Writing Assignment #2 (Commentary on Modern Life)

More than a hundred stars

Franz Rosenzweig wrote most of his masterpiece, The Star of Redemption, on postcards mailed to his mother from the Macedonian front in WWI. I can only imagine what it was like for Frau Rosenzweig, sporadically receiving scraps of genius from her son. I expect that she hoped, even prayed, for every postcard she received. I imagine her daily trip to the mailbox. It must have been filled with hope and anxiety—that one chance a day to learn if Franz was, for now, alive and well.

My fiancée is in Baghdad. Petty Officer Decker is stationed in the Green Zone. He’s a computer specialist, on an assignment whose details I’m not allowed to know. Unlike Frau Rosenzweig, I don’t have to hold my breath for the contents of the mailbox every day. Unlike Macedonia, Baghdad’s Green Zone is equipped with Internet connections. There are those who decry contemporary technology. They claim that by connecting to the Internet we are in danger of disconnecting from real, in-person relationships. Currently, that threat to personal relationships is my surest connection to the most real relationship I’ve ever known.

Almost every day, David logs onto gmail.com around 3:30 PM Baltimore time (10:30 PM in Baghdad), and we “chat.” It’s not as good as having him here, obviously, but gmail chat is real-time communication. He tells me about what he’s been working on, I tell him about my day. Recently, he spent some time typing about how much he misses our dog and our daily trips to the park with her. (The dog park serves as our workday decompression time. Every day we three trot off to the Wyman Park Dells where the dog runs and wrestles and we gossip with the other dog parents. We got engaged there. It is a comfortable place. It misses him.) That evening I took a camera in addition to the regular water, dog treats, and tennis ball. The next day, photos of the dog romping with her friends greeted him from his email inbox.

David uses photography to express observations for which he can’t always find the words. I accepted his first dinner invitation in part because of the depth and sensitivity I saw in his photos on myspace.com. He recently posted a few photographs he’s taken in and around Baghdad. I was struck by the beauty and nuance he captured in his images of destruction. Being able to see those photos from my living room, and to share them with friends and family, made the distance between us easier to bear.

Before he deployed, David kept me in flowers. There were always fresh flowers on my bedside table, and as soon as one bunch started to fade, he replaced them. Recently, I mentioned in a chat that I had bought myself some flowers, because they reminded me of him. About a week later, a florist’s truck stopped at our door. The card on the bouquet read “A little something to brighten our home. Love, Your David.”

Franz Rosenzweig could not have sent his mother flowers from the front. I wonder if he would have written the Star, if he had access to myspace.com and gmail.com, or even a telephone. I wonder if the scraps and postcards written in trenches during stolen moments were somehow integral to the creation of the masterpiece. The Star is a remarkable piece of Jewish theology, influential to nearly every Jewish thinker to follow. Could it have been written if Franz had, as David does, a comfortable room with air conditioning and a television? Is David’s ease of communication denying the world some great artistic or philosophical masterpiece? I don’t care. I wouldn’t give up the Internet for a hundred Stars. The Talmud teaches that to save one life, it is as if you save the world. If that is the case, then this life, my life, is equal to the world. The World be damned, this world needs David more.

My childhood bedroom at night (Writing Assignment #1, Part 3)

The big-girl bed in my childhood bedroom was a double mattress and box-spring on the floor. The bed was in one corner of the room. The high windows were to my left when I rested on my back in bed. Diagonally across the room was my desk. It was triangular, specially made for a corner. Dressers butted each side, with bookshelves sitting on the surface. In the weak illumination from the street the whole set looked gray and black, though in light of day they were clearly yellow drawers in orange shells.
Lying in bed I could clearly hear the infrequent car on the road outside. I liked to watch the headlights move across the room from the wall behind my head across the bifold closet doors on my right, the mostly-shut door to the room, the shelves of books and toys, and onto the wall opposite me. The mirror over the dresser reversed that path so every headlight had intersecting paths across my room. I really loved the combination of the traveling light with the crescendo Doppler effect, shhhhh-oom, of tires on asphalt. I would press my special pillow to my nose, lingering in its bouquet of down, detergent, and drool. I felt safe snuggled up in the covers, the sound of a television faintly drifting in from my mother’s room across the hall.

On Nothing (Writing Assignment #1, Part 2)

I fretted. I agonized. I despaired. I was a graduate student, studying for my PhD comprehensive exams. I disliked what I was studying. I mistrusted my colleagues. I found it difficult to force myself to stick to my reading schedule. If I didn’t keep my schedule, I wouldn’t be ready to sit the exams when I had planned. If I didn’t sit the exams, I wouldn’t become ABD—all but dissertation. If I wasn’t ABD when my current funding expired, it would be much harder to find more funding. Without more funding, I would have to borrow even more money than I already had. I was miserable.

I had an epiphany. I woke from a fitful night of sleep and said out loud “what happens if I don’t finish?” It was a question I hadn’t yet asked. But the answer was easy: nothing. Nothing bad would happen if I didn’t finish this degree. Nothing was a relief. Nothing gave me permission to walk away from nearly 5 years at the university.

I didn’t finish the degree. Nothing bad happened.

The Aged Giant (Writing Assignment #1)

Before I went to Italy, my mother’s Zia Yawnee loomed large in my consciousness. In the late Fifties, Yawnee (actually, Ioni, I would later learn), a non-Jew, dared to marry my great-uncle Paul. I was raised on stories of the elegant Italian woman my mother called Zia because the family refused her the honor of “aunt” in English.

Ioni returned to Italy after Paul’s death in the late Sixties. In the mid Nineties, I convinced my college roommate we should route our Spring Break trip through Verona so that I could meet this giant of my (mother’s) memory.

We got to Ioni’s gated condominium community after dark. An old woman’s voice answered our buzz in thickly-accented English. Jenny and I found our way to the elevator. When the doors opened a tiny, withered woman jumped in fright at the sight of us. “Oh Marian,” she exclaimed, calling me by my mother’s name, “you scared me.”
I reminded her that I was Marian’s daughter, and that she and I had spoken on the phone. I called her Zia and kissed her cheek. She was short, the top of her head lower than my shoulders, and smelled the way old women smell--of talc, medicine, and old-fashioned perfume.

I tried to reconcile my mental picture of Zia Yawnee with the bent, teetering Zia Ioni before me. “Come on,” she encouraged as she shuffled into her apartment, “I want to show you something.” Jenny and I smiled at each other as we followed, and I knew I was about to see some of the spunk I expected.

Stay tuned for more frequent posts

Regular readers no doubt gave up on me weeks ago, and for good reason. However, I'm here to say--fear not dear reader! Soon there will be much more to read. Starting on Monday 10/6, I will be taking a non-credit course called "Writing from Personal Experience." The course description reads:

Memories, observations, and analyses are the writer's raw materials. In this course, participants transform their personal experiences into memoirs, humorous social commentaries, and narrative story essays as they read and discuss published writing by established authors. Class sessions introduce techniques for developing and strengthening the writer's voice; selecting details that provide clarity, interest, and meaning; and creating effective essay/story structures. Such nonfiction techniques as setting, character, narrative tension, and resolution are also put to use. Participants share their writing in a creative, supportive environment.

I figure that you, most patient of friends, relatives, and perfect strangers, deserve to read whatever comes out of my tortured keyboard. I expect to post assignments (and any comments they receive) here.

I'll do my best to keep it interesting.

Thank you, we're very proud of him.

Being the betrothed of a military man is an odd experience for me. Not only do I have to navigate my ambivalence toward the military writ large, the war in Iraq in particular, and the prospect of moving every three years until he retires, I have to figure out what to say when people thank me for his service (or sometimes they thank me for my sacrifice). The first time someone said it to me, I had no idea what to say. "Umm, thanks?" was the response, I think. Now that we're marking nearly three weeks of him being in Baghdad, I've figured out what to say, but somehow my ambivalence has grown. The Navy is offering him a TON of money (tax-free!) to re-enlist, and so we, together, decided that it would be for the best for him to re-up for 4 more years. If he makes chief in this enlistment, he says he'll want to stay in until retirement. He'll probably make chief. Who knew when I was a supremely self-confident bleeding heart college student that my future would have a U.S. Military ID card in it? And yet this sailor is the kindest, most considerate, most compassionate man I have ever met. As far as I can tell, his only faults are poor spelling and a tendency to horde stuff. (Of course, any accusations of pack-rat-ism from me would be complete and utter hypocrisy, so perhaps I should strike that last.)

Last night I was looking on cafe press for a holiday card we could send. On a whim I searched for "Navy," and I found a ton of tee-shirt designs for Navy wives & girlfriends. One said "Navy Wife: You try doing this shit." For some reason, knowing that there are enough other people in my shoes to warrant a tee-shirt made me feel better. It's been less than 3 weeks since he deployed, and I'm having a hard time making the bed every day. If it weren't for the dog needing to go out, I wonder if I'd leave the house on the weekends. (Work has been really shitty lately, too, but perhaps it's best to save that for another post.)

I'm not sure why I'm posting this, except to tell those few of you who read: next time you meet a service person, or especially their spouse, take a second to thank them. It doesn't matter what your politics are. My military man dislikes the current administration as much as that self-confident bleeding heart student I once was. Even if he didn't, as long as people like him continue to volunteer for this shitty existence, the rest of us aren't forced to do it.