Tell the Story
Sarah Payne is the exhausted writing teacher in Elizabeth Strout’s novel My Name Is Lucy Barton.
Strout’s narrator says, “…recording this now I think of something Sarah Payne had said at the writing class in Arizona. ‘You will have only one story,’ she had said. ‘You’ll write your one story many ways. Don’t ever worry about story. You have only one.'”
What is the one story you will always be telling?
I’ve been writing a series of freedom-centered writing prompts, and I want to share some of them here.
Here’s the first one:
In ancient Rome, slaves who were to be freed were given a hat called a pileus during a ceremony of emancipation. Reading that, I thought, “why would they want to wear a special hat–couldn’t they want to look ‘normal’ and hatless, not showing that they had ever been enslaved at all?
I caught myself. Isn’t that the same thing as asking why we can’t “pass” as someone who’s never experienced abuse or trauma of any kind?
Most days I can accept, and some days I can even celebrate, who I am because of my experiences. I am proud to wear the hat of a survivor.
Can you wear your hat? Are you free enough?
I didn’t plan a “digital sabbatical,” but a blog break evolved.
I want to tell you about the Peaces of Prosperity series on Bridget Pilloud’s site.
My piece will be up later in the month, but here’s today’s Peaces of Prosperity post–including a prompt for your own writing (you know I love a good prompt!).
Tonight in my workshop we described the scene outside our window: a policeman supervised the removal by tow truck of a tar kettle that had, apparently, somehow collided with a streetlight before we arrived.
Each of us wrote the scene quite differently.
In The Art of Description, Mark Doty writes, “It’s incomplete to say that description describes consciousness; it’s more like a balance between terms, saying what you see and saying what you see.”
Did we change the scene by writing it? Did the scene change us?
::
In this excerpt from “Planetarium,” Adrienne Rich writes,
What we see, we see
and seeing is changing
the light that shrivels a mountain
and leaves a man alive
Heartbeat of the pulsar
heart sweating through my body
::
The light, a heartbeat, a mountain, the pulsar, a man, my body.
Or Doty’s balance between the terms.
From The New Yorker, December 21, 1957:
Quite rightly, we remained among the living;
Managed to hoard our strength; kept our five wits;
So far as possible, withheld our eyes
From sights that loosen keystones in the brain.
We suffered, where we had to, thriftily,
And wasted nothing on the hopeless causes,
Foredoomed escapes, symbolic insurrections.
So it is we, not you, who walk today
Under the rebuilt city’s raw façades,
Who sit upon committees of selection
For the commemorative plaque. Your throats
Are dumb beneath the plow that must drive on
To turn the fields of wire to fields of wheat.
Our speeches turn your names like precious stone,
Yet we can pay our tax and see the sun.
What else could we, what else could you, have done?
–Adrienne Rich
How do I answer the question of the last line?
A (wonderful) former student read about Colton’s birth and emailed me, mentioning that she loved the “provenance” of his middle name, Atreyu.
I inferred that she meant its “origin,” but I don’t think I’d ever used the word “provenance” myself in speaking or writing. So I looked it up.
It does derive from the French provenir, “to come from,” but it refers to a chain of ownership, a subject which has been on my mind, most often the chain of ownership of a work of art.
I don’t know about you, but as much as I like to wear beautiful things, I would, given Oscar Wilde’s choices, prefer to be a work of art.
And if I am a work of art, what is my provenance?
I’ve passed through my family, my schools, my beliefs, my fears, my husbands, owned by all of them in various ways. I hope the final entry in my personal provenance will be myself.
What is your provenance?
Skinniest letter, biggest word.
I
(there
it
is
again)
planned
to
write
a
post
about
integration
of
my
selves,
merging
all
the
I’s
which
some
days
seem
to
be
disparate,
others
synchronized.
It
was
going
to
be
a
piece
about
blogging.
About
real
life.
About
teaching
speaking
writing.
About
In
Real
Life.
And
it
turns
out
that
the
post
is
all
about
how
everything
comes
back
to
how
I
choose to define that letter/ word.
I spend a lot of time up in my head.
Thinking, thinking, thinking.
Sometimes I forget that there’s life outside my head, that my head is attached to my body, that I’m sitting on a planet that supports me.
I start my writing workshops by asking everyone to do what I know I need to do: remember the ground.
The ground underneath our feet, underneath our chairs. We sink down into it, taking a few deep breaths, letting go of our busy days.
Sometimes I give in to the impulse to take off my shoes.
I can fight. I can fly.
Or maybe there is a middle way.
I can be willing to stay in my ground.
This is not exactly the same as standing my ground, which tends toward “fight” even if it isn’t quite.
It’s more like sitting, waiting, connecting.
The ground can be a little messy.
More tomorrow.
Sometimes you know it’s going to happen.
We should believe people when they try to tell us who they are.
I was your girl.
Oppressiveness of the waiting and the uncertainty.
We should believe people when they try to tell us who they are.
If I do not fly I want to fight.
Oppressiveness of the waiting and the uncertainty.
Nothing is undone.
If I do not fly I want to fight.
I was your girl.
Nothing is undone.
Sometimes you know it’s going to happen.