Thou Rambling Ill-Formed Child—Please Call Your Parents
Anne: a softer portrait
It’s expected for a writer to dislike some or all of their published work on account on perfectionism, insecurity, self-deprecation—or overdue enlightenment. In The Author to Her Book, Anne Bradstreet used a child as a vivid metaphor for a disfavored book of her verse that she may have felt was prematurely published, and to such a degree you’d think the poem was about a real child if you neglected to read the title. Taking to task the “ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain” as “one unfit for light,” Bradstreet speaks with the hair-wilting harshness of a disappointed parent running out of ideas. In the end she softens, empathizes, and offers a bit of counsel on the rigors of the world (“‘mongst vulgars may’st thou roam”). A good thing, because she evidently harbored enough venom to kill a Puritan village. Really, the affection seems to have been there all along, and part of her anger is with herself for … being angry.
Bradstreet must have had multiple motives in writing this way, self-deprecation being obvious. She lived in 17th century New England and was for a woman unfashionably intellectual, not to mention competing in a man’s field. She also birthed eight children in ten years, neither an easy job nor free of bitterness. So to me the illegitimate child metaphor seems partly literal, a device to allow writing directly about motherhood while using her work as a stalking horse for the task.
When I reread the poem just now, thirty years later, looking for thoughts on writing, I ended up hearing it as a parent. Beneath the mother’s anxiety (it’s hard to imagine a father writing this way) there are so many implicit questions. How harshly ought we critique our own, how quick do we forgive? Need we continue to help them (“In better dress to trim thee was my mind”)? How do they reflect on us when they’re out there (“At thy return my blushing was not small”)?
The child metaphor is limited. Unlike books, humans have free will and continually add their own chapters without parental co-authors. They can’t revise the past, and a childhood gone wrong can’t be rewritten. Bradstreet knew love alone is not enough, especially after the fact (“affection would/Thy blemishes amend, if so I could”), and may make things worse (“rubbing off a spot still made a flaw”). There is no sure path to success from the start, but so many ways to fail. Even if we had a chance to start over, as we do with a book, we might not get it right, which is to admit true incompetence.
Can you tell I have a teenager on my mind? My little fledgling, with feet almost as big as mine, has two years of high school left. He seems to think that is a long time. I used to joke we’d move as soon as he went to college. Now I think we might follow him. Well, not really, but the sentiment is there, once I realized that a clean break was neither possible nor desired. But will he call? (Don’t suggest that he’d call just for money; he knows me better than that!)
The Accursed Book
The Author to Her Book
by Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)
Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain,
Who after birth didst by my side remain,
Till snatched from thence by friends, less wise than true,
Who thee abroad, exposed to public view,
Made thee in rags, halting to th’ press to trudge,
Where errors were not lessened (all may judge).
At thy return my blushing was not small,
My rambling brat (in print) should mother call,
I cast thee by as one unfit for light,
The visage was so irksome in my sight;
Yet being mine own, at length affection would
Thy blemishes amend, if so I could.
I washed thy face, but more defects I saw,
And rubbing off a spot still made a flaw.
I stretched thy joints to make thee even feet,
Yet still thou run’st more hobbling than is meet;
In better dress to trim thee was my mind,
But nought save homespun cloth i’ th’ house I find.
In this array ‘mongst vulgars may’st thou roam.
In critic’s hands beware thou dost not come,
And take thy way where yet thou art not known;
If for thy father asked, say thou hadst none;
And for thy mother, she alas is poor,
Which caused her thus to send thee out of door.
A critique of the poem by Julie Sheehan and a short biography of Bradstreet.
Because Life Is Amazing
Some people, more than one and fewer than a thousand, have asked why I haven’t updated this space in such a long time. It’s nice to hear, like having someone ask why you haven’t been cooking. Perhaps my guests are polite, but if they ask for seconds I know that they either really like my work or really like me. Either one is good, both is best. (Or they’re gluttons, but let’s not go there.)
I haven’t abandoned “cooking.” No, I’m just slow. This post reflects about two three four hours of research and thinking and writing. Usually in that order. Next, I didn’t intend this as a chronicle of my quotidian mundanity, let alone my tiresome vocabulary. My initial question was whether I could write. “Could write” doesn’t mean string words together nicely. A while ago I decided to shelve that issue based on the gracious compliments I’ve collected like fortune cookie aphorisms in my wallet. (One of the best: “Like a drink of cold water,” from a law school teaching assistant in my mandatory writing seminar. And he was a gruff former drug cop at that.) Just, can I do it? Not by dumping personal history, which fatally confuses streaking with sharing. No, I’m mostly at peace with my (weird) past, challenged by the present, and cautiously intrigued by the future. If you can do it, the best reason to write is that you want to write. The payoff of doing well is thrilling, as in when you nail something in a good piece. You can’t force it. No amount of perspiration will get you inspiration, but patience helps.
I’ve been writing a lot, more and better than in years. Yes, I’m pleased. And bemused (why now?). My young adult novel is nearly done at around 85,000 words, which is half a million keys pressed (many more if you count editing) to make a fairly average length two to three hundred pages. I also just sent in a science fiction short story to a competition for not-yet-professional writers. Six thousand words was the limit and I wrote 5,918, which in editing meant picking and choosing individual words, like walking around a house with a ceiling that’s too low and trying not to smack your head. I have a lot of other shorts variously submitted or in the works, including one that sold last fall for a whopping $50. Most of all I’m calling myself a writer, a really difficult transition for me for fear of mediocrity. This is not writing for its own sake, a masturbatory exercise. If it were, I’d rather do something useful. (I am not fishing for compliments! Any given will be severely scrutinized and/or excoriated. Hey, that you’re still reading is the real compliment. Would you like seconds?)
Now, instead of writing on writing, which is about as interesting as the physics of gruel,1 (I’ve already blown about 500 words here), I do have something on point.
I recently added something to the tag line in the site header above: “because life is amazing.” Though that’s a bit giddy for me, it’s not the product of a passing mood. I believe it. I’ve always felt it, but it wouldn’t have occurred to say it or would have seemed a tad too ironic before I upgraded my life to color. As a general matter, I’m not taking up writing to complain. Some people are strangely startled that I explain I feel it’s a privilege to be hear here. [Sigh, f#*&1#g typos.] Not because “it beats the alternative”—and what a stupid expression that is—no, it’s that it’s a blessing, and the only path possible to all that is good for us. I want to make more of it. What makes me emotional is not to dwell on all the years lost, the career ruined, the slow grind of daily life; but on the loves and opportunities I am blessed to have, however fleeting some may be. Buddhism seems to grasp this, in meditating not on why life sucks but why life is.
It feels good to get out a little more. I started volunteering occasionally, began knocking off long-stale home improvement projects (this is not small stuff, see the last post), and started taking piano lessons (at 44, mind you, he will learn a new trick). I’m alive again, most of the time, three-dimensional versus flattened into a picture frame to watch everything through a gauzy camera while eating stale potato chips and trying to ignore the cold.
I’ll always write about and contemplate and dip into the sadness. Some things about it are actually enlightening (see Buddhism, above). It provides contrast, but neither the memory of it nor freedom from it are reasons for me to feel blessed. I’m not here to dump a lifetime of miseries and resentment and then quickly tack on a caboose about uplifting recovery. That’s streaking. And, worse, boring. The ultimate yet tentative beauty of life is sharing. In being permitted to enjoy life, I’m not grateful, I just am, and before I wasn’t. And I mean wasn’t.2
I hope to write about all this someday in that memoir thing. These posts are glimpses. I’m not racing towards that challenge. It will find me.
An Admonition to the Fault-Fynder
If many faultes in this book you fynde,
Yet think not the correctors blynde.
If Argos heere hymselfe had beene,
He should perchance not all have seene.—Richard Shacklock, printer (ca. 1565); quoted in many tech manuals including one I read around 1980; note that the “misspellings” may not have been at the time
XKCD: let's not take Strunk too seriously
1 Unless you’re a wannabe geek about these things, try starting with Strunk’s (not White’s) The Elements of Style and Chicago Manual of Styleon mechanics; and me, someday, on content. The regular grammar geeks already know these things.
Grammar is important and can even save lives: ”Let’s eat Grandpa” versus “Let’s eat, Grandpa.” But I regret all the times I corrected people on petty matters of grammar, worse so because a lot of the rules turn out, on a second look, to be specious or wrong. Split those infinitives. Write sentence fragments. Dangle your prepositions until they gasp for air. And tell anyone who thinks they’re superior for pointing out niggling errors rather than elucidating content (guilty) to go get a better job. Or f**k themselves; that works, too. Put, your, commas, wherever, you, goddamn, want.
As I’ve said elsewhere, the first sin of writing is to be boring. Not to be unable to define gerund.
I do want to look good. I was crestfallen to learn a few weeks ago that none is plural—usually. Who knew? Not the 1959 revision of Strunk. Usage note in the New Oxford American Dictionary:
none | usage: It is sometimes held that none can take only a singular verb, never a plural verb: none of them is coming tonight, rather than none of them are coming tonight. There is little justification, historical or grammatical, for this view. None is descended from Old English nān, meaning ‘not one,’ and has been used for around a thousand years with both a singular and a plural verb, depending on the context and the emphasis needed.
Of course, the only thing this says for sure is that the traditional rule is a mistake. To heck with the high-horse prescriptivists, let them polish the silverware. I get it now.
2I’ve already gotten a couple of messages from friends that this notion of gratitude connected with things in their present tense lives, making them appreciate their own corner of the world a bit more. It’s not that you’re happy because you’re better off than someone who is sad; it’s that the event makes you stop and realize what you take for granted. It’s like finding an extra present under the Christmas tree. (Or gift-giving tradition of your choice.) A little karmic windfall is a good thing.
The Day the Ceiling Fell
Cleanup crew
Literally a third of the living room ceiling fell to the floor on Father’s Day. This was my fault. About 12 years ago there was a heavy rainfall while I had the roof open for the addition. The tarp didn’t do its job, or maybe I didn’t do my job hanging the tarp, and many gallons of water filtered down into and through cracks in the ceiling. I patched the ceiling in a haphazard way, but the bandages held until new cracks appeared last week. Sunday morning I was idly talking to my son Julian about repair options. He kept asking, “Can’t we just call someone?” I assured him it was an aesthetic problem. Wrong. We were nearby but not in the room when it all let loose. The noise of three hundred pounds of plaster hitting the hardwood floor was impressive even from the curb. The violence was enough to shake things off the nearby walls and shelves (fortunately not my pictures!).
No one was hurt and surprisingly little was damaged, though the cat might take issue regarding her emotional well-being. I half expected to find her little tabby tail curling out from under a sheet of plaster, a notion I found perversely amusing in the way of A Fish Called Wanda—and yes I do love this cat. The worn-out couch and carpet are truly worn out. The venerable piano I paid nothing for gained more character. I learned the painless way that closing your laptop when you’re not using it is a good idea.
Book found under the debris
The worst injury of all is probably to my faltering ego. I think I’m going to make some lemonade from the disaster and build a tray ceiling, improve the lighting, and rough in a ceiling fan; meager recompense for the room blowing up. So now I have a new medium-sized project added to a crowded list with more items delayed than the O’Hare departures in a blizzard. On the upside, school is ending and I can enlist the boys to learn some skills. I have already provided a generous lesson on the long-term price of hack repairs. (Julian just walked by and reminded me, “I was right and you were wrong.” Fine, his workload just doubled. I wonder how much drywall he can handle?)
On the constructive side, today we watched Malcolm graduate from the fifth grade.* It was a bittersweet thing. He’s growing up and, including his brother’s time there, we’ve been involved with that school for ten years. Now that door is closed, and however good or bad a job we did is behind us. In a sense we’re watching the boys build the houses where they’ll live after they leave us; houses that, I hope, will have better ceilings.
Maia—not squished
The more so because of the chaos I grew up in, I regret not providing a stout and orderly childhood home. It’s a rare kid who sees the skeleton of their home laid bare, especially by the folly of their father, and these guys are admirably stoic about it. As a corollary of feeling better, I dwell on this more and I am bringing it around, and with drywall and mud and paint will create the nice boxes I hear normal people like to live in. To be honest, I like problems like these. I understand them. I can fix them. Carpentry is wonderfully concrete. Meanwhile, how the kids will turn out—I don’t know. Raising them is such an inexact and humbling process. But as I described in the last post, I’m trying my best, a much better best than in many years yet maybe 30% of what I can really do. In the meantime I’d really appreciate it if the rest of the damn ceiling would stay where it belongs, securely over our heads.
* With honors, mind you, and just a year after he tried to break it to me gently that “I’m just not an ‘A’ student” in a walk through the park. I demurred … passionately.
