Crocheting, Creating, Writing

Here's a blog post I wrote back in July. Just now posting it. I know, I'm a procrastinator.

Last night I realized that I love teaching people how to do things that I love to do. I taught my coworker how to crochet. I had so much fun watching her get excited about making her own hat, and I loved encouraging her every step along the way. I love making gifts for people, whether it’s hats or origami flowers or bracelets. I used to make Christmas presents for my friends in junior high and high school. Even though it took a while to make them, I still enjoyed it. Part of the fun was in the process, I guess. And now that I’m making a blanket and hat for my nephew, it’s even more exciting because I think about him and Amanda as I’m working on them.

Writing is another kind of craft, a creation of something beautiful and artistic out of something as small as words. Words strung together, looped around my fingers and hooked into sentences and paragraphs can become something beautiful and so much bigger than the sum of their parts. Words alone seem ordinary, like a skein of yarn, but under the right care they can be transformed into something entirely new and different: a blanket, hat, gloves, scarf. I want to stitch words into fabric, wrap myself in a garment of words or give them as gifts to others. I want my words to be useful, meaningful, to bring delight not just as a story to wile away an hour but to take with you on long trips, to keep you company in times of need, to be treasured and taken out and read over and over and loved. Have you ever loved a story like a favorite piece of clothing? You turn to its pages when you’re sad or upset or just because you love that one line that seems to encapsulate exactly what you feel in the perfect combination of words and poetry. You read the story again, recommend it to others, quote its best lines. It stays with you and speaks to you when you’re quiet. I want to write stories like that.

Words are powerful. I already knew this, but I was reminded again this week. Another coworker had a birthday, so we gave him a huge poster with personal messages signed all over it. He said he loves giving gifts, but our words meant more to him than any present we could have given. I smiled because I know what he means. I appreciate words of affirmation, encouragement from others, the satisfaction of knowing that what I have said or written matters deeply to someone else. That may be why I love it when someone compliments a story; they’re showing me that the words I have woven are important to them too. Words are threads connecting us. Words are meant to be shared between people. It’s how we communicate. Language exists to express ideas and convey meaning among people. Can we even think without language? Which comes first, the idea or the words? I’ll leave that question to be debated by philosophers. All I know is, words are powerful. And I’m glad I chose them as my artistic medium.

I have often thought that writing is both a skill and an art form. You can master the basic rules of grammar and sentence structure to create perfectly adequate–but sometimes a bit mundane–sentences and paragraphs. But the real beauty of writing comes from spinning the words over on top of each other, looping and connecting them. Taking out words that don’t work and substituting others as if stitching and re-stitching a row of yarn. My first goal as a teacher of writing is to help students master this first basic step, to ensure they know how best to convey their ideas and communicate with their audience. Because writing that fails to communicate effectively is useless. One of my college professors once said, “The ability to communicate concisely in prose is more important than knowledge.” He explained that if someone could fathom great mathematical or philosophical concepts but couldn’t share them with others, then that knowledge was useless. I want students to learn how to share their ideas and see that writing is relevant to all aspects of their lives; it’s not just some exercise they have to perform to get a grade. My secondary goal as a writing teacher is to help students see the beauty and the poetry in language, to see it as an art form. This goal is more applicable to a literature-based composition class, in which students read and study poetry, short stories, and plays. I don’t want them to just squeeze “the meaning” (as if there’s only one) out of every poem, but also to enjoy the musical qualities of a poem, to hear it and feel it and sense its images. Then finally, in a creative writing class, I want students to play and experiment with language, to pull loops of words through other words and stitch them into an entirely new pattern, a new garment that has never been made before. This is not at the expense of meaning, of course, because writing that experiments too freely can sometimes fail to communicate anything besides the author’s remarkable skill in wordplay. Like an intricate pattern of lace, such writing may wind up being useful as nothing more than a doily to be put on a table or framed on the wall. But maybe that admiration of words is itself a kind of usefulness.

Routine Adjustment

Here's a story I've been working on for a while now. Those of you who attended Duke TIP session 1's talent show will recognize the beginning; this is the rest of the story. (I sound like Paul Harvey.) The ending still needs work. Comments are welcome.

Mary Ella both looked forward to and dreaded when her friends came over to play Scrabble once a week. She began every Wednesday morning by washing dishes from the night before, usually just a couple of plates and the Corning Ware bowl she baked the casserole in. She scratched at the cheese stuck on the inside of the bowl; it never came out in the dishwasher if she didn’t scrape it first. She hated cleaning the house top to bottom, but if she didn’t do it, her friend Ruby would think she did nothing but watch TV soap operas all day, which wasn’t true; Mary Ella never cared for that dramatic filth. She thought those women needed to learn a little self-control before jumping into bed with every man who said she was beautiful or that he loved her. Those women didn’t know what love was.
    When the dishes were done, she wiped off the mahogany dining table before spraying it with Pledge to make it shine and smell like lemons. She and Clyde had been married 47 years, and they knew that love was about staying true to each other during all the ups and downs of the relationship. They had been through a lot together–like when Clyde’s brother Jesse died in Vietnam, or the time their oldest daughter Gloria decided to drop out of Okalona High School three months before graduation, or when twenty-five of their tomato plants got wiped out by a blight. They had gotten through those times, so Mary Ella knew they could handle anything life decided to throw at them.
     “I, for one, am glad we stayed together,” she said aloud. “Lord knows I need someone to keep me company as I get older.” She stopped, afraid Clyde had heard her from the living room. She had to remind herself not to talk out loud anymore since Clyde had retired from the lumber mill last month and stayed in the house all the time. The newspaper rustled a little and then everything went quiet again.
    She wiped her damp dishtowel across the vinyl seat cushions. She didn’t consider them yet to have reached old age, they were just 65, after all, and had all their original teeth still. That was why she and the other women played Scrabble instead of Bridge or some other old-lady card game. Or heaven forbid, dominoes. Eighty-year-old grandmothers at Marshall County Nursing Home played that and she certainly didn’t want to be lumped in the same category with them. She kept active; she went to aerobics class every Tuesday and Thursday to keep herself fit. An active body ensures an active mind, she thought. That was why she never had time to clean, but Ruby didn’t understand. She had been widowed since before any of them had kids and said she could never bring herself to remarry; she loved Jim too much. Now Mary Ella thought that was taking things too far. Jim had been dead more than thirty years and she still couldn’t move on? Mary Ella wondered what she would do if Clyde died. She would be sad, but she saw no reason in mourning for the rest of her life.

I saw a deer today

I saw a deer outside my professor’s house today. I have been going over there regularly to water his plants while he’s on vacation. When I was almost finished, I walked back into the front living room and gasped when I saw the deer step out of the woods, walk across the driveway, then stop in the grass of their front yard to eat. I sat on the floor by the fern and swept up fallen fronds with my fingers. She noticed me shortly after that, and looked up quickly and stared at me through the glass while I smiled stupidly on the other side. She was so beautiful and fragile, I had to watch. Of course, it’s not like I’ve never seen deer before; they jump out in front of our cars at home all the time. When Grandma lived with us, they used to come up in the backyard outside the window and eat large acorns off the ground. Even then, we would stop in awe, whispering to each other while watching them bend their necks repeatedly towards the ground. But for some reason this seemed different. Maybe it’s because Milledgeville is more heavily populated, and deer sightings are rare. I think it’s because she was so close, just a few feet from the window, and I got to watch her for the longest amount of time ever.

    After she noticed me, I didn’t bother sweeping the fronds anymore. I just sat as still as possible and watched her. Every time she lifted her head to chew, she’d face me, but I didn’t move. I had rather do anything at that moment than scare her away. It was time for me to go and eat a snack, but I didn’t care. She was thin and clearly needed to eat more than I did. I knew that if I got in my car to leave, she’d run away and she didn’t have a grocery store or a fully stocked pantry to go home to, so I let her enjoy her meal. She ate dried Mimosa blossoms that had fallen on the driveway. I was so close to her that when she swallowed, I could see the lump move down her slender neck. I could see her shining black nose twitching, sniffing the air as she watched me.

I had never noticed before how large deer’s ears are, how they stick out at wide angles from the narrow head. Her ears were crusted on the back with bug bites. I have seen mounted deer before, but their antlers must overwhelm the ears. Her legs were so tiny, like standing on sticks. Her hooves were black and polished, like an animal you’d see on display in a petting zoo. She kept her tail tucked down, and once, when she had turned away from me, I saw it twitching slightly, swaying back and forth like cows’ tails do. I thought this was a good sign. It showed that she wasn’t too scared of me, despite all the times she stared at me as she chewed. Once, she started at a noise and I saw all the muscles in her body jump for an instant. Her fur was tawny with white cottony bits along her stomach. It lay short in straight lines across her back and I imagined what it would feel like to pet her.

    After watching her for about ten minutes, she moved off into the grass again, behind a bush. I stood up to keep watching her through another window, and I think she saw me even through the bush. She walked back up the hill towards the woods she had come from, then across the driveway to another patch of woods. I watched her until I couldn’t see her through the thick foliage. Then, when I left, I could hear her somewhere on the other side of the driveway, up the other hill that I didn’t use. She made some kind of scratching, screeching sound, as if to warn others of my presence. I walked around the car to see if I could get one more glimpse of her, but I didn’t see her again.

    As I sat watching her, I knew I would write about it. I considered how I might use it in a story I’m working on. Perhaps seeing a deer could be a moment of epiphany for my character, make him realize something.  I say I want my fiction to relate to nature, but I realize now that only the characters in one story actually interact with the natural environment. And I would like more of my characters to do so. It reminded me of the Raymond Carver story, “Call If You Need Me,” in which an estranged married couple connect as they watch horses that have wandered into their yard.

    It was interesting for me, sitting there, I wondered how anyone could shoot deer. I’ve eaten deer lots of times and think it’s delicious, but I couldn’t watch her eat and want to kill her at the same time. I thought, well, hunters don’t kill fragile small deer like this one. They only shoot the large, mean-looking bucks and older, healthier does. Maybe that’s something for my character to think about.   

A Little Girl's Birthday Party

There is something sad and beautiful about the abandoned decorations after a birthday party. Today my neighbors across the street held a party for a little girl. I watched as the adults strung a banner with triangular pennants on it, twisted pink ribbon around the posts of the carport, and tied small bunches of pink and blue balloons to the stop sign. They finished decorating early, before the guests arrived, so I could see the long table and metal folding chairs waiting expectantly under the shade of the carport.

Later, when I looked out the window, I saw that the chairs around the table were filled. The adults had carried larger wooden chairs from the dining table outside for themselves. They blocked my view of the children. There was something sweet and innocent about the way the adults sat watching the activities of the children. It was as if they too were participating in the party, felt that it was important and meaningful.

I thought of my birthday parties growing up and tried to remember if there were so many adults in attendance then, supervising us children. I don't remember; I guess it's because when you're four or five, you don't really pay attention to what grown-ups are doing. For the first time, I imagined what it would be like to attend a child's birthday party again, this time as an adult. I look forward to the day when I can go to parties for my children or nieces and nephews, sit in the "big people" chairs and enjoy watching the simple pleasures of childhood.

At this party was a very tall boy, maybe late teens or early twenties, who wore a Braves baseball cap and tight jean shorts. At one point, he walked over to the edge of the yard to smoke a cigarette. One young woman wore a short purple cotton dress. Another woman wore a long jean skirt. Then of course, there was our neighbor, the old man who always wears a Mr. Rogers sweater, even in today's 80-degree weather.

Another time I looked out the window and everyone had gone inside, except for one woman who sat alone facing the empty table. I wondered what she was thinking and why she sat by herself. They came back out and the children played tug-of-war with a short yellow rope with a pink bandanna tied in the middle. I think the birthday girl won her match. She wore a knee-length grayish purple tutu.

By 7:30, just as the sun was beginning to set, the guests had all gone home. The decorations stayed behind, the pink and blue balloons dull in the fading light.

Title Explanation

Well, I finally did it. I broke down and started a blog. I guess the reason I'd been putting it off is that I wanted it to be a good representation of myself as a writer. Recently, I thought up a title I actually liked, and a few ideas for blog posts have been rolling around in my head, so I figured it was time. Here goes.

As much as I hate the postmodern usage of parentheses to convey opposing meanings at the same time, I felt it was an appropriate way to describe my relationship to writing. On the one hand, I am one of those anxious writers, too scared to approach the blank computer screen for fear that it won't come out right, it won't be good, or (worse still) that nothing will come out at all. So I stay away from writing creatively for a while, fritter away my time doing useless or mundane tasks, and all the while I have this nagging voice in the back of my head telling me I need to write. I must get my thoughts out there in whatever way I can. So outweighing my fear of my writing not being good enough is the greater fear of what will happen if I stop writing. Becoming a published writer has been my dream since I was about six. And if I don't write somewhere, I may never get the courage to keep on writing when I finish school.

I envision this blog as a way to work through my fears about writing, encourage others, and hopefully, gain some confidence as I post my work for the world (or maybe just my friends on the internet) to see. My posts will contain a combination of thoughts about writing, experiences with teaching writing, and excerpts from my fiction and maybe some nonfiction journal-type entries that may or may not become parts of essays or stories.

Enjoy and feel free to comment.