Because We, and Our Stories, Still Matter

on writing about ourselves, and beginning with a list

“Lives of the Artists,” Beth Kephart, a montage series telling the story of six extraordinary women (Agnes Martin, Lenore Tawney, Isabella Stewart Gardner, Virginia Woolf, May Morris, and Ursula Nordstrom) in nine squares each, first exhibited at Colonna Contemporary

When writing of yourself—when wanting to reclaim your you when the noise of the world crowds in—why not begin with a list?

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Of the things you loved enough to preserve them.

Of the things you gave away.

Of the things you outright lost.

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Of the things in the pantry of your family home.

Of the things that were never in that pantry.

Of the meals you could not cook on your own, or refused to eat, or ate greedily, noisily, pleasingly, strangely in good humor or revenge.

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Of the things that you stuffed in your high school locker.

Of the things that you hid under your bed.

Of the things that you carried in your largest bag but never, ever used.

(Why did you keep them? Make a list.)

(Why did you free yourself of them? Make a list.)

(What have you replaced them with? A list. A list. A list.)

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Of the times you said I love you, and really meant it.

Of the times another said it, too.

Of the days that slipped away, too soon.

Of the bluest nights that clung.

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Do what you can. Don’t make a fuss. You are gathering yourself in the clutch of right now.

The words on your lists are tiny engines. The sentences you write will motor forward, or detour. No one is watching. Write as you wish. Write silly. Write loud. Write plaintive. There’s only one rule: Write you.

Maybe (first draft) you’ll simply classify and categorize—organizing yourself (your words) into sentences that start with I was or I am, I did or I loved, I want or I wish or I carry. Which is to say that perhaps, at first, you’ll be writing nothing more than a list aided and abetted by adjectives and commas:

In the dark blue duffel bag, I carry a tiny jar of blueberry jam, an un-inflated yellow balloon, and a hot pink tennis ball.

Okay, that’s fine, but go deeper. There’s more to you than your list plus commas. There’s also (obviously) context—the why of your list, the story that shaped it, the family or community you’ve learned (or borrowed) from:

It was Aunt Crystal who taught me that you can never be sure of what you’ll find out on the road—an old man with a sweet tooth, a child with a birthday, a kid who just wants to play. And so I pack for the strangers I might never meet—jam, balloons, a tennis ball.

But is that enough? Have you, through your writing, acquired clarifying distance? Can you, through the words now on your page, see yourself as others might? If you want to know more about you, if you want to write a truer you, consider playing around with the second person:

Who did you think you were—you with your messy hair and your frayed jeans, your sweatshirt too big and too warm? Walking around with that bag on your shoulder, as if you could solve the problems of the world?

If you are no fan of the second person (you wouldn’t be the first), you can skip that part. But I would wager that you are still in search of a more meaningfully articulated self. Perhaps you are even in search of your own damned beating heart. You have time. You have space. You have an extra pencil. Do this: Write of that day that slipped away too soon in an imaginary letter to a person you loved (or love). Why the day mattered. What details you recall. Who you were missing when the sun went down. What you were missing in yourself.

Dear Uncle Danny, I kept thinking I would find you, by the froth of the sea in winter. I kept thinking that if I squinted hard, you would be there, beneath the shriek of the gulls, by the hard backs of the clams, so close to the sandpipers you loved. I thought I was the one who could save you. I thought I was the one you could trust. I thought I was trustworthy. You didn’t come.

A list can announce. A list can rev. A list can steep. A list can lead. A list can be the start of story—of who we were and who we are and who we may yet someday become. A list is a breeze, a ripple, a stir. A list whispers us toward our own complexity, and power.

Because yes, we still have powe

NOTE: I’ll be teaching about writing the self on behalf of Cleaver, on February 23. To learn more, click on this link. To join us, click here.