Stickiness – I want to stick with you

Have you ever referred to one of your close friends as sticky?  Kathy is one of my stickiest friends.  She has stuck with me through thick and thin.  When others questioned my motives, she had my back.  When I stood my ground and fired five of the teachers who taught at my yoga studio, she never asked why.  Two weeks ago, when I struggled with the question of alcoholism.   Am I an alcoholic?  Am I the living legacy of my mother?  She texted me every day.  “Been reading your blog.  Stay strong.  I love you.  As they say, one day at a time.  Sending love and healing energy your way.  You’re on my mind and wanted you to know I’m here for you in any way I can.  Good for you.  You deserve a great day.”  Now that is a sticky friend.  No judgement, no shame, no doubt, just love and support.

Although stickiness is not a quality you might strive to achieve, it embodies all that is good in life.  Honey is sticky.  Who does not like honey?  Adhesives are sticky.  They hold things together.  What would we do without Elmer’s glue, super glue, hot glue, wood glue, rubber cement, glue guns, glue sticks and epoxy.

How would we attach a stamp to an envelope?  How would we keep wrapping paper on the presents we give to our loved ones at holiday time?  Without stickiness, super models would have to forgo fake eye lashes and nails, children would not have stickers to play with and I would never have chewed bubble gum, which by the way, rotted my teeth.  And  what about gummy bears?  Now there is a sticky business that is bad for the teeth.

If something is worthwhile, if it has purpose and meaning, if it is universal, like a moral, a folk-tale, an urban legend, it will stick.  Good ideas stick.  Inventions that make life easier stick with us.  What was a kleenex called before it was a Kleenex?  Kimberly Clark trademarked the name Kleenex for its paper handkerchiefs in 1930.  Now we call every facial tissue, Kleenex.  The name stuck.  Copy machines were once just that. Now we know them as Xerox machines.  Apple was Steve Job’s favorite fruit.  There are more sticky brand names that are now nouns:  Alka Seltzer, Frisbee, YoYo, Escalator, Chapstick, Ping pong, Styrofoam, Scotch Tape, and my all time favorite, Hoola-hoop.

As a writer, I want to be sticky.  I want my ideas, my thoughts, my words, my sentences, my stories to stick with you.  I want them to be unique and universal.  I want my name to be bandied about like, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Woolf, Henry Miller, Toni Morrison,Maya Angelou,  Flannery O’Conner, and Margaret Atwood.  These are not just words,  These names mean “writers.”  Do I want to be famous?  No. I want to be good, really good at what I do.  I want to challenge, awaken, enliven and engage my reader.  I will keep writing, day after day, month after month, year after year, until I learn how to be sticky.

Write in Spite…and to spite

I write in spite of the fact that I sometimes have no idea what will appear on the page.  I write in spite of the fear of exposure, rejection, judgement and, worst of all, being ignored.  I write in spite of knowing that what I have to say may mean nothing to you or anyone else. I write in spite…to spite those who do not want me to speak; to annoy those who want to protect the status quo; who think of change as a threat to be defended against.  I write in spite of being uncomfortable with the void I see lying at the end of each and every sentence.  What will come next?  Will it be something profound, funny, uplifting, meaningful, or revelatory, or will what I say be vapid, repugnant,and glaringly  over modified?  Does it really matter?

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you.”  Maya Angelou.

“You can fix anything but a blank page.”  Nora Roberts

In spite of being told that I am self-absorbed, mean, thoughtless, and uncaring, I continue to write.  I write in spite of others anger and resentment.  I write simply to please myself; for the sheer joy of seeing the cursor move across the page.  Writing is the beating of my heart.  It is my inhalation and exhalation, the goose bumps of wonder, my hair follicles standing on end, my son’s sweet kiss, my grand daughter’s smile, the sun rising and setting.  Writing is birth and death with nothing in between.  It is the void that threatens to   swallow me up and the monster waiting to devour me.

If I write about my mother, I despair, remembering  her failures and mine.  If I write about my hopes and dreams, I risk being superfluous.  When I write, into my brokeness, my depression, my distant but memorable suicidal thoughts, I tend to get maudlin.  So be it.

I write in spite of spewing, like a volcano, red anger across the pages.  I often want to lash out, to destroy those for whom $20,000,000 is not enough: those who will forever want more and will kill to get it.  I do not understand people who want to deny others the right to vote.  And who could possibly be against gun control.  Sure, why not give every one an AK-57.  Let’s just fight it out in the streets. Who cares if our children become murderers?  I do.  And why do old people who no longer drive have to present photo IDs to vote.  Really?

In Arizona, which passed one of the nation’s toughest anti-immigration laws, Gov. Jan Brewer signed an executive order Wednesday directing state agencies to deny driver’s licenses and other public benefits to illegal immigrants who obtain work authorizations under a new federal program.  So she is denying immigrants, who have been in the U.S. and who now have legal status, public benefits to which they are entitled.  Go Jan.  I want to be just like you when I grow up.  NOT!

I want to cry out and be heard.  “Stop manipulating the environment.  What we do in the name of good does harm.”  We stopped natural forest fires and now we have this “tree epidemic” which stems from Forest Service policy dating back to the early 1900s of aggressively fighting all forest fires. But regular, small fires clean out dead wood, grasses and low brush — and if fires are quashed, the forest just grows into fuel. And that’s why we see more of these mega-conflagrations today.

Intense forest fires have been raging across the western United States this summer. So far this year, nearly 43,000 wildfires have torched almost 7 million acres of land.  NPR Science correspondent, Christopher Joyce, and photographer, David Gilkey, report that the forests of the American Southwest have become so overgrown they’re essentially tinderboxes just waiting for a spark.  Why do we continue to interfere and try to control Mother Nature?  she knows best.

“If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don’t write, because our culture has no use for it.”  Anais Nin

Need I say more?  Yes and I will keep saying more and more.  Hope you are listening.