Outside Reading 2

Annotations on Hubert Butler’s “Aunt Harriet”

“It is a very brief story but nothing at all if I do not convey the closeness I felt to that body in the box.  Love?  Affection?  Admiration?” (394).

           

This passage intrigued me because Butler refers to his aunt as a “body” dead in a coffin, yet he still expresses such grand emotions toward her.  I feel that this explains the disconnect one often feels when mourning death and seeing their dead loved one in a coffin.  The experience is unexpected and confusing.  Butler loves and admires his aunt, but can’t see past the grotesquness of the funeral traditions.

“I have left Aunt Harriet in her coffin a long way behind, but I am thinking of the memories she took with her; they were all unimportant but the past is a mosaic of tiny pieces, a fragment of a larger picture…” (396).

Here, Butler takes a step back from his previous observation to take in the larger picture and remember his aunt as a person and a loved one, rather than simply a body in a box.  He also tries to relate to her personally, by speculating on the pieces of her life she took with her in her death.

“I spent the rest of the night wrestling with this problem even after the tapping had stopped.  What worried me was the thought that in some supreme effort of faith she had half-conquered death, which like a wave in an ebbing tide had left her stranded half-alive on the foreshore” (400).

Here, Butler is voicing his concerns and fears, subtly twining in the irrational fears that death and loss can conjure.  I thought this section was beautifully written, while not being over done.

“Aunt Harriet was self-effacing and considerate.  She would sooner have gone through the ordeal of death a second time than be resurrected in a blaze of newspaper publicity” (400-401).

Butler is able to silence his fears because he remembers the personality and strength of his aunt.  This is another instance in the piece where Butler is able to disconnect / relate death from / to the person who passed.  I like the complexity and confusion in that; it relates to the experience of mourning well.

“Students come there to learn about the flora and fauna of the Nore valley.  The cows there produce special cheeses and the pigs special sausages.  It is still a place where it is easier to believe in happiness than in pain” (402).

The closing of the piece finally explains why the setting was so important for Butler to continually describe.  In it, he can remember his aunt and find “special” memories that are “easier to believe in” than pain.

Outside Reading 1.

Luc Sante’s “The Unknown Soldier” is probably one of the best examples of the “creative” in creative nonfiction.  This is a piece that teeters on the border of fiction and nonfiction, as it tells the story of many lives from Sante’s perspective.  The aim of the piece is to express a universality, a common humanity in death and how or if we remain once we die.  Certainly, as one of the human race, Sante has a voice in that, but only one voice.  And only a speculating one.  He is not dead, has never died, but his experience as a human who has observed and likely mourned death grants him a voice in the discussion.  Though the piece may be quite experimental and unique in its composition, it still expresses Sante’s emotions and perspective, therefore it is still nonfiction.  The subject matter is grim and dark, but also calls upon a common experience of the human life and so is accessible by many readers.  Death, sadness, and grieving, are common themes for literature of all kinds, nonfiction included.

Stuart Dybek touches on the themes of death and common suffering in his piece, “Confession.”  This piece is more recognizable as nonfiction.  It is told in the first person point of view and details a specific instance from Dybek’s life.  We understand that this is a personal story, an essay of an event that happened to the author, yet the importance of the piece is not the author’s emotions, but the emotions experienced by a secondary character.  Confessing to his priest all of his trivial sins, Dybek gives an offhand reference of suicide.  Making jokes of his narcoleptic priest and seemingly going through the motions of an outdated tradition, the tone is quiet light hearted.  But with the last line of the piece, “Go in peace, my son, I’m suffering enough today for the both of us,” we see the pain and suffering beyond the coughs of Father Boguslaw.  Again, we are confronted with an author discussing the emotions of others in order to tap into the common humanity in us all, proving creative nonfiction does not have to be limited to the experiences of the author.

Sebastian Matthews “Kind of Blue” is another piece that explores the pain of someone else.  Matthews writes of his father, a man who cheated on and possibly left his mother, attempting to understand the older man’s motivations.  By distancing himself from his own opinions and experience Matthews can try to really understand the feelings his father had and perhaps have a different outlook on a personal experience.  Perhaps he is also hoping he can feel differently about his relationship with his father after his writing.  The topic is still Matthews’, he’s just exploring it from a different, more creative angle.

These three essays show how creative nonfiction doesn’t just have to be a regurgitation of facts.  These authors explore events in their lives or emotions they feel the need to express in unique and creative ways, expanding the possibilities of a nonfiction piece.

Dance Lessons *

*Revision of first essay (included in portfolio)

I looked at his extended arm, hand waving me into his embrace from the middle of the otherwise empty dance floor.  My feet were sore, my make-up was creasing, and I was getting a rash from the way the unlined material of the hand-crafted bridesmaid dress cut into my side.  I was a fifteen year old with social anxiety and he was calling me into a circle where two hundred sets of eyes and just as many cameras would be trained only on us.  But he flashed me that familiar smile that said, “I got you, sis,” so I went to him and placed my hand in his.  He grabbed my waist and we danced.  We cried and laughed and spun under the soft lighting of the reception hall.  In moments I forgot about all the wedding guests and was isolated in the trustworthy arms of my big brother.  He led me like he had a thousand times before, his grip strong and his eyes kind.

***

I have pictures, their backs stained with the sticky amber glue of photo album pages and the quick scrawl of the year they depict, that show a young boy I can’t recall swinging two-year old-me around the playground.  My back is pressed tightly against his chest and his hands are locked on my hips as my tiny legs kick straight out, dancing in the rush of air our bodies create.  We’re both laughing, our similar noses scrunched up and our teeth showing.  I can’t remember the day these photos depict but I’m now able to recognize the way my brother’s arms embrace me, protecting me from the dangerous world that lies outside his grasp.  However, I would be deceiving you for the sake sentimentality if I claimed this was always the case.  The son of my mother and her first husband, Tony lived almost a generation before I was even a possibility.  With fourteen years between us, it has been difficult to find our rhythm. 

***

“You remember that card you made for your brother?  He tried to throw it away but Sarah stopped him,” my mother gossiped to me, consistent with her habit of telling me too much while I was too young.  At six years old, with hands still coated in glitter glue and crayon wax, my heart was crushed.  At twenty, with a forfeited youth in the name of young love and that pretention of young adulthood not quite out of his system, my bother found no treasure in an illegible card made on recyclable construction paper.

With these missteps, our sloppy waltz toward a synced partnership continued.  A few years later, Sarah, his first wife, satisfied her maternal instincts by fitting me with one of her sports bras.  I was so excited I immediately jumped up on the queen-sized bed shoved into the couple’s two bedroom duplex.

“Tony, look! Sarah gave me my first bra!” I shouted, as my brother walked past the doorway, lifting my shirt to proudly display the cotton signifying my bestowed grown-upness.

“You’re not supposed to show that to boys,” he explained, quickly retreating from the situation that flushed his cheeks.

“Boys never really learn to handle bras,” Sarah whispered to me with a smirk.  Too young to understand why she chuckled to herself and too deflated to care about an adult keeping secrets, I simply descended from my throne of womanhood, scrambling the royal sheets with my sloppy departure.

***

As we aged, Tony and I began to discover our responsibilities on the dance floor.  My brother took the lead, looking down at his own feet, noting the steps he took and telling me when to step forward to avoid the same failures in my routine.  I placed my hands trustingly on his shoulders, and allowed him to guide my movements, depending on his experience in the craft.  And when my body dipped toward the floor, I allowed his arms to cradle me, believing he was strong enough to support my weight.

***

“I can’t fucking believe this.  Are you serious?” my father shouted at me, trying to pacify his bubbling anger by rocking back and forth in his computer chair.

I didn’t answer.  When my father yelled there was no way to know what answer he expected, just that you weren’t supposed to answer wrong.  He clumsily jerked his head like a dog shaking off water, his eyes bulging, brow expectantly raised, the weakening skin of his aged forehead smashed together in a protrusion of wrinkles, silently asking, “WELL?”  He demanded an answer to his rhetorical question.

“Are you serious?” he repeated, adding extra bite to the first syllable.

“I just got the papers earlier this week.  I didn’t know you had to take out a loan,” I said, my eyes finding particular interest in the peeling lacquer on the office desk.

“You can’t be fucking serious.  You didn’t think of telling me about this?  When did you get the papers?”  My father’s questions were coming in rapid succession now.

“Last week,” I said, my voice shrinking.

“Last week.  And you didn’t tell me then because…?”

I just shrugged, too intimidated by his thunderous voice and reddening face to admit that I didn’t value his opinion on where I went to college, and that the idea of going away to college was really more about going away from him.  Unfortunately, in the grand planning for my future I neglected to figure out a way to pay for my escape plan without my parents’ aid.  With one of my acceptance letters came an insistence on the ParentPLUS loan program, expecting my parents to sign responsibility for half of my university costs.  My education wasn’t worth any effort on part of my father, though, and upon hearing he’d actually have to contribute to the person I would grow into while at college, he put on quite the performance.

“Well, that was really smart.  No, really.  You’re really fucking smart not telling me about this shit sooner.  I have to take out a loan for you to go to school?  Is that what you’re telling me?”  My father’s voice steadily rose as his mind rolled over the idea, not unlike the obsessive way his tongue kneaded the tobacco tucked behind his lower lip.

“Never mind.  I don’t have to go.”  I instinctively recoiled, back peddled, gave up.  I knew from experience it was better to give in to the wrath than allow things to escalate; that’s how furniture got destroyed.

All the while, my brother, visiting my parents for the afternoon, manned the porch swing outside the window.  When my father had decided he’d asked enough impossible questions for that particular “discussion,” I returned to the kitchen.  My brother met me inside and joined the conversation, swiping a hand under my back to protect my falling body from the impact of the cold dance floor.

“Do you know how hard it was for me to listen to that?” Tony asked my father when he’d returned.  “Just like it was when I was a kid.”  He spat the last sentence, accusing the older man of some past offense our argument had conjured from his memory.  From the disgust in my brother’s voice, I knew he was recalling more than just a chair being pummeled.

“You think you can keep her from going away to college?  You think yelling and screaming is going to stop her from leaving?  If anything it’s just going to make her run faster.”

My father remained silent, his face still flushed with the efforts of his earlier tantrum.  Dark sunglasses now covered his eyes and his mouth was pulled tightly shut.  Tony was an adult now. A man.  He’d grown into a true professional, tie and all.  He was nursing a fledgling career and creating financial stability for himself.  To my father, the authority of manhood required some amount of respect, and so he resided to stolidly hold up a wall of the kitchen, peering out at my brother’s defiant face from behind black glasses.

“She is so much better than this; this house, this family.  I didn’t finish college because I needed to work days and take night classes so I could afford to be away from you.  It was too much.  I couldn’t handle it.  She deserves to succeed where I failed.”

Tony reached to hug me and I collapsed in his arms.  I sobbed into his chest, welcomed with the soothing musk of his sandalwood cologne.  My hands fisted the back of his Pens hockey t-shirt as he soothingly stroked my hair.

“She’s going to college.  And she’ll figure it out with or without you.”

***

When I was fifteen, my brother remarried.  I attended the wedding in an itchy, coral bridesmaid dress and white pumps that pinched my pinky toes.  My hair was set too tightly, and by the reception dinner I was scratching at bobby pins attempting to burrow their way into my skull.  After the guests finished their food and everyone had helped themselves to a few drinks, it was time to open the floor.  The couple’s first dance was followed by the routine of the wedding party.  Next, came the father-daughter song, and then my brother took my mother’s hand.  Before the floor was opened to everyone, though, Tony beckoned me to center stage.  He was already a bit tipsy, and his thinning hair betrayed the sweat the overhead lights caused his head.  That familiar smile welcomed me and I placed my hand in his.

“I know this wasn’t something you were excited to do,” Tony said, referencing the bright gown and high heels that made me feel out of place,  “but I needed you here with me.  Thanks for doing this.”

As I watched my brother begin to cry, I remembered the faded image of the boy who held my young body close to his.  I teared up as I compared that child to the man who stood before me, the man who, at times, treated me almost as if I were his own child.  This tall, loving man, protecting me in his embrace once again, would continue to offer me advice, guide my steps as best he could lead.  He would try to shelter me from the cruelty of the world threatening to knock me off balance, supporting my dipping body.  He’d even eventually take me in, open his home to me and be the kind of man I regarded with admiration, not fear.

***

We’ve had a lot of practice, Tony and I, but we’re nowhere near professionals.  Spending the last two decades growing together, we’ve learned to give and take.  I lunge forward as he steps back, he approaches as I withdrawal, and occasionally we hold each other close as our weight sways side to side in unison.  Our steps are never rehearsed; we stumble and step on each other’s toes, as siblings do.  Still, in him I’ve seen the strength of a man capable of pulling off a Patrick Swayze lift when necessary.  Whether he’s swinging me around a neighborhood playground or simply lending me his emotional support, my brother has been the young man lifting me up and smiling as he helped me fly.

Solnit Response

     I agree with Solnit's suggestion that we are made up of many selves.  It seems so obvious to me that, whether wiling or not, we are shaped by the opinions and behavior of other people.  From family and friends we are expected, pressured, to act certain ways.  We allow strangers to influence our behavior because we covet their lives.  We aspire to be like some, we avoid becoming like others.  We shape ourselves only by comparison.  There is no individual.  We can only become alternative mash-ups of those around us.

     I find it interesting that Solnit admits this realization.  Earlier in the book, Solnit claims we are not our parents, or more specifically, that she is not her mother.  She explained to her mother in an unsent letter, "I am not a mirror, and the shortcomings you see are not my fault" (24).  Here it seems Solnit is refusing to see images of her mother within herself, saying, "Mirrors show everything but themselves…nothing of your own will be heard" (24-25).  But Solnit never details what her "own" actually is. Does she have a clear sense of that?  Or is she just so offended by the idea of becoming like her mother?  It seems, she finally admits on page 248 that we are made up of many selves.  Does she realize this means she is like her mother, at least in some aspects?  I wonder if her including this new realization at the end is Solnit realizing that we are always like our parents, just as we are like our friends and heroes.  We are part of everything we are ever exposed to.  We form our "own" by the examples of others.  I wonder if her journey to reconcile her opinion of her mother comes to fruition with this admittance of likeness.

Physical Description

            She comes into Hallmark every Saturday at 4pm.  Her hair is like a puff of cotton candy atop her head, dyed a faint lavender I can only assume is the result of an improper combination of chemicals.  It would have been more graceful to proudly display her greys.  Her clothes are another attempt to look an age she can no longer pull off.  Animal print clings to her chest and arms, on material stretched too tight that pulls up to reveal the slacking skin of her stomach atop jeans bedazzled with silver stones.  She walks right up to the register in heels that clack against the tile floors, loudly announcing her entrance.  Without regard to other customers or tasks the worker behind the counter is involved with, she shoves her handwritten shopping list their face, the contradiction of cheetah patterned nails and classically trained cursive interrupting all other duties.  Her hands betray her; their elasticity is gone, wrinkles gather the limp skin in ruffles, blue veins and brown age spots tell of the years she’s endured.  She leads the way to the first item on her list, the employee trailing behind, getting sick from the overwhelming musk of her Chanel perfume.  She shops for greeting cards with coordinating envelopes she will hand-address.  She asks for help picking out a birthday card for her nephew, anniversary cards for her daughter and her husband.  The options on the racks overwhelm her, but she never likes the suggestions of the workers, young college girls with their black aprons and decorated nametags, from a generation where a single kissing Emoji takes the place of a poetic Between You and Me card.  She checks out after wasting a half hour of the employee’s time, her patience thinner than when she sashayed in.  Crossing the threshold of the door, her left heel collapses beneath her foot, causing her to stumble.  Embarrassed, she scans the nearby crowd to see if she’s been found out.  Relieved to see she’s safe, she adjusts her top to show more of her sun-spotted chest and walks proudly out the door.