Let's Get Small

Long before I began writing things down, I began collecting words. When I was about nine years old, my Aunt brought over a comedy album, Steve Martin’s “Let’s Get Small”. I don’t remember a great deal about the record anymore but I can still see myself, memorizing every line, every inflection, every nuance. My ability to perform each routine was endlessly entertaining to the adults in my life. My mother would say “do Steve” and I would launch into one of the bits from the album. In retrospect, I’m sure I didn’t fully understand the subtler, more adult themes but at the time, I felt completely connected. People want to be entertained, and I wanted to be entertaining. Steve Martin knew how. That was the summer that I began my lifelong love affair with language. 

I talked almost constantly, aloud but also quietly, whispering myself to myself. I kept a running conversation in my head. The sound of me, explaining the world. Naming my own universe. I became fluent in two languages. The first language was audible. Words chosen for public consumption. Like my earlier reenactments of the Steve Martin record, I wanted to please. The second, my own private language, was made up mostly of words I’d plucked from other people’s conversations. 

 Over the years, I'd secreted away titillating fragments spoken through clouds of cigarette smoke, mostly by the women who lined their lawn chairs across the sidewalk of our aparment complex. Slick with baby oil and iodine, they told stories about boyfriends, work, children, and ex-husbands. In search of candy and Mad Magazine, I'd lingered at the Greek deli on the corner, listening closely for American swear words and phrases hidden inside boisterous Greek converstaitons. These words, when strung together properly, were filled with the intimate details of real life, and peppered with profanity. 

 As I got older, I began experimenting with words. I invented details, told outright lies when necessary, adding flesh and muscle to the bones of my reality. My mother said, “What an imagination.” The smoky women at the Greek deli said, “You should write a book.” No one said, “Do Steve” anymore. In private, I cultivated an affection for profanity. I invented new ways to swear. I gestated curse words. I fermented the erotic. Longing to add context to my experiences, I unstrung words from their usual home and placed them dangerously near the edge of propriety. 

 Nearing middle-age and now creating my own smoky conversations with women very much like those at the Greek deli, I am beginning to name the universe again. Explain myself to myself. By simply existing in the world, I know that things - amazing , horrific, beautiful, surprising, and ordinary things happen, every second of every day. Each of these extraordinary / ordinary things seems to change us in ways that are both obvious and far more difficult to name. Or maybe it’s truer to say that we aren’t so much altered by the events themselves as by our understanding of them; by what we do with them when they are done doing themselves to us. 

From my afternoons memorizing my Steve Martin record, from every stolen conversation or gifted line, from every fragment of profanity I have ever tucked away to examine later, carefully disassembling its potential, I have cultivated a private obsession with words. The way they sound, the way they taste, the way they move with intention from mouth to ear. I love the way it feels to run my tongue along the smooth surface and sharp edges of language. Roll it around inside my mouth and discover the delicious nuances of meaning. Sometimes, unexpectedly, I hear a simple word or phrase so perfect it is tangible. It has weight and substance as it leaves the air and lands against the surface of my life. Those are the words I love. Those are the words I keep. 

Even now, a million years since 'Let's Get Small", I am still learning to write all the words I have carried around inside me. This requires a gentler touch than I am used to. Noisy is easy, writing is much quieter. Each time I intend to write, produce a snapshot of a thing that isn’t me, every landscape becomes a self-portrait. Without me, I can not anchor my words to a story. My writing is still in its infancy. A larvae of the animal it will become. Until it has grown to its full potential, I offer each word as a gift, a prayer, an invitation and I leave myself, willingly, caught up in the meaty tissue at the center of every story.

My Renegade Hand

I once read an article about a rare disorder called "Alien Hand Syndrome". It's usually associated with a brain trauma, like an infection or a stroke. Usually, but not always. It happens like this -- One hand becomes alien to the body, working independently from the rest. You might not even know it is happening until you catch a bit of movement from the corner of your eye, only to discover that your own left hand is flapping away, wild and untamed. Here's the part that is most frightening: some people with this disorder report that the hand doesn't just operate independently, it undoes what the first hand has done. It may be discovered sneaking up behind the first hand, unbuttoning buttons or unzipping zippers. It may catch a door just before it latches. It may jerk the wheel into oncoming traffic. This hand, this alien hand, becomes a renegade.

I think about this condition from time to time, the renegade hand. I wonder if this unlikely condition could be to blame for some of my misadventures. Maybe it's the hand that reached up and unraveled an otherwise quiet life. Maybe it's the hand that pushed his button or poked her bruise. Maybe it's the hand that tipped the glass of red wine onto the cream-colored rug or dropped that burning cigarette. Maybe this renegade hand is to blame for the wild and untamed condition of my life. Maybe this renegade hand is to blame for the wild and untamed condition of my hair. Hmm. I suppose that does seem rather unlikely.