SHE SLEEPS FLAT on her back with the sound of a man’s voice leading her through a meditation. It’s a low, deep drone that lets her fall asleep before she ever reaches the Akashic records.
Hey, I also sleep flat on my back and listen to meditations narrated by men with low, deep voices, usually before 10 p.m., my new bedtime when I turned fifty.
Point of view is the point, isn’t it. She shies away from fiction—calls herself an essayist instead—easier to hide behind the fact that fiction is farther than truths she’d rather reveal in third person.
Hey, I also shy away from fiction, and call myself an essayist! But for me, it’s not because fiction is “farther than the truth,” but rather, because I write through a voice that tells me to start with my own story, is that not writing, too?
Perspective takes patience, but not the kind that lets you visit every single perch before you land on your own. She gets up every morning to write, but it’s never a short story, why not? She knows enough about the shape of stories to tell a few of her own by now, but she still doubts her capacity for make-believe.
Hey, I hear you. I’m here, too, you know. Listening to you shift into third person, trying it on a like a too-big coat found at a thrift store in the desert, where you can barely imagine how said-coat reached this part of the world, where it never gets cold, except at night.
And I also get up every morning to write, but not because I want to experiment with short stories. No, I want to get closer to myself, that is the main reason, and also because for decades now, I’ve called myself a writer, but get self-conscious about the fact that I’ve never managed to publish a book of anything—except when I was eight years old and launched my own publishing company, it was called Lichtenstein Press, Inc.
Her habits include frequent trips to the library, the grocery store, and the post office, a tedium trifecta that brought her peace during the pandemic, at least, when her daddy was still alive, when her daddy needed her and these trips kept her on a track that kept looping her back to care giving and taking in a back and forth kind of way, more taking than giving, though it wouldn’t appear that way from the outside looking in, would it?
Hey, I also took care of my daddy when he was dying! I also love the library! I even joined the board when I first moved back to my home town and wondered how to ground myself down enough to stay for a while when my daddy needed me most.
It was my sister who found him lying in the snow that one time when he tried to take out the trash and slipped and fell and gashed his hand and then got frostbite. We were so worried he’d never be able to play the piano again but there he went, healing his hand and playing the piano until the very end of his days!
And hey, I like the post office, too. And I make frequent trips to the grocery store because though I make lists, I’m always forgetting at least one item, the most essential one!
She insists on reading others’ worlds and worlds to define her own, which is part of who she is and always was but never quite owned it in the way kids these days do so through social media, no. She loved books, but not enough. And she loved writing, but not enough. And she loved community, but not enough, to make a carousel about it, or a reel, to be real, and to be fair, she was part of the generation lost to woods and ferris wheels.
Wait, hello? Hey! I like reading, writing, and community! And I’m also part of a lost generation, but I’m still walking in the woods and I still believe in ferris wheels as symbols of whimsical possibility. You can’t make a character out of me—naught may endure but mutability—that’s a quote I memorized while studying for my English major exams in college. We wrote those essays by hand in a little blue notebook!
I used blue ink, too. The left side of my hand, smudged in blue like a bruise—the English major’s wound.
She resisted habits for many years but one day she woke up and realized she needed them to survive. It wasn’t gradual, this recognition, it was a mountain-top epiphany, and once she saw herself in the mirror telling herself this fundamental truth, she had to abide by it with the fervor of a convert, a delirious devotee to ritual and routine.
This shift in consciousness took a toll on her relationships. She could no longer roll out of bed and honky tonk all day with the best of them, ending up at a random Thai buffet on a Tuesday with her mother. No, she had a schedule that kept her cleaning and preening in ways she couldn’t recognize yet in herself but still welcomed like a gust of cold air after an oppressive heatwave. She thanked god.
Wait, wait, wait. I am thanking god now, too, in ways I wondered possible when I was younger. And I’m also leaning into ritual—like bread-making on the sabbath—but that’s a path I don’t take too seriously, I still want spontaneity, I still live for surprises, I still want invitations from strangers for coffee in their dimly lit living rooms, with goats peeking in through the side door, wondering what we’re both doing in there! Can I have that and also that?
A monk’s life and also a punk’s life?
A fisherman’s life and also his wife’s life?
A traveler’s life and also a gardener’s life?
A storyteller’s life and also a life of pure witness?
She closes each short story with a few notes taken in pencil, her preferred writing tool.
No, I prefer a black ink pen.
She thinks, that after reading for an hour each morning, she’ll fill herself up with ideas as fuels to get her through another summer day.
Me too, me too!
She sits down to write with incense burning to her left, the big green tree to her right, and hopes that walking the tightrope of a sentence or two will take her to the end of an hour feeling more hopeful about herself as a writer.
Hey, it’s all about perspective, right? Remember that short story you just read, “Point of View,” by Lucia Berlin? This whole weird dialogue of sorts came from that, you know. Don’t try to hide it, we both know what’s going on here. We’re experimenting with form and function, fiction as a farce and a force to be reckoned with, borrowing truth to sacrifice at the altar of stories. Don’t keep third-person-ing me!
She’s learned to shut out the voices of doubt when she there’s a ceiling fan blowing cool air on her freckled shoulders. She’s learned that every small detail is a chemical for the cocktail that creates a bond between writer and reader, writer and self, writer and world. She’s learned how the third person and the first person are in love with the second person, you, and you have a choice about what to do with all three of us.
I have to go now, but I’m really excited to read what you say next about her—this character and her habits, this character and her particularities and preferences. I can tell you really love her, how you pay such close attention to what she does and thinks.
I have an essay collection idea for us—a series of essays on life as a verb. Each essay would be devoted to just one—humming, breathing, dreaming, eating, cooking, writing, sleeping, waking—is this a good idea?
Maybe you can go first.
Hey, I also sleep flat on my back and listen to meditations narrated by men with low, deep voices, usually before 10 p.m., my new bedtime when I turned fifty.
Point of view is the point, isn’t it. She shies away from fiction—calls herself an essayist instead—easier to hide behind the fact that fiction is farther than truths she’d rather reveal in third person.
Hey, I also shy away from fiction, and call myself an essayist! But for me, it’s not because fiction is “farther than the truth,” but rather, because I write through a voice that tells me to start with my own story, is that not writing, too?
Perspective takes patience, but not the kind that lets you visit every single perch before you land on your own. She gets up every morning to write, but it’s never a short story, why not? She knows enough about the shape of stories to tell a few of her own by now, but she still doubts her capacity for make-believe.
Hey, I hear you. I’m here, too, you know. Listening to you shift into third person, trying it on a like a too-big coat found at a thrift store in the desert, where you can barely imagine how said-coat reached this part of the world, where it never gets cold, except at night.
And I also get up every morning to write, but not because I want to experiment with short stories. No, I want to get closer to myself, that is the main reason, and also because for decades now, I’ve called myself a writer, but get self-conscious about the fact that I’ve never managed to publish a book of anything—except when I was eight years old and launched my own publishing company, it was called Lichtenstein Press, Inc.
Her habits include frequent trips to the library, the grocery store, and the post office, a tedium trifecta that brought her peace during the pandemic, at least, when her daddy was still alive, when her daddy needed her and these trips kept her on a track that kept looping her back to care giving and taking in a back and forth kind of way, more taking than giving, though it wouldn’t appear that way from the outside looking in, would it?
Hey, I also took care of my daddy when he was dying! I also love the library! I even joined the board when I first moved back to my home town and wondered how to ground myself down enough to stay for a while when my daddy needed me most.
It was my sister who found him lying in the snow that one time when he tried to take out the trash and slipped and fell and gashed his hand and then got frostbite. We were so worried he’d never be able to play the piano again but there he went, healing his hand and playing the piano until the very end of his days!
And hey, I like the post office, too. And I make frequent trips to the grocery store because though I make lists, I’m always forgetting at least one item, the most essential one!
She insists on reading others’ worlds and worlds to define her own, which is part of who she is and always was but never quite owned it in the way kids these days do so through social media, no. She loved books, but not enough. And she loved writing, but not enough. And she loved community, but not enough, to make a carousel about it, or a reel, to be real, and to be fair, she was part of the generation lost to woods and ferris wheels.
Wait, hello? Hey! I like reading, writing, and community! And I’m also part of a lost generation, but I’m still walking in the woods and I still believe in ferris wheels as symbols of whimsical possibility. You can’t make a character out of me—naught may endure but mutability—that’s a quote I memorized while studying for my English major exams in college. We wrote those essays by hand in a little blue notebook!
I used blue ink, too. The left side of my hand, smudged in blue like a bruise—the English major’s wound.
She resisted habits for many years but one day she woke up and realized she needed them to survive. It wasn’t gradual, this recognition, it was a mountain-top epiphany, and once she saw herself in the mirror telling herself this fundamental truth, she had to abide by it with the fervor of a convert, a delirious devotee to ritual and routine.
This shift in consciousness took a toll on her relationships. She could no longer roll out of bed and honky tonk all day with the best of them, ending up at a random Thai buffet on a Tuesday with her mother. No, she had a schedule that kept her cleaning and preening in ways she couldn’t recognize yet in herself but still welcomed like a gust of cold air after an oppressive heatwave. She thanked god.
Wait, wait, wait. I am thanking god now, too, in ways I wondered possible when I was younger. And I’m also leaning into ritual—like bread-making on the sabbath—but that’s a path I don’t take too seriously, I still want spontaneity, I still live for surprises, I still want invitations from strangers for coffee in their dimly lit living rooms, with goats peeking in through the side door, wondering what we’re both doing in there! Can I have that and also that?
A monk’s life and also a punk’s life?
A fisherman’s life and also his wife’s life?
A traveler’s life and also a gardener’s life?
A storyteller’s life and also a life of pure witness?
She closes each short story with a few notes taken in pencil, her preferred writing tool.
No, I prefer a black ink pen.
She thinks, that after reading for an hour each morning, she’ll fill herself up with ideas as fuels to get her through another summer day.
Me too, me too!
She sits down to write with incense burning to her left, the big green tree to her right, and hopes that walking the tightrope of a sentence or two will take her to the end of an hour feeling more hopeful about herself as a writer.
Hey, it’s all about perspective, right? Remember that short story you just read, “Point of View,” by Lucia Berlin? This whole weird dialogue of sorts came from that, you know. Don’t try to hide it, we both know what’s going on here. We’re experimenting with form and function, fiction as a farce and a force to be reckoned with, borrowing truth to sacrifice at the altar of stories. Don’t keep third-person-ing me!
She’s learned to shut out the voices of doubt when she there’s a ceiling fan blowing cool air on her freckled shoulders. She’s learned that every small detail is a chemical for the cocktail that creates a bond between writer and reader, writer and self, writer and world. She’s learned how the third person and the first person are in love with the second person, you, and you have a choice about what to do with all three of us.
I have to go now, but I’m really excited to read what you say next about her—this character and her habits, this character and her particularities and preferences. I can tell you really love her, how you pay such close attention to what she does and thinks.
I have an essay collection idea for us—a series of essays on life as a verb. Each essay would be devoted to just one—humming, breathing, dreaming, eating, cooking, writing, sleeping, waking—is this a good idea?
Maybe you can go first.
