The Words Stand Alone

The Words Stand Alone

She walked over to me, gave me a hug and said we’d have to go for coffee so she could “spill disapproval into my lap.” My eyes cemented into a blank stare as her quote snatched the breath from my lungs. She was smiling. She didn’t stop smiling, because everything had frozen in its place. My mouth dried up, and my eyes were opened wide with shock and regret. I immediately adopted the posture of un coupable. There was no escape. I looked for a door, a hole, a window—anything. When I caught my breath—my fists locked at my sides—I looked beside and beyond her, and heard myself betray myself, and say I’m sorry. I felt my face turn red as I lowered my gaze. I shrugged, still blushing, and made a mental note: Beware the word you’ve written.
* * *
I have an uncle named Aaron Bushkowsky who lives in Vancouver in a dirty apartment with a mutt named Frankie. My uncle Aaron writes plays and poems and film scripts, and a lot of what he writes had its beginning in a family of seven. Five Bible-name children and two German-Baptist parents and a jalopy and mice and insanity and abuse and Bratwurst, and he’s got a mind full of material from which to write.
When I was small and he was so big with his salt-and-pepper hair and black writerly t-shirts, I would look up into his deep artist’s eyes and think to myself, I want to be just like him.
Once, he flew me out to visit him and his beautiful actress wife. He introduced me to boccocini and Starbucks and the cast of Coronation Street. I explored the backstage of his theatre and met a lesbian for the very first time. His desk was covered with papers: scripts, bits of poems, a grocery list, film reviews. And I thought to myself, I want to be just like him.
On my birthday (if he remembered my birthday), he would send me a book of his poetry, or a collection that held one of his stories. I would smile and put the books lovingly on my shelf once I realized that I didn’t understand what they were about. Ed and Mabel Go to the Moon. Mars is for Poems. I didn’t know why he wrote about outer-space, and thought it was kind of silly, but told myself that he had his name on books and posters and in newspapers, and I didn’t. So I would smile, and the books would smile back from their spot on the shelf.
One night, not too long ago, I couldn’t fall asleep. I remembered the dreamy, starlit covers of my uncle’s books. Taking one, I curled up under my covers ready to fall asleep to shooting stars and supernovas. Instead, I found myself bumping into my family members and their stories. I dog-eared the pages where, between aliens and spacesuits, I read about my grandfather, my mother, my aunt. Suddenly, the pages grew hot between my fingers when I realized the words had been read by strangers long before they’d been read by me.
Some editor had read about my grandfather’s voice—“a shovel scraping gravel” (Bushkowsky 11). A critic had read my grandmother—“counting brush strokes / while the beating went on” (24). An anonymous proofreader had read my great-uncle—“now 68 and wheezing in a half way house” (78). Desperately, I wondered, What about the rest of the story? Where were the poems about the happy things? Where were the poems that said Thank you and I love you and Things weren’t always that bad? And then it occurred to me that my grandfather had this book too. He had read “his footsteps / across cold linoleum” (11). My whole family had gotten these books with a smile and This is my new book, Merry Christmas. My mother read herself “waiting and waiting for dad to leave” (26), and my grandmother would’ve read her “heart falling behind / the rhythm of the machines” (46) before it finally stopped.
The twelve-year old inside me clumsily drew her wooden sword, and swung mightily at the pedestal on which my uncle had stood for so long. With a Merry Christmas, he passed out this ugly family portrait, seen through his deep artist’s eyes. The prose and poetry that he wrote blew up in their faces, and I wondered, who says that’s okay, who gives him permission to write them that way?
I fell asleep angry and clutching the question: Who gives him permission?
But it wasn’t long before I forgot my question, the dog-eared pages, and the family I’d found between the lines. And when I least expected it, and hardly recognized it, the answer came to me.
* * *
“I write to be honest. I write to confront myself. I write to simplify my anxieties. I write to honour those I love. I write to remember what is real. I write to dry my tears. I write to release them. I write to reprimand myself. I write to forgive…”[1] And the list goes on, because somewhere between Barbie-dolls and boyfriends, I inherited the black, writerly t-shirt and the “I” that comes with it.
The writer’s “I” is the one who says that the story is worth reading. Who gives permission to write about friends, family, the world. Who says you should write—must write—at all costs. The writer’s “I” says that every word is like a flag to be planted firmly and proudly on the peak of some mountain, hailing its existence—literal and literary. The “I” recites the writer’s Great Commission in a booming voice from beyond the clouds. The writer basks in the glory of the Cause, then takes up his golden pen and writes the magic words that will change the world.
The “I” who inspires me to sit at the keyboard and write something, anything, is the same “I” who gives my uncle permission to write my grandmother into the grave. Perhaps, if all writers were infinitely wise and full of the understanding of the world, the commission to write would not be such a dangerous thing, but our “writing selves” generally don’t seem to possess infinite wisdom or the understanding of the world.
My “writing self” is a chubby twelve-year old with short hair and glasses, wearing a too-long grey t-shirt and baggy jeans, who looks in the mirror, tries to ignore her reflection, and just go on with her day. Like a baby fondling a stick of dynamite, the idea of my “writing self” backed by the ammunition of the written word is a frightening one. When I write, I write my story, my life, my way. My “writing self” plants her literary flag solemnly amid the final trumpet blasts and anonymous applause, in that sun-on-her-face moment, then giggles and skips down the side of the mountain in search of another.
Meanwhile, night and day play a perpetual game of tag. The wind blows, the rain falls, the sun shines, and my flag—which I’ve forgotten by now—continues to flap in the breeze. And sooner or later, a little worse for the wear, it is discovered by a passer-by, and my “writing self” is summoned to explain why my flag is there. Seated at a steel table under the glare of a swaying electric bulb, I find that it’s no longer a symbol of literary triumph, but a spear in someone’s side. And I wonder: Who replaced my rattle with TNT?
* * *
“They loved me then and I know they love me now. Smiling at me from across the table; four eyes between two women had seen me grow from a small child into whatever I had become. They want to catch up while they’re in town.
How is school?
How do you like work?
Are you going to a church?
Great!
I love it!
Not regularly.
They go cross-eyed looking at the straws they’re sucking on—diet Pepsi.
I tap my fingernails on the table.
So you have a date tonight?
I can’t help but smile as the butterflies take flight. I come so close to forgetting the question that comes next.
Is he a Christian?
Bye-bye butterflies.
No.
She reaches for the salt but catches the straw on her sleeve. She spills disapproval into my lap.”[2]

I wrote about Chris and Donna, and one incident. From a decade of friendship, I found out the one time they made me feel bad, and I wrote about it. As far as the reader is concerned, nothing else existed.
* * *
“She reaches for the salt but catches the straw on her sleeve. She spills disapproval into my lap.”
The words circulated between me and the members of my writing class, then settled comfortably between the pages of a folder on a bookshelf in my living room. Then, more than a year later, they blew up in my face.
Donna wanted to read the piece that had gotten so much attention. I was happy to have her read it, but had forgotten the sentence. It was only one sentence in one segment on one page in one paper, one of the many flags I had abandoned and forgotten. And it was about her.
My hindsight hand reaches out in vain, in slow-motion, screaming “NO” wishing to intercept the exchange. I handed her a copy and ignored the faint tick-tick-tick and the bit of a fuse that hung from that sentence in that segment on that page in that paper.
Then it blew up in my face.
* * *
She walked over to me, gave me a hug and said we’d have to go for coffee so she could “spill disapproval into my lap”.
The frozen-smile, shoulder-shrugging episode unfolded, and my “writing self” was brought to the steel table. Donna’s silhouette stood in the shadows and I squinted under the glare of a swinging electric bulb. My flag, a little worse for the wear, was thrown onto the table. Shamefully, sweat pouring from my brow, I said I’m sorry and the scene dissolved.
That day, and the next day, and the next day, I wriggled uncomfortably beneath the knowledge of what I had done. I had been writing for myself, to myself, yet, to the world, the world that consisted only of an anonymous reader.
The piece I handed her—the one I wrote her into—was entitled Between Two Worlds, and should’ve reminded me that I still had a foot in each. I wrote Donna into my piece, awarded her action and emotion and literary existence, and wasn’t prepared to stand before the living, breathing, nonliterary Donna, and take responsibility for my words. But I hadn’t thought about the real-life Donna. I had been writing for myself.
I had written without regard for her feelings, without a concept of loyalty to anything but the writer’s “I.”
I realized that what I’d handed her that day was not just a paper, but a slap in the face. One that she would receive seated on a couch in the corner of her loft, with a coffee in one hand and a bomb in the other. She would read six pages before finding herself written into the seventh. There she was, spilling “disapproval into my lap.” Ka-boom.
Despite the disaster that occurred in the loft of Dear Donna’s quaint home, she walked over to me, gave me a hug, and gave me the chance to do damage control. To utter a confused, embarrassed, twelve-year-old sorry.
But not before the voice of a comrade could whisper from beyond the clouds. He tells me not to say Sorry, that I didn’t do anything wrong. He asks me, “Isn’t disloyalty as much the writer’s virtue as loyalty is the soldier’s?”(Murray 84).
His words are yanking on my sleeve, and I tell him to Be quiet, she can hear you! I take him by the ear and drag him away, but I know he’s always been there and always will be, beyond the clouds. The voice at the summit. And I know he’s right, but what about Donna?
* * *
I don’t understand Natalie Goldberg when she says “I am writing for myself” (Goldberg 72).
Dear Donna inspires me to unearth Natalie’s flag and wave it rudely in her face. Taking a deep breath, and pushing my glasses up my twelve-year-old nose, I tell her that When you write, whenever you write, you can never write just for yourself. A reader is always there. Even the most obscure sentences—scrawled on a napkin, in a diary, or in the steam of a bathroom mirror—exist innocently enough until someone discovers them. There is always the chance that someone will read what you’ve written.
* * *
(One summer I held a job that put me in daily contact with truck drivers. By the end of the summer, I had grown quite fond of them and decided to write a goodbye letter. I typed it out, printed it into leaflets and posted them outside my office window on my last day. A few months later, I got a call from a driver who said he’s picked up a “Pro-Trucker Magazine” and found my letter published inside.)
* * *
When you write, whenever you write, you can never write just for yourself.
I wrote for myself and destroyed Donna’s loft.
My uncle writes for himself and my mother carefully sweeps up the debris.
And so I don’t like Natalie Goldberg when she says “I am writing for myself” because I know she is we, and I just can’t justify the mess. I am not satisfied that “the writer and the reader communicate only through the page” (Atwood 1). I am afraid of what happens when the writer is not summoned to the steel table to be given the chance to explain—when there is no shadowed silhouette or swinging electric bulb. Because then, the words stand alone.
* * *
“When a writer is born into a family, that family is finished” (Dufresne 12).
I used to laugh at those words, but now I sigh at the tragedy behind the truth. Milosz understands that my “writing self” is a moody twelve-year-old, self-centered and disloyal, who enjoys climbing mountains and planting flags and hop-scotching away from responsibility. He understands I will forever peer through parted fingers at my world—the one I write for myself, and the people I write into it. I will forever utter a confused, embarrassed, twelve-year-old Sorry. I will forever need to be reminded: Beware the word you’ve written.
Works Cited

Atwood, Margaret. “Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing.” Conversations about Writing: Eavesdropping, Inkshedding, and Joining In. Eds. M. Elizabeth Sargent & Cornelia C. Paraskevas. Ontario, Toronto: Nelson, 2005. 1.

Bushkowsky, Aaron. Mars is for Poems. Lantzville, British Colombia: Oolichan, 2002.

Dufresne, John. The Lie That Tells a Truth: A Guide to Writing Fiction. New York, New York: Norton, 2003. 12.

Goldberg, Natalie. “Writing Down the Bones.” Sargent & Paraskevas. 2005. pp 72-77.

Murray, Donald. “A Writer’s Habit.” Sargent & Paraskevas. 2005. pp 82-88.
[1] From an imitation exercise of Terry Tempest Williams’ “Why I Write.”
[2] From “Between Two Worlds” written by myself.