Complaints Department

I'm the most honest when I write letters to friends. Is it a fool's errand to write here? It's a bit like picking up the phone and talking when no one is on the other end. A pretend conversation. Zero connection. Surface activity. 

I'm over summer. Yesterday I saw a Lycoris squamigera (what a name!) in front of my window and thought "Good! Summer will be over soon." I didn't think "Oh, how pretty!" I was just relieved that this pale, leafless trumpet was here to herald the start of fall. Let us harvest whatever survived the deer browsing in the field and let the leaves shrivel and drop.

A beautiful white hair just fell out of my scalp. Lots of the brown ones are letting go too. I'm thinning out. Shedding.

Lycoris squamigera.

A couple of 20-somethings re-enacted a video game on the stage yesterday when I was helping their friend find something in the shop. They narrated what they saw and collected in the game when they play it online. There was no imagination. They never asked if they could be on the stage, just assumed it was ok to move chairs around while saying, "This is where you pick up the battle axe."

Lycoris squamigera. They are known as the "surprise lily" for showing up unannounced, foliage-free.

Diminution and Amplification

A few years ago I bought a t-shirt at a zine fest. On the front was the message "I will not make myself smaller." The shirt was a light green color, and had an image of a plant on it. The bold message spoke to me. "Hell yeah!" I thought to myself, "I won't make myself smaller!"  I wore it once and then donated it to a thrift shop. The message was dishonest on me, a woman who juggles her wallet, pocketbook, and several loose bags to make a quick getaway and not be in anyone's path at the grocery checkout. I am almost always making myself smaller, so I won't be a bother. My body is large. I'm tall and towering and stalk-like. My feet are a size ten, to hold up the height so I won't topple in a stiff wind. I am worried I am blocking you with these words. Let me grab them real quick and dash off over here, ok? So sorry.

Oops. I lied! There are more words, because there's Pointy Mary, Rita Poem, Chintz Davenport, Tom Mato. Pointy gets what she wants from you. Fill out this form, in triplicate. Pointy wanted to wear that t-shirt with the message on it, but it wasn't red, it was green, which is a very unflattering color on her. Rita will tell a man who has just spent fifteen minutes talking down to everyone at the table that he has just wasted everyone's time with his shit wits. Chintzy adores the spotlight, and takes it wherever she finds it. She orders Manhattans and wears bright red lipstick. Tom is male and can report on anything from poison ivy to dead mice and people will listen and comment.

When I am complimented for something -- an act of kindness, a performance, a poem, a meal, those accolades go to the audacious parts of me. Last week I received a glowing email from a stranger, and the day before yesterday I was told after a performance, "We're so glad you could make it this year! You're our favorite." I don't know what to do with these compliments, so I imagine them as trophies I hand over to all these larger, and somehow more deserving, parts of me. Jennifer is happy to stay out of your way, in her closet with a notebook and pen. When Chintzy, Rita, Tom, or Pointy take the stage, Jennifer stays in the wings. 

I'm not sure how to explain this, with all these points-of-view. Who is writing this? All of me. Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello.

I like Manhattans because they taste like the smell of an old dresser. Call me Jenny or Jennifer or Jenn while I sip one, but you're going to have to order for yourself because I don't want to muscle my way through the crowd at the bar. I got here early to avoid it. There's no way I will get the attention of the bartender. How dare I interrupt? They look busier than an octopus hanging laundry. 

An Experiment

Yesterday I sat at my desk in the afternoon after clearing this room of extraneous books, and I hand wrote three pages. It felt good to just be slow, to observe, and not feel pulled by any thoughts of "I should read that book by the person I'm only vaguely acquainted with, and then post my review of it as a dazzling reel." Not that I've ever done that, but the thoughts exist, and they are as intrusive as ticks.

Now I have a laundry basket full of books that will go to a little free library. There's the book about how and why we laugh, one all about how and why we read, several rhyming dictionaries I keep telling myself I'll deploy in a workshop someday (never happened in 23 years of teaching), some young adult literature that was great winter reading, some poetry, novels I hung onto with aspirations to read but never did, a quirky gift book, and books I purchased for some reason I no longer recall. Oh, and a two volume set of Shakespeare quotations I think I've referred to exactly twice. They are a lovely reference for a true scholar. I hope they find them.

No one will ever read what I wrote yesterday, or know what I saw, because it's all in my handwriting. The three pages are the equivalent of one of those puzzle boxes. Beautiful to look at, but difficult to solve. I can't explain how freeing it felt to write like this again. No expectations whatsoever. No pressure. No feeling of simultaneously writing and editing for the purpose of fitting into some social media limitation. And I recognize now that my clearing of books was a letting go of the words of others so some of my own might rise to the surface. I've been surrounding myself with walls of books, building a fortress to hide in. I cut out a few windows yesterday.

With that said, here's a list I made this morning of some of the good things about my writing, which is for the consumption of others, because I felt the need to type it, and be accountable for something other than one sad, metaphorical, perimenopausal, self-referential sentence. See Jennifer Hill: (The Fog Blog). 

This experimental list can also be read with the title, Self-Portrait at 54. Is there anything that isn't self-referential in some way? We are all drawing our own likenesses into our copies of the old master portrait.

Good Things About My Writing

Full of images

Spins a sense of whimsy, playfulness

Poetry rich

Elevates the daily

Mostly honest

Introspective and extroverted

Strives to be universal

Fills a lot of notebooks no one has seen

Has been published, performed, shared

Is both memorable and forgettable

(I even forget some of it and I wrote it.)

Unfinished, fragmented

Part dream, part real

Symbolic

Direct

Values paying attention, sensing, feeling

Verb driven, loves movement

Feminist

Spiritual without being didactic

Is not the news

Thinks of others

Plays with structure, word sounds and shapes

Listens and gathers

Speaks up after listening and gathering

Finds contrasts/similarities in the collected, turns them over

Appreciates and honors brevity

Appreciates and honors saying/showing more when it is called for even when it is a struggle

Leans into discomfort, jumps into the icy pool

Adores the parenthetical, the footnote, the secret, the hidden seeking to be discovered

Often cheers or connects with people

Believes in the power of language and emotion and the language of emotion

Has been around for many years and is gaining some wisdom

Is no longer trying so hard to be seen, just wants to be better at seeing 

The Fog Blog

Greetings from the inside of an echoic drainpipe.