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The first thing I thought of on the topic “writing about
writing” was the creative process—how we come up with ideas, find words to
express them, and organize these thoughts into a coherent whole.
Writing is a mystery, really.It goes on in our heads as thinking.
But if we could have our thoughts automatically transcribed
onto paper, would that be better than forming each word with a pen, or typing
it on a keyboard?
Not the way I write.I don’t get fully formed sentences in my thoughts, but require the
process of seeing words on paper or a computer screen to help me get to the next word and the next sentence.
Years ago when I worked at Smith, Slingerland, Trauth &
Holtz one summer, I taught myself the official Gregg shorthand from a
book.I had to because I had applied for a secretarial job and to do it you
were required to take dictation.The company didn’t know, when they hired me, that I had never done it
before.
Who would apply for a legal secretary’s job back then
without knowing shorthand?
So I was slow at first, and had to write some of the words
out in longhand when I didn’t know the symbols needed to produce them.
I enjoyed learning the shorthand, though, and used it for
another secretarial job I got on another summer break.
Today I can’t think of even one shorthand symbol I used to know.
I just tried to write some, but they look like ordinary
squiggly lines.And now I feel as
if I’ve lost something important,
even though I’ve never ever wanted to write in shorthand for myself, and never even
used it to take notes at a lecture in school.
I only used shorthand when I had my secretary hat on.
I think I wouldn’t find shorthand very useful as a writer
because I like to see the real words as I write them.
I read the words aloud in my head as I write them, also,
because I like to hear how they sound.
I still haven’t explained how writing comes about—how we get
from one thought to the next.
One thing I believe is that you can never be a writer
without being a reader first.It’s
the reading of all those sentences
that teaches us how to make new ones of our own.The infinite varieties and rhythms seep into our neurons,
are then recombined, and given our own personal inflection.
The most awful job I had in my life, next to teaching junior
high math and English, was trying to teach remedial writing to college students
who did not read.
You can’t make writers out of people who don’t read.
I think about people who make art without ever having seen any.They tend to make primitive art—art that hasn’t learned
anything about perspective or shading or color theory—basically reinventing
their own wheel without a formed culture to jump off from.
Still, these primitive, or folk artists as they are
sometimes called, can be very talented and provocative.That’s because they want to be making art.
My remedial composition students did not want to be writing or reading.
I just can’t teach people how to do something they don’t
want to do.
Several friends who are bipolar have told me how much the
practice of meditation and mindfulness helps them deal with their disorder.I have found the same.
When I was younger, I embraced every passing mood as real
and permanent.If I was in an
upswing, I had zillions of ideas and enough energy to carry them all out.
So I thought.
In the early 1970s I started a leather craft business in
Ithaca, designing all the products, cutting the leather for belts and handbags,
selling at craft fairs, buying heavy equipment and operating it, making
repairs, going to trade shows, dealing with sales reps, negotiating contracts,
opening a retail outlet on Eddy Street, hiring and managing employees . . .
It makes me exhausted just writing about it.
When the business failed in the 1974 recession, I drank
heavily and sank into a deep depression.
At that time I had very little self-knowledge.In fact, I had not yet been diagnosed
as bipolar.
All I knew how to do in those days when depression hit was
to wallow in the darkness until I could find a way to jumpstart my life again.
And so it went.
Now, through a regular practice of meditating every day, I
get a chance to look at the workings of my mind.I see how resistant it is to being still, how much it avoids
awareness.But I have those split
seconds where I’m able to catch it—to stop the racing thoughts for a moment.
I take a breath and look into my heart.I see the pain.I see the avoidance.
I get to know me better.
The essence of mindfulness meditation—being aware of
whatever is passing—knowing it is passing—letting it pass—is exactly what I
need to better deal with my mood swings.
When I wake up in the morning feeling shitty and can’t
figure out why, it helps to know that this too will pass.But more importantly, not to blame
myself for it.
I am my own harshest judge.
When I was younger, I wanted to be better and better every
day in every way—to mold my life into a perfect jewel.I thought that if I found the right
formula and tried hard enough, I could succeed at it.
My mother always told us that we could do anything, be anything,
and I believed her.Our shelves at
home were filled with books on self-improvement and positive thinking.
My favorite was How to
Live 24 Hours a Day.I
interpreted that to mean, how to be an achiever
24 hours a day.
When I fell short, I got depressed.
And of course I fell short.
Achieving things is still my number one hobby.It’s part of who I am.
With insight, I also know that the achiever is not all that I am.
When I was young, I coveted black leather.I even bought a bikini that simulated the
look and feel of it.My sister
Mary got the same one, but my sister Laura didn’t think they were so hot and chose
a different look.
Laura always followed the more conservative path.
My next black leather acquisition was a motorcycle jacket
and matching boots I bought when I got my 125 cc Ducati.I quickly learned to drive the bike and
passed my driver’s test easily.
It’s a good thing I’d learned how to drive a car with
standard transmission—several of them, actually, because I got my lessons from
whoever had the time and inclination to give them—one of my three older brothers
or my father.I think I wrecked
the hand brake in one car because I always forgot to release it before driving
off.
Larry—my Cooper Union friend from Newark—rode on the back of
the Ducati when we drove from New Jersey into Manhattan for parties.It was nerve-wracking trying to avoid
the oil slick in the center of the lane going through the Holland Tunnel.I slowed down and drove cautiously
through it while the cars behind me honked.
Coming back late at night there was usually no traffic and
we always made it home safely.Years later I thought Larry had been foolish to sit behind me on that
bike after I’d been drinking all night.We were both young, foolish, and lucky.
For years after I no longer owned a motorcycle or had any
opportunity to drive one, I kept renewing that motorcycle license, just in
case.
The next black leather coat I loved was a stylish one I wore
in my late twenties.At least, I thought it was stylish.This was in the early seventies when
everyone was wearing mini-skirts.The coat was short, too—a wrap-around with a leather belt to hold it
together.
One night I was wearing that coat when Herb and I went to a
party in Manhattan.I drank too
much, Herb didn’t like it, and we got into a fight.Pissed off, I put on that coat and walked out the door.
All I could do was walk around the block.
In a few minutes Herb came after me.“You shouldn’t be walking the streets alone in that coat,” he
said.“You look like a
prostitute.”
I stopped wearing that coat.
A few years later, I left Herb.
As I got older, I chose my coats for comfort and warmth,
rather than style.Living in
Ithaca now, I like to have a lightweight but warm jacket with lots of pockets
for hiking in the woods.It has to
have a hood, too, for when it rains and snows.
I never use an umbrella—I just wear a coat
with a hood.
As Adrian got older, he had trouble finding
clothes—especially coats—that worked for him.I’d take him shopping, but we could never find anything that
fit right.Or he’d complain the
zipper was too hard to work.
In the last few years of his life, he mostly wore my old winter coats.He had shrunk and my size fit him
better.My coats were warm and
lightweight and always had a hood.
Toward the end of his life, he could not manage any kind of
zipper or buttons.I’d always be
there to help him, but he’d get impatient with his own clumsiness.
It seemed to take forever to get him all dressed in his
coat, gloves, hat and boots.He
felt the cold deep in his bones, so I bundled him up good.
Adrian liked my red jacket the best, and I still have it in
the closet.Once in a while, when
his son Owen comes to visit in the winter, he’ll wear the red jacket.He thinks of it as his father’s jacket
and doesn’t seem to notice that it’s women’s clothing.
I recently spent a week in southern Florida, staying with my
sister in her gated community.
It was lovely.
The grass was green.The skies were blue.Water
shimmered in the constructed lakes.Palm tree fronds swayed in the breeze.
There was wildlife to see, too.The birds in Florida are much more interesting than the ones
we have flying around in upstate New York—birds like the ibis, heron, spoonbill,
pelican and stork.Well, we
actually have some fabulous birds in Ithaca, too.We have our own great blue herons, and the red-tailed hawk
and turkey vultures.
There were several kinds of lizards (geckos, skinks and
such) darting about my sister’s community.We saw them on our early morning walks (necessary to avoid
the heat of mid-day).
I didn’t see any alligators, but my sister has.We could have taken a twenty-minute drive
to a nature center and seen them.
Most days as we walked around my sister’s community on the
wide sidewalks and paved roads, we heard the noise of workers mowing, trimming,
clearing and maintaining.
It takes a lot of effort and equipment to create this neatly
manicured landscape.
After a week, I finally learned my way around—how to get
from my sister’s house to the community center, for example.All the roads and little bridges over
the water looked exactly the same.
As I drove home from the airport after I got back to Ithaca,
I breathed a sigh of recognition and relief.
At my house, nothing is manicured.I live on the outskirts of Ithaca in a little community of
five houses that feels like country.
Deer pass through.We have woodchucks, rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, and Canadian
geese.
I mow my lawn regularly, but I don’t worry about dandelions
or trimmed edges.I look out my
window and see huge pine trees.Acres
of woods surround our neighborhood.You can walk the trails and find a natural pond or two.
Ithaca feels wilder and more comfortable to me than the
gated communities of southern Florida.
I feel I can breathe more easily and relax here.
Someone who lives in a cabin in the middle of a forest might
argue with me that my life is over-civilized and not wild at all.
Is there any part of this earth that is still truly
wild?
While looking through a book about mandalas, I read that
they are symbols of integration, harmony, and transformation.That's exactly what I want in my life—to
integrate my disparate selves, to live in harmony with the world around me, and
to transform this flawed, frightened human into—what?
I can’t imagine the other side of transformation, but I love
the idea of it.
Transform, transcend—these words take me to a place other
than where I am.Is that what is
meant by a seeker?
I pick up another book and look at its title:Now
Is Then.It’s a book of
photographs, but the title is what grabs me.
I’ve been haunted lately about the idea that now is then.The old woman is the little girl, I think.
When I use the term old
woman, I picture a dark bent creature wearing a black shawl.
I don’t see myself as an old woman, but I can see the little
girl.
This little girl is so moody, so needy.She thinks that she is the only one
suffering.Or surely, the one
suffering the deepest hurt.
If I indulge her, she can wallow in self-pity the livelong
day.So I take her out and we meet
a friend at Gimme Coffee.
It’s air-conditioned inside the coffee shop—a comfortable
temperature—but so noisy that I can barely hear my friend telling me her
troubles.
After a few minutes we go outside where the tulips have
sprung up all over town.We walk
among them.I take my sweater
off.It feels good to be warm in
Ithaca.
Having a friend tell you her troubles is a great way to
silence self-pity.It allows you
to be instead a sympathetic listener—one who comforts instead of one who
complains.
Both are good—the telling of troubles and the listening to
troubles—a gift that friends can give each other.
Perhaps the transformation from a needy self-pitier to a
compassionate comforter is all one needs in order to feel a sense of
integration.
The little girl and the old woman smile in harmony.
I used to
think of dying when I was in a deep depression and couldn’t imagine ever
feeling better.In my bipolar
highs, I was invincible and life had infinite possibilities.In the lows, death often seemed like
the only way out.
But that's
not the way I’m thinking about death now.Instead, I'm using it to hone my understanding of the gift of
life.
What would we do if this day were our last?Most of us would choose to spend it
with loved ones.Some might want
to listen to music, play the piano, visit an art museum, or make art
themselves.
It’s easy
to know what we’d do on that one
day.But chances are we’re going
to have more than one, so what do we do with that?
There are
times when I’ve been happy to just “get through the day.”That was especially true during
Adrian’s long decline with physical problems and Alzheimer’s.It was also true in the months after he
died.
There’s
nothing wrong with doing what you have to in order to get through the day.But when there’s an opening—a breathing
space to imagine something more—then I’d like to do it with a true knowledge of
life’s fragility.
I know we
have only this moment to live in, not
the past or the future.But that
doesn’t rule out making plans or choosing to change our daily lives.
I’m always
planning.It takes over my mind
the second it is not intensely focused on something else.
I love to plan.It’s part of my optimism—planning to
make things better.
Now I’d
just like to add the knowledge of my inevitable death to the mix of factors
that I account for when I do it.
I’m not
talking about preparing for physical decline, financial planning, and drawing
up a living will.Those are all
useful, but I’m talking about the quality of my life now.
What do I
want to do when I really understand
how short a time I have left?
It’s not
about regrets or fear.It’s about
opportunity.
Every week
I get a short inspirational email from the Buddhist teacher and author, Pema
Chodron.Today, I received one
titled “Life is Short.”It began:
Every act counts.Every thought and emotion counts too.This is all the path we have.
That’s what I’m
talking about when I talk about death and dying: the preciousness of each act,
each thought, each emotion.They
are in limited supply.
When I experience a new ache or pain, I immediately think it is a sign
of something terminal. I say to myself to assuage the fear, "I have had
a good life and I am ready to die."
At this age, I sometimes think it is time to prepare for death. Time for a more pared-down life, a leaning into acceptance of the inevitable.
Most of us don't really live with a knowledge of our own death. It is an abstract concept like the square root of infinity.
When Adrian died two years ago, death was suddenly in the room with me. I hugged Adrian's body, but where was he?
Adrian's guide to life was the poem, Invictus, by William Ernest Henley. It begins,
Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.
It ends,
I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.
Adrian sought to live his life fearlessly, as a grand adventure. But when his body would no longer allow him to do that, he embraced death.
I feel sometimes that I have one foot planted squarely on this earth and the other lifting off into the unknown.
I question my daily routine.
I wonder whether to let go and take what comes, or to deliberately forge a life of reflection and preparation for my own death.
I haven’t been kind enough to myself in the past, but I am
gradually learning how to do it better.For example, as we were having our “moment of quiet” before we started
writing tonight, I had a flash of anxiety:“What if I can’t write anything tonight?People expect things of me.I will disappoint them.”
Next, I quickly admonished myself:“You are being silly.It will be fine.Don’t
think such things.”
Then, I remembered that being kind to myself means allowing whatever
I’m feeling to be felt without squelching it.By allowing the anxiety to be—in a gentle, loving space, the feeling dissipated on its
own—almost.
As I explored this fear further, I realized that no one in
my writing circle will judge me for not being able to write, or for falling
below some preconceived standard I’ve set for myself.I am the one
judging.
My next critical thought was that ego was motivating my concern.Why would the other writers even notice what I am up to?They’re thinking about their own
writing, not mine.
After all, that’s what preoccupies me—how well my own
writing turns out—not how well everyone else has written.It’s a relief, in fact, when a good writer
has a bad night.It makes room for
me to have a bad night.
Now we are getting at how competitive I am, as I hide behind a compassionate front.I always tell people, we can write from
the heart in this circle.It is a
safe place.No one is judging our
lives or our writing about our lives.
Except I must be, or I wouldn’t have felt that fear tonight
about not measuring up.
No matter how hard I try to excise that little girl who
needed to prove herself in order to be loved, she is still inside me.I usually try to bind and gag her—to
push her back into the furthest corners of my awareness.
Who wants to hang out with that scared little uptight
perfectionist?
Not me.
But every time I think I’ve strangled her to death and am
finally free, she hits me with a jolt of pure recognition.She is
me.I’m never going to be free of
her.
Maybe it’s time to give her a hug and show her how to
laugh.
*weekly writing circle run by Zee Zahava in Ithaca, NY
Does everyone get trip anxiety? Does it get worse as we get older?
When I was seventeen I got on a plane (before jets) and flew 3,000 miiles from my home in New Jersey to Los Angeles to go to the University of Southern California. I don't remember any trip anxiety--just joy at getting to go that far and to start my life over again.
That flight took thirteen hours. I got nauseous and held the vomit bag open in my lap just in case. But a friendly gentleman from Brazil was sitting next to me. We had been chatting amiably, ending in an invitiation from him to visit if I ever found myself in his country. There was no way I was going to barf in front of him.
What changed me from that brave girl who couldn't wait to leave home and have adventures, into this timid soul who gets nervous every time I have to travel anywhere?
What is so damn frightening about our tiny Ithaca airport? All the gates are within yards of each other. It's true that we can't get anywhere from here in one flight except Newark and Philadelphia, but it certainly is an easy, comfortable terminal for the beginning and end of a trip. And it's a ten minute drive from my house.
But there's no use arguing with my nervous self. I'm going to be anxious no matter how illogical it may be.
Adrian got extremely anxious before trips in his later years. The effort of helping him pack and get organized distracted me from my own anxiety. It was agonizingly frustrating trying to get him ready for a trip, but he was the anxious one, not me.
Before we'd leave the house for the airport, I'd grill him and review: glasses, meds, socks, etc. But I still overlooked, that one time, the fact that he hadn't brought his wallet, and thus, his driver's license.
No ID, no fly.
I left Adrian at the airport and zoomed home to get it, but by the time I got back, it was too late. We'd missed the flight. They rescheduled us through Elmira, another local regional airport. Driving home from there the night we got back was not as easy as coming into Ithaca.
How I used to complain about traveling with Adrian in those last years. Getting from one gate to another when he walked so slowly . . . helping him through security . . . having him spill his drink all over me on one flight . . . falling down the escalator on another.
In those days I thought it would be a relief to travel alone, with only myself to worry about.
"I just finished your book; it was compelling and so emotional and candid. I resonated with so many things, from large to small, and thank you for being so honest." --Nancy M. If you are interested in the life of an artist, issues of depression and bipolar disorder, or the challenges of caregiving for elderly parents, I think you will find this book a moving account of one woman's experience with all three.
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