Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for which there is a market demand-a business as safe and commendable as making soap or breakfast foods-or it should be an art, which is always a search for something for which there is no market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do with standardized values.
Willa Cather (1876-1947), U.S. author. “On the Art of Fiction,” On Writing (1920)
Well, Willa, old girl, what would you think of today’s world and instant communication of ideas amongst even the least of us? Do you have a descendant, a younger version of yourself out there on those stark plains in Nebraska somewhere Blogging?
I think you’d rather enjoy this cacophony of voices raised up in “search for something for which there is no market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic-and have nothing to do with standardized values.” I think you would approve heartily of this medium that allows the voices of the masses to be heard and mold public opinion. I think you would applaud madly.
I first read Will Cather when I was fairly young. She was another author the the librarian at the Andrew Carnegie Library in Clay Center, Nebraska deemed safe to place into my starved little hands. We had reading programs in the summer when I was a child. For every ten or so books you read, you could earn an ice cream cone at the Soft Serve joint across the street from the Park. I could read 10 books a week easy peasy. Maybe 20 since I had read everything in the children’s section at least once. That’s why they promoted me to the adult section. I only had to read one adult book a week,
I planned to sew today. Then I remembered I had to glue some pieces of wood together and a lampshade. That means until they are dry the kitchen table is occupied and I will surely need the kitchen table while I sew. So I am writing instead because I can’t sew.
That’s really bunk. I want to write so I found an excuse why it’s really not convenient. I’ve felt driven to write this past week. It’s like a fever and I can’t not write. The weather is beautiful and I think I should go out and enjoy it because in Wisconsin you really take advantage of days like these days while you have them. Winter approaches.
But I can’t leave this monitor which is new to me by the way. It’s much easier on my eyes and bigger and I love it. I thought I would mourn my old Sony that I have had 12 years and got when I got my first expensive state of the art IBM. Nope it’s sitting in the closet and I don’t care one whit. Sony was a good friend and it was a good old work horse but out with the old and in with the new. This is a Gateway and it will probably never live up to the Sony’s pure gutsiness but the Sony was in the last stages of simply fading away.
But I diverge, back to what’s up with the inability to walk away from the PC? Where are all these words coming from and why am I feeling pushed by some unseen force to record them? Do not interpret that as a supernatural force. I said unseen. I think this is an entirely natural process. This has happened before, these periods where I can’t not write.
Of course the reverse is often true as well. Long periods with nary a word. I will sit down at the keyboard and stare at the monitor and nothing. I will try to type a simple sentence like: I went to the store and bought this or that, and the prose is as flat as a soda sitting in the sun for four hours.
I wander away and brood. Sometimes for days. Sometimes for weeks and months. My personal Muse has wandered away in a snit to play with our words by herself. Moody little bitch. Sometimes I beg her to return in the silence of an endless dreamless night when my thoughts chase themselves around in circles and I know that if I could write I could get to whatever it is that is bothering me and then I could sleep. But no, the keyboard, a pen and paper, even crayons will not entice her out of her hiding place.
When I was first started college, my Professor in English 101 praised my writing so highly that it gave me a case of the heebe jeebees. She really liked me because I was older and polite and best of all, I could spell.
Really, she was impressed by my spelling skills. OK. Cool. My other Professors weren’t as complimentary as she was but they liked me too. I always got these nice remarks on my blue books. That first semester was a little heady for someone who had flunked out of high school.
When it came time to write my term papers I got nervous as hell. What if I couldn’t live up to all that praise? jesus christ on a pogo stick, i put so much work into those papers you’d have thought i was writing a thesis. And I studied like a maniac for my finals. Then I went home and fell into the deepest depression I had experienced to date, sure I had failed everything but English.
When my grades arrived in the mail I was afraid to open the letter. But after the kids were in bed, I sat in my favorite chair and got ready to face the music, turning that letter over and over in my hands beofre I opend it. Holy shit…Straight As.
Even in Algebra which I was sure I would have to repeat so that’s why I took it the first semester. Heck, I hadn’t even had to be tutored. I understood everything.
Then I got the letter from the Dean’s office notifying me that I was on the Dean’s list and my name was in the local paper for having made the Dean’s list and having a 4.0 GPA. I was stunned and suddenly impressed with my bad self.
Then I got scared.
What if I couldn’t live up to all of this. What if this was a fluke. What if I had fooled all of those Professors or some terrible mistake had been made because this just couldn’t be true. It did not jive with anything I knew about myself.
All my life in that damn grade school and high school I had gone to they kept telling me I wasn’t living up to my potential. Or at least that’s what my parents had told me they had said. But no matter how hard I tried I could not achieve whatever it was they wanted me to achieve.
I had so much trouble with math. You see I went to kindergarten in Ohio which was basically like a pre-school. We learned the alphabet and numbers and I knew how to write my name but that was it.
Then I got to Nebraska and a one room schoolhouse with a teacher who really didn’t want some white trash kid who knew too much and was too old in her kindergarten messing up everything. My parents didn’t want me there either because I was old enough for first grade and I had graduated from kindergarten and they had a picture proving it.
So they put me in first grade and my mother taught me to read which I got right away. Reading, WOW! But NOBODY taught me to add and subtract. Ever. I don’t ever remember flashcards for numbers or getting the way numbers worked explained to me. Except one of my little friends showing me how to count on your fingers.
Not until I was 25 and I told my husband I couldn’t add and subtract. More like confessed because he was peeved that I never balanced the check book when I used it. He sat me down and explained numbers to me in detail when I wanted to get my GED.
Did you know that every number that can be divided by 9 also adds up to nine. You know, like 81 divided by 9 equals 9. 8 +1 equals 9. Skip taught me that. Skip was pretty smart when it came to stuff like that. I taught my kids all the stuff he taught me that made numbers easier.
I didn’t know how to tell anyone what the problem was. Or they didn’t listen. Or they didn’t want to hear. Or whatever. They just kept putting these numbers in front of me and telling me to make them do things that I COULD NOT MAKE THEM DO PROPERLY.
i tried. really i tried. i cried and i tried and the numbers would not work. i hated numbers.
Numbers still cause me problems. My daughter has problems with them too. She has been diagnosed as having some weird form of dyslexia that also caused her problems with reading comprehension which I did not have. Numbers transpose themselves and run around on the page for us so we have an uneasy relationship with them. I don’t do numbers past 30 or so. Not even with a calculator.
My daughter has learned how to corral them and even manages to balance her checkbook. I just operate on hope and a general sense of direction in that arena.
But there it was, an A in algebra… What the hell? How had that happened?
When I was a kid, we got a beating for every report card with anything less than a C on it which meant every quarter I got a beating. I never got anything but Ds in math. I remember working my ass off for Mr Bruin one semester–I think I was a freshman–doing every damn bit of homework which was a problem for me with math because I would get so confused and give up. I remember asking my mother for help that semester and she grudgingly gave it to me even though she would soon be tearing my ego into shreds about how stupid I was for not knowing this stuff and not paying attention in class.
Then report cards came out and my usual A in English had slipped to a B and I still got a D in Math. My parents were really pissed. Not only had I gotten-my usual D in math but my other grades were slipping. Of course I had never heard one word of praise for any of those As in the past. My parents did not believe in praise. Pride goeth before a fall you know. Pride is the devil’s handmaiden. right.
I went to Bruin and demanded he look at my grades again and we averaged them out and according to them I should have gotten a C+. So I asked him to change my report card and he refused. He told me he took off points for attitude. I went home crying and told my parents that and my Mother said I had probably deserved it.
What bullshit. What utter bullshit. He thought I had attitude before? Just because I was a Gavin? All Gavins had attitude? Well Ok, he had taught all my Aunts and Uncles and Tommy and Kenny were recent and probably painful memories. My brothers were breathing down his neck. He thought they were bad?
I’d show him attitude. I never turned in another homework assignment again. I never paid attention. I sneered when I spoke to him. I told him to go to hell a couple of times in front of the whole class. Sometimes I didn’t even bother to acknowledge his presence. Colored pencils, a sketch book, or my poetry journal were the only tools I brought to class.
He called me in and asked me what the hell was going on and I told him “I have a bad attitude, remember?” and turned on my heel and walked out. The principa called me in and I told him that if a teacher was going to give me a bad grade for a bad attitude because I was a Gavin I was damn well going to earn it. And if I was going to get beaten at home for said attitude I was going to earn that too.
That was the end of my education as a child. I quit trying. Anything I did at school I did because it pleased ME to do it. That’s why I ended up in honors English. That’s why I got As in art. My parents stopped going to parent teacher conferences about that time. I guess they didn’t want to hear it anymore. Maybe they weren’t invited.
The PE teacher saw my back after a beating one time and asked me what in hell was going on. I didn’t answer but they didn’t call my parents about the shit I pulled the way they called other kids’ parents and I got some heavy duty detentions for my “attitude.” The school may have started trying to protect me. My home ec teacher tried to talk to me but I was too pissed off to talk to anybody. School had become part of the enemy. I started doctoring my report cards and no one said a word about me turning Fs and Ds into Bs.
I got pulled out of Bruin’s classes though and stuck into general math. I flubbed around in there as well. Who gave a fuck.
My parents had already decreed I could not go to college when I was in 7th grade. They had three sons to educate.
I would go to business school and become a secretary. Excuse me, I CANNOT TYPE WITHOUT LOOKING AT MY HANDS. I FLUNKED TYPING, TOO.
another beating. for not trying.
Never mind that I practiced at home for hours on my Mother’s Selectra. How much trying is enough? When do you give up? NEVER. I can type 95 words a minute looking at my hands. But I still can’t look away from the key board. I think hit i and my fingers hit the e.
Just like I could not play the piano withut looking at my hands after five years of lessons. I still can’t because if I don’t watch my hands, my fingers don’t do what my brain tell them to. Piano lessons were another occasion for disapproval and censure but because I was practicing under the watchful eye of my Gran who was also paying for my lessons she could swear that I was pounding away at her old upright fatithfully for an hour every day.
Testing when I was 28 showed that my right brain is dominant and I am right-handed. I should be left-handed. Actually I am ambidextrous. I could have been left-handed but my mother encouraged me to use my right hand because then I would fit in with “normal people.” My mother is left-handed. Apparently, she did not feel normal because she also tried to change my left-handed brother into a righty. It didn’t take. Granted, this is a righthanded world.
I was just hanging on at school until they let me the hell out of there. So far as I could tell, my destiny was to become a wife and mother so I might as well get on with the show. I could legally leave as soon as I turned 16. If I could get the hell away from my parents I would fly like a bat out of hell.
I write because if I don’t my Muse will begin to scream until she drives me to distraction and then I will begin to scream as well.
B
IF IT AIN'T ONE THING IT'S YOUR MOTHER 