Story Time Approaches!
Sometimes, I fear I might develop a dependency on brain-draining/blogging before I write properly. I don't really think it's the case, but warmups are ideal when possible.
I don't know what it is. I think I have a normal metabolism, a normal body temperature. At Starbucks, however, I always feel refrigerated. Sometimes, I don't even listen to music; I just use my headphones as earmuffs to insulate just a little bit more warmth.
There's a man over there missing about half of his forearm. I want to ask him what his story is — not to be offensive, not to be a creeper, or anything like that. I just wonder what it's like to live with one hand. I want to know. I want to know everyone's story of course, but, every now and then, there's a glimpse, a person, a comment that makes me set aside my general curiosity and pointedly wonder.
Stephen King (and many other writers and readers) recommends against adverbs. I get the notion: if you couldn't say it with a verb, subject, and some adjectives, you're not saying it right (or something along those lines). Still, you can't always have time for bolts and brackets. Sometimes, you have to use duct tape.
DANG IT
There's a father with his daughter.
Interjection: I accidentally started the word "daughter" as "dag," and it autocorrected to "daguerreotype"!
Anyway, there's a dad with his daguerreotype, and he's just sitting there waiting for coffee or something, tickling her, and she's giggling loud like she's wild and free, and he's giggling with her, and she drops his phone, and he says "be careful!" but he's mostly laughing.
Son of a rip-snorting saucer-blanket.
In the words of Juba, "Not yet. Not yet."
I have too many things to do before then anyway, but there is the eternal tension of waiting — no matter how short or how long. It's like a magnetic pull: close enough to feel it but far enough away for it to be tension but not connection. Buggers on a slithery dog.
In other news, I'm gonna do Story Time!! What what! I hope I'm like a kind of Mr. Rogers: charming and inviting and soothing. It'll be my stories of course, so the themes will vary, but I hope they draw. I hope they invite.
Have you ever gotten to a point in a book where it tells you to do something like make a list or write a letter or clean out a closet or any of a hundred tasks? You love the book, and you want to keep reading, but, because you love the book so much, it would be a dishonor not to follow its directions. So you wait because you don't have the time just yet to devote yourself to the task (a 5- or 6-page story via Stephen King's advice in my case). And the book waits. And you miss it.
And then some, my friends. And then some.
I don't know what it is. I think I have a normal metabolism, a normal body temperature. At Starbucks, however, I always feel refrigerated. Sometimes, I don't even listen to music; I just use my headphones as earmuffs to insulate just a little bit more warmth.
There's a man over there missing about half of his forearm. I want to ask him what his story is — not to be offensive, not to be a creeper, or anything like that. I just wonder what it's like to live with one hand. I want to know. I want to know everyone's story of course, but, every now and then, there's a glimpse, a person, a comment that makes me set aside my general curiosity and pointedly wonder.
Stephen King (and many other writers and readers) recommends against adverbs. I get the notion: if you couldn't say it with a verb, subject, and some adjectives, you're not saying it right (or something along those lines). Still, you can't always have time for bolts and brackets. Sometimes, you have to use duct tape.
DANG IT
There's a father with his daughter.
Interjection: I accidentally started the word "daughter" as "dag," and it autocorrected to "daguerreotype"!
an obsolete photographic process, invented in 1839, in which a picture made on a silver surface sensitized with iodine was developed by exposure to mercury vaporYup. That's exactly what I meant.
Anyway, there's a dad with his daguerreotype, and he's just sitting there waiting for coffee or something, tickling her, and she's giggling loud like she's wild and free, and he's giggling with her, and she drops his phone, and he says "be careful!" but he's mostly laughing.
Son of a rip-snorting saucer-blanket.
In the words of Juba, "Not yet. Not yet."
I have too many things to do before then anyway, but there is the eternal tension of waiting — no matter how short or how long. It's like a magnetic pull: close enough to feel it but far enough away for it to be tension but not connection. Buggers on a slithery dog.
In other news, I'm gonna do Story Time!! What what! I hope I'm like a kind of Mr. Rogers: charming and inviting and soothing. It'll be my stories of course, so the themes will vary, but I hope they draw. I hope they invite.
Have you ever gotten to a point in a book where it tells you to do something like make a list or write a letter or clean out a closet or any of a hundred tasks? You love the book, and you want to keep reading, but, because you love the book so much, it would be a dishonor not to follow its directions. So you wait because you don't have the time just yet to devote yourself to the task (a 5- or 6-page story via Stephen King's advice in my case). And the book waits. And you miss it.
And then some, my friends. And then some.
You invent the best exclamations and substitute expletives!
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the daguerreotype interjection. It made me chuckle.
I think “Story Time with Nathan” will be more inviting than Mr. Rogers. Perhaps I am the only one to feel this way about Mr. Rogers, but I appreciated his show more as an adult than as a child. As a kid, I could never understand why he changed his shoes so often or spoke so slowly; “The Electric Company” was more my speed. I felt that Mr. Rogers was patronizing me (even though that word wasn’t part of my vocabulary yet). It wasn't until my adulthood, after hearing that Mr. Rogers was a Presbyterian minister & a bit about his motivations for the show, that I began to appreciate him. In any case, I’m sure your stories will be both inviting and engaging, and I can’t wait to see the results!
I am curious: when you began this post and/or when you titled it, did you have different layers of stories in mind? It did work out nicely that way. First, story time approaches through the brain-drain process preceding story writing; then, “Story Time with Nathan” is evidently and delightfully moving closer to fruition; story time as the 5- or 6- page “homework” assignment from Stephen King’s book was also described, even if only in a stalled form that hopefully will resume soon; and story time may also be discovered in the personal lives around you: the man with the missing forearm, and the father with his daughter. But the most poignant story is your internal story, the story of the longings triggered by that father/daughter duo at Starbucks. Take heart, my friend: there too, your story time approaches!
Every day brings you closer to your future story of fatherhood, if it be the Lord’s will to bless you in that way (and I do pray that for you). And yet, as your post on “Living in the Tension” pointed out so insightfully, we cannot simply jump from here to there, because we have to be changed through the journey from here to there. I loved your quote from this post in its own right, because it so eloquently speaks to where I’m at in this moment of my own story: “…there is the eternal tension of waiting — no matter how short or how long. It's like a magnetic pull: close enough to feel it but far enough away for it to be tension but not connection.” Oh, how I feel that! But how interesting it is, then, to connect that quote to another quote from your “Living in the Tension” post: “I can live in the tension while at the same time realizing that the moments are more than mere tensions. The moments are events themselves, not merely road-blocks to whatever I'm hoping to achieve.” Now, I do not enjoy the eternal tension of waiting. Not one little bit! But there must be a reason for it.
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ReplyDeleteI do not say this unfeelingly. I, too, have experienced the excruciating longing to become a parent. Both my children were miracle babies. I was married for ten years before my eldest child was born. A major reason was the onset of chronic health issues (that the Lord has since freed me from—thank you, Lord!), which required me to be on heavy-duty medicines that would have caused birth defects if I had tried to become pregnant while taking them. At one point, I was even on a chemotherapy drug. I wanted so badly to become a mother. I tried to wean myself off of the medicine. My little pill-splitter in hand, I went from 2 pills a day, to 1.5, to 1, then 0.75…but inevitably, there would come a time when my symptoms would flare up with such a ferocity that I would be forced to go back on the full dosage of two pills a day and start the weaning process all over again. For years, I persisted in these attempts, without success. One Mother’s Day, when I was 29 years old, the topic came up in conversation and one well-meaning but thoughtless family member said, “Oh, are you still trying to wean yourself off of that medicine? Why don’t you just give up and enjoy being pain-free on the medicine?” I politely excused myself to go to the ladies’ room, where I promptly burst into tears. So I know the excruciating wait. I know the longing. I know the ache.
Of course, in my case, you know there is a “happy ending.” I was blessed to become a mother, and twice! I’ll skip the story of how God began to turn things around—although it’s another beloved story of His power and I love to tell that story too when there’s time! In any case, by the next Mother’s Day, I carried in my womb my precious gift from God. I loved every moment of pregnancy, even the nausea, because it told me that my long-awaited son was still growing inside me. And later, when my son was old enough to understand, whenever we would pass Bethel Temple Community Bible Fellowship, I would say to him, “That’s the church that prayed you into existence!” But I remember what it was like before children. And I pray for you, my friend.
May God bless you with a little daguerreotype and a little solenoid as well.
Thank you for sharing your story! It is an honor.
DeleteI am glad God has blessed you with your two, charming kids!
"Solenoid" was hilarious!