*It's nearly upon us...* Tomorrow, all Helliday breaks loose, every one! Expect hohoho's and pretty lights and exuberant punning as far as the eye can see.
But first, I'd like to wish a Happy Trails and thanks for all the fish to November. I've eulogized Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Veteran's Day and - briefly - the one year anniversary of my attaining attorneydom. Two traditions that I did not observe: Movember and NaNoWriMo. Movember, well, I guess that the cost of mother nature allowing me to have a monthly "FRIEND!!!" (oh my! Ok, seriously, do people actually use that euphemism or is it an urban legend?) drop in is that I don't really grow much hair on my face. I grow eyebrows and lashes acceptable, but that's about the limit. So, no moustache. Sometimes, maybe, I pulled a swath of my hair across my lip in a contemplative manner (or was that the bovine chewing cud form of rumination?) This is the closest I have reached to achieving solidarity with the theme.
But just for you, N/Movember, here's a photo of my first dance teacher sporting his very lovely moustache... ok, it's his head pasted onto my body from a very long time ago. It was a joke I don't completely remember, but he did find it funny. He also found the word "bile" funny. Hysterical, actually. I'm not sure I learned a whole bunch of dance from him, but boy did I love him.
And National Novel Writing Month (which I admit I used to think was some kind of very short fiction writing contest until I saw the acronym spelled out)... well, I once again didn't write a novel. The closest I've ever come to such endeavors were a slew of short stories about love that fit together in my head if not ever on wordpad. And this was a few aeons past.
But just for you, N/Movember, here's a photo of my first dance teacher sporting his very lovely moustache... ok, it's his head pasted onto my body from a very long time ago. It was a joke I don't completely remember, but he did find it funny. He also found the word "bile" funny. Hysterical, actually. I'm not sure I learned a whole bunch of dance from him, but boy did I love him.
And National Novel Writing Month (which I admit I used to think was some kind of very short fiction writing contest until I saw the acronym spelled out)... well, I once again didn't write a novel. The closest I've ever come to such endeavors were a slew of short stories about love that fit together in my head if not ever on wordpad. And this was a few aeons past.
It makes me feel a little funny watching the literary lucubration aflurry in this month in my google stream. There's a bit of a ghost in these posts for me. I often thought I'd end up being a writer of some sort (and of course, though far from the noun, I am certainly compulsively tied into enacting the verb), but I've long distanced myself from this conceit.
People still say things like "you missed your true calling..." or "if you ever quit your day job..." to which I deflect with a series of tropes that are trueish and perhaps justifications at the same time: (1) I lack the discipline, (2) I am not particularly accessible to an audience and don't intend to become so, (3) I find I'm a better writer when I'm a more miserable person, and (4) I've seen friends try to get published or get read and I don't have the chops or the universality to indulge in such endeavors if I ever created something.
Funny to say "I lack discipline" because I'm disciplined to a fault in many arenas of my life, including the practice of professional and academic writing. I make notes, timeline my process, start from outlines, draft tautly perspicacious paragraphs, and make heart-wrenchingly tough edits.
But in the "creative" side of things, I'm a spirit dancer rubbed in patchouli and banging arrhythmically on a drum. My blatherings are indulgences far more succulent than the darkest chocolate paired with the bubbliest bath. I revel in the curves and angles of my words painted on the page; my ears itch and lips tingle at pulsation and shaping of such curlicues embodied. I dodge entendres, duck literalities, and dive headfirst into the juiciest ambiguities, strewing errant punctuation marks and stray parentheticals in my path like rose petals at a wedding.
I have no delusion that such excursions makes my writing readable or accessible. Not to say others can't enjoy it, but I am rarely willing to sacrifice the elan of a single phrase for the greater good of a chapter. I do that enough at work! I'm a cautious and quiet talker in every day life. The reckless abandon of the page has always been the contretemps to this reality.
And as for structuring a story, well... I live in the story world and always have, but it is a shifting protean place never hinting at beginnings or endings. I was a dreamy child - fairy princess stunt pilot warrior extraordinaire - and an appreciably mopey teenager. I used story more consciously than many to navigate reality. Estranged and uncomfortable with those unpredictable gales of emotion, physical urges, and obsessions that accompany these, I used story and word to abstract what I was feeling, transforming experience into an effulgent little jewel that I could dispassionately hold to the light. When I'd glimpsed the universality of what once manifested as personal experience, I could re-specify it safely into story, trying on different motivations and contextual underpinnings as necessary. Give me the same minute of memory and I could write a million stories within those perceptions. By doing so, I could chose the story about events that most appealed. I learned to find the story about myself and my past that felt most comfortable. All of this has been quite useful in my life. It helped me understand eventually that as much as we are shaped by what we experience in life, we are shaped with the stories we use to edit and splice together an indefinite series of minute memories towards meaning.
In the meantime, the slag of all this tumbling would be a written story that I could careful edit into something presentable and throw on a rarely read blog. Writing was more catharsis than creation and still often is, although now I more revel in the challenge of capturing the complexity of reality with humanity's woefully inadequate lexicon.
When I did "write," it'd come from a spark - some tiny thing that happened in real life that captured my consciousness. I'd mull over a thought or snatch of dialogue for some time, palping and pawing at it from every facet until the day my fingers fell too close to a keyboard. Many hours later, the literary exorcism of a moment or idea would be complete and I'd have no particular desire to return or develop the product. In fact, really, that's what I still do, but without the facade of fiction.
This works rather well for blogging for a minute audience, but life is never a cohesive story and perhaps I'm too aware of that to create one myself? And of course, the pulling at falling strands approach is rarely accessible, since I have no particular niche to call my own and refuse to seek one out. My blog, for instance, is an olio that resists asserting such concinnity that could make it funny buzz-wordy things like searchable or brandable or, admittedly sometimes, readable! I know that in my little circle of friends, a few will chuckle if a post flickers past their stream, and that the members of the Collaborative Professional Group would be quite happy to elect me as secretary for life, due to the jollity I bring to our meeting minutes.
But I also know I'm not likely to suddenly shoot up to a statistically interesting number of followers or shares. I won't be inviting fandom as much as amicable appreciation. And I'm happy to offer that. There is something to any expressive endeavor that seeks to connect - to be seen, heard and understood - and there is something that craves an audience, but my threshold for that cost is apparently quite low. Assuming a clear identity always requires cutting off the noise - those other facets and potentialities vying with the dominant ones for validation. We are infinite contradictions, and merely appear cohesive by assuming the appropriately contextual roles that highlight aspects of ourselves and minimize others. I can do this, but never wholeheartedly. When categorized as any single thing, my gut quivers and my pulse races.
And well, in my erstwhile adolescent enclave, I've seen the process of marketing a finished product. My IRL circles were uncomfortably saturated with writers and musicians. Usually both. Maybe some artists. I don't think I knew a single person not working on something. I've edited a hundred manuscripts - quite thoroughly, I might add and perhaps in that I really missed my true calling - of books that ran in limited edition self published form and maybe show up from time to time in the local used book store beyond the shelves of a few close friends.
I've handed over tons of rejection letters and witnessed the tons more ghosts of mail never received from publishers and journals too busy to respond. The whole thing seems rather brutal, and I'm not foolish enough to deny that the pipes are clogged with grossly over-talented people who just haven't hit the right time, place and pitch. And somehow, I wish I had more purity of essence (and peace on earth, of course!), but knowing that any serious endeavor would likely attract the same handful of "nice... that was fun" from acquaintances that a spare half hour could attract, I just lack the same motivation to push past any prior reservations.
But if this is all one long justification, well, perhaps it is. There are - of course - a million ways to interpret a single instant and no single interpretation claims exclusive veracity. And perhaps that itchy uncertainty is what makes me feel just a little twinge when I see the word counts of hardier writer-writers winding through my streams. There are a million things I could have been and each of these have little prickles at my core. I will still flush far more with unpredictable pride when my writing, singing, or dancing is complimented than most any other aspect of my personality. Myself as "good at" these things is apparently a part of some core identity of which I am quite protective, even if I rationally prize many other qualities more highly (my ability to plan, my ability to form creative conclusions from dry text and form rational coherent arguments, my ability to read others closely, my ability to feel gratitude and express it, my ability to hear subtext accurately, my ability to empathize, my ability to remain level-headed and work through tough emotional situations, my loyalty...).
But if this is all one long justification, well, perhaps it is. There are - of course - a million ways to interpret a single instant and no single interpretation claims exclusive veracity. And perhaps that itchy uncertainty is what makes me feel just a little twinge when I see the word counts of hardier writer-writers winding through my streams. There are a million things I could have been and each of these have little prickles at my core. I will still flush far more with unpredictable pride when my writing, singing, or dancing is complimented than most any other aspect of my personality. Myself as "good at" these things is apparently a part of some core identity of which I am quite protective, even if I rationally prize many other qualities more highly (my ability to plan, my ability to form creative conclusions from dry text and form rational coherent arguments, my ability to read others closely, my ability to feel gratitude and express it, my ability to hear subtext accurately, my ability to empathize, my ability to remain level-headed and work through tough emotional situations, my loyalty...).
And so to selves past, I bid adieu and "nice" to see ya again. And to the future, I say: BRING ON THAT DARNED FIGGY PUDDING AND WHATNOT!
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