Trusting the Madman

I'll bet, when Debbie announced on Wednesday that our theme for this year would be "Carpe Annum!" (Seize the Year!) that at least 50% of you - the ones who've been reading long enough to know what movies I like and how I think - I'll bet you thought I was going to quote from The Dead Poets Society.

I almost did. The quote that intrigued me most from the movie was Todd Anderson's impromptu poem, because the scene is one of my favorites. It perfectly demonstrates the Yawp!, the seizing of the day that Mr. Keating urges.

I close my eyes,
And this image floats beside me:
A sweaty-toothed madman with a stare that pounds my brain.
His hands reach out and choke me,
And all the time he's mumbling,
Mumbling truth,
Truth like a blanket that always leaves your feet cold.
You push it, stretch it, it'll never be enough.
You kick at it, beat it, it'll never cover any of us.
From the moment we enter crying to the moment we leave dying,
It'll just cover your face as you wail and cry and scream. 

The sweaty-toothed madman could easily be not Walt Whitman (the subject of Todd Anderson's poem) but the short-sheeting God of the Book of Job, who demands trust without explanation. Have you met him?

But I didn't quote this poem, because the end of it seemed to tell only part of the story. It left out the eucatastrophe, the surprise at the end when Job sees God face to face, and in that warmth and wonder forgets what explanation it was he'd wanted.

Have you lived long enough to understand?

Sometimes I think, just barely, I might have lived that long.

Last September I experienced a eucatastrophe of my own, the day I sadly conceded to the equiring voice in my head that the time had come for me to find a job. The area I live in is short on jobs, and the ones available - so far as I knew... Well.

The internal conversation went like this:

"Why are you so resistant to getting a job?"

"Because I've had jobs I hated, and I'm afraid I'll get one like that, and then I'll be trapped."

"Yes, but you've had jobs you loved. What if you found one you loved?"

"That would be different."

And fifteen minutes later, standing in the grocery line, my phone vibrated, and when I checked, I found a Facebook announcement for a job that I would love - if I could get it.

I did get it.

And I don't know the words to tell you how much I love what I'm doing. I work in a Family Resource Center, where I get to help struggling families find resources to meet their expenses, put food on the table and love their children well.

What I do know is that with my life so re-arranged, my next novel will be written from a new perspective, from a different rock on whatever mountain it is that I'm climbing. I'm very curious about what I'm going to say.

So the movie I'd actually like to quote is Kate & Leopold, where Kate says:

"It’s wonderful to get what you want. It’s really a great thing… unless what you thought you wanted wasn't really what you wanted because what you really want, you couldn't imagine or didn't think it was possible. What if someone came along who knew exactly what you wanted without even asking? They just knew, like they could hear your heart beating or listen to your thoughts… and what if they were sure of themselves and didn't need to take a poll… and they loved you, and you hesitated?... and I… I have to go."

What if the sweaty-toothed madman loves you? What if he can hear your heart beating? Wouldn't that be the Eucatastrophe to beat all?

Take the leap. Make this your year to forget what you thought you knew, and allow the sweaty-toothed madman to lead you to the thing you didn't know you wanted.

He's sure of himself. He knows.

What if you hesitated?

You have to go.

Say Something True

I keep a paperweight on my office bookshelf with a single quote preserved beneath the glass:

"Good writing is clear thinking made visible."

- Bill Wheeler

I keep it there because it reminds me of the one rule I'm most likely to forget, the Law of Writing that was whispered, bellowed and nagged into my psyche by my writing professor in college:

Tell the truth in the fewest, simplest words possible. 

If, like me, you love the most succulent kind of literary fiction, you might guess how I could forget this rule. If, like me, you also aspire to write the same, you know my struggle, because you share it.

Aspirations to succulence entice a writer to wordiness and wish-wash.  An author who wants her writing to be "beautiful," "poetic," or "magical" is tempted to build her descriptive muscles at the expense of her truth-telling ones - for understandable reasons. The adverbs and adjectives in true writing are often exquisite. Consider this out of Marilynne Robinson's Gilead:

"Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don't have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see.  Only, who could have the courage to see it?"

It's easy to be so dazzled by a word like "transfiguration," that something you felt keenly in the reading, the shock of truth, gets obscured when you sit down to "write like that." And how does it get obscured? Why do we hang up on the descriptor, "like transfiguration," and miss the punch: "who could have the courage to see it?"

Because there's no Thesaurus for truth. Adverbs and adjectives lie scattered around us. We think truth does, too, but that's an illusion. What we call truth, those warmed over lumps of pre-packaged words that lie closest at hand have come to us from movies and greeting cards and songs and sermons and talk shows and cute little poster things on Facebook and Pinterest.

Understand: those non-truth's may actually be true. On occasion they may even be good theology in a way that succulent truth is not.

It's hard to see and accept the difference, and believers struggle more than most. We want to be right - especially in our theology. We want to transmit to our readers something we hold precious. It takes courage and faith to loosen our grip on what comes to us packaged and approved.

But the kind of truth that is organic to the author, the kind drawn - often painfully - from her own chest, brings a gift that theology neglects. It draws the reader to the quick of her own truth - her own Book of Job questions, and her Jacob-ish drives - to the place where she wrestles with angels. There's no holier ground.

So how's it done? How do we tell the truth in the fewest and simplest words possible?

Don't laugh.

We write a lot of words.

We throw words on a big page, the way Jackson Pollock used to dash paint onto a big canvas. When he finished with the dashing, he would stand back for a long look, to pick out the "painting within the painting." When he'd found it, he'd cut out that bit of canvas and stretch it onto a frame.*

His method reminds me of a scene in Dead Poet's society, in which the teacher, John Keating, helps the student, Todd Anderson, to pull the succulent truth from his chest:



Personally - much as I love this film - I wonder if Todd Anderson would have found those words, self-conscious as he was, in a classroom full of his peers. But he might have found them if he'd spun circles round words upon words - more words than if he only longed for succulence. Words and words and words till his skin snapped with the shock of truth, and he knew he could cut the rest.

Now your turn:

Have you struggled as I have with telling the truth? (Please say yes.) What have you brought back from the fray?

Do tell. We love to read what you have to say.


*I learned this from Jocelyn Lieu's chapter titled Circling the Unsayable, in Words of Thumb, edited by Michael Martone and Susan Neville.