Blog #11- The Powers of the Unspeakable

12:00 a.m.

There is a tiny cut on my hand, a spot I must have missed with the moisturizer a while back, which becomes irritated whenever the weather gets colder.  It is a small but insistent kind of pain, and as I sit in my green chair contemplating my backyard in the dark once again, I can't think of anything else but this small annoyance. 

It has been a good day, a productive day, a day filled with writing-talk, dinner with friends, and even a film festival which is pretty much my favorite event all year.   And yet, this tiny cut is demanding all my attention right now, the way that pain always tries to do.  The weather, though recently beginning to warm up, has left its mark on me. 

The feeling of winter is still with me, too; I haven't managed to shake it just yet.  The days are warmer now, but the nights retain a chill that makes me shiver most nights at the bus stop.  I know, with all the sensibility of my logical brain, that we are on the cusp of spring, but my body refuses to accept it as real, until there is steady proof, until it can be counted upon in a more consistent way. Until then--until every day brings the same, reliable promise--I will remain just a little suspicious.
                                                            
                                                                     *
Lately, a friend and I have been getting together to write haiku poetry. We take our time about it, 5 verses between the two of us per session.  We are following, as closely as we can, an adaptive form that requires us to build on one another's poetry in a collaborative effort.  We use an old yellowed book of experimental poetry in mixed-language translation as our guide.  We rely upon this format: Stanza 1- mention or reference a particular month; Stanza 2- reference a season;  Stanza 3- introduce a new idea; Stanza 4- no mention of the season here, so the author has a bit of freedom. Then we wash, rinse, repeat. 

I find the comfort of structure an enjoyable way to write; having an unseen force to push against in my writing is helpful.  And yet, when consistently juggling seasons and months becomes tiresome, we try to find a way to "say it," establishing the "when" of our verse, without actually saying it.  This is an old, well-worn technique for most poets, but non-fiction writers are accustomed to truth-telling, and sometimes I find it difficult to hold back on the tell.  In my classes, professors ask us to write about grief without the word "grief" itself, to prune our writing back in a way that hardly resembles the old academic writing, with its need for clear thesis statements and literary evidence at every turn.  It resembles instead the way my roommate might attack the boxwoods in our back yard with pruning shears whenever they get out of hand.

All this has got me thinking about the power of the un-sayable, and how it so often seems to overshadow those things that we have no trouble speaking aloud.  Once the words are committed to the page, or to a listening ear, is it possible that this act alone can lessen their power over us?

                                                                         *
When my grandmother passed in 1998 from a brain tumor, I found the process of her dying an excruciating one to bring up in conversation. The first person I spoke with about it on the day of her death--a music teacher of mine--seemed sympathetic, but later insisted that I should stick around for rehearsal.  I could not do that, I told her.  Who could make music at a time like this?  She insisted that times like this were indeed the most appropriate for the creative arts.  But I couldn't bear to bring my grief to the stage, to my friends and peers.  I couldn't lay it out in the open like an unwrapped gift.  I couldn't feel her logic, and I felt betrayed instead.  I didn't want anyone telling me how to mourn. 

I stopped talking for a while.

Fast-forward 15 years.  In December, by the time we lost Nana's husband, I had changed.  Once again, I learned of the news on my way to choir practice, as though the universe had waited until just this moment by design to tell me of his passing.  This time, though I didn't tell anyone just yet what had happened, I came prepared to sing.

 And later on that night, when I needed to talk about it with someone this time around, there were a few friends in Pittsburgh in whom I could confide. We drove around town looking at Christmas lights and got coffee, talking around the subject at first, but when I was ready to rehash my indecisiveness over and over about whether I should return home in the middle of finals to attend the services, I was supported fully by a set of listening ears.

Of course, this was not easy terrain for me to navigate; but speaking about Poppop to others and soon after composing a brief essay about my visit to say good-bye helped me to keep on going even after I'd returned home.  The act of expression seemed to lead me out of the darkness, this time around.  This is not something I could have known in 1998, but I'm sure glad to know it now.

The ramifications of Nana's passing still seem mysterious and strange to me, after all this time, perhaps because of the difficult circumstances of her death, or perhaps because I was so much younger and more immature, then.   The power of the unspoken won out, then, and the effects of this continue on for me. Yet here I am, letting her husband go with all the grace I can muster.  Putting a voice to the unseen turned out to be the most liberating thing I could do, under the circumstances.

                                                                 *
Lately, I've had many opportunities to be heard in the ways that I desire, to say the thing I am not sure I want to say, but which needs to be said.  Professors are recognizing my writing with thoughtful comments more often than before; my blog is about to get more exposure due to my partnership with another site; and I can call up a few of my closest friends whenever necessary to talk about the big-ticket things in our lives, the stuff we all need advice about once in a while. 

And yet, I sit here in the darkness of my backyard, the dining room light glowing through our picture window and casting shadows in stripes on our lawn, and I find that the brightness makes me both uneasy and grateful, all at once.  It is nice to be able to see my words on the page, for once, as I sit out here.  But I feel exposed, too, as though any neighbor peering out a window or even my own roommate and her guests might catch me in the act.  The act of what, you might ask, and it would be a good question, a pertinent question.  The act of putting the un-sayable to paper, I suppose--of speaking things aloud which make me uneasy, of steeling myself for truth-telling in a way that even a degree in Nonfiction Writing has not prepared me for. 

It probably looks just like thinking, from the outside.  It leaves me feeling vulnerable, nevertheless.

On the page, we're not always meant to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth.  We are meant instead to lead our readers there of their own accord, to act as guides.  But in our lives, sometimes this is not enough, and that is the different between living and writing.  What brings me truth and clarity on the page may keep me muddled elsewhere in my life.  The un-sayable has the power to overshadow a person--I must try to bring it to life, to light, or risk letting it bury me alive.  Luckily, I have a few tools in my toolbox I didn't have before.

This is why, if we merely feel a little clearer about things at the end of a day than we were when we began it--even if we have done nothing else of note--it is enough.  We have already made a start.