Containing multitudes, part 2

How It Started

photo credit: Kurt Chris­tensen

It started with word games. In the begin­ning I loved hear­ing my fam­ily read Dr. Seuss to me and stum­ble over the words. My aunt Carol made a game of read­ing the titles of Tom & Jerry car­toons before they faded off­screen. I had a favorite laun­dry deter­gent when I was 6 years old because they spelled the brand: A-L-L, the stain-lifter, that’s All. Once I had a han­dle on the alpha­bet I grad­u­ated to more sophis­ti­cated games like word searches and the news­pa­per jumble.

I can’t remem­ber a time when I didn’t love read­ing. In school I’d get in trou­ble for not fol­low­ing along as we read aloud. My kinder­garten teacher thought I wasn’t pay­ing atten­tion because I was read­ing ahead, the labored attempts of my slower class­mates too slow to hold my atten­tion. In a split class­room, I focused on what the first graders in the room were taught instead of what was on offer on the kinder­garten side. I com­plained loudly and fre­quently to my par­ents and teach­ers that I was bored.

We started writ­ing in school. I loved spelling tests and vocab­u­lary work­books, but until I learned about essays, I just thought that words were for play. When I was asked to write a descrip­tion of my dream kitchen, though, my people-pleasing ten­den­cies took over and I felt a pow­er­ful urge to bring that kitchen to life for my teach­ers and the nice peo­ple who would be grad­ing the state-wide writ­ing test.

The Ego Stroked, Backward

Maybe I was an espe­cially naïve child, but I believed every word of praise given me about my writ­ing skills. I didn’t buy the oblig­a­tory “he’s so hand­some” schtick the fam­ily and the check­out line ladies offered, and it was dif­fi­cult to con­vince me of other kinds of prowess, but if some­one wanted to talk to me about words, I lis­tened. Maybe it was because writ­ing was less sub­jec­tive; there was a right and a wrong way to spell, whereas there were many kinds of “hand­some.” Besides, my social expe­ri­ences to date had not borne out that “hand­some” appel­la­tion. Maybe it was because writ­ing took place in a bub­ble, and my responses to any feed­back could be based on what I had writ­ten, thereby alle­vi­at­ing the need to think on my feet in con­ver­sa­tion (see afore­men­tioned social awk­ward­ness). Hell, maybe I really liked the atten­tion. It wasn’t focused on me, after all. Every­one was busy look­ing at the pieces of paper with my hand­writ­ing on them. I have been accused of being a closet extro­vert before.

My bore­dom in the class­room even­tu­ally became com­pounded by an inabil­ity to artic­u­late on the fly my increas­ingly com­plex take on what we were read­ing. Yes, Lord of the Flies, sym­bol­ism, I know. Yes, that’s a phal­lic sym­bol. Yes, metaphors! I couldn’t fig­ure out why these things were being exalted as if they were nuggets my class­mates found while pan­ning for gold or an A+ class-participation grade. For me that stuff was in plain sight, part of the text. I was more inter­ested in how all those parts fit together, what they did when you held them all in your head at once. Class dis­cus­sions were frus­trat­ing, but by mid­dle school we were also writ­ing essays about what we read. And, inevitably, it became known that I was “smart.”

I don’t know why they did it. Maybe my teach­ers, not­ing that I never vol­un­teered answers in class, wanted to sal­vage my own par­tic­i­pa­tion grade. It could be that they were sadists who took great joy in watch­ing me writhe, roast­ing in the heat of my own blood ris­ing to my face each time they insisted that I read an essay aloud. All I know is my intro­vert self had trou­ble with a silent class­room lis­ten­ing to my crack­ing voice given authority.

The Illu­sion of Confidence

I don’t have any­thing to say. Peo­ple often insist that I do, but I have noth­ing more to say than any­one else does. This is why I con­tinue to encour­age every­one I meet who says they have a story to tell, they ought to write a book. I am a huge advo­cate for writ­ing, obvi­ously. I think every­one should do it. The act of telling sto­ries is the act of learn­ing a lit­tle more about your­self, and we all could use more of that. I think we tend not to exam­ine deeply enough. I also think we are lazy com­mu­ni­ca­tors, and writ­ing is an effort­ful means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion that tends to lead to more thought­ful engage­ment with other people.

My gift, if I have one, is orga­ni­za­tional. I have the same thoughts as most peo­ple, maybe slightly less addled by Amer­i­can Idol than most, but still. What I do is present those thoughts well. Espe­cially when I am telling sto­ries about my past, I have to achieve a pretty thor­ough under­stand­ing of the expe­ri­ence, from many dif­fer­ent angles.

photo credit: barabeke

I have a friend whose fre­quent refrain is that I write author­i­ta­tively, as if I know what I’m talk­ing about and am pre­sent­ing inevitable con­clu­sions. It’s true that I see sys­tems in the world and pat­terns within them that don’t seem to be appar­ent to every­one. I see ways for dis­parate con­cepts to fit together. If, when I pack­age what I see into a tidy whole, it makes sense to other peo­ple, that doesn’t make me an author­ity. As far as I can tell, it’s just the most com­plete man­i­fes­ta­tion of my two favorite activ­i­ties: play­ing with words and anthologizing.

These are not new ideas, so I won’t claim to have any­thing to say. I’ve read too much by peo­ple who do have some­thing to say to accept that man­tle. I will accede, how­ever, my abil­ity to put things a cer­tain way that seems per­sua­sive to peo­ple. I promise to only use this power for good. Or for amuse­ment. Mine, not yours.

Telling My Story to Myself

I know no one more con­vinced of the power of sto­ry­telling than Richard Hoff­man, Writer-in-Residence at Emer­son Col­lege. He taught a class while I was there, and I can’t remem­ber what he called it but I called it the Apoc­a­lypse Mem­oir Sur­vey. He’d com­piled a read­ing list of mem­oirs writ­ten dur­ing the worst upheavals of the 20th cen­tury. One of my aims in tak­ing the class was to finally get a few pieces of his­tory to stay in my head. I hoped that the nar­ra­tive for­mat would be eas­ier to grok than the nev­erend­ing true/false quizzes admin­is­tered by my AP his­tory teach­ers in high school. What I found were testimonies.

History’s view is by neces­sity epic. Sig­nif­i­cant events get con­ve­nient labels like the World Wars, the Holo­caust, the Armen­ian Geno­cide, the Vel­vet Rev­o­lu­tion. This scope does not per­mit indi­vid­ual lives, and that’s what the mem­oirs were for. They human­ized the unspeak­able atroc­i­ties of the 20th cen­tury, vic­tims and per­pe­tra­tors alike. Each week we dis­cussed the pur­pose of telling such sto­ries, the urgency of bear­ing witness.

The other thing Richard wanted to teach us with his apoc­a­lypse mem­oirs was the impor­tance of telling our own sto­ries to our­selves. I entered the class a mem­oir skep­tic. I left it ready to enroll in Richard’s memoir-writing work­shop. The ques­tion I always come round to of who I am and how I got that way was in the pages of every book we read, on the lips of every writer. How could I pass up a chance to search for those answers for col­lege credit? And, speak­ing as both edi­tor and voyeur, how could I miss the chance to help my class­mates grap­ple with the same thing?

I only had the vaguest notion of what the ques­tions were when I started writ­ing about myself. Now I have a bet­ter idea of the ques­tions and a vague notion of how to find some of the answers. I still feel pre­sump­tu­ous writ­ing about myself. I have opin­ions, yes. I have a his­tory. Who cares? I con­sole myself with the fact that I’m not try­ing to sell anything.

Eye­balls in the Darkness

It turns out some peo­ple do care. My mem­oir work­shop class­mates were inter­ested in my story because it was exotic and I was a pecu­liar spec­i­men: a South­ern boy in a New Eng­land grad school writ­ing about faith and com­ing of age. I haven’t lived in my home­town in more than a decade, which has kept a gulf grow­ing between me and my fam­ily. Some of them have read what I write, and taken the time to let me know it. I’ve been sur­prised at how touched I feel to know that as I try to explain me to myself other peo­ple in my life are just as curious.

photo credit: movi­mente

Maybe, as it’s been sug­gested to me, it’s a lit­tle like find­ing someone’s diary and look­ing for entries about your­self. Maybe the time and space that have sep­a­rated me from my fam­ily is more eas­ily bridged than it often seems to be.

Writ­ing is a lit­tle like walk­ing through a car­toon for­est at night, watch­ing preda­tory eye­balls blink on and off. I can only do it when I think nobody is watch­ing. Clearly though I want peo­ple to read what’s here. Why else would it be online? Why else would I let peo­ple know when there’s new mate­r­ial here? The for­est isn’t just a car­toon, and it isn’t there only when I’m writ­ing. There is only one means of illu­mi­na­tion: All of you, let me see your eyes.