I write it so.......

Sherley Anne Williams writes, “I want somehow to tell the story of how the dispossessed become possessed of their own history without losing sight, without forgetting the meaning or the nature of their journey.” When I write I use the past, but it doesn’t control me. When I live I use the past, but it doesn’t have to control me.

My responsibility is to write and live my history without it controlling me. The past is just an experience it vanishes like time. I have a responsibility to not forget the past or to make it larger than it was. The more I reconcile with myself the more I reconcile with my past.

My past remains strong in my life, but how strong the hold is, is up to me. When I write reflections of me I can take possession of my past and I can choose to write myself out of the bondage of my past experiences. When I write my past I must not only know, but feel that my writing will not change my past events. Nothing will ever change my past it is already made.

Writing is a method of making my future better. I learn what the past has to teach me and I become free only if I write of what my past means in the present. I am not free when I am writing in the past. My writing life is about capturing moments in the present in such a way that I am honoring my past experiences. It is only when I am in the present that I am enhancing my future.  

Jullian Barnes in Flaubert's Parrot wrote, "It is easy after all not to be a writer. Most people aren't writers, and very little harm comes to them." What isn't discussed is what happens to those of us who do become writers. What harm comes to us if any?

I don't know about you, but I see a fine piece of furniture and I say I can make that. I see a Van Gogh painting and say I want to paint. I see a giclee and I say I can take that shot. When I see anything and everything and I can do it, I can write it, I can make it mine. I ask what is the harm that comes from thinking I can make anything mine when I write it? The harm is that it overflows into the rest of my life. I begin to believe I can make anything mine without having to write it.

Writing for me is always inspired by wanting to make the moment, the event, the "thing" more gladdening. I love that word gladdening. To make or be glad. Gladdening. When something has caught my eye I am inspired to write. The words swirl in my mind sticking here and moving there until there is a grouping and then a sentence and then a string of sentences and then a paragraph and then? What then? And then a moment that I have frozen in time. 

That is what it is like when I write. I freeze moments in time. I look at moments in my life and I take pictures that print out in words. When I write I feel like I am stealing a moment away from time. I feel as though I have one up on time I have made something mine.

On a good writing day I am thinking and writing in my head faster than I can type. My heart pounds, my stomach has butterflies and my lungs are tight because I'm not breathing. I am so focused on the words my mind forgets to voluntarily breathe. On those good days that aren't ever a whole day I know what I can do and what I dare to do and I do it. I believe I can make anything mine and I write it so…….

Exercise #3

In 1934 when I entered the harbor of New York I wasn’t smart enough to believe what I saw. Tar paper shacks, wood pallets and oil barrels all lined up for people with their families to live; make-shift shanties for the poverty ridden who picked through garbage dumps for scrapes of food and clothing for their children and themselves.

I didn’t realize how close I was to being just like them, the faceless and nameless of Riverside Drive. What made me think it would be better for me stepping off a ship from Europe jobless with a cheap college degree? A worthless piece of paper I thought I could start my life over with.

I remember the feeling of loneliness and the fear of having to eat just on the change I had in the bottom of my purse. I was always taking extra care of my hose so they wouldn’t snag or get a hole. I may have been hard up without a job and cash, but I couldn’t look like it or I would never get a job.

I began to doubt all the time I had spent in academics thinking I could came back to America and walk into a teaching position. I drank more than I ate; it seemed cheaper at the time and then reality began to sink in. I had to do something so I turned to what I knew academics.

This time I took a more practical approach I went to Columbia Business School. I moved closer to the university because it was cheaper to live. Little did I know I would make my future at Columbia. My future was going to become bigger than the harsh reality of having to go to business school, bigger than not teaching at Columbia University. Bigger than anything anyone who knew me believed my life would be. Bigger than I thought my life would be.

“Miss. Bentley! Are you ok? Miss. Bentley?”
“Yes. Yes. I’m ok, I’m ok. What do you need? Do I have to sign something?”
“Yes. This is a consent form for your surgery. Just read and sign her.”

The clipboard passed from hand to shaky hand and the pen passed too, but from fingertips to trembling fingers. An unreadable signature was handed back nervously to the nurse.

“Do you need anything Miss Bentley before I leave? My shift is ending.”
“Water. How about some water you old New England girl?”
“Just a bit. Your surgery is scheduled first thing in the morning.”
“Yes. Ok. Just a little water. Thank you.

Maybe the nurse cared, really cared. Not just that I was a patient, but cared because I was a person. Maybe her kindness was more than just her job . . . maybe . . . just maybe . . . she had some sympathy . . . .

I was forty-four years old then and I had lived more than one life. I wondered if other people had more than one life. There was Vassar and Columbia, Italy and Florence, Mussolini and the Fascists and then the Communists and the FBI. They all wanted me. But what did I want? I can’t really remember anymore.

I was famous for a while. My picture was in the paper. People read about my life in newspapers. I was escorted from place to place in chauffeur driven cars. I was called a spy extraordinaire. A spy who became a lecturer, who told stories from memory so often I became unaware of what was real and what was fiction. I lived a life, but was it my life? And if it wasn’t my life whose life was it?