All of us, We are Writers

We — yes we. all of us, we are writers. 

Not with pen, nor keypad, do we write. No. But by tongue — between the partition of hello and goodbye. It begins at the onset of a first meeting. Hands shake and names are given. One probes further and the other writes — what I mean to say is that the other narrates, sculpts for his inquirer his own character. Out of a barrage of facets that make up your life experience, you carve out a persona that stands apart from the kind of indeterminable creature you have been set out to be, by the uninformed acquaintance. You, in essence, try to fit the three-part, million word trilogy into a children's storybook. With pictures. We all do it. Me? Yes, I write too. 

"Rachel," I say, "Rachel Lowry"

"How do I keep myself busy? Why, I would say my busyness keeps me, rather than the other way around." Yada yada yada.

For some, we give trinkets, "I have never had a cavity." For others, we supply the given, "I studied at the Y. English. Yes, I write." For most, I avert the usual. "Never mind how old I am." For many, I digress. "I find poppy seeds a strange thing to be considered eatable." For the few, I implode with some exciting something to say. "I haven't given up on the idea of living in New York yet. Maybe in the fall." And my acquaintance does the same. 

I, like you, have lived long enough to have one hell of a good story or two to tell. And here we sit before one another, talking of ghost towns and New York in the fall. Yet for most, we keep our lips pressed before divulging those deep wells of what give us our drive. We hold this portion of ourselves for later.

But for a few. For them, we share because we sense they need it more than we do. Because sometimes, our agenda is irrelevant and these experiences are not ours to hoard. And so I string my story and you string yours.

And then there's always the fear that our tale will be inaccurate, that our telling could never really show the way a moment still trembles beneath the surface of our skin some ten years later. How i wish this falling short of truly knowing somebody weren't the ever-present reality.

But then, how beautiful is the attempt to share this round thing we call life with the other. As I eagerly wait with my lips parted at the edge of my tea cup, to be given a trinket or two from a new acquaintance across the table, as if the sharing of it were the whole of our being.

© 2012 by Rachel Lowry. All rights reserved. {photo via}

Book Review: Tess of the D'urbervilles

Reading Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'urbervilles has been endearing and captivating in its heart-wrenching fatalism. The novel, which is now considered a major nineteenth-century English novel, tells the tale of a young Tess D'urberville, in an impoverished rural England during the Depression in the 1870s. Her yearning to achieve status will lead to questions of what is entailed in purity and innocence. 

Hardy's panorama views of the Blackmore Vales of the English Countryside are most arresting, as is our heroine's tenacity, in her unwarranted desperation. How daunting are those dimly-fixed suggestions that give the reader pause to wonder if  existence itself can be nothing more than a roll of the dice.

The narrator asks, "But, might some say, where was Tess's guardian angel? Where was the Providence of her simple faith? Perhaps, like that other god of whom the ironical Tishbite spoke, he was talking, or he was pursuing, or he was in a journey, or he was sleeping and not to be awakened."

I yearned to run to her side, to answer as her guardian angel, if none she had. How I wondered how Hardy could do it, could commit the most sadistic, the most unprincipled of acts in permanent ink. What a beautiful, beautiful tragedy.

@ 2012 by Rachel Lowry. All Rights Reserved

Those of the Wing'd Capacity

It was morning, but the sky was silenced, still, by the dominance of night. She knew well the pull of gravity, the weight of the stars beyond the horizon. But she also remembered dawn.

She slipped her feet from her shoes, slowly placing her toes upon the thin, white sheet of frost that blanketed the dark underlying pavement. Toe, then ball, then heel. She drew them, pointedly, across the   ground, one step, two step, three step. Slowly, the arms around her cold body came to her sides, fingers parting in sudden tremor. The tight knot above her head came loose, locks of tresses enveloping her shoulders. The fabric that once clung to her core blew against her, rising and falling with the heaving in and out of her chest.

And she danced until her heart thundered from within; until her eyes need not remain open; until the ground ceased to meet her feet and the birds be her sole companions.

@ 2011 by Rachel Lowry. All Rights Reserved {photos via vi.sualize.us}

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

While aimlessly and disinterestedly perusing the dusty corner of the abandoned book section, I found an old anthology of american short stories. And it came home with me. I found myself between the covers for the rest of the evening with this book, and after a number of superb stories, I found a little gem, written by James Thurber, which required three, four, perhaps five re-reads. I so love the charm by which Thurber reminds us that the most ordinary of people may or may not be living secret lives of the most daring of exploits. 

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber 

"WE'RE going through!" The Commander's voice was like thin ice breaking. He wore his full-dress uniform, with the heavily braided white cap pulled down rakishly over one cold gray eye. "We can't make it, sir. It's spoiling for a hurricane, if you ask me." "I'm not asking you, Lieutenant Berg," said the Commander. "Throw on the power lights! Rev her up to 8500! We're going through!" The pounding of the cylinders increased: ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. The Commander stared at the ice forming on the pilot window. He walked over and twisted a row of complicated dials. "Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!" he shouted. "Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!" repeated Lieutenant Berg. "Full strength in No. 3 turret!" shouted the Commander. "Full strength in No. 3 turret!" The crew, bending to their various tasks in the huge, hurtling eight-engined Navy hydroplane, looked at each other and grinned. "The Old Man'll get us through," they said to one another. "The Old Man ain't afraid of hell!" . . .

"Not so fast! You're driving too fast!" said Mrs. Mitty. "What are you driving so fast for?"

"Hmm?" said Walter Mitty. He looked at his wife, in the seat beside him, with shocked astonishment. She seemed grossly unfamiliar, like a strange woman who had yelled at him in a crowd. "You were up to fifty-five," she said. "You know I don't like to go more than forty. You were up to fifty-five." Walter Mitty drove on toward Waterbury in silence, the roaring of the SN202 through the worst storm in twenty years of Navy flying fading in the remote, intimate airways of his mind. "You're tensed up again," said Mrs. Mitty. "It's one of your days. I wish you'd let Dr. Renshaw look you over."

Walter Mitty stopped the car in front of the building where his wife went to have her hair done. "Remember to get those overshoes while I'm having my hair done," she said. "I don't need overshoes," said Mitty. She put her mirror back into her bag. "We've been all through that," she said, getting out of the car. "You're not a young man any longer." He raced the engine a little. "Why don't you wear your gloves? Have you lost your gloves?" Walter Mitty reached in a pocket and brought out the gloves. He put them on, but after she had turned and gone into the building and he had driven on to a red light, he took them off again. "Pick it up, brother!" snapped a cop as the light changed, and Mitty hastily pulled on his gloves and lurched ahead. He drove around the streets aimlessly for a time, and then he drove past the hospital on his way to the parking lot.

. . . "It's the millionaire banker, Wellington McMillan," said the pretty nurse. "Yes?" said Walter Mitty, removing his gloves slowly. "Who has the case?" "Dr. Renshaw and Dr. Benbow, but there are two specialists here, Dr. Remington from New York and Dr. Pritchard-Mitford from London. He flew over." A door opened down a long, cool corridor and Dr. Renshaw came out. He looked distraught and haggard. "Hello, Mitty," he said. `'We're having the devil's own time with McMillan, the millionaire banker and close personal friend of Roosevelt. Obstreosis of the ductal tract. Tertiary. Wish you'd take a look at him." "Glad to," said Mitty.

In the operating room there were whispered introductions: "Dr. Remington, Dr. Mitty. Dr. Pritchard-Mitford, Dr. Mitty." "I've read your book on streptothricosis," said Pritchard-Mitford, shaking hands. "A brilliant performance, sir." "Thank you," said Walter Mitty. "Didn't know you were in the States, Mitty," grumbled Remington. "Coals to Newcastle, bringing Mitford and me up here for a tertiary." "You are very kind," said Mitty. A huge, complicated machine, connected to the operating table, with many tubes and wires, began at this moment to go pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. "The new anesthetizer is giving away!" shouted an intern. "There is no one in the East who knows how to fix it!" "Quiet, man!" said Mitty, in a low, cool voice. He sprang to the machine, which was now going pocketa-pocketa-queep-pocketa-queep . He began fingering delicately a row of glistening dials. "Give me a fountain pen!" he snapped. Someone handed him a fountain pen. He pulled a faulty piston out of the machine and inserted the pen in its place. "That will hold for ten minutes," he said. "Get on with the operation. A nurse hurried over and whispered to Renshaw, and Mitty saw the man turn pale. "Coreopsis has set in," said Renshaw nervously. "If you would take over, Mitty?" Mitty looked at him and at the craven figure of Benbow, who drank, and at the grave, uncertain faces of the two great specialists. "If you wish," he said. They slipped a white gown on him, he adjusted a mask and drew on thin gloves; nurses handed him shining . . .

"Back it up, Mac!! Look out for that Buick!" Walter Mitty jammed on the brakes. "Wrong lane, Mac," said the parking-lot attendant, looking at Mitty closely. "Gee. Yeh," muttered Mitty. He began cautiously to back out of the lane marked "Exit Only." "Leave her sit there," said the attendant. "I'll put her away." Mitty got out of the car. "Hey, better leave the key." "Oh," said Mitty, handing the man the ignition key. The attendant vaulted into the car, backed it up with insolent skill, and put it where it belonged.

They're so damn cocky, thought Walter Mitty, walking along Main Street; they think they know everything. Once he had tried to take his chains off, outside New Milford, and he had got them wound around the axles. A man had had to come out in a wrecking car and unwind them, a young, grinning garageman. Since then Mrs. Mitty always made him drive to a garage to have the chains taken off. The next time, he thought, I'll wear my right arm in a sling; they won't grin at me then. I'll have my right arm in a sling and they'll see I couldn't possibly take the chains off myself. He kicked at the slush on the sidewalk. "Overshoes," he said to himself, and he began looking for a shoe store.

When he came out into the street again, with the overshoes in a box under his arm, Walter Mitty began to wonder what the other thing was his wife had told him to get. She had told him, twice before they set out from their house for Waterbury. In a way he hated these weekly trips to town--he was always getting something wrong. Kleenex, he thought, Squibb's, razor blades? No. Tooth paste, toothbrush, bicarbonate, Carborundum, initiative and referendum? He gave it up. But she would remember it. "Where's the what's-its- name?" she would ask. "Don't tell me you forgot the what's-its-name." A newsboy went by shouting something about the Waterbury trial.

. . . "Perhaps this will refresh your memory." The District Attorney suddenly thrust a heavy automatic at the quiet figure on the witness stand. "Have you ever seen this before?'' Walter Mitty took the gun and examined it expertly. "This is my Webley-Vickers 50.80," ho said calmly. An excited buzz ran around the courtroom. The Judge rapped for order. "You are a crack shot with any sort of firearms, I believe?" said the District Attorney, insinuatingly. "Objection!" shouted Mitty's attorney. "We have shown that the defendant could not have fired the shot. We have shown that he wore his right arm in a sling on the night of the fourteenth of July." Walter Mitty raised his hand briefly and the bickering attorneys were stilled. "With any known make of gun," he said evenly, "I could have killed Gregory Fitzhurst at three hundred feet with my left hand." Pandemonium broke loose in the courtroom. A woman's scream rose above the bedlam and suddenly a lovely, dark-haired girl was in Walter Mitty's arms. The District Attorney struck at her savagely. Without rising from his chair, Mitty let the man have it on the point of the chin. "You miserable cur!" . . .

"Puppy biscuit," said Walter Mitty. He stopped walking and the buildings of Waterbury rose up out of the misty courtroom and surrounded him again. A woman who was passing laughed. "He said 'Puppy biscuit,'" she said to her companion. "That man said 'Puppy biscuit' to himself." Walter Mitty hurried on. He went into an A. P., not the first one he came to but a smaller one farther up the street. "I want some biscuit for small, young dogs," he said to the clerk. "Any special brand, sir?" The greatest pistol shot in the world thought a moment. "It says 'Puppies Bark for It' on the box," said Walter Mitty.

His wife would be through at the hairdresser's in fifteen minutes' Mitty saw in looking at his watch, unless they had trouble drying it; sometimes they had trouble drying it. She didn't like to get to the hotel first, she would want him to be there waiting for her as usual. He found a big leather chair in the lobby, facing a window, and he put the overshoes and the puppy biscuit on the floor beside it. He picked up an old copy of Liberty and sank down into the chair. "Can Germany Conquer the World Through the Air?" Walter Mitty looked at the pictures of bombing planes and of ruined streets.

. . . "The cannonading has got the wind up in young Raleigh, sir," said the sergeant. Captain Mitty looked up at him through tousled hair. "Get him to bed," he said wearily, "with the others. I'll fly alone." "But you can't, sir," said the sergeant anxiously. "It takes two men to handle that bomber and the Archies are pounding hell out of the air. Von Richtman's circus is between here and Saulier." "Somebody's got to get that ammunition dump," said Mitty. "I'm going over. Spot of brandy?" He poured a drink for the sergeant and one for himself. War thundered and whined around the dugout and battered at the door. There was a rending of wood and splinters flew through the room. "A bit of a near thing," said Captain Mitty carelessly. 'The box barrage is closing in," said the sergeant. "We only live once, Sergeant," said Mitty, with his faint, fleeting smile. "Or do we?" He poured another brandy and tossed it off. "I never see a man could hold his brandy like you, sir," said the sergeant. "Begging your pardon, sir." Captain Mitty stood up and strapped on his huge Webley-Vickers automatic. "It's forty kilometers through hell, sir," said the sergeant. Mitty finished one last brandy. "After all," he said softly, "what isn't?" The pounding of the cannon increased; there was the rat-tat-tatting of machine guns, and from somewhere came the menacing pocketa-pocketa-pocketa of the new flame-throwers. Walter Mitty walked to the door of the dugout humming "Aupres de Ma Blonde." He turned and waved to the sergeant. "Cheerio!" he said. . . .

Something struck his shoulder. "I've been looking all over this hotel for you," said Mrs. Mitty. "Why do you have to hide in this old chair? How did you expect me to find you?" "Things close in," said Walter Mitty vaguely. "What?" Mrs. Mitty said. "Did you get the what's-its-name? The puppy biscuit? What's in that box?" "Overshoes," said Mitty. "Couldn't you have put them on in the store?" 'I was thinking," said Walter Mitty. "Does it ever occur to you that I am sometimes thinking?" She looked at him. "I'm going to take your temperature when I get you home," she said.

They went out through the revolving doors that made a faintly derisive whistling sound when you pushed them. It was two blocks to the parking lot. At the drugstore on the corner she said, "Wait here for me. I forgot something. I won't be a minute." She was more than a minute. Walter Mitty lighted a cigarette. It began to rain, rain with sleet in it. He stood up against the wall of the drugstore, smoking. . . . He put his shoulders back and his heels together. "To hell with the handkerchief," said Waker Mitty scornfully. He took one last drag on his cigarette and snapped it away. Then, with that faint, fleeting smile playing about his lips, he faced the firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty the Undefeated, inscrutable to the last. 

@ 2011 by Rachel Lowry. All Rights Reserved {photos via vi.sualize.us}

we're all mad here

Lewis Carroll’s Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There allows us to see the world through the eyes of young Alice – a nonsensical perspective in which we see the absurdities and limitations that culture and language have upon understanding our reality. Shayla S.'s blog, Serendip, plays with this idea in an intriguing way:

Ironically, Alice's Wonderland is nonsensically logical. In Shayla's words, “to prove something is true, the contrary must first be disproven. In the context of nonsense; to show that something is logical, the opposite must be shown to be illogical. Carroll confuses this notion primarily through his word and logic play, illustrating the subjectivity of both truth and reality.” (Shayna S.).

When Alice is drowning in her own tears, she banters with the mouse:

"I had not!" cried the Mouse, sharply and very angrily.

"A knot!" said Alice, always ready to make herself useful, and looking anxiously

about her.

"Oh, do let me help undo it!"

"I shall do nothing of the sort," said the Mouse, getting up and walking away.

"You insult me by talking such nonsense!"

What, really, is nonsensical about this situation? Is it the fact that Alice mis-contextualizes the meaning of certain homophones, or is it the absurdity of a mouse her size telling her to stop doing so?

In her encounter with Humpty Dumpty, Alice questions word meaning:

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone,

"it means just what I choose it to mean-neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master-that's all."

“Why should Alice reject Humpty Dumpty's authority to make up meanings whenever he desires? There is an established, official rulebook on the definitions of words (at least those that have been agreed upon to be recognized as words). To think that anyone can assign new and multiple meanings to words is illogical because we have the conception that she is unauthorized to do so. But who is authorized to write the dictionary? Oxford? Who is the (wo)man (or men or women or people) behind the curtain? Definitions of words are not entities in which we can rely on not to change. Many words completely transform from the original meaning into something entirely different. Here the nonsense of making a word be whatever one chooses lies within the notion that Alice and the reader believe language and grammar are fixed systems. Alice, like the reader, must draw herself away from her "normal" Victorian expectations and learn to accept the absurd as the new norm” (Shayla S.).

“For us, recognizing nonsense is an important part in our construction of our reality. Understanding what something is not alternatively adds to the understanding of what something is. It allows one to question the solidity of our definitions of things,of ourselves, and of the reliability of experience as a foundation of the sensible” (Shayla S.).

Through Alice’s changing assumptions, the reader is led to wonder, how fluid is our reality?

"She ate a little bit, and said anxiously to herself "Which way? Which way?" holding her hand on the top of her head to feel which way it was growing, and she was quite surprised to find that she remained the same size: to be sure, this is what generally happens when one eats cake; but Alice had got so much out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way."

As a child, Alice is not yet limited by the dimensions that culture dictates. For Alice, hazy is the line between fact and fiction, between history and fanctasy, between rationality and imagination. For Alice, words can mean whatsoever the user chooses them to men, an idea contrary to traditional education. There lies within such an idea something extremely liberating-something I fear we lose grasp of as we grow up. In a way, I'm jealous of Alice. What I wouldn't give to go behind those bright blue eyes for a moment, to see the world in absolute wonder and curiosity, to be liberated from the confinement that the human-construction of words so often have upon our understanding and thought-process. In a very peculiar way, nonsense tells us more about ourselves than sense ever could.

@ 2012 by Rachel Lowry. All Rights Reserved.