Education of an impostor
Because folding is the metaphor, see? For domestic knowledge and stability. For normalcy. When you don't feel normal and want to fit in, you observe and try to copy. Everything is a clue to the right way to behave. Nobody needs to know that you are an impostor.
Last night my small book group met to
discuss Michael
Ondaatje's
novel Divisadero.
It's a flawed book, or at the very least a book that
requires both careful reading and a lack of attachment
to resolution. I was the only one who really enjoyed
it. Yes, the characters are damaged and abandoned,
solitary types with hidden motivations. But they are my
people, sketched out in Ondaatje's poetic language. I
can't be the only one who knows how to fill in the
blanks.
What I can't
get from careful observation, from cracking open other
peoples' linen closets, I get from books. Stories show
me the possibilities in life. Sometimes I
know
the characters, fellow
strangers in a strange land. There is solace in the
world of quiet ones, solitary bookish people trapped in
the amber of personality and circumstance. Freedom is
possible. Maybe it is as simple as self-acceptance and
if there is hope for them, there is hope for me. Or
maybe there is no hope and I should just get on with
it.
“All my life I have loved traveling at night, with a companion, each of us discussing and sharing the known and familiar behavior of the other. It’s like a villanelle, this inclination of going back to events in our past, the way the villanelle’s form refused to move forward in linear development, circling instead at those familiar moments of emotion. Only the rereading counts, Nabokov said. So the strange form of that belfry, turning onto itself again and again, felt familiar to me. For we live with those retrievals from childhood that coalesce and echo throughout our lives the way shattered pieces of glass in a kaleidoscope reappear in new forms and are songlike in their refrains and rhymes, making up a single monologue. We live permanently in the recurrence of our own stories, whatever story we tell.” -- Michael Ondaatje, Divisadero, p. 136.
Without stories, I would be a series of events waiting for an author, searching for a unifying theme. Without memory, the raw material of story, I am nothing. But a strange thing can happen when we start to tell our stories, to mix memory with narrative: the stories can change. We can change. Our past can drop away, defanged.
I am here to gather the pieces and make them into something new, a narrative, a mutable monologue: this is who I am. If I'm lucky what I write will spark something in you.
Maybe it's time for another story.
Join one sentence with another
For about eight months now, I've been taking a course
at The Writing Salon
called the
Round Robin. Once a week the instructor, Jane
Underwood, sends a class email with that week's
writing prompts and partner assignments. Every day,
for no more than twelve minutes, my partner and I
each write on that day's prompt, sending the
resulting "writes" to each other by email.
Occasionally, the prompt is a photograph. Usually it
is a phrase (yesterday's was "I feel exasperation
tensing my face"), sometimes just a word.
The point is
to just do it, to see what happens when we let our
words flow without forethought or editing. Each partner
responds to the other's work, pointing out the things
that they like, encouraging the good. The process is
exhilarating and a little scary. I read the prompt,
gnash my teeth, and then start typing, not knowing
where I'll end up.
And where I end up often surprises me. Mainly I divert
my thoughts from real life, bored with the worn roads
of me, well-traveled and devoid of
wildlife. The words don't tumble, exactly, they waltz, softshoe
onto the page, join me at a leisurely pace. I start
with one sentence, join it with another, and before
you know it, I have a story. A vignette.
Like this one, so different from what I write here.
Writing prompt:
The test
It’s nothing. Just a blank sheet of paper, 8.5 x 11
inches. The doctor passes it to me. I stare at one of
the desk legs, slit my eyes until the carpet and wood
blend together, a fuzzy field of sand and tree.
Did she mention what I am supposed to do with the
paper? Is that the whole point of this test, to see how
I react? Origami isn’t my thing, doc. I can’t even fold
a paper airplane. And I am not up to folding a cootie
catcher. The idea makes me smile, though, a cootie
catcher with various diagnoses hidden underneath the
flaps, with pictures of clowns and crazies decorating
the outside. Pick a number, say the riddle, figure out
the problem.
The sheet of paper sits there, like a command: Do
something. So I do. I grab it and growl, start ripping,
take what I’ve ripped and rip through that as well,
doubling, tripling the thickness of the paper until I
can’t rip anymore. By now I’m stomping around her desk,
going in circles. I take what remains of the paper and
toss it into the air, cackling as the confetti drops
around us.
I sigh, sit down. “I feel so
much
better. Thanks, Dr. Krapinski.”
She offers me a cigarette.
Image from here by way of I Am the Cheese.
More on cootie
catchers.
Marked by heavy hands
This is the sensory soup of
childhood. It is a mix of family and location, of bad
luck and lucky streaks. We continue the pattern with
our own children, begin the silent lessons, mark them
with heavy hands: this is who you are, who we are.
Whenever my son smells oatmeal pancakes or plucks a
plump blueberry from a glass bowl, the past will live.
"You Are My Sunshine" will conjure up a darkened room,
my soothing cuddle against impertinent wakefulness. He
may spend years in therapy trying to get my voice out
of his head, only to find that same voice coming out of
his mouth in middle adulthood.
I can only hope that his experience is as painless as
growing up can be. Sometimes my best won’t be good
enough.
I remember being seven, lying on that flowered couch in
my grandparents’ family room, my hand sunk into a
plastic bag full of cherries. Cold from the
manufactured air, goose-pimpled, I clutched a pillow
for warmth. The television, which was as much a piece
of furniture as an entertainment device, was showing
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in Top Hat.
That night I would have another asthma attack, whether
it was because of mildew, cat hair, cigarette smoke, or
my own melodramatic emotions is up for debate.
Image: Me and my grandmother, Hollywood
Beach, 1973.
Diversionary tactics
Don't be disturbed by the photograph.
It is only a diversion. In fact, I actually posted it a
couple of weeks ago and then removed the post. I had
nothing to say and the photograph wasn't adding to the
conversation. Today it appears as filler, a little
piece of San Francisco scenery. Or maybe it works as
metaphor, too, though as a metaphor for what you'll
have to be the judge.
Last night I was walking home from my food writing
class, feeling energized and full of something (beans?
ideas? hope for the future?) when I realized that I
have a commitment problem. I've been circling working
life for almost five years now, keeping decisions on
hold, tossing words into the air. I fumbled into my
first career, became a librarian almost by default,
then stumbled when making what felt like a deliberate
move into the world of cooking. And I've been floating
with the current ever since.
I have to commit or I'll keep on writing 450 - 800 word
posts here forever and ever. It's not a bad gig, though
the pay is lousy. I love interacting with my blogging
friends. But I need something more substantial. A
career.
Do you know what I mean?
For your trouble, your time, maybe as a reward for
leaving a comment, here's a recipe. Consider it another
diversionary tactic or maybe just some picnic food for
your next visit to Fort Funston, the hang gliding mecca.
Herbed feta and
tapenade sandwiches
Briny tapenade and thyme-spiked feta punch up the
flavor of this Mediterranean sandwich. A couple of
simple tricks -- adding a sprinkling of herbs and olive
oil to a supermarket cheese, roughly chopping a handful
of olives with a touch of garlic – give it an
effortless homemade touch. Bring extra bread along to
sop up red pepper juices and the occasional escapee
feta tidbit.
Makes 2 sandwiches
1/2 cup kalamata olives, pitted and roughly chopped
1 small clove garlic, minced
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
1/2 cup feta cheese, crumbled
1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves, minced (can substitute
1 teaspoon dried)
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
pinch freshly ground black pepper
4 slices country bread
1 small cucumber, peeled and thickly sliced
1 large red pepper, roasted, seeded, and quartered
Stir together kalamata olives, garlic, and mayonnaise
in a small bowl. Lightly toss feta, thyme, olive oil,
and black pepper in another small bowl. Slather each
slice of bread with a generous amount of tapenade and
layer the feta, cucumber, and red pepper on two of the
slices. Top each sandwich with the remaining bread,
slice in half, and serve.
Image: Hang gliders at Fort Funston, Memorial
Day 2009. Photo by "Mr. Trinkle."
Beware of Estonians bearing basil *recipe not included*
Peter was only after the blender.
I was
working in the college bookstore, propped up on a stool
behind the register, when he came in to buy something
small, a pack of gum, a used book, a cassette tape, I
don’t remember. As I passed his change over the
counter, brushed my fingertips across this stranger's
calloused palm, Peter said “I know you from the
newspaper. You told it like it was.”
A month earlier I was one of five or six people chosen
to answer a question for The Elm: what did we think about the
proposed student fee increase? Below my photograph was
the statement “I know nothing about it. I have no
opinion.” Ignorance and flat honesty prevailed. It was
my statement, my stand on nothing in particular that
got me the boy.
Or maybe it really was the blender. After asking my name and
relationship status, Peter went straight to appliance
ownership: if I had the blender, he had the basil. He
knew where to score pine nuts and a fine wedge of
pecorino romano. Peter wanted to come back to my place,
make a little pesto.
The blender
sat on the stained linoleum kitchen counter in the
small college apartment I shared with my roommate
Martha, right beside the coffee percolator that she
filled with Folgers each morning. Martha bought it with
plans for soup-making, warm vichyssoise in winter,
refreshing gazpacho during the humid summer months, but
in reality we used it make frozen drinks. After the
Piña Colada incident the appliance went fallow,
gathered cooking grease and flour dust.
Peter's basil source was a garden
across the Chester River, a plot of rich soil courtesy
of his employer, Anthony's Landscaping. We rode there
one sticky June night, pedaled his tandem through a
landscape defined by moonlight and shadow, moved our
legs in time to the percussion of crickets. The basil
had formed a moat around a pair of tumbledown beefsteak
tomatoes. Rabbits and groundhogs had ravished the rest.
As I smoothed my fingers over the soft leaves, pale in
the semidarkness, the basil sighed, let out a breath of
spice and earth and warm sun, a promise of pasta sauce
and anise-tinged kisses.
When you are 18, most of the world is
still a mystery, or it should be. I already had a
boyfriend, and Peter knew it, but something about his
earnestness – his habit of tossing rocks at my window
for midnight bike rides, the fact that he was as
aimless at 24 as I felt at 18 – made him irresistible.
He was an English major whose literary mind had been
muddled by deconstructionism, an Estonian-American who
later taught me the best places to go in Washington, DC
for Ethiopian food and the blues. Peter liked to pass
things on. It was insider information: the slightly
off-kilter notes of Thelonius Monk; the tuneless
pounding and punk bands of d.c. space; the Biograph
movie theater; linguini with pesto sauce.
His pesto obsession was endearing. And it
was
an obsession. In circa
1988 Chestertown, Maryland, pine nuts were an exotic
foodstuff. Without a car, Peter had to finagle his way
75 miles and back to DC to procure one expensive
cupful. He arrived at our place on the appointed night,
clutching two bouquets of basil, a greasy paper bag
half-filled with pine nuts, and a crumbling hunk of
cheese. Martha and I had already peeled the garlic,
purchased a good-enough olive oil. We had wiped down
the blender. In the kitchen, I started grating cheese
while Martha opened beers. Peter began tossing pine
nuts and knobs of garlic into the machine.
The blender turned out to be an inferior pesto-making
tool, or perhaps it was all in the technique. Crammed
in the bottom, the garlic and pine nuts slowly turned
to paste, while the basil calmly refused to be pulled
into the fray. Peter finally grabbed a wooden spoon.
The high-pitched whine of the blender was interrupted
by a thunk as the bottom of the spoon splintered
against metal blades. Too late to go back now. He
picked out the shards.
Twenty
minutes later, Peter offered a fingerful of the final
product. Eyebrows raised in anticipation, I kept a
cheerful expression, gazed past the green film coating
his glasses to look directly into his eyes. The pesto
tasted of garlic and more garlic interrupted by a heady
nip of basil and the punch of sharp cheese. Raw pine
nuts, resinous and rich, just barely kept the other
ingredients in tune. As olive oil ran down my chin, I
carefully deflected a splinter with my tongue, a little
kick from Peter's secret ingredient.
(First image: Me, Chestertown, MD, Summer
1988, taken by "Martha." Companion picture of Martha
not included. Second image: Basil plants, from Vultus Christi.)