“stronger at the broken places”

I know that you have endured a great sadness. We all have, of course, and some of us hold up under the sadness better than others. Sometimes we move beyond the sadness; at other times we wear it like a shroud. Sometimes the sadness is all that we have left.

“The world breaks everyone,” Hemingway wrote, “and afterwards many are stronger at the broken places.” If he had ended there, one would be able to take encouragement and solace–and even strength–from his words. But no, he went further: “But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good, and the very gentle, and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too, but there will be no special hurry.”

Surprisingly, he wrote this in a letter at age twenty-six to his early literary mentor, Sherwood Anderson. Hemingway, it seems, was fatalistic from a very early age.

He would soon embarrass Anderson, of course, in the savage parody The Torrents Of Spring. The book is largely unreadable, but Hemingway wanted it that way: he and Anderson shared a publisher, whom he wanted to reject the novel so that he could sign with Charles Scribner and Sons. And that’s exactly what happened, although the experience says more about Hemingway’s tendency to “outgrow” and attack his mentors (including Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein) than it does about his literary ambitions.

But, somehow, I digress.

Sadness is a weight, of course, that most people never see. Sometimes we are able to move past it; sometimes it stays with us for an entire lifetime. Sometimes it even…defines us. But that, of course, is something we must try to avoid. It’s a fight, a daily struggle, and at times there is no clear winner. But if you are lucky, very, very, lucky, you just might become stronger at the places which are broken.

“I don’t go out much these days…”

There are still times when I am perfectly content to stay inside all day, ensconced in an enforced solitude that is as much withdrawn as it is literary. I’m sure it’s very difficult for most “normal” people to understand, but there are days when the mere act of venturing into the world is more than a little…frightening. I know at these times that I’m becoming withdrawn; I know it and yet there are times when I can do very little about it.

Don’t wake me, cause I was dreamin’
And I might just stay inside
I don’t go out much these days
Sometimes I stay inside all day*

The odd fact is that I can be incredibly productive on such days; office work seems to take very little time at all, and my literary work sometimes assumes a new music and poetry. Somehow it seems easier to concentrate, to focus, to think, to write, to create, to produce. Which doesn’t mean that I don’t become…lonely…on such days. I do, sometimes very much. Sometimes I reach out to someone, usually with only mixed success. But there are days, though (still), when all I want to do is sleep. There are still days when all I want to be is dead to the world.

You wouldn’t think it would require such great effort to accomplish one of the simplest things in life, that of venturing out into the world. But sometimes it does, and all I can do is force myself to keep going. I don’t always succeed, but I do try. And yet there are still times when I must say: “I don’t go out much these days…”

*Counting Crows, “Miller’s Angels” (from the album Recovering the Satellites, 1996)

“but she breaks just like a little girl…”

I didn’t know Jennifer very long, or in the end, very well. A few months, maybe, during our second semester at college. She lived in Sullivan Hall, one of the oldest buildings on campus, with surprisingly large rooms and lovely hardwood floors. Jenn was lovely, too, with blonde hair, hazel eyes, and a throaty, Demi-Moore like voice that I could have listened to for hours. I thought–and perhaps I was right–that I loved her.

We shared a bed one night, early on, chastely. I was content to hold her and talk, and more than that, just listen. It was something I did fairly well at the time; listening, that is. Hopefully, I still do. She talked about her family and her dreams, and seeing into her as I did, I knew every one of those dreams would come true. Of that I had no doubt at all.

One ice cold morning in January I waited for her in the hall after the 9:15 class. I was sitting in the window, in love with the impossibly blue sky, when she walked up to me and gently brushed the side of my face with her lips.

“It’s so bright today,” she said.

“I wish it could be like this forever,” I said.

“Maybe it will.”

“Yeah. Maybe it will.”

I took her hand and we walked out into the cold, parting at the student center to each head for our next class.

“I’ll see you tonight,” she said. And just for a moment I watched her walk away, until she blended into the crowd and I had to turn away and walk to the other side of campus.

That night it snowed, furiously. We met that night outside her dorm, in the cold and blowing snow, with snowball fights breaking out all over campus. Jenn was smiling with both her mouth and her eyes, playful and full of plans. She was all bundled up and in seconds she was part of the fun, laughing and throwing and running and playing, at least for a few moments, the part of a little girl.

I kept up the best I could, but I was without gloves and my coat was as poor as I was. Within a half hour, perhaps, I was cold beyond measure and could no longer feel my hands.

“Go on back to your room and get warm,” Jenn said. “I don’t mind. It’ll all be fine.”

“I don’t want to leave,” I said. “But I’m freezing. I’m sorry.”

“No. It’s fine. We’ll talk later.”

“Sure,” I said. “We’ll catch up later.”

And then I watched her run away before she disappeared into the laughter and the darkness.

I tried calling about three hours later. I hate to say it, but I tried calling, off and on, until the stillness of a snow-settled dawn. But Jenn didn’t answer that day, or the next, and I didn’t see her until the spring, in someone’s arms at our favorite pub. I left, then; I had to. But I took with me the memory of a little girl smiling at me and holding my hands as I sat in the window, her hair and face framed by the morning sun.

the writing life

Writers, it seems, sometimes like to read about the act of writing as much as we enjoy the alchemy itself. The image of a young Hemingway in Paris is part of my consciousness; many, many years ago, A Moveable Feast became my standard of how a writer should work and live.

It was a pleasant cafe, warm and clean and friendly, and I hung up my old waterproof on the coat rack to dry and put my worn and weathered felt hat above the bench and ordered a cafe au lait. The waiter brought it and I took out a notebook from the pocket of the coat and a pencil and started to write…

We know now that the mere act of sharpening pencils was part of Hemingway’s process for writing, a means to put himself in the right frame of mind for creating stories from memory and imagination. We each…procrastinate…a little before losing ourselves in the solitary and frequently frustrating act of writing. What writers don’t ordinarily admit, however, is that part of the delay is based on fear: fear that the writing won’t go well, that the feelings and stories we wish to express will evaporate before our eyes, that we lack the talent or vision to express what we secretly feel. Writing is a brave act, much more than what Fitzgerald wrote about “swimming underwater and holding your breath.” It’s an act of faith and hope and dreams, of laying your soul bare before the world. It’s a tightrope act, walking a wire without a net and never knowing if you’ll keep your balance or fall (and fail) in the attempt. It requires more than a little courage, not to mention the unshakable belief that the writer’s vision and belief is truly worth exploring. It’s not self-aggrandizement or justification;  it’s the eternal hope to make the reader feel, to touch someone’s heart and inspire that little glimmer of self-recognition in the stories we tell.

Annie Dillard, also, wrote eloquently of the process in her book The Writing Life:

One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time.

So, hold nothing back, then.  Something else, Dillard writes, will occur to you later. It always does, in one form or another. To be able to write it well, though, requires a form of concentration, talent, and a sense of hope and wonder that most persons do not possess. I make no claims to the talent part. But I have never, ever, given up this thing we refer to as hope.

stand in the fire

Music, to paraphrase Pete Townshend, not only helps you transcend your problems–it helps you to dance all over ‘em. That’s the way I feel these days listening to Warren Zevon’s Stand In The Fire, a nearly forgotten yet flawless live album that takes his down-on-their-luck characters and his self-deprecatory charm and turns the whole thing into, well, one big freakin’ party. After all, it’s pretty hard to focus on your own problems when you’re dancing around the room…and believe me, I know. I may be a lover but I ain’t no dancer, as Paul McCartney wrote; but I can damn sure try. And I can still lose myself in music just about anytime I damn well please.

That sort of release is a special gift, I know. When I was younger I was constantly afraid that I would someday lose the ability to feel music so deeply. But I needn’t have worried; music is in my DNA or something. “I wanna dance, I wanna sing, I wanna bust up everything,” Mick Jagger sang. And yeah–I still feel that way at least a few times each and every week. I can’t play guitar without channeling Townshend: I have to jump around the room. I suppose I’m some sort of animal with a guitar…but I can say with only modest embarrassment that it’s all right with me.

But back to Warren Zevon. His songs can be achingly heartfelt and direct, but it’s the celebration of hard luck and bizarre yet hilarious characters that made him so very special. Werewolves? Headless mercenaries? Only Warren Zevon could combine that sort of dark humor with biting lyrics and commentary. The man was good; the man is missed.

I’m the innocent bystander
Somehow I got stuck
Between the rock
and a hard place
And I’m down on my luck

Stand In The Fire is reckless, frenzied, urgent, funny, exciting, and absolutely essential listening for anyone who loves what we used to call rock ‘n’ roll. I’m listening to it now…and I’m dancing around the room.

“when only memory remains”

“Is that the best you can do?” she said.

It was.

I’m not sure what, if anything, we talked about after that. There was, after all, nothing left to say. I had told her everything in my heart for the last ten months, and now with only seven caustic words, I could only wonder if any of it had meant anything at all.

There is no memory of taking her home that night in June, only memories of what came after: sitting alone for hours in my car because I couldn’t face anyone, crying for days, seeing no one, missing her voice and her perfume and her touch. I spent the next four years waiting for a letter that never came, trying to understand and survive in a life without her: a life I never wanted. A life I am still adjusting to now.

“It’s not right anymore,” she once said as I was driving her home just after dark. “It’s supposed to be…perfect.”

“I think perfection is more of an ideal,” I said. “We have to work at this like we would at anything else.”

I mentioned other couples we knew then; told her it probably wasn’t perfect for them, either. I knew they weren’t giving up; I know now that some of them never have.

I’d sooner forget but I remember those nights
Yeah, life was just a bet on a race between the lights
You had your head on my shoulder you had your hand in my hair
Now you act a little colder like you don’t seem to care*

She placed her hand in my hair one night; I’m not sure I’ve ever felt so good, or so loved. One of those small intimacies we all take for granted; one that I’ve known not nearly enough. But most of all I remember the cool, but not cold, September night when I first visited her, the way she walked me back to my car after the visit, the way the moon hung low in the southern sky, the way we kissed, the way I fell in love even before that first kiss. I remember and I must always live with it; I remember because now, after all this time, the memory is all that remains.

*Dire Straits, “Telegraph Road” (from the album Love Over Gold, 1982)

“just yesterday she was here…”

Everyone disappears. Everyone runs. Nothing lasts forever. Sometimes things end before they’ve even begun. And only the few, the very, very few, even bother to say goodbye.

I understand that everyone goes disappearing,
into the greatest grey
that covers over everyday,
and hovers in the distance and the distance and the distance…*

Maybe goodbye is the cruelest word of all. I’m not sure; I just know that there have been many times when I needed to hear it. Without a goodbye you can remain for years–even decades–in the moment of parting, the hurt so fresh it feels that it will never go away.

Sometimes I go out for an errand and forget my phone, and foolishly think I’ll have missed a call by the time I get home. So I pick it up from the table or kitchen counter, power it on, and stare a second in disappointment at the blank screen. It’s funny, I think. Maybe if I stare at it long enough a call will suddenly materialize; maybe the phone will even ring while I hold it in my hand. But it never does. Of course, it never does.

You would think I would go slightly…daft…after a while. Start talking to myself or something. But no: I read, write, listen to music, play guitar, and when I have the nerve and feel like it, even go to the pub. But I’m not going to the pub much these days…

Who knows? Perhaps tomorrow will be different somehow. Perhaps I’ll feel better; I might even feel like going to the pub. But I’ll carry with me memories of all the disappeared. They’re not here, of course, but they’ve never really gone away.

*Counting Crows, “Up All Night” (from the album Hard Candy, 2003)

“straight into darkness”

For one summer–one lovely, all too brief summer–I truly loved her. She was eighteen then, and I…I was only a few years older. For those few months she was the woman I thought she could be, while I was the person I was and am still becoming.

There was nothing but joy then when she called, or visited, or we hung out, or when we made love. There was a creek we swam in that summer; I remember holding her in the part where the water began to run deep, her bathing suit off, her body wrapped around mine. I remember the kiss of sunlight on my face; I remember her lips on mine. It was the kind of summer Fitzgerald might have written about, the one with “blonde Northern girls and the tall young men from the farms lying out beside the wheat, under the moon.”*

And then there was the day she told me she was pregnant. I was, to be that young, ecstatic. I had never thought much about becoming a father, but none of that mattered now. If she could have stayed that young and happy forever, and I was going to have all that and be a father also, then that was all right with me. The rest of my college would take care of itself; it was almost over, anyway. I wanted her. I wanted the baby. I wanted to be married.

But she, who so often talked of marriage and of becoming a mother, became truculent and withdrawn. I quickly realized what she planned to do, even before she told me, and the day after it was over the feeling just died.

we went straight into darkness
out over the line
straight into darkness
straight into night**

Every January or thereabouts I wonder about the child who never was. Some years–though by no means all–I’ve also cried. And I can’t help but wonder if things would have different between us, if in the realm of alternate possibilities I would love her still today. Impossible questions, impossible to answer. But I still grieve for our child; I still grieve over what might have been.

I’ve never written of this before, not even in a journal. I’ve never even talked about it, to anyone. Anyone at all. We all live with our silent grief, one way or another. I can’t say with certainty that this is what led to all to the vehemence and hatred later. But one day she told me that I never treated her better than during that summer when she was first pregnant. I hope, someday, that’s the way she’ll remember me. And I will leave the darkness for good.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Absolution”
Tom Petty, “Straight Into Darkness (copyright 1982, Gone Gator Music)

lectio divina

The first time I saw a hummingbird, I was in church. Not in the sanctuary, actually, but upstairs in the annex at Sunday School. The morning was bright, lovely, and warm, and the hummingbird flitted just outside the open window. I was too young then to think of it as some kind of sign, but something stirred in my heart that I had never felt before. I learned something about beauty, then, and fragility, and the importance of keeping your eyes, mind, and heart open to all possibilities.

Those qualities are important, too, in the lifelong discipline of learning that we all share. I try very hard to keep my heart open whenever I learn by reading, which is why I’m not ashamed to admit that I often hurry to my computer, intent on notating a section of lovely prose or a lesson I’ve just learned. I’m not ashamed to admit that reading makes me feel excited and alive. Sometimes I read aloud just to hear the beauty of the words or to understand what I’ve just experienced; sometimes I laugh, and sometimes I even cry.

There’s a name for this sort of intense, fully immersed reading: lectio divina (spiritual reading). All reading is spiritual to me, because a book–if it’s any good–enters directly into the human heart. And there it remains, if you’re fortunate enough, to form the essence of the person you are continually becoming: the person you are destined to be.

Sometimes friends ask me how many books I’ve actually read. Truly, I’m not really sure: seven thousand? Ten thousand? I do know that at it’s peak, my library contained over 1,500 books. Many, far too many, are now gone in the chaos of the last two years. I probably have only a hundred or so with me now in Pennsylvania, but the good news is that I’m once again acquiring these treasures at a rate commensurate with my usual pace. Which means, of course, that I’m investing again: not only in books, but in my lifelong education. Little wonder, then, that I often refer to myself as an autodidact…self-taught. I’ve read less than some, more than some. But what I’ve read stays with me, affects me, shapes me. I feel every book I’ve ever read, no matter how long ago it was (some, of course, more than others). And these books, as Wendell Berry wrote, converse with each other as much as they converse with me. There’s an alchemy going on here inside my heart, filled with Robert Jordan and Jake Barnes and Brett Ashley and Daisy Buchanan and more characters than I possibly have space to name. They whisper to one another; they whisper to me. Soon others will join them, and the conversation will take on even more dimensions. In the meantime, I will keep reading. In the meantime, I will keep learning. I will never, ever, stop learning…

“beside the green apple sea”

Tonight I’m thinking about my many…faults. Last night at the bookstore I told a friend, “I  am a perfectly imperfect person.” I must have heard it or read it somewhere, as with so many of the words I live by. Sometimes I live behind the words of others; sometimes everything that I’ve read and heard and learned and lived with coalesces into something that, on my very best days, might pass for some sort of minor originality.

it’s 4:30 A.M. on a Tuesday
it doesn’t get much worse than this
in beds in little rooms in buildings in the middle
of these lives which are completely meaningless,
help me stay awake, I’m fallin
asleep in perfect blue buildings*

I am, after all this time, learning–especially about myself. I’m building a new life in a city where I know hardly anyone, and I can’t help but wonder: is this my fault, or is the task of finding true friends as difficult as it sometimes seems to be? Questions. There are always questions.

My poet says, and I have always tried to remember, “…have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”**

Patience, then. We must all be patient. I must be patient, as I am slowly and inevitably learning. I’m learning that my talents are somehow still intact, and I am learning that the writing I’m doing now is going well–even if some of it, as I noted elsewhere, is like Gertrude Stein’s admonition to Hemingway, inaccrochable. Which doesn’t mean the prose or the story is poor, of course. It’s just not something I can blog about. And besides, it’s for my book.

Did I mention that I’m learning to read again? I’m speaking, of course, of the kind of reading I used to do: ravenous and focused. Some of the books I’m turning to these days are old friends, while others of course are new. I’m still…learning…as always. I’m learning about my art and my strength (which I didn’t know I still have) and most of all, I’m learning about myself.

Thankfully, my latest lessons don’t involve a great deal of “fear and self-loathing.” I’m trying to be the artist I thought I could always be, and the kind, patient man I’ve always wanted to become. The work itself is unfinished, of course, will always be unfinished. I am unfinished, as we all are. And if you think about it, that’s the most important and pleasant answer that we can ever hope to have.

*Counting Crows, “Perfect Blue Buildings”
**Rilke, from Letters To A Young Poet