Schrodinger's Pen: The Quantum Life Writers Must Not Neglect

Every pen has to cope with the personality of its wielder.  If our pens could talk, they would be able to tell a great deal about us:  Mine would inform you that I do not have a consistent time when I write, nor do I have a set period for which I write. No word quota, no tally.

I do, however, have a large pile to go through today... tidbits of ideas, things to be edited, things to be elaborated on, and probably plenty of things that should never see the  light of day.  This morning, I found that pile intimidating: the accumulated questions and observations from months of experiences.  Now, I've begun to see them as seeds sown and grown to the right height for harvest.

My pen would tell all sorts of embarrassing stories about me: about how this is the first year I've let strangers critique my poetry, that I was so nervous before my first poetry reading a couple months ago that I practiced casual anecdotes to open with... my pen would be a complete ass about the whole thing.

Yet, there are many things my pen does not yet know about.  There are some experiences I've yet to record, barely touched on, for the same reason I'm on a hiatus from taking photos for the time being.  I realized I was beginning to see the world through a frame, and every scene or sunset was instantly undergoing rectangular surgery in my cookie-cutter mind, before I'd even had time to enjoy it.

Similarly, writing can become a dangerous opponent of itself, especially when guilt sets in for any days we spend neglecting our pens for friends and other ventures.  Just recently, one of my writing cohorts expressed dismay at how much time he was spending in the woods while in Colorado, saying it was not conducive to his writing.  When I asked what this meant, he said that the happiness he felt in just experiencing nature was not immediately turning a word-count-profit.  This, I reminded him, was not evidence of his failings as a writer, but rather an investment we should all be making.  Part of writing should be allowing yourself to live: to enjoy the world without constantly looking for ways to chop it into narrative.

Strangely, I think the best metaphor for why this is true is found in quantum physics: the study of things very very small.  When measuring a particle so small that it no longer obeys the rules of physics that we're familiar with, the act of looking at it changes where it is and where it's going.  At first, this may sound nonsensical, but consider that, in order to "see" anything, a photon (light particle) has to hit that thing and return to your eye.  On the quantum scale, that's like trying to measure the position of a balloon by hitting it with a tennis ball.  You may know where the balloon once was a moment ago, but wherever that was, it's no longer there.  The act of measuring, unto itself, changes the thing you are measuring, not unlike trying to take the temperature of a test tube of warm water with a thermometer.  The relatively cool temperature of the thermometer itself will affect the temperature of the water, causing the water to cool before it can be measured.

Similarly, as David Shields wrote, "The moment you start to arrange the world in words, you alter its nature.  The words themselves suggest patterns and connections that seemed at the time to be absent from the events the words describe."  This abstraction/subjection of the world into words is a necessary framing in order to relay meaning, and though writers know perfectly well the limitations and inaccuracies of words, they are what we have to work with.  Words can be essential toward helping us notice things about moments we would not have otherwise.  Yet, how many moments with friends have been spoiled by my disengagement from conversation as I ponder how I would begin describing the details of the room to give a certain pace to the dialogue?  (The dialogue that is different now, because of my lack of participation.)

And though there are no easy solutions to this issue of balancing our experiences and the words that translate them into meaning, I've come to believe, with a tip-of-the-hat to Ecclesiastes 3,

There is a time to experience, and a time to write.

Striking a balance between embracing life as something to be lived primarily, and something to be written about secondarily, is something I've obviously yet to master.  And, especially in the case of narrative journalism, some scenes must be written about on-the-spot.  I can't say that I recommend that every writer model themselves after my literary lifestyle, or that allowing oneself to wait to write until I they feel it is time would be wise for every writing project. But, I can say with some certainty that there is wisdom in allowing for seasons of sowing and seasons of harvest.  

To neglect letting oneself simply take in life with no looming guilt or expectations now and then is to forget the young writer we started out as: just a kid with a pen who had a lot of things on his mind and no one to talk to about them.  Writing as an extension of self is as important to practice as writerly discipline, and my pen could certainly tell you about how I could use a good dose of BOTH right about now.  

Thank goodness, my pen keeps its secrets until pressed.  

A Boy Born Without the Words

For Cam


Someday you
will have grown too old
to die young.

What will you plan
to do with your life
then?

Metaphors: The Good, the Bad, and the Brautigan

Note: This blog post is primarily in response to a poem by mid-western writer Travis Campbell, entitled "Good Metaphors."

I recently entered MacGregor Literary's Annual Bad Poetry Contest, and, much to my delight, I am currently holding second place.  It is strange, the amount of pride I have in this fact.

What is it that is so thrilling about purposefully writing your worst?  There is a certain degree of freedom in it, because compliments and criticisms are now one and the same, and the worst anyone can say about your work is, "I think it's too good."

My stab at infamy begins,

I was walking on the streets
bare and rusty, like someone's
half-drank bottle of underwear

ends with

the sky as vivid
as a t.v. show
about vacation places.

and, in between, includes some of the most bizarre and creative imagery I have ever come up with.  Strangely, there were several times that I had to stop myself while writing this poem, because the imagery I was coming up with was becoming too good and I needed to replace some words with weaker ones.  This is a problem I have never run into before, and certainly a problem I would like to have more often.

It causes me to wonder how much is lost in our constant efforts to impress with our words, and how many truly inspired and inventive uses of the English language are squelched beneath the toes of the leviathan expectations we impose upon ourselves: This has to make sense.  This has to seem legitimate.  To be laughed at is unbearable.

--

I agree with Travis Campbell when he says,

"Good metaphors
don’t need to be explained.
Good metaphors
don’t even need to be
Good metaphors."

Richard Brautigan exemplifies, in a way I'm not sure any other writer can, how good metaphors are sometimes terrible metaphors that don't make the least amount of logical sense.  And yet, those same comparisons can reach so deeply into the heart of how we truly see the world, that somehow, in our maze of synapses, the words connect our irrational selves to the scene in a way that is difficult to understand, with relevancy that is impossible to ignore.

The first time I ever read anything by Brautigan, it was like looking into the eyes of a fish from another planet and seeing myself, upside-down, reflected.

My favorite metaphor of all time can be found in his collection of flash-fiction titled Revenge of the Lawn, in a piece titled "Pacific Radio Fire," about sitting by the Pacific Ocean, listening to the radio with his friend whose wife had left him without warning.

"His eyes were wet wounded rugs.

Like some kind of strange vacuum cleaner I tried to console him."

I understand that rugs cannot feel pain, cannot be wounded, and that vacuum cleaners are machines, which are the opposite of something that can truly console.  And yet, I see his friend's eyes, their baggish wet sadness, and I feel the awkward pain the narrator feels in his inability to do anything about it.  Since happening upon this short, page-and-half story, I've always admired Brautigan's style: he's not really trying to be a good writer.  And, in my mind, that is much of what makes him a great writer.

--

In Professor Sean Lovelace's "English 409: Writing in the Community" course I took this spring, I supposedly tutored a 7th grader in poetry and nonfiction.  In reality, I ended up learning as much from her as she learned from me.  As I look back on some of the poems I wrote off-the-cuff during our brief, silly writing sessions, I see some of the most creative comparisons I've come up with in years.  I can only assume this is because, in my efforts to free her mind from the expectations of "good" writing, showing her how fun and creative writing can be, I was reminding myself of the same.

Because I was writing for her, and for myself, and no one else, I came up with things like

"His mind was a diseased rat, playing jazz on the roof of Wal-mart..."

and

"Humpback whales are the only whales
known to sing.  They swell
with notes in their teeth
like galoshes."

--

To summarize the wisdom I have learned over the last semester in one trite piece of advice: write bad poetry.

Return to the homeland of your youth, that untouchable notebook of scribblings so incomprehensible and heartfelt that you could never bear the thought of showing them to anyone.  Dig up one of those early poems and see if you can't see a glimmer of creativity and rare openness; learn from your former self, the writer who was free to say whatever he wanted because no one ever had to see it.

Beginning the process of growing up and moving beyond the hermit-writer you once were, opening the shades and stepping out to become a literary citizen, is not a call to leave behind your vulnerabilities and fragile words of fumbling elegance (and, at times, outright stupidity).  It is the challenge to take those words and have the confidence to step into a community who will either accept them, or not.  Trust your words to be worth your time, and let yourself take ungraceful and arduous steps towards the writer you wish to become.  

I'll be right there, fumbling beside you every step of the way, like a drunk baby bunny trying to capture fireflies in its paws mid-flight.