Writing group

Actually, I often go to my writing group meetings with the attitude of, "Well, it'll make you stronger. It's an opportunity to search for the positive. You can take from it what you will."

Deep inside, I'm having trouble letting go of the reception my last story had. I emailed a story several days in advance of the meeting, and one member read it on the bus on the way and the other read it quickly there at the meeting before critiquing it.

The story has a number of problems, but one member pointed to a few "forced" sentences that were more poetic than the plain prose of the bulk of the story. He also pointed to a spot where a reaction preceded an action ("Shoot," she said. She had knocked over a glass of wine) and a paragraph where the word had appeared too many times. The other member pointed out that my ending was too closed; her favorite stories had ambiguous endings and seemed to float in the mind afterward. Then there came the questions: "Do you read many short stories? Have you studied the craft of writing short stories?" Suddenly they were telling me that I was not like Carver and Malamud.

I try not to dwell on it, but one member of the group is a special challenge for me. He steered a conversation dangerously close to emasculation. He told me that sons have grown distant from their fathers, that they see their fathers not as the strong men they are (or were, in the Olden Days) but as tired, cranky, weaklings who sleepwalk home after a long day at the office. He told me I should read Robert Bly's Iron John: A Book about Men. I don't know why I was so offended, but I told him that I generally didn't read "men things." He called a male character in my story a "wimp" because the man fetches some of his wife's things from storage, even though he is presumable the one who put them there, and because he cooks dinner for his wife, even though she cooked dinner for him the night before.

He steers literary discussions toward writers he knows, and usually points out how they are actually better and more original than the author that another group member mentioned. (For example, a discussion of Tolkein and C.S. Lewis led him to Mr. X, who is actually better than the other two. Sadly, the group's discussion about Tolkein and Lewis evaporated into his monologue about this other guy.)

I hate dwelling on things. I really do.

Scenes from Home, 2

They pulled into the driveway behind his father, who had just gotten home from work.

"Welcome home, Pete," the older man said, holding his hand out and then pulling his son into a hug. "We missed you!"

Peter took his bags out of the trunk and followed his parents into their home. It was cluttered with evidence of his nephews' and nieces' joy, but bright. The top floor covered about half of the house below, and the other half was open with windows cut into the sloping roof. His parents lived without blinds or curtains, so the house was carefully watched by his mother's garden and the woods outside. Peter noticed his father's guitars by the fireplace. A new clock on the mantel chimed the hour.

This was not the house he grew up in, but it was close. He had no bedroom here, no carefully tended shrine of newspaper clippings, spelling bee trophies, band and chorus awards, scouting ribbons, clay creations from elementary school. But it was good: there was no space on earth telling him who he had been, who he was, and holding him to that point—unless it was a few boxes in public storage somewhere, where his parents kept the plastic toys and stuffed animals of his childhood.

"Gram and Gran should be over soon," his mother said.

Duets

My new flute arrived this week, bringing with it an era of deeper exploration. The new flute introduces me to three components of professional flutes: a silver head-joint, open holes, and a B foot, which extends the flute's range down one half step. I'm pleased that I'm already sounding better, though covering up the open holes with my fingers will still take some getting used to.

Saturday will essentially be my West Coast debut as a flutist—a beginning flutist, yes, but a flutist. I played for my family back in Georgia—even got to play "Puff, The Magic Dragon" with my dad on guitar—but they probably would have encouraged me and told me I was great even if I'd played the flute from the wrong end. Bless them for recognizing this as a way to make my life richer and more fulfilling, and bless them for having no reason to consider this a silly passing fancy.

For my first trick out here, I'll be reading through duets with my violinist friend, who has heard about my adventures with the flute from the beginning, when I bought a $10 plastic recorder to test my passion and dedication. I'm still not quite ready—it's only been six months—but we'll basically by sight reading, and any harmony I'm able to create will be damn-near miraculous. And when we try again in six months, perhaps playing Bach trio sonatas with another pianist, it will be miraculous for sure.

* * *

Last night I felt like a musician.

His Enemy, My Enemy

The President talked about the Enemy again this morning.

Don't you see that the word Enemy is dangerous? Shame on you, who told my parents that Saddam blew up the towers. Shame on you, who have used Al-Qaida to make Insurgents of every child who rises against you. I will never rally against your vague Enemy, who you say Lurks even here on Our Soil, using Our Phone Lines. For my protection? For my safety? There is nothing of value in this world that must be gained or guarded by guns.

You have become one of my personal Enemies, as Saddam was yours. The difference between you and me is that I will never use guns to depose you.

Scenes from Home, 1

The weather here was actually better than the weather he had kissed goobye on the other coast, even though Georgia was still in winter and California had already begun to return to its near-continual spring.

They passed Newnan and had before them twenty miles of interstate flanked by dirt fields and woods of struggling young pine. He pressed his camera against the windshield and took a picture of the flat road ahead.

"I'm so glad you're back," she said, patting his knee. When he didn't say anything, she continued, "Do you miss it?"

"No," he said. He realized he had answered too quickly. "No," he tried again, "not really." There was more he could say. "I miss the people, of course, but not really the place."

How could a place be so empty? It was as if it had been ignored by God, who in other parts had supplied contour and features, wrinkles, moles, and birthmarks, hills and mountains and natural lakes and rivers, magnolia and palm and sequoia and eucalyptus, wildcat, pigeon, gull. This was dirt crossed by state roads and pocked with the same concrete strip mall offering NAILS and MAIL PLUS at each intersection.

"It's so strange," he said.

He didn't grow up where they were going. His hometown was just outside of Atlanta, a half hour south of the airport he had flown into earlier that day. His parents had moved to the town of Lagrange and built a house on a finger of West Point Lake, which the Army Corps of Engineers had created out of the Chattahoochee River, which springs from the earth in North Georgia and carries the runoff of Atlanta to the Gulf of Mexico. The lake, waxing and waning with the fickle yearly rainfall and whims of the Corps, formed an ever-changing border with Alabama.

"How's the lake?" he asked.

Going back

My trip to Georgia wasn't quite as frightening this time. I arrived at the Atlanta airport at the same time as Andrea's "other best friend," Jessica. As Dave was heading toward the interstate, Jessica and I agreed that there was something terrifying about returning.

I told her how I had been petrified last time I was hurrying through the airport for baggage claim and my parents. What if someone I had known back then saw me? Would they be able to see the new me, or would they only see the old? And would I become the old me because I was now under their gaze in their world? Would they point their fingers and open their mouths in an otherworldly scream, recognizing in me a foreign humanity that threatened their way of life?

This was how I thought of my terror. Jessica's explanation sounds more reasonable. Birth is a point of zero choice: we do not choose when, where, or to whom. Childhood is a period of little choice: we do not choose our neighborhood friends, our schools, our teachers. Adulthood allows some choice: although many of us might not, we can choose our homes and friends and even families. A return to Georgia is a return to a life that I did not choose and a home that I did not create.

My argument is flawed, of course. The reality is that I fled. Ran away. I could have created my world there just as my brothers have, as Andrea and Dave have.

But there is too much there to hate: I hate growing up. I hate losing teeth. I hate my neighbor's dad, who tied her tooth to a doorknob. I hate older brothers and their sarcastic friends. I hate teachers and blackboards and desks. I hate the Pledge of Allegiance. I hate not understanding the laughter of adults. I hate church and communion and confirmation and confession; I hate having been lured by mystery and pomp (and the arrogance of God's favor) and hate having prayed to my derivative concept of Christ for the salvation of my school chums. I hate middle school, with its violently disinterested or bitter teachers: Key the bully, Reese the bored, Cobb the cruel. I hate high school and the unacceptable ritual of the freshman's dreaded first day. And of course I hate the tyrants and fools, McDuffie chief among them, who was but a foretaste of the same in college: Ganschow, Freer.

I hate. Or rather, "I release and grow." Or rather, "I drop and run."

Georgia vacation, Alpharetta Stop

I had a great time back in ol' Georgia. I spent the first two days with friends from Peachtree City, two of the most in-love people around. More pictures from this phase of the vacation are here.