Jayne Anne Phillips

Trampoline silhouette [Not sure what this is? See the Story Up My Sleeve background page. A regular whiskey river Fridays post will show up here sometime later today.]

My brother was a gymnast, the best in the Tri-County area; he refused to perform on any equipment but the trampoline. The trampoline was a new acquisition for Bellington High School in 1968, and Billy wanted to do things no one in Bellington had ever seen anyone do.

I didn’t know I loved him deeply, not then, not yet; for days on end I had no conscious thoughts of him. After all, I was the elder sister; I was a senior, I would graduate with Honors (as honors went, in Bellington), I was pretty enough. I did right in superficial ways. I kept structures intact by attending to surfaces, trying to conceal the fact that I belonged nowhere. Uneasy, I watched Billy practice in the gym, twisting and turning as though borne up by some liquid medium.

In the weeks preceding the gym show, Billy was granted special practice time during homeroom hour. Mornings in the crowded high school, I had homeroom in the gymnasium. Thirty of us sat in one section of the portable bleachers, waiting for the scream of first-period bell. Roll was taken, announcements made. Girls gossiped. In front of us lay the basketball court, vast and blond; on the other side of it, my brother hurled himself into the air repeatedly, warming up. He was obvlivious to spectators, and most only glanced at him once or twice and went back to copying homework assignments. I kept my hands open in my lap and stared at my palms, at the lines, the whorls and stars and crosses. If I looked at Billy, I wouldn’t be able to look away.

[source]

[Trailer for Adaptation (2002), starring Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, and Chris Cooper
and featuring a whole lot of other favorite, familiar faces]

From whiskey river’s commonplace book (the archives):

Human beings can’t live without the illusion of meaning, the apprehension of confluence, the endless debate concerning the fault in the stars or in ourselves. The writer is just the messenger, the moving target. Inside culture, the writer is the talking self. Through history, the writing that lasts is the whisper of conscience. The guild of writers is essentially a medieval guild existing in a continual Dark Age, shaman, monks, witches, nuns, working in isolation, playing with fire.

When the first illuminated manuscripts were created, few people could read. Now that people are bombarded with image and information and the World Wide Web is an open vein, few people can read. Reading with sustained attention, reading for understanding, reading to cut through random meaninglessness — such reading becomes a subversive act. The writer’s first affinity is not to a loyalty, a tradition, a morality, a religion, but to life itself, and to its representation in language. Ego enters in, but writing is far too hard and solitary to be sustained by ego. The writer is compelled to write. The writer writes for love. The writer lives in spiritual debt to language, the gold key in the palm of meaning. Awake, asleep, in every moment of being, the writer stands at the gate.

The gate may open.

The gate may not.

Regardless, the writer can see straight through it.

(Jayne Anne Phillips)

Writing is one of the most easy, pain-free, and happy ways to pass the time in all the arts. For example, right now I am sitting in my rose garden and typing on my new computer. Each rose represents a story, so I’m never at a loss for what to write. I just look deep into the heart of the rose and read its story and write it down through typing, which I enjoy anyway. I could be typing kjfiu joew. mv jiw and would enjoy it as much as typing words that actually make sense. I simply relish the movement of my fingers on the keys. Sometimes, it is true, agony visits the head of a writer. At these moments, I stop writing and relax with a coffee at my favorite restaurant, knowing that words can be changed, rethought, fiddled with, and, of course, ultimately denied. Painters don’t have that luxury. If they go to a coffee shop, their paint dries into a hard mass.

(Steve Martin, “Writing Is Easy!” [source])

[Read more…]

Story Up My Sleeve #10: “Blue Moon,” by Jayne Anne Phillips

Making the Trip