Tonight I was reading a nonfiction work by Margaret Atwood, Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing. In it, Atwood discusses the writer as the “slippery double”—a person divided between her craft (writing) and her “other” self (the one who cleans the litter box with a small plastic shovel and applies the stain stick to the bottoms of her daughter’s white socks).
In some ways I agree with Atwood. When I write, I mostly close off to the world around me, letting the page sponge up my attention. That person writing feels distinctly different than the woman who just made a fart joke. More distinguished. More . . . writerly.
The truth is, none of us are neatly bisected individuals. We are composed of jumbled up and twisted vines. To quote Whitman—because I can—“I am vast, I contain multitudes.”
When I was in school earning a master’s in literature, I took Irish Lit. as an elective. It was a split-level class, meaning I was the lone grad student. Few students contributed much to the class discussions, with the exception of one bitter-arty-edgy child who always managed to say something thoughtful and literary-esque regardless of the fact that no one seemed to care. I learned from her that venturing something intelligent got you little more than a congenial nod from the tenured prof and blank stares from your peers—eyes deadened from too many drugs, a lack of sleep, or some other ailment that prevented their synapses from firing fast enough to construct a complete thought.
I mostly kept quiet.
One day I had to present Yeats’ “The Second Coming” to the class. And here’s the thing, it’s one of the most accessible poems to literature students. So there I stood, trying to make Yeats’ notion that the world was going to hell in a hand basket relevant and applicable (this was during the Bush administration, after all) to a roomful of kids staring and drooling like the residents of a rest home zoning at the “Magic Mark Show” from their respective wheelchairs. With the exception of my one ally, Miss Bitter-Arty-Edgy, who sat attentively. Dare I say, even interested.
After class, Miss Bitter-Arty-Edgy—she had never spoken to me before—caught up to me in the hallway to compliment my presentation. Kind of.
“You’re actually smart,” she said.
I’m not sure if she was asking me or telling me.
I couldn’t figure why she would have ever thought otherwise. I read nonfiction for fun, can analyze a poem at an alarming rate and few people would be willing to go head-to-head with me in a “Jeopardy” category on American Lit. Plus, I hadn’t cracked any fart jokes in class . . . that I could recall.
Because I didn’t respond, she must’ve felt the need to clarify. “I mean, you’re pretty and smart.”
Um . . . thanks?
Admittedly, my vanity swelled like a belly at Thanksgiving, but another part of me felt a bit injured. To her, and God knows who else, my shell preceded my Self. My outie didn’t match my innie.
Or so she thought.
Our appearance and our brains aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. Mine are both housed in the temple (OK, the modest craftsman) of Andrea. It’s taken some time to get comfortable with my inherent contradictions, but I’m getting closer to accepting all that I am rather than what I’m expected to be. I guess that’s called growing up.
After all, we’re all little tapestries of strangeness. I love the executive who won’t let his children play with his Legos because he wants to build the Millennium Falcon himself, or the scholar who attributes human qualities to her pet chicken (you know who you are). Which is why I’m going to take a momentary break from Atwood’s heavy discussion of the post-Romantic writer . . . to watch a little “TMZ.”
