Flannery O’Connor warned me today—she grabbed me by the shoulders and with those piercing green eyes she said with fierce passion: do not abandon the story; do not abandon the mystery.
I love story. I believe with all my heart the story will save you. Will save the world. I believe that the source of power in story is its ability to engender empathy. It is empathy that connects us, protects us, enables us to love and accept those who are unlike us but with whom we can identify at the most basic level—our need to be loved, fed, protected. Our desire to love, nurture, protect. This is also the ultimate mystery—who we are and why we do what we do. This is character and plot, pure and simple.
I also love kids. Now THAT is a mystery. I like the power of discovery, the openness most kids have in exploring the world... But the harsh irony is that I spend all day banging my head against the walls of formal education where it is my duty to teach the tools of analysis. “We murder to dissect” has rung in my ears since I was in high school myself and wondered why the teacher was teaching a great poet like Wordsworth who basically undermined everything she was teaching. Now I do the same.
Because I have to teach the minutia of analysis and how to speak authoritatively of the author’s purpose, the structure of the story, the intent of meaning through an element, the textual properties and means of explication, I feel I have pounded the flavor out of the meat of mystery and pleasure and joy and true power of a novel—to alter and change us, sometimes without our conscious collusion.
Most of the year I languish under the desire and critical need to write, to create story, and summarily fail. Most summers I dig and dig, struggle against the solid, stony ground of my imagination until once again I strike gold...or oil...or clear flowing waters of story... But I seem to lose ground every year, find I am farther and farther away from finishing worthy stories, worthy novels, A worthy novel, to hand to a stranger and be read.
I don’t know why. It is a puzzling mystery. But I want to write. I want to learn how to tell a story. A story with meaning. I want to give to “someone” what I have loved in receiving great novels, great film, great short stories, great poetry.
I tend to blame my job for being stifled and barren. Oddly, pathetically, I feel I have made a sort of secret deal with my ancestors...I have not borne children, therefore (or because) I will bear stories. And yet I have not done so. Not really. Not right now. Not for a long time.
Even this...this...emotional dribble...is a violation of all that is story. I am emoting and telling...not creating a story with pathos or empathy. I am merely emoting.
I walked very fast today my 40 minute walk around the circle and I took Flannery O’Connor’s collection of essays with me and I read as I walked. The humidity is so heavy and there were few walkers which I never realized before how much I prefer not having to pass others on the walk. Sad isn’t it? Anyway, got back and showered. As I washed my face I was suddenly overcome with sadness thinking (didn’t even realize it—surprised me) about a particular student who is so very, very intelligent and is in so much trouble. He has two more weeks of probation...he has four felonies. He’s 16 years old. His record will be expunged when he is 24. Yet he has already established a habit of breaking the law. It truly blows my mind that he is living that life. I love this kid—he is bright and deeply insightful. He picks up on subtleties in literature and poetry that even the majority of my IB students miss. I know that this kind of sensitivity and high intelligence often gravitates toward the flames of self destruction but I don’t understand exactly why and I certainly don’t know how to stop it—only he can stop it. But how can I help?
And I cried at all of this thought that didn’t have words until now. This kid who is the youngest of three boys, three years apart. His oldest brother is the scholar and the favored one whom his father loves—this boy feels that so keenly, I can see it ooze from every pore as he smiles calmly in the telling of it. His brother, the one in the middle, 19 years old, he whispers, is transgender, doesn’t feel like he’s in the right body. This draws a lot of pain and confusion from his father. He is a great disappointment. Of himself he says that he is the greatest disappointment of his father. Whatever crimes he has committed...time he has done in jail...whatever it is, he feels he has deeply hurt and alienated his father.
Whenever I grow despondent about the writer’s block, the energy drain, the distance my stories keep from me, a friend of mine tells me that I am doing far more important work teaching and engaging with these kids. But...I feel that I have betrayed a gift...a particular trust...I am not living up to my potential, not fulfilling my calling to write. I am failing at the purpose of my life—this is how I feel, this is a deep and passionate conviction. No excuses. I am a story teller. I must tell the story. But every day I fail.
I don’t know how to fight this dragon. I don’t even know which thing is the dragon... Is the dragon the failure to write, or is the dragon the feeling that I am failing.
Underneath all of this and perpetually is the haunting of my Japanese American friend. Twenty years ago, this friend who spent his childhood in the Japanese internment camps in California, mentioned his gift and love of writing. I asked him why he wasn’t writing, except within the context of his ministry. He said he had to make a choice and because of his experience in the camp he chose to follow the calling of Christ to minister to those who are victims of a system that beats them down and keeps them down. He felt it was more honorable to give his life to others rather than to his writing talent which he considered to be a selfish indulgence.
I disagreed. And I told him so. I’m sure he smiled at my impertinent youth and delusion.
The reality is I must work, earn a living, where I have a reciprocated feeding of the soul—I find this in teaching. Writing (as a career) is too unpredictable, too precarious, too insecure, too risky.... So I cannot give up a stable income on the way way off chance that my God-given gift and talent, the promise I made to my ancestors, might fail...might become cursed in the face of the more noble and higher calling of teaching. Ironically it already feels it is cursed, as if in teaching I am squandering my opportunity, desire, need, gift.
It’s not that I want to give up teaching; it’s that I want also to devote my life to the craft of writing. To find a way to truly inspire the love and joy in the mystery of the story...I want to cultivate that curiosity and I want to nurture my own muse and engender in me that ability to write the story even as I teach others how to find meaning in other people’s stories.
But deep down I fear it is a serving of two masters...unless I can find a way of recognizing it is simply a single coin with two sides...
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