Talking Up Writing

When I see teams talk up their writing among each other, I see good writers employed in a publication organization. This assertion calls for qualification of three terms: talk up writing, good writers, and publication organization.

Talking up writing is easy enough to explain. Let's say Anita, Brian, Carlos, and Diana—who call themselves the Fab Four—work on the same team in a large company. Anita has never written an internal proposal, but she needs to draft one for management. She asks Brian to share a successful one he wrote last year so that she can use his as a template. Brian, on the other hand, needs to write a monthly meeting review, but he's bored of using the same boilerplate style. So he asks Carlos to read his meeting review before submittal for suggestions on what he might add to or delete from the document. And while Carlos is writing a new procedure, he asks Diana if she can think of a way to make a particular sentence sound better. Meanwhile, Diana, who is crafting a necessarily negative response to a query, asks Anita to look for tone problems before sending it. Just the fact that these staffers are talking up their writing gives them deeper insights into each other's approach to writing and into the writing process itself.

Describing good writers is a tougher nut to crack. To keep it simple, we could say that management almost always accepts the writing of the Fab Four without comment. Or management also turns to the Fab Four to draft their own messages before editing them to reflect their own style. Or the Fab Four's supervisor asks them for their opinion on a business-critical email. Or employees in other departments of the company seek the Fab Four's input at any point of the writing process, from planning the scope of a white paper to drafting a status report on a massive project to reviewing an audit report for precision,  clarity, and conciseness. If any of these situations apply to you and your team, then you are good writers.

Perhaps the easiest term to qualify is publication organization, because these days virtually every company is one. This term does not apply only to book publishers. Does your business create and archive blogs, business forecasts, business plans, disaster plans, procedures, audit reports, meeting reviews, internal and external proposals, project plans, status reports, and completion reports? If yes, then you work for a publication organization. Everything you do must be in writing, so you and your fellow employees are no less writers than novelists, playwrights, and poets. In fact, you and your team likely write more than "published authors"; therefore, you need every writing tip possible to improve the productivity and sharpen the quality of all your documentation. 

Talking up writing at the workplace has many benefits. It will enhance everyone's writing experience and tighten the team camaraderie. 

The Pretense of Southern Exposure

Just too much can go wrong. Starting with wanting her. The moment they separated their bodies after making love for the first time, he knew it was over. So why did he bother? 

He lay next to her considering his ex-wife. Certain things are hard to get over. She understood him better than anyone. Even his mother never really knew him. He remembered his mother once told him, "You're my only child, but for the life of me I'll never figure you out. Your father was as transparent as the invisible man before I kicked him out for good. But you're another story altogether." When his ex-wife said she'd leave him for good, a flood of confusion seized him. All that data about him would now be compromised—how he refused to eat anyone's cooking but his own, how only he could do his own ironing, how he stacked on the bedroom dresser loose change from his pocket in a tower from quarters at the base to nickels to pennies to dimes at the summit. She said he didn't care about her. But that's not true. If it were, why was he thinking about all this now? 

He got out of bed leaving her there, put on just his pants, and walked outside. The rising sun was radiating on the front of his house. The clapboard siding and shutters needed painting. The white paint from the clapboard and the black paint from the shutters were peeling, especially on the southern side of the house. He could not forgive himself for buying into the brazen lie about the advantages of southern exposure. He needed to paint but he needed a change. This time he thought, he'd paint the clapboard black and the shutters white. And he'd get started right away. He wouldn't wait for her to leave. And if she did, it wouldn't matter. Not this time.

Wanting to Make Art

I woke up this morning with a feeling I never had before. I wanted to make art of something, anything, but I'm not sure what art looks like, sounds like, feels like.

On the subway to my college art history class, a painting popped up on my phone, "Flaming Summer Meadow" by Brazilian artist Janaina Tschäpe. I really like it, it made me want to paint something like that myself. But when I showed it to my art professor, who won a Pulitzer Prize for criticism, he said, "Where's the art in that painting?" I didn't know how to answer him. What could I say? The sheer human emotion that I saw in it? The radiant colors that brought together what people and nature have in common? I didn't say anything becuase I was sure my art professor knows more about paintings than I do.

Then I went to the park to meet my best friend for lunch. My friend is one of the most educated, worldly people I know. He knows something about everything. While I was waiting for him, I was reading Jon Fosse's Septology. What an interesting book, I thought. All stream of consciousness, one long sentence over hundreds of pages. It made me want to write a book myself. When my friend arrived, he said, "Don't tell me you're reading that timewaster. I see you're almost finished part one. Don't bother with the other six parts. It's more of the same. Seven hundred pages of emptiness." I didn't know what to say to my friend. But on the subway ride back home, I thought about it. I realized I could have said for me the book was a deep examination of what it means to be alive, to create art in absolute isolation, to choose a life of solitude, to be a deeply self-examining Catholic, to survive troubled family relationships and lingering suicidal thoughts, that if art were life as life really is, then this book is a consummate work of art. But it was too late, and I didn't want to call out my friend on his judgment, because his friendship meant too much to me and, after all, he has read more books than I ever will and probably knows better about Fosse's book than I do. Maybe I'm just misreading it.  
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When I got home, I told Alexa, "Play 'Tití Me Preguntó' by Bad Bunny" as I lay in my bedroom. I am not a big rap fan and don't understand Spanish, but I like the swing of this song and I've memorized the lyrics in translation. I can't get that songe out of my head. Maybe that's what I should do, write lyrics for some rapper. I think I'm a pretty good writer, and I completely get rhythm and meter. No sooner did I think that than my father knocked on my door, more like pounded on it, and shouted, "Turn off that garbage. Why don't you ever listen to real music?" It's his house, and I'm living on his dime, so I can't argue with him. He’s entitled to his opinion, especially since he’s always playing sonatas in the living room on the Steinway piano he inherited from his father. Makes me wonder, how did I end up with no talent? So down went Bad Bunny. And my father did get me to think. Maybe “Tití Me Preguntó” isn’t real music. If art is forever, then he has a good point when he says that the music of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven has lasted nearly three hundred years and all the stuff I listen to disappears in no time.  

Now it's past midnight. I can't sleep. I'm in bed thinking what a weird thought I had this morning when I woke up. How can I make art when I don't know what it is. I hope the same thought doesn't waste another day tomorrow.

Living in the Past

You say I live in the past, but how can I not when I'm with you? When I'm alone, I'm in the present, preparing that Greek salad, washing the toilet, mowing the lawn, or buying groceries. True, when I leave out an ingredient, when the toilet isn't spotless, when I miss a section in the lawn, when I forget to buy an item, it's because I'm living in the future, imagining what the trip to Maui will be like, or how I can get the best possible price for a flight to New Orleans, or where we will stay when we travel to Miami. But I'm usually in the present when we're apart. 

I have known you a long time, most of the years of my life. When you lie in bed with the veins in your legs throbbing in pain after twelve miles of hiking, please don't interpret my smiling at you as a sign of indifference. I'm thinking about how those legs have walked thousands of miles with me through trails in the Grand Canyon, Arches, Mount Rainier, Yosemite, Yellowstone, Great Smoky Mountains, and Acadia, and the streets of New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Athens, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo, Helsinki, and Valletta. When I laugh apparently out of nowhere, I'm recalling your reactions when your father or mine said something inappropriately yet wickedly funny during family gatherings. When I seem distant as you talk about something we need to get done, I'm not shirking a responsibility. I'm reflecting on the many accomplishments and setbacks we have shared, and how all these events have brought us to his beautiful place. And when tears well in my eyes at the end of Casablanca, Death in Venice, Paris, Texas, El Norte, Cinema Paradiso, or Central Station, I cry not for the fate of the these fictious characters but for losing family members and friends who can no longer share their radiance with me, for those poor, humble, kind people who have served me and will never reach my status, and for those who have helped me throughout my life, who have changed my life for the better, without receiving more than a thank-you from me.

So tell me, what's so bad about living in the past? Don't you?

A Walk in Greenwich Village

You are eighteen, your first day walking in the city alone. At 9:01 a.m., you emerge from the dark subway staircase of Christopher Street/Stonewall into the light of Christopher and Seventh Avenue South. Awaiting you at the top of the subway staircase stands an ancient man, stooped, both arthritic, spotted, wrinkled hands on his cane. He smiles at you, his few brown teeth rattling, He says no hardship will befall you with him beside you. You surprise yourself by nodding affirmatively, and he accompanies you, right hand holding the cane and left hand holding your right. But the walk will now be far slower. As you head north, you notice every detail, the doorframes and cornices on the buildings, the Rainbow Pride flags draped over the black iron fencing of the Sheridan Square Viewing Garden, the commemorative plaque on Stonewall Inn, the clothes passersby wear, as the ancient man shuffles beside you.

Crossing Seventh Avenue South is painfully slow with the ancient man, but he assures you the traffic will wait patiently. Not one aggressive honk comes from the bus, taxis, trucks, and private cars. You finally get to the west side of Seventh Avenue, in front of Little Ruby's Café, which occupies the southern point of the triangle bordered by West Fourth, West Tenth, and Seventh Avenue South. "This place used to be the Riviera Café," says the ancient man. "It was around for forty-eight years. When they opened in 1969, I took my wife there. We were their first customers." You want to ask his age, and whether his wife is still alive, but you don't.

At Tenth Street and Seventh Avenue South, you turn west past Small Jazz Club. "I play there every now and then when they have jam sessions," says the ancient man. "I'm a pianist. Do you know Warne Marsh? Red Mitchell? Stan Levey? I jammed with those guys when they needed a pianist back in fifty-seven. I played with lots of other guys too." You look at his gnarled fingers but have no reason to doubt him.

You think this will be a long walk, an endless walk, a walk that will age you. You begin to feel with every step that the ancient man is getting younger and you are getting older, that he is sucking your youth from you. You want to get away but you know this ancient man knows something you need to know, nothing your father knows, your older brother knows, your teachers know, your friends know. But you get to West Fourth and Tenth, and the ancient man gently steers you east, back toward the Christopher Street/Stonewall Subway Station. He asks you to take him back to the top of the staircase where you met him.

That final one hundred-meter walk down the block and across the street to the station seems a lot faster those first steps. The ancient man has quickened his pace, his cane not touching the ground, until he is leading you, and you are having trouble keeping up with him. He jumps onto Seventh Avenue South against the Don't Walk sign with traffic rapidly speeding downtown toward you. He pulls you up on the curb of the station entrance as if you were a small child. In fact, you feel like one now.

"I told you no harm will come to you," says the ancient man. He lets go of your hand, puts both hands on his cane, stoops, and stares down the staircase, just like when you met him. You stand there, winded, looking at him for guidance. He signals for you to return to the subway below. You planned to be in the Village all day, but you do as the ancient man tells you. You get to the first landing and look up at him. A young woman ascends the staircase past you. She and the ancient man exchange some words that you can't quite make out, she stakes his hand, and they disappear from sight.

It is 9:25. As you turn toward the next flight of steps to the subway platform, you realize that while you are only eighteen, with a lifetime ahead of you, you still must make better choices.

A Window

I am looking at the window that I have looked out at for the past thirty-seven years. From this window, I have seen seasons change, the morning summer sun spreading across this room as an invitation to join the world outside, the early afternoon autumn leaves fall from the dogwood and the grass browning like a defeated old man succumbing to his sorrows, the late day snow creating a soft blanket of hazy forgetfulness on the lawn, and at dusk the white flowers bloom on the dogwood promising life to an awakened spirit.

But, as I said, I am looking at, not out, the window. Its wooden frame, once stained a walnut matte finish but now overpainted white. I can still see what it once looked like and still long for the darker look. What was I thinking? But I no longer possess the ambition, patience, or skill to strip the paint, sand the wood, and restain the frame to its original appearance. So white it shall stay.

The single-panel double glass pane, its weatherstripping still holding after all these years. I have seen the unsightly consequences of air entering the space between the two panes, causing a cloudy appearance. I have spent years, off and on, worrying that such an unpleasant situation would befall my windows. I am pleased to say that all this concern was entirely unnecessary. But why is so much air passing between the sash and the casing? Why is it so cold in here? I see no daylight, yet something must be wrong.

But those ornery lift bars. Only half an inch separates them from the stool, making it challenging to lift the windows. Don't push them down too quickly or your fingers will get jammed between the bar and stool, likely breaking some bones. Who thought of such an impractical design? Doesn’t the manufacturer do usability testing? Aren’t there laws such dangerous mechanisms?

No wonder I’ve been looking out, and not at, the window these 37 years.

Lost and Found

Have you seen the things I've lost? Just asking. Thirty-four years ago, I lost my high school senior ring when my house was burglarized. I know you and I have never met, and I know the burglary was a long time ago, but that ring must be somewhere, right? Maybe it ended up in your possession by way of a garage sale, a visit to an antique store, a find on the street, or some other way unfathomable to me right now.

I am also looking for Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser. I know I lent those three books to different people, though I cannot remember who, and at different times, though I can't remember when. Actually, I have a good suspicion of who borrowed the Csikszentmihalyi book, but I dare not ask him out of embarrassment because he has gifted me so many books over the years. Sometimes I will bring up this matter in a conversation with him, saying something like, "I'm still trying to find that Csikszentmihalyi book but can't for the life of me find it." I get no response from him, which makes me wonder if he has lied to me about many other things throughout our long friendship. I still want to look up things in those books, but I refuse to buy another copy in the hope that someone, maybe you, might return them. One point I should make about the Rukeyser book. My wife insists that I never owned it, that it was just a wish list book. But how can she know all of the thousand or so books I have owned? Plus, I recall like it was yesterday thumbing through Rukeyser's poems, feeling alternately helplessness,  numbness, hopefulness. How could I have not owned that book? For this and other reasons, I have stopped lending people books. They never return them unless I ask for them, and I cannot bring myself to ask. 

Now you might be thinking if I cannot bring myself to ask people I know to return the things I've lent them, then how could I possibly ask you, a total stranger, to return something in the improbable event that they ended up in your possession? I would say you've got an excellent point, I would thank you for raising it, and I would reflect on that fine piece of logic, as I also ponder all I have lost. But, believe me: even though I have no proper answer for you, I will still ask if you have them. And who are you not to answer?