Fiction depiction 2

This won't surprise you, but I have pretty turbulent relationship with writing. When I'm in a dry spell I feel like a spurned lover (even though it's my own fault for not sitting down and just writing) and when I'm in a time of abundance it's as though I can't stop. I'm forever seeking that happy medium, the place where I write some every day but don't always end up drunk or destitute. 

I wrote this a long time ago, trying to understand my own relationship with writing. She isn't me, but she could be. This is somewhat unfinished, perhaps, but I still like it.

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Tsunami Words

The words, when they came were like a tsunami. They swept her away and she had no choice but to be drowned. It was as though language became a force of nature and she wrote with a ferocity that could be measured in storm force. Everything else was inconsequential in front of their power. Answering the phone, the needs of loved ones were nothing to be noted. The demands of the body – eating, excreting, sleeping – were deep inconveniences, the pitiful cries of those who couldn’t swim in the waves. And she wrote in torrents, loving each word as it poured out of her.

As she wrote she muttered, paced, laughed, as though her body itself became the storm, wrenched back and forth, a lifeboat in the storm and she was eager to be drowned. As each wave rose and relented she found herself surrounded with more wreckage – unwashed dishes, ignored children, frustrated friends, but none of that mattered, because the words were there and she felt free. It was as though she was the white cap atop each great wave and she could see forever.

But when it stopped suddenly she was left adrift on the desert ocean, surrounded by salt water she could not drink, fish she could not eat. When the words would not come she starved amidst riches. She longed for the tsunami to come again, even though she knew it brought devastation.

She tried to trick the words into coming, tried to lure them closer. She would read good writing, as though trying to convince her own words to come back. “See? You would have friends, just come back.” When that didn’t work she’d put out lures, scraps of unfinished writing, as though language might become frustrated with the possibilities and sneak in, finishing the unwritten poems by itself. And as a last resort, when all else failed, she would pretend she didn’t care, would watch television and ignore the voices inside that told her she could do better.

She would wash the dishes, pick up the wreckage left by the waves, and all the while plan for their return.

Books were her altars, the more there were the greater the likelihood the words would return. She knew there was a chance she’d become a madwoman, the kind who’s home was full of items with ritualistic meaning lost when she died, but this was a risk she could take on the chance the words would come back.

Each word had it’s own particular nature, and in combination they had their own power, personality and needs. They needed to be wooed carefully. Some were brash and relentless, would haunt her dreams like old boyfriends who still showed up unwanted, while others were elusive and shy, wild things that ran at the slightest crack of a branch. She longed for them all when the storms were gone and wished they would at least send a postcard.

(c) 2008 Laura S. Packer

Writing vs telling

Maybe the title of this post shouldn't be so belligerent, but it does sometimes feel like a battle.

This post was sparked by a post in my friend Elsa's blog. She wrote about writing a story down then trying to tell it, after a conversation with a friend about the tension between writing and telling (I may have been the friend she cites, I'm not sure). I struggle with this and I'm not sure why it's such a dilemma

I am a writer. I am also a storyteller. And it seems as though those two parts of my creative self can't quite co-exist.

When I tell a story it is a protean thing. It changes every single time it's told, twisting, turning, morphing into what it needs to be in the moment. The plot remains the same (usually) but the words change, the colors shift, the emphasis varies depending on how the audience responds, what they seem to need. It's a dance between the three of us, the audience, the story and me. And every dance is different.

When I write it's about crafting the language. Choosing the right word. (Hmm... do I use protean or variable. Oh, fine, I'll show off a little. Jeez I'm pretentious.) Finding the right reading rhythm. Or tonalities that will leap off the screen or page. It's far more about linguistic niceties, because I don't have the advantage of my body and physical voice to help me out, nor do I have your direct feedback. It's a much more internal process.

Now comes the interesting part. I don't write down the stories I tell. None of them, not one of the 75 or so stories in my active repertoire exists as more than a slim list of notes, the bones.

I have tried. And I have managed to write some of them successfully, turn them into good written pieces, but when I do they pretty much universally stop being telling stories and become written works, alive on the page, but not the stage. Since much of my creative process is tied into performance I have become quite reluctant to write these stories down, to tie them to written language.

I'm not quite sure why this happens though I find it incredibly frustrating. I think it may have to do with somehow thinking the language becomes fixed once I write it. If I try to perform the story again I become more concerned with the exact phrasing and exact language, so I can't pay as much attention to the needs of the audience. I get tangled up in words. Just as in dance, if you are always worried about where to step instead of paying attention to your partner and the music, you start to stumble and fall.

It's a problem. I have a pretty substantial body of work, but it's ethereal. If anyone has any brilliant ideas about how to loosen these ties I'd love to hear them. I don't want my stories to become ghosts and memories when I do.

(c) 2008 Laura S. Packer

Physical frailty

It could be worse. But jeez does it sound dumb.

To avoid straining my knee more (which ached some after yesterday's ride) I decided I'd instead go swimming and lifting today. Before we went to the gym Kevin and I decided to enjoy this lovely day and fly a kite. 

I'm new to kite flying, so I'm still learning all the ins and outs. One of the things I'm still learning is to how to keep the string from burning my fingers when the wind grabs the kite. It's a windy day.

The kite was really going and my finger got caught, singed. I let go of the strings and started chasing the kite so it wouldn't fly away. After maybe five steps something happened inside my right knee and I fell down, in a fair bit of pain. Ouch.

I can just see the medical report. "Patient injured knee kite flying." I feel like a dope. With a limp.

If it still hurts this much tomorrow I'm going to the doctor. For now it's rest, ice, compression and elevation.

But boy, before that happened the kite and I were soaring.

(c) 2008 Laura S Packer

oh, by the way

I've given in and started a food blog. I wanted to keep this blog more about writing, storytelling, observational essays, life, and I know once I get started talking about food I can just go on and on and on and on and on, so...

If you're interested it's here: cook pot stories.

It's nascent. 

What I find more interesting is that this suggests that I am getting hooked on blogging. I'm not sure if this is a good thing or merely naval gazing, since I'm not sure if anyone is reading any of this (hi Mom!) but there it is. We'll see how long it lasts. 

Actually, I know someone other than Mom is reading this, since I recently broke 1000 on my visitor count. Woo-hoo! Thanks for reading everyone.

White tail grace

I was out for a ride this morning and, boy, the voices were loud. You know the ones I mean, those voices that tell you (me) that you're (I'm) a failure at whatever you are (I am)trying to do at the time.

At that particular moment, the voices were saying, "I pretty much suck. Why am I even doing this? I'm in terrible shape. My knee hurts. Why bother? You won't make a difference anyway." That last was in reference to the fundraising I'm trying to do for the Dana Farber Cancer Center via the PMC. It's going slowly, no one has much money this year.

The voices were pretty loud and I was struggling to ride through them, those monsters in the road. I saw a guy stopped by the side of the bike path a bit in front of me and slowed down to make sure he was okay. He said to me, sotto voce, "There's a deer right here."

I got off my bike and we stood together, looking at a young deer, looking at us. It wasn't 15 feet away. After a little while the guy rode off while I stayed and watched.

It was beautiful. And it clearly didn't find me threatening. We looked at each other. I could see its nostrils flare as it smelled me (I did smell, I'd been riding), then it stopped watching me and calmly began eating berries off of a nearby tree. In a little while it wandered away into the underbrush. When I could no longer see it I got back on my bike and rode away.

The monsters were gone.

I am grateful that man needed to share his moment of beauty. I am grateful the deer simply is.

Sometimes the universe offers moments of grace and for once I was able to stop and notice.

(c) 2008 Laura S. Packer

Why I want to believe in reincarnation

I think about the afterlife and I wonder. Sometimes I am comforted by the thought that I will return to the earth, giving back all that has made me (ignore the physics and embalming problems here), returning the cows and chickens and fish and carrots and tomatoes and lettuce and beets and rice and chocolate and so on. That when I die, I am done, my successes and failures die with me, while the world goes on; there is comfort in that. Other times I contemplate heaven, but that is fraught with philosophical difficulties - do we shed the more troublesome aspects of ourselves when we die, are we insipid in heaven? Or is heaven something so far beyond my comprehension that I can't understand it enough to long for it? I don't particularly want to be a ghost, as far as I can tell that's pretty boring. So what's left?

Reincarnation sounds pretty good to me. I really like this option because, damn, but life is hard sometimes. I'd like to think that all the crap I'm sorting through these days, crap that keeps coming up over and over again, will be worth something. That the stuff I'm learning now will have some value later, because honestly I sometimes doubt that I'm going to learn it well enough to use it in this lifetime. But with a little processing time in between, I just might be able to do something with it.

I would love to know:
how to love without sacrificing myself.
how to speak painful truths such that they are heard
how to use anger effectively.

Stuff like that. If I could learn that this time around and carry it into the next, that would really be something. And if I carried the recipe for tomato cucumber salad over too, that would be huge plus.

Take a couple of lovely, heavy, ripe tomatoes. Cut them in half and scoop out the seeds. This will sting if you have any scrapes or cracks in your hands. Chop the tomatoes into small pieces. Put it in a good sized bowl. A pretty one.
Take a cucumber. I usually peel it some, but not entirely. Slice it in half the long way and run your thumb down the inside, scraping the seeds out. You can use a spoon, but this is more fun. Chop up the cucumber and add it to the tomato.
Find an onion that seems non-threatening. Peel it, dice it and add it to the bowl of veggies. If you cry a little no one needs to know. Some tears are a gift.
Take a bunch or parsley, flat or curly, your choice. rinse it and shake it dry. Chop it up until you have what you think is enough, then add some more. Add it to the bowl.
Sniff it all. Mmmm....
Take a nice, ripe lemon. Cut it in half and squeeze the juice out from both halves over the veggie mix. You may want to use two lemons.
Add salt and pepper to taste; it may take more salt than you're expecting. Mix it all up well. Eat.
This, I know, is heaven.

(c) 2008 Laura S. Packer

The naked truth

We went camping this past weekend. This is nothing unusual, lots and lots of people pack their cars and drive off to someplace in the woods where they can gaze into a fire and slap at mosquitos. What differentiates the camping I did this weekend was that I went to a nudist camp.

There are a lot of things I could tell you about this place. It is a lovely, quiet setting. It's not prurient, no orgies or wild sexual escapades. If anything it's like spending time with a bunch of kids who can drive. And happen to be naked. And the bodies? Just like yours. The average age is probably close to 60. It's a bunch of really nice, ordinary people, who happen to like not wearing clothing.

There are some rules, spoken and unspoken.
- You get more direct eye contact at a nudist camp than you will anywhere else in your life - you're not supposed to look, even though I suspect most people peek. You don't catch anyone peeking, instead everyone looks right at your face whenever you talk with them.  
- There is some smugness about being at a nudist camp. If you somehow manage to forget that everyone there is naked, sooner or later, someone will remind you that in some way we are a little bit better because we camp naked. I don't really agree with this, but it is in the air.
- There are some real rules about keeping everything pretty much asexual (no significant touching (there are kids around), no visible body jewelry below the waist, etc etc.).
- Conversation is light, no politics or other heavy stuff. I suspect this is because we're already so exposed no one wants to be more so.

- If you're playful, you're better off. It's a really silly bunch, with silly senses of humor.
And so on. It's all friendly, polite and very sociable. This is not the kind of camping you do if you want quiet communion with nature.

I don't really care much one way or the other about being naked, though there is something nice about the nude sunbathing and hot tubbing whenever I want, not to mention not having to worry about clothing getting wet in the inevitable rain. What I find really interesting about this place is the community. I don't know if it's because everyone is naked, so there isn't really much left to hide, or because it's a bunch of people drawn together by one common, relatively unusual interest but this group of people seems to be strikingly honest and open with each other.

If someone has a problem, everyone knows about it. Yes, this could just be common gossip, but it seems deeper that that. People want to help. They want to talk and be listened to. The underlying assumption is that if you are there, you are part of a community that will help each other.

I show up with my tent and gear, people stop to assist me, even though they all have their trailers and permanent sites and barely know my name. I don't ask, they just do it. There are potluck dinners where we are fed even if we have nothing to share and the response is just delight that we came. A few years ago I mentioned the PMC to one person; within 15 minutes an announcement was made over the PA systems and people can running, literally, to give me money for the ride. People I didn't know, people I knew didn't have much money, people who were doing it because they cared. When I've asked in other communities, with people who know me better and have more money, I don't get anything like that kind of response. It is truly remarkable.

I don't know if it's because everyone there has the great equalizer of being naked, being revealed for all to see. I don't know if it's because it's simply a kind of community I hadn't had the good luck to encounter before and it exists elsewhere, with clothing on. I do know I am grateful for it and if I have to drop trou be part of it, then I will.

Oh, and that recurring nightmare about performing naked? Not such a big deal, stories are stories no matter where you tell them.

(c) 2008 Laura S. Packer

Watch, give, save a life

When I was 18, I thought about killing myself. We all have those thoughts from time to time, I know, but this was my long dark night. I spent a lot of hours on a bridge and a lot of time looking at my wrists. I got through it. But I didn't tell anyone at the time and I would likely have gotten through it faster and more easily if I had.

Hopeline, 1-800-SUICIDE, is a national listening line that helps people considering suicide. It's free. It's confidential. It doesn't record you or track you or judge you. And they need help.

I learned about it from Postsecret. I believe they help people. I believe they give more stories happy endings.

Watch this video, go to the website and donate. You may never know whose life you save.

Because this is worth rereading

I imagine Mary Oliver is sick of this poem. But, god, it has changed so many lives, including mine.

Sometime ago I was driving home, a six or seven hour drive. The visit had been hard, harsh, full of my pain suppressed so others could be absorbed, full of recriminations and accusations of being unkind. I was in a numb place and desperately needed to remember who I was, but I was long gone. As I drove through the night, the long ribbon of the road in front of me, I needed some kind of fuel to help me. I heard the words wild geese in my head. And I was smart enough to listen.

I called my friend Robert and asked him to read me this poem. Without asking why, he did. I cried. He read it again. I thanked him. I got home.

Thank you Robert.

Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Myth? Oh myth, where are you?

Sometimes it feels as though I'm missing something, as though a vital part of my life has slipped away and is taking a vacation without me. This tends to happen when I'm overstressed, overtired, too busy and fretful to pay attention to what's happening inside of me because I'm distracted by what's happening outside of me. When I'm in this state I tend to read lots of light stuff, fun fluff. I putter a lot. I don't keek as much as my nature would incline me to. It's easy to coast along like this, feeling as though I'm half here because it's too hard to go looking for the rest of myself.

When I finally notice I'm not present I can do a couple of things. I might shrug and pick up another fun, inconsequential book. Likely something I've already read. Something I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit I've read, let alone read more than once. But it's distracting. 

Or I might sink even further, decide all is lost and watch tv instead.

But. If I'm lucky, if I notice when the moon is in the right phase, when the stars are aligned, when the gods are smiling just enough, I might try to do something about it. There are a few cures that work, but the one I want to talk about here has to do with story.

The really old stories, the ones that begin with Once upon a time and A long time ago have stuck around for a lot of good reasons. To begin with, many of them are just really good stories. You knew that already, I know. But just think about it - all of those human elements are there, and those old stories map out for us how to live, or not live, our lives.

Love.

Hope.

Fear.

Death (and who knows what comes after).

The mysteries.

Friendship.

Passion.

Even boredom and the routine of daily life.

Everything about what it is to be human is recorded in those old, old tales. 

We really haven't changed all that much. We may engage in all of those activities at a faster pace thanks to the technology around us, but we are still essentially the same animals we were thousands of years ago.  

What does this have to do with my missing self? When I am clever, after noticing I'm not all here, I go to the old stories. I go to In the beginning and immerse myself in that sense of deep time. I fill up with all of those symbols that help provide meaning to what it is to be human, I remind myself that I am merely one small instant in this long, long story. And slowly I am filled up again, slowly I become a hospitable environment for myself. I remember to look and see the world. Notice the leaves. Hear the stories around me. Smell the summer. Just as humans have been doing forever.

It's not an instantaneous process, it's not foolproof, but it's something. I have to keep redirecting myself, but god! the whole world is there for me in those stories. It's there for you too. Take them in, then let them go, recreate them in your own image and rediscover who you are now. You may be surprised.

Stories feed us and sustain us if we let them. 

(c) 2008 Laura S Packer