Springtime in Anchorage; Levels of Sharing
While I was taking this photograph, I heard rapid, scuffling footsteps coming up behind me.
Before I could whip around, a gentle voice said, "Would you like a photo with you in it?" I said "Oh, no, thanks" with a big smile before even really considering the question; before registering the lanky man about my age pushing his stroller full of sleeping baby. Friendly place, kind people everywhere.
But this picture's probably better without me in it. I wish the picture could capture the salty, boggy stink of the mudflats. A slight change of angle, and you can see downtown Anchorage, breast to breast with the wilderness.
I knew that if I drove due west from the internet cafe I'd parked myself at, I'd find a park and a branch of the Coastal Trail, to take a late lunch (carrot, lettuce, spirulina shake) and to look at spring springing, enjoy the sunshine.
The willows are lasciviously pussied out--
The dogwoods are putting out, although I couldn't get a non-blurry picture.
Hungry moose had eaten much of the life out of many trees, but the scars are like artwork.
Patches of snow amid the sunshine, birches still sleepy, the moss underneath them almost greener than the budding angiosperms.
I spent yesterday evening with my wonderful friend Lynn. The air in her light, spacious home was resinous-resonant with balm of Gilead--she'd harvested a bunch of cottonwood branches over the weekend, and they had leafed out and budded on her table, were shedding their sticky buds with that wonderful, mystical, healing balm.
Lynn had been reading my blog, and had some concerns and questions, both about my situation and about her own process as a writer and figuring out how to become more comfortable with putting "personal stuff" out there. Obviously, I don't have the answers to that question, but as I discussed yesterday, there are issues I'm feeling compelled to write about. It's a mutually reinforcing process, I'm finding: as a writer, everything in life is potentially material for my writing, so writing about intense personal experience might help me to write my best. On the other hand, writing my best about my personal life might actually give me insights that help me to live my life the best I can. Even better, they might strike chords, inspire, or otherwise be helpful to other people.
The fact that so much of what I've been sharing here had been a surprise to Lynn, whom I've known for three years, also brought home to me a discrepancy between how I present myself in different social groups. Since Phil was the draw that brought me to Alaska, many of my friends are originally friends of his. Lynn had been friends with Phil for at least a decade before I ever came on the scene. Phil is the most expansive, generous, out-there guy you could meet, but he's also very private, and doesn't gossip, or talk about personal struggles much. I've always been someone people entrust with secrets, and have always proven that trust, but I've also always been willing to converse about just about any subject in my experience or imagination, which is probably why people often describe me as "innocent". But around friends who were originally Phil's friends, and even beyond to some degree, I've been very quiet--"mysterious," Lynn said--about what's going on with me, why I'm always going to Anchorage for appointments, etc--I've tried to be more like Phil in terms of my level of disclosure. I wear baggy clothes.
So that's another issue opened up by the last month of frank posts! I'm still processing--so grateful to Lynn for the conversation opening all that up. I'd love any of your thoughts on that too.
Another springtime thing: I went into an ethnic clothing/images/incense store like I just adore, and looked at more hats! So many beautiful hats, and the guy said he invented the fleece lining so many of those hats feature, which I love so much.
I've wanted a "rainbow" hat for years, but have never found one that both fit my small head and was actually warm enough. The rainbow hat pictured above could have been made specially for me, and I think I might have bought it even if it hadn't been on sale.
I also adored this idea--a Ganesh made of leaves. Might have to go back and buy some as gifts.
First time in a month I don't have a logo at the bottom of the post!
Tomorrow, Phil is coming home. I may take a day off posting--I want it to be "his" day. But sending love nonetheless.
Intersections between blog life and real life are often strange, illuminating, uncomfortable, and exhilarating all at once. Some old friendships of mine have been deepened because of my blog; if nothing else, my friends have LOVED watching me come out of the silent denial that I clung to with my ED, and talking about things so openly. I couldn't do it with them, but I can do it through writing, and they respect and understand and take joy in knowing that, all those years, they weren't crazy. I had a problem, a very big problem!
ReplyDeleteOther friends don't understand my blog. They dislike veganism, dislike my writing voice, and find the whole enterprise weird. They don't really recognize the person they know in my blog. And those friendships have largely faded, if for no other reason that, if you don't see Gena Hamshaw in Choosing Raw, you don't know me very well after all. Or don't want to.
Gena, I so appreciate you sharing your experience of how blog life and in person life have intersected for you. Phil's home now, had a rough trip, and is furious with me because I don't seem better to him. He's also very uncomfortable with my writing about this on here, it turns out--he thinks it's less good writing because it's "all about me." I offered him the perspective that by talking sincerely and openly about what I'm going through, I'm aiming to strike chords in other people, invite them to recognize things that are happening for themselves, and that that has actually happened, even with our friend to whom I referred in this post. He responded "You could be right." I really appreciate his willingness to consider my perspective, but at this point I'm feeling more of an agonized pull between where I want to go with my writing and how my husband feels about it.
Deletelove
Ela
Ela,
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry about the pull between you and yourself and Phil. I find all the people who follow my blog and probably those who read it, too, are afar friends. None of my friends friends read it. My family has on occasion (my parents don't know it exists) and my wife likes to read it every so often. But even then, she catches up so she's read every one. I'm not sure about this last month, though as she never said anything about me writing so much. She's very different from me in terms of expectations and such about writing. She's done some writing but there's no way she would ever say that writing about myself is less good writing. I guess that's because she's interested in humans, really interested. The books she picks out at the library are often biographies or autobiographies. So there are just different tastes. It's interesting.
I found strength in the fact that people responded to my honesty and my way of writing my experiences. I still remember one guy said, "You wrote exactly my mania." To be able to do that and connect like that is so important to me. To be gotten and to get...that's my drug. Good luck with this, Ela. It may not be easy. And then again, maybe it will!
Thanks, Meredith--you're right, people's tastes as readers vary endlessly, as well as expectations of what one's significant other should write about.
DeleteI'm so glad you've been able to touch people through your transparent sharing and clear communication. It's a good drug to have!
love
Ela
As you might have guessed from meeting me, I'm a big fan of self-disclosure. I feel that you might as well beat people to the punch, point out the truth before they do it for you in less eloquent terms, so it's a defense mechanism for me in many ways. It's a way of having control over a situation, by basically saying, "I have nothing to hide and protect."
ReplyDeleteWhile there are some issues with this when it comes to some people doing shitty things with that information, generally my experience is when I share something very close about my hurts or failures, the reception isn't "What a loser you are, Carrie!" but "Me, too." I guess that's the core experience of writing for me in some ways - for a reader to recognize themselves in a piece of writing is such a big gift.
That sounds very woo-woo, I realize. I would also have to say that putting out my sore spots where others can see them is a way of making it less powerful than they are captured within my own brain. They become a story - just another story - and are then encapsulated and graded in importance in a specific way. I started writing when I was young as a tension-releasing activity, unconsciously, and it's always been that way.
Carrie, thanks so much for articulating this so clearly.
DeleteYour "beating people to the punch" comment in your first paragraph reminds me of something Steve Almond said in a talk he gave here last month. It's a wonderful insight as a writer--if there's something on you, use it as material rather than waiting for other people to do so!
Not woo-woo at all--the biggest point of disagreement between Phil and me at the moment is that I see my writing transparently as an opportunity to strike a chord in others and have them recognize a piece of themselves--which is something that has actually happened increasingly this past month--whereas Phil sees it as narcissistic vomit. Sorry about that sentence
I really appreciate your perspective. How do you square it with any different opinions your husband might have? (If I recall, though, he was quite mellow about your fiction (but not fiction) piece we workshopped at the residency.)
love
Ela
Well, everyone's writing is narcissistic vomit, if you want to get down to it. It's all about the writer and the writer's experience and opinion and background, even if the writer kicks up a big imaginative dust cloud to make everyone think it's all a pure creation fabricated independently in some lab and not in a writer's brain. So I'd disagree with Phil on that point; a major step for me in becoming a writer was deciding that I had something worthy to say and just getting over that self-centered fact.
ReplyDeleteMy husband doesn't really get my fiction, but he really likes my blog posts. He says I am 'brave' to say what I say about myself and my life. He says he could never reveal that much and do it with as much precision. I think such revelation is as natural as breathing and so I don't really think I'm brave; I think I'm doing mental housekeeping more than anything. But I guess we forget how important it is to share our lives with people. There are some things in my life that I feel a real urge to destigmatize - my own anxiety disorder and my views on sex, for example - so I feel a kind of public service there. To normalize the use of medications for mental illness, to break modesty barriers regarding sex and discussions of sex - these are things that personally interest me because I'd like to live in a world where more people got help and didn't feel bad about needing drugs to be more functional and where sex wasn't treated like it's dipped in shit and off-limits.
I guess ultimately, I don't really care what Adrian thinks about what I write. I don't do it for him, anyway. It's nicer to have your spouse approve, obviously; it's taken me a while to realize that Adrian values certain kinds of writing more than others and not to take it personally. He is very supportive of my writing in other ways. He is also very used to being a subject of my writing and enjoys playing that character. Perhaps Phil is uncomfortable in that role? I know other writers who completely block out their partners/spouses from their life writing in an effort to respect their privacy.
Thanks so much for this, Carrie--I really appreciate your perspectives.
ReplyDeleteI recognized today that the tension in Phil's and my relationship over my writing isn't limited to my blogging, although that might be the most obvious bone of contention. This is obviously something we're going to have to work through, or find a way to neutralize. I don't think it would be good for me to stop writing poems and essays that are not necessarily sweetness and light, that deal with mental illness, dark places, despair, paranoia. The responses from other people in whom chords have been struck as a result of reading such pieces tells me that having such experiences presented in art is beneficial for others, and it sounds like you've found the same to be true.
The "mental housekeeping" aspect as well--I love that phrase! I used to confine such subject matter to my private journals, but journaling through the experiences got really old and never was much help. Making the experience into art does seem to be helpful, although I can see my dad shaking his head, or tearing his hair out, at my failure to understand what art is (he would side with Aeschylus and TS Eliot all the way).
If I'm to get to the point where I can not-care what Phil thinks, I think it'll take some adjusting. I may propose or try out blocking him completely in order to respect his privacy--problem is that some friends of ours and Phil's family members read my blog partly to keep up with "the adventures of Phil." Maybe I'll make a series on my blog so-titled, and otherwise leave him out.
Thanks again.
love
Ela