I read this quote in the September 2014 issue of The Writer Magazine. It aligns perfectly with my passion for genuine and authentic writing.
“Years ago I read an interview with Paula Fox in which she said that in writing, truth is just as important as story. Reading that interview was the first time I really understood that there’s no point in trying to impress people with my cleverness when I can just try to write honestly about what matters most to me.” — Molly Antopol, The UnAmericans, Stanford University
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Ke11y
Across the street from where I lived, and grew up, a Poplar tree was split down the middle by a single bolt of lightning. I saw it. I really did. A summer evening fifty-five years ago, the most awesome sight I ever saw. I wanted to have that same power in my fingertips, just so that I could deal with the school bully. Billy Harrison, he was the boy who loved Susan Rafferty. What I knew was this: he loved her a lot less than I did. I was convinced I would never be her boyfriend if I didn’t tell some outrageous lie, or know every song-lyric in the cafe juke box! So, you see, being me, being honest, was never going to cut it if I wanted to be Susan’s beau. I would have to be something else. It was hopeless to imagine that I, the spotty-faced schoolboy, would ever be able to outshine Billy Harrison. I had a lot going on when I was ten years of age; so much advice coming from so many sources. Uncle George, though he was mostly amusing, and very interesting, had this habit of telling me if I didn’t eat creamed asparagus, or boiled codfish, a lightning-bolt would come down and strike me to charcoal. I never did eat it, so I still wonder when the lightning will come and the thunder of my heart start to beat, or if some blue-white flash will sneak up on me and cut me down for all the boiled-codfish I never ate. I was so mixed up, it’s no wonder Susan Rafferty never loved me back.
Move forward sixty-years.
People are telling me: be as honest with my writing as I can. Be yourself!
Look, honestly, I get to thinking that maybe the good guys don’t have as much fun as the bad guys, so when I come back from heaven next time, I’m not going to be such a good guy. I’m going to meet the women with rough edges, maybe smoke, drink, and have an over-riding affection for fish-net stockings, and a six-inch skirt!
Honesty…honesty…honesty…really?
Okay….back up again…sixty years:
I was always terrified as a kid, I never wanted to be afraid, for nothing ever felt so badly to a boy of ten. I wasn’t being honest with myself when I was the only boy in the entire school willing to play hopscotch with Susan Rafferty. I was being dishonest, for I hated making a fool of myself in front of every other boy at school. But being dishonest, well that put me close to Susan. If I’d been myself, well, I’d have been up a tree somewhere, or sailing a dinghy in the harbor. I think I told myself, I honestly did. I said; sixty years from now I’ll not fall for the loving shenanigans, it is way too hard. I’m going to make out with all the most beautiful women, twice over, own a Firebird Classic, fly faster than the speed of sound, belch in public, dance to any tune, and care about everything far less than I do today.
My pals laughed at me, of course they did, but none of them had the same kind of courage.
When Susan told me about her tears, my heart squeezed against my ribs. There is a good reason for tears, even though a lot of the time it is a painful process. The reason I know this is because the next day Susan walked home with Billy Harrison.
Yep, you get it….lets go forward.
When I look backward from this mountain of age, being loved, I can understand so much of what happened. Some things, not. Looking way back, I was never born to be a ground creature, there was always something inside me saying ‘you have no limits’. The urge to fly was greater than any other feeling, and fly I was sure to do. My father was a professional fisherman, he knew I was not born to be on a boat in the Bering Sea. But there was a place, a home for me, and so it was for thirty-eight years. The cockpit of a Sikorsky Sea King Helicopter. Quite something for a kid who played hop scotch to win the heart of a girl!
How did my father know I was never a ground creature?
Bear with me here…let’s skip back that sixty years…
I was a hell of a disturbed kid. I remember being in trouble at school for going to the top diving board in the school swimming pool, knowing that board was out of bounds for kids under twelve. Hell it was high. I screamed as I ran toward the edge, and flung myself off. The teacher gave me the slipper on my backside for showing off to the entire class. What a fool he was, I wasn’t fooling about, or showing off, he just didn’t get it. I was making sure Susan Rafferty saw me fly?
My father, he got it.
Sorry…okay…skip forward…dizzy yet?
The writer is not someone I can honestly write about. I’m just a man, I wish I was more, for then I would truly work at making the lives of those I love more beautiful. The man I write about is the man I want to be. My stories are letters to the world, written with love, posted, emailed, scribbled down on scraps of paper. There is no sense, no pattern, no particular style or genre. I can write. I do so. I cannot take away pain, (hurting at least proves you’re still alive), or build sandcastles in a safe place. I’ve not had a chance to be normal, only ever envied those that are. I’m the acceptable reactionary. The man who thinks: ‘well, that’s just how it is.’ Is it any wonder that I’m difficult?
My honesty, my belief that I can write, or the knowledge that my life only survives day-to-day, night-by-night, is no longer confusing. I don’t regret love, just glad I was one life it touched, and even though it has brought pain, and perhaps some fear, it is most definitely better to have loved and lost.
Honestly, there is no desire to be clever on the page: However, there is a desire to remain the child I was; capable of such friendship, for you, the reader. I live in a wicked world a lot of the time, I live with people who have been kicked in the head, and believe all they read in Sunday newspapers. Not for me, no, I don’t want that for me. I want to sit on a sidewalk in Paris, drink coffee, and watch the world pass by knowing nothing of me. I want to miss someone very much, some of the time, so that I know what it’s like to come home. I want to have events in my life to share.
Do you know what I mean, can you begin to see me with your eyes closed, can you sense the pleasure of befriending a man who is always trying to blow smoke up the chimney before the fire is lit?
Just one more time…come back with me six decades….
At ten I walked down onto the shore, made my way along the harbor, and came to some rocks. I bent down, selected a large stone in the darkness, which I rolled over, and placed my note to Susan before rolling the stone back. Sometimes I think I’ll go back, but of course I won’t. I never will. My time is done. Never mind, I’m here, doing my bit, even the good John Wayne would think me a tough son-of-a-bitch, and Superman would be out of his Kryptonite breath if he tried to keep up.
If you dare to like the writer as a man, then heck knows how much you would have loved him as a kid.
mcullen Post author
Clever writing. I like the back-and-forth approach. It worked for me to travel from one world to the other, in fact, that traveling gives this piece a richness and helps it to soar. Well-written . . .so much said in few words. And I definitely would have loved this kid.
Ke11y
In love’s first days I was the world’s greatest clown.
I could juggle – walk a tightrope wearing a red nose – fall out of a blue and yellow car – all because loving you was so much fun. I knew the softness of your thigh – the crimson heat of your breasts, and the world we lived in rolled white under the crispness of your laughter.
I wanted to do things that would make words happen in your throat, tears form in your eyes, I wanted to be your happiness, and when you got mad at me it was because I took a joke too far, or I missed something I should not have, and you felt hurt. It was then I would go to my piano and bring you back to me. You’d come to my side, and we’d be together, and I’d say I was wrong and kiss you.
In the evenings I’d introduce you to my friend, Charlie – what a man, his words, his characters, they exploded off the page and into the readers’ hearts forever. You’d read Wordsworth – all those hills and daffodils. This was to be my future with you. God was in his heaven, and all was right with the world.
But the sun has wept for us both. We’ve suffered the quiet shame, untold invasions on our dignity, self-respect, and love. We’ve been cut into quarters by difficult words, caught up in the bumbling and stinking cruelties of right and wrong. The petals of love drooping, then dropped.
How do two people in love find the electricity to power such cruel words? What must we do to sail through the clouds, avoid the static storms, and returned to loving. Is this what arguments do: break sound barriers, taking affection away at the speed of light?
When love was friendlier; when the cats lay at my side, hope was the eternal spirit. But love is not always friendly, sometimes distant, out of reach, walking away in strides of days till gone. Hope, then, is not eternal; it is hiding, slinking away like the cat that doesn’t come near.
Stay awhile more, let me not feel the depth of you gone, not yet, for I need hope to live, all the remembering of a lifelong romance, the lingering kisses, those not measured by the hourglass that has slipped your absence by.
I should be building sentences, stocking up on verbs, but inspiration has fled along with the tangle of arms and legs, leaving me feeble, helpless to express in words what it’s all about. I am alone, unable to go home. However brief, let hope live, let love linger, and let words come like Sundays.
Promise me this summer will be full of flowers.
mcullen Post author
Wow. Gorgeous writing. . . Starts nice and easy, pace quickens, builds to a crescendo, hear the cymbals clash. . . and breathe. Just breathe in the goodness of this writing.
Ke11y
The ocean of life creates its own bridges. I wish I’d known you when crossing the bridge between ten and twelve, but definitely by the time I crossed to seventeen. At ten; well at ten I was going to be a soccer player, scoring for England on the sacred Wembley turf, and not against the bushes on my street every Saturday morning. I knew where I was going at twelve: by twelve I knew the difference between a carnival and a carnivore, and by seventeen I crossed the bridge between life’s deeper mysteries; why the carnation would never convey what the rose offered. I wish I’d loved you at seventeen, so sure and certain of my world, so courageous, so in touch with life.
I’ve been pushing my way against the chill, fighting my way along the shoreline, and against the sea spray. Crossing bridges, and entering times when chunks of life were as rough as Mendocino rock. Times when friends believed I was nothing more than a dreamer, but I knew you were standing up there, ahead, your frame covered in mist, waiting for me.
I’m sorry I never found you when I was young, on the bridge between ten and twelve; the pirate, or the schoolboy scoring for his country. I guess those were the best times. No one wanted to own me then, my work all before me; all a boy’s dreams intact.
Bridges. I’ve crossed them.
Hello…
mcullen Post author
I love writers’ sensitivities. Writers notice things that others do not, like, “why the carnation would never convey what the rose offered” and “entering times when chunks of life were as rough as Mendocino rock.” Sensitive and courageous writing = lovely writing.
Kathy Myers
In my humble opinion; honesty, authenticity, and cleverness are not mutually exclusive, especially in humor writing. The masterful essays of David Sedaris are cleverly crafted yet honestly expose his own unpleasant personality traits such as snobbery and narcissism. He becomes the character who enters a scene and mines it for humor. Pretty clever I’d say.
In fiction I’ve found honesty is important when writing dialog. A character’s authentic voice and the information they provide can weave through the plot seamlessly.
I’m sure that the late greats Joan Rivers and Robin Williams would agree with the old adage: Death is easy, comedy is hard.
mcullen Post author
I enjoy your thoughtful response, Kathy, as well as using Sedaris, Rivers and Williams for examples and comparisons.
Ke11y
I agree with Kathy, authentic voices can add significantly to a storyline. But I must also put forward that too much authenticity can actually detract from the plot. In a novel, still gathering dust in my desk drawer, waiting for my editing, is a character called Frank. A cockney. I place him below, writing his dialect as authentically as I can present him to the reader.
From my shirt pocket I pull out a toothbrush which, after three months in the Cambodian jungle, resembles something a chimney-sweep might use, rather than clean teeth with; and if this isn’t bad enough, the mangled tube of paste is all but empty. I hold the tube against wheel arch, and drag the toothbrush handle along its length, flattening the tube paper thin, gaining one last glob of spearmint paste. I take a guzzle of tepid water, spitting the gargled waste into a pile of rotting leaves before pouring the remainder down my neck, swishing its wetness into my armpits. I unhook my shirt off the truck’s wing-mirror, thrashing it against the fender to dislodge overnight inhabitants, and pull it on. Slipping off my socks, I wring out the odorous moisture, sniffing the result. It’s not good. No choice but to put them back on, and lace up my boots.
Voices are gathering at the breakfast tent, mostly Scandinavian accents, but one, a thunderous voice, is English. My approach is met with a true cockney welcome.
“Hey, Brannigan, ‘ow’s it goin’, yer get enuf kip?” It has all the magical lilt of my homeland, calming my nerves in a far off, and dangerous place.
“Some – yourself?” I respond, looking for a place to sit at the table.
“Like a new baby, mate. Once I gits down inat soft muck I’m dead ta world.” He jostles some space. “Get in’ere an grab yerself some eggs, ‘ope you don’t like’em soft – cook mustta got distracted…,” Frank stretches his neck, looking in the direction of the rotund, red faced man,
“…eh Porky?” and emphasises his dissatisfaction by pointing a thumb downward, execution style. The cook, stone faced, glares right back, then slowly, and deliberately, raises his arm to produce a solitary stiff finger from his knuckled fist, which he jerks skyward. Frank laughs enthusiastically.
I grab a couple of crusts from the basket, slapping three rubbery fried-eggs between them.
“Where’s yer lass, she sleepin’ in?” I ask, smacking the hell out of a ketchup bottle.
“Na, mate, she’s fixin’ up Sven’s wrist, idiot broke his cast yesterday. She’ll be along, don’t yer worry.”
Frank had first met Olga, now his wife, while working on a building site in North London. Olga, a Norwegian, was working as an exchange nurse in the U.K. He remembered to me his first sight of her. He’d seen her walking across a hospital car park, in Tottenham High Road.
“She was wearin’ one’o dem red cloaks over her uniform, and o’my-gawd, doze gorgeous fishnet stockings! I wanted her right then!’ He chortled, before slugging down a beer.
Frank admitted he’d watched her and then waited eight hours for her return, when, in his usual brash ‘Bow Bell’s’ style, he asked her on a date. A month later they married.
mcullen Post author
Lots of authenticity here, I’d say. Well done.
Ke11y
Thank you, Marlene:
If there are more gracious people than you, they are working in monasteries, or attached to wings flying somewhere.
So I think authenticity depends a lot of your audience. I wouldn’t presume this, normally, on an American audience.
mcullen Post author
Chuckling, Kelly. Thanks for your upbeat sense of humor! 🙂