Languish Arts

July 24, 2011

Have you ever taught someone to write? I don’t mean grammar or spelling or purposeless academic filler, I mean really led someone by the hand into the caverns of their own mind. Have you taught them to truly communicate with the written word, to turn themselves inside out, filling this blank white space with heaves and screams, leagues of life, chasms of betrayal, the colors, sounds, and smells of the human experience? Have you taught them to close their textbook, toss the wasted paper far beyond their sphere of influence, rise above outlines and rough drafts, and just write?

My son and I were talking a bit last night. He wanted to know how I do it. How I write the way that I do. Hmmm. Yes. That was my response. Hmmmm. So much for homeschooling. I explained that, at his age, he is more than likely overdoing it. Questioning his abilities. Working against a lack of life experience. Trying to make up for it by using words that are too big for him, peppering his spaces with redundant adjectives, and trying far too hard to be lyrical rather than real. I told him that he is a writer. The very first time he put pen to paper with the intent of conveying emotion, he became a writer. I explained that his job is now no longer to become a writer, but to perfect his craft. And his craft is not my craft. Or anyone else’s craft. It is his own.

Subject/verb agreement will come. Spelling will come. Sentence structure is neither here nor there if you have not yet taken responsibility for your words, planted them, fed them, watered them to effloresce into colors that are different to every eye. A word, a group of letters molded together to create sounds, to create meaning, to create feeling and life. You give all those words to them the day they are born. Every single word ever created, you gave to them. Now what are you doing about it? Will you teach them that words are bricks to be fitted together only like so, perfect lines and corners, tasteless mortar in between? A solid structure, safe, symmetric, purposeful, correct? Is that the linear grey verbiage scrolling like a teleprompter you want them to see when their passion and desire and fear and anger become too much to bear? That is why we write, you know. We write because emotion is a palpable thing, a tangible, pulsing, singing, dancing thing. And when it explodes, it does not do so in subjects and predicates. It does not boil over into reflexive pronouns, prepositions, or ‘I before E except after C.” The dam breaks, the flood rages, and the land is consumed with words. It’s a dance, a dream, a whispered secret, a touch in the dark. Give them that, and they will seek the rest.

Cup of Night

July 20, 2011

I’m sitting on the couch in my underbritches. It’s 1 o’clock in the morning. Everyone is asleep but me. My dog snores, old, creaky, she shifts position and snores again. I like walking around the house in my underbritches at night. It’s a freedom thing. Because I like the way my legs feel when I walk on them naked. I like the way the ceiling fan feels on my bare behind when I’m lying on the couch typing. I like it when my boobs aren’t strapped to my chest with elastic and hooks. I wear glasses at night after I take my contacts out. I like resting my eyes from them. It’s a freedom thing. I like to read at night, but not about dragons or love or murder mysteries. I like to read about real people and real things. Things that happened today, perhaps in parts of the world I only know about from books and television. Things that other people are doing with their lives, things they have sacrificed, things they have stolen, things they have given. I like to read about weather and nature and feel my smallness and weakness under the unyielding force of Earth’s desire. Perhaps I will read about scientific things and marvel at the pulsating gray matter of those who understand them. My dog shifts again. I curl one leg underneath me. My ass is cold. My knee throbs. But it always does. Sweet familiarity of a failing body. I roll one foot in a circle and hear my ankle pop, pop, pop, crack. Apparently, China is reporting a 30% increase in tax revenues. A wildfire continues to burn in Harnett County. That’s right next door. Perhaps it will burn a path to my door. Oh, and do you know what a hydrothermal worm looks like when viewed under an electron microscope? It looks like this. My knee throbs. Snore and a shift. I uncurl my leg from underneath me, stretch, curl the other one. Moth on my keyboard.  Airplane overhead. A spark in the dark. I decide. I shall not wait patiently for that wildfire. I shall become an arsonist.

Drifting the Word

July 14, 2011

When I was a kid, I drifted. In my head, I drifted frequently, in and out of the present, turning my tangible world off and on when it suited me. Everyone drifts a little bit from time to time. Even if you’re just scribbling in the margins of your paper in American History, you’re drifting. I scribbled sometimes, but most of the time I just checked out completely. And I’d play little games in my head. I might have conversations with people I hated. Or with teachers I couldn’t stand, saying to them in my head everything I wish I could say with my mouth. But I’d also play this game with words. It got quite annoying after a while because, once I started, I had a hard time turning it off. And sometimes it would last all day long. I would catch a word, usually something inconsequential, perhaps a word like (looking around the room) lantern. I’ll use lantern. With that word, I’d try and focus all of my energy on it. Like the Death Star did with Alderaan.  Or those bad guys from Krypton in Superman II.  I’d roll it around in my mouth. I’d say it over and over again with emphasis on different syllables. I’d take it apart. Shuffle the letters. And with all the firing synapses I could muster (indeed the whole point of my game), I would try to render it meaningless. When you say a word over and over, so many times, pronounce it in every way possible, it really starts to sound funny in your head. You start to think it’s just silly. Like a fake word. And all of a sudden, this inconsequential little word is a blank slate on your tongue. It’s kind of a fascinating little trick. And if you want to take it to the next level, try reverse engineering that little sucker. Try to force your mind to turn it back into what it is supposed to be. If you played the game right, it could quite possibly take days for you to remember the familiarity of what ‘lantern’ feels like in your mouth. Try it some time. It’s fun.

Christopher Jacob

July 8, 2011

When he was born, 16 years ago today, I had no idea how to be a mother. I still don’t. I remember looking at him through the glass of his incubator. There is something euphoric about the ignorance of a 17-year-old girl looking at her newborn baby for the first time. It causes you to completely overlook the IV in your child’s forehead, the breathing tubes disappear, and all 2 pounds of baby simply look like a shriveled, wriggling little miracle. I really had no clue. I heard the doctors and nurses talking to me. Telling me things about him. Telling me what happened after I had a seizure 3 days before. I heard all those things. But I wasn’t paying attention. I was busy looking at him. I wanted to know when I could take him out and hold him. I wanted to know when I could nurse him because my boobs hurt like a son of a bitch. Things like, “he can’t maintain his own body temperature,” and, “he’s not strong enough to nurse,” meant nothing to me. Psht. He was Super Baby. He could do anything. Except cry. He sounded like a wet mouse. I think I might have actually laughed at his futile little squeaks. But scared? Nope. Concerned? Not even. Oh, bliss! Either I had an uncanny maternal sixth sense that not even I was aware of, or it was just dumb luck, because aside from being 5 weeks premature and only weighing a few cents shy of 3 bucks, he was perfectly healthy. And I mean perfectly healthy. No breathing problems. No eating problems. No reflux. No asthma or allergies. Nothing. Even 16 years later, I can count on one hand the number of times that kid has gone to the doctor for anything other than his baby shots. And I am not exaggerating.

I still have no clue how to be a mother. I guess you could say I am the antithesis of the soccer mom. I concentrated on teaching him how to learn and to love learning much more than pumping him full of facts and figures and names and dates and tedious repetition. I’ve taught him how to teach himself. And to love it. Or he has figured that out in spite of me. Not sure which. I have never really been the mom who spends ridiculous amounts of time and energy and money creating experiences for him, but simply opened the door to the world and let him experience it for himself, the way it naturally unfolds before him. I have answered his questions about life and given him my own opinions with copious grains of salt so as not to cause him to fear holding opinions that are different from mine. At least I hope I have. As he’s grown older, I’ve tried to step lower and lower on the hierarchy of authority in order to walk beside him instead of towering above him. I have never wanted my children to fear me in the name of discipline. There is a fine line between being your child’s parent and being his friend, but it exists and it can be found. And that line is worth looking for.


Really, the only thing I have ever known how to do is love him. More than the air in my lungs, I love him. And he has been so easy to love. He is still a Super Baby. Amazing, brilliant child. Everything he is and everything he knows, he has taken with his own hand. Fed it to himself instead of opening his mouth like a little baby bird waiting for those around him to fill it with regurgitated shit like so many of his generation.


He doesn’t know it, and I have never put the burden on him in spoken words, but he has been my light in so many dark tunnels. I look up to that kid. I have learned more from him than he ever has from me. But I’ve still yet to learn how to be a mother. How to be a mother in the modern definition of the word, that is. I never gave a shit about cute baby clothes or decorating his nursery. My idea of a diaper bag was shoving a diaper in the glove box of my car. I’d love to say I breastfed him because I was progressive and knowledgeable and self-righteously forward-thinking, but really I just did it because I was too lazy to fuck with bottles. I have never rushed him from one sports game to another. I have never obsessed over saturating him in curriculum, listening to Baby Einstein on the way to our fourth visit to the natural science museum. Yeah, no. Not me. I’m more like a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kinda girl. If he wanted to learn about dinosaurs, I gave him a book. If he wanted to learn to read, I gave him a book. When he wanted to learn to cook, I handed him a cookbook and gave him free reign in the kitchen. I did take him to the natural science museum once. But only because They Might Be Giants was playing a concert there. Oh, well, there was that time we took them to the Smithsonian. But even that wasn’t planned. We just decided to go. It was fun. But I think they cared more about figuring out how to climb Abraham Lincoln than anything else.


So again I say. Me and that whole “mothering” thing have never seen eye to eye. I suppose I was always too busy showing him what it means to be alive to ever bother with it.
 
Today, I have never been prouder to say he is my kid. Never been prouder than when I hear him going apeshit on his guitar that he taught himself to play. After 6 years of band, I never came close to the talent and skill that child carved out of himself. Ever. Never been prouder than when I listen to him talk, deep in conversation with him, and marvel at his level of understanding, wit, cynicism, sarcasm, and awareness. He blows me away. Every single fucking day, that kid blows me away.

So with that in mind, I love you, Jake. I have loved being your mother. I have loved watching you grow and change. I have loved watching your hands and your mind take the world around you and make it better in ways that leave other kids your age with their faces in the dirt on the playground. I have tried the best that I could to be your mother. I don’t know if I have succeeded by society’s standards or not, or by anyone’s standards for that matter. But you have succeeded in continuing to be my wriggling little miracle every single day.