Jellyfish Motherfucker

I’m trying something different today.  I’m writing a blog entry while listening to Cheryl Strayed’s “Write like a Motherfucker,” section of “Tiny, Beautiful Things.”   We’ll see how that goes, I guess...  Here's what I'm hearing right now,  plus some jellyfish dancing around.

 

 Whenever I’ve shared anything from this book with friends, their response has almost invariably been, “It’s like the author has been following me around for the last year of my life.”    In this audiobook excerpt, Strayed narrates her response (originally from an online advice column called “Dear Sugar” at therumpus.net) to a young, aspiring writer too afraid to write… anything but eloquent advice column inquiries.  As with every letter, Strayed responds with a perfect combination of empathy accompanied by loving, but bluntly-stated truths. The advice is rooted in the author's own life experiences, and is always personal and warm.  I think that's why people relate to what she writes so strongly. For me, Strayed's response spoke to the last ten years of my life and she must have been following me around.

I spent years running from the words floating around in my head.  I set aside my longing to express myself in order to avoid feeling depleted, depressed.  I love to write, and there are few things I find more satisfying. But during the times in my life that I’ve written the most prolifically I have often been the most sad.  It’s kind of a chicken and egg thing: do I write when I’m depressed, or does writing make me depressed?  Both are true, to an extent, but I can no more extinguish the part of my voice that wants to be expressed through my fingers and clattering keyboard than I can keep myself from giggling a little when I hear the word “shaft.”

“Write like a Motherfucker” makes me feel brave, and strong (while I hide behind my computer screen).  And you know what?  I am brave!  I am fucking strong!!  I am a MOTHERFUCKER!!!

Ok, reigning it in... life stories.  Right.

When I was in massage school, my instructor, Mrs. Boots—one of the wisest women I’ve ever met—made an observation about me during class, and I’ve held onto it, mostly because I  liked it and it made me feel special.  Boots said, “Courtney, you’re like a jellyfish that grew a steel spine for itself.  You are one of the most vulnerable people I’ve ever met, but you never crumple.”

I do crumple from time to time I guess, but I always pick myself back up, keep floating along aimlessly, gathering things up with my delicate, but sting-y tentacles, trying not to destroy my favorite things, my stories.  I’ve been absorbing them, even while I strayed from my words and my stories, and I find they’re still with me.  They never left.  They’ve been growing with each experience, each revelation.  I’ve been drafting the stories of my life by living them, and now, I’m putting ‘em out from time to time. 

Swimmers beware.  I’d hate for anyone to get peed on.

Unconventional Sources

I chose to narrate Linda Broadkey's "Writing on the Bias," because I found her prose to be unusual, though lovely.  I found myself having to read through some sentences more than once, because it didn't look the way I expected it to look.  In the piece, Broadkey writes about how she labors over her prose.  There were times I too labored over the prose while narrating it, but it sounded more conversational (and less academic) as I spoke the words aloud than they seemed when I was reading silently.

Below is what I initially wrote for my first blog entry, before deciding that introductions were in order.  I wrote it on a ship with no internet access, and found the process of handwriting a blog kind of liberating, I didn't second-guess myself as much .  This reading response captures my visceral, freshly-read reaction to the piece I narrated in the excerpt that I accented with an old film reel that shows you how to sew a dress from a simplicity pattern.  I hope you can read my (slightly) sea-sick handwriting and enjoy the video.

Publicly Private

For as long as I can remember, I've found it difficult to define myself with much intention.  I grow attached to descriptive language that defines characteristics I'd like to have--like sincere and attentive--then try to act in a way that reflects these characteristics, which I have done with varying levels of success.  The problem I run into is that words alone are an abstract concept.  I can't see any evidence of growth in a linear sense, and neither can anyone else because it's almost always been a private, internal process for me.

This blog is my attempt to nurture the growth of a new part of myself, and share that growth with an audience (if you'll have me).  I want to be an audiobook narrator.  I'm thirty, and most career paths I've had have been pursued on a whim.  I don't regret these, some of my best decisions have been made on a whim.  But I think it's time to try something different.  I've listened to hours and hours of audiobooks in the last year, and have been able to get through books that would've felt way over my head had I sat down with a regular book.  I think, when I'm stationary, a million snooze alarms go off in my head for overdue tasks I "should" be doing.  That word gets in my way a lot.  But when I'm moving around, busy attending to one of those "should's" my mind is free to engage with the ideas that present.  Audiobooks have been the perfect vehicle to lose myself in, to tool around in someone else's mind for a spell while I do suburban housewife things.  I've only found one book that didn't work for me.  If there's a woman alive who can contentedly fold the laundry while listening to 'The Feminine Mystique' I'd like to meet her.

So, in order to nurture this growth I'm going to post, narrate, and review various pieces of literature. Some I will have written, most are probably written by someone with a more intentional career path.  The pieces I write will share life experiences that are brought to mind by the act of reading someone else's work, so I get to play show-and-tell with my brand new identity.  I hope, reader, that you are as into literature and storytelling as I am.  I hope this blog attracts readers and writers with as many different perspectives as possible, so I can learn from your experiences as well as my own.