*Non-Fiction — June 17, 2020
Excerpt from Failure: A Writer’s Manual
Flower meadow in Llano, Texas, The US National Archives
18. SUMMER
The season of the dashed ambitions of the undergraduate for a brilliant year that ended up being just, in fact, another year; the season where my article, at last! awakens in the heart of the professor. Graduate students and adjuncts feel their own false promise of summer break; there will be a week or two before summer classes (not that long, it’s only one they reason), the July long weekend, and then a week or two at the end for focus, both glorious and then sad (so little real useful time, so little money).
For myself, there are two distinct phases. June is the month where the days grow as long as they ever will be on this planet. There is something about daylight stretching beyond the dinner hour that makes me feel wise and patient. It’s all the babies I’ve held, the babies of friends, as a babysitter, putting them to bed in the still-blue light. Yes, June is partly that for me: the face of a sleeping infant under a glowing blue sky, the miracle of patience and the pain of birth and then feeding and sleeping and just being here. The smell of white milk and the softness of bird-delicate bald heads.
There is something else to be said about life on June evenings: in my mind we are all on porches, silently looking at our neighborhoods and then opening our mouths to express it, identify that thing that we are reaching for. And it doesn’t come out easily or sometimes at all.
And then the rest of the summer is black, humid, dark night. I speak exclusively of the summer of the child; the weather of childhood is really the stage setting for the rest of life. The sweltering days don’t even make an impression on me; the next point at which the world becomes possible for thought or feeling is the black night—that’s when you get out the bikes and permission from your parents. I rode hard just for the feel of the air moving. For a shiver. And then it seems we’d bike and bike around the village until we ended up on someone’s front lawn, just outside the pool of the porch light, and the sweat and heat would close around us and sweat would suddenly be everywhere, streaming out of our hair, our necks, down our backs. It was the 1970s, era of synthetic foods; someone served artificially flavored Country Time lemonade or Kool-Aid or something horrible called bug juice. That segment of the summer was deep, black, hot and hopeless and exciting. Those endless dark nights when it seemed all we could hope for was that the next day wouldn’t be so hot and boring. And then the queer rumble in your stomach when these rides continued into August; on TV suddenly a back-to-school commercial would appear and then I was reaching for the summer to do something for me: heal me, rest me, repair me while riding through the night, the rides now errands into the black macadam streets with the lamps and silence. I’d whiz through the night and pray, let there be something about this I can take into school with me. So the first day will be less frightening. So it will be better than last year. I will have an epiphany on this night journey that will finally protect me from all the cruelty kids inflict on each other, the names and the bottom on the social order. On these last few bike rides before there are no more night bike rides because it is a school night, let the world underneath these spinning wheels give me something to take into the fall.
20. THE NIGHT BEFORE LAST, I THREW OUT OLD COSMETICS, A MONOGRAMMED TOWEL I WAS SO PROUD TO GET FROM BLOOMINGDALE’S IN 1992.
27. EVERYTHING ANNIE DILLARD SAID ABOUT DOSING COFFEE AND WRITING WAS RIGHT.
I’ve experienced two miracles of sleep in my life. The first in which I had gone to bed at 10 and had a dream that I was exploring this large castle that was just like boarding school, only big, big, bigger. This architect whom I was in love with was there—outside the castle we were kissing, and he was supposed to meet me inside. There were security guards and I remember they were apologizing for either not letting him in, or losing him. I was confident and happy. Don’t worry, I told the guards, when he wants to find me, he will.
I woke up for the only time in my life naturally at 6 a.m., well rested and with my heart floating. The happy sun was doing its work and I walked to work with an uncharacteristic appetite for the day. The dream, I understood, was true. It was true that when my love wanted to find me, he would and that I was fine. I still remember that castle and the guards who were friendly men and what I really knew.
28. HAIR PART 1
The whole first part of my life, people asked about my hair. How I could be half black and have the hair I had?
29. HAIR
Letting my hair grow out from this blonde dye job feels like some sort of important gradual transformation back to me. The bleaching and cutting off of my hair feels like a separation—everything happened to another person. I stepped out from under my scalp and walked away. And it has been something to see brown hair surface and start taking over my head again.
I’m two people: the person who is confident being very formally dressed and made up. Who likes attention and handles it well.
The other person is the floppy slobby writer, who wears comfortable clothing and feels a bit shy. Who is unassuming, the “who me?” Diane Keaton type. I like both people. Both people have my own real hair.
30. THE BALL OF THE UNIVERSE
I went out to dinner with a friend and in the pink neon light of the restaurant sign and pleasant hubbub, I got one of those moments when companionship and a good meal whet the tumor of anxiety, causing it to grow slippery and release from my guts. Then for a few shimmering minutes I could see—it’s all fine and it’s all a miracle. Early evening in mid-spring in New York, I had walked a mile or so to the restaurant just to enjoy the day; my friend was telling old, comfortable jokes that still worked. The pop-eyed anxiety and sorrow was swimming like a wet ball in a pond, and as I spoke and ate I had the sense of being able to observe it and it being small.
31. THE WORST TIMES TO BE SINGLE ARE FRIDAY NIGHTS AND WEEKEND MORNINGS.
33. THE BIGGEST JOURNEY OF WOMEN IN THE FIRST WORLD
I know that men have their own struggles. I think that one lifelong journey of a woman in the United States is the struggle to feed herself. I remember stuffing myself to excess, and I remember when I realized I was profoundly sad and food was just a proxy. I also remember entering the strange and delightful world of eating until I recognized that I was just satisfied. This happened in college. I was astonished that food was so indifferent to me; instead of calling eat me, food was impersonally just sitting there—on plates, at the college bookstore, at receptions.
Around this time, Margaret Atwood came to campus. I stood in line for her to sign my book. Her book ended with a detailed description of a woman who had been starving herself going out to the grocery store and buying all the ingredients for a cake, baking it from scratch, decorating it as herself and presenting it to her selfish fiancé. He recoiled. The woman then gave it to her lover, who ate it. Duncan.
“Ms. Atwood,” I said, “could I ask: what was the significance of Duncan eating the cake at the end?”
“Sometimes,” she answered, “a cake is just a cake.”
Originally published in No Tokens Issue No. 5. View full issue & more.