An Unpleasant State of Being

Someone is watching from behind a tree. I stare from my hiding place without moving, until my eyeballs harden, until I'm not longer sure he's seen me. What's he waiting for? In the last possible moment before I have to run, light coming fast, I discover I've been held prisoner half the night by a tree, its dead, dense bole carved by moonlight.

(from Fugitive Pieces, Anne Michaels) 

 Here's today's confession: I am bad at waiting. I am incredibly impatient. I can't function when I'm waiting for something. For me, waiting is akin to the sensation of holding your breath for an extended period of time. I can't accomplish anything substantial because my focus keeps drifting to whatever it is I'm waiting for. It's like part of me is frozen, just standing there, completely useless. And then the other half of me is frantically scrambling around. That's why this quote from Fugitive Pieces came to mind. That complete stillness accompanied by frantic mental scrambling is exactly what I feel like when I'm waiting. Right now I'm waiting for something big and it's like I'm afraid that if I move it will evaporate into thin air. And so here I am, frozen in this, the most unpleasant state of being.

Raw

I've been reading a lot of what would be considered 'young adult' fiction lately. This rather arbitrary division of fiction bothers me a little bit, but that's not what I want to write about right now. I want to write a little bit about why I've been loving these books. Now, I should take a moment here to note that yes, there is a lot of garbage out there in the world of YA fiction; however, this problem is not unique to YA fiction, it is a fault of fiction in general. I mean, seriously, look in any fiction section and you are bound to find garbage. Goodness knows I've had to read some of it. So, I'm not saying that this is applicable to all YA literature any more than my praise of other books is applicable to all books that fall in that category. 

My particular reason for loving these books lately can be summed up in one word: rawness. I was having a conversation with Sally the other week about YA fiction and I told her that one of the reasons that books in this category are often so wonderful is that they don't shy away from that sensation that you have when you're a teenager that everything is so important. Every moment, every experience, every inconsequential detail is freighted with significance. At least, I know that's how it felt when I was a teenager. Reading back through some of my journals can be downright painful and leave me wondering how anyone managed to put up with me during those years. Everything is intense when you are a teenager and emotions run close to the surface. As a teen this was what drew me to books. It made me feel less alone.

At some point I tried to stop having my emotions so near the surface. Intensity began to scare me. So I tried to stop. For a long time I made a concerted effort to just not feel much of anything. (This, by the way, is not healthy.) But lately I've been wondering why as adults we shy away from this kind of rawness. What is it that makes us think that it is better to stop feeling deeply? Why do we stop letting little things matter? I'm not saying everything should be as intense as it is as a teenager (remember, my journals from then do make me cringe now), but maybe rawness is not a bad thing. In fact, maybe we should embrace it a bit more. I've been thinking about this and realized that this is exactly the quality that draws me to my favourite authors. Yes, I have books I love because they are beautiful or interesting works of art. Yes, there are authors I love because they simply tell a good story. But the ones that I return to over and over again are characterized by the same rawness I'm finding in the YA books I've been reading lately. Finding significance in things. Allowing your heart to be open. This is dangerous, I've been discovering, but it is also where the potential for beauty lies. Fully experiencing life: this is what I find in Sylvia Plath and Anne Michaels, John Steffler and Michael Ondaatje, Stuart McLean and Alexander MacLeod. It's also what I find in Ann Brashares and Stephen Chbosky, Sarah Dessen and Meg Cabot. And this, I'm discovering, is the best way to live.

By the way, if you are ever wondering what I'm reading, you can check out my relatively new tumblog (a word I despise by the way) At the gates of a new city. This is where I'm chronicling the passages that strike me in the books I'm reading at any given moment. It's more for my own personal record than anything, but you're welcome to check it out for inspiration or to build a reading list for yourself.

To break into the poems of others

The Trouble with Poetry
Billy Collins

The trouble with poetry, I realized
as I walked along a beach one night -
cold Florida sand under my bare feet,
a show of stars in the sky -

the trouble with poetry is
that it encourages the writing of more poetry,
more guppies crowding the fish tank,
more baby rabbits
hopping out of their mothers into the dewy grass.

And how will it ever end?
unless the day finally arrives
when we have compared everything in the world
to everything else in the world,

and there is nothing left to do
but quietly close our notebooks
and sit with our hands folded on our desks.

Poetry fills me with joy
and I rise like a feather in the wind.
Poetry fills me with sorrow
and I sink like a chain flung from a bridge.

But mostly poetry fills me
with the urge to write poetry,
to sit in the dark and wait for a little flame
to appear at the tip of my pencil.

And along with that, the longing to steal,
to break into the poems of others
with a flashlight and a ski mask.

And what an unmerry band of thieves we are,
cut-purses, common shoplifters,
I thought to myself
as a cold wave swirled around my feet
and the lighthouse moved its megaphone over the sea,
which is an image I stole directly
from Lawrence Ferlinghetti -
to be perfectly honest for a moment -

the bicycling poet of San Francisco
whose little amusement park of a book
I carried in a side pocket of my uniform
up and down the treacherous halls of high school.


I know I have been inundating you all with poetic posts lately, but I think that another part of the trouble with poetry is that reading really good stuff makes you want to read more. Actually, that's kind of the problem with literature in general for me. I read something incredible and am struck with this momentary feeling that I should never pick anything else up again, but then I am like an addict who just needs a fix. I break into others' poems on a regular basis. And the more I do it, the more I want to do it. Poetry begets poetry, whether writing or reading it.

Justification

I had a conversation today with someone I count as a friend that really bothered me. In this case it's not what was said, but how it was said. It's that incredulous tone people adopt whenever I talk about school and my academic world. The tone that says, "why would you do that?" and "that sounds like a total waste of time and energy." The attitude that causes people to say things like "I want to do so much more than research. I don't want to sit up in an ivory tower researching pointless things. I want to do something that has actual meaning and significance in the world." The attitude that constantly prompts the question, "And what are you going to do with an English degree?" or "What can you do with a Master's of English?", and not in a genuinely curious way either. I am tired of justifying myself to others. In part this is because I have yet to successfully translate my passion for literature into something that can truly be conveyed to others. So, a lot of my frustration is with myself. But it's more than that. It's the fact that people write off what I'm passionate about so flippantly. I know that I am guilty of this myself on occasion, but I am trying lately to be very conscious of it. I grew up with a group of people who, by and large, knew exactly where they were headed in life. Many of the people I grew up with are in school to become, or are already, doctors, teachers, engineers, nurses, veterinarians, computer experts and government workers. And when I am in those circles of people I often feel judged for not pursuing a "traditional" and "meaningful" profession. Even the people I've met in university who have no idea what they want to do now that they've graduated sometimes seem to think that their degrees hold more value than mine, or that because they've chosen to go into the workforce rather than go back to school they are somehow contributing more to society. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with not wanting to go to graduate school. It is not for everybody. Sometimes I'm not even sure it's right for me. Nor do I wish to disparage those, or any other, professions. They are wonderful pursuits and I am thrilled when, for example, my friends who are going to be teachers light up with passion for what they are learning and doing. I'm irked, however, by the idea that going to school and finding a job are somehow not on equal footing when it comes to their intrinsic value. And I am even more bothered by the idea that seems to be so prevalent in society that choosing to pursue research (unless perhaps you are searching for a cure for cancer or alternative fuel sources or something) is not as important as other professions. No, I'm not curing cancer. I understand that. But literature holds such power and importance in human lives. We are inherently linguistic creatures. We are people of stories. We construct ourselves by telling our own stories. We understand ourselves by our own accounts of our stories. We come to understand ourselves better through an interaction with other people's stories. As Michael Ondaatje says in his novel Divisadero, "We live permanently in the recurrence of our own stories, whatever story we tell." Literature, and art in a broader sense, has the power to be transformative, to be healing, to be enlightening. Again, Michael Ondaatje writes, "sometimes we enter art to hide within it. It is where we can go to save ourselves, where a third person voice protects us." Is it not worthwhile to spend time deeply examining something that holds so much sway in humanity? Is it not worth time to try to understand what our literature is saying about us? I think it is. This is what excites me most about literature and language: the human expression, the fact that it simultaneously reveals and shapes us. Even if you are not the direct reader. Literature seeps into popular culture. It influences everything you see; advertisements, television shows, movies, are all permeated by references to literature. It's role in defining us is so immense that I don't think the full extent of it can even be understood. There are so many other things that I could say this of, art and music come to mind immediately, but the one that I have chosen to pursue formally right now is literature. So, that is why I am doing what I'm doing. That is my rambling and possibly unclear explanation of why I am passionate about literary research and studying. And I'm sorry if that is not good enough for you.

The Feeling of Unbrushed Teeth

- This morning I am at low ebb. I did not sleep well last night, waking, tossing, and dreaming sordid, incoherent little dreams. I awoke, my head heavy, feeling as if I had just emerged from a swim in a pool of warm polluted water. My skin was greasy, my hair stiff, oily, and my hands as if I had touched something slimy and unclean. The thick August air does not help. I sit here lumpishly, an ache at the back of my neck. I feel that even if I washed myself all day in cold clear water, I could not rinse the sticky, untidy film away; nor could I rid my mouth of the furry unpleasant taste of unbrushed teeth. -                     

(from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath) 

This morning was one of those mornings. One of the ones where you haven't slept well the night before and you wake up feeling absolutely disgusting, certain that the day will be horrible and you will feel like a creature that has crawled out of a mucky bog all day long no matter whether you shower or put on your nicest clothes. Fortunately the day turned around significantly and I ended up feeling pretty good.

I am a huge fan of Sylvia Plath (as discussed here, here and here). I kid you not. One of my most treasured books is a copy of Sylvia Plath: The Complete Poems, which I hunted high and low for and finally found in Victoria. I can recite several of her poems from memory and often quote them (for example, the title of yesterday's post is a line from a Plath poem). I wrote a paper on her poem "Daddy" and last year and ended up using it as my writing sample to submit to grad schools. The Bell Jar probably makes it onto my top-ten list of books and I may own a The Bell Jar tshirt from Out of Print clothing. I really loved the movie Sylvia. I am not exactly sure what this says about me as a person, but I try not to worry about it. Anyway, for a while now I have been wanting a copy of The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath and the other week I had to renew my irewards membership so while I was doing that I decided to treat myself to a copy. It just arrived in the mail yesterday and it is all I can do to keep myself from reading it and only it. He writing is so raw, so powerful, so emotional. She was so in touch with the intensity of life. Her every sentence pulses with power and emotion. It's amazing.

What book would you die by?

One morning with nothing to do but wait for lunch, we sat in the long grass and discussed Aunt Bett's brother, Uncle Victor. For some reason he held a morbid  fascination for us, and it was usually Owen who started us off.

     Avery imitated the haughty angle of Owen's head.

     'They say he died when a book fell off his library shelf and knocked him senseless.'

     'What book was it?' I asked him.

     Owen sighed disdainfully.

     'Who cares,' he said. 'That's not the point, is it?'

     Owen, Avery explained, was disturbed that a man who had survived being a soldier in the Great War could die so unheroically.

     'It certainly is the point,' I argued. 'What book would you choose to die by?'

     There was a moment's silence while we all contemplated this question.

     'The Bible, I suppose,' said Tom.

     'Oh, don't be so melodramatic,' said Owen.

     'I'd choose Browning's Portuguese Sonnets,' said Nina.

     'Not thick enough,' I said.

     Then we heard my mother calling and as usual Owen, being the eldest by almost eight years, had the last word.

     'I'd choose Grey's Anatomy or a medical encyclopedia, just in case there was a slim chance of resuscitating me...'

(Anne Michaels, The Winter Vault)

So, what book would you choose to die by?