Unravelling - Week Four

Unravelling - Week Three

Fireman. Nurse. Unicorn.

from the nytimes article, "architect, or whatever"

An iconic staple of an American childhood is being ask what you, the little one, wants to be when you grow up. The answers can be grouped as either extremely pragmatic or highly impractical (never anything in between) and are recalled by your family long into adulthood (even as the information seems an absurd folly best attributed to a complete stranger: your four-year-old self). Fireman. Nurse. Unicorn. I wanted to be an architect (this was also my dad's idea, so either it was a shared dream, or a transferred one). So when I saw the article in today's New York Times on young architects that were finding new angles for their dreams in this rocky economy that seems to be hating on jobs for architects (notes to architects: join the club), it made me think. What do I want to be when I grow up (i.e. right now)? Many of my friends have taken definite paths that seem to suit them: politicians, pr executives, lawyers, PhD's in obscure topics.

I've pursued this and that, but what am I? My response to this article was surely influenced by a day spent updating my resume, an obscurely professional part of adulthood that - when done correctly - doesn't look like me at all (at least not the parts that I'd like to meet at a dinner party). Which makes me think that maybe the most savvy thing I can do in this new economy - like these young jobless architects are discovering - is be myself. This can't be an excuse for dalliance. I must commit myself to the varied things I'm passionate about, as determined as my friends who study for the bar or their orals or campaign for public office. I need to stop seeing my mix of interests as a deficit and start seeing its value. Because I suspect that professional resilience and diversity will be staples of this new economy. And that's pretty exciting to imagine, especially since being an architect never worked out.

Unravelling - Week Two

Unravelling - Week One

Unravelling

The adage "a picture is worth a thousand words" used to ruffle my feathers. As a writer, they're fighting words, really. But over the last few years, I've been taking more and more pictures. My eye will be drawn to something, and I won't know why, but I'll start shooting. Only later, like a Roshak blot, will I understand what I was looking for in the shot, what I saw. As Anais Nin said, "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." A long walk with a camera has become my own version of visiting a psychic for clues about my future. I'm taking an 8-week self-exploration workshop with London-based photographer Susannah Conway called Unravelling. So I'll be posting some of my assignment pictures here each week. If you want to see more, find me on Flickr.

Genesis

My word for 2010 is honesty. In the spirit of being honest and sharing myself freely, I'm sharing a piece of fiction writing I did last year that seems very much in the spirit of a new year with fresh possibilities, that I never felt was "good enough" to publish. In this post's comments, you can read the letter I wrote to the amazing author of Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg, thanking her for her inspirational words.

Genesis

He helps her climb the steps of the bus. She curtsies prettily for the driver, who shoots her a grin. He fumbles with the change for bus fare, and then herds his little girl toward a pair of open seats. This routine is new to them both.

Her woolly tights start swinging even before her tulle-covered skirt hits the seat. She kicks sporadically, like an irregular heart beat trying to correct itself.

“Daddydaddydaddy.” She tugs on his jacket sleeve. Staring out the window, he’s a helium balloon in danger of breaking away in the wind.

“Let’s play a game, ok? The alphabet game with food. A is for apple.”

He smiles but doesn’t turn away from the window, “B is for brioche.”

She squints at him as if she’s skipping and he’s trying to trip her up. She forgives him instantly. “C, candy.” She waits for him to come back to her.

He finally registers her silence as others would a scream. The game has left her mind like a cloud blowing across a patch of sky. Her eyes rest upon the homeless man sleeping draped over his two-wheel cart. She is briefly aged and intense, and then she’s back.

He watches her nervously.

“Daddydaddydaddy.”

“D is for diakon radish.”

Years from now when she’s 16, he might be disappointed that she wears short skirts (with no hint of the woolly tights) and refuses to eat anything but baked Doritos and carrot sticks. Three years before that he’ll be quietly proud of her stalwart veganism, even as her angry silence and severe makeup confuse him. Everything will seem fallow for a while.

One weekend during college though, she’ll come home to him. They’ll quietly cook together, and find unspoken solace in their shared history. Over the years their family will have contracted and expanded like a lung. A new mother will come into the family and take root over the years. A young half-sister will bolt around the kitchen, too.

But today is the genesis of it all; just him and his little girl, sitting on this bus. He’s 23 years old and raw, his heart cracked open. He’s doing what he can. He’s playing the alphabet game with food, passing on a hopeful vocabulary of community gardens, precious family dinners, ethical citizenship and exotic flavors to this squirrelly five year old. His offspring, he realizes with a start.

“U is for Unagui,” he says.

“Una-gee?” She stops fidgeting and studies her father.

He nods, his eyes firmly planted on her now. “An eel. An oily fish that looks like a water snake.” Raising an arm covered in tattoos – a messy cartography of his heart – he breaks the air between them, miming a snake, hissing and leaning in to tickle her. She winkles her nose and shrieks with delight as the bus lurches toward the next stop.

Todaytodaytoday. He’s digging up the dirt and praying like hell it produces.