the almost right words

In honor of the first week of National Poetry Month, I’d like to share with you a personal favorite, Billy Collins’s “The Lanyard.”

Billy Collins–The Lanyard

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

Heavy hearted this week.

A teacher from St. Johnsbury, Vermont named Melissa Jenkins was lured from her house last Sunday night when the guy who used to snow plow her driveway called her out of the blue and said he and his wife were having car trouble just down the street.  He asked for her help.  Melissa felt suspicious enough to call a friend and tell him where she and her two year old son were going, and left the snow plower’s business card on her kitchen counter.  Shortly after she arrived to help, the snow plower strangled her to death.  Her two year old saw everything and later gave information to the police saying he heard his mother scream and saw a man pull on her neck.  The couple put Jenkins’s body in the back of their car and drove it to their trailer where they stripped her, poured bleach on her, then bound her and dumped her body in a river, weighed down by rocks and covered by brush.   Condoms and wrappers were found nearby but the police have not yet said whether or not Melissa was sexually assaulted.  Fortunately, the murderers have been caught.

I’ve felt amazingly rattled by this.  It’s given me nightmares.  Left me sick to my stomach and shaking my head as I try to break the images free but can’t.  Like me and my wife, Melissa was a teacher and had a young son.  She was about our age.  I have a friend who knew her pretty well and used to car pool with her to a summer class.  Like my friend, Melissa was a single mom.

The world asks us to understand things we can’t possibly understand.

And then there’s the on-going Trayvon Martin tragedy from Florida and the constant revelations and double talk accompanying the debate about what happened the day he crossed through a gated community with a bag of Skittles wearing a hoodie and somehow ended up shot to death by an over zealous neighborhood watchman named George Zimmerman, who we are now learning had a history of violence and aggression, even as we learn also that Martin had his own troubles and had thrice been suspended from school, both their images becoming obscured and distorted and manipulated in ways we don’t fully comprehend or understand.  Because of Florida’s controversial self-defense laws, Zimmerman still hasn’t been arrested, even as the local chief of police has stepped down in disgrace.

I don’t know that we’ll ever know the full truth about what happened that day.  The only credible witness so far is Zimmerman himself and he’s already lied his ass off, first saying Martin attacked him and bashed his head into the sidewalk and spilt his lip, information which the original police reports corroborated.  Then, a few days ago, a police surveillance camera from that night shows Zimmerman looking unharmed, free of the injuries he claimed he got in his “scuffle” with Martin.  Zimmerman lied and it would appear the police helped him.

A young black man wearing a hoodie.  A hoodie which has now become synonymous with the kind of racial profiling people of color have been enduring for hundreds of years.

I don’t want to oversimplify this.  I think it’s likely Martin’s death was racially motivated, but so far we don’t know that for sure.  What we do know is he was a young black man in a hoodie and that Zimmerman told 911 he looked “suspicious” and that he was going to follow him, even as 911 told him not to.   Martin was gearing up to watch the NBA All Star Game and had walked to a convenience store to buy a bag of Skittles to mark the occasion.  He was on the phone with his girlfriend at the time his encounter with Zimmerman began.

Skittles.  Girlfriend.  NBA All Star Game.  Sounds like this kid was really looking for trouble.

And yet, as angry as I feel about this, and ashamed, and terribly saddened, I’m equally terrified of over simplifying this and making decisions without knowing all the information.  Isn’t that why we have courts of law?  After all, Zimmerman himself was of mixed heritage and his friends and relatives all say he wasn’t racist.  Does their word mean nothing?  I don’t know.  Zimmerman, for his part, has already been caught in his own lies.  He’s already guilty in our hearts, guilty enough that what “actually” happened that day matters less and less, even if it eventually goes to court, which of course it absolutely needs to.  Has to.

I don’t know what to make of all this.  My gut speaks.  I listen.  I know what I’ve  heard and seen and feel.  Mostly what I feel.  I see the looks on the faces of my black students when the subject is brought up.  I see my black friend’s suppressed anger, the choked desire to do something.  I hear a tiny and unpopular chorus coming to Zimmerman’s defense, urging people to respect due process.  I hear Geraldo saying that anyone of color wearing a hoodie is looking for trouble and that they should know better.  I feel myself reacting, thinking did he really just fucking say that?

Man.

All we really know for sure is that Travon Martin is dead.

And like the death of Melissa Jenkins, the fact is a heavy burden.

For me, one of Facebook’s on-going pleasures, and this is coming from a former Facebook doubter and critic turned addict, is getting status updates by the great writer Richard Bausch, who I met at Bread Loaf.  I’m sure he doesn’t remember me, or the rather hilarious hour we spent sipping whiskey together around a campfire, but something tells me Richard has been making impressions on people who he won’t remember a hell of a lot longer than I’ve been alive.   Either way, I’m pretty sure Richard wouldn’t mind me sharing his wisdom from a recent status, in which he writes:

“One of the most endearing things about all the writers I know–and I know a lot of them of course–is that not one of them has any material ambitions. They want money of course because they need it, but when they get it they use it mostly to buy one thing: Time. That’s all any of them want. To be able to purchase a little Time from the world’s daily demands, and they want that time, all of them that I know, for one reason. To work. No material matter comes close to that for them. I think that’s a wonderful thing. And when the various kinds of wrangling and petty quarrels and vanities arise that come from being human and trying to do something very hard in a world that is mostly indifferent–well, I try to remember that. It’s something very beautiful about us that we all share: that sweet almost child-like quality of wanting from the world only a little time to keep doing this thing we love so much that even when it tortures us we long to be there in it and with it.”

You know that feeling when you hear something or read something and the sensation is that the speaker/creator has literally opened up your brain and surgically removed something you feel very deeply and then said it in a way that surpasses your own expressive capabilities and makes you understand that thing you felt even more deeply than you thought you did?  This was kind of like that for me.  I guess that’s the point of art, huh?

I figure since I’m borrowing Richard’s words, I should plug his wonderful book of short stories I read recently.  His stories will yank on your humanity.  They will humble you with their simple power.  They will clarify things you’ve been wondering about.

I just watched the trailer for the new film adaptation of Kerouac’s On the Road.  I didn’t even know an On the Road film was in the works, let alone around the corner.  I’ve always sort of bought the notion that the book was mostly un-filmable because of its wandering voice and pretty much plot-less structure, but this trailer is making me re-think all that.  It’s pretty damn good and, though it’s only a minute and a half, seems to embody the kinetic spirit of Kerouac’s work and has me sure I’ll buy myself a ticket when the time comes.  Have a look for yourself.

It also makes me think of an under-appreciated gem of a film called “The Last Time I committed Suicide,” which is based on a long letter written by Neal Cassady to Jack Kerouac known as the “Joan Anderson” letter.  I found a juicy chunk of the letter on a random Myspace page.  It’s worth a look.  Maybe even two.  But hey, don’t take it from me.  Kerouac himself later said that this letter, only part of which has survived, played a huge role in his literary development.  Anyhow, in the film, a young Thomas Jane plays Cassady and he’s tremendous as the Denver born Beat legend.  The film also features an absolutely stellar performance by Keanu Reeves (if you can believe that).  There’s also lots of great jazz on the soundtrack.

Beat that.

Sorry.

I read a short passage in Joe Hill’s Heart Shaped Box the other night and I liked it so much, I wrote it down and am here to burden you with it.  It’s a short passage.  Here it is:

“She glared at Jude, saw he was dressed, black Doc Martens, ankle-length duster.”

Wow, you’re thinking, I’m so relieved you brought that to my attention.  But, to me, this is a great example of what I like to think of as totally utilitarian physical description.  Joe Hill is not the most concise writer I’ve ever read (I recently read Justin Torres’s We the Animals which re-defines concision in a way I’m not totally crazy about), but he’s got a great eye for the telling detail and he’s very precise and direct with physical description.  And his descriptions, like this one, work for you, consider your experience, your busy day, and your ability to think for yourself.   For me with physical description I’m always thinking, what have you done for me lately?

This description comes about a third the way into HSB in which we’ve met aging rocker Jude Coyne and learned the reasons that he’s now being haunted by a ghost who’s trying to ruin his life and drive him insane as quickly as possible.  We know Jude’s lived hard, spent a lot of time on the road.  We know he’s a rock and roller and probably dresses accordingly, and in six words (black Doc Martens, ankle length duster) Hill confirms this and then some, totally filling in the gaps for me about what Jude looks like and how he carries himself.  He looks like a bit like The Punisher, another Doc and Duster wearing bad ass kind of fellow.

Physical description should always be doing more than describing what a person looks like.  I don’t care if a guy has blue eyes, but for God’s sake, use them.  Description should be working for the character, and therefore, for the reader, dealing with characterization as well as description.  Only a select number of people leave the house in black Doc Martens and an ankle length duster and Jude is one of them.

Here’s how Hill might have written the same description if he wanted to make it a lot worse: “She glared at Jude, saw he was dressed in a pair of gleaming Doc Martens, the yellow stitching running up their sides like broken lines down an endless highway.  The shoes were old and broken in and Jude rarely wore any others because they felt so good.  Nothing fit him quite like his trusty Docs.  His duster was ankle length and also black and tickled the shoes as Jude walked.  Its leather had worn with the years and was now soft and supple and fragrant with the many years of his life.”

This description, instead of working for the reader, throttles her with information.  Its greater sin, though, is that it doesn’t put a whole lot of faith in the reader, not nearly as much as Hill’s six words do, which allow you to fill in the gaps for yourself.

If you can deliver the effect of ten words with six, or even better, twenty words with six, keep the six.  Kill the rest.

I have a story entitled “Family Breakfast” up at Splinter Generation that I’m thrilled about.  It’s a story whose tone and flow I’ve been working on a while and much love to Neal Bonser at SG for his sage editorial advice and helping me work the story to its best and truest form.  The story also holds a special place for me because it’s one of the only stories I’ve ever read to an audience.  I read a snippet from it last year in the Blue Parlor at Bread Loaf.  Always a thrill to see one of your children go out in the world and make something of himself.

There’s often good cause to question our culture’s obsession with sports.  Large chunks of it are dedicated to discussing, debating, observing, coddling, and paying for games while there are vastly more important issues (you know, like, say, poverty) who receive so much less face time relevant to their actual importance in our country that it’s downright embarrassing.  111.3 million people tuned in for the Superbowl this year, yet one in every two Americans doesn’t exercise his right to vote.  We’ve been at war in Afghanistan and hardly anybody talks about it.  The achievement gap between rich and poor students has widened recently, yet education funding is stagnant and we’re mired in a defeatist testing culture that prizes equality over equity and ignores the needs of individuals.  Many of us know this–we do, and not just sort of, we really know it–and continue to obsess over something more trivial like professional athletics.  Why?

It’s complicated.  Entertainment, one.  The simple pleasure of watching great athletes, two.  A break from lives that are legitimately busy and near overwhelming in their demands, three.  In the context of this post, none of these reasons seems all that impressive.  Sorry poor students, I’d rather watch Rajon Rondo and the Celtics than think about you anymore today.  Not quite, but kind of, right?

But the recent ascendency of Knick’s point guard Jeremy Lin provides an unexpected answer that, while it may not totally satisfy, is well worth considering.

Jeremy Lin–the story of Lin, I mean–argues for the relevance and necessity for sports in our culture.  Granted, the way the culture has rallied around and uplifted Lin in the past two weeks is frightening in scale and one can’t help but begin looking down to see how far the fall is going to be, but regardless of whether Lin continues performing magic, defying skeptics, and winning basketball games, his story, and what his story makes us think about, is important.

Lin received no athletic scholarships to college. Went un-drafted out of Harvard.  After being cut by the Golden State Warriors earlier this year, Lin was picked up by the Knicks, played a whopping five minutes during pre-season, before being sent down to play for the D League’s Erie Bay Hawks. The D League people.  You ever seen a D League basketball game?  I didn’t think so.  It’s where basketball players go to die.  After putting up a triple double with the Bay Hawks, Lin was quickly recalled by the Knicks, who must have realized their mistake.  Even still, he was the Knicks third string point guard.  A notch above the water boy.  Lin said he was “competing for a backup spot, and people see me as the 12th to 15th guy on the roster. It’s a numbers game.”

At this point we’d assume that the Knicks saw something incredibly special in Lin and made him their point guard to show his stuff.  Wrong.  Lin only got the chance to play at all because all the other point guards were either injured or setting new standards for shitty play at the point guard position.  Knicks coach Mike D’Antoni even admitted “He got lucky because we were playing so bad.”

Lin made the most of that chance, then the next one, then the next one, and the one after that, putting up silly numbers and displaying late game heroics that have sports writers digging out their thesaurus.  People have been wondering how Lin will co-exist with Knicks star Carmelo Anthony when he comes back from injury.  Two weeks into the saga of Jeremy Lin, a reporter asked D’Antoni who would take the big shots at the end of games, Lin or Anthony.  D’Antoni said he honestly didn’t know.   This is the equivalent of asking the Giants coach who would be leading the Giants up field at the end of the Super Bowl with the game on the line, Eli Manning or back-up David Carr and the coach having to wait a long as beat before responding.

Meaning, it’s unlikely to the point of laughable.

But it’s happening.

After Lin lit up the Lakers for 38 points and outplayed Kobe Bryant (probably the fourth or fifth greatest player of all time), Bryant was complimentary and deferential, “players playing that well don’t usually come out of nowhere,” he said.  “It seems like they come out of nowhere, but if you can go back and take a look, his skill level was probably there from the beginning. It probably just went unnoticed.”  It’s a great quote because it speaks to something valuable to consider when considering Lin.  The role timing, opportunity, and effort play in relation to raw ability.

Lin’s raw ability is obviously sufficient to warrant an NBA contract, which means he’s a very, very good basketball player; however, his raw talent was no where near sufficient enough to earn him an athletic scholarship out of high school or an entry into the NBA draft, let alone a starting point guard position.

And by the way, what kept this kid going when everything around him wasn’t supporting his decision to be a pro basketball player?

So if this guy isn’t that great, how did he end up being so great?  The story is young and who knows what the rest of the season holds for Lin and the Knicks, but for me, the coolest thing that Lin’s story offers and why I think it argues for the relevance of sports is that it’s been Lin’s effort, timing, and confidence that we should be inspired by, not his raw talent.  Kobe’s right…this guy was good all along, but for whatever reason was denied the chance to show it, or didn’t show it when he was given the chance.  The basketball apparatus told this guy to stop.  Didn’t give him money.  Didn’t draft him.  He played anyway.  I don’t exactly know why.

But I do know that as a writer whose been at it a long time and is still waiting to break through, I take heart in the way Lin just seemed to say, fuck it, I’m playing basketball and when the time comes, I’ll be ready.

Why?  Because it’s what I do.  It’s who I am.

Rock on, Jeremy Lin.