Getting rid of what I love

Notes from a writer editing both her book and her closet

Before we begin…

How easy is it for you to get rid of your possessions? Was there something that was particularly difficult to give up? What gives a thing meaning for you?

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Revisions

This one is about things. It is also about writing — specifically the exercise of culling, cutting, looking at something I love, once loved or always thought I needed and getting rid of it. I’ve been doing this on multiple fronts since the beginning of January. I’m honestly not sure where it will lead. The process leaves me excited, unsettled, and a little tired.

I have been deep into revisions of my novel, guided by notes from a developmental editor and others. When I sent the manuscript to them, the opening section ran 155 double-spaced pages. So far, I’ve slashed nearly sixty of them. Some of the material will be repurposed and go elsewhere. Most of it will just go.

When not writing, I have been busy emptying closets and the garage of things that have lived there for a long time, waiting for us to want them or need them. A guitar. Paintings. Wine glasses. Chair covers. Massage table. Christmas decorations. Like the sentences I’ve sliced away, they all meant something at some point. They all connect with a story I was trying to tell, not on the page but about myself. They don’t work anymore. I hope they find a new purpose elsewhere.

Everywhere I look – on the page, in my closets – I find open space waiting for me to make the next move. Do I fill it with something new and better or leave it alone? And what about the pieces that remain? I scrutinize every line or scene in my book with new eyes. Is it working? I may have needed to write it to get where I am now but it won’t necessarily help me get where I am going. I look at every favorite shirt, every dish, pot, pan, or chair the same way. How does it serve me now?

I woke up this morning thinking this: I am editing my book but I am also editing my own story. Getting rid of my stuff is just as uncomfortable and exhilarating as murdering one darling after another in the pages of my manuscript. After all, editing is not only about what to cut but what to keep and what to add. It’s about learning what is important.

A while ago, I responded to a prompt to write about a thing that was important to me. This blue blanket is one of the three things I own that I would try to save if there was a fire (and all the humans and animals were safe). When I finished writing it, I realized that this is one of the few possessions I have that holds important pieces of my history, that has grown old with me, that still matters.

The (Once) Blue Blanket

The blue flannel blanket arrived in my life when I was about ten, long after I’d stopped sucking my thumb and carrying a scrap of blanket from my infancy. The flannel was the color of the morning sky and soft, so soft. A paler blue satin binding edged the entire thing. I vaguely remember feeling that it was okay to have it – this was no baby blanket; it was a full-size adult blanket meant for a double bed.

I never tucked it in once. Instead, I wrapped it around me before getting under the covers at night. I worked my fingers up against the satin binding or rubbed it against my cheek, just as I had done as an infant. I worked the binding even when I read or watched television with my siblings although I tried to hide it.

I clutched that blanket around my neck at night when, on the other side of my bedroom wall, my parents waged war. I clutched it for warmth when the steam radiators in our old house were no match for the northeasters that lined my window and ancient pink wallpaper with ice. I tossed it off in a hurry when my father, his voice filled with excitement and joy, woke us all up in the middle of winter’s night to stand outside in the snow and see the aurora borealis.

I wore it around my shoulders like a shawl when, at eighteen, I brought my newborn son home from the hospital. My young husband, the oldest of six, showed me how to position my arm on a pillow so I could nurse my baby more easily beneath the shelter of my blue blanket. Our marriage was short but those moments with him, his hand resting on my shoulder as we watched our son nurse, live on.

Years later the blanket – thin in spots, transparent in others, binding half gone – kept showing up in the bed I shared with another man who was confused by its presence. I’d never told him about the blanket when we’d been getting to know one another, just one of the many things that went unsaid over the seven years of our relationship. He would put it in the closet or, once, in the pile of rags designated for polishing his shoes. I would retrieve it without a word. Its shabbiness violated the otherwise crisp appearance of the bed, the order and style to which he aspired. I was sure he would never understand that on the many nights when I lay in that bed next to him angry, frightened, or alone, the blue blanket was the only thing that grounded me. When I touched it, I could always find my way back to myself.

I’ve been married now for more than twenty years to a man who welcomed the blanket into our bed and into our lives without question. He has no need to understand – he’s happy if I’m happy. He hates a crisply made bed anyway. Most days, he never even knows the blanket is there.

I have never been sure about the “why” of this blanket. Perhaps the initial need lay in the obvious: my desire for security in a house full of kids screaming for attention from adults who were struggling. Maybe it’s the memories woven among the fraying threads that return to me in the middle of the night, a sense of safety and home that persists even now. Maybe it’s just that I want it. It’s mine. I have reached an age when I understand that these are reasons enough.

These days, the blanket is unraveling rapidly. The morning-sky blue has faded into nondescript gray. Not a shred of satin edging remains. When I wash the blanket, I must place it in a net bag to hold what remains of it together. I no longer care about the color, or that its shape is gone, or that the threads of its past are coming undone before my eyes. Right now, it remains.

The blanket at least shows the blue of the sky even if it doesn’t have any color left itself.

Ruth Ozeki: The Secret Life of Things

As many of you know, I love the novels of Ruth Ozeki. Two years go I wrote about how The Book of Form and Emptiness made me think about the secret life of things and the hold they have on us. The post was fun not only because I loved the book but because it generated so many fascinating stories in the comments section about things that mattered to readers. Like this one from Cauhautemoc Kish:

I looked up at my bookcase and saw the outline of a book wrapped in plastic: “La Unica.”

It took me back to when I was teaching in Mexico City, and I had the audacity to enter into a dark cavernous building across from the statue of Cuauhtemoc on Avenida Reforma that housed a few dozen individuals including Lupe Marin, the second wife of Diego Rivera.

Lupe answered the door and invited me and my student translator into her apartment and regaled us with stories about Diego Rivera as we sat inches from a few originals painted by iconic artist.

Lupe was gracious, flamboyant, and a hoot. She brought out a copy of her book, “La Unica,” signed it and presented it to me as a gift.

I was to conduct the second part of my interview when she returned from a European trip, but as sad luck would have it, she became ill and passed shortly after her return from the trip.

I will always be reminded that this crazy gringo conducted the last interview with Lupe Marin, and every time I place eyes on that book, it all comes to pass as if it was yesterday.

I have promised the book to someone who will treasure this keepsake, but I’m not giving it up right now.

Got a story about a thing? Tell us!

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In Defense of Darkness by Julie Christine Johnson

Finally, this piece by Julie Christine Johnson caught my mood exactly as this week came to a close. It’s about the creativity that survives the darkness — and even needs it at times: In Defense of Darkness.

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P.S. And now, your moment of Zen…winter light

This moment of Zen comes from Stephanie G.

“12/1/15- 7:20am - traveling in PA- a reminder that even in winter our world is full of light.”

Calling for Your Contribution to “Moment of Zen”:

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Come on, go through your photos, your memories or just keep your eyes and ears to the ground and then share. Send your photos/links, etc. to me by replying to this email or simply by sending to: elizabethmarro@substack.com. The main guidelines are probably already obvious: don’t hurt anyone -- don’t send anything that violates the privacy of someone you love or even someone you hate, don’t send anything divisive, or aimed at disparaging others. Our Zen moments are to help us connect, to bond, to learn, to wonder, to share -- to escape the world for a little bit and return refreshed.

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