Writing in Place, Writing to Place

Julia Cameron, in The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life, talks about the importance of “placing” a piece of writing in its context, that “placing” is one of the things that makes a piece of writing real to a reader.

One of the writing exercises in the book is to list every place you have ever lived, and then to select one and write as if you are there in the present tense. For me, developing the list turned out to be surprisingly easy, and rather than list all 16 places I’ve lived, I’ve grouped them by city:

New Orleans, Louisiana (four in 18 years)
Jacksonville, Florida (one in 15 months)
Baton Rouge, Louisiana (four in four years)
Beaumont, Texas (two in nine months)
Houston, Texas (three in four years)
St. Louis, Missouri (three in 31 years)

Two places on that list have had the most impact on me as a person and a writer. It’s no surprise – they are the two places I lived the longest – the house in suburban New Orleans where I lived from age 4 to almost 18, and the house I’ve lived in St. Louis since 1986. Not counting the three earliest homes (age 4 and under), I have been writing in all of the other 13 places, not to mention various hotel rooms, beaches, airplanes, airport gate waiting areas, parking lots, restaurants and just about everywhere else I might have access to computer or pen and paper.

The place I chose to “be” and write in the present tense is my college freshman dorm room, the day I arrived at college.

It is Sept. 14, 1969, and I have just turned 18. I drive from my home in the western suburbs of New Orleans to LSU in Baton Rouge. I am driving my graduation present – a 1970 candy-apple-red Ford Maverick (the 1970 models were out in mid-1969). It is packed with everything important for me to have in college – clothes, books, sheets and pillows, personal stuff, and a black-and-white portable television. I arrive at my dorm, check in to get the key to room 114, and unload my car.

The room is at the end of a hallway, with a 14-foot ceiling and pale green walls. With two closets, two metal-frame beds and two metal desks, the room is a mirror image of itself. With no roommate yet in evidence, I choose a side and plop my stuff on the bed. I stick my head in the bathroom down the hall, with its six stalls and six shower heads in a communal shower. I finish unloading the car and park in the designated area for students.

In my room, I’m unpacking when I’m visited by an upperclassman who urges me to sign up for fraternity rush. I decide not to, but this meeting will turn out to be a crucial event – in a few months I will pledge this fraternity and my life will change dramatically. He leaves; I glance at my watch and realize I have to run to make an advanced placement test in math, followed by one in how to use the library (“Books and Libraries,” which students shortened to “Books and Berries”).

I finish the tests, check my room (still no roommate) and then walk to the student union to eat dinner. I’ve been in the union building many times before – any time I visit LSU I go to the union and the bookstore. I notice a lot of other solitary freshmen doing the same thing I am – eating by themselves and looking rather overwhelmed. Returning to my room, I find my roommate and his parents have arrived and are unpacking. He has a lot more stuff than I do.

I turn out to be fortunate indeed – my roommate is a great guy, a walk-on for the freshman football team (so he’s big). He belies the stereotyped football player image because he’s smart, too.

We talk late into the night. Sharing our backgrounds and family information, what we’ll be studying, what we like and don’t like. Even though he’s from a small town and I’m from the big city, he turns out to be far more worldly and sophisticated than I am.

We will get to be very good friends this year. Many months from now, he will hand me a glass of cheap wine to drink while I’m struggling to write a paper on Gothic architecture in France, and I will ace the paper.


Over at the High Calling Blogs, Laura Boggess is leading a discussion of Cameron’s The Right to Write. Take a look and see what others are saying, commenting and posting. Last week’s discussion was about connection, being an open channel and integrating. This week’s discussion is about credibility, place and happiness.

Related:

L.L. Barkat's Happiness Beyond Writing.

Nancy Kourmoulis' Makin' A List.

What Were We Waiting For? by Marilyn Yocum.

Melo's Missed the Boat.

Cassandra Frear's A Page at a Time.

Saturday Good Reads

Poetry, prose, fiction and even a video (which I suppose should be called a Saturday Good Watch)-- a lot of good stuff was posted this past week, and this is just some of it.

Prose

“Prayer for the Class of 2010” by Fred Sanders at The Scriptorium.

"Traditional Now: Do Flowers Grow on Pork Chop Hill?" By Greg Sullivan at Sippican Cottage.

"The Dark Side of Emptiness" by Duane Scott (and a bunch of good posts on emptiness at the One Word Blog Carnival) and Duane's "Amongst His Promises."

“Waiting on Empty” by Louise Gallagher at Recover Your Joy.

“Emptiness: Anna’s Story” by Sarah Salter at Living Between the Lines.

“The Dangerous Vacuity of Our Public Discourse” by Carson Holloway at Public Discourse.

“Asphalt Diaries” by Jeff Jordan at To My Children, If They Are Listening.

“Emptiness” by Ginny at Make a Difference to One.

“Mismatched” by Billy Coffey.

Poetry

“The Journey Home” and "Act IV - The Tomb" by Pete Marshall.

“Barbie at Communion” by L.L. Barkat at Seedlings in Stone.

“Fighting a Losing Battle” by Peter Pollock at Rediscovering the Church.

“Catch a Falling Star” by Melissa at All the Words.

“Nothing” by Leslie Moon at Moondustwriter.

“Because some things do look more romantic as a ruin” and “Taliessen after the mass” by Justinian at Delight and Glory and Oddity and Light.

“Throughout the day” by Nancy Rosback at Poems and Prayers.

“These Voices” by Karen Eck at Phoenix-Karenee.

“Flow” by John Blasé at Dirty Shame.

“Done With Wings” by Chaplain Mike at Internet Monk.

Fiction

“She Found Her Peace” by James Schmotzer at The Faithful Skeptic.

Video

“We Con the World” by the Flotilla Choir.

Bread-Body, Wine-Blood

She walked, shoulders hunched,
like an upside-down spoon,
fragile, her short hair a helmet
of white, ancient.

She stopped to take her place in
the line moving slowly to the
wine and the bread.

She stepped forward, each
step an invisible burden, the
pain like a bag of rocks.

She carefully held the offered
square of bread, and carefully
dipped it in the cup.

She placed the stained square into
her mouth, hands trembling, and
smiled as the taste of thousands
of communions consumed her.

She turned and moved slowly to
her seat, each step measured
like a moment of life escaping,
captured in a sigh of exhaled breath.

She paused in the sunlight-filtered
aisle, eyes closed, calculating the
cost of going on.

She placed her arm on that of the
boy behind her, nephew? grandson?
friend’s child?

She followed his movement forward,
slowly pulling life from the touch
on his arm. Come mama he said.

I looked into her face as she passed,
and saw the eyes of a young
woman ravaged old by an
invaded body, a poisoned blood.

Photograph: Night Life by Nancy Rosback. Used with Permission.

Little Woods and Big Woods

I’ve been reading God in the Yard: Spiritual Practice for the Rest of Us by L.L. Barkat, and actually started a journal to record what the 12-week process asks you to record. Things like, “When I was a child, I lived…”

When I was a child, I lived in a suburb of New Orleans, along what is now called the “Metairie Ridge,” some of the highest land in the city. It had been built up over a long period of time by deposits from the Mississippi River. And while it had been “swampy, marshy,” it was still high – which is why my mother’s house has never flooded during a hurricane, including Katrina in 2005.

It was a neighborhood of tract ranch homes, largely populated by people like my family – World War II veterans and their families. The husbands commuted to their jobs in the city (yes, this was the 1950s) although there were some working mothers as well. Not to mention extensive evidence of the Baby Boom. Kids were everywhere.

Behind the houses across the street from my house was a small, shallow drainage ditch, which we kids knew contained “polio water” – some parent (I would bet a mom) had told their child that he (invariably a “he,” since girls had more sense) would get polio if he fell into it. (The Salk vaccine didn’t arrive until 1956 and 1957, and polio was something we all knew about.)

And behind the ditch was – The Woods.

This wasn’t a forest by any stretch of the imagination. It was a small stand of woods – but large enough (say, half-a-block wide and two blocks long) to be a place of magic and adventure to a 6-, 7-, and 8-year-old. A well-worn and narrow trail meandered through it. Somehow, most likely the result of a land title dispute or general disinterest, it had escaped subdivision development.

Where else to play cowboys, war, hide-and-seek? Where else to go hang out? You were far away enough from parental oversight to feel daring but still close enough to feel comfortable. As I got older, and the childhood games stopped, I’d often go walk through the woods, find an old stump or downed tree, and sit. And listen.

It changed from “The Woods” to the “Little Woods” when we discovered the “Big Woods,” a large undeveloped area a few blocks away. This one was several blocks long and wide, few trails and loads of blackberry bushes. It much more resembled “forest primeval” than the Little Woods did. You didn’t play games like hide-and-seek in the Big Woods, because you could easily get lost. Instead, you traveled in groups, looking for blackberries and anything that might smack of mystery and adventure. If you didn’t find adventure, you’d make one up.

Whenever we visit New Orleans, I’ll walk every morning through what had been the Little Woods and the Big Woods. It’s all homes and subdivisions now, and the levee along the big drainage canal is now West Metairie Avenue. (The first time we scaled the levee and looked down at the big canal and across it to undeveloped marshland – we got an inkling of what it must have been like to be explorers on an expedition.)

But I walk it, and I don’t have an ounce of regret that it’s gone. Because it’s not.

Related:

Laura Boggess at The WellSpring is a week ahead of me in reading God in the Yard. See her Parachute: Learning to Fly.

A List of Empty Things

An apology that begins with “if.”

A church trying to be relevant to the culture.

97.3 percent of People Magazine.

Sound bites that pass for political speech.

Most contemporary political speech.

The prosperity gospel.

People who say “we’re the experts; trust us.”

The editorial page of the daily newspaper, most days.

A congressman or senator who votes for a bill without reading it or understanding it.

The New York Times best-sellers list, most days.

The self-help section of the bookstore.

Most corporate vision statements.

The belief that marriage will meet all your unmet needs.

Believing that “reality television show” is not an oxymoron.

A culture besotted with celebrities.

The belief that “educating the public” will solve all your problems.

Most acceptances speeches at the Academy Awards; a simple “thank you” will do.

Dictators who say all they want is peace.

When the definition of “is” becomes relative, as in, “It depends on what your definition of ’is’ is.”

Spending money our great-grandchildren don’t have.

Knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

“You’re doing a heckuva job, Brownie.”

Companies who say “employees are our most important asset.”

School officials who say “it’s for the children.”

Organizations that call jobs “roles” and people “talent.”

The hole in the human heart.



If you’d like to read other posts on emptiness, visit the One Word Blog Carnival hosted by Bridget Chumbley.

Because It Matters

Grant’s Trail, a biking-walking-jogging-rollerblading trail in St. Louis some eight miles long, begins about a mile-and-a-half from my house. It’s a converted railroad track bed, and I’ve been biking it for years now. Counting the round trip and an occasional side meander, it’s a good 20-mile ride.

Just before the trail begins, there’s a brick apartment complex of some 40 to 50 units in five or six buildings. Rather nondescript, it’s neither at the luxury end of residential living nor the housing-of-last-resort end. Nondescript, and rather anonymous, sufficiently describes it.

Each time I’d go to Grant’s Trail, I’d bike past the complex, barely giving it a thought except to watch for doors suddenly opening from cars parked on the street (bikers have to watch for these things). But it wasn’t the kind of building or complex that you’d pay much attention to.

Until January of 2007.

One cold, icy day (I remember because we eventually lost power from the ice coating the trees), police made a startling discovery. Inside one of the apartments was a 13-year-old boy, kidnapped a few days before as he rode his bike home from school in rural Franklin County, near St. Louis. And with him was a 15-year old boy, Shawn Hornbeck, kidnapped when he was 11. The good news was that both boys had been found alive. The bad news was what they had endured, one during a short few days and the other for several years. Police arrested Michael Devlin, 41 at the time. He later pleaded guilty and is now in prison.

The story became international news. During the next few weeks, news media from all over the United States and several other countries converged on the complex, the local pizza parlor where Devlin worked, his family’s home in neighboring Webster Groves, the police department and everywhere else in our suburban St. Louis municipality of Kirkwood.

The news cycle eventually turned and went on to other things. But I can’t ride or drive by that apartment complex now without thinking about Michael Devlin and those two boys. What happened there horrified all of us who live in Kirkwood and anyone who read or learned about the story.

For me, the horror went deeper. I don’t really understand why it did – there’s nothing repressed or anything that happened to me when I was young that would trigger such a reaction. But I was profoundly affected.

Many people asked why or how. Why didn’t the older boy try to escape when he had so many opportunities? How did neighbors ignore screams coming from the apartment? Why did the police ignore tips? Why didn’t Devlin’s family question some of his odd behaviors?

I didn’t ask how or why. I understood. I knew the answers to all the questions. Instead, I focused on the shock, the fear, the horror, the desolation, the pain, the hopelessness, the desire to survive that became part of these boys’ experiences.

I finally knew what I had to do to deal with it. I wrote it out. More than 44,000 words poured out of me until I knew it was time to stop. I wrote it as fiction, far removed from Kirkwood and the events of February 2007. Anyone reading this manuscript wouldn’t recognize anything of what actually happened.

In The Right to Write, author Julia Cameron says that “when we commit our thoughts to paper, we send a strong and clear message that what we are writing about and whom we are writing to matters.”

In my head and in my heart, I became a conduit, what Cameron refers to as “become a channel.” I don’t understand why this happened, but it did. I’ve shown the manuscript to no one. No one else has read it, and it’s likely no one ever will.

But it mattered.


Over at the High Calling Blogs, Laura Boggess is leading a discussion of Cameron’s The Right to Write. Take a look and see what others are saying, commenting and posting. Last week’s discussion was about loneliness, writing as witness and where a writer writes. This week's discussion is about connection, being an open channel, and integrating.

Related:

L.L. Barkat's Excuse Me, I'm WRITE-ing.

How a Life Makes Sense by Nancy Kourmoulis.

Melo's The Little Things.

Cassandra Frear's The River.

Julia Says by Nancy Rosback.

Monica Sharman's Writing, Prayer, Confession.

On This Day, Just a Few Short Years Ago

Janet and her grandson Cameron

She may be a grandmother now, but she will always be the girl I married. Happy birthday to my beloved.

Related: Happy Birthday, Mom by Travis Young.