I have a hard time writing about things that really matter. Even in my private journal, the sentences start, then sputter, then fade half-finished into the gridlines.
I am incapable of expressing what matters most… And yet, that’s what I should be expressing. Why write if it’s not about something important? Why read if it’s not something important?
But… How to express what is as essential to my being as breathing and heartbeating?
I like the between places. Transitional spaces. The moments when you’re poised at a crossroads, neither here nor there.
What do I mean?
There’s a stairwell at work. It leads down to the parking lot. It is one of my favorite places.
A stairwell? Really? How unromantic.
But there’s something about it: the caustic warmth of the sun beating in, the white walls scrawled with black-painted figures. Red brick. Cement floor. It lulls me into a languid calm that is truly tactile and tangible. My mind spins off, drunk and reeling.
Same with airports, trains. Subway rides beneath city streets. Locomotives of transience.
It’s still morning and I sit down in the stairwell. Stretch my lets across the step as I thumb-type – a tweet, an email, a caption.
“Weird place for a coffee break, kid,” said superego.
“But it makes perfect sense to me.”
(My second Cowbird submission.)
I collect smiles like some people collect rare and exotic maps of foreign locations and relics from times gone by. Someone else owned these things once. Once they belonged to men and boys, in their pockets, on their faces. They touched them with their hands, found in them direction, and then left them behind. Now they belong to collectors like me, enshrined in frames and memories.
My collection began with a stranger on the streets of Boston.
I got me a Cowbird account. It’s a collaborative writing community. In their words, “a witness to life.” In my words, a good excuse to keep writing non-fiction.
My first Cowbird story was written per request of my friend Sam:
“I’m sorry, Sam, but I don’t remember how we met. I was probably drunk or about to be, hopping from flat to flat, bar to bar in a strange country.
“But, it’s okay, Sam. I do remember the moment we became friends and not just people who say hello at Pint Night. Maybe you remember this? We both wanted cookies.”
‘What would you write, on the pavement, if you were a beggar?’ Ada Ida asks.
‘I’d write, all in block capitals: I’m one of those who write because they can’t handle speaking; sorry about this, folks. Once a paper published something I’d written. It’s a paper that comes out early in the morning; the people who buy it are mainly workers on their way to the factory. That morning I was on the trams early and I saw people reading the things I had written, and I watched their faces, trying to understand what line they were up to. Everything you write, there’s always something you’re sorry you put in, either because you’re afraid of being misunderstood, or out of shame. And on the trams that morning I kept watching people’s faces till they got to that bit and then I wanted to say: “Look, maybe I didn’t explain that very well, this is what I meant,” but I still sat there without saying anything and blushed.’
– Italo Calvino, from Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories
I’m still thinking of what I would write… I’ll think some more about it and let you know.
What about you? What would you write?
Last Friday, Patagonia guide Dani Catania spoke at both JDK Design and Maglianero Café. He’s been guiding in Patagonia since he was 18, as well as owning and operating his own company, South People Patagonia. Believe me. His CV is impressive.
He lead us through slide after slide of epic landscapes, dramatic cloudscapes, wicked iceberg-filled waterways, up-close-and-personal wildlife encounters, and the faces of the people he met along the way. By the end, he had at least half the studio pledging to quit their New England lives to embark on a Patagonia adventure.
(It helps that Dani himself exudes a king of confident, earnest, joie de vivre that makes him immediately likeable and trustable.)
Fantastic images aside, (for they did conjure the magical) something Dani said was especially poignant. It had little to do with the inspiring landscape.
To woefully and roughly paraphrase (I take notes quickly, but not that quickly):
“The key – the important thing is the people who we go with. You go on these adventures because they make you feel good. But you meet people along the way. They are good influences, and you try to be a good influence on them.”
It’s the same in Patagonia as in anywhere else. The people you meet along the way have the greatest impact. Maybe the scarcity of other voices in Patagonia simply makes the experience more crisp…
I’m sending some mental love along to the people I’ve met so far on my crazy adventure, and some pre-emptive good vibrations to those I haven’t yet encountered. We’re all stories. I look forward to being a part of yours.
(Photo my own - do not use without my permission.)
I guess if I’m going to style myself as some kind of writer, I better write.
Here’s a work of short fiction. I wrote the first notes for it while I was curled up on the couch with a fever.
