Life of Wry

(This picture doesn’t really go, but I’m being spontaneous. And oh my god, but I love this picture.)

Coming along at a perfect moment this morning – I was drinking a cup of coffee, reading, and thinking about if or what I might write today – was this comment about spontaneous versus deliberate writing:

Deliberate writing [..] so often ends up dense and ponderous, as we over-pack every word and phrase with so much meaning. Spontaneous writing is what you’re thinking now, it’s immediate and […] takes surprising turns.

Like I said in my first post (waaay back in March 09), this blog, at least in part, is about experimenting with various writing styles. If anything, I tend toward more deliberate and less spontaneous. I tend to over write, which I think is a sign of lack of writing confidence .

It’s funny, after heavy journal writing for about 20 years, followed by nearly 20 years of email, twitter, chat and various other social media platforms, you’d think spontaneity would reign. It does, but when I write for real, it tends toward overworked.

I like technical writing or at least writing technically. I like my writing deliberate, structural and orderly. Not a surprise, I suppose. I tend to be literal, linear, precise, detail and process oriented. I seek clarity in all things. I like to work a piece of writing until I’ve squeezed all the excess juice out of it.

I like to focus for focus’s sake. I’m a person who sorts M&Ms into rows of like colors and arranges the bathroom cabinet by body part. (Is there a therapist in the house?) I see the world in patterns. I like my world tidy, categorized and containerized. I imagine technical writer types are puzzle people, people with OCD tendencies, declutterers, linear thinkers, organizers, planners.

Makes some sense, huh?

I probably missed a bet when choosing careers; I could have written vacuum cleaner manuals.

What seems really liberating, though, is a writing process that is more spontaneous, less intentional, less uptight, less careful. The kind where you open up and let it flow — personal, intimate, authentic, unmeasured. Straight from the heart.

Stepping out – to be spontaneous, uncontrolled, messy, suggestive, seductive, vulnerable – seems hugely challenging. But, hey, maybe I’ll surprise everyone and write a poem. It could happen.

[I’m goofing around with fictional prose.  This piece has no beginning nor end.. and I probably won’t return to it.  The characters are based on a couple I watched today at lunch.  I made up a bit of a story to go with them.  For a visual, I grabbed a photo of a pair of older folks… I met them in Brazil last December.  They don’t really fit the bill, but it’s better than no picture at all..]

Jack was an elderly man.  He moved through the restaurant with an unsteady, uneven gait.  His eyebrows, gray and woolly, deepened into a ‘V’ above his eyes, which were trained on an object somewhere ahead.  His right hand stiffened into a shape that was part claw, part fist, and in his left hand he clenched a wad of keys. Walking required so much effort, Jack seemed unaware of how unnaturally he held his arms, and how curled — more out of habit than necessity — his shoulders were.  Indeed, Jack looked as though he were shoring his entire body against gravity itself.  He was irritated with the hostess, who had greeted them warmly at the hostess stand, but who had swiveled so deftly through the densely packed tables in the dining room that she was now completely out of sight.  His wife, Bea, was at least a few turns ahead, and he was about to lose her, too.  Jack was more than annoyed.  But this was not unusual.

Unlike her husband, Bea was not above using a walker.  In fact, she loved her walker, which she sometimes referred to as her magic carpet.  She admired her husband’s determination and his noble, if not stubborn, fight to remain independent of the tools of old age — the walker, the magnifying glass for reading, the diapers, the Lifeline cord in the bathroom.  But at the same time, she grew tired of his futile grasp at youth.  She took pride in her effortless glide through the dining room, moving swiftly between the tables, her head held high — maybe a little too high.  Part of her felt like she was on display to people who might look pityingly upon a pair of 80 year olds, and part of her was showing off for her obdurate, willful husband, always a few body lengths behind.

Arriving at last at their table,  Jack didn’t have the energy to protest the fact it was not the booth he’d requested when making lunch reservations a week earlier… reservations that were, in fact, unnecessary for a Tuesday at 11:30.  He sat down heavily, letting gravity do most of the work, and then quickly righted himself and got straight to business like a cat that’s fallen off the edge of a step.  He rearranged his place setting, relocated the salt and pepper, and put his Pontiac key ring on top of the napkin dispenser. He didn’t suffer indignities well, but he put a good face on them.

Bea was all smiles, too many of them, Jack thought.  Her eagerness embarrassed him.  Though, really, if he could be honest with himself, he was less bothered by her eagerness, and more weary of his own crankiness.  More and more these days he felt like a spoiler.

Bea was always excited to be eating out.  She enjoyed the chance to fuss with her makeup, wear a little extra jewelry and put on some perfume.   She looked forward to wearing something other than her well worn housecoat. Today she wore a pair of yellow slacks that were generously cut and held up with a thin, red, faux leather belt.  She wore a floral blouse and a pair of red, patten leather loafers.  She did not like sensible, rubber soled lace-ups; her shoes were her personal stand against the dowdiness of aging.  The more she clip-clopped through a public place, the happier she was.  Especially if she clip-clopped at a rapid pace.  Her fashion signature was her propensity to wear silly socks.  Her choice this day was a pair of white ankle socks with musical notes on them.   She knew they hardly matched the pink, yellow and red flowers in her blouse, but she quite enjoyed them anyway.

Jack was oblivious to all of this, but he was not oblivious to her enthusiasm.  On some level, it saddened him that he could not be a better companion.   Bea was not deterred.  She took a few moments to carefully park her walker and place her sweater neatly over the handle.   Then she took her seat in a chair to Jack’s right, as was their habit, so she could speak into his good ear.  She quietly gestured to him to remove his sunglasses.

The hostess, satisfied that her customers were at last situated, placed menus on the table in front of Bea and Jack.

Jack ordered two Manhattans without looking up. In his prime, he was accustomed to issuing directives. This was as much a part of his young man’s persona as stubbornness and impatience defined him now.  These days, he clung to the trappings of his younger, surer self like someone overboard clings to a line, often to Bea’s bemusement.  The hostess, also without looking up, replied that their waiter would be along to take their drink orders.  She removed the extra place settings and left.

Jack rearranged the salt and pepper.

Bea breathed deeply and fluttered slightly in an unconscious effort to get things back on track.

I want to share a picture I ran across today.  It is one of those pictures that captures a human moment so fully and so faithfully that it just takes your breath away.  And makes you glad to be a human.  It also moved me to writing.. something I haven’t done in months.

First, this blissed out man is Bruce, and he is dancing with his oldest daughter Karina, who, of course, has just gotten married (I’m not at this wedding).  The mom, not pictured, is Julie, my childhood friend and neighbor. Julie and I haven’t seen each other but a few times since high school. She lived two doors down and, with Katy, the girl who lived in the house between us, we formed a regular threesome.  We were part of a larger pack of kids in a very kid-rich neighborhood a long, long time ago.  Julie’s father was an extremely kind man, and was the obstetrician who delivered me (and my three brothers) into the world. Julie and I have reconnected on Facebook, and yesterday she posted this picture, one of many from Karina’s wedding this summer.  When asked, she said it was ok for me to share.

Anyway, I saw the photo and thought it was moving.  So moving, tender, beautiful, and lovely.   And as I said, it prompted some thinking.

I’m thinking about how one lives life.  What’s good and right and important.  What are our wisdoms, how do we give to others, what do we contribute to the greater good, what do we leave behind.   At 54, they’re topics worth thinking about.  As someone who’s kind of retired, or maybe not, with a 12 year old son and a lot of healthy years ahead, people and actions and priorities are definitely on my mind.

I’ve had a lot of time to think in recent months.  A huge part of my summer was spent on a massive organizing project.. where, literally, every storage box in my possession, every drawer and every closet, was emptied and every item therein touched, stared at and resolved.  For one thing, it was a long, long trip down many memory lanes, and for another thing, the very fact I organized every (really, every) aspect of my life on earth, frees up so much psychic space, I’m just sitting here rattling around in my own liberation.

Whatever that means.

Really though, I’m going to write about this mother of all organizing projects because it was that monumental, that turning pointish, but for now I just need to say that besides clearing the decks in a profound and literal way, it afforded me a lot of think time, and I spent it on my past, present and future.

So along comes this photo.  And I’m looking at the expression on Julie’s husband’s face as he dances with his now married daughter.  There is so much there.. love, contentment, a certain peace.  It says tons about life: the love he has for his wife, the love they have for their three children, the love and kindness they are passing on to their children (the way Julie’s parents passed love and kindness on to their three children).  There is no doubt in my mind that Karina, and I don’t know her at all, will pass along those same kindnesses.. because that’s the way it works.  A child raised in a family of love will not go off and murder anyone.  She will not start any wars.  He will not, through anger and self-righteousness, commit horrible atrocities.  He probably won’t even be mean.

What if everybody were loved like this?  Wouldn’t we all be better off?  Wouldn’t the world?  Wouldn’t we nurture a finer peace and leave the world in safer, more sane, hands?

Couldn’t a lot of love go a long way?

I know.  Cue music.  Apologies to anyone reading this who knows me to be maybe more cynical and wry (that is the name of this blog, after all), or who knows I’m having a hard time with my own crazy anger these past few years.  I know this doesn’t really sound like me at all.

I’m just happy thinking it may all come down to love, and thinking that kindness is a worthy goal.

Because it’s just not that hard.