What We Believe

I recently discovered that I began "writing" at the age of two, when my father would sit, with me at his elbow, each week to write my mother a letter. Apparently, to distract me from distracting him, he would set me up with pencil and paper of my own. To this day I love a good writing instrument and the paper I write on has to have a certain texture and sound. See, shortly after my second birthday, I do mean shortly because the first letter I have written by a family friend to my mother at a New York address is dated October 31st, nearly two months after my 2nd birthday and written exactly on hers, legend has it she left Jamaica to pursue an education... I inherited this and other letters the week after my father died which was two years and two months after she died. Odd that it's only now, editing this, that I notice that symmetry. In any case, the night before I was to return to Vegas from my father's memorial service, my little sister pushed a familiar and well-worn box of stationery across her dining table to me. She said simply, "take these, you're the writer". Then she went upstairs to bed leaving me there with what felt every bit like the unexploded munition that it was. There were a total of 44 letters in that box. Forty were from our father, two from her mother (our Grand), one from a family friend, and another from one of our mother's school-to-work friends. It took 13 months and NaNoWriMo to open the box again after opening it that night only to have one envelope disintegrate in my fingers and discharge its contents - a "letter" from me and a drawing from our older sister. Even as I noted the signature on my letter, your loving daughter, Kay, the only portion assisted by our maiden aunt, (also the only potion intelligible), I thought to myself, this explains a lot. Anal, doormat, and arrogant are among the nicer names I've been called over the years which I share here to say, it's the words we believe and that we tell ourselves that matter most. I may be any and all of those by turns, but I teach writing /English / literature, whatever the way I do on purpose and to alleviate the feeling of being trapped in a history beyond my control. For me, the act of writing is a liberatory practice - one that I feel everyone should engage daily if not more often. If you come to agree with me, you will do it beyond the time it is required for your grade. The more we write, the chances improve that the record about us will be amplified with our own voices and not just the fragments and figments others entertain about us. I've got more to say about this and a few other topics of interest, at least to me, but now it's your turn. In 500 words, preferably less, answer the following questions: Why do you write? Is there any corrective testimony you'd like to offer to set the record straight? What impact has others' writing (or NOT writing) had on you and or your life as you know it? And how might we make this course, this summer about you, about us, if we cared enough about the details to make it so?

"Letter writing is the only device combining solitude with good company." ~ Lord Byron