Monthly Archive for January, 2008

Compassion and Tiny Num Nums

Published on January 25, 2008 in Uncategorized. 3 Comments

On Tues­day night I babysat, then drove across town to cat­sit for the week. Being in these homes is a lot like walk­ing in a for­eign mar­ket with­out a guide, using my hands and mouth to guess at the value and ori­gin of every object. I feel drained. I feel a ter­ri­ble short­ness: of life, of reach, of under­stand­ing. And there are pho­tos every­where to dra­ma­tize this feel­ing. I also feel how much my body needs to be touched.

The two year-old I watched the other night kept wak­ing up scared. I think I messed up her night­time rou­tine and when she went to sleep things just weren’t right. Sev­eral times I heard her cry­ing out and had to go hold her.

The first time I read her a story (actu­ally it was just a series of words that started with the let­ters I and J).

The sec­ond time she kept point­ing to her par­ents’ bed­room. When I car­ried her in there she showed me their baby mon­i­tor, which was unlike any I’ve seen before. It had a screen stream­ing video from a cam­era fixed directly above her crib. The image was black and white and grainy, like look­ing at a sono­gram, or night vision sur­veil­lance tape, which I guess it basi­cally is. She held the mon­i­tor, turn­ing it off and on and say­ing, ‘Baby.’

The third time, I car­ried her to a soft chair that was wide enough for me to lie on with my knees bent and she slept on my chest. Her weight made my ribs feel weak. Her weight made it like I had very thick skin, or blub­ber. Like I could, with extra effort, breathe under water. Her weight was per­fect and I scratched her back.

After I put her back in her crib, I didn’t know what to do with my time. I had the urge to eat myself sick. I checked the baby mon­i­tor fre­quently and watched her chest rise and fall. I stood in the kitchen and felt very depressed by their pantries full of noth­ing but CoCo Puffs and Crys­tal Lite and the freezer full of Jenny Craig meals.

Taped to the refrig­er­a­tor were two com­puter gen­er­ated graphs with num­bers on the y axis and dates on the x axis. Every two days they were graph­ing points in pen­cil: their weight. A bold, red hor­i­zon­tal line indi­cated their ‘goal weight,’ where they hoped to soon pencil-in a point. His graph was blue, hers was pink.

Do peo­ple really do this? Do they really mean it? Can you live with a two year old body of such per­fect weight and really take his-and-hers com­pet­i­tive weight loss graphs seri­ously? How can you have a grow­ing lit­tle sack of body in your house and fill your shelves with noth­ing but shit? This upsets me. People’s homes do not elicit my com­pas­sion, only the peo­ple in the homes. I can imag­ine a day when a baby will be very nec­es­sary to my well being and capac­ity for compassion.

Speak­ing of com­pas­sion, I don’t really under­stand what it is any­more, but I miss it. I think I used to have a lot more of it.

A Poem Found Here and Here.

I can imag­ine a day when a baby,

also called the gift of mercy,
will feel the desire

to relieve it. Doc­tor, who is moved
by the uncon­di­tional wish?

Sen­tient beings? A per­son?
A peo­ple known as the Remote?

Beings be freed by nov­els based
upon the fur free message!

By the suf­fer­ing! By under­stand­ing
of the British science!

My fash­ion is a need dis­cov­ered,
a splin­ter group is my mind,

abover our own is the inter­ces­sory
prayer. Abover Our Own is the title of

my novel on the fur free mes­sage,
and com­pas­sion was originally

from a peo­ple who were orig­i­nally
from feel­ings and the desire to relieve it.

In this other house where I am cat-sitting (by the way, Emily, what’s the name of your cat?) I have not been dis­gusted by the liv­ing space. It is lovely. But I still feel lonely and like I wish there weren’t any pho­tos on the dresser. I watched the end-half of Love Story and the name­less, senile cat curled up on my lap and I cried.

I did not like this movie because it was, in my opin­ion, entirely inhu­man. Every­thing hap­pened on a slick tra­jec­tory. The fact that she dies in the end does not make it any bet­ter. It made me think of all the ‘tru­isms’ that I no longer take for granted as tru­isms. I don’t know how to explain this more specif­i­cally except that it made me think about phrases like ‘the human fam­ily’ and ‘the his­tory of man’ and ‘live life to the fullest’ and wish that they indi­cated some­thing that is real.

I started to read a book on the his­tory of lan­guage and I felt bet­ter. Lan­guage grew out of some­thing and goes on chang­ing and chang­ing and break­ing apart and respond­ing to our alien­ation. Lan­guage is of and for and because of alien­ation. Last night I became obsessed with the phrase ‘tiny num nums’ like it per­fectly described some­thing I was look­ing for. This phrase will grow into some­thing sat­is­fy­ing just for me.

What I am say­ing is that a stranger’s home will take on the fea­tures of the thoughts you bring into it–much like we project things onto for­eign cul­tures. Lately I am always in a state of mind where I won­der about life and feel some­thing between ter­ror and a blank wall in my mind. Being in these homes makes me feel like I am walk­ing around in a phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of that state of mind. Most of the arti­facts are mute to me, some things offer a sense of inter­ac­tion, and then there is one small, roam­ing body that makes noise to get my atten­tion and wants to fit its whole self against my warmth. Where, I won­der, is that body roam­ing in my mind?

if some­thing is too much i can’t look at it if it’s too much i can’t have any of it if there is too much there i have nowhere to look

i like things that are like tiny num nums i need things to come to me in tiny num num size i have a fil­ter that lets only tiny num nums through

Clear, unpretentious, genuine writing.

Published on January 19, 2008 in Uncategorized. 3 Comments

dixon.jpgI inter­viewed Stephen Dixon by mail. My let­ter to him is ner­vous and inde­ci­sive, try­ing to ask good, bold ques­tions and then apol­o­giz­ing for ask­ing them. His response, in gra­di­ent type­writer ink, melted me down and then stabbed me in the best way. I read Meyer, loved it, won­dered what Stephen Dixon would really be like. Then, in the space of a cou­ple days, I got all these very per­sonal and un-flashy flashes of him. A voice­mail to let me know he’d put his let­ter in the mail; the let­ter itself, with frag­ments of a novel in progress typed on the back (“he does think there was a light fall of snow”).

I’ll tell you what I think you need to know about Stephen Dixon, and then let you read his let­ter. It’s so good on its own, unclut­tered by my think­ing. Stephen Dixon has writ­ten 27 books, taught at Johns Hop­kins, won awards for his fic­tion, and become a McSweeney’s beloved. He retired last year and he’s around 70 years-old. He’s racked up lots of praise, all of which notes how guile­less and read­able his work is despite being exper­i­men­tal and “avant gardist.” He’s got a gen­tle kind of humor we can all relate to and, bot­tom line, he just writes a lot, doggedly, and peo­ple are fas­ci­nated by that.

Meyer tells the story of a aging writer who is try­ing to plow and cir­cle his way out of writer’s block by sim­ply writ­ing what’s in his mind (“Let’s see, he thinks; maybe something’s in there”). What results is like a story cycle, with mem­o­ries told and retold, feel­ings exam­ined and reex­am­ined. A whole life stands before you on wob­bly legs. Yet, the book is supremely digestible, I think because it is inti­mate and true to the way peo­ple think; in other words, his form is unique but he’s not just mak­ing stuff up.

.….….

Jan 7, 08

Dear Alisha:

Firstly, let me say I’m par­tic­i­pat­ing in this inter­view more because my pub­lisher wants me to than that I want to. I feel that way because I’m not very good at explain­ing myself and work habits and why I write and what I write about, and I’m absolutely ter­ri­ble at explain­ing or deci­pher­ing any one par­tic­u­lar book.

Yes, it’s all in the book, all of what I wanted to say and how I went about say­ing it. Each chap­ter is linked, and the book shows how much I’m more inter­ested in struc­ture and time and tenses than in telling a story. I tell a story, or Meyer, per­haps my stand-in, tries to tell a story, and per­haps the story is that there is no story and he finds no way of telling it.

The last chap­ter sort of grabs up the pre­ced­ing chap­ter and if my ways and non­story aren’t evi­dent by then, it empha­sizes it now.

But don’t be dis­cour­aged. You sound very intel­li­gent and astute and your ques­tions are very good and I’m sure your work will go well and I won’t end up feel­ing I’ve embar­rassed myself in writ­ing once more. What’s wrong, in other words, is not the inter­viewer but the inter­vie­wee. Also, know that although I’m retired as of July 1st of last year, I have less time to work on my work because of a num­ber of per­sonal cir­cum­stances at home, one of which isn’t that I’m more fatigued with age. I feel good; it’s other things.

The novel might, in part, be about aging. But that’s not it at all. What I wanted to do was tell a story and bring forth a life and his­tory of that life by writ­ing around it all. Things slip in, what he was like when he was much younger, his work, his rela­tion­ship with his wife, his inter­est in sex and cre­ativ­ity and his frus­tra­tions when he finds he’s not work­ing on any­thing, or hasn’t for a week or more.

The lat­ter is some­thing how I’ve felt, but I don’t know if I feel that way any­more. I am still an obses­sive writer but not as much. I love writ­ing and it is the time when I am most happy and con­tent with myself. I love mak­ing up things or retelling things or going ever deeper into things with each work, and what bet­ter activ­ity for that than fic­tion writing?

The rep­e­ti­tion you speak about is more a deepening.

I think your take on my novel is fine and sharp, but I’ve heard a num­ber of takes on it and they’re all good. We don’t all see the same thing in a work of fiction.

Ques­tion two; no, I don’t have that urge. I just don’t enjoy answer­ing ques­tions about my work. It takes time, the tak­ing of time away from the lit­tle time I have–not life­time but worktime–to write. But I’m answer­ing your ques­tions, or cir­cum­vent­ing them, and not dis­lik­ing the expe­ri­ence. What sort of ques­tions do I like to be asked? None, about my work, although if I were forced at gun­point to cite one it would be “the mechan­ics of how I work.”

Ques­tion 3; the plain speech is some­thing I’ve grav­i­tated to as a writer. My writ­ing used to be com­posed, in part, of a lot more com­pli­cated and even tricky speech. I am very spe­cific as a writer. I tell my sto­ries mostly through dia­logue or para­phrase. I love plain speech and very acces­si­ble writ­ing. Clear, unpre­ten­tious, gen­uine writ­ing. I hate flow­ery writ­ing, arti­fi­cial writ­ing, famil­iar writ­ing. It’s why I can’t read most fic­tion, con­tem­po­rary fic­tion. I usu­ally feel I’ve read it before, the story and the writing.

Now, I repeat myself con­sid­er­ably in my fic­tion. But as I said, its eas­ier to relive in fic­tion an expe­ri­ence I’ve already writ­ten about in my fic­tion, because then, to repeat myself, not only can I go deeper into the expe­ri­ence but by repeat­ing myself it shows how impor­tant that expe­ri­ence is in my fic­tion. Meet­ing for the first time his wife is an exam­ple. In my work in progress–I really call it a page in progress, since some pages take a 100 takes and a week to write. But that meet­ing, that first meet­ing, which some­times repli­cates the first meet­ing with the woman who was, three years later, to become my wife, is the most impor­tant meet­ing of my life. I am telling it in a dif­fer­ent way this time, in my new novel, His Wife Leaves Him, where they meet at the ele­va­tor after the party, rather than at the party. But I love that expe­ri­ence and will prob­a­bly be writ­ing about it the rest of my life.

The writ­ing of Meyer, Q 4, wasn’t effort­less. It was ardu­ous at times, almost always plea­sur­able, and the trick was to make it seem as if it were effort­less, writ­ten effort­lessly. It some­times isn’t easy to sim­plify and con­nect chap­ters. To go deeper while mak­ing it look easy. I wanted Meyer to be a good effort­less read and a funny emo­tional story. If you noticed, the wife is almost never shown but his feel­ings for her are evident.

You men­tion I go from past to present; but you for­got to allude to the con­di­tional. A lot of my writ­ing is about the con­di­tional. What if and so on.

What avenues did Meyer lead me to in my writ­ing? Noth­ing much. Once a novel or story’s fin­ished, I for­get it and start some­thing else, usu­ally the next day, and find out what I want to write about. One word leads to another; one line to another line. One long para­graph to the next. One chap­ter to the fol­low­ing chap­ter, and finally, one book to the next. But I try to make it all new and fresh and original.

Best and thanks,

Stephen

.….….

I have a lot of thoughts about some of the things he touches on, espe­cially “plain speech” and being “more inter­ested in struc­ture and time and tenses than in telling a story,” but I think its bet­ter to just leave it at this for now: read his book(s). Also, what’s your favorite part/line? This let­ter is ripe for some found poetry.

What fol­lows is my let­ter. Read if you’d like, but its wholly unnecessary.

.….….

Dear Mr. Dixon,

Thank you for the oppor­tu­nity to inter­view you, and for the plea­sure of read­ing Meyer. Meyer is my first expo­sure to your work. What a lucky gig–I get a free copy of a good book mailed to me and then I get the author’s address so I can con­tinue the con­ver­sa­tion begun in my head while read­ing. What­ever ques­tions I have can go imme­di­ately to paper and into the mail, with some promise of an answer. I have to admit that I feel a bit stumped by all this free­dom. I don’t know how one should struc­ture a let­ter like this. Do you need to know some things about myself? I should think so. I am a 22 year-old girl, recently grad­u­ated from col­lege, liv­ing with my par­ents and one of my two broth­ers in Santa Bar­bara, Cal­i­for­nia, the town where I was born. I work in the box office of a the­atre com­pany and try to spend my free time writ­ing and read­ing. I have a blog, which is where this inter­view will end up. I think about aging way more than a 22 year-old should, so Meyer had my attention.

The thing I really liked about Meyer is the way you pre­sented old age–if that’s what you were doing–as a sort of rhythm rather than a par­tic­u­lar image or expe­ri­ence. Aging, as medi­ated by Meyer, is pri­vate and full of rep­e­ti­tion. It’s this rep­e­ti­tion, and his need to com­mu­ni­cate, that also pushes Meyer to invent. Aging is the process that both threat­ens and invig­o­rates his cre­ativ­ity. What do you think of my take on your novel? I guess I’m just gonna come right out and ask, is Meyer an account of what get­ting old is like, or is it say­ing some­thing about what get­ting old is, what it means. (This is prob­a­bly not the kind of ques­tion you like to be asked, you can just say some­thing unre­lated if you prefer.)

Fol­low up ques­tion: Do you have the urge to answer every ques­tion about your books with, “Read the book”? If yes, how do you deal with this? If no, or some­times, what sort of ques­tion do you like to be asked?

If we are get­ting to know Meyer through his writ­ing, then it’s the anx­ious yet delib­er­ate pace, the cir­cu­lar pat­tern of revi­sions, and the stub­born attach­ment to plain speech that are most telling. Is this the per­son that you wanted to show? What does his writ­ing conceal?

Tell me some­thing about the process of writ­ing Meyer. While read­ing it, it’s hard to imag­ine that it could’ve been any­thing but effort­less. At the same time, it shows a great deal of restraint. Was it very dif­fi­cult or very easy? Was it hard to bal­ance writ­ing about the past while mak­ing the story about the present?

What’s next? What avenues and new ideas did Meyer lead you to in your writing?

I’m done ask­ing ques­tions. Of course, feel free to add to or sub­tract from this inter­view as you see fit. It’s dif­fi­cult to ask ques­tions about a semi-autobiographical book with­out mak­ing approx­i­ma­tions of the ‘truth.’ Cor­rect and clar­ify as needed. Again, thank you so much for your time. I really can’t wait for your response, and to read more of your work.

Sin­cerely,

Alisha Adams