I’m currently reading Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. It’s easy to think that it’s probably a novel on a country girl’s childhood pursuits involving lots and lots of birds. Woodpeckers, sparrows, blue jays… 
The pictures of the birds on the cover remind me of topic encyclopedias in the early 90s which use this thick, cardboard-like paper that yellows and smells like ancient love letters with time. However, if you would read the text inside the red box at the bottom, you’d find out that it’s actually an instructional book about writing and life. And at just 64 pages into the book, I’m learning so much about life than I know what to do with. So here are insights that made me go "Ahhh…", and some afterthoughts I wish to include. I figured this way, there won’t be people who had to suffer my 4th re-telling of these things, just so I could share it to e-v-e-r-y-o-n-e.
On Why People Write
- So God made some of us fast in this area of working with words, and he gave us the gift of loving to read with the same kind of passion with which we love nature.
One good thing that came out of my days with the Sex and City marathon was that I remembered just how nice it was to write, because it’s so closely intertwined with thinking. And as Melai would attest, thinking my brains to death is one thing I love most and do best. Then there was the night of the heavenly insight when I realized, while making the toffee frosting for Pam’s cupcakes, just how much I missed tinkering around in the kitchen, and just how much I’m taking for granted things that God allowed me to know how to do, if only just a little. Just like cooking and baking. And writing. Thus the renewed interest in writing.
On How to Write
- Flannery O’Connor: Anyone who survived childhood has enough material to write for the rest of his/her life.
Someone also said that adolescence is enough suffering for anyone. So technically, each of us has enough good material to write. Sadly, only a few would have enough guts or interest to do so.
Why is that such a sad thing, when it’s true that not everyone can be a writer, just like not everyone can be a farmer, or a politician for that matter (for who would take care of literature if all would be farmers, and what would become of this world if everyone becomes a politician?)? Well, as much as I believe that, I also believe Sir Yapo when he said that when one knows how to write, then he knows how to think. I actually think that if more Filipinos would learn how to articulate their thoughts on paper, we could then have an increased trust in the elections/votation results. Or maybe not, since our country is that where election winners are already concluded way before the votes have been counted. That’s actually from De Quiroz.
- You sit down, I say. You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your consciousness to kick in for you creatively.
I used to loathe the idea of keeping journals, though I wanted to write. Every start of the year, ever since 7th grade, I’d try to start a journal. But then I’d realize that there’s no way my right hand would be able to catch up with the things going on in my head. And there was this one time when I found out that my Lola has been going through my stuff! The last time she was at it, my whole family woke me up early in the morning, reading a love letter my neighbor’s cousin left in our mailbox for me, which of course found her way to Lola’s hands (she faithfully checks the mail every so early in the morning). Lola is not one to keep secrets - especially mine. And so that fateful morning. I didn’t like the guy, so imagine my mortification upon waking up. I was 9 then, and the memory stuck. So when I found out Lola was reading my journal I stopped writing. But not before wishing the ground would open up to swallow me.
But then you’d realize - and I did - that there’s just no other way to write other than getting a pen and paper, and writing (or turning on the computer and typing away). I can’t expect to wake up one day to a newspaper article assignment the Times is paying me to write, without first knowing how to deal with the competing thoughts in my head, just enough so I could write down a little piece of something each day… Or every two days maybe?
On Perfectionism and Writing (and also Life)
- I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just write, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.
The chapter on perfectionism is, by far, the most striking for me. In all honesty, I would say that I’m not a perfectionist. To make you understand, I would say that my friends from St. Paul could attest that I don’t comb my hair back in high school, and I would let you peek into my bag so you’d see the chaos inside. It’s true though that I have an inclination for the ideal. I really don’t know how it happened. I’m guessing my Cinderella Theory has something to do with it.
The premise of the Cinderella Theory (which is actually based more on the story of the animated Princess Sarah, and Belle in Beauty and the Beast) is that if one suffers enough at the beginning of his/her life, but still maintains a cheerful and kind disposition, he/she gets to live happily ever after. As a kid - and I realized this only while writing my autobiography for ENG5 in sophomore year - I was actually trying hard to maintain my being a trophy kid and to avoid being an inconvenience to anyone because I believed that if I suffered enough but still kept walking this straight line, my fairy godmother would finally take pity on me and grant me my wish. Just like Cinderella. And Belle. And Princess Sarah. Screw fairy tales and princess stories.
- Perfectionism means that you try desperately not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived.
And maybe my family circumstance also had a hand in making me think the way I do. I used to think that with all the things Mama’s worried about, I shouldn’t add up to her problems anymore. That meant I can’t afford to make mitakes, because if I do, that’s going to be another item in her long and growing list of disappointing things in life.
- I think that something similar happens with our psychic muscles. They cramp around our wounds - the pain rom our childhood, the losses and disappointments of sdulthood, the humiliation suffered in both - to keep us from getting hurt in the same place again, to keep foreign substances out. So those wounds never have a chance to heal. Perfectionism is one way our muscles cramp.
"It’s a beautiful thing to forget…" That’s what the dad says in A Moment to Remember. I agree. Sadly, being of melancholy temperament, I’m gifted with an amazing memory - for nasty things done to me, for me hurtful things said against me. Perfectionism becomes my muscle cramp when I don’t allow myself to go down the same road, to commit the same mistakes, to try once again. Instead, I obsessed with the familiar. Better safe than sorry. But then, the wounds don’t heal that way. And the only way it would is to let it dry out in the open.
I remember what what I went through while training in softball, particularly in batting. Every session, my hands would hurt like hell from all that bat-clutching that’s making the leather gloves cut through my already raw skin. After every session, I would find myself wincing as I peel the leather off my hands oh-so carefully - lest I pop even more paltos. But during the next sessions, I’d be surprised that the clutching and the leather aren’t casuing me as much pain anymore. Because my hands got used to them already. I began getting less strikes then, and more power in my swing.
I once said to a friend that the cure to a heart that’s been hurt is to have it go on loving. Yes, it would get hurt over and over again, but that’s the idea - to allow it to be hurt again and again so that it would get used to the pain. Hopefully, eventually, the pain of the next disappointment wouldn’t be as excruciating. But this was already in college, and I’m also still learning to heed my own advice.
- What people…forgot to mention when we were children was that we need to make messes in order to find out who we are and why we are here…
- …Perfect means shallow and unreal and fatally uninteresting.
I don’t care much about being interesting. Okay, that’s not entirely true, but that’s beside the point. I don’t care much about being interesting - or not - as much as I do being real. And I guess when you try to live life too perfectly, when you try to be too okay with everything - refusing to cry, to complain, to commit mistakes - you become… fake. Just like a Stepford wife. And so an action point I’ve resolved to do: to commit as much mistakes as I could. Then, hopefully, I’ll really be able to live.
Okay, that’s it for now. Shucks. This is actually what I hate about blogging: That as much as it helps you practice your writing, it’s still is a lot like undressing in front of the world! I feel like I’ve just given the universe access to some really good blackmail material.
I really hope nobody turns out at my front door demanding blackmail money.
