Dear Writing Group

You click away on your keyboards, and it’s as if I can watch you in your wordplay.  Karen is hunting, stalking, sometimes jumping on her prey in a somersault wrestle to the ground, then quickly up again, fading back into the forest, moving stealthily forward.  Mandy hovers above her scene like a goddess, watching the action like humans watch bees, detached yet involved, choosing random moments to intervene, knowing that her own existence is made manifest by the stories that call her into being.  Holly sits there quietly now, her mouse scrolling as she ponders what just moments ago was pouring out of her, a gush and rush, cavorting like puppies who have now worn themselves out and so briefly rest.

I, like Mandy, come to this night odd, unsure of how to enter or what to bring.  Recent travels have changed me and the newly formed landscape within seems too wild to map, too foreign to explore, too private a place to bring outsiders.  I look for distractions I can toss into the mix, ways of acting like I’m contributing without revealing how much I’m not.  I’ve been writing nearly daily at home, brimming and overflowing with integrations and insights, excited to bring them to the surface.  But that writing is a world away from this one, and no bridges yet exist to carry what I know there to this place I sit with you.

Holly scratches her belly and yawns loudly.  “It’s not going anywhere!” she laments.  She is bored with what is not getting written, bored with our silent clicking efforts, asking if it’s time to read, no matter how rambling the writing has been ‘til now.  Karen studies her screen, scientist of life, ever willing to see what might be there.  Mandy squints her eyes, bites her lip, and keeps typing.  I lift my own fingers up, sigh loudly, say, “Ok…”  Holly eagerly and loudly concurs, drawing a fond smile from Mandy as her fingers continue.  Soon we will read.

A Private Investigater Named Zach

There’s all sorts of good that can come out of bringing others into something – personal trainers, and executive coaches, high school teachers and parents of toddlers.  Sometimes you just need someone else to set the boundaries, show you the way, remind you that your best is better than what you settle for.

That’s what I thought I was getting into when I hired Zach.  Really I was.  The idea of a private investigator gets all tied up in shady deals and cheating and snooping where your nose doesn’t belong.  But I thought that by having an outsider take a look at things and bring me real data, a reality test really, that I could take this thing to a higher plane.

The problem was not just that I was deluding myself.  Yes, I was looking for an excuse, a substantiated reason to turn this thing on its head.  But even so, cooler heads may have prevailed and all that if Zach hadn’t been who he was.  If he hadn’t been the kind of person who, having witnessed a wrong, or at least something that looked like a wrong given the info he had access to, couldn’t rest until it was made right.  Probably being a PI wasn’t a very good career choice for him, but the roads he did and didn’t take are a different story.  I got the Zach I got, and that has made all the difference.

It was a cold February day when I first went to his office.  It felt so scripted, the damsel in distress on one side of a cheap metal desk, the gumshoe on the other.  Except Zach was no Humphrey Bogart, although he did have the looks.  He couldn’t have been more than 30, with a thin sheen of cool barely masking an almost painful eagerness to be helpful.  He was the nephew of a neighbor, the kind of person you hire when being a good member of the community is more important than getting the job done.

I didn’t have much to tell him.  Looking back on it, that’s probably why I didn’t try to find someone with more experience; it would have been embarrassing to admit how little I knew to someone who was asking all the right questions.  I knew instinctively that Zach would take the crumbs that were all I had to offer and act as if my job were done – he’d have it covered from here.  I needed that sense of reassurance, no matter how falsely it rang.  That was it really – the thing that led to all the bad decisions I made from there.  Having asked him from the start to shoulder far more than was his to bear, I felt responsible to make it up to him somehow.  When he started to care, more than just caring on principle because he felt it was the thing to do, but really care, as if his understanding of the world and good and evil and the meaning of life all depended on this, I was already beholden to him in a currency I had never intended to spend.

Sharing a Moment of Vulnerability

I’ll admit it:  I’m choosing a safe vulnerability to write about.  It’s a real one – and maybe one of my deepest ones.  But, still, it’s safer than some things I could write about, and that’s the point about vulnerability, right?  It’s not about avoiding it or not;  it’s about the fact that some things just are vulnerable, they just are, and you’ve got to take life on its terms.  And that includes getting to say, no, you don’t get to see that place.

The vulnerability for which I am issuing limited admission is the subject of music.  Singing, drumming, whistling (actually, I can’t whistle), humming, even listening to music – it’s an arena that I can barely go into alone, and it takes every once of grit I have to share it with others.  I can’t explain it, it makes no sense, it just is.  And here’s what I’ve learned from it.

Vulnerability is like density:  the mass per unit volume of a chemical element.  The more vulnerable an arena of life experience is, the more it means that energy is packed into a small space, just waiting to be liberated.  Going into those places of vulnerability can be like liberating the masses from a despot king.  If you do it right, that is.  Done wrongly, you can just make it all worse, increasing the king’s power, making the prisoners more hungry and despairing than they already were.

Ah, there’s a bit of drama.  Drama and vulnerability go hand in hand, you know, the one a smokescreen that makes escape from the other possible.  If I talk enough about vulnerability, I won’t have to feel it, won’t have to wonder how different my life would be if I just had a little more courage, won’t have to admit how hard I work to avoid the vulnerability, justifying my neglect with any convenient reason that comes along.

Like checking my email.  That’s always a good one.

All right, all right. Music.  What feels vulnerable is the fear of all the ways I’ll fuck it up.  Sour notes, lost beats, my lack of skill and familiarity butchering something intended to be pure and unfettered from human error.  But really that’s just another smokescreen, a reason not to go there.  It’s what justifies my absence from the spaces of vulnerability, as if there’s just too much risk to the universe itself for me to go there.

But what is true vulnerability?  What music does is brings out something in me that is less masked than I’m used to being.  It’s the sounds I long to make just because – not because they are needed by someone else, but just because they make me happy.  It’s the rawness of my desire to learn and excel, finding the beat and surrendering to it fully, letting it use me as raw material only, no name, no identity, just raw power energy poured into the creation of something new, something momentary, something with no justification at all.

Diana’s Book Blurb

Who dun it?  The question would be easier to answer if only there were an it that had been done.  When Madeline gets the call to investigate the death of a small town’s wealthy patriarch who, to all appearances, was merely the victim of a random car accident, she is unprepared for the twisting maze of possibilities that suggest how Manfred Randall’s life and death are intertwined with those of a spinster librarian, a 10 year old autistic boy, a displaced cowboy, and welder with a Ph.D.  Introduce a serial killer in the mix and Madeline discovers that the meaning of life, death, and culpability are not quite what she thought.

Carly 2

When I walked into the viewing room, Cherry was surrounded by her usual coterie and already in high drama, exclaiming (in hushed tones, of course) to some woman I’d never seen before.  Cherry always had epitomized everything I hated about being female, embracing with determined abandon the look, feel, and sounds of the forced and fabricated versions of femininity that had permeated our childhood.  I was glad I’d brought Fred along.  Since this was all about Cherry’s husband’s family, I could more easily keep my distance, but that was easier to do in a pair than alone.

I glanced around the room, not seeing anyone else from the Randall family that I recognized.  There weren’t even many people there yet and, except for the two guys by the coffin, they were dispersed throughout the room, like magnets aiming at each other with opposite poles.

Taking Fred’s hand, I guided him toward the casket, following custom.  It was odd to find myself comforted by the path of least resistance, but somehow death is like that.  It’s one thing to push back, negotiate, rebel against life.  But death doesn’t work like that, and for the moment I was content to leave the rituals around death unquestioned as well.

Sam 2

I wanted to stay at the back of the room as long as I could, so I looked at the pictures mounted on posterboard, and pretended interest in who had sent each bouquet of flowers.  I don’t think anyone even really knew I was there yet.

I knew Keith and Woodward would notice me soon.  They had hosted my graduation party in New York City back in college, always happy to open their home to family – at least the family that would deign to come.  My girlfriend had said the usual about them – they were so good looking, what a waste.  But I thought they probably put it all to good enough use.

I didn’t have to look at Cherry and her brood to know who was there, and they were too self-involved to care if I were there or not.  Simone was with her, of course, and that did give me a momentary distraction.  When I was younger, I often lingered around her like a dope, as if any moment she might regale me with scintillating stories of her porn star days.  Maybe she’d take pity on me under these circumstances and come hold my hand.

I glanced at the guy in the corner, trying to get a bead on him, but I couldn’t place him.  Clearly I didn’t have to worry about him crashing in on my grief space.  I was laying odds that he’d be out of there as soon as was politic, sooner if he could.  Briefly I imagined slipping out the back, meeting him at his car.  Maybe a sympathy fuck would be more up his alley.

I leaned over to smell the tulips sent by Aunt Marge.

Sam 1

The map of how the Gulf filling was up with oil was more than I could stand to look at.  When Katy came by with the coffee, I latched on just for the distraction.

“Looks like the sun will finally make it out today.”  I surprised her.  I wasn’t usually the chatty type, and she’d already turned to the guy two seats down from me.

“Yeah, that’d be nice,” she said, looking back at me while she kept pouring.  Just like she didn’t even really need to see to know where the rim was.  She’d probably refilled more than her fair share.

The teenagers in the corner busted out again then, and we both looked over.  I’m not sure why – it’s not like they were actually interesting.  Their hilarity was contrived -  like somehow it was created more by circumstances than nature.  But I guess it saved us from looking at each other.

The guy next to me stood up, laying a $20 on the counter.  Katy fished out change from her apron, and I swear she didn’t even count before she handed it to him.  Whatever the amount, it seemed to work for him.

Watching him move toward the door, a woman I’d never seen before caught my eye as she paused at the entrance, scanning.  Not too subtle about it either.  I kinda wished I was the one she was looking for, though.  The penetrating quality of her eyes…yeah.  I could get used to that.

I turned back to the paper and saw that ghost Katy had dropped off my check.  But the woman behind me still vibrated in space, warming my back.  Yes, indeed.  I could get used to that.

Carly 1

The teenagers burst out laughing again, and I could feel the twist low down, buried in my abdomen.  It wasn’t likely they were laughing at me, not at all really.  And yet…I almost wished they were.  It was a measure of how unhappy I’d become: I’d rather have the mockery of an audience, laughing and pointing fingers at my plight, than this feeling of sitting here just disappearing.

The trouble was, I had absolutely zero motivation to join in the conversation.  Charlie, Greg, Blackie, and Dan had surrounded me as they gathered their chairs around, taking over three different tables in their usual territorial stakeout.  At breakfast and lunch, the diner was open to other customers only by their good graces.

It could have been worse.  At least these guys tried.  But at best their own efforts to include me confused them, and in Greg’s case at least the resentment lingered and gathered, accumulating around innocuous comments and moments so that nothing was easy.  In my day, it was the diner time that was the work – all the noise and activity of the site was my sustenance.

My Role in My Family

My family classified itself by the scholarly categorization system of the Peanuts comic strip.  My brother was Linus, a quiet reminder of what was important.  My dad, Charlie Brown.  The central character, yes, but also bumbling, unaware, a reminder to us all that his rages and requirements grew out of a place where he was simply lost.  Mom was Sally, although looking back I’m not sure why.  Maybe it was that Sally was unashamedly female, willing to love no matter what came in return.  Me?  I was Lucy, of course.  You can tell even now in how I write this, the one to analyze, pronounce, decree.  Five cents, and the psychiatrist is always in, always ready to tell you what is what and what you should do about it.

Me being Lucy is also about me being the loudest in my family.  My dad tried for that distinction, all that yelling and drama.  But somewhere early I determined that I would not let that win: that somehow, some way, I would have the last word.  I would study, persevere, attack where needed.  I would control the football, happy to snatch it away, to watch him fall in failure in order to right the balance.  But mean and obnoxious and over the top as Lucy was, she was never the bad guy.  Lucy loved every one of them, especially Charlie Brown, no matter how rude or annoying she was.

So, that was me.  The whistleblower, naming my father’s alcoholism when no one else could stand to see it.  The rule maker, setting the terms of how things would go so that I need not risk the terms others would set.  The loud mouth, saying out loud what I was sure needed to be said.  But always, amidst it all, staying one of the gang, keeping something intact.  Loving in the way I knew how.

A Family Memory in a Car

First always is the memory of being 14 or so, getting lost with my mom and brother.  What state were we in?  Where were we driving to?  Did we ever get there?  Those details are washed away by time, irrelevant to the memory.

What matters is that there we were, the three of us, a recently redefined family unit in the wake of my parents’ divorce, making our way through the world.

My mother was at the wheel, of course.  Now there was only one person with a driver’s license, one person in charge, one person carrying the load of this terrible wonderful weight that is a family.

And there I was, awkward in my quest for adulthood, feeling naked and betrayed by the changes, yet loyal and true, seeking a balance between rebellion and responsibility in my stumblings into maturity.

And my brother, quiet and serious, an integral part of things and yet fragile somehow, almost not there, the least of us in age, adrift as the only remaining male in a drama where empowerment of the female was the thread that had gotten us through.

There are two parts to this memory:  the tableau just described, all its tension, all its tenderness.  And the moment something broke through – some giving up?  some silly turn?  the relief when we had found our way?  Again, the details are muted, muddied, irrelevant.

But this comes through strong and clear:  the moment we began laughing.  Laughing and laughing and laughing, unraveling, releasing, laughing until we cried, crying through more laughter, stopping the car because nothing else could exist, certainly not driving, certainly not safely, with such laughter taking over all muscle control, all meaning.

Laughing until the world we had known had dissolved and there we were, still there, laughing, a family.  Driving somewhere.  Still a family with somewhere to go.