Forward March

We drove our girls to the Everson Museum courtyard where students were gathering with many parents. They went into that crowd to find their friends, one of whom helped organize the march. Stephanie and I followed to see who was there. Once we knew they were settled, I said, let's get coffee and we walked to Recess Coffee near City Hall. We passed friends heading to the march and said hellos. Maybe they wondered where the hell we were going. 

Along the way I told Stephanie how at school on Friday I had described my family life and one person said, don't even ask him because his life is perfect. Another said, perfect wife, perfect daughters, perfect pets probably. I shrugged and smiled because I really do have most everything at home I've ever wanted. Enough that we were walking away from the march to get coffee.

When we thought about things, long ago, we wanted smart kids who were independent but not desperate to get away. We wanted to be nurturing and loving. We wanted to teach and let the kids learn on their own. We knew we would have to let them go and become independent. Maybe that's everyone's plan. Stephanie though is good at doing in the moment so as to achieve those long-term goals of her parenting. She's not perfect but does parenting the way I do writing: she dives in without trepidation and knows she will find the right way. I'm no slouch at this stuff, but she's playing Major League Baseball as an all-star while I'm a good player on the farm team. 

I wanted to explain all this to anyone wondering why we were walking away. It's all part of our plan.

And I wanted coffee. 

The march was excellent. I'm proud to know Saoirse Murphy-Collins who organized and gave the my favorite speech. It wasn't just that she is one of my daughters' best friends. I'm a writer and a teacher and she did everything I would have done as a writer and everything I would have asked her to do if I was her teacher. She wrote a speech that worked at every level. It was on target, unique, delivered in a cadence and tone that responded to the crowd, and was both full and brief. I couldn't have done it any better. I'm not sure I could have done it as well. 

Our girls were up front, making a difference, chanting, cheering their friends at the lectern, and standing up for what's right. 

They didn't need us there much. Really, they just needed a ride there and if we hadn't been able to do that, they would have found another way. They appreciated us buying hot chocolate after hours in the crisp, March cold, but even that they could have taken care of without us. 

This is just what we wanted. We aren't disposable to them by any means or unappreciated, but they've learned how to take care of themselves, what sides to choose, and how to stand up. And it doesn't bother them to see in the crowd that Stephanie and I are standing in support, beaming from a distance. They're used to it having seen us there nearly every moment since they were each born. 

They'll keep marching. I can't wait to see where they get to next. 

Grief At A Distance

Reading Rick Bass's lyrical memoir Why I Came West, I thought of a writer from back here in the east, David Budbill, most famous for his poems about the imagined town of Judevine. I've read Budbill since Ben recommended him, though when he first gave me Judevine I was too green to appreciate it. I came back to Budbill through Hayden Carruth and some experience and wisdom before I appreciated enough to hear what he wrote. Happy Life and While We've Still Got Feet are precious books to me now. In my classroom, I went to the computer and searched for a new Budbill book. There is one, but there's a catch: he died in October 2016. 

I get attached to writers. Learning that Budbill had died was a shock. Realizing he had been dead seventeen months without my knowing felt like I had been a bad friend. 

No, I didn't know the man. 

I had a similar feeling when J.D. Salinger died in 2010. It was a terrible time in my life and I stood in another classroom when I learned of his death the day he died. There wasn't any guilt over having missed it, and I understood I was never going to meet or correspond with the man, but I still felt as if a friend had died. 

Driving to get gas today, I passed a car like that of a neighbor whose husband died about the same time Budbill passed. Throughout her husband's cancer I kept tabs on her online and tried to be of some use. My wife had gone through cancer treatment too. She came through bald but on the mend. The neighbor's husband was taken off life support and passed into the other life. Since then, we haven't had much contact. It's as though she lives across the world instead of a block and a half away. 

Yesterday, I spoke with a woman who has been through chemo and radiation and who prays she is free, that cancer won't come back to her. She asked what exact kind of cancer my wife had had. I didn't know. I probably seemed clueless, out of the loop. In many ways, I was. I simply believed nothing bad could happen. I went to appointments, sat with her for chemo, and fainted while the plastic surgeon removed stitches from her mastectomy, but I didn't pay attention to names of things or exact details. If felt like ignoring some of that might make it go away. That's a fool's philosophy, but it worked for us this time. 

David Budbill has died. His last book of poetry is in paperback. I'll need to get a copy. I'll want to tell Ben because he gave Budbill to me and I eventually came to treasure that gift. Is it ridiculous that I'm grieving Budbill? I am, just as I grieved Salinger, and I hope it won't diminish the neighbor who died or his wife to say I felt similarly about that too. 

I'm whistling past the graveyard here. I often have. My wife is healthy, thank heavens. I'm healthy enough to grieve a poet I met only through words on printed pages. Then again, not much brings me closer to someone than their words on a page. About the only thing, holding my wife and not letting go. 

Focus

“All we can do is one thing at a time. All we have is this moment, this day.

Each moment, we can do another one thing, giving it our full attention, giving it full weight, acting as if it might be our last act...”

— Lao Babauta, zenhabits.net/scarcity

I read those lines at school while students read their books. I told them I would join them in my own book after I finished an article I was reading. Beside me sat my book and writer's notebook stuck with four blue post-it notes, ideas to write. There were students in the room, movement in the hall, and traffic outside the windows. I was anything but focused on one thing. 

My students brag of their mad multi-tasking skillz. I used to argue except I multi-task too (though without skillz mad or otherwise). I'm listening to music as I write, thinking thoughts and typing them, and I occasionally walk and chew gum without falling down. As a teacher, I do many things at once. I no longer argue about multi-tasking, but doing two things at once never feels good because I'm not focused on either one. I read the article distracted and it was a lousy experience. After class I cleared my desk and focused on reading it again. It opened for me because of my focus and I savored it. That's a lot of how I want to live.

“What we can’t do is concentrate on two things at the same time. When I talk about being present, I’m not talking about doing only one thing at a time. I’m talking about being focused on one thing at a time. Multitasking itself is not the enemy...; pretending we can ‘multifocus’ is.”

— Greg McKeown, Essentialism, 220

However, I don't focus as if it might be my last act. That's too much pressure and becomes my focus. Sure, life is short, but acting as though it is hanging by a thread distracts me. It's like someone holding a gun to my head demanding I enjoy fully and am present in this moment or else. That's not my way of living.

As much as I can, and more each passing year, I focus on one thing at a time: the person with whom I sit, the book I read, the food I eat, the words I write. Most often there are distractions and my habit is to go with them and then curse myself for lacking focus and discipline. But it turned out today that the article was the distraction. I needed to focus elsewhere. I figured that out when I set the article aside and took care of those other things. I focused on each task one after the other rather than two at any one time. When I read the article focused it was a wonder and led to a draft of this. Between paragraphs I took spoonfuls of yogurt, tasting and savoring it as much as these words. 

Done with the draft, I looked out the window and focused on nothing until I felt ready to revise. I'm moments from finishing and am allowing my focus to shift now, wondering where it will land next and if I will focus on it as the one thing I'm doing in that moment.  If so, that's more than enough. 

The Writing Life: A Paper Dictionary

Dictionaries are quaint relics. Most people haven't cracked a paper dictionary in years and instead Google what they need to know. But a writer needs that quaint dictionary lying open within easy reach while writing. It transforms the writer for the better in a way that can't happen online. 

Consider two people looking to listen to music. The first opens his phone to an app. Maybe he searches for a specific album or artist, but more likely he lets the machine decide. The algorithm does the thinking and the listener almost immediately lets the music drift into the background. 

The second person has a turntable or CD player and a shelf of albums she thumbs through. Maybe she searches for one in particular, but along the way notices other possibilities triggered through browsing. She chooses an album, puts it on to play, and  listens. She may let the music fade to the background eventually but begins engaged with the process and experience.

Writers must engage. Creation demands it. Writing this, I'm thinking about words and usage and ideas I want to convey. I'm open to the unexpected. To be engaged, I'm typing in a minimalist editor, full-screen, with my phone turned off. To engage with words, I keep the dictionary open, close at hand. Today I looked up "enmity" for spelling. On that page I encountered ennead, enjoinder, enkindle, enkephatin, and enophile. I didn't read all the definitions -- I wanted to get back to writing -- but the words caught my eye and intrigued me. The language had a tighter grip on me. I felt writerly.

Googling definitions doesn't do that. It's too efficient. I look up words online when necessary, but prefer the inefficient paper dictionary which brings me into contact with other words. I keep the dictionary open next to me so I'm not having to cross the room to find it. Paging through the dictionary enhances my writing. Looking for the dictionary takes me away from writing. Keep it close and open. 

At home I have two writing spaces, my basement nook and a desk in the living room. In the nook, the dictionary is open and waiting. I have yet to create space for an open dictionary in the living room and although it is in reach, I don't use it often enough. I'm sure that hurts my writing a little. It's something to fix. 

Besides having it near at hand and keeping it open, I mark up a dictionary. I draw a dot next to each word I look up. Looking up "enmity" today I saw dots next to "en masse" and "enormity" in the same column of page 576. It's not every day I come across a dotted word. Today, finding two, I felt connected to the past, the language, and the dictionary. A dictionary is a kind of history of language and our personal dictionaries are the histories of our language use. 

Which dictionary a writer uses may come to matter in time, but almost any hardback that lies open will do. At home I have _Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary_ that Mom gave me for college. It's a good dictionary and has become _my_ dictionary, familiar and comfortable. At school I use a large _New Oxford American Dictionary_ that is open within reach of students.

A dictionary can be had for cheap at garage and library book sales. Post to Facebook and a friend will likely give theirs away. Thrift shops have them for next to nothing. Buy one at the bookstore or ask for one for your birthday. It will last the rest of your days and once you've marked it and made it yours, you'll never want to let go of something that has made you the writer you've become.

The dictionary may seem quaint, but it's an essential tool. Writers should dip into it often, scanning for the word they need or aimlessly wandering. Dotting the words makes them ours and leaves a trail as we delve deeper into writing with language particularly suited to our thoughts, ideas, and dreams. If that's quaint, then I'm all for being a quaint writer.