Footprints

Maybe it took Gabriel Garcia Marquez one hundred years of solitude to write One Hundred Years of Solitude. Well tell me Gabe, how long will it take me to write my novel? Last weekend I locked myself in my room and managed to churn out a whole three and a half pages. And even now I"m looking at that chapter sideways like, is this the best you could do? Man this is tough.

I read an article in Poet's & Writers about accomplished contemporary novelists who had totally different careers in addition to being a writer on the side: botanists, lawyers, accountants. Some took 10 years to write their first novel, novels that eventually turned into movies, like American Psycho (i'm beginning to understand that character more and more by the way).

Then i think to poets like William Carlos Williams, who was a doctor. Gerald Manley Hopkins, a Jesuit priest. Whitman, doctor. Lucille Clifton--mother of many. I'm about to break out the candles and the wegie board (sp?) to ask a few folk how they did it. There are also many contemporary writers living that same double-helix life with Flo Jo-like grace.

And since I've been intrigued with the idea of illusion lately, perhaps grace is another one of the world's greatest illusions. Maybe that is why the ultimate metaphor for grace is a black swan gliding across a pond. On the surface the movement looks so effortless, but underneath the water those legs are kicking like hell to propell that bird forward. That is the nature of grace. Making the hardest things look easy: survival included. Walking into work with a smile even though your insides have turned into a landslide. Pointe Ballet: smile for the audience while your toes promise never to forgive you again.

I have newfound appreciation for bookstores and libraries for the genius and the garbage those shelves hold. It takes writing plenty of garbage to create genius. It also takes reading plenty of garbage to recognize genius. I'm in awe of all the books the world has created. At this point, even the trashiest Harlequinn romance is close to being considered a monumental achievement even if there's a machine in a basement somewhere in Wyoming churning those suckers out. Hook, plot and climax.

Lately every movie I watch, every book I read, I wonder: what's the charm of these characters? What makes them so believable, what combination of words make them so flesh and blood in my memory? I watched the movie Magnolia tonight. Saw it once before long ago but thought I should revisit it because when I was at dinner with a friend the other night he mentioned it in such a positive way. The entire movie is heartbreaking and the characters, irresistible. Why? Every single character in that movie needed the same thing: they all needed someone to listen to them. To listen to their silences and not the noise. And by the end of the movie, most of them met the ear that was destined for them. Each character was a small transformation of humanity.

Still trying to figure out the frogs falling from the sky at the end. A Biblical reference perhaps?

I think of people like Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Hitler, individuals who shifted the consciousness of millions of people in gorgeous and ghastly ways. I think of Harriet Tubman, who used an unloaded pistol to liberate African people. And just about every main character in every Toni Morrison novel.

I don't know what I'm saying. I just know that I'm trying to create the kind of snow that sticks. Pardon the snow imagery: God dumped a foot of snow right in front of my door this weekend. And damn I can't tell you how magnificent it was to wade around in it like a queen for an hour today, watching it fall all around me like romance, looking back at the footprints I couldn't help but leave behind.