Hi readers!
I recently traveled to Portugal for a cousin’s long-overdue wedding. The trip had always been meant as a parents-only getaway, but circumstance left my husband behind as well.
Fast forward to the shuttle ride from Lisbon airport and I awoke to see a mustard, stone archway cupping a hunter green door, welcoming us to Quinta Sant’Ana. The woman at reception looked disappointed for me, that I’d be alone in a rustic carriage house with clear standing shower and a gray, stone tub. My sad room would be awash with golden sunlight in the morning sun as I honeymooned by myself.
I couldn’t wait.
Travel fatigue sent me face first into cool sheets after a hot shower. I awoke in the dark to a penetrating silence. I just listened. My phone was fully charged, but I wanted to stay unplugged, so I read Sara Sutterlin’s poetry collection called I Wanted to be the Knife. It was a quick read and the work is pithy but impactful.
There’s a term for anything you can imagine and the vocabulary words can be worlds unto themselves, embodying potentially fascinating history and usage changes over time. One’s thirst for innovation or distinction could rest on the types of words chosen. It may also keep a writer away from simple, concise language. To paraphrase Stephen King in On Writing: we choose big words because we’re a bit ashamed of the small ones.
I thought about the words I choose but also about simplicity and efficiency in writing. Micro fiction affords one the benefit of a neatly squared package, if the effort is successful. If the challenge is a low word count, then the piece must be shaved down even further. There is no room for even a wasted word. In longer compositions, like the work of Ernest Hemingway, however, that commitment can span a career.
Simplicity also spilled into photography. I asked myself each time: “What if just this?” What if there was no rule of thirds in the photo, only a single subject and stark color palate? We were in a vineyard on rolling hills with bountiful nespera (loquat) trees, blooming birds of paradise, and a variety of roses, among many other plants. I could capture them, and did, but wanted to stretch the simplicity mindset.
Before reading Sutterlin, I wrote a poem while watching movie The King’s Man on the flight over. There were gruesome images of battle and tragedy. After reading the book of poetry, I wrote two more stripped down pieces. All are unedited.
A Joyful Dirge
We love our boys when they’re dying
Windswept with the ash of brethren
Spun ‘round with the force of conflict
As their boots pound on hollowed ground
We beam at their valiant advance
Through punishing sun and shade
Their backs heavy with [responsibility]
Stinging sweat on unseen wounds
Mere children rooting for mother country’s milk
Dashing through fireflies of munition
With helpless screams of pain and triumph
From well worn and soaked trenches
Feet marching through piss and bits of dried flesh
We love their wide, waiting eyes
Vigilant, voracious, and vigorous
Scanning plains and hills for the enemy’s eyes
Forever frozen in that expectation
From moment to moment
As death hisses in their ear
Not yet sure who it will embrace next
Our glory
Never our shame
As we build kingdoms
And erect mighty towers
On the crushed bones of boys
Our babies
Who should lap tenderly at our breasts
Instead left weeping in a darkness with no tomorrow
Swaying from numbness to fear to quiet resignation
When it’s over
Will we say it was worth their blood?
They were heroes
In our worst hours
If I only try
Not being so clever
Will you still see
How shiny my armor?
Weightless
Sneer if it pleases you
Jeer if the feeling strikes
Regardless I move
The idea I love, which came in a previous newsletter, A Body At Work, was that short works leave open space for the reader’s imagination to build beyond it. My worry is that too few, too terse of a work, and you won’t be able to understand what I’m trying to express. It’s the insecurity of being misunderstood.
Do complex emotions have to be expressed in convoluted ways?
Is the sentiment better served with simplicity?
Sometimes we love a rich and unctuous sauce. Other times we pine for subtlety. The work now abides my mood but serious work, as what I’m moving toward, cannot entirely subsist on mood, but more habit and structure. It also has to be understood. If people cannot appreciate the dips and dives in flavor, what’s the point? Have I done my job if the work can’t be comprehended? In the end, professional work is meant to be read and retold. It is meant to be savored.
As my meditation on silence comes to a close, at least for now, I wonder what else will reveal itself in the stillness. I wonder how much I can pare down to reveal a slivered truth. For now, there’s just this.
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Brilliant writing!
Lots of cogitating going on! For my money writing starts and ends with words. Just as painting a still life starts with paint, writing a fiction whether micro or macro starts with words, composing a melody starts with sounds. Mastering the affordances and properties of the material substance used to hold the art work together in the physical world is the difference between being an artist and working in that direction. A second point: Comprehending a literary text as a reader isn’t the same as comprehending the same text as a writer. There is a correspondence between them, the poem is about the moon not about a trip to Antarctica, but the transaction transforms the inner art object wrought during the magic of composition (the mental elements of the art aren’t copied or repeated but uniquely constructed by the reader), Writers usually do everything they can to create texts that invite readers to work hard successfully at the task of building their own inner object using the blueprint of the text while finding joy in the process. Sometimes hiding Easter eggs for the reader is nice, but deliberately or negligently setting up obstacles or obfuscation isn’t so nice. I don’t read writers who do so. It’s gaming or manipulation. That doesn’t mean that something complex or subtle on its face can’t be mind boggling even when the writer has done exquisite work crafting the text.