As the Pen Goes...

My granddaughter Sophia (9) was doing an art project with me, as was her sister, Daisy (6). We were making birthday cards for their Uncle Dylan, my youngest son.

As I questioned Sophia about her approach to art, she explained, "I just let the pen go where it wants to go."

"That's funny," I answered. "When I write a story I just let the story go where it wants to go."

***

It's been raining for days now. This is spring break for the children, so they have no school work. Card games, board games, art projects, movies are all on the docket.

Everything around us is green now. Or pink (native roses), yellow, purple and orange (the wildflowers). As the rain once again approaches, the beautiful California poppy closes up. The birds seek cover. The dog-walkers break out their umbrellas.

I begin to write, inevitably. I love the rain.

***

Writing my memoir is a daunting task, because I mainly have to work from my memory. Luckily, I also have 50 years of written journals, some letters, and 14 years of blog posts to check my memory against.

I have also reached out to a few friends to compare memories of certain events.

But reconstructing events from long ago is indeed an exercise fraught with peril. I used to use a teaching exercise to make a related point. I would stage an event, such as having someone suddenly burst into the classroom, seize something (say an eraser) and then just as suddenly depart the premises.

Then I would ask each student to write down what they think they just saw. The responses varied tremendously.

Every defense lawyer and prosecutor understands this phenomenon. It is why "eyewitness" testimony can be so unreliable. We all tend to see the events we witness in a self-referential way, in a pre-existing context we bring to the situation.

In his brilliant book, Ways of Seeing, John Berger argues that we perceive the world visually, and only later construct the language that explains what we think we saw. That this is shaded with our biases, ideological beliefs and previous visions is implicit in his argument.

***

Sophia, Daisy and I finished our cards once our pens and pencils had had their way. So too has this story found its way to a conclusion.

-30-