Card Tricks

When I was a kid I had two favorite card games: “Old Maid” and “Authors.” The appeal of “Old Maid” was obvious, with its brightly colored characters like Tumbledown Tess in her red ski sweater and Fifi Fluff in her movie-star sunglasses and high-heeled pumps.

I’m not sure, though, why I liked “Authors,” so much. The portraits on the cards were, after all, either extremely grim or just plain bizarre. Why, for example, was Nathaniel Hawthorne painted with long, bright yellow locks (I secretly thought of him as “Banana Head”), and why was Robert Louis Stevenson’s face and hair tinged with purple shadows? Fitting in neatly with these unappealing pictures was a scowling Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who, with his balding head and big scraggily beard didn’t look like anything special to my six-year-old self.

How wrong I was. Alfred Tennyson, in fact, was a big, popular success in his own lifetime. So big, in fact, that Queen Victoria made him England’s poet laureate, which meant he got to represent his country at all sorts of official celebrations and got paid for the position too. His writing was so remunerative that by 1850 he’d finally made enough money to marry his sweetheart and was eventually able to buy a house in the country where he could let his crinkled beard grow while he wrote more spectacular poems.

And spectacular they were. Today people are still in awe of the music of his work as well as the vivid pictures he created with words. Take these snippets from “The Eagle”: “He clasps the crag with crooked hands” and “The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls.”

Try saying these lines out loud, or better yet, go outside and recite them while you’re walking. I guarantee the words will be some of the most delicious things you’ve ever had in your mouth.

In the 1880’s, Tennyson was made a baron, which meant he got to add “Lord” to his name and had a seat in the House of Lords. When he died he was buried in the Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey, which includes memorials to Geoffrey Chaucer, Lord Byron and George Eliot (a.k.a. Mary Ann Evans).

Despite this success, Alfred’s life was not all flowers and rainbows. His childhood, for one thing, was as grim as anything Charles Dickens could have dreamt up. His father was a bitter man who’d been disinherited by his own dad and was forced to get a job as a cleric to support his family. Fueling his unhappiness with alcohol, Reverend Tennyson was such an abusive father that he once reportedly threatened to stab one of Alfred’s brothers in the throat.

Needless to say, the reverend’s 12 children didn’t thrive in such an environment. One brother was put in an insane asylum and another was addicted to opium. Tennyson, however, found some happiness when he left home for Cambridge, where he made friends with other people who recognized his poetic gifts and encouraged him to keep writing. I suspect it was like finding the magic key that let him out of a dungeon. By writing beautiful and powerful verse, he not only rose above his miserable childhood, but he also found love and admiration and connection with people outside the grim walls of his family home.

Due to some financial woes, Tennyson had to leave Cambridge without earning his degree, and more hard times came when his early works were attacked by critics. Worst of all, his beloved school friend, Arthur Hallam, suddenly died in 1833. Once again, Tennyson used language to deal with his loss. The poem he wrote for Hallam, “In Memoriam,” is still considered to be one of his greatest achievements. In this piece, Tennyson struggles with the big questions about the fragility of life:

Our little systems have their day;

They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, are more than they.

But he also asserts:

I hold it true, whate’er befall;

I feel it, when I sorrow most,
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

After Hallam’s death, much of Tennyson’s work had an elegiac theme. He wrote of the dead Lady of Shallot floating on a barge toward Camelot (“A gleaming shape she floated by,/A corse between the houses high”) and of the death of King Arthur (“So like a shatter’d column lay the king”).

You’d think a poet who dwelt on death so much would make for a gloomy companion. But Tennyson also weaves a note of hopefulness within his work, a suggestion that good things are still ahead. Take, for example, the end of “Ulysses,” a poem about the hero’s restlessness after returning safely home. “Tho’ much is taken, much abides,” Tennyson writes. After all Ulysses has suffered – the brutal battles of the Trojan War and the terror of facing everything from the gargantuan Cyclops to the wily sirens – the old hero still wants more action:

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek to find, and not to yield.

Today, writing probably isn’t the quickest way to make money or win points with the public. But as a means of creating order or beauty out of chaos or grief, it’s no card trick. Whether you pen formal poems or scribble in a journal now and then, putting your thoughts on paper can still work wonders.

You Complete Me

I came up with what I thought was a clever idea the other day.

Since my husband and I are about to celebrate our wedding anniversary, I decided to write about some of my favorite romantic moments from movies. I began scribbling away, and within a few minutes I had a list of almost 20 scenes. Among them were Aidan Quinn watching Rosanna Arquette’s dopey magic act in Desperately Seeking Susan, Julian Sands striding towards Helena Bonham Carter across a field of barley in A Room with a View, and Rebecca Pidgeon and Jeremy Northam sparring their way through The Winslow Boy.

I thought this list would make me happy, but as it grew, so did my unease. With just three exceptions, all of the films I thought of feature characters who are white and heterosexual, a fact that brought home to me the sad truth that huge numbers of people (whether that means you, your neighbor, your doctor, your co-worker or your partner) aren’t represented on our movie screens.

Which brings me to another question: Why is it that publishers of the printed word seem to have more faith in the idea that diversity can sell than the mainstream film industry does? The people who produce books understand that someone like me (white, female, married to a man) might pay money to read about the adventures of Armistead Maupin’s Michael Tolliver or the rise of Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court.

At a recent writing conference, my son, a filmmaker/film critic, was told that any script featuring gay characters would be “a hard sell.” Why is that? How do we know for sure when we’ve had such limited access to such films? Couldn’t mainstream movies bring a greater variety of characters to life and move us all in some way? Americans were enthralled by Chiwetel Ejiofar's performance in 12 Years a Slave but what about seeing more characters like Don Cheadle’s depiction of a dentist/dad in Reign Over Me?

What about the connection we naturally feel for our fellow human beings? Isn’t it possible that it could flourish in a darkened movie theater?

The White Rose

When I stand at my kitchen sink washing dishes I look out the window and see the grapevine growing on our fence. Beyond the fence is the backyard of the house where we used to live and in the yard is a white rose that blooms through all of spring and into fall.

I gave the rose to my husband for our 10^th wedding anniversary and also because his mother had died just five days before. That was 20 years ago, but I can still hear her voice, the rhythmic, soft tones of a woman who’d come here from the Scottish highlands, where she lived on a farm and milked cows and cooked dinner over a peat fire. 

She tried working and living in the town of Aberdeen for a while, but then her older sister died and she had to come back to help her dad and three brothers on the farm. She was in her early 30’s before she could make her escape to Toronto, where she met her husband, a printer who’d just emigrated from Glasgow. My daughter looks a little like her, and my son has the red hair of his Scottish forebears.

Last year our next door neighbors built a pergola in their backyard. On one side of the pergola is a trellis and on the trellis the white rose, which once grew low to the ground, has gone wild, growing taller, reaching wider than I thought possible.

Round Round Get Around

Confession: I’m a bit embarrassed by our newest car. Not because it pollutes the air with rude noises or billowing black smoke. No, our car, a Passat, makes me blush because it’s just a little too nice. Not that it’s particularly luxurious. At the age of 12, it has a cracked windshield and is decorated with a collection of dings acquired by its previous owners.

Still, the Passat is kind of fancy (plush seats, a Frenchy sounding name and an air conditioner that actually works) in a way that’s a little foreign to me. Not to mention that in the year since we bought it, the car has yet to break down at some inopportune time (e.g., on the way to work or to an appointment), which seems like a rare luxury indeed – like eating a gourmet brownie when a bowl of potato soup would suffice.

Consider some of the vehicles my husband I have owned in the past, like the ’63 midnight blue Chevy Impala that went kaput about a month after we bought it from a bearded folk singer. Although our time together was brief, the long, sleek Impala with the chrome trim was my first car, and I still get a little tingly when I think of steering it down a curving, tree-lined road.

We bought our next car, a ’68 Buick Skylark, after our son was born. I suppose it was a beauty when it was new, with pristine upholstery and pale olive paint that shimmered in the sunlight. But when we acquired it, the Skylark was already over 20 years old, and its paint had dulled to a flat khaki. Inside, its seats were damp and cracked and half of the automatic windows no longer went up and down (well, they did go down).



Working as a freelance writer, I’d tuck my son into his car seat and together we’d drive all over town, picking up new work and dropping off completed projects between trips to grocery stores, playgroups and parks. As my son got a little older, we played tapes in the Skylark too, and we’d sing together. We sang “Let’s Take It Nice and Easy” with Frank Sinatra and we sang “A Fine Romance” with Fred Astaire and we sang “It’s Love, It’s Love” with Lena Horne. Besides getting us where we wanted to go, the giant, rust-flecked car made me want to laugh over the incongruity of a small-boned mother with a penchant for poetry driving such a big lunky thing. Of course the Skylark had a poetry of its own as its V-8 engine carried my son and I up and over hills as easily as a sled gliding through the snow.



When our daughter was born, we brought her home from the hospital in the Skylark, with me sitting beside her in the back seat and murmuring words of comfort to help ease the shock of being taken via C-Section from my womb only to be tucked inside a musty old Buick. By the time our girl was four, though, the Skylark was acting up. When it started dying in the middle of intersections, we felt compelled to replace it with a shiny Ford Escort, which was reliable enough, although we soon learned this new vehicle was a poor little tin can of a car that strained to make its way up roads with a slight incline.



Perhaps the Escort was an ill-conceived purchase, but it was light and easy to drive, and now, 15 years later, it has acquired a weathered look that’s as comfortable as an old chambray shirt, and I still enjoy driving it now and then just to prove that my tastes haven’t become too posh.

  

Now, just a block away from our house, a light rail line is being constructed. In the process, our once-gritty, industrial neighborhood has been graced with smooth white sidewalks, tasteful landscaping and a series of canoe sculptures that seem to be floating up a stream of tall waving grasses. When the new train is up and running, I just may be ready to turn in my keys for both the smooth-running Passat and my old friend the Escort. After all, I’d love to let someone else do the driving while I sit and people-watch or read or write.



Then again, I’ve always had a little yen to own a Ford Falcon. Maybe a ’63 convertible, red, two doors. If you know of one that’s for sale, let me know.

Moonlight and Money

When my husband and I were first married in 1984, we were a cliché-come-to-life: happy but poor, with our student loans (microscopic by today’s standards) and a desire to replace our hand-me-down furniture with nicer things.

This was before I began my famed love affair with thrift shops, where for about a dollar I can find a piece of fabric that instantly transforms an ugly chair into a thing of beauty. No, back in the early years of our marriage, we'd haunt an antique store in Northwest Portland, where we'd admire a long elegant table and imagine ourselves serving a holiday dinner set amongst flowers and candles. Or we’d pass the carved doors of a French wardrobe and picture our own clothes hanging inside, amidst the mingled scents of fresh paint and musty wood.

Another imaginary amusement of ours was to drive to a small furniture shop in the suburbs and sigh over the long cool white curves of an ultra-modern couch. The first time we entered the store, a sales woman, neatly dressed in a business skirt and blouse, greeted us with warmth. On our second visit, the same woman smiled and said to let her know if she could help. The third time we walked through the doors, she glanced in our direction with a dismissive look that clearly said, “You again?”

Feeling embarrassed, we resolved to make at least one small purchase, a difficult endeavor since we couldn’t afford so much as a lamp. Eventually, though, we did find something in our price range – a calendar of poster-sized paintings. Among the stylized still lifes, the pictures also included a portrait of a peach-toned man and boy (“Tell Pere” and “Tell Fils,” the son with an apple atop his head) and a strange scene featuring a woman, a hunter and some moonlit water.

For years, those posters graced the walls of our various abodes before taking up permanent residence in the damp basement of our current house. Last winter, though, when I was making plans for the last session of an adult writing class, I suddenly remembered the posters. Bringing up both the William Tell painting and the moonlit scene, I asked my son which one he would find more inspiring as a writing prompt and he instantly chose the latter.

How right he was. When I asked my students to look at the poster and write whatever came to mind, every one of them created pieces that were filled with life. While my husband and I are not quite so poor as we were 30 years ago, I can’t imagine buying anything now that could bring me more pleasure than the poems and stories – including some dark beauties as well as one comic piece – that my students read aloud that night.

Here is one of those pieces:

 

Freewrite from a Poster by R. Smith

 

            There is something about the moon, tonight

 

(though I’ve danced before)

            Now I dance with the moon

when I move, it follows

            The moon (because it is light-footed)

twirls me like a top – lead, follow, lead, follow

 

            I dance beside the waters whose ripples tango, whose silence

restrains (the waters reflect the moon)

            The earth beneath my feet waits for the rhythm of the trees

to cut in on the moon

            And

the earth beneath my feet has no sound but is my orchestra

            I dance like the wind

 

            I dance with the moon

the trees cut in, I sail with the trees

            I dip with the clouds – Hey

Mr. Huntsman: Put down the bow and let that creature breathe

            another day (put down your bow and join me)

No

            Bring bow and pluck the string to set the slope in motion

set the trees spinning, send the moon into pirouette

 

 

 

Oh, Yoko

What could I possibly have in common with the controversial Yoko Ono? You can find out in my article at http://www.voicecatcher.org/archives/category/writers-craft.

The Sincerest Form of Flattery

Here’s an old family story: Once my cousin and her family visited us. I was 7 to her more worldly 9. She wore her long blond hair pulled off to the side in a ponytail and a navy blue beret tilted near one eye. She hadn't been at our house for more than an hour when I pulled my long blond hair into a side ponytail too and dug through the box of dress-ups in my closet until I found a brown velvet beret, which I wore at an angle on my head. I confess my imitation didn't stop there. To complete my ensemble, I donned a sleeveless mock turtleneck t-shirt that looked a lot like the one my cousin was wearing.

Despite my young age at the time, I think I sensed even then that my older cousin might have felt a little smothered by my onslaught of adoration throughout her visit.
Not only did she have to sleep in my room, with its pink walls and rows of dolls with painted-on smiles, but she also had to endure my following her, happy-puppy style, throughout the small one-level house. Alas, there was no stopping me. In my cousin's presence, I was like a small white flower leaning toward the radiant light of her style and verve.

While I'm no longer such a sad imitator, I still enjoy being inspired by someone else's spark - especially when it comes to my work. Some of my writing influences include the ironic parentheticals of Kate Atkinson, the musical wit of Jane Austen's long winding sentences, and the colloquial poetry of Billy Collins. For writers - or anyone - the trick is to relish all the different voices we hear and then try to create a new one that is ours alone, to find a new path. After all, no one wants to spend their whole life following someone else around the house.