A Beginning

It is January and dark and cold. In celebration of her newest year, the sky is scattering confetti. Soft snow drapes itself over an iron lamppost outside the window of my  favorite cafe by the seaport, where I am sitting to write. At this hour, the cafe is populated like the trees outside: sparsely. But it is comfortable here. The barista always knows my tea order before I ask and kindly delivers it steaming inside a mug. I love this place. I love the winter. It is my favorite season along with spring. Everything drops dead then secretly and silently rises again.

I begin my new endeavor with this paradox in mind. Or perhaps it is not an endeavor but rather a personal manifesto. Ten years ago I began blogging when I first moved to Los Angeles but stopped soon after. I had a sense that no one would want to read what I wrote. That is, I did not feel I had anything worth saying and was sick of myself every time I tried. I felt too exposed, too ridiculous in that exposure. I also did not consider myself a writer. I did not define myself as anything except a sanguine girl-child who drove 3000 miles from home to get away from herself (well, I did not know that then). 

Turns out, you cannot get away from yourself, and also turns out I was a writer…whatever that means. For me, writing is how I process life. I get it out onto the blank page- my favorite thing in the world, all the possibilities of it- in order to understand what I am experiencing, what I am feeling. Journaling is something I have done nearly every day for the majority of my life. It is, I believe, the highest form of writing because it is the most truthful when done well and right. Sit down with paper and pen, have something you wish to discuss with yourself, watch it unfold as you talk about something entirely different. Notice as the page wends into a different story, a different song- a song you didn’t know was being played within yourself, within your life. 

As a child, I would write my own music. I did this whenever there was a song I longed to play on my clarinet but could not find the sheet music to it. I would either hear a tune or think one up then test it out until it felt right. My instructor, Mr. Gifol, who once played with the likes of big band deities like Benny Goodman, had a smoker’s laugh and lived with his elderly mother. He eventually caught on to what I was doing because it was clear I was not practicing the music he was giving to me, and also because I kept asking for blank sheet music paper. He overtly condemned my waywardness but secretly encouraged it; he always gave me the paper. 

My other struggle with music was that I never learned the names of notes. If I was told to play a B flat, for the life of me I could not discern where on the instrument that note could be coaxed. Likewise, I could not look at a note and label it a “B flat.” However, I could read the little symbols, and I could play by ear. Hearing and feeling the music was enough. 

It is like this with words. I can properly spell any word that is pronounced to me. It has won me spelling bees. But if I am shown a word with which I am unfamiliar and asked to pronounce it, I will do so incorrectly. 

I am difficult in other ways. To my mother’s chagrin, I loved to cook. From a young age she would give me recipes to make things she needed- for dinner, for parties, for holidays- and I would stray. I added more of this and less of that or changed the dish entirely. I experimented with all types of ingredients. My lab was the yellow beehive-shaped spice rack in our kitchen. My sister and I played a game where we had to close our eyes and smell different spices and herbs and guess what they were. I’d add the wrong spices to everything: whole cloves to brownies, paprika to sauces that rejected it, curry to Mexican dip. I eventually perfected certain recipes. But my mother still hands me things and says, Only what the recipe calls for. My response: of course, but always more or less of this or that. 

I also had a love of hiding behind the living room sofa, squeezed in the unforgiving space between the front window and the towering back of the thing. Unfortunately, this is where the cord for her gorgeous porcelain lamp ran. I was banned from ever going behind the sofa but behind the sofa I went anyway, crawling on hands and knees, dragging a cord once or twice, something crashing behind me…

My mother tells me I was a good child. Sweet. Funny. Funny? I asked her when she mentioned this recently. Yes, she said, funny because you were always telling outrageous stories you imagined up, and also because you were very observant; you noticed things about people then told them, and they thought this was very funny. One thing I remember noticing was about my father. He loved to tell jokes, and just after letting one out, he would quietly breathe back in. I said, “Daddy, you always breathe in after telling a joke because if people laugh, you can laugh with them, and if they don’t laugh, you can just breathe out and no one notices.” I remember the delighted surprise on his face when I said this, how he laughed despite himself because, of course, this was completely accurate. 

I have always unsettled people with my unpainted observations about them, should they ask. I have always unsettled myself with blunt observations about myself; I am painfully self-aware. 

My mother was the first to tell me I was a writer. I scoffed, embarrassed and confused. At twenty-six, my mother didn’t know me. I knew me best. Of course. Of course, as we think. But as we think is incorrect. Others often see things about us that we do not- that the narratives we’ve created about ourselves do not allow for, yet the (less biased) narratives they’ve created about us do. My whole life, the narratives I’ve made up about myself have ricocheted between generous- sometimes arrogantly so- and downright monstrous. I do not know myself. I know myself well. A paradox of being human, of having an inhabited yet unruled mind. How well can we truly know anything? “I know that I know nothing,” Socrates said. I enjoy my sense of curiosity. I enjoy what is interesting, and what I do not know is what interests me the most. 

This endeavor, this manifesto, then, is to write about what I do not know in the hopes it will become clear. 

And so I will end my first bit with one of my favorite poems by W.H. Auden, an abstruse one I have often returned to. 

If I Could Tell You

Time will say nothing but I told you so,
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

If we should weep when clowns put on their show,
If we should stumble when musicians play,
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

There are no fortunes to be told, although,
Because I love you more than I can say,
If I could tell you I would let you know.

The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,
There must be reasons why the leaves decay;
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

Perhaps the roses really want to grow,
The vision seriously intends to stay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

Suppose all the lions get up and go,
And all the brooks and soldiers run away;
Will Time say nothing but I told you so?
If I could tell you I would let you know.