This is a quote from the writer Ruth Ozeki, which I snatched from a Q&A with her over here.
"There’s something about the idea of writing, and thinking about writing
as a form of prayer — the way as a writer you call out into the world
and throw your words into the world. You’re not praying to a god, but
you’re almost conjuring a reader to arrive. That’s what books do,
they’re an invitation to readers."
She wrote "A Tale for the Time Being," which I am reading right now. It is wonderful. Consider this, which is in the voice of a teenage girl in Japan, writing in her diary:
"Then is the opposite of now. So saying now obliterates its meaning, turning it into exactly what it isn't. It's like the word is committing suicide or something. So then I'd start making it shorter...now, ow, oh, o...until it was just a bunch of little grunting sounds and not even a word at all. It was hopeless, like trying to hold a snowflake on your tongue or a soap bubble between your fingertips. Catching it destroys it, and I felt like I was disappearing, too."
Posted on: Tuesday, November 19, 2013
Posted on: Monday, November 18, 2013
You're okay.
I have never loved someone
The way I love you
I have never seen a smile
Like yours
And if you grow up to be king or clown or pauper
I will say you are my favorite one in town
I have never held a hand
So soft and sacred
When I hear your laugh I know heaven's key
And when I grow to be a poppy in the graveyard
I will send you all my love upon the breeze
And if the breeze won't blow your way
I will be the sun
And if the sun won't shine your way
I will be the rain
And if the rain won't wash away
All your aches and pains
I will find some other way
To tell you you're okay
You're okay
You're okay
You're okay
You're okay
You're okay
You're okay
Posted on: Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Bellwether
I ball my fist and clench my teeth, willing the burst of frustration back down my throat. "Come on guys," I say tersely. "Time to get dressed."
The clock is marching forward.
We are running late, later, so late now.
It finally bursts out. "COME ON! YOU NEED TO GET DRESSED!" I yell. Please know that the caps-lock doesn't really convey the force of those words, the volume, the seething frustration. The girls immediately feel it, shoulders bunched, brows furrowed. I see Violet try not to cry. I see Madeleine stop and scowl. "You don't have to yell," she scolds me. "Nobody likes to be yelled at, you know."
"You don't listen until I yell," I insist. "I've asked you nicely to get going a thousand times this morning, but you didn't get moving until I yelled." I'm not yelling now, but still loud. "You guys never listen!"
This isn't true. But right now it feels like the truest thing. The yelling feels justified. How else am I going to get them out the door? This is their fault. Not mine. I'm so frustrated now that I am using more force with everything, dropping their backpacks onto the table with a thud, thunking cabinet doors shut, tossing their shoes down on the floor in front of them.
Eventually we do get out the door. We are not late to school.
Later on the playground, I find out that Violet balled her little hand into a fist and swung it into another boy's face. She pushed a kid later during PE.
"We're not violent and she's not exposed to violence," I tell her teacher on the phone that afternoon. "I just can't understand why that's her first reaction."
I hang up and try not to cry. Guilt covers me like a heavy cloak, but I am not sure why.
When I talk to Violet about it, all she can say is that she just got frustrated. She just couldn't handle it. I ask how it feels when she's frustrated and she says she doesn't know. "Do you feel tight inside, like something is all clenched up like a fist? Does your heart speed up?" Violet says she doesn't know.
I talk to her about the idea of keeping a calm heart. How important that is.
I start to feel like a hypocrite.
The next morning I resolve not to yell at the girls when they're getting ready. I decide that being late is a natural consequence for their dawdling. Maybe a tardy slip will convince them to listen to me when they're getting ready in the morning.
I don't yell. The girls get dressed on their own. We get to school, and while we get there later than I would like, we are not late.
The next morning, I do not yell. The girls get dressed on their own. We get to school and we are not late.
We do it again the next morning.
And the next.
This morning, Madeleine said, "I'm glad you aren't yelling anymore." I glance at the clock. We are going to get to school later than I want, but my heart is calm. I smile at her. "Me, too, kid."
The clock is marching forward.
We are running late, later, so late now.
It finally bursts out. "COME ON! YOU NEED TO GET DRESSED!" I yell. Please know that the caps-lock doesn't really convey the force of those words, the volume, the seething frustration. The girls immediately feel it, shoulders bunched, brows furrowed. I see Violet try not to cry. I see Madeleine stop and scowl. "You don't have to yell," she scolds me. "Nobody likes to be yelled at, you know."
"You don't listen until I yell," I insist. "I've asked you nicely to get going a thousand times this morning, but you didn't get moving until I yelled." I'm not yelling now, but still loud. "You guys never listen!"
This isn't true. But right now it feels like the truest thing. The yelling feels justified. How else am I going to get them out the door? This is their fault. Not mine. I'm so frustrated now that I am using more force with everything, dropping their backpacks onto the table with a thud, thunking cabinet doors shut, tossing their shoes down on the floor in front of them.
Eventually we do get out the door. We are not late to school.
Later on the playground, I find out that Violet balled her little hand into a fist and swung it into another boy's face. She pushed a kid later during PE.
"We're not violent and she's not exposed to violence," I tell her teacher on the phone that afternoon. "I just can't understand why that's her first reaction."
I hang up and try not to cry. Guilt covers me like a heavy cloak, but I am not sure why.
When I talk to Violet about it, all she can say is that she just got frustrated. She just couldn't handle it. I ask how it feels when she's frustrated and she says she doesn't know. "Do you feel tight inside, like something is all clenched up like a fist? Does your heart speed up?" Violet says she doesn't know.
I talk to her about the idea of keeping a calm heart. How important that is.
I start to feel like a hypocrite.
The next morning I resolve not to yell at the girls when they're getting ready. I decide that being late is a natural consequence for their dawdling. Maybe a tardy slip will convince them to listen to me when they're getting ready in the morning.
I don't yell. The girls get dressed on their own. We get to school, and while we get there later than I would like, we are not late.
The next morning, I do not yell. The girls get dressed on their own. We get to school and we are not late.
We do it again the next morning.
And the next.
This morning, Madeleine said, "I'm glad you aren't yelling anymore." I glance at the clock. We are going to get to school later than I want, but my heart is calm. I smile at her. "Me, too, kid."
Posted on: Wednesday, November 6, 2013
A clasped grasshopper, a letting go.
I can imagine his hand around her wrist, just below the fist, how he'd have to shake it to get her fingers to loosen their grip on the grasshopper she rescued from the playground. I can see how she'd respond to that, the utter dismay, the frantic worry as she scrambles to pick the grasshopper up again. And I can feel it, a sudden, horrible lurch, when he picks up his foot and stomps the grasshopper flat before she can save it again.
"I tried not to cry," she tells me, trying to keep it together even now. "I tried to keep my emotions in check, but I just couldn't do it."
My Violet is full-to-bursting with emotion, always, and the kids at school are well aware of it by now. And this one boy has been using it to his advantage, pulling and prodding, always looking for a reaction from her. We've told her many times that if it's the reaction he's after, she's going to have to work at not reacting. He'll eventually get bored with it, we reasoned. Still, how is a 6-year-old girl, so excited about catching a grasshopper, supposed to hold her reaction in when a boy very deliberately and very cruelly kills it right in front of her?
"Oh, Violet," I say. "I don't blame you at all. I would have cried, too. When sad things happen, it makes sense to cry."
When I got back to work I jotted off an outraged email to her teacher. This has to stop, my email said. No more of this, it said.
Help her because I can't be there to do it, was what it said somewhere underneath those words. The world is ugly and I can't always protect her, is what it said even further down. Help.
There is a certain prevalent belief these days that it's hard to be a person in the world, and that the sooner kids toughen up and learn that, the better. That it's not a parent's job to protect their children from grasshopper-smashers on the playground. That I'm not doing her any favors by intervening or offering shelter in some way.
I wonder about this mentality. This curl-up-and-accept-it mindset, this shoulder-shrug of a worldview. Do I want her to look out at the great wild world and feel it like she felt that boy's fingers on her wrist? To understand that the desperate and helpless feeling of being forced to let go of something precious is just a part of life?
No. She is six. Only six. For her, the world can still be loveliness and hope and good people who care even about the smallest of lives. It should be. It's hard to be a person in the world, sure, but maybe that's because we've stopped advocating for kindness. The world is a fight for the hearts of things, even a grasshopper's heart. Sometimes especially that.
"I tried not to cry," she tells me, trying to keep it together even now. "I tried to keep my emotions in check, but I just couldn't do it."
My Violet is full-to-bursting with emotion, always, and the kids at school are well aware of it by now. And this one boy has been using it to his advantage, pulling and prodding, always looking for a reaction from her. We've told her many times that if it's the reaction he's after, she's going to have to work at not reacting. He'll eventually get bored with it, we reasoned. Still, how is a 6-year-old girl, so excited about catching a grasshopper, supposed to hold her reaction in when a boy very deliberately and very cruelly kills it right in front of her?
"Oh, Violet," I say. "I don't blame you at all. I would have cried, too. When sad things happen, it makes sense to cry."
When I got back to work I jotted off an outraged email to her teacher. This has to stop, my email said. No more of this, it said.
Help her because I can't be there to do it, was what it said somewhere underneath those words. The world is ugly and I can't always protect her, is what it said even further down. Help.
There is a certain prevalent belief these days that it's hard to be a person in the world, and that the sooner kids toughen up and learn that, the better. That it's not a parent's job to protect their children from grasshopper-smashers on the playground. That I'm not doing her any favors by intervening or offering shelter in some way.
I wonder about this mentality. This curl-up-and-accept-it mindset, this shoulder-shrug of a worldview. Do I want her to look out at the great wild world and feel it like she felt that boy's fingers on her wrist? To understand that the desperate and helpless feeling of being forced to let go of something precious is just a part of life?
No. She is six. Only six. For her, the world can still be loveliness and hope and good people who care even about the smallest of lives. It should be. It's hard to be a person in the world, sure, but maybe that's because we've stopped advocating for kindness. The world is a fight for the hearts of things, even a grasshopper's heart. Sometimes especially that.
Posted on: Tuesday, November 5, 2013
And I kiss you on the ground in a cornfield at night
This is what I might whisper in the rain
Come over and nap with me, I want you
I sleep like a raccoon in you
I sleep in you like I am a raccoon somewhere
Do you ever want to climb into a birch tree with me
Somewhere in the bottom of the rain I want you
Come over and nap with me, I want you
I sleep like a raccoon in you
I sleep in you like I am a raccoon somewhere
Do you ever want to climb into a birch tree with me
Somewhere in the bottom of the rain I want you
Pay attention to the beautiful world.
Something about this guy's intensity just makes me tired, and isn't that kind of sad? Everything exhausts me, maybe especially the internet. He sees it as this magical tool, this miracle of communication that can be used to spread beauty and love and light to people all over the world. What a lovely idea.
"You get to be a part of people's lives on such a crazy level. This is the dream. This is the dream for poets. For somebody who feels, somebody who has something to communicate. This is the dream."
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