Every story, every poem you carry inside is dead until you bring it to life. The time your aunt had a little too much bourbon on xmas eve and told you what had really happened; the way that carnival lights can play over the face of a stranger; the howl that leaped from your heart when you looked out at what had been a beloved meadow and saw a war zone of construction: all of these lie waiting. You know what to do. You know that you are the miracle of breath that will bring your stories to life.
Two of you responded to recent Breakthrough tips. Here are their living stories, here is their breath:
What We Have to Do —-Mary Patton
When I was a child, I would try to explain to my dad that I HAD to do things, like: Be on time, do my homework, do my chores, get ready for bed, etc. “I can’t! I HAVE to finish this,” I would say. My daddy would reply, “The only thing you have to do is die and live until you do die. Everything else is just consequences.” True or not, it’s what my daddy said.
As an adult, he made me think. Can I escape death and must I live until I die? Are change and consequences inevitable? I realize it is true, not just because my daddy told me so, but because I have a compost pile full of rotting shit. Each year that compost makes new squash and new tomatoes and sometimes unnecessary weeds. Gardening has taught me about life and what we can and can’t escape.
They say that a person who is neither alive nor dead is a “vegetable”. People respond to this condition as if it were a terrible thing for anyone to endure and spend millions of dollars to bring the person into active life again. It occurs to me that even vegetables, both human ones and edible ones, produce life and change even in their static form. As a human, it humbles me when I am inactive and don’t see visible and rapid change in my life. However, even without visible motion, there is slower action happening that is unnoticed by human eyes. There is really no use in hurrying.
I once lived in a little A frame cabin that was a homestead in Alaska. The cabin was built in the 1960’s before the Alaska Pipeline. I lived alone in the middle of nowhere and after survival work like hauling water, chopping wood and washing, I read and thought of the meaning of life. One dark winter, I was outside chopping wood with my dogs nearby and could not quit studying the large configuration of the Big Dipper and North Star directly over the smoking chimney of the cabin and the colorful Northern Lights that danced vigorously around them.
It was clear and about -25 degrees F. without a breath of wind. It was so cold my breath turned into ice crystals on my parka. I was depressed and feeling lonely that day from what Alaskans call “Cabin Fever”. The silvery lights shining outside in the perpetual darkness were more beautiful than the inside of my dreary cabin walls, so after I hauled my wood inside, I decided to build a small igloo in the snow to watch the vicious motion of the sky. I dug a deep hole, shoved my sleeping bag into it and cuddled up with my dog to watch the night sky bloom and grow. With a pair of binoculars, this was a powerful experience.
Visions came in abundance. I could hardly believe how being that close to nature would give me such amazing dreams. As I studied the enormous sky, I imagined the moving skylights to be butterflies flittering around.
Those beautiful colored dancing butterflies suddenly died and landed on a barren landscape. The Northern Lights were changing their patterns and slowing down but I saw butterflies dying and rotting into the ground, the wind blowing around them, snow falling until they were covered and forgotten.
Some 370 miles above my snow cave, the wind blew again and the magnificent colored lights shot across the sky some more. I saw melting snow and seeds blowing everywhere. One lonely seed landed on butterfly bones and began to sprout to become a Tamarac on the tundra.
I spent all night in my fort but it felt like years had passed of this cycle of shifting sky, from abundant, colorful life to deathly still cold, gray winters. Lights and butterflies lived and died, pollinating everything as they went. Trees grew then died and hills came but diminished into valleys. Weather patterns changed, animals and people came to live and die on those hills and valleys and rivers. It was the vision of a thousand million years into a never ending future. These were the pictures the Northern sky had permanently engraved in my mind.
As I huddled in my sleeping bag, I laughed. Perhaps all that life cycle was connected to earth’s rotation and orbiting and we are all spinning an electric generator that creates the Aurora Borealis. Maybe when I face the death I can’t escape, I will generate just one volt of that colorful night formation to show the Universe that I was here.
I can’t escape my unknown destiny but by simply existing, I create change that matters. My daddy is dead now but his words still live in me. Like a carnival merry-go-round, the cycle continues and I cannot escape the continuum but have resolved that it is all joyfully ok.
And here, from Rachel Rueckert:
Please write us how it feels when you ignore your deepest gift. Set your writing timer for 30 minutes and use this opening sentence if you like: I can’t escape…
I can’t escape the guilt of not having a 9-5 job. Maybe it is my German roots from my father’s side and the way my grandpa told my fiancé, only half-joking, “If I hear you say failure one more time, I’m going to recommend my granddaughter not marry you.” My mom’s family never had any money. Her dad was a brick layer and his father was a homesteader in Idaho. When I turned 15 my step-mom, who had moments of homelessness in her childhood, took me to five different fast food restaurants to pick up job applications, even though the minimum working age was 16. “No one will hire me,” I retorted with no small degree of resentment. “Just lie about your age,” she said. “That’s what I did.”
I didn’t’ lie about my age, but by 16 I had two jobs and was still earning A’s in high school so I could go to a good college to get a practical job. My parents wanted me to have a better life. I understood that, but no one entertained the idea of me pursuing a creative vocation. There comes a time when we stop blaming our parents for our failures. But my prolonged start to owning my writer-self is one of my regrets. I realize now it is never a permission someone will grant me. I have to seize it with both hands.
Once I browsed my old elementary journal and found an entry on how I wanted to be an author. It was accompanied by a bright red stick figure holding a book. I have no memory of my parents ever talking to me about this dream. It may have been another whim like the time I said I wanted to be Princess Jasmine or a house painter. There are few narrative threads I can trace throughout my short life, but one that has always been present for as long as I can remember is the need to write.
I kept a regular journal until my mom stole it before I got kicked out of the house as a teenager. I wrote bad poems in a silver notebook until my step sister used it to tell my Dad I was sleeping at my boyfriend’s house on the weekends. I asked for a fire and flood proof lock box for Christmas and still kept writing. When it came time to apply for college I claimed “English major” on the application. The first week of college, so unsure of my future path and doubtful of my talents, I went to the career center to change it to “undecided.” I thought I might graduate in Undecided, a subject I can confidently say I am an expert on.
Eventually I made my way to a creative writing class. I produced a lot of bad writing. The professor said he only gave A+’s to students who “produced a certain kind of brilliance.” I got an A-. I brought my portfolio to him at the end of the semester. He had an embarrassed smile. “Just keep writing,” he said.
I did. I can’t help it. Sometimes I made time for it and sometimes it came in spurts. I forced myself into a “real career” as a high school teacher at an urban school after graduation with Teach For America. I worked 80 hour weeks. There was no emotion left at the end of the day to put on a pot of noodles for dinner, let alone emotion left to pull out a piece of paper. I went almost two years without writing about some of the most transformative experiences of my life. It almost killed me.
I promised myself as a way to get through my two-year teaching commitment that I would save money to travel for a year. By the time I boarded the first plane from Miami to Bogota I felt nothing, only vaguely remembering why I decided to take this journey in the first place. I packed a leather journal with a vintage map etched into the front. I opened it reluctantly. For weeks I wrote reluctantly, then less reluctantly, till eventually I was writing every day again and finding words here and there that leapt off the page and into my heart. My soul perked up.
At the end of the year I walked a 500-mile pilgrimage across Spain. Without the usual momentum of life, I slowed down and reevaluated my life direction. A week before the plane back home to Boston I wrote a list of commitments to myself. To slow down. To avoid being too busy. To prioritize my happiness. To own “I am a writer.”
It has been five months since I have been home from my journey around the world. I try to write every day and take advantage of the privilege of only working part time and having a room of my own. Sometimes my fears and insecurities overwhelm me into believing I can’t write well and will never “make it” as a writer. On bad days I start to lose sight of my goals and browse job listings. No matter what flavor the emotion is for the day, at least I am writing, and as far as I’m concerned, that makes me a writer.
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