Nausea

I have always defended a person's right to commit suicide, if it can be called a right. Or a choice. It seems so when people seek out a Dr. Kavorkian to help them. I believe that there is a biological imperative toward suicide in mammals that sits inside the genes of some of us. It is a cousin to the death that sits inside us all. We don't have the choice whether or not to die, and some of us don't have a choice about whether or not to commit suicide. It comes, and is carried out.
Yesterday I learned of the suicide of a person I once knew well. It wasn't a surprise that he killed himself; I still have his ID card from Shepard Pratt. He wore that caul all along.
I have always talked about him from the perspective of the end of our relationship, when he was heading for a breakdown, and violent. He threw me down a set of stairs through a glass door--thinking I was his mother, and hurling at me (hurling me) the rage he felt toward her. "You loved Betsy more than me!" Then he tried to run over me with his car. My best friend was with me, and we still speak of it often. Yesterday, when we were remembering him, I reminded her that I had seen him a couple of years later sitting on a bench on Locust Walk, at Penn. I was seriously ill, on my way into the hospital where I'd remain for 10 days on an IV drip of antibiotics. He wanted to talk to me. I couldn't stop. My friend said he probably assumed I didn't recognize him when he wasn't behind the wheel of his car.
Dark humor. That was a joke he'd have laughed at.
He was the most charismatic, wittiest, coolest boy in our college. Older than me. Irresistible and wildly destructive. I have a picture of him that portrays his characteristic style: a faded blue shirt, khakis also faded worn low on his hips, an alligator belt, his face pointing toward the ground, hands pushed into his pockets, his hair cut in curls around a long thin face. Louche and slouchy. Absurdly thin with veined arms that made you want to be a vampire. Somehow he always seemed to be on the post office steps. You'd say hello, and that lowered head would raise like a horse's heavy head, and in a moment he'd be laughing from deep inside that concave chest. Did I mention the cigarette? There was always a cigarette, dangling from his mouth or pinched between the tips of his fingers.
He groaned when he read. He was picky, and poor writing tortured him. His female fans wrote his papers for him. We all had a laugh when he became a successful magazine editor and writer. Who was his ghost then?
He took me to Disney World when it first opened. Can you imagine going there with a person like that? It tortured him, too. Yet it had to be done. He was from Florida and he had to exorcise Florida. He became a New Yorker, in with the in crowd.
He took me to Martha's Vineyard and disappeared every day. Finally he told me he was going to the gay beach, just out of curiosity. There were many women after me, before he became gay. Perhaps we were all a curiosity too.
I don't think it means anything to describe him.
There was an explanation for his suicide, but those explanations always come from the rationalizations of the living, to make the mystery of self erasure less confusing.
Suicides of sacrifice are far more accepted than suicides that seem to be made of sorrow. One unselfish, the other private. We are terribly afraid of what we don't know about another person, or ourselves. The idea that this lives inside is so threatening it is literally criminalized.
But maybe they are coming, coming from the beginning, like all of death.
I have written all this down the way I always write this blog, in a fast unfurling of a skein I've yet done nothing with. This is only partly elegiac. It's also about something else.
It's about being thrown through a glass door, and feeling ashamed of it. I tell the first part of the story, but not about that feeling. It's sickening, sad, and confusing. Like knowing a person is gone.

A Sweet Boy

Tuffy Loved The Beach

Animals find you. Cats, always: they choose.
But dogs, too. Dogs charm their way in. They know
You're a sucker for a big-eyed grin, a lick on the hand.
Animals find you. They don't just appear in your home
By accident. They come out of the woods, out of the wild,
to be close to the hearth. You think you don't want a pet.
You say you want to travel light, unencumbered. You're free
To stay out late and never know the number of a vet.
You think you're smart not to take on all that work.
Or you think maybe someday, when life is dull anyway.
But an animal chooses when and where. Ask Eve. One
minute you're all alone, and the next, moved by the blink
of an eye, a skyward smile, a flicking tail, you're owned.

My husband called me from work. "I'm looking at the Internet and I see that someone is giving away a schipperke in New Jersey."
"That's weird." It was. Schipperkes are rare. Most people don't even know what they are. We had one called Edie, and I had been asked if she were a wolf, a fox, a pig. The breed isn't related to any other. They look like miniature Belgian sheepdogs, but they aren't. Their story is that they were bred to live on boats and to work as ratters, but this may be a myth.
"I'll bring the ad to show you."
This was meant to be for purposes of curiosity only. We had Edie. We had cats. A child. A small house. Enough already.
He brought this ad home, and swears now the accurate version of what happened is that the next day he came home from work and the dog was in the house.

I had called the number and had a long talk with a young woman who had to give her dog away. The story came out over several weeks but it was this: she had gone to a car dealership to buy a car so she could go to Rutgers where she had been given a full scholarship. The car dealer, a man in his late forties, had romanced her on the spot and she started going out with him. (Oh boy. She was eighteen.) He took her to a pet store and bought her an $800 dollar puppy. (I didn't tell her about puppy mills. She already had this ancient boyfriend--bad news enough.) She and Spaz, as she called the puppy--too young to coordinate all his motions--then moved in with the boyfriend, who once he had bagged her felt a rivalry and a hatred toward the dog. (To understand the monstrousness of this, take a look at some YouTube videos of schipperke puppies. Yes, all puppies are cute, but these are like little toys come to life--irresistibly so.)

The dog had to stay locked in a room and was NEVER ALLOWED OUT. Never went outside. Never sat with the girl while she watched TV. She went to the back room to feed him and change his paper, but he was utterly alone. (She didn't go to college, but got pregnant and was basically stuck in the apartment herself.) She realized this wasn't a good life for the dog and decided to find him a home. I am grateful to her for this.

So I took him. It wasn't that simple, though. We kept him for a week and then my husband insisted we give him back. He was wild and anxious and peed everywhere. I didn't mind, but I have been told I have a high tolerance for crazy. We drove him to the depressing apartment. The skeezy boyfriend glared. The girl put him back in his room and we left, with me heartbroken.

I kept talking to the young girl about him and her boyfriend was threatening the pound--so I took him again, with clearance this time, for a two month stay, during which I would train him and find him a home. He was completely unhousebroken and had never been outside. He knew nothing.
This was in January of 1998. January! House training a dog when there are no scents on the ground, in the snow, in the cold, twelve trips outside a day (I have never liked crate training)...but Spaz, quickly renamed Chaz (somehow I couldn't see walking around the town parks yelling out Spaz! and anyway, if names are destiny...). But the dog was an easy and sweet boy who wanted to learn and please. He was utterly open and would go right up to the scariest dogs in Mills reservation with a big smile on his face, all curiosity and bright expectation, and they'd look at him like, are you fucking kidding me? I am a Rottweiler. What planet are you from, you friendly moron? I had to explain to him what was up and soon enough he got the idea of watching my other schipperke, Edie, who was street smart and cool; when those big dogs passed her she turned around and gave a little nip at their heels, just enough so they'd swing their heavy heads around to look, because they'd felt something...but she'd be playing innocent by then. She got away with it every time. Chaz, whose name morphed through a series of changes into Tuffy, never wanted to be like that, but he backed up Edie while she did it. He never stopped looking after those he loved.

Two months passed, and I found a very good home for him. He was here until a couple of weeks ago. His last night he wanted to stay in bed with me, very uncharacteristic of him; he liked to guard the house at night, either sleeping down near the front door or on the steps on the way upstairs. He could not breathe. He'd had cancer for several months but had been doing very well until that night. All three of the rest of the pets stayed in the room too, to be near him.  I hoped to take him to his vet in the morning but when it because clear he was deeply distressed and uncomfortable, I drove him to the emergency vet to be euthanized. He kept his head outside the window the whole way, both having his last look at life, and gasping for air. I was able to tell him he was about to die, and would be comfortable very soon. When he got the shots he collapsed into my arms. He isn't here anymore, and never will be. The house has lost an anchor.

The other night I was driving home from work and when I was thirty seconds from my driveway, I had the clear thought, "I am about to see Tuffy." I probably had that thought a thousand times but never noticed it. It was part of the background, as he was, in many ways--the least demanding of anyone in the house. "I am about to see Tuffy. But, no, I'm not."

I have had many animals with me in my life. It is a privilege and a mystery in every case. They grow and change in ways people don't, and they remain the same in ways people don't. The language of communion with animals is as complex as the human is willing for it to be. The vocabulary is truly endless. The death of the animal is part of that vocabulary and always present; knowing their life span, every day is a memento mori. So the life is vivid and fresh. Every walk is taken in Beginner's Mind.

Our other dog, Jesse, is still in mourning. She was his companion all her life and utterly bonded to him. Her grief has been deep, and I have tried to spend as much time with her as possible. She is beginning to adapt, just now.

I didn't take Tuffy's ashes as I did for Edie, and for Rupert, a great cat. Their ashes are on the shelf, and rather meaningless.  Instead I have an epitaph, something my son proclaimed: Tuffy is Gentle. He was.

Grazing, Thrilling

Sometimes one feeds on the art of others. During busy times it becomes grazing--poking around to see what might satisfy an urge, balance out an exhaustion, offer up sweetness. This has been a time of grazing, balancing out the intensity of teaching. On my bedside table, just to settle me, as I really do not read in bed:

The Pilgrim Hawk by Glenway Wescott, given to me last summer by the brilliant English writer Sarah Salway, a book I didn't know, my bad--and now I have hunted down all his work and have a stack of it. I'm reading it, one paragraph at a time, again.

A Regular Guy by Mona Simpson. I have read this one a few times, it has some scenes that are breathtaking. There is some Steve Jobs in this book but never mind that. Mona is great.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami. This is a very loose book, loose in the writing, maybe a runner's stretching. It is the only Murakami I have ever read. Larry Dark is reading 1Q84, which is heavy enough to break a few bones.

( ) Hold Everything Dear by John Berger. I love him and always feel braced when I read him. And sad.

Native Speaker by Chang-Rae Lee. I am teaching it again, both in my undergrad course and as a book to discuss in an independent study with an MFA student. So I have read it twice again in the last four months and listened to the audio book. All the stitching and hemming and basting has become very clear to me, but seeing how it is put together hasn't ruined it--this is a good book. IMHO Mr Lee is a great writer. The conceit of this book is very smart indeed--the man figured out a way to write about the alienation of first generation Americans metaphorically. I shall not give the plot away because the small mysteries at the beginning are best experienced. I am not sure if this book really moves me, or if I am jarred by it--the many beautiful sentences and the moments of wisdom have yet to make me cry or ache, but I remember them. I stand in relation to the book much as Lelia, the wife, stands in relation to the protagonist, Henry Park--I make lists of observations about it, I find it a turn on, I pick up on its accent in spite of its effort to be undetectable, and I want it to feel for me as I feel for it, but we're not quite there yet. Maybe that will happen when I teach it yet again.

I needed to graze some art today so went with a pal to Asbury Park to see the Shepard Fairey, a.k.a Obey, wheat pastes and murals recently put up around town. They were like old blacklight posters. Very very fun stuff that hit the spot. And the ocean churned wildly! Wind blew hard down the boardwalk! Thrilling.
Shepard Fairey

Hours and Hours

When I was young I used to read all day. The habit began because of a fear. In the summer of age eight I refused to go to the beach because of a man who terrified me. When I saw him I lost all sense of breath and safety and sometimes fainted. Soon enough it was decided I could stay back at the house--even if the adults thought it a waste of beautiful beach days. Having a near death experience on a daily basis rendered me oblivious to anything beautiful about the beach. So while everyone else went off I stayed home and read.

I lay on an old horsehair sofa on the upstairs porch and raced through book after book--sometimes three in a day. I kept a list of all the books and handed it to my teacher on the first day of school. I was proud of the numbers but more than that I'd created a waking dream space inside myself where hours could pass without my noting time. Look down at the book at 9 a.m.; look up and it is lunchtime. Same for the afternoon. I could spend hours doing other things with equal engagement but I never lost sense of time in the same way. In my reading I traveled to the world of the characters who did not live in time. A scene could take me a minute to read but I'd know it took an hour to live. Weeks might pass in a nanosecond. Nothing was the same as in my world. This going back and forth between temporal realities offered a pleasure and a release from the boredom of child time--waiting and waiting. I could go into books and get away from that oppressive constraint. Not to mention being entertained and surprised. Books didn't hurt me or cause me turmoil or sorrow. I didn't cry unless I wanted to. I could choose to participate in the author's prompt for tears--or I could skip the pages if I didn't want to feel that way in a particular moment. I had I had a sense of my own agency when I read in a way I had nowhere else.

Now over to writing. How much time? How lost must one be in time and to time? Every writer has to figure this out for herself but from anecdotal evidence it seems that the more time is set as aside and given over the deeper and one is able to go. What's down deep? The symbols; the metaphors; the intuitive connections drawn between words and therefore characters. The skips in time. What is necessary. At some point during the creation of a work the writer must enter timelessness in the same sense as the reader.  Most writers have an inkling that this must be true: therefore all the questions at readings about how many hours a day a writer works. This is not a dumb or pedestrian question. It's trying to get at how the magic happens. Though the answer is individual it is useful to hear the experience of others. When do you begin to lose sense of yourself in the world and give yourself over to the work? That's interesting isn't it?

Every writer I know is frustrated when he doesn't have the necessary time. Many wait until they do because grabbing time in between more pressing daily matters ends up being unproductive and can convince you that you cannot write. It can offer the physical release that writers need--the hand gets very dependent on daily exercise--but it's not going to get where the work wants to really happen.

That sensation of timelessness on the part of the artist occurs at some point in the process of creation of all good art.

I used to teach dailiness and habit but now I encourage time. Take a day. Take a weekend. Stay up all night. You remember what that was like. Light the candles. Close the door. Lose track.

That was my plan for today. Unfortunately ...

It Was There All Along

The plot. A plot. To plot.
Some people are born with an innate sense of how to do this and don't think about it at all. For example in Stephen King's otherwise quite enjoyable writing book http://amzn.to/oH47BQ he says very little about plot; I believe he goes so far as to say he doesn't plot (I don't have the book here to check.) Yet he does. He writes plots that keep those pages turning and the money flowing. Every twist he takes on his way to the ending resounds with a ka-ching!

Other people need to learn how to plot. It's a point of craft that can be learned--a good answer to all those many who say MFAs are useless and writing cannot be taught. Plot can be taught; practiced; mastered. Amendment--the basics can be mastered. A great plot is a great theme is a great mind. A great mind is a combination of intelligence and self-honesty. Howevs--I would say that learning to plot is a way of developing the self and the mind because it's a way of organizing and choosing that asks for a lot of thought--deep thought. When you are in deep thought you have an opportunity to cast a glance sideways at your emotions and defenses and see what's up. I guess I'd say that self-development for an artist is different than self-development for a monk or a nun--the goal is different. The goal isn't to exfoliate and polish the inside for a God. The goal is to be realistic about what it means to be human. This is why a lot of great artists are also great jerks--one can be a bit too pleased with one's impulses. No harm in seeing oneself clearly but acting a little good.

One reason plotting is a skill to be learned is that in life we are fascinated by complexity so to shift over to simplicity is counter-intuitive to what we think writing is supposed to be about. Aren't we representing the complexity? Not exactly. We're playing off it; pointing to it; asking the reader to remember it exists--but we're working above all with a math formula--not a camera or a paintbrush.  This isn't obvious in great books because the math is hidden beneath layers of description characterization scene setting etc. And...everything the author wants to say. Ideally the math disappears for the reader and the characters come alive. But the math has to be there. The math is always there--in the most experimental books it's another formula but it's there. The math is the safe place for an author. Once it's in place the paintbrush can be brought out.

I think though that the basic shape of a plot does exist internally in the drama of how our minds and bodies work. This is why there is a universal response to the basic plot formula. It doesn't only represent the raw experience of the world; it corresponds with our interior patterns. We are living our insides all the time. Whether or not we stop to notice we know.

So learning about plot from a teacher is like learning about who we are from a shrink. There is a mirror involved--maybe not a looking glass. Let's say a reflector.

Shane Ruminating On Her Tail