I Stand Here Writing

Abstract

stand in my kitchen, wiping the cardamom, coriander, and cayenne off my fingers. My head is abuzz with words, with bits and pieces of conversation. I hear phrase I have read recently, something about a radical loss of certainty. But, I wonder, how did the sentence begin? I search the air for the rest of the sentence, can't find it, shake some more cardamom, and bit of coriander. Then, by some play of mind, I am back home again in Indiana with my family, sitting around the kitchen table. Two people are talking, and there are three opinions; three people are talking, and there are six opinions. Opinions grow exponentially. I fight my way back to that sentence. Writing, that's how it begins: is radical loss of certainty. (Or is it uncertainty?) It isn't so great for the chicken when all these voices start showing up, with all these sentences hanging in mid-air, but the voices keep me company. I am writer, not cook, and the truth is I don't care much about the chicken. Stories beget stories. Writing emerges from writing. The truth. Has truth anything to do with the facts? All I know is that no matter how many facts I might clutter my life with, I am as bound to the primordial drama of my family as the earth is to the sun. This year my father, the son of severe Prussian matriarch, watched me indulge my daughters, and announced to me that he wished I had been his mother. This year, my thirtyninth, my last year to be thirty-something, my mother-who has touch of magic, who can walk into the middle of field of millions of clovers and find the one with four leaves-has begun to think I need help. She sends me cards monthly with four-leaf clovers taped inside. Two words neatly printed in capital lettersGOOD LUCK!! I look at these clovers and hear Reynolds Price's words: No-