenities McCourt never had. My troubles, and thus the stuff of a memoir (who wants to read a memoir about a happy, perfect life?) didn't start til I had brain surgery, but they've given me something to write about. When I could force myself away from the clutter of travel plans and an exciting social life and work to do so. left Chicago last year because I wanted to do just that, get away from the clutter (and excitement) of a life that pulled me from my writing, and when I look back at the stuff I've written (for my memoir) today, I can't believe how cluttered it is sometimes. I think that comes from not really being sure how to tell the story.
McCourt says that the child's voice is "innocent," it can also be messy. Think of a 4 year old and how he tells a story. There's lots of "and then.. and then's" because their train of thought sort of peters off and reroutes itself sometimes. McCourt has managed to stay away from that here, and I wonder if part of his ability to nail the voice and mood so crystal clearly also comes from his writing at 66, after retiring, and after a life-time of telling the stories. He'd had plenty of practice in adopting the persona of young Frank, so he could write with some clarity, and leaving his job gave him time to write without the clutter of work and other papers.
What this does--this perfectly clear telling of the story, from the viewpoint of a child-- for me, is tell the story in a way I can understand while creating two different characters. There's the Frank/teller, who sounds smart and contemplative, and then there's the Frank/kid, who I don't feel like I see quite as well as I see Malachy. I see him of course, but he somehow seems less than childlike to me. It's weird, and I've only just begun to think about what that does for me as a reader. Because present tense is used, I feel a sense of currency in the reading, which might also be what makes me see Frank as less-than child, since I can't separate him in my head as an adult now? I know.. that kind of contradicts the idea of two Franks, but it muddles me all up to think about it. So much for an uncluttered mind as I read!
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Greatness and Freedom- Dinesen's Africa
Although I've commented in my class post about Dinesen's language and the way her surroundings influence her style, I'm always stuck by the feelings of freedom that must have existed for her in Africa. I can imagine that as a woman at the turn of the century it was difficult for her to feel much freedom in her daily life. That she could "escape" to Africa and find it there is clear in her writing, not just in what she says about the place, but the very places and atmospheres she chooses to write about.
"Everything you saw made for greatness and freedom, and unequalled nobility. The chief feature of the landscape, and your life in it, was the air... In the middle of the day the air was alive over the land, like a flame, burning; it scintillated, waved and shone like running water, mirrored and doubled all objects.. in this high air you breathed easily, drawing in a vital assurance and lightness of heart "(347).
Dinesen's passage about the way the air moved around her not only lifts me up to her level of appreciation for something so mundane as the air, but it undulates in pace and rhythm in much the same way a breeze blows a leaf down a dirt road. She may be talking about the atmosphere here, but as she shares these observations with the reader, she's also throwing out the contradictory nature of the place. Her air is a flaming candle at the same time it is running water, and the very juxtaposition of these things is as juxtaposed as her landscape and existence in it. Here she is, a landed woman, a member of society; White. But she's out on safari, she's engaging with her help and the natives. She's perhaps thought of as dainty and maybe even helpless at home, but here, in the "wilds" of Africa, she's got her own power, her own lifestyle.
Africa itself, as we see it through her eyes is as much a wild place as a calm one; as much a hot, dry land as a it is a sky full of vivid blues and violets.
I'm revising a piece about my childhood home for my thesis right now, and what I'm noticing is the contradictions and juxtapositions of the land and my perceptions of it. Many see a huge expanse of land as openness, possibility; growing up I felt hemmed in and confined by all that nothingness. One of Dinesen's brilliant moves is using these things to really put me there in her land, and this is something I'm trying to work with on my piece too. I want readers to feel the appreciation I have, now as an adult, for the openness, but I also want them to recognize just how limiting that can also feel. I don't get a sense of limits in Dinesen's writing, not the kind I struggled with, but the kind that came with being so different and removed from a "normal" society.
"Everything you saw made for greatness and freedom, and unequalled nobility. The chief feature of the landscape, and your life in it, was the air... In the middle of the day the air was alive over the land, like a flame, burning; it scintillated, waved and shone like running water, mirrored and doubled all objects.. in this high air you breathed easily, drawing in a vital assurance and lightness of heart "(347).
Dinesen's passage about the way the air moved around her not only lifts me up to her level of appreciation for something so mundane as the air, but it undulates in pace and rhythm in much the same way a breeze blows a leaf down a dirt road. She may be talking about the atmosphere here, but as she shares these observations with the reader, she's also throwing out the contradictory nature of the place. Her air is a flaming candle at the same time it is running water, and the very juxtaposition of these things is as juxtaposed as her landscape and existence in it. Here she is, a landed woman, a member of society; White. But she's out on safari, she's engaging with her help and the natives. She's perhaps thought of as dainty and maybe even helpless at home, but here, in the "wilds" of Africa, she's got her own power, her own lifestyle.
Africa itself, as we see it through her eyes is as much a wild place as a calm one; as much a hot, dry land as a it is a sky full of vivid blues and violets.
I'm revising a piece about my childhood home for my thesis right now, and what I'm noticing is the contradictions and juxtapositions of the land and my perceptions of it. Many see a huge expanse of land as openness, possibility; growing up I felt hemmed in and confined by all that nothingness. One of Dinesen's brilliant moves is using these things to really put me there in her land, and this is something I'm trying to work with on my piece too. I want readers to feel the appreciation I have, now as an adult, for the openness, but I also want them to recognize just how limiting that can also feel. I don't get a sense of limits in Dinesen's writing, not the kind I struggled with, but the kind that came with being so different and removed from a "normal" society.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Enchanting myself away from the normal - Angelou post
Before I applied to grad school I spent the summer reading MFA reading lists for schools across the country. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was on several lists, so I read it. The book has stuck with me for its vivid imagery and uniquely light way of speaking to dark subjects. Angelou's ability to write with the innocence and wonder of a small child carries this book, and even though I sometimes wonder if she's really a trustable narrator- because her style of storytelling IS so vivid-- I feel satisfied that I am getting an accurate portrayal of Marguerite's life. So in reading our lecture notes, I wasn't surprised to learn that Angelou's magic carpet is sherry, a deck of cards and secluded room. As writers we have to do whatever it takes to get us out of the ordinary into a place where language sings and the common description/definition of things falls away. Because of this, I think Caged Bird is a timeless story, one that speaks to a certain period of Americana, but at its heart can show anyone how to live and move beyond one's world. Even if that world was a war-torn Parisian cafe and the writer was Hemingway, or a crummy, dumpy house and the writer was Augusten Burroughs, writers have the unique ability to take a moment and move beyond it to speak a larger truth.
So, in moving away from the 2010 Caribou cafe in which I sit now, let's go to Nebraska, circa 1989. This might be hard for some of you to read.. sorry. It's just what came to me.
The burlap bag is heavy in dad's hand-- I can tell becuase the muscles in his tanned forearm are shifted out a little, and with each wriggle and bulge of the bag I see that muscle tighten and pulse as he steps forward. I'm not sure where the bag came from, but he probably had it out in the dusty shop. When he came to the house with it an hour ago, I grabbed it from him and watched it puff the scent of dirt and tractor grease, surprised at its presence in his hand.
"Marcella, where did Touca have her kittens? Can you find them?"
Dad refered to me as his "right hand man," and becuase I had yet to start school and mom was gone all day, I spent my days with him in the shop. He was my best friend, and at five years old, I was all sugared compliance and quick eagerness.
"Yeah yeah, she had them in the old pig barn, over behind the saddles. You know, where you keep the old hay bales? Only one of them has been up and walking but--"
"They're sick, Marcella. All the cats around here always get distemper. It's not good to have sick kitties, it is?"
Was dad actually telling me he was going to take my kitties to the vet? This was unheard of. The feral cats mothered batches of babies the way I collected toads and slugs in the summer-- often and a fierce protectiveness, and dad had no use for the multitudes of wild cats that teemed around the farm propoerty. I couldn't believe he was going to make sure this group got the attention they needed to clean up the boogers that constantly plauged their eyes, and I didn't want him to stuff them in a bag, but if that was what it took to get them there safely, then so be it.
"No, it's not." I said, agreeing that sick kitties were bad. I couldn't play with them, what with their snotty faces, and most of the time, they lived for a while then died any way. If dad was going to get them some help, maybe I'd actually get to tame one, feel its soft down fur and nuzzle it in the way my friends with indoor cats got to. "I can help you get them if you want."
Dad had nodded me toward the pig barn, and we'd gone in to find the kitties. The old shed hadn't been used for hogs in years, but in the dust-mote shades of shadow and light that filtered in through the cracked and broken boards you could always smell some combination of amonia, straw, mash, pig shit and mold. I loved the old buildings on our farm, but I never played in this one becuase it was so old and fally-downy. The containment corrals had mostly fallen down, but next to the building and the one fence still standing, and old well and water tank still bobbed mossy water in and over its lipped surface.
"Ok, Marcella, I see them. You can go back to the house now."
I wasn't sure why dad was sending me to the house alone-- I figured we'd load up the kitties then take them to the vet together.
"You don't need my help here? But I can--"
"No, no, go in and.. get me some.. twine or something. To, uh, tie the bag? Please?"
The tall grass that had grown up around the pig barn knicked my legs as I ran through it, trying to get to the house and back in time to help dad. I don't know why I can still remember the way that grass and the weeds felt as they slapped against my bare legs, but I know that I'll never forget the scent of that pig barn, or the way dad's arms looked as he walked around the water tank, carrying that bag, arm muscles bulging. By the time I had found and hauled the spool of twine back to dad, he was outside again, moving around the water tan, dipping the bag in it. I stood and watched as he dipped the wriggling bag in the water, holding it under longer and longer each time, then letting it drop. I knew then, as a child knows a bad thing when she sees it, that something was wrong with this picture, that my kittens were sick and that dad was drowning them. I knew then that yes, maybe those kittens were beyond saving with the vet's medicines. I knew that even pulling them up was probably not going to save them. But what I witnessed was wrong in a particular way that only the executioners of bad men can probably know. My dad had drowned my kittens to put them out of their misery, and to end his own discomfort with their presence, but those things alone were not exactly what was so wrong with the scene. What was wrong was that he had lied to me, that my dad had lied to me, or at the least, misled me as to what he was doing with the kittens and why he needed my help. I eventually grew up and got hogs to show for 4-H and housed them in that pig shed. They drank water that came from that tank; I "got over" what I saw that dad and how bad I felt for the mewling bag of sopping kittens who had their eyes cleansed in the most unholy of baptisms, and I left the farm. That memory doesn't come to me often, but when my last cat died, it did. When my dog ate poison and died, it came to me then, too. There is something beautiful and innocent about a life lived among the cycles and organic moments of life and death on a farm, but I wonder if it only when we keep them masked and containted that we are able to accept them.
So, in moving away from the 2010 Caribou cafe in which I sit now, let's go to Nebraska, circa 1989. This might be hard for some of you to read.. sorry. It's just what came to me.
The burlap bag is heavy in dad's hand-- I can tell becuase the muscles in his tanned forearm are shifted out a little, and with each wriggle and bulge of the bag I see that muscle tighten and pulse as he steps forward. I'm not sure where the bag came from, but he probably had it out in the dusty shop. When he came to the house with it an hour ago, I grabbed it from him and watched it puff the scent of dirt and tractor grease, surprised at its presence in his hand.
"Marcella, where did Touca have her kittens? Can you find them?"
Dad refered to me as his "right hand man," and becuase I had yet to start school and mom was gone all day, I spent my days with him in the shop. He was my best friend, and at five years old, I was all sugared compliance and quick eagerness.
"Yeah yeah, she had them in the old pig barn, over behind the saddles. You know, where you keep the old hay bales? Only one of them has been up and walking but--"
"They're sick, Marcella. All the cats around here always get distemper. It's not good to have sick kitties, it is?"
Was dad actually telling me he was going to take my kitties to the vet? This was unheard of. The feral cats mothered batches of babies the way I collected toads and slugs in the summer-- often and a fierce protectiveness, and dad had no use for the multitudes of wild cats that teemed around the farm propoerty. I couldn't believe he was going to make sure this group got the attention they needed to clean up the boogers that constantly plauged their eyes, and I didn't want him to stuff them in a bag, but if that was what it took to get them there safely, then so be it.
"No, it's not." I said, agreeing that sick kitties were bad. I couldn't play with them, what with their snotty faces, and most of the time, they lived for a while then died any way. If dad was going to get them some help, maybe I'd actually get to tame one, feel its soft down fur and nuzzle it in the way my friends with indoor cats got to. "I can help you get them if you want."
Dad had nodded me toward the pig barn, and we'd gone in to find the kitties. The old shed hadn't been used for hogs in years, but in the dust-mote shades of shadow and light that filtered in through the cracked and broken boards you could always smell some combination of amonia, straw, mash, pig shit and mold. I loved the old buildings on our farm, but I never played in this one becuase it was so old and fally-downy. The containment corrals had mostly fallen down, but next to the building and the one fence still standing, and old well and water tank still bobbed mossy water in and over its lipped surface.
"Ok, Marcella, I see them. You can go back to the house now."
I wasn't sure why dad was sending me to the house alone-- I figured we'd load up the kitties then take them to the vet together.
"You don't need my help here? But I can--"
"No, no, go in and.. get me some.. twine or something. To, uh, tie the bag? Please?"
The tall grass that had grown up around the pig barn knicked my legs as I ran through it, trying to get to the house and back in time to help dad. I don't know why I can still remember the way that grass and the weeds felt as they slapped against my bare legs, but I know that I'll never forget the scent of that pig barn, or the way dad's arms looked as he walked around the water tank, carrying that bag, arm muscles bulging. By the time I had found and hauled the spool of twine back to dad, he was outside again, moving around the water tan, dipping the bag in it. I stood and watched as he dipped the wriggling bag in the water, holding it under longer and longer each time, then letting it drop. I knew then, as a child knows a bad thing when she sees it, that something was wrong with this picture, that my kittens were sick and that dad was drowning them. I knew then that yes, maybe those kittens were beyond saving with the vet's medicines. I knew that even pulling them up was probably not going to save them. But what I witnessed was wrong in a particular way that only the executioners of bad men can probably know. My dad had drowned my kittens to put them out of their misery, and to end his own discomfort with their presence, but those things alone were not exactly what was so wrong with the scene. What was wrong was that he had lied to me, that my dad had lied to me, or at the least, misled me as to what he was doing with the kittens and why he needed my help. I eventually grew up and got hogs to show for 4-H and housed them in that pig shed. They drank water that came from that tank; I "got over" what I saw that dad and how bad I felt for the mewling bag of sopping kittens who had their eyes cleansed in the most unholy of baptisms, and I left the farm. That memory doesn't come to me often, but when my last cat died, it did. When my dog ate poison and died, it came to me then, too. There is something beautiful and innocent about a life lived among the cycles and organic moments of life and death on a farm, but I wonder if it only when we keep them masked and containted that we are able to accept them.
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