The Third Rail
[Apologies in advance for the metaphor mashup…]
I just got back from a week at the ocean. It’s easy to lose myself in my memoir there because the rippling waves in the background always cast a spell on my unconscious.
I spend the first few days happily lolling around within four walls that provide me with no previous associations involving necessary daily tasks. I have the time and space to take notes, tinker with sentences, and pull back and make a valiant attempt to get a birds-eye-view of my memoir, while back home I am inevitably staring at ants.
What happens next is inevitable, and predictable. At some point, usually by Day Four, my unconscious starts to bubble up, straining like a puppy on a leash, and says, Okay, you’re ready! I’m ready! LET’S GO THERE!
I am doubtful. THERE = the things I don’t want to think about, the associations about childhood that I never want to assemble into a plain but cutting amalgam of words that will force me to look at the truth that I’ve been avoiding my whole life, but which are very necessary to completing the memoir.
In other words, THERE is this: My mother didn’t want me.
Those five words are as far as I can get. I can look at these five words and conceptualize them, but my gaze is always off to the side. If I look directly at them, they’ll burn my retinas.
I did touch lightly on the topic in an essay I wrote for Next Avenue last year, but even so, I looked away as each word emerged from its very deep crevice.
I read the essay aloud last year in front of an audience for a reading I did for Propaganda Girls, and my throat started to close up when I read the very first sentence aloud because:
You’re not supposed to tell…not even yourself.
No one’s supposed to know…that includes you.
Never look at yourself; keep your gaze on others. [Duly noted! I’ll crank out lots of biographies instead!]
Of course, these directives apply to more than just that five-word sentence, but to everything we knew to keep hidden in that 70s-era no-hair-out-of-place house. Admittedly, this is why I launched Rooting Around 18 months ago [hard to believe]: I wanted to become comfortable with looking at and telling people the secrets about my life.
Actually, that’s not exactly right: I started my Substack because I wanted to be comfortable with looking at and telling MYSELF the secrets about my life.
But those three directives die hard, which is why I make regular forays to the ocean. The sight and sound of the rippling waves usually knocks a realization or two free from my gray matter, or can even trigger a long-buried memory. It’s like shaking a container of salt that has formed a brick from the humidity. It’s still good; slam it on the counter hard enough and a few flakes will slough off. And a few flakes is all you need, and can digest at any one time anyway.
With the ocean in my periphery, when my pencil isn’t wandering around on paper — I always write with pencil on legal pads — I’m reading, studying other memoirs to look under the hood to see how they’ve made their sausage. I work happily, silently, breaking up the day with a slow walk on the beach and the occasional dinner out with a friend.
But inevitably, after a few days of dancing around the edges of my unconscious, the third rail starts to loom in the distance. It’s faint at first, but then it starts to rear up. I return to my work, but something is lost because now I am aware I am getting close to the third rail of My mother didn’t want me. If I want to know what it really means, I have to feel it. And I’ve survived all these years by pushing the feelings down.
We dance around, the third rail and I, for a few days. Will I touch it? Will it touch me? Do I want to? Am I ready? Once or twice I get close enough to feel the energy pulsing off it in waves. If they were visible, I imagine they’d look like the lightning jags coursing between modules in any Frankenstein movie.
But I can’t touch. Not yet. Seeing the energy waves flips a switch, shuts down the works. I turn away, and then of course, the spell is broken. Can I get it back? Do I want to?
The answer is clear. For the rest of the week, I block the five-word sentence full of kryptonite from my mind. I can’t return to it until I put some distance between me and the sea and turn to busywork instead: cleaning up voice-transcripted Word documents, watching a seminar on memoir structure, and studying Modern Love essays to see why they work. And reading another memoir or two.
But every time I create the time and space for my mind to wander and to figure out what the hell kind of story that really wants to emerge, I am able to go a little bit deeper. Of course, I am already making plans to go back.
I never forget that the ocean is a dangerous place. Maybe next time I’ll be able to stare at the sun.
This Week’s Takeaway: What are you afraid of writing or creating? What kind of environment would best put you in a space and mindset to go there? Can you carve out just one hour once a week? You don’t actually have to do anything, just creating a little bit of space for your mind to wander is enough to start.
