A Few Notes About Writing

Redon's "Homage to Goya"

A few years ago two friends gently yelled at me. Remonstrated, perhaps. They insisted the first thing I had to do every morning, once ablutions had been made and coffee dripped, was to write here. And I did.

And now I don't, not frequently, not daily, and to my loss, because readership notwithstanding, I discovered that writing some assurance--the Google statistics I can consult--my quick jottings were read at least by one person. The sense of contact served to boost my spirits. Most simplistically, it made me happy and set me up for a good day. An hour well spent beats vagrant time (I'm not sure what vagrant time is, but I like the sound of it).

Writing poetry also boosts and antidepresses but in a different way than writing in a blog, in the way stormy weather forebodes and then the storm breaks and there is sunshine, skies blue as the English countryside's (I rely on the Nineteenth Century novel for the shadings of blue).

Breaking that down, my spirits feel heavy, raincloud like. I don't understand it, I never do, I think I'm upset. And then I write a draft and I'm no longer heavy. Like storybook enchantment my intention has to be honest. I can't stage things, can't realize my sadness can be remedied by picking up my pen or laptop. I have to chance on the cure.

Each time it is required I forget what will work and each time I discover it.

I would like to remember in the essential way memory and work collude and start writing here more.  Who knows if that will happen but at least there are three drafts of poems and perhaps more on the way. I'm not a pretender in at least one sense. In at least one way, the way of writing poems, I'm a poet.

Write it out, girl: just the fax; incest

Mid-1999, I was working for the great Condé Nast empire. At that point I may have still have freelance. My time there was short as it usually is for me. The thing is, that as I stood at the fax machine, punching in numbers to send some document to H.R.--I was not in the great Time Square building where shoulders could brush against Anna Wintour's, but a pale office suite on Madison Avenue--it hit me.

My body registered the strangest and most unexpected muscle memory of incest. Me being as verbal as I am, I received a telegraph from my corpus reading something like: There's a reason you were so remarkably unhappy a teen.

Except it was probably more like the neon extravaganzas up and down Broadway, flashing images. In my case they were not of the latest Hollywood stars.

Taking the long view, which I am able to do spot on (I am supremely logical too often), I wasn't surprised. My weird ups and downs and other various of my emotional states paralleled those I'd read were the case for women who'd been ill-used by family. It made sense--huh, well I saw that coming--and at the same time I was stunned. Flattened.

I decided to trust my body with what it was telling me--and no more. I wasn't going to point a finger or pretend to know specifics. My body hadn't specified, although my memories begged for a rolling list of credits. Equally and more importantly, I wasn't going to let this bit of information fall back into my body for another slug of years. 1999? Jesus, Lord have mercy. I was 50.

I have experience parenting myself and parented this: Best thing it to tell three friends--and soon. I'm still pretty proud I chose to do that. I had--and have--really trustworthy pals who can hear the worst and not faint. I phoned three of them and described exactly what I felt at the fax machine and why I was telling them.

They heard me.

Of course I couldn't resist the fax/facts connection. Even as the first buzz of memory came to me, I thought of Jack Webb, Dragnet, Just the facts, ma'am.

The unpacking of this revelation is the work of a lifetime, conscious or not. In other words, I was unpacking before I could see what was in the suitcase, and once I had access its contents, my unpacking was more useful.

Why tell you this? I am sitting here, reading a novel (Robert Harris' The Ghost, in preparation for the new Polanski movie) (isn't that funny: Polanski, the rascal misuer of young women; sidebar: he should stand trial, though I can never forget what it was like in L.A. during the Sharon Tate murders and trial--Polanski has led a life).

Where was I? Oh, here in this great chair my friend David gave to me (from his living room), with a host of ideas coming to me for possible blog posts, and me pushing them away, preferring not to write. So I have come up with an ultimate tale in the spirit of: Tell it! Say it!

Write, girl. Whether it's about an old difficult memory or a book I'm reading, write, share, there's no reason to keep secrets. Don't wait for some great idea. You already have it. Don't wait.

Note: That's Anna Wintour, up there. I considered using an image of the famous $35 million cafeteria with titanium fixtures, but, hey.