Guest Post, Gregory Wolos: Rosebudding

Be warned: if you haven’t seen Orson Welles’ classic 1941 film Citizen Kane, spoilers follow! This post takes for granted knowledge of the mystery at the heart of the film, the “last word” that gives Citizen Kane its narrative drive, a mystery revealed only in its final frames. If you haven’t seen the film, leave now and come back after viewing, or read on and take your chances.

Rosebud still“Rosebud”: Charles Foster Kane’s last word; discovering its meaning is the film’s putative objective. Not until the movie’s final shot do we discover that “Rosebud” is the name printed on Kane’s childhood sled—it’s tossed into a furnace as workmen in a vast storeroom sort through the thousands of material possessions the great man accumulated during his lifetime. Just a sled— but important enough as a symbol of lost innocence to be the final, private word an important public figure leaves behind. The sled burns in a furnace, the irony dramatic as the audience learns what the seekers in the film never do. A close-up on the sled, “Rosebud”: its lacquer bubbles, it blackens, it’s gone, nothing more than smoke pouring from a chimney into the night sky. If we can’t know this great, public figure, who can we know? Who will know us?

In a culture consumed by the new, we too often consider nostalgia to be an indulgence, but don’t we all depend on our own “Rosebuds”? As a writer willing to go to virtually any length to unmask myself to myself, I find that I return again and again to a practice I call “Rosebudding.” Rosebudding is an active process of physical or mental investigation: its elements are rediscovery, intense reflection, recovery, and, ultimately, reconfiguration—the creation of something new out of something old. Through Rosebudding we can work from a physical item or an experience and its associations, eventually loosening the object or memory from itself to get to its essence, which is the living breathing, malleable core of inspiration all writers seek.

Moving—sorting through junk—the detritus of an actual attic or one of the mind: “Rosebud,” again and again. A memory of a moment or a new insight, or Rosebuds in juxtaposition: flint and steel, a spark—a flame rises, and we toss an old sled into the fire. But maybe as we watch the sled burn, we find something new.

A while back, my wife framed my father’s WWII medals with a photograph of him in uniform. This tribute had actually been displayed for a few years before I noticed that mixed in with my father’s purple hearts, campaign ribbons and service medals was an odd pin that portrayed a musical note: somehow included in this honor to my father’s service was a badge awarded to either my son or my daughter for exceptional performance at a New York State Music Association competition—approximately sixty years after the end of WWII. Rosebud on my father’s purple heart—the grenade that exploded behind him in a French foxhole leaving him flat on his belly in a hospital in Europe for half a year, a chunk of shrapnel fused to his backbone; Rosebud on the scar from this wound, freshly exposed every summer to my brothers and me and the rest of the world on crowded Long Island beaches; Rosebud on the letters my parents shared while my father recuperated in Europe and the picture of my mother he tucked into his helmet; Rosebud on my daughter’s trombone playing and my son’s oboe playing and the way their hours of lessons, rehearsals, concerts and competitions helped shape our family’s weekly life for a decade and a half.

Rosebud on Purple Hearts and high school music awards being pinned to the same piece of felt within the same wooden frame under the same pane of glass. Finally, Rosebud on the storage unit where the display sits in a box because there’s no room for it in our present apartment.

Rosebudding. Writers are miners—we pry the ore from deep underground, and process out the precious metals, ever mindful that the dross may be of equal or greater value. Rosebud.

Guest Post, Gregory J. Wolos: Getting in the Mood

I’m starting my writing day, and just about everything is ready: coffee mug and banana are on the table beside me; my notebook’s open to my last feverish jottings; laptop’s aglow— as Hemingway advises, I left off yesterday in mid-sentence. I’ve even drawn the shade to my study window, heeding Annie Dillard’s counsel to avoid a room with a view “so imagination can meet memory in the dark.” But I’m still not ready to begin work—and I’m momentarily paralyzed by the fear that overnight I was transformed from a real writer into a clueless “wanna-be.”

How do I condition myself to begin? If writing were a 5K race, I’d know how to warm up—light jogging, stretches, a few sprints. But once I’ve coerced imagination and memory to join me at my desk, how do I induce them to converse? How do I create the mood for writing?

tumblr_ljtp9b2g5x1qb0wfxo1_400This final stage of my daily writing prep is highly personal—I’m sure all writers have “getting started” tricks of their own, and I offer mine only as an example, not as a prescription. (Can you sense that I’m delaying, tip-toeing around my revelation?) Okay—what I do to get started is dig into my vast store of humiliating moments, pull one out, and relive it until I feel my fingertips quiver and the blood rush to my cheeks. When I’ve exposed myself to myself—when I’m as raw and as honest as I’ll ever get, I’m ready to write.

Kafka wrote that a work of literary art “must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.” My practice, when beginning to write, is to polish to transparency a patch of my own ice-covered sea—and peer down into the dark waters for a familiar flash of scales that makes me squirm. The feeling I’m looking for—the sense of heightened awareness—is something like Rosencrantz’s in Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead when the Player challenges the character to “[t]hink, in your head, now, think of the most . . . private . . . secret . . . intimate thing you have ever done secure in the knowledge of its privacy. . . . Are you thinking of it? Well, I saw you do it!

What I’m describing is the use of my catalogue of personal humiliations as a stimulus, not as a source of subjects. (With the understanding that this catalogue is always available when I am at the subject-searching stage.) And I should make it clear that by “humiliations,” “embarrassments,” and “mortifications,” I’m not talking about revisiting the tragedies we encounter in life. Tragedies are too grand in scope to suit my purpose—I can’t contemplate a personal, historical, or literary tragedy quick enough for a useful warm-up exercise. And the relief that comes from catharsis, the purging of pity and fear that Aristotle claims to be the end result of literary tragedy, is the opposite of what I’m looking for when I’m beginning my writing day. Bring on Rosencrantz’s shock at being caught—at something.

What about happy moments? Not for me—too warm and fuzzy. Like Tolstoy’s happy families, happy times are basically all the same—picture the cast of Disney on Ice skating to canned cartoon melodies, performers and audience blissfully unaware that Mickey and Minnie’s glittering blades threaten to slash through the surface of Kafka’s frozen sea.

Exhuming a past humiliation requires not warmth, but a tolerance for a kind of lonely coldness — I choose a mortifying moment to suspend in memory, and its icicles drip onto my cheeks. When my chill blush seeps down my neck to my shoulders, my shiver tells me I’m prepared for work: by daring to hide from nothing, I’m free to write about anything.

Guest Post, Gregory J. Wolos: One Seuss, Two Seuss—Old Seuss, New(er) Seuss

Gregory J. WolosI came across the word “curmudgeon” the other day and was struck by what a fine alternative it is to “grouch” or “sourpuss.” Wondering where such a word came from, I searched out its etymology in my Oxford English Dictionary. I discovered that, though “curmudgeon” has been in use since the sixteenth century, even the experts can’t trace its derivation. As I sat pondering the mystery of “curmudgeon,” the word’s foggy origin and unique sound reminded me of one of my favorite children’s books, one I used to read long ago to my now-adult children— On Beyond Zebra, by Dr. Seuss. I’ve got my half-century old copy in front of me now, and memories waft from its pages as I turn them.

The ostensible subject of On Beyond Zebra is language—the alphabet, specifically. The story’s narrator explains to his “very young friend who is learning to spell” that the standard alphabet is woefully insufficient: there are marvelous creatures all over the world with bizarre names that require equally bizarre letters. The narrator conjures up these letters and creatures, one after the other, such as YUZZ for Yuzz-a-ma-Tuzz and SNEE for Sneedle (“a terrible kind of ferocious mos-keedle”). The book’s theme, nearly shouted at the reader in rhyme and illustration, is “Be creative!”

On Beyond Zebra is one of several books written and illustrated by Dr. Seuss between 1946 and 1956 that are hymns to the imagination. The pages of On Beyond Zebra, If I Ran the Zoo, If I Ran the Circus, and McElligott’s Pool burst with invention. Dr. Seuss’s pictures and rollicking anapestic tetrameter lead the reader to such thrilling oddities as fish with time-telling faces and tiny creatures that juggle punctuation marks. We find ourselves in such imagination-stretching locales as “Fuzz-a-ma-wuzza-ma-dill” and “the far western part of south-east North Dakota.” These books practice their central ideal: if the reader looks around him or herself with fresh and unbiased eyes, there are amazing things to be seen. Not only do these early works encourage readers to “think outside the box,” they model the process. The narrator of McElligott’s Pool, for example, speculates: “If I wait long enough, if I’m patient and cool,/ Who knows what I’ll catch in McElligott’s Pool?” Then he answers his own question by picturing page after page of spectacular fish eager to take his bait. We readers join him as he populates and names the creatures of his universe— the implication being that we share his god-like power to create.

It seems to me important not to confuse Seuss’s books in praise of creativity with such overtly moralizing works as How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Horton Hatches an Egg. Because books like Grinch or the Horton stories focus on a particular virtue, such as unselfishness or faithfulness, their outcomes are predictable and reductive. Their characters and settings may seem original, but they serve conventional conclusions: good wins; evil, if it isn’t purged, suffers. All of which is fine, if you like sermons.  But what I am suggesting is that the books I’ve grouped with On Beyond Zebra portray a more complex, interesting, and truthful world.

The Zebra books are full of joyous wonder—but they also tell of misery and despair. In On Beyond Zebra the reader experiences creatures like the Quandary, who “worries, far into the night . . . Is his top side his bottom? Or bottom side top?” And there are Thnadners: “and oh, are they sad oh!/ The big one, you see, has the smaller one’s shadow.” Jogg-oons spend their lives “doodling” around “far desert dunes . . . crooning very sad tunes.” These creatures illustrate a fact about the world: sadness is as real as happiness. “Existential angst?” Seuss seems to ask the reader. “Here it is: look and learn.” Horton the elephant won’t always be there to bail you out.

Which brings me to Oh, the Places You’ll Go, Dr. Seuss’s last book. I’m afraid that, measured against his best earlier work, Seuss’s final story must be viewed as a dismal failure. I can hear your outraged voices: “What? The wonderful book I received (or gave) just this year as a graduation present a ‘dismal failure’? Why, the valedictorian quoted it in her commencement address—in fact, the speech itself was delivered in rhyme. It was so creative! And inspiring! What are you—some kind of curmudgeon?”

Call me what you will. But I condemn Oh the Places You’ll Go for the very same reasons that your valedictorian’s principal approved the speech that used it: it’s safe; it’s an agglomeration of platitudes; its messages are as generic as those of a Nike slogan or a Hallmark card. Where are the “Places” in Oh the Places You’ll Go? There are none. The book is nothing more than a series of substance-less slaps on the back, like “Kid, you’ll move mountains!” or “Life’s a great balancing act!” Clichés are fine for T-shirts, coffee mugs, and politicians, but once we’ve heard them, they dissolve like sugar stirred into a glass of water. By contrast, the masterfully imaginative works of the Zebra group take us everywhere: they show, rather than tell. In fact, they don’t just show, they show how.

I’d rather gift my graduates with On Beyond Zebra. Dr. Seuss left the final page of this book blank, except for one last fantastical letter with a question printed under it: What do you think we should call this one, anyhow? The reader has been invited to create both the name of the letter and the whatever-it-is the letter will help spell. Let’s say I call the letter CURM—needed to begin Curmudgeon, of course (the word even the Oxford English Dictionary can’t explain). The picture I draw is a cartoon version of me!  I’m pointing at you, and I seem to be accusing you of something—but what is it? And what are you going to do about it?

Guest Post, Gregory J. Wolos: Dear Story

Gregory WolosDear Story—

It’s over between us. We knew it would come to this, and the news that you’ve been accepted by a new lover is a bittersweet reminder of what we once meant to each other.

It’s with an effort, Story, that I remember our first days together: you showed up at the back doorstep of my awareness—naked, untamed, willful—dangerous! You entered my life as a vague notion, a possibility. How could I resist falling passionately and obsessively in love? For weeks I could think of nothing else but you. Friends knew—they saw it in my inwardly turned eyes, my inattention to their conversation. “Not again,” they warned, shaking their heads. They know me to be a destructive lover.

And they were right—I followed my old patterns. It wasn’t enough to cherish you as you came to me—I had to try to change you. I insisted that you look a certain way: with fierce demagoguery I controlled your language; you spent time only where I allowed; only those individuals I chose for you were permitted inside your paragraphs. Worst of all, nearly every time we met I questioned your size. Trim down, I commanded, tighten up—what will others think? Yes, my lost love, I confess, how you appeared to others was always a priority—when they appraised you, what would they be thinking of me?

Can you believe that I was only searching for your heart? Can you believe the paradox of my love—my efforts to improve you were intended to prepare you to be loved by someone else.

Then, Story, you were nearly done. How old the new looks in retrospect. The truth is, in our last moments together, even as I straightened your seams, swept your hair from your eyes, and corrected with a finger wag the last imperfection of your speech, I was already forgetting you! “Finished” is a cruel word, dear Story. I sent you away, and you didn’t object. I forgot about you, until your new lover wrote: “Is Story available? We love her and want to feature her in our pages.” And without a moment’s pause I’ve given you up. It’s a formality—our end was born in our beginning.

It will be months before I see you again, Story. Our names will be paired, but you’ll no longer belong to me. My eyes will scan your glittering new font and narrow, justified columns, but I won’t read you. I’ll have archived your heart. Acquaintances will quote you to me, and I’ll look at them, confused. “Who?” I’ll ask. “What?”

I’ll be listening for the backdoor laughter of a new lover.

So, Story, adieu—forgive my fickleness—even the brief flirtation I’ve shared with this letter has cooled. It’s all part of the game.

Your Author,
Gregory J. Wolos