by Michelle Newcome

Thanks to Nicki Salcedo for that wonderful quote.  This month the theme here at PF&HT is  “I was just _______ and it hit me _______.”  Like creative people often do, I’ve had some rough patches recently.  Mostly a result of being too invested in the world combined with a sometimes crippling sensitivity.  Also like many creative people, I’m beset by insomnia – the kind where you don’t sleep at all for days.  On one night when I knew sleep was just not going to happen I gave in to the whimsy I usually keep under saner and tighter control.

I was just laying in bed wide awake and it hit me – I should leave my bedroom, walk down my stairs, out the front door, onto the lawn and lay down under the dogwood tree in my front yard and stare up at the tree limbs.

Have I mentioned I live in the hood?  As in there are men roaming around, armed and carrying 40 oz’s wrapped in brown paper, tossing packets of crack like mardi gras beads?  Or that it was 2 am and my husband was out of town?  Luckily I was wearing pajamas instead of a short nightie – although that’s altered in the poem -  and the street was quiet.  Luckily I’ve lost just enough weight this year to not stick up quite as much when I’m laying on my back.

My house, which I write about often, was a boarding house in the 1950′s and the landlady catered to WWII vets.  She ran a tight ship – anyone who wasn’t in by curfew got locked out and slept on the lawn.  I know this because my next-door neighbor was a young man then and watched it all happen.  For the record, he was still disgusted forty years later.

My dogwood tree is not just any dogwood.  It’s almost as old as my house – which was built in 1900.  It’s enormous – easily the largest dogwood tree I’ve ever seen.  I once measured it for a “Biggest Dogwood Tree in Dekalb County” contest, but due to lack of funding the contest was suspended.  I was told I would have won hands down.

So, as I rested on the lawn, feeling the cold earth and the sticks, smelling the onions that grow better than grass, I decided that this experience was given to me because words needed to come.  Sometimes you can bring forth the words without living them – like when you write about a place you’ve only seen on Google maps, but sometimes the words need hillocks of new grass and jewel-green leaves against dark limbs and a midnight sky.  Sometimes the language hears the beckoning and finds its own way.

If you’d like to read the poem that the language wanted to be – you can find it on my website:

http://michellenewcome.com/blog/2010/04/27/to-the-men-asleep-under-the-dogwood-1958/

When in your memories did life beckon to the language?  Did you follow?  Not?  Any rejoicing?  Any regrets?

This being April Fool’s I could post some absolutely tricky funny business, but I’m far too serious for that.  Instead I’m going to discuss the most misunderstood archetype of the whole panoply of archetypes.

Yes, it’s The Fool.  As an archetype The Fool is the one I know I want to disavow.  I’m serious by nature and rather intense in everything I do.  In my dreams I’m typically far more likely to put myself in the place of The Empress, maybe even The Star on a really good day, but as I get older and wiser I find that when I look back on my life it’s The Fool I regret rejecting.

What is The Fool?  In the world of Tarot The Fool resides at Zero position.  He’s depicted as a vagabond with suitcase in hand – ready for the adventure and ready for life.  The Fool is the first card in the Tarot deck and since he’s Zero, The Fool’s job is to go round the whole circle of Major Arcana to complete his journey to total wisdom.  The Major Arcana are the 22 cards representing the basic human archetypes – within them are contained archetypes of triumph like The Star and archetypes of despair and destruction like The Tower.  One of the lessons The Fool learns in his journey, however, is that no card or experience is all good or all bad – sometimes disaster lies in triumph and sometimes despair is the road to redemption.

The Fools is a like a baby – full of possibilities with limitless and unknown potential.  The Fool must navigate choices and opportunities in order to decide the fate of his life.  What The Fool is called upon most to be is open – he’s the exact opposite of a fixed and closed-mind.  Even though he’s the unmolded clay of humanity, the classical depictions of The Fool have some set motifs and themes.  He is drawn as facing North West – the direction of the unknown.  He stands on a cliff – representing his launching himself into the unknown.  He may or may not be prepared for what he faces, but he does carry an unopened bag that may have the materials of his success and survival.  He holds a staff, representing his free will for the journey ahead.  In his hand is a white rose to symbolize his purity and innocence.  The dog nipping at his heels will help guide him, but also propel him forward on his journey.

We all have illusions of grandeur at times and we hate the idea of being made “the fool” or looking “foolish.”  But here’s what I know:  seeing the world with bright and new eyes, carrying a bag with belief that it has everything we need in it, and knowing that failure holds potential are the secrets to a fulfilled life.  In ancient times, April 1^st was the first day of the new year.  On this day, think about doing something silly – not tricky, just silly.  Today act like a new year has begun and you stand at Zero position – innocent and interested, ready for the journey.

Play The Fool today with a glad heart.

This month Linsey Lanier asked us to talk about craft – what we’re good at, what we want to improve, and any books that have helped along the way.  Because I’m a poet I think in lines and use devices more common to poetry.  I tend to favor books and writers who use imagery – writers like Alice Hoffman, Luis Alberto Urrea and Paulo Coelho – and deep devices.  I like recurring symbolism. I usually insert hidden symbols in everything I write.  I try to never use an image that is not part of a grander scheme.  This comes from poetry – every symbol must advance the theme and metaphors should be of the world of the poem.  For instance, one of my poems is about a carpenter with a sick child so every symbol and metaphor is from wood or a tool.  I’ve been told that my writing is very rich and descriptive (maybe too much so at times).  Because I’m getting the kind of rejections I’m getting I’ve spent the past year really going deep into the world of craft and trying to figure out how to continue to grow in mastery and skill.  So far my favorite craft books have been those written by Noah Lukeman – The First Five Pages, A Dash of Style, and The Plot Thickens.  Since I’ve begun playing around with omniscient POV I’ve picked up a great book by Alicia Rasley, The Power of Point of View. 

This week in my current work in progress, There’s No Goodbye, (magical florist must save the doomed soul of her dead husband), I’m using a device that’s pretty obscure called Chiasmus.  Basically, it’s from the Greek letter Chi and is represented by an X.  The concept when used thematically is that the low are brought high and the high are brought low – Chiasmus figured prominently in The Scarlet Letter.  Chiasmus, when used as a sentence-level device, is the reversing of grammatical structure in a sentence to create an ABBA pattern.  In the chapter I’m working on Chiasmus is both the thematic structure – one of the main characters is revealed as having fallen upon very hard times from a former position of strength while my main character, the florist Marchand Boniquet, has risen to a position of power.  The Chiasmus is triggered by searchlights over a theatre making a big X in the sky.  On a sentence level at least one sentence in each paragraph of the opening scene is written in the criss-cross world of Chiasmus.  This is the kind of thing I get off on.  Here’s an example:

 She felt the hidden water below her feet rise, the tempest growing as the rain moved against her.  As above, below also.

Here’s an example from an official source:

• “By day the frolic, and the dance by night“. Samuel Johnson The Vanity of Human Wishes.

(prepositional phrases and gerunds in reverse order)

Aside from all the literary gobbledygook I adore, my biggest realization about craft came from the Malcolm Gladwell book, Outliers.  His theory is that in order to be an expert at something you must spend 10,000 hours working at it.  If I were to add up all the time spent in the MFA program and writing manuals and manuscripts I would have to say I’m only about 500 hours away.  So, there’s my goal for the remainder of this year!  How many hours do you have left?