The Bolts of the Universe

Our lives are not what we deserve; they are, let us agree, in many painful ways, deficient. Song turns them into something else. Song shows us a world that is worthy of our yearning, it shows us our selves as they might be, if we were worthy of the world. 

Five mysteries hold the keys to the unseen: the act of love, and the birth of a baby, and the contemplation of great art, and being in the presence of death or disaster, and hearing the human voice lifted in song. These are the occasions when the bolts of the universe fly open and we are given a glimpse of what is hidden; an eff of the ineffable. Glory bursts upon us in such hours: the dark glory of earthquakes, the slippery wonder of new life, the radiance of...singing.

~Salman Rushdie

The Ground Beneath Her Feet

I've been reading this amazing book by Rushdie, who I avoided reading for so long because I was young and ignorant when the controversy surrounding The Satanic Verses raced through the media and I was sure that a good Christian would not read such dangerous material. In the past twenty years, nothing has challenged me to believe otherwise. On a recent road trip, during a delicious conversation about quality writing, my friend Jonathan asked if I'd ever read any of Rushdie's books, suggested a couple, and a title or two stuck in my brain. While Jonathan and my husband Toby holed themselves up in a studio above the Goshen Theater laying down bass tracks for Jonathan's new album, I felt the freedom of being a mom away from home, wandering between downtown's shops until I paused for a long, inspiring treasure hunt beyond the doors of Better World Books, a self-sustaining business that collects and sells new and used books to fund literacy initiatives worldwide. BWB's environment is so welcoming, so soothing, that I could spend hours there shuffling along their dark wooden floors, rifling through shelf after shelf of words, discovering new and reacquainting with old literary friends. 

And there was Rushdie, one of the titles Jonathan had suggested settled patiently in the middle of the fiction section. For seven bucks, it was mine, and now, several weeks later, I am reading the rhapsodic poetry of his work. The experience reminds me of the first time I read Thomas Hardy, the freedom and light that came from discovering that waterfalls of enchanting words had no limits, that description could be generous and lavish without being cumbersome, that there were words that carried such beauty and weight that I could feel myself inside of their world. Hardy could do that. Leif Enger can do that. Salman Rushdie can do that. 

I'm still struggling, at age 42, to discover my voice as a writer, and I think the greatest reason is that I know I have more than one voice, just like I--the I who walks around and loves and works and shops and sings--have more than one persona. How I write depends on who I envision is reading the thing, but sometimes my vision is short-sighted. I can only see myself, or those I know, on the other side of the page, and sometimes--often--that stifles me. There are times I long to open up, to rhapsodize and overflow like Hardy and Rushdie, to draw out single moments for entire pages, maybe even chapters, to describe the first moment of an earthquake or the immersive nature of stealing a person's image with the snap of a Pentax, and there are times when I want to spew out highly accessible quips and witticisms, good for a cheap laugh, a surprising twist, a simple connection. 

So I'm not sure there is just one voice for me, maybe for any writer. I'm often tempted to use several pseudonyms for all of the writers I want to be: the deep and thoughtful poet; the painfully honest, forthright memoirist; the sarcastic and snarky essayist; the gritty, ironic satirist; the thought-provoking, inspiring humanitarian; the stumbling, searching half-believer. I don't want to be just one, choose just one, but neither do I want to be known as all of them, or even associated with some of them, because they embarrass me and make me ashamed to know them, admit to knowing them, though they probably shouldn't. They should probably be ashamed to associate with me. 

My writing is chameleonic, changing color with the literature I digest, the moments I observe. It's a child who can't decide what it wants to be when it grows up, rattles off an endless and unrelated list--hairdresser, firefighter, professional soccer player, mom, librarian, toy store owner--and fully expects that it will be all of them. It's an apple, sweet, sour, deep golden or bright red, depending upon the tree from which it dangles. It's a rock song, a folk song, a rap song, a country song, an opera, a jazz piece, a sweet, silent, whole note of a moment. 

So I wonder, where does it fit? And does it fit anywhere? Who does it call, and who calls it out? Must it be palatable, or can it be bitter and still wholly consumed?

Or can it simply be, with me trusting that what I write will slip into the hands of those who need it, causing the bolts of the universe to fly open and glory to burst in upon us?