Writing Down The Bones

I've been thinking a lot lately about what gets me inspired. Where it all hails from and how it will either stay and play or leave me drowning without words to scrawl. I see patterns in my work, and I embrace them. I see bipolar tendencies and anger and smiles and laughs and sex and alcohol and even PMS.

There was a book I recall from an English Comp course called Writing Down the Bones. My instructor did the unthinkable, and used HIS own work as a text. We all rolled our eyes heavenward and sighed around his ego...but later I realized there was a reason published writers get academic freedom and I now embrace that too.

"So, what do you do?" he drawled lazily through the unoccupied right side of his mouth. Left hand and lips taking turns with a Newport 100.

"I write...and I teach..you know like for the money part of it."

"What do you teach? Teach kids how to write?"

"Yeah pretty much."

He gazed sleepily downwards and brushed the hair from my exhausted eyes. There was that sparkle of mischief I know and look forward to seeing again.

"And how are the kids of New Jersey?" he says; stretching his sculpted torso across the futon. Inquisitive blue eyes not leaving my face-searching for so much more than he speaks of.

"Well, they aren't really kids. Some are just starting out but many are adults returning to school after working for years or having kids. It's tough to teach at the developmental level. Rewarding but tough."

"Isn't it frustrating that you have to start from scratch? Doesn't it get annoying when kids don't know how to even spell and they're in college? Shit, I remember this one guy that couldn't even stay in the same tense when he read his stuff in class. It was ridiculous. I didn't have much patience for school. Now I know why."

I ponder this and decide to be honest. It's not easy to be honest when everything else we have is based on deception... but writing is my passion and so I tell him. I explain how it feels to have all these low-income and recently laid off students who either last one quarter or they face the odds of living in projects, being on welfare, unemployment, food stamps. BUT here they are doing something that no one in their families have done before...

"Well that's very Michelle Pfeiffer of you. I mean...isn't it?"

All I can do is stare.

I wonder about a lot in those few seconds:

Should I get dressed now and just flee the scene?
Should I stay and continue what I know is a discussion that someone without much passion for the craft will know nothing about?
Are we going to fight?
Do we even know each other enough to have a fight?
If I stay is it worth it I mean the sex is incredibly original...

But really? Did he just refer to Dangerous Minds?

I light a cigarette and simply say "I learn more from the youth of Newark and Paterson than I do anywhere else."

What I want to say is that sometimes there are things that people don't understand because they haven't been there, and it's a bit cruel to antagonize me with a reference to a film based on something that is reality and that I see everyday.

Recently one student a "KID" of 26 in school for the first time, told me ignorance is bliss. His writing--much like mine is filled with raw emotion, drinks, and smokes. He hides behind fedoras and bandannas: even though flying colors on campus breaks the rules. He knows he has tons of heavy shit to say yet all those words are somewhat of a mask for his own real narrative...

It's all about falling into a haze of comfort, or swallowing a pill chased with Heineken to forget: stories not meant to have concrete plot or direction, but in the end they do...their direction spirals downward. The plot thins rather than thickens as the next freewrite becomes about a party, a gun, a court date.

I am not their critic.

Much parallels my own work: The Fear, loss of self, direction confounded in the name of uncertainty. I share some examples for license to create, as building blocks. Telling stories of mistakes and things that I learned from.

The result usually sounds something like: "We like you cuz you not fake. Ya show us ya shit and don't pretend to be somebody you ain't. You be real Ms. E. We can't usually just SAY what we feel...especially in school."

AND I SEE IT YET AGAIN! After all the time spent on degrees and years of practice as a writer--there it is: We can't say what we really mean. An inability to speak the words we really feel...

Until we do.

There are so many nonsensical things that we can say, spewing forth verbal diarrhea without thinking. No meaningful thought, just words exploding from our mouths and our flip-top heads are all too eager to expel them into the night sky.

Out of all the words, meaningful or just taking up space, lies or truth, I've learned the most from these KIDS and therefore added,

"Thank you, I'll take that as a compliment. Michele Pfeiffer's a hot talented woman who knows what she wants: and so am I."

He yawns and looks at the clock, "You wanna get some food or just stay in bed? Cuz I could take a lesson from that song from when I was a kid about the hot teacher..."

Do I even need to mention the age difference?

And I realize why I'm here. In the world of words that's so complex, with all the needs of others, and the tact that is necessary to go through life, sometimes it's easier to just write down the bones, and focus on the basics.

Eat sleep sex water cigarette occasional glass of wine...coffee.

I completely see why I keep coming here.

This is my sanctuary from having to think and set an example. Here I'm just writing down the bones.