We Were Connoisseurs of Synonyms, Or: Why I Use Twitter

It is easy to make light of this kind of "writing," and I mention it specifically because I do not make light of it at all: it was at Vogue that I learned a kind of ease with words [...], a way of regarding words not as mirrors of my own inadequacy but as tools, toys, weapons to be deployed strategically on a page. In a caption of, say, eight lines, each line to run no more or less than twenty-seven characters, not only every word but every letter counted. At Vogue one learned fast, or one did not stay, how to play games with words, how to put a couple of unwieldy dependent clauses through the typewriter and roll them out transformed into one simple sentence composed of precisely thirty-nine characters. We were connoisseurs of synonyms. We were collectors of verbs.

(Joan Didion, "Telling Stories," 1978)

Islands

I had better tell you where I am, and why.

We had been to see The Descendants and I still couldn't stop crying.

Afterwards, over an Indian dinner buffet in a booth next to the drooping Christmas lights strung across the windows, my dad questioned the motives of fiction. "Why do people want to make up sad stuff?" As I dabbed my eyes with a paper napkin, I suggested that most fiction exists for us to process our feelings through something other than our own realities. Or even emotions that don't exist in our own reality, but we feel the need to process anyway. 

This lingering sadness, still furrowing my brow: I'm still processing that damned film.

Part of it, I swear, was Hawaii. Kauai in particular. J and I were supposed to go to Kauai almost eleven years ago now, on our honeymoon. But then the realities of finances set in and we never made it. We'd planned the entire trip in our heads, and those places kept showing up in The Descendants. The beach on which George Clooney's character runs barefoot: a few miles from the cabin I'd wanted to rent. The bar where Clooney finds Beau Bridges downing a whiskey: a restaurant we'd listed for a visit. We were meant to be in the background of those shots, learning to surf, consulting a map for a hike along Na Pali.

Hawaii, the great unaccomplished trip, hangs over my head like a misty cloud, once in a while seeding the atmosphere of my mood with tiny raindrops. These raindrops remind me of other things left unfinished. A promise to take up sewing. The accordion. Plans with friends for a group project cast aside into the ethers. The inkling of a novel I had in me once about a family coming to terms with the fact that as you get older, things disintegrate in order to make way for new things, like the erosion of the soil as a river grows wider and deeper.

Not so long ago I'd decided that I might never write a novel, and I was okay with that. But I think I might be changing my mind. 

* * *

To Joan Didion, Hawaii belonged to James Jones. But to me, Hawaii is forever Joan Didion's. By her own criteria:

Certain places seem to exist mainly because someone has written about them. [...] A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his image...

Didion's Hawaii is rendered not with palm trees and luaus but with curtains drawn in hotel rooms. Barracks, smoke fires, and porous volcanic rock. The stench of a marriage falling apart. In her essay "In The Islands," Joan Didion writes about witnessing a couple's public disagreement on a delayed plane, and how as a result the man storms of the plane before it takes off. 

It was not until we had passed Diamond Head and were coming in low over the reef for landing at Honolulu, however, that I realized what I most disliked about this incident: I disliked it because it had the aspect of a short story, one of those "little epiphany" stories in which the main character glimpses a crisis in a stranger's life—a woman weeping in a tearoom, often, or an accident seen from the window of a train, "tearooms" and "trains" still being fixtures of short stories although not of real life—and is moved to see his or her own life in a new light.

And then: 

I was not going to Honolulu because I wanted to see life reduced to a short story. I was going to Honolulu because I wanted to see life expanded to a novel, and still do.

Didion confesses (elsewhere) that she writes in order to experience things. That until she has written something down, she hasn't been able to fully process it. I think that in addition to understanding past experiences, there is something in the intent of writing that forces future experience: where we say WE WILL and I HOPE and SO IF, what we do is born: We will make it to Hawaii. We will make Hawaii our story, a story of our happy marriage; not of death, not of divorce, not an abstract vision on a screen. We will face our fear of flying, our fear of turbulence, of winds and ocean. We will write the book that is our life, it will go on for thousands of pages, we won't let it become a mere short story.

It seems like no accident that The Descendants came out around the same time as Didion's Blue Nights. Both are about the challenges of confronting death, death that is always too soon. Descendants director Alexander Payne's Hawaii matches Didion's: a place where things fall apart at the seams, islands are created from the chaos of volcanos, fossils, resorts. These octoberian portraits of life as a great crescendo followed by the inevitable decrescendo, or worse: the music stopping suddenly altogether. So then what do we take from these fictions (and remembered non-fictions)? If we don't take anything, where are they taking us?

Try this: by expanding life into a novel, or blowing it up large onto a screen, by forcing ourselves to explore emotions we don't even know yet... Maybe this is how to confront the things we're angry at that aren't yet a reality. Learning how to harness the emotion before it even happens.

Maybe we will make it to Hawaii. Maybe, then, we will make it our own.

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.

Something I Must Say

Why is writing important? Mainly, out of egotism, I suppose. Because I want to be that persona, a writer, and not because there is something I must say.
-Susan Sontag, 1957

I'm horribly disturbed by how quickly time is rushing by me. Last night, sitting on the sofa with a beer in one hand and the remote in the other, letting my belly hang out in post-cake trauma, I watched the minutes move on the clock, getting angrier and angrier as each hour passed without me realizing. What am I DOING with my life.

I shouldn't be so cyclically cynical: this is mostly just the comedown from a weekend spent with family, residual emotions of one of those beautiful weekends when everyone is together, dancing, laughing, each of us with a song in our heart, appreciating the moment of togetherness to celebrate each other's lives. But then I wake up on Monday, and everyone is gone, yellow balloons lie puckered, low to the ground, streamers sag, and I feel the drudgery of another week weighing down on me, responsibilities and pressures and dental appointments like the tiny stabs of a pin. And I want to go back again to the laughter, to sucking helium out of a balloon and singing Happy Birthday. But you can't go back again.

Dear Diary: The world is moving way too fast. It's all I can do to keep writing it down.

And then I wonder (again and again and AGAIN out loud) why I feel so compelled to write in the first place. I do agree with what they say, that the personal blog is dying. (I hate statements like this, and yet I make them.) I think that unless it's couched in a distinct creative intent, there's no point. Unless you're making noise to make beautiful noise (or hilarious noise, or world-changing noise), you should just shut up.

Who have I turned into? Grumpy Old Zan. Moping her way through November. Mopember.

Why do we do what we do? And must we, really? Creativity can be a burden or a joy, but either way it's a process, not just a natural bodily function (excepting maybe Tracey Emin's bed). I've been taking comfort lately in biographies and memoirs of artists, in discovering how art came into this world, sometimes by accident, mostly by hard work. These accidental, easy scribblings on this page are but a joke. (Todd Rundgren: "The ultimate punchline would be, you know, to stand in front of your Creator, at the end, and ask, 'What was this, just a fucking joke?' and he says, 'Yes.'") But you and I: we've been through that.

And so I sit at home on my couch, the hours pass, and I've created nothing but bodily functions. Not very beautiful noises at all. (Though often quite funny.)

And then one day I look up from my navel and see that all around me people are busy making beautiful things. Things with messages and intent. There is artistry all around us. There is beauty all around us. We all have the potential to do amazing things. We are all Stars.

It's okay to let other people do the creating once in a while. To let your own thoughts simmer in the meantime. They'll come to a boil soon enough.

* * *

Further reading:

Just Kids - Patti Smith

Hear Patti Smith read from her (now National Book Award winning) memoir, including a great scene where Allen Ginsberg rescues her at the Automat. I couldn't be happier that this book won the award; its honesty was heart-breaking, and its simplicity endeared me to Patti Smith in a way I never would have expected. When you're done listening to that, go listen to this.

A Wizard, A True Star: Todd Rundgren in the Studio - Paul Myers

Reborn: Journals and Notebooks 1947-1963 - Susan Sontag

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.

Setdressing

I.
A basement paneled in wood. Sneakers making a tock-tock-tock sound down the staircase. Off to one side, a greenhouse filled with ferns; in the corner of the greenhouse, an old sewing machine. Shelves piled high with games: Concentration, Othello, Operation. Games that buzz and clack and pop. Books in German and Russian. Upstairs, a terry loop bedspread, pale violet and blue floral pillowcases, a green velvet couch. Sepia photos in frames on dressers. Drawers full of silk scarves and soft cotton tops. Dial soap and Archway cookies. The hum of a flourescent light suspended under cabinets. Klondike bars in the freezer.

II.
A hallway lined with red lockers, slamming at unpredictable intervals. Combinations commited to memory being spun deftly with a left hand. Cutouts of Keanu Reeves, quotes from Robert Smith and Michael Stipe. Paper bag covered textbooks and binders scribbled on with Bic pen pulled quickly from a heap of papers on the top shelf. A mix tape. The smell of Love's Baby Soft and peppermint lip gloss. Further down the hall, formaldahyde creeping through a vent in the biology room door.

III.
Rubber skate guards thrown under a bench painted glossy red. Plexiglass marred by galvanized rubber puck nicks. T-stop ice dripping from a metal blade onto the rubber floors. Rental laces graying from renters' hands pulling them tight around wool sock-thickened ankles. Wide-eyed kids from church groups wearing sneakers and chasing a rubber ball across ice with brooms. Dimes under the hot chocolate machine, scraped free by a hockey stick. Caramels with a creme center under dim vending machine lights.

IV.
Two beds against perpendicular walls. Quilted headboards. A closet with sliding doors, sash windows with double panes. Flannel nightgowns, sleep in the corners of the eyes, whispers in the dark.

(Prompt: a couple of old pictures sent to me by my cousin, plus these calendars, which reminded me of the aforementioned pillowcases. [via] See also: someone else's picture of the sheets my parents used to put on the fold-out couch when guests came to stay. There's something about bedding patterns that sets my memory going, and then I feel like I need to set dress everything or it might disappear forever.)

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.

Neither Here Nor There

ARGUMENT
I think there might be crickets outside.

Or they could just be car alarms.

New York is sweating off its summer. This great rushing snake, shedding its skin. Underneath, a smooth pink layer of memories. Never memories from here, though. For me it's drive thrus, the swingset outside the junior high where we used to go late at night, the metallic smell that lingered on your hands from grabbing the chains, the woods, deep and dark, high school kids tucking themselves inside with soft packs of Marlboro reds and cans of beer. 

The air at dusk, the light over a solitary water tower. The sound of a parade with its thundering bass drum.

Thunder - real thunder - rolls over the barrier of the Hudson, pinballs through midtown buildings; the rains come and I close my eyes and think of all I ever think of: nights on porches, eating corn, breathing in the smell of rain on grass, earthworms peeking out to say hello.

Fleshy pink. Like a skinned knee.

AN EXAMPLE FROM EVERYDAY LIFE
Yesterday as I was husking ears of corn, I noticed that my posture was all wrong. I was bent over the plastic trashcan in our kitchen, one foot pressed to the foot peddle keeping the lid open. Inside: coffee grounds, empty potato chip bags, two empty grapefruit husks from my morning juice. Outside: the sound of subway wheels clacking against tracks. This was wrong. I should be sat comfortably on the end of a wooden porch, knees rounded, paper bag at my feet waiting to receive silks, husks, the rough stalk satisfyingly snapped clean. There should be birdsong. 

As the water boils, I think I can hear crickets again. Cicadas. Something that lurks in trees; the organic engine of a non-mechanical life somewhere outside my city window. I can't tell anymore if it's real or wishful thinking.

SLIGHTLY FORCED TREE METAPHOR, PT. 1
I recently learned about pine trees in Ireland. That many, many years ago, Scots pines grew natively in Ireland, but then something happened, and they were gone, and no one knows how or why. For years, there were no pine trees in Ireland. Then someone decided that Ireland needed pine trees, so they imported entire forests from elsewhere, from Scotland and Norway.

The Irish pine forests are beautiful, majestic. They have the same solemn, cushioned air found in other pine forests all over the world. But I can't help but wonder if these pines ever miss their home.

SLIGHTLY FORCED TREE METAPHOR, PT. 2
I find a book of North American trees and flip its pages as the bus putters up Riverside Drive. Slippery elm. Trees of the soapberry family: Buckeyes. Boxelder. The helicopter seeds of maples, like two tadpoles kissing. The hum and cough and paper shuffle of society buzzes around me; a man with an off-track betting book considers the names of horses: First Flute, Capitalism at Risk, Flaming Punch. He puts a star next to Every Little Thing. And I remember every little thing about creek beds, waterstriders, flat rocks concealing crawdads and tadpoles, too.

I read up on sweetgum trees, those staples of park walkways. Fruit 1", long-stalked woody ball of pointed capsules, ripe in fall, persistent through winter.

Like me, I think.

Maybe when fall comes I'll ripen, be less of a cynic about this place. Maybe I'll persist through winter.

Or maybe that idea will stick in my teeth like a kernel of sweetcorn, prodded by a fingernail as the rusted chain of a swing creaks under my imported weight.

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.