Day: May 2, 2008

The Story That I Told You…

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May 2, 2008

1:21 pm

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Musings on Extemporanea

…It’s All Lies.

Writers deal with plagiarism all the time, with the understanding that writing itself is a great act of borrowing repeatedly from a permutation of the single story that spans the globe. But every once in awhile, a personal story bizarrely loops and I hear it again — told to me after I’ve told it to someone else.

Former classmate, J., did it to me once at Mills, by naming one of her main characters the exact name of one of my minor characters. The name was so unusual that it couldn’t have been one of those random ideas sleeting through the universe. I mentioned it to her, and she reacted in horror, and changed the character’s name. It happens, in grad school, where you’re listening to and reading hundreds of stories a month, and everything is immersed and enmeshed in your literary brain. It happens. You speak up, people re-center, and we all go on. Something similar occurred when one found others in the class starting to sound like Dave Eggers — we simply wrote ‘derivative?’ in the margin of whichever paragraph has been pulled straight from his latest novel and hoped that THEY re-center, and go on to write something better.

It’s harder when you’re out of school.

I told a former classmate a story that was personal — before I knew how susceptible to mental bleed-over she was. It was years ago — and I’ve been much more careful of how I relate to her after she showed signs of wanting to inhabit my life — take my guy — and otherwise step into my still inhabited mary janes. She wrote me a letter recently, and told me that story — just about word-for-word.

My story. My life. My truth. And for the life of me, I don’t know how to deal with it.

On one hand, I think, “Okay. It’s real, on my end. I know where the bodies are buried — literally.” Or at least what’s left of them. There is nothing provable in E’s story — the story I told her was about what I considered to be a national disaster, so many people could claim a piece of it as their own particular truth. I know she can’t, but really, does it matter? I know what I know.

On the other hand, shouldn’t I say something to her… so she can have a little reality check? At least within her own mind to take a breath and go, “Oh, wait…” But, will she have a reality check? Or will it be a breath of air on a house of cards that I should be trying to make fall?

I’m struggling with the idea of being a public and private person. This is twice now that things I’ve just said to people in passing have either been reprinted — on other people’s blogs!!! — or retold. It’s freaking me out. Am I endangering my family and friends, telling little stories of things that are of no particular consequence to me, but really happened? I feel like I need to drop all but the people I know for sure I can trust, and stop speaking to virtual strangers — because someday this will come back to haunt me, and I’ll be as exposed as a peeled egg. Part of me thinks I’m overreacting, but in this Reality TV world, how else do I deal with someone who tries to get their fifteen minutes of fame from my life?

Unhappy, unhappy, unhappy.

Poetry Friday: Silver Lining

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May 2, 2008

11:37 am

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Part and Poetry

Happy May.

Consolation

by Wislawa Szymborska

Darwin.

They say he read novels to relax,

But only certain kinds:

nothing that ended unhappily.

If anything like that turned up,

enraged, he flung the book into the fire.   

True or not,

I’m ready to believe it.

Scanning in his mind so many times and places,

he’d had enough of dying species,

the triumphs of the strong over the weak,

the endless struggles to survive,

all doomed sooner or later.

He’d earned the right to happy endings,

at least in fiction

with its diminutions.

(Read the rest of this one here; it will open in a new window.)

Here’s to happy endings this month.

Poetry Friday: The Name of the Rose

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May 2, 2008

9:19 am

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On Writing, Poetry Friday

XXVII I’m nobody! Who are you?

Are you nobody, too?

Then there ’s a pair of us—don’t tell!

They ’d banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!

How public, like a frog

To tell your name the livelong day

To an admiring bog!

— The Belle of Amherst
We’ve had a ridiculous amount of fun this week with names — pen names, Hobbit names (shout out to Pansy Danderfluff, yo!), blues names, and other silliness. Thinking about how eagerly we entered into this got me thinking about names in general.

When I was small, my sisters played ‘Jean and Patsy (!)’, which was their version of playing House (why didn’t we ever play ‘Home?’ Anyway.). I loved the names they used, but struggled to find a name of my own, and without a name, I was told I couldn’t play. (Ah, the gullibility of childhood. Now I know I would never be allowed to play ANYWAY, on account of being four years younger than “Jean,” Queen Bee and Rulemaker, but I lived in hope back then, didn’t I? *sigh*) ‘Jean and Patsy’ were the COOLEST NAMES EVER (!!!), and they were TAKEN, alas. So, I dubbed myself Stephanie — who always ended up the “babysitter” of the dolls, i.e., the one left holding them when Queen Bee decided she and my other sister would be playing something else. I changed my name multiple times in the game, but I could never change my low status. Eventually, I began to imagine stories for Stephanie that were better than anything Jean and Patsy ever did. In time, my imagination trumped my feeling of being left out.

Emily Dickinson hits the nail on the head when she says, “I’m nobody, who are you?”
After learning to deal with not being asked to play, writers and introverts sometimes forget how to enter into the game. Privacy is a privilege, and being Somebody is a dreary prospect, as is being obliged to keep croaking one’s status and importance to an ‘admiring bog.’ How much a luxury it is to sink into namelessness. What’s in a name, after all? If you can put an invisible identity in front of your real name, isn’t it still you, by any other name, and still just as sweet?

When I was a kid, I thought it hilarious that I had an uncle named ‘Bookie.’ No, not bookie, like someone who takes bets, Boo-key. My uncle’s real name is Robin, but does anyone call him that? Nope. That regrettable name was sculpted by the fingers of admiring relatives pinching his toddler cheeks, poor man.

Baby names, family names, names you only answer to when your mother calls you by them — those are the insulations — the mac and wellies, to extend the metaphor — that though you may whine about having to wear them, protect you from the cold and wet of the bog. They can be magic talismans to take with you into the real world.

The poet Traci Dant has the right of it in ‘Twice Named.’

A Twice Named Family

I come

from a family

that twice names

its own.

One name

for the world.

One name

for home.

Lydi, Joely, Door,

Bud, Bobby, Bea,

Puddin, Cluster, Lindy,

Money, Duddy, Vess.

Yes,

we are

a two-named family

This poem is printed in its entirety at The Writer’s Almanac. Click through (will open in a new window) and scroll down to Thursday to read the rest.

Maybe you didn’t have a nickname given to you in love (most of mine were hideous and derisive – all part of being the little sister of The Queen Bee and Rulemaker), but you can still have an alter ego who animates your hidden side, and has adventures of their own (Vivianna Isabella Tentadore lives!!).

By any other name, you will still be who you really are.

Poetry Friday is at Big A, little a, where the ball is rolling down the long aisle toward graduation — minus a few late papers and that sinking feeling that not everybody is graduating and moving on! More poetry of all kinds awaits you. Dive in!

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