Blink of a word

Meryl Streep can convey more in the flicker of an eyelid or the twitch of her lip than most writers can in pages and pages of prose.
I am not sure how she does that.

Talent, genius, hours in front of a mirror. I am not sure.

But she knows how to use her medium – film – to its advantage. Close ups of her face and her (natural, instinctual, intentional?) minimal changes of expression can convey more than anything I have ever seen.

I wish that I could write more like Meryl Streep uses her face to convey emotion, plot, history, life.

I wish I could write more like Sarah McLachlan uses her voice to convey emotion, history, life.

I wish I could write more like Vincent Van Gogh painted the Plains of Auver. I love the three-dimensionality of his paint upon the canvas and the fact that he left blank spots.

I am not sure that written words can do this. It may well be a limit of the medium.

A limit of my talent, surely. But also perhaps a limit of the medium as well.

What works so well in a movie close up is lost on the vastness of the stage. Some actors can master both. Some cannot.

What works so well in a song is lost in simply spoken dialogue. Some can master both. Some cannot.

What works so well in poetry is lost in the novel. Some – a few – can master both. Some cannot.

It has come to my attention that I am physically incapable of writing short emails. IM and text messaging (beyond the simple technical aspects of poking in letters on my teeny tiny cell phone keypad) are hard for me to master.

While I feel the short story is more of my natural pace than the novel, the short email is almost beyond my capabilities. I mean, yes, sure, I can do it.

If I force myself.

And am self-conscious.

And not myself.

Some people complain that my emails are too long. Others don’t say anything, but I can tell they are put off by my verbosity. Still others probably don’t even bother to read my emails. If I can’t write everything I need to say in my subject line, they are ready to move on.

If I cannot say everything that needs to be said in about two or three terse, non-grammatical sentences full of quaint codes and shorthand, then clearly there must be something wrong with me. And what I have to say is most certainly not worth listening to.

Or something.

I think of myself as a writer.

As in someone who is compelled to write.

To put pen to paper or words upon a screen.

Constantly. All the time.

It is almost a sickness. A compulsion.

It is who I am. What I do.

The other day a friend of mine called me a storyteller.

Wow.

No one ever called me that before.

She thought I felt a need to capture life in stories. She didn’t say that. She simply called me a storyteller.

She only needed one word.

I, on the other hand, need more than that.

Whole sentences.

Paragraphs.

Pages even.

To express myself.

I love the fact that the English language has more words than any other language. That we have more options and ways of expressing ourselves than anyone else on the planet. Not that I think of it as a competition. But rather that those of us who speak and write in English simply have a larger chest of treasures to choose from.

That means we should choose wisely.

We get to choose.

We have the privilege of choosing and because of that we should use that privilege judiciously. If we spoke certain other languages, we might have no choice at all. There might be only one word. Or no words. To convey what we mean.

Yes, I can write haikus.

And minimalist prose.

But my soul craves narrative, description, dialogue.

Not like I am Charles Dickens getting paid by the word or anything. I am paid nothing. And most of what I write is never read by anyone.

I don’t write because I want to be read, necessarily. I write because I have to.

I am very conscious of the words I use and the way I craft my sentences. I edit and re-edit. Blog posts. Emails even. Stories most definitely.

I know some of my email readers would be incredulous. How could that impossibly lengthy email have been edited?

Geesh!

Facts. Just the facts. We don’t want thoughts, emotions, fears.

I should convey my thoughts in extremely brief symbols. A hieroglyph might be helpful.

If I could capture the twitch of Meryl Streep’s eyebrow to convey everything I wanted to say, I would.

But I can’t.

I need words.

Lots of them.

I like description.

Narrative.

Witty dialogue.

Stories run through my veins. They pop out of my ears. Leak out of my pores. Seep out of my fingertips and into emails, blog posts, countless notebooks, Word documents. You name it.

I think about things like time. And how there are the same number of seconds in each and every day. But it doesn’t seem like that. Some days, some weeks are interminable. Like the movie Groundhog Day. Others whiz by, a blur.

I cannot believe it is almost a week now since I returned from vacation. This week, when you think about it, was no longer or shorter than last week. But it seems so different. On the one hand, each day seems so long. On the other, the entire week is almost gone.

Like sand through an hourglass, days of our lives….

I think about things like Rice-a-Roni. The San Francisco treat. There was an amazing piece on NPR this morning about the history of Rice-a-Roni. About how a young couple needed a place to live in San Francisco right after the end of WWII. Housing was short, because there were all of these servicemen returning from the war. The couple ended up renting a room from an elderly widow who lived in a small apartment. She had fled the Turkish genocide of Armenians in 1915, during the last great war. Her two young children had been lost in the chaos. Pregnant with a third child, she had wandered for months through the wilderness with other refugees, eventually ending up in Syria. Somehow she made it to America. She loved to cook, even in the cramped quarters of her small apartment. One of her specialties was rice pilaf, which included vermicelli noodles chopped up into itty bitty pieces. The young American wife learned how to make this rice pilaf, and her husband, who worked for a pasta company, thought it would make a great side dish in a box. A novelty in the late 40s, early 50s. And hence Rice-a-Roni was born.

I think about my children. Who are not home yet. Whom I miss terribly. They will be coming back this weekend.

I think about friends who are having health crises. Friends who are well. Friends who are making huge changes in their lives. Friends who are making no changes in their lives. My mother’s friend who passed away on Tuesday night.

I think about all sorts of things. Books I have read. The nightly news. Conversations I have overheard. Things I need to do. The color of the clouds in the sky. Traffic. The squabbling of political candidates. Bills I need to pay. What I am going to make for dinner tomorrow night. Global warming. And how obscene it is that Exxon/Mobile had the largest profits ever.

Meryl Streep would be able to convey all of this with a quiver of one eyelash. I, alas, must wrestle with words. And the fact that words are inadequate. Or that I am inadequate at using words to convey what Meryl Streep could convey with the quiver of one eyelash.

Sigh.

At least I have many, many words to choose from….