Comma Dot Comma

So medieval! (Pics courtesy of Dr. G’s sister, Marie)

It was a Klingon kind of day. Everybody had much larger foreheads than usual and they kept banging them into lintels. The ceiling had partially resolved to stop keeping its distance and thus advanced and retreated as it felt respective waves of confidence and self-doubt. “Am I too aloof?” my ceiling kept asking. “I usually define it as shyness but, I don’t know, sometimes I wonder if it’s just a euphemism for standoffishness. I’d like to make more of an effort to reach out; it just feels so unnatural everytime I try it. Hey, want to hear a joke? What did one wall say to the other? Meet me at the corner. Ha! Ha! See, that’s friendly, right? That’s relatable.”

“You’re in my personal space,” I said. “Could you back up a bit?”

“Ouch,” said this woman with a striking forehead. She had misjudged the height of the doorway.

A few posts ago I bestowed some of my writing advice upon you without your specifically asking for it (except Mike, he asked for it). Therefore, I have compiled a list of advice that other people give me about my own writing. My genre of choice is poetry, and the stark incontrovertible reality of the poetry world is that almost no one in it reaches a wide audience and absolutely no one makes any money off of it. The best you can hope for is an occasional pat on the back and, eventually, with the gradual accumulation of publication credits and prizes, an office with a window at a liberal arts school.

All of this is preamble to say that there are well-meaning people out there who wish me more success than I wish for myself. They persevere in trying out different ideas on me to get me to turn from the Path of Doom. They also try to help me identify what I might be doing wrong. Or they enjoy a letter I’ve written or a story I’ve told and hope for more of the same. My general reaction to such tips is to feel grateful for the motive behind them and then giggle while I compile them into a list. I might get tired of poetry some day, but that day is far off. Without further ado, the list:

• Write children’s books now, while you still remember what it’s like to be a child.
• Write policy journalism, such as for the Atlantic Monthly.
• Write a screenplay and option it for some quick money.
• Write humor like Erma Bombeck.
• Rejection slips are a sign that it is time to change direction.
• You should be a travel writer.
• All the best writing comes easily.
• You have the science of writing down, now work on the art.
• Poetry may be a high art form but no one reads it.
• You should use your gifts for the Kingdom of God.
• I’ll say one thing– you’re honest.
• Narrow your focus.
• Try to pick subjects that are accessible to a wide audience.
• Market yourself.

So all this grammar talk has got me thinking about rules and memorization and how cool they are. I’m hoping it’s so passe to assert such a thing, that it is cutting edge again. My mom landed a job teaching junior high history recently, and she asked me what I remembered most fondly from my own history class days. “Memorizing things,” I told her. She gasped in a surely-you-jest manner; she is the queen of multisensory, integrated, project-based learning. Maybe if I had gotten to make cheese and debate the Indian Situation and map out exploratory journeys like her students get to do, I would have said that instead.

But no, what I loved most was memorizing the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence (When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another…) and the Gettysburg Address (… our forefathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great Civil War, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure). We also memorized the Preamble to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

I can’t recite any of them wholly, yet their flotsam and jetsam knock against my thoughts as I scrub an elbow in the shower or walk at a certain iambic pace down the sidewalk. I remember my dad’s nonsense versions of pop songs better than the real lyrics, as well as other silly verses he’d recite (Ladies and gentlemen, hoboes and tramps, cross-eyed mosquitos and bow-legged ants…) plus the poem our class memorized in sixth grade (Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows…). Shel Silverstein contributes a fair amount, too (Sarah Sylvia Cynthia Stout would not take the garbage out…).

We did all the things kids usually do in Catechism class at church, including singing songs and staging nativity plays and cutting things out of construction paper and talking about life choices that made Jesus happy; and yet I am most grateful for the many prayers we memorized (light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, one in being with the Father, through him all things were made), and the familar phrases of the Mass itself (on the night he was betrayed he took the cup…).

In my late teens, memorizing scriptures carried me through the darkest and most sightless months of depression (do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…), and just the other day I relished singing along with Sinead O’Connor on the radio, from first verse to last (Went to the doctor and guess what he told me, guess what he told me, he said girl you better try and have fun no matter what you do, well he’s a fool, ’cause nothing compares to you…) and Shakespeare’s sonnets often come to mind for no reason (if snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; if hair be wires, then black wires grow upon her head…). These days ee cummings gets me out of bed (i thank You God for most this amazing day, the leaping greenly spirits of trees, the true blue dream of sky…)

This motley collection of words and phrases creates a visceral connection to the history of my nation, my family, my faith, my own rites of passage. I could look any of them up on the internet should I be so moved; but memorized, the words take on a special separate life. They come to me unbidden, out of context, or at just the right moment. They are the voices of my people. It’s only recently that we humans have learned to preserve our most precious words in writing; our bodies are still designed to learn them by heart.

When I teach creative non-fiction, I try to get my pet peeves out in the open right at the beginning. I act as bossy as possible and exaggerate to make my point. For lack of anything interesting to say, I here present my bossy writing tips, exactly as I share them with students. Of course, none of them apply to you, my most admirable fellow bloggers. And there is no reason you should listen to me, either. But it might be fun to think about how lucky you are not to be my student.

[UPDATE: I have decided to put the Mister’s comment in the body of this post because it deftly breaks every single rule in a mere 36 words. Good job decimating the language, Mister! Extra credit to other readers: Can you spot all the egregiousness in his comment?

“Seemingly, its just very corroborated that your a very nice, savvy and judicious preceptor whose students are very much luckier then there ever likely to infer. And thats why you should always listen to your elders.” ]

1. Excessive Use of Big Vocabulary Words: I know it’s tempting. But don’t do it! Multi-syllabic words do not contribute to an impression of intelligence when they are not the right words. They can obscure your meaning, prevent a reader from connecting with your work, or even mislead. Intelligent writing is, above all things, precise. Compare:

“To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.” — Bertrand Russell.

Now, my thesaurus version:

“To aggress and magnificently triumph over hysteria is the genesis and commencement of what has been heretofore known, and will henceforth be known, as sagaciousness.”

Which one sounds smarter? You’re right — the first one. Which one is more accurate? You’re right again– the first one. Keep things simple when you can.

2. Moralizing. Opening and/or closing paragraphs do not need to contain a moral lesson, such as “hard work pays off” or “keep trying even if you fail at first” or “family relationships are important.” For an essay to be worthy of existing, all it needs is to be interesting. Of course, interesting essays often contain life lessons. However, those lessons are part of the fabric of the essay, revealed in details and events, rather than tacked on at the end. Instead of using a moral assertion to end your work, try using an image that seems significant– you will likely find that the moral comes through elegantly without being stated.

3. Overwriting. Sentences which are full of repetition and piled-up adjectives suffer from overwriting. These characteristics indicate that you don’t trust your reader to be smart enough to figure it out. Readers resent this. They think, “I got the idea in the first three words, why does the author keep going on and on? I’m not stupid!” This admonishment is a little tricky, because I am always after students to add more detail to essays; but the key is to choose appropriate details. In many cases, less is more.

Example of overwriting: The tears that came welling up from her big, round, blue eyes were like beautiful pearls cascading from her eyes.

Better: Her tears shone in the lamplight.

4. Padding sentences. Avoid the following words, which add little to a sentence: just, really, very, nice, so, a lot, practically, seemingly. Most of these words are used to add intensity; try to replace them with more specific nouns, verbs, and adjectives.

Example of padded sentence: I was just so happy to get a really nice present; it was really big and very exciting, a lot more than I had expected.

Better: I couldn’t stop clapping when I got the present. It was the size of a washing machine and wrapped in fluorescent green paper.

5. Basic Grammar and Spelling Errors. Get your facts straight on your/you’re, their/there/they’re, then/than, its/it’s.

Correct usage of each:

Eat your peas.

I hear you’re the King of Spain.

We took their breakfast cereal when they weren’t looking.

He’s headed to the landfill? Why would he want to go there?

They’re full of big ideas.

I ate my pomegranate and then I went to the water park.

You have much bigger hair than I do.

We annoyed the dog when we combed its fur.

I’m going out because it’s Saturday night.

In a way, I don’t mind getting gray hair. It’s like naturally produced glitter, and I enjoy thinking of myself wandering the highways and byways with a head of hair that will give you a flash or sparkle when you least expect it.

I am, however, deeply perturbed (can one be deeply perturbed? Or is perturbation by nature a rather mild experience?) by the tensile strength of those wiry buggers. It doesn’t matter how many other hairs are trying to weigh it down, if it is newly growing in or freshly broken off, it will find a way to jut straight out, sometimes as much as 2.5 inches in the air.

Its very nature makes me want to destroy it. It stands tall, proud, a little less than straight because even in straightness it will not conform, like an artist or revolutionary in a totalitarian regime, rising from the masses and shining alone in the light of truth. Like any regime, my response is immediate and uncompromising: the hair must be mown down! Plucked from among its brethren and sent somewhere where it will never be remembered! Down with upstarts! Let the sorry fate of this hair be an example to the rest.

You can be a little unusual, I tell my hair after crushing such a strand into a bent snarl and flushing it down the toilet in full view every remaining strand. Be any color you like, be a little shorter or longer than your neighbors, convert to Veganism. It’s all the same to me, I say. But beware– should you stand up from amongst them, should you try to assert your own will in a way that makes me notice– you, too, shall be destroyed, and in an even more gory, public way than the last one was! Let this be a lesson to every hair among you.

What our President’s hair would look like if he did not do likewise with his own unrulies (I rest my case):

Before I get to the long-winded part of this post, Liz led me to this Sacred Spaces ten-minute interactive prayer site. I’ve gone through it a few times (it changes every day) and have found it lovely. Those Jesuits! Gotta love em.

Sometimes people ask me what it feels like to be a Christian. If they ask at lunchtime I am inclined to say “Hungry,” especially if they are eating some deliciousness containing avocado and bacon, and I am eating the one un-mushed corner of a peanut butter and honey sandwich that got mangled in the bottom of my purse. Then I eye their deliciousness and sigh heavily.

Other times I say “Mork from Ork.” He looks like a regular human apart from the bad fashion, and most of the time in casual interactions nobody notices anything different about him. Even if he tells someone straight out that he’s a citizen of another planet, they laugh and let it pass because they assume it’s not so, or that he’s being metaphorical. Anyone who spends enough time with Mork, though, learns that he can drink through his finger and sit comfortably on his head and communicate with his boss via telepathy: “Mork calling Orson, come in Orson.” He spends a lot of time feeling out of place and unsure of why people do what they do. He’s doubly an outsider: not human, yet banned from Ork for due to his human-like qualities.

Though I can’t drink through my finger, I have got bad fashion and enjoy sitting upside down on occasion, especially with some light reading, say the funny anecdote section of a Reader’s Digest. Most people don’t care whether I am a Christian, so long as I don’t take up more than my share of space on public transportation and wash my hands before leaving a restroom. Even if I announce it, they are likely to pat me on the shoulder and say, “Isn’t that nice.” (It seems that most people in this country are Christians of one stripe or another, though, strangely, in my current set-up, almost nobody I see regularly identifies themselves as such. )

The two ways I really identify with Mork are his outsiderness and his special powers. As I move through my ordinary day I am aware that there is another presence in me and in the world around me. I want to describe it as another layer, but that wouldn’t be right, because Jesus is all mixed up in it. I feel warmth or an ache in my chest when Jesus wants me to pay special attention to something. I start praying and looking around, really noticing. (I am really happy when Jesus wants me to notice chocolate candies in the break room.) Sometimes I will feel an almost physical nudge– to speak to this person, pray for that situation, give something or act in some way. Sometimes an overpowering sensation of love will sweep over me and I will have to stop what I am doing and start crying. Those swept away times are rare.

I can sometimes go days or weeks without that warmth or nudge. Mostly what I get on a daily basis is mental nudging. When I start complaining about a boss or some nasty cookies, there’s a gentle nudge reminding me to shut up. Or if I don’t shut up, I get nudged later reminding me to apologize or in some other way rectify the situation. When my thoughts start down certain paths, I get nudged out of them most of the time.

All this warmth and love and nudging doesn’t make me an obviously better person than those around me, but I think it does make me better than I would be without it. I love saying “Mork calling Orson, come in Orson” when bad or good or puzzling things happen; my automatic response is to turn to Jesus with it, whether to yell or complain or ask for help or collapse. Jesus and his pop don’t mind having Orson for a nickname I don’t think. They answer to it, which is a good enough sign for me.

So on the one hand I got the SECRET POWERS to change myself and the world. Which is pretty fun most days (except I don’t like getting nudged out of bed on work days). On the other hand, it gets a little loney because the other peeps don’t got the secret powers yet. I get a little too Morky for my non-Morky friends at times, and too non-Morky for my church people at other times; but this whole dang planet is just not Morky enough for me! When’s it gonna Mork out, I ask you? We should all be rescuing raw eggs and sleeping in the closets!

Driving around in our 1989 Mazda is about as embarrassing as audibly farting in a crowded elevator.

It’s not the many street-parking-related dings or the rust spots. It’s not the crooked license plates or falling-off bumpers. It’s not the fact that the driver’s side window won’t roll down so we have to open the door at every toll booth. It’s not the different rattles you hear depending on the idle speed. These particulars give our little car a certain jauntiness that makes me proud.

I cringe because of the clouds of acrid smoke that billow out for the first five minutes when we start the car in the morning. Right when the clock radio goes off I start praying for a nice strong wind. Every time we start the car I think about how I am counteracting all the reducing, reusing, and recycling I do (Yay 3 R’s!), as well as the city bus riding and walking. We try to drive away quickly, without letting the car warm up, before our neighbors see us. We have to hold our breath the whole time we are stationary, which puts a limit on how much idling we can tolerate.

Sitting at a long light recently amid the hazy blue swirls, we noticed a person frantically waving outside the driver’s side window. We cracked the door open. “Your back tire is on fire!” he said. We dutifully pulled over to inspect. No, the tire was fine. He had simply mistaken the thick exhaust for something more dangerous.

There’s nothing we can do. The Mazda has over 200,000 miles on it and the engine valves are just plain leaky. We wanted to just nurse it along until we were ready for the Next Phase, taking the grimaces from the passing public as our just due and adding oil every time we filled the tank. Just last week I realized and accepted the fact that I sometimes prefer saving money to upholding my good girl civic and environmental principles.

But now, fate has tipped its hand, perhaps forcing a decision. The water pump has “fallen to pieces” and the timing belt’s gone. The old-car question rears its ugly head: Pay huge sums for the repairs or call it a day, turn out the light, close the chapter, cash in the chips?

Will we never again open its sunroof or squeeze it into a parallel parking spot no SUV can manage? Never again triumph at fitting Ikea furniture or cross country skis into it? Never again cram in two or more 6 foot + members of my writing group and laugh at the way their heads bump the ceiling? Never again tell the story of how we got the car (Given to us by a church friend in a moment of flummoxing need)? Is this it for the MX-6?

First off and unrelated to post title: if you are a prayer, please commune/icate with God for my friends Mike and Stacy. They are in an uncertain and scary moment in a long yearned for, hoped for, prayed for, everything for, pregnancy.

Now, on to scary marriage.

Events of late have conspired to make me consider again that worthy institition. One day recently while wandering around the leaf-strewn neighborhood near my work I found myself keeping pace with a young guy. Old school punk rock: mohawk, leather, chains, tatoos. We pretended we weren’t walking the same speed or direction for awhile, but at the stoplight he gave in and asked directions to the local tavern. I gave them. He said he had to get there fast, before his wife’s shift ended. Why? He had just found out she had cheated on him.

“I’m so sorry,” I said lamely. “I hope the two of you can find a way to work it out.”
“I don’t,” he said, pointing at his cell phone. “This is the third time! She just lies to me and lies to me!”
“That really sucks,” I said.
“Yes, it does. We’ve only been married four months.”
The light changed, he went his direction and I went mine. I prayed for him as he walked away but felt I had missed an opportunity of some kind.

Then a friend told me that marriage was scary, because how do you keep from being sick of each other? This person’s parents, married more than 30 years, talk to each other through the dog: “Spot, mommy’s idea is really harebrained, don’t you think?” “Spot, don’t listen to daddy. he’s so unreasonable!”

Then this weekend I went to a wedding. It was a nice one, full of happiness and hope and the Holy Spirit. But inevitably weddings stir up talk of marriage and inevitably the Mister and I are the longest-wed in the group of acquaintances huddled by the hors d’oeuvres table. And inevitably we are called upon to dispense nuggets of insight. I’m kind of smug about my marriage so I don’t mind talking, to a degree. But part of me realizes that every marriage is as unique as the two people who make it, which puts an obvious limit on the value of any nuggets coming out the nugget dispenser.

Anyway all I can say is that marriage is scary. Not because I might get cuckolded (can a girl get cuckolded?)or sick and tired of the Mister (can’t imagine such a thing!), but because with every passing year I invest more and more in a losing proposition. My career choices, my friends, the music I listen to and movies I watch, where I live, my sex life, my politics, my spiritual path: all deliberately and permanently shaped around my spouse. (Not to say we share all the same tastes and opinions, just that we constantly take the other person into account.) For us, to be happily married means both of us committing to live life together. To change together. To make sure we keep eating out of the same bowl, so to speak. The more we do this, the more there is no going back to our old individual lives. We have a really good time, even in the sandpapery spots when life gets so rough we’re all abrasions.

But what is this thing we’re making together, this marriage? What’s it going to be in the end? Nothing. Zero.
One day, sooner than ever, I’ll lose the Mister, or he’ll lose me. It’s a basic fact, no getting around it. It will be like a sweater unraveled into separate piles of colored yarn. But we keep doing it anyway! In at least this one case, the Now is more than the End. How scary, and how great. Worth it, I suspect.

And that’s the only nugget I got, if it even is one.