THE OLDEST STORY ON EARTH

This essay "The Love of My Life" by Cheryl Strayed?

Read it. I read it the other day after my idol Roxane Gay posted it to html giant. I raced through it. My heart was pounding--cliche, however, in this case, completely true. Afterward, I sat there at my desk, dazed, mouth open, all blub blub crying at the end.

HOW DID SHE WRITE THIS? That is my thesis about "The Love of my Life" by Cheryl Strayed. That is my literary analysis of this essay in total.

If I wrote this essay, I could jump off a building afterward, screaming YAHOO!

How does a person know why they do what they do so well?

It's nearly impossible to look at yourself so unflinchingly. Have you ever tried? Somebody asks you why you did something, and you have no idea. Or you have an idea but it's surrounded in the protective padding of Lies and you know it. Or you have an idea but it's surrounded in the protective padding of Lies and you don't know it.

Everybody says Know Thyself, like I'm sure that's on a piece of paper hanging above people's desks all around the world. But nobody really does. Who would want to?

CS that's who. It's like Cheryl Strayer died and hovered above her body for twenty years, watching her heart like a doctor would, with objectivity and care--and then she came back to life and wrote this essay.

CS's psyche is like a barge being pushed by a barge. It is large and solid and in charge. It holds a lot of nasty stuff and transports all of it where it's supposed to go--in her case, to the page. CS's psyche is also like an open pleasure barge. You could totally hold a pageant or party on top of Cheryl Strayer's psyche. It is so strong and keeps everything in its place. Nobody would get drunk and fall over the railing into the water.

The Big Book from Alcoholics Anonymous--no, I'm not in AA--has this passage in it that basically says that there are some people who will never recover and goes on to explain "usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault. They seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty. Their chances are less than average. There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest."

Cheryl Strayed has this capacity. Most definitely. If this were a high school yearbook, Cheryl Strayed would be voted Most Likely to Kick Heroin and Then Write An Awesome Essay about It. In fact she did. It's called "Heroin/e">Heroin/e" and it's about being all wrecked and junked up in her early 20s.

Do you know there is such a thing as catastrophe theory? I do because I keep coming across it, looking it up, and then immediately forgetting what it is, and looking it up again.

"Catastrophe theory is a theory of mathematical structure in which smooth continuous inputs lead to discontinuous responses."

The guy who came up with the theory didn't really mean "catastrophe" as in "disaster" though. He just meant "smooth continuous inputs" cause abrupt changes.

As in:

Smooth continuous input = I keep putting a needle in my arm and shooting heroin in there and I feel great.

Discontinuous response 1 = I have abruptly stopped feeling great.

Discontinuous response 2 = I have abruptly died.

Am I applying the theory right? I'd like to think so.

When I think of catastrophe I always think of my friend Chris. He is gay and grew up in Speedway, Indiana in the 70s but it gets better. His family is Amish and thus, Chris hates anything faux old-timey/quaint, like one time he refused to go back to this restaurant where we ate because we had to drink water out of jelly jars.

Chris once told me this story about his step-mom who lived with his dad in a trailer. It's possible her name was Charlene though I'm not sure. In any case, she talked about herself in third-person consistently, with no irony, and called herself Char-Babe. As in "Char-Babe is going down to Hoosier Pete's to get a pack of Kools."

One day Chris and Char-Babe went to the grocery store and it seems Char-Babe was having quite a day and nothing was going right. It was just one of those days.

Well, wouldn't you know it, when Char-Babe and Chris got out to the car, there was a hole in one of the bags and it broke and everything was going everywhere like cans of Spaghettios rolling under the car. Char-Babe was beside herself. Holding the broken bag, she screamed:

WHAT A FIESTA!

That is my favorite catastrophe story to date and that says a lot considering it is ancient. An ancient story. Other than The Epic of Gilgamesh, it is, perhaps, the oldest story on Earth.

As you can imagine, when Chris and I lived together, we said this quite a lot, like if Burritoville forgot to put the tofu sour cream on our burritos or if we ran out of toilet paper.

To this day, when I am feeling especially tried or worn down, I return to What a fiesta. I recommend it. It's comforting. It's all-encompasing. It does and says it all.

Yes I am inciting ridicule, but I'm not judging Char-Babe as a whole. How could I? Our gas has been turned off for a week because we didn't pay our bill and we keep turning the knobs, checking to see if it's back on yet. What a fiesta.

This morning my daughter and I stood in front of the stove, expecting nothing, but when we saw a flame, we were so excited we jumped up and down and clapped.

"Yay! she said. "We can make this now!" [Holds up Pillsbury paper roll of dough in triumph]. "But we better make it fast before it's too late."

[As an aside, just checked again. Gas is not working. [WAF!] Zaz is crying behind me now. She really wanted those rolls.]

Could Char-Babe do better than that? Maybe.

PLOT-O-MATIC ROBOTS AND OTHER THINGS OF BEAUTY

BUSY, RG: Roxanne Gay writes about how we are all busy being busy at HTML Giant. I love her. Her non-fic writing embodies "good person," doesn't it? It does. That was rhetorical.

CHILD ABUSE AND DRUG USE, BOTH RIVETING OF LATE: I just read the Nancy Werlin's YA thriller The Rules of Survival. Total page-turner. I love reading about child abuse and neglectful, crazy, drug-addled parents. I guess everybody does. That said . . . the book hasn't knocked around in my head since. It didn't get bigger with time. It didn't age well. Oh well. And I just read it two days ago.

Here's an essay by Elizabeth Bachner at Bookslut about reading YA. Leave me alone, people. I'm in that same place right now. Aren't these five sentences beautiful?:

I can't ever change back the other way, unlive a day or a month or a decade, unmeet someone, unfall in love, unread a book. But I can dump a pile of shampoo on my hair, and go out into today's morning with cold, wet ears, and fly myself to Paris. I can order some crepes Suzette somewhere, or some other flaming dessert. I can crack open a new book and come out the other side. Everything will be as it should be.

THE BEST BOOK IN THE UNIVERSE--WHICH, LUCKY FOR ME, JUST SO HAPPENS TO HAVE CHILD ABUSE AND DRUG USE IN IT: Speaking of child abuse, has anyone read Heather O'Neill's Lullabies for Little Criminals? I did. Last summer.

Speaking of aging? This book is like a 20-year old bottle of La Piana balsamic. The protag is a 12-year-old girl named Baby who is being raised by her father Jules in the red light district of Montreal. Jules has a minor heroin prob and Baby eventually falls into the hands of charming pimp named Alfonse. God. Damn. Such. A. Good. Book.

H.O'N. has stories at This American Life too. See My So-Called Jesus. Description from TAL: Heather O'Neill reflects on what it would mean to be the savior of all mankind, but still in middle school.

Also, H.O'N. has a great reading voice and I saw her interviewed on YouTube for some Canadian literary event maybe? I don't know. But she smiled nonstop and seemed the nicest person on earth. I like nice people. I like writers who are nice.

THE PROOF CRUSHER: I'm back in touch with a friend who was like a sister to me in grad school and that makes me happy. We're sending each other poems. She found out yesterday her book is getting published. More happiness. She sent me some comments on a poem, describing a poem of mine as a knot--knot being a good thing. Then she said her issue with the poem was its title drains its juice and makes it a kind of proof. She suggested reversing lines (thinking of the title as a line), seeing what would happen if I played the poem backwards. So I did. I've never played a poem backwards. Great advice.

PUTTING YOUR WOLF ON BACKWARD: I interviewed Matt Hart about his second collection of poems WOLF FACE. He said this, which was kind of incredible to me: "I ALWAYS revise as I'm reading. Things will pop into my head that I have to try right then and there. I've cut entire stanzas at readings. I've read poems backwards." Proof crusher!

PLOT-O-MATIC ROBOTS AND OTHER THINGS OF BEAUTY: Still obsessing over plot. I've been playing around with Dramatica Pro software, trial version. I actually read Dramatica's downloadable 400 page book on story theory. That was dumb to do. I'm sure I'm the only person who's ever read it.

So how the software works is it asks you all these questions and then it has this basic outline of scenes that is populated with notes based on the questions you've been asked to answer previously. Here's an example of the template:

Scene 1: Prologue The needs of a story determine the desirability of a prologue. The prologue can be used as a device to hook the audience's attention; establish a certain aura (romantic, violent); provide backstory; foreshadow certain events.

Scene 2: Chapter 1-Initial Situation --A novel usually begins with some sort of temporal and/or spatial initial situation. The initial situation gives a description of a particular, sometimes emphasized prosperity. This prosperity serves as a contrasting background for the misfortune to follow. From this situation stems the orders or advice to not interfere with this prosperity--to maintain the status quo.

Scene 3: Chapter 1Introduce Protagonist --Introduce and establish protagonist's point of view--the issues and concerns that shape the protagonist's outlook.

Scene 4: Chapter 1Absence --One of the characters may absent her/himself from "home." This may affect the initial situation, protagonist, or both. Examples: 1. Parents leave for work, vacation, war 2. Death 3. Younger member of generation leaves The leave-taking of a key character prepares for the misfortune, creating an opportune moment for it.

And so on and so on. Sixty scenes. It's like the 90-page design documents I fill out at workblueprints bigger than the thing I'm building.

I emailed my friend K some examples of Dramatica scenes and she wrote back, "Whoa. Cool. Though it makes me think one day, robots will rule the world."

My friend and I have an idea for a collab YA book. "We will be bots together," K noted. "Collabo-bots."

IEP MEETING, I.E., NINE EXPERTS SITTING IN A CIRCLE COMPLAINING ABOUT MY SPAWN: I have an IEP meeting for my daughter in less than four hours and I want to shoot myself. Here are some things, among others, I am asking for:

Occupational therapy
Speech therapy
Physical therapy
Vision therapy
One-on-one aide
Touch screen computer

Actually my daughter already gets all those things--except for the touch screen--I'm just asking to continue services. I am bringing my friend J for moral support and intimidation. She was once a lawyer. Not some stanky janky one either. She went to The University of Chicago. That doesn't mean anything to me but J says to lawyers it's everything, like "Ooooh, hoooo hoooo, so and so went to Yale, Fancy, and so and so went to John Marshall, that poor retarded ruined thing."

J is representing me as Friend who just so happens to be a former attorney. She is my force of strength and support this morning even though she's never worked in education. But she has managed sales of really big buildings, so I think she will be able to help. I have a good feeling.

She has nerves of steel. When she was working, I used to ask her sometimes, "Don't you get super nervous at closings and start thinking, "OMG this building is worth 2.5 billion dollars. What if I mess something up and sell it for 25dollars?" I realize education is not property. The mind of a child is not a building. Not literally at least. Still, I have hope for J's utility. We will emerge triumphant.

As noted in subtitle above, IEP meetings feel like Nine Experts Sitting in a Circle Complaining About My Spawn. They're unbelievably painful. They're like doing taxes, like, black and white, there it stands: Annual income, five dollars.

Weeks before my daughters' IEPs, I start feeling depressed. I dread them. Last year, driving to ours, my husband and I threatened to divorce each other. Later, after it was over, we were like, "Ha ha. Sorry about that! IEPs are so stressful though, aren't they?"

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING IN A DREAM ABOUT BEING IMPORTANT: The book LOVELY, EFFORTLESS, SAFE by Jenny Hollowell? Michael Schaub wrote a review of it at NPR. I like him, he likes it, so would I like it? Would I like this book? I have to say, I'm intrigued. Even though I find actresses creepy and desperate, even Broadway ones, even book ones. Still. A 20-something protag is always appealing. They're messy and ridiculous, openly dreaming about embarrassing things like being important.

THINGS JOYOUS, THINGS TERRIBLE PART II

My friend Michelle reminded me that she wrote a column for me when my kids were born. She was working at The Post-Trib.

"I'm not sure if you ever saw it," she said. "You were a little busy."

I did see it though. I clipped it. I have it in a wooden box for them. Along with two unused diapers the size of a Post-It. Oh, and two knitted hats (from Hannah and Winona and Calla, Michelle's craftabulous daughters). Those hats keep a thumb warm, let me tell ya.

Here's the article. Michelle has won all sorts of awards for her column/editorial writing. To have such a writer writing about my two cookie faces? However crumbled up they were back then?

How lucky am I?

Lucky yo.

Taking the Time to Look at the Past and the Future
by Michelle Holmes
The Post-Tribune, Friday, Nov. 19, 2004

Nearly 94 years and a billion breaths separate Zahra and Amira from my grandmother.

In their Chicago hospitals, the twins' mother reminds her tiny babies to breathe, jostling the little girls when they drift off to sleep in warm incubators.

Sixty miles east at the assisted living home, my mother lovingly adjusts, for the thousandth time, the oxygen tube that offers another moment, another day, another week of life to her own mother.

And somewhere in the middle -- at the very beginning of two lives, and at the very end of another -- I am offered entry.

* * *

In the neonatal intensive care unit, the first thing we do is wash our hands.

Three minutes at the sink, scrub to the elbows, rinse from the top down.

When you weigh less than 2 pounds, a germ is no small enemy.

Purses and backpacks, coats and cell phones are piled in a heap as we step into the nursery.

A sign warns us to tread lightly. "Shh, we're growing."

I do not speak at all, following Amira's parents through the dim room.

My eyes scan for other small lives, but mostly I see tubes and wires.

We'll visit just one baby here. Then the trip across Chicago for another badge and clearance to a second, brighter unit, where parents dare to hope aloud.

Once cradled together in the pre-birth darkness, Zahra and Amira do not know how many miles stand between them now.

Inside their isolettes, each fights her own epic battle.

On this day, almost before they look at their daughter, Amira's parents glance at the computer that hangs above her, where flashing numbers spell out her hold on life.

Briefly, their eyes meet, then turn with pleasure to the tiny form in swaddling clothes that they have grown to love so fiercely.

Today is good.

We can reach inside and hold the tiny hand in ours.

We can exhale.

* * *

Lunch is over at the Sterling House. A lady in a handmade sweater dozes in the lobby. In the dining room, kitchen workers gossip. The halls are quiet.

My girls and I tiptoe to my grandmother's door and peek inside. Eyes closed, she rocks in her easy chair.

Until she turned 90, I rarely saw her sitting.

At 60, she worked two jobs; at 70, she tarred her own roof; at 80, she raked leaves and scrubbed floors; at 85, she chased my babies across summer afternoons.

Today, her heart offers oxygen to live, but not quite enough to move.

So our visiting is different.

At the nursery, we look to the future. Here we listen to the past.

Stories of her father, on a Halloween, with grass skirt and ringed nose, traveling by bus across New Jersey with his famous lemon cake.

Of her uncles, and their "Christman Flying Circus" offering airborne thrills across the Eastern seaboard.

And of the chocolate molasses pancakes her mother, on her deathbed, requested for her mourners.

On this day we can forget the tubes and pills. This day she is ringingly alive, and taken in by the wonder of it.

"I've really lived a couple of hundred years," she says, her eyes shining.

And it seems true.

It is a good day.

And we can exhale.

BITCHING ABOUT AWP IS LIKE WRITING A VILLANELLE

Is this going to be an "original" post? Probably not.

But like my friend K says, "Sure, everyone does it, but it's like a traditional fixed form now. Bitching about AWP is like writing a villanelle."

It's only October, and I am debating going to AWP in February.

Some people hate going to AWP. Because they think it's stressful. At AWP in April, my friend L and I walked around, and over and over, we heard people say, I AM SO STRESSED. OMG ARE YOU STRESSED? AWP IS SO STRESSFUL.

Later at the hotel, L said to me, "Can I tell you that I LAUGH at people who think AWP is stressful. LAUGH, Liz. Do you hear me laughing? Because I am. I am laughing at those people."

I hear her point. Still, it is stressful, being smart enough to know that such a thing as AWP even exists. It is stressful, being rich enough to spend $1,000 to drink beer and go to poetry readings for four days. Can I keep bringing up Africa? See previous I AM A TOTALLY OVERWORKED INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGNER, DO YOU HEAR ME? post. God, I love Africa!

But seriously, here's is my quandary. I am a geek and when I read the descriptions of all the interesting panels at AWP, I was very excited. Then I went and I was very sad. Those panels made me feel sorry for all of us, for every single person on earth.

My friend K says, "Panels are not the point of AWP. The point of AWP is Book Fair! The point of AWP is Hanging!"

So it seems if I decide to go this year, I have to get over the idea of going for the panels--in other words, going to gather knowledge about poetry and poems and "the industry" of poetry in a formal setting.

"This is a fantasy," K assures me.

It's just that . . . instructional design conferences? They are so dang useful. It is the whole point of them: Utility. In my experience, IDs are not above shit that is useful. I like that about them very much. If you go to an instructional design conference, here is what will happen:

1. You will read the panel description--crystal.

2. You will go into that panel and it will start on time and be in the room it says it's going to be in and be led by the people who are supposed to be leading it.

3. You will be delivered exactly what you were promised. An hour of interactive, dynamic, on topic, applicable knowledge that blows your head off, even if you thought you were not that interested in the subject.

4. You will walk away, uttering a sentence such as, "God, I never knew cognitive load theory could be so titilating."

To be fair, it is the whole point of the instructional design conferences, i.e., the instruction. One upping your peers. Making your panel more interesting, memorable, useful, and fun than your neighbor's. Stuffing your awesome and oh-so-instructionally-sound panel in your lame-o instructional design neighbor's panel's face.

At ID conferences, one is expected to bring one's game to the panel. And those design nerds? Oh, they bring it. Design nerds take games and gaming seriously.

Part of it might be, there are no superstars in instructional design; there is only good design/bad design. But that's not true really. There are superstars in design, even the nerdy kind of design (instruction). But if they gave some stupid presentation, they would get rotten tomatoes thrown at them just like everybody else. They know this, so they would never ride into a design panel on their high-design famousness and blab for an hour, all bumbly jumbly.

Whereas with AWP, I get the strong sense that as long as somebody is "famous," he has license to rattle on loonishly or read a boring and/or insane lecture off an I-Phone. After all, "That's the guy who wrote a 'well-known' poem in 1974. There must be something brilliant knocking around in that bobbly head somewhere. Even if it never comes to surface during this hour-long panel."

Considering I've never been much of a "starstruck" kind of person, I found myself sitting through the panels, wondering a couple of things:

1. Why are there no rotten tomatoes flying through the air right now? Poets are not athletic enough to throw rotten tomatoes maybe?

2. If five people know you--three of them former students--how famous does that make you?

3. Not to beg the question, but . . . most of you are TEACHERS of some kind, aren't you?
Has anyone else gone to any other conferences? If so, how did the panels compare to those at AWP?

Maybe I'm just a bad panel picker? Is there such a thing as a bad panel picker? If so, how does one self-identify?

THINGS JOYOUS, THINGS TERRIBLE

I once dated a writer. Given so many circumstances, the word "dated" feels very small, but words are small, so there you go.

In any case, when I was with him, I would tell him all kinds of things--things joyous, things terrible. And sometimes, before I could finish an entire story, I could sense him making structural decisions.

Should it break on

joyous

Or

terrible?

I used to find it unnerving, frankly. But today I am too tired to be unnerved. Today I know we all die, and then there's nothing left, unless there are words, and why shouldn't there be?

The girls' sixth birthday was yesterday, and all day I thought, I should be happy.

I also thought, My daughter is still in diapers. My daughter is still not talking.

I rubbed my daughter's back as we fell asleep and when I was so tired, I could barely think of anything, I thought: My daughter.

In the morning, her seizing wouldn't stop and the ambulance came and D got in and I stayed.

She hates her IV, D reports.

The fact is, she can't use her left arm very well but she's trying if it means she might be able to pull the IV out of her right.

On the phone I sing goodnight to her. It's 8:30: Goodnight, goodnight. Goodnight, goodnight.

D comes back on. "Not responding."

Later, I feel really lonely. It is possible for so many things to be one person's fault. Not even an evil person. Even when you don't want to believe this, it's true. I write my friend to tell him.

L--I wish I could talk to you. I have made so many bad choices, Rake. I can't begin to tell you. Sometimes I feel like everything I touch is on a fast track to Pain City.

R--You can't blame yourself for that. You can't, and hey, I am not in Pain at all, I'm in Cincinnati. I know there are others, too.

L--I am stupid. It is really depressing though. Maybe even more depressing that after 20 years you're the only friend I can tell without trying to be okay with it? I am not okay with it.

THE PLOT DOES NOT THICKEN

I've never taken any fiction classes so I'm teaching myself about the mechanics of writing fiction. It's fascinating. I'm learning so much.

So far I've learned: The last two books I've written are lost causes.

My MFA barely taught anything about the technical aspects of poetry. We workshopped our poems. I got comments about my poems from my peers who were as good or bad at writing poems as I was. Anything techie or form-related that I know about poems (and I'm certainly not an expert) I learned by reading handbooks and then parsing up poems on my own.

This makes me wonder: Do most MFAs in fiction learn the technical aspects of story telling? Plot, scenes, scene building, acts, climax, pacing, organization, etc. Or is the focus more on style?

I've asked some people about plot, and I've heard, "Oh just read novels. That's the best way to learn."

No. It's not. Not for me. Because it's not like I've never read a book of fiction before. I feel like I could read hundreds of books of fiction and come away not knowing anything more about plot than the knowledge I started with, i.e., stories have beginnings, middles, ends, the middle is the longest part, there's a high point near the end during which something big happens, somebody changes, then all the loose ends are tied up, The End.

I read hundreds of books of poems but before I read formal handbooks that broke certain things down, all I could say after reading a poem was: "That poem is about this. I really like this poem. I like how it sounds. I like what it means. I like how it makes me feel. I really don't like that poem. It's terrible sounding and it's boring too."

Not that these kinds of observations aren't useful. It's good to know what poems are about and to know whether you like the sound and meaning of them. But it doesn't help you understand how they're working, what structures are in place, what kinds of decisions the writer is making and why--if you're me. Maybe some people learn everything they need to know that way.

In the same way, I feel like in order to understand structures in novels, I need to know what I'm looking for and then REREAD the novel and slice it all up and look at each element closely and then look at how everything fits together.

I find handbooks handy. I find frameworks calming.

Sometimes I read a bunch of reviews of a movie before I watch it. Sometimes I read reviews or descriptions of a movie as I'm watching it. I feel like I can see what's going on better if I do that. It doesn't "ruin" the movie for me, knowing what's going to happen. Not to mention, I don't know what's going to happen (visually)--seeing that I've only read about what somebody else thought they saw. My husband is a visual artist and he finds this behavior completely baffling.

THE PRACTICE OF POETRY by Robin Behn

A POETRY HANDBOOK by Mary Oliver

RULES FOR THE DANCE by Mary Oliver

THE POET'S COMPANION by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux

THE SOUNDS OF POETRY by Robert Pinsky

THE ART OF RECKLESSNESS by Dean Young

THE TRIGGERING TOWN by Richard Hugo

WISHES, LIES, AND DREAMS: TEACHING CHILDREN TO WRITE POETRY by Kenneth Koch

SOUND AND SENSE by Laurence Perrine and Thomas R. Arp

WRITING DOWN THE BONES by Natalie Goldberg [I know I said I don't enjoy books about how to be a writer, but this was the first book I ever read related to writing poetry so I have a soft spot for it. Plus, I reread it about six months ago and thought it was a pretty fun read.]

WRITING THE LIFE POETIC by Sage Cohen [Ditto for this. It's my former classmate at NYU. Go Sage!]

THE BENEFIT OF THE PROFESSION OF POETRY

Here is a short convo I had the other night:

Z: When I grow up I'm going to be a poeter.

L: What's that?

Z: Somebody who writes all the poems.

L: Oh. Why? Why do you want to do that?

Z: Because poeters always have work. They have so much work to do, they are always busy and never out of work.

Lorine Neidecker felt the same way I guess.

Grandfather
advised me:
Learn a trade

I learned
to sit at desk
and condense

No layoffs
from this
condensery

If I could not be a poet, I would be a conceptual artist. I would spend all day making absurd objects that could operate/function usefully if there was a context in the world that allowed them to.

For instance, I might make gloves with a mile of fringe (if Rebecca Horn hadn't already made something like that) with the hope that maybe at some point, there WOULD be a situation that would arise, rendering my object useful, e.g., if one of the miners in Chile was like, "God, you know what would be really great and calming right now? To rub the fringe of some suede gloves between my fingers. Too bad I'm a mile underground."

Conceptual artist is a terribly embarrassing job title though. Rivaled only by Poet. What could I call myself instead?

What would you be if you weren't being whatever it is you are?