vulnerability

I am currently enrolled in a class called "The Personal Essay." I enrolled for two reasons: it fit in my schedule and I didn't have to drive to Lincoln Park. Plus the title of the class was interesting.

The class entails writing our own personal experiences....and then letting everyone in the class read what we've written and comment on our essays.

I didn't really know what I was getting into when I registered.

For me, blogging is an exercise in vulnerability. And I'm not even that deep in my posts. Writing a personal essay is a lot more intense than blogging...and a lot more personal. And then to open yourself up to twelve other writers for their feedback of your portrayal of your life...it's a bit intimidating, to say the least.

But I must say, I survived. Thus far, at least. We had our first workshop on Monday, and I survived my essay being on the table for all to critique. It was actually a good experience.

Which made me wonder why it is so difficult to be vulnerable. It's easy to share certain life details with certain people, to stay on the surface for the most part, to hole up the major emotional battles going on inside, to keep people at arm's length. Yet vulnerability is strangely liberating if done correctly. Sharing my essay with my class was almost a relief--so much of my life is so personally contained in my brain that very few people get to experience it with me. Plus, how do you get to experience someone's whole life with them? Only when we open up the curtains does the light come in...metaphorically speaking, of course.

And of course, I think it comes more naturally to some people than others. People who can just open up about their whole lives....it amazes me.

snippets

the silence breaks upon us
in a sudden brutal wave.
in its aftermath a trail
of bruises on our hearts.

*

wake up!
the tide is ebbing
and there slip away our lives—
we leave temporary imprints
on the cold earth’s eyes.
we see but for an instant
how to clear away the dark
to keep the sea from coveting
the stories of our hearts.

*

the black horizon summons
calling shamelessly its own;
but the sunlight breaks the silence
calling all the stragglers home.

allegiance

I admit that when it comes to politics, I am an apathist. Yes, that is a word I just made up, but it describes me perfectly. I don't care, really. I am as apathetic as one can possibly be about politics. I voted in the 2000 election--because I could. Because I had just turned eighteen that year and there was a small measure of excitement in voting. And I haven't voted since then. I blame it on the fact that I moved and am not registered where I live now...which is lame, I know. It all comes back to being an apathist.

Sometimes I want to be a more aware, more involved citizen, but it never lasts. And I pretend that I know what's going on in the caucuses right now, and at least I know the candidates' names...but that's the extent of it. And I never want to be involved enough to actually do it.

I wonder where this comes from. I've heard some sad statistics about the percentage of the population that votes; if I remember correctly, it's distressingly low. Yet despite the low level of actual involvement in the decision of our country's leadership, everyone later becomes a critic at some point. And I'll admit I've made my fair share of jokes at the expense of the president--but this joking manner generally pertains to his unusual vocabulary (which I technically can no longer mock since I myself invented my own word earlier in this post) and his lack of eloquence when speaking publicly.

I saw a sign a few months ago on my way home from class in Lincoln Park--it said God Bless America, God Damn Our President.

Really?

Maybe the person who made that sign did vote. Maybe not. But something about that struck me as somewhat offensive...and I don't even have strong feelings about the president one way or another.

And lest this becomes a forum for political debate, let me repeat: I am apathetic toward our current government, our future government, and the state of politics in general. I wish I cared. I'm sure that eventually something will make me care. I have never felt a real sense of allegiance to this country, though. Maybe it is rooted in the fact that my mother is Canadian--she has lived in the US for twenty-six years and is still a Canadian citizen...she carries a green card. Maybe it is rooted in the fact that I find so many other countries so much more interesting than this one--and though I live here, I have never felt that I couldn't live somewhere else.

Maybe I find it something of a paradox to ask God to bless America and damn its leader at the same time.

Maybe my allegiance lies to something bigger than borders and public policy and presidential candidates and the Constitution. Which may be heresy. But I might also just chalk it up to my apathetic state.

being a writer

I've known for a while that writing is something I enjoy, and am relatively good at (and I say that without any sense of superiority--it's just been reinforced over many years), and would possibly be interested in as a career. But I still have a hard time calling myself a writer. In fact, whenever someone tells me they are a writer I am a little skeptical. I want to say--prove it. Show me something you've written and I will decide whether or not you can legitimately call yourself a writer.

I have come to the realization that writers come in all shapes in sizes and just as you can't judge a book by its cover, you can't judge a writer by their appearance. I started a writing workshop class last night that will last for the next ten weeks--and is full of people who I would never assume to be writers, yet there they are, in my writing class, all claiming that if they could do anything in their non-existent free time it would be to write.

Which just goes to show me.

I'm really excited about this class because it is going to give me a real chance to be critiqued by other writers. But it's also a little intimidating. I've always felt confident about writing, but I also fall into the trap of comparison far too often, and I judge myself too harshly against other people's standards. So it should be interesting.

I have found that being a writer is a strange fate, one that I would never have anticipated in my high school years being a viable career option. On my better days I have lofty aspirations of being published, of actually making money by writing, of being respected as a writer. The rest of the time I satisfy myself with blogging and journaling and keeping a file on my computer full of poetry and unfinished stories and short essays on my life that I never show anyone yet value as much as everything on my hard drive.

It is a strange and terrifying journey, this discovery that one can be a writer, and that writers are all around us, hiding in our midst, waiting to take our everyday experiences and turn them into novels and poems and short stories and essays, waiting to breathe life into the everyday mundane. We are the keepers of the English language if we are functioning correctly--we strive to expose the enormity of a language full of powerful and beautiful and absurd words...these little things that fall off our tongues like water, without thought, with the greatest power anyone can have.

The weight of this has prevented me from taking upon my shoulders the title of "writer."

But the weight of anything important is never as heavy as we believe it will be.