I remember writing a poem about
arteriosclerosis in high school and showing it to a friend. He didn’t know what
to make of it and neither did I. I had a little blue notebook in which I
scribbled random thoughts and poetry. It’s somewhere else now. I hope no one
finds it. I bet my name is written on the front page.
If I read it now, I could see who I was
then and compare him to me now. I didn’t know shit then, but I bet I wrote with
more voice. I bet I didn’t think so much about repetition of the word “then”
and its placement in a sentence. Whoever’s voice I’m writing with now is
crippled.
This is relevant. I’m following a
thread and I feel it necessary to explicitly state that there is a thread.
There is always a thread. The cardiovascular system is a network of threads,
threads I can follow, threads keeping it all together.
Maybe arteriosclerosis was a serious
issue when Macrorie wrote Uptaught. I
wonder how he died. If you want to know what I remember from the reading, it’s
this: “You’re no damn good when your arteries get hard” (20), “Maybe he’s got
hardening of the arteries or something” (106), “People’s emotions as well as
their arteries harden with age, and they hide behind a wall of impenetrable
insensitivity” (171). I wonder if my arteries are hard.
Arteries carry blood away from the
heart. I can’t empty my heart with hard arteries. I don’t know if it’s better
to have a full heart or an empty one. I wrote a short story over break titled “The
Emptying of His Heart.” It was about a lonely guy falling a tree alone in the remote
wilderness who suffers anaphylactic shock after being stung by wasps from the
tree he was trying to fall. I hear that emptying of the heart is one of the
symptoms of anaphylactic shock. It’s called empty heart syndrome.
I bet an empty heart produces dead
writing. I bet a heart that can’t empty does too. Hard arteries slow the
emptying of the heart. That’s why you’re no good with hard arteries. That’s why
King Lear was no good. That’s why I feel like I’m no good.
Aaron --
ReplyDeletefrom this post your short story sounds good; sad, but good.
It's incredibly hard to respond to this post, but you've definitely written "lively" writing, or at least the kind that I think Macrorie and others would be excited about. It will be interesting to see if you are able to keep this blog "alive" as the semester goes on while still incorporating different aspects of class, asking big questions. Maybe that's the one thing from this that I'm missing: a bigger question, something more like an allegory than a personal truth. But maybe I just can't see it.
Aaron, I think your post is a superb example of the writing that the Third Way is supposed to produce. It is not particularly fancy, it does not sound pretentious, and it tells your perception of the truth unflinchingly. I feel that I can get a sense of who you are from it without even knowing you well. In short, it is a powerful piece of writing that is a pleasure to read.
ReplyDeleteMoving to an analysis of content, I think I know what you mean when you describe your writing difficulties. I never think my writing is good, and it usually comes as a surprise when someone tells me that it is. Actually, I usually think they are lying or attempting to preserve my feelings from the sting of reality. College has killed my writing in some ways, replacing metaphors with grammatically correct language usage. I often think it is missing some spark that could set it aflame. However, I also think that my writing is now more marketable. Very few people hiring technical writers are interested in beautiful metaphors, and I have never been a creative writer. Also, my new brand of writing has its own attractive qualities when in a formal context. Careful consideration makes me think that my writing is not worse than it was. It is just different. It is what I have needed it to be.