A few years ago I started reading books by Joan Didion, an important contemporary American writer. Her memoirs about the deaths of her husband (The Year of Magical Thinking) and daughter (Blue Nights) are extraordinary books – honest, deeply personal, and yet universal.
Didion is most famous for writing books that combine social commentary with reflections on her personal life. I have not yet read any of these, but her name is high on my To Do list. A couple of weeks ago I came across a paragraph from her book Slouching Towards Bethlehem that reminds me of James Hillman, my favorite author:
I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.
There’s an entire book in that paragraph. Yours. Mine.
Years ago, when I was recovering from a severe case of shingles, I made a couple of appointments with a psychologist friend to try to figure out what had triggered my illness. (Shingles is widely regarded as a stress-related disease.) Part of the intake procedure was a decade-by-decade survey of my life, and the name Richard Burton inevitably came up when we talked about my college years. I lightheartedly recalled how besotted and silly I had been – a foolish college girl who knew very little about life.
To my astonishment, my psychologist friend was intrigued by my imaginary love affair – even respectful of it. And so I gradually began to revise my attitude towards the Jean-I-had-been. She knew some important things that I’d forgotten about. She was someone important, even if she sometimes embarrasses me today.
Our relentless march toward a New and Improved Self is often a…mistake. Didion is right: The people we used to be need to be welcomed back into our lives.
I really like the disciplined and hard-working person I’ve turned into. It’s a thrill to open my mailbox and find a scholarly journal that features an article I’ve written. (That happened to me earlier this week.)
But so much has been pushed aside, buried, forgotten. Did you know that one Saturday, years ago, I watched a live performance of Swan Lake not once but twice? That I’m gradually filling a metal dollhouse with vintage Renwal plastic furniture? That Bill the Cat is my favorite cartoon character? That I read The Boxcar Children over and over when I was a child?
Not everything I used to love has held up well over the years. But – Thomas Wolfe notwithstanding – often you can go home again. At least I can. Swan Lake is still my favorite ballet, The Boxcar Children is still a wonderful book (I reread it recently and loved it all over again), and Bill the Cat is back with us again, courtesy of Facebook, and as funny as ever.
If you want to be a writer, the first step is to become an interesting person. You can always hire someone to fix your punctuation and sentence structure. But nobody can fix you – that’s a task you have to do yourself.
The good news is that you already are an interesting person. If you sometimes feel empty, or lost, or useless, welcome to the human race. We all feel that way. But there’s a remedy. The energy reserves you need are hidden inside you. Start looking for them, and start writing!
Joan Didion
