Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye.
–Helen Keller
Good day! How was your weekend? Mine picked up with the wind on Saturday. Cool, windy weather after the long hot summers of south Florida makes me feel more alive and face-to-face with exciting, mysterious forces that come from far places; I practically see wind sweeping down from the northern latitudes, across vast expanses of prairie and high plains and forested mountains and hills and icy waters and through all the cities and towns and isolated outposts of human habitation, shaking everything up in a deliciously bracing way. Imagine all that the wind has touched before it lifts your hair or rustles the grass and leaves all around.
So I went for a long walk, to take the air, opening the windows and doors of my being as I did so. I walked a paved path, with others passing by at intervals, some on foot, some on bicycles, and I wondered at the journey we all take, that other journey, you know, that leads to a distant country, and that is filled with strange twists and turns, enough to bewilder us at times. I thought of a film I recently watched called Pan's Labyrinth (2006), directed by Guillermo del Toro. It is a beautiful film, a modern fairy tale about a young girl's struggle to make sense of multiple changes and certain threats and dangers. She discovers seemingly magical sources of power that take the form, in part, of fantastic creatures that live in a spooky, labyrinthine netherworld. There she is told she is the heiress to an ancient title, a Princess, in fact, and given certain tasks to "prove" herself fit. She must learn to trust herself throughout, for things are not simply what they seem, and her survival, and that of others, depends upon her knowing what is what, and thus making the right call.
The twists and turns and dark corners and curves of the labyrinth are a symbol of the human unconscious, a cryptic "force" whose messengers can guide us on our life's path; though we must rightly interpret and wisely use this force, for it can be dangerous. Pan is an ancient nature God, associated with fertility and spring, with shepherds and their flocks, and is often depicted playing a pipe. As I walked, I listened to the wind, felt it on my skin, and the solid ground under my feet. And though it is but fall, here in south Florida I heard in the wind the sound of Pan's piping.
That's my weekend story. Tell yours! (free write)
Stories–narratives–we tell them endlessly. They are built into the fabric of our lives. Our very lives are the stories we tell about them. The meaning we make of existence comes clear in the stories we tell each other, and each is one of the untold gazillions accumulating over time. Each has a point or a purpose. Each involves events, actions, a conflict set in motion, consequences, perhaps the underlying motives and feelings of those involved, the lessons and insights gained through the experiences recounted.
A hundred thousand people were killed by the atomic bomb, and these six were among the survivors. They still wonder why they lived when so many others died. Each of them counts many small items of chance or volition–a step taken in time, a decision to go indoors, catching one streetcar instead of the next–that spared him. And now each knows that in the act of survival he lived a dozen lives and saw more death than he ever thought he would see. At the time, none of them knew anything.
John Hersey, Hiroshima
We imagine the action that took place in the event referenced above, but the writer does not show us the exploding bomb, the fire and smoke and devastation all around. The wails of the living, and the dying.
Narration does more than suggest, it shows action:
When I pulled the trigger I did not hear the bang or feel the kick–one never does when a shot goes home–but I heard the devilish roar of glee that went up from the crowd. In that instant, in too short a time, one would have thought, even for the bullet to go there, a mysterious, terrible change had come over the elephant. He neither stirred nor fell, but every line of his body had altered. He looked suddenly sticken, shrunken, immensely old, as though the frightful impact of the bullet had paralyzed him without knocking him down. At last, after what seemed a long time–it might have been five seconds, I dare say–he sagged flabbily to his knees. His mouth slobbered. An enormous senility seemed to have settled upon him. One could have imagined him thousands of years old. I fired again into the same spot. At the second shot he did not collapse but climbed with desperate slowness to his feet and stood weakly upright, with legs sagging and head drooping. I fired a third time. That was the shot that did for him. You could see the agony of it jolt his whole body and knock the last remnant of strength from his legs. But in falling he seemed for a moment to rise, for as his hind legs collapsed beneath him he seemed to tower upward like a huge rock toppling, his trunk reaching skywards like a tree. He trumpeted, for the first and only time. And then down he came, his belly towards me, with a crash that seemed to shake the ground even where I lay.
George Orwell, "Shooting an Elephant"
Notice how Orwell works the elements of sight, sound, movement in space, and deep feeling into the account, revealing only at the last line he has been lying down, firing up at the huge animal whose final collapse reverberates in our imagination.
Most of our stories are of events not so unusual; they are of events more homely, domestic, ordinary. These events are no less potentially interesting and dramatic. An important strategy is to narrow your account down to the one or several key events and not to swamp the telling by including too much or anything that does not work to make your dramatic purpose clear, flowing, and forcefully delivered. Dialogue used sparingly may heighten the sense of immediacy and reality. It should reflect real conversation, minus whatever does not move the action forward or reveal character. Simple words and short sentences work best.
Writing autobiographical essays or memoirs we begin to think more concretely about the kind or type of a person we see in ourselves. Likewise, in writing about others we may "typecast" or categorize as a way of framing the individual or personality we are attempting to describe. The individual is more than any single type but for the sake of managing our material we often simplify. Here is Theophrastus, an ancient Greek philosopher, on "The Faultfinder":
Faultfinding is being unreasonably critical of your portion in life. For example, a friend sends over a serving of the main dinner course with his compliments: the faultfinder is the kind who says to the messenger, "You can go tell your master I said that he didn't want me to have a taste of his soup and third-rate wine–that's why he wouldn't give me a dinner invitation." And even while his mistress is kissing him he will complain, "I wonder if you really love me the way you say you do." He gets angry with the weather, too, not because it rained but because it didn't rain soon enough.
If he comes on a wallet in the street, his comment is "Always this–never a real find!" Let him get a slave at bargain prices, moreover, after begging and pleading, and what does he say but "I really wonder if the fellow can be in sound shape, seeing that he was so cheap." Or supposing somebody announces: "You've got a baby boy!" He meets this good news with: "You might as well have told me half my estate's down the drain–that's what it really means." [. . . .] And when friends have raised a loan to help him out and one of them asks him, "Aren't you pleased?" his answer is "How can I be, when I have to pay everybody back and then act grateful besides?"
The following website publishes the 30 types Theophrastus wrote of:
Character Traits/Personality Types (according to the astrologers)
Aries: + assertive energetic courageous ardent
- Aggressive angry egotistical impulsive
Taurus: +conservative reliable steadfast patient deliberate
- greedy stodgy possessive obstinate
Gemini : + intellectual versatile communicative alert
- nervous undependable impatient unable to concentrate
Cancer: + protective domestic emotional patriotic
-oversensitive oblique crabby moody acquisitive
Leo: + creative vital commanding expansive regal
- pleasure seeking conceited domineering lazy
Virgo: + practical modest analytical unassuming
- reticent overdiscriminating aloof overcritical
Libra: + harmonious affable diplomatic balanced thoughtful
-indecisive vapid discontented
Scorpio: + intense passionate penetrating genuine
- blunt cruel lustful vindictive
Sagittarius: + expansive free enthusiastic profound
- reckless outspoken excessive boisterous
Capricorn: + cautious ambitious serious stable orderly
- cold limited miserly fearful
Aquarius: + instructive inventive aspiring changeable unconventional
- revolutionary detached cool rebellious
Pisces: + intuitive inspired sensitive intangible
-vague oversentimental confused self-pitying
Real people are of course not pure types; they are complex individuals but the type is a way of framing a study of the personality. You might begin with a list of what a person is–mother, grandmother, retired doctor, Sunday painter, etcetera, and then narrow the focus to the activities and character traits most on display. Show the person in his or her usual surrounds or ones that reveal something of the person; show how he moves, how he speaks, gestures, dresses, and so on. Show her heart, her values and ideals and how they manifest in her life's work and activity. Get the perspective of others, too. How do others respond or feel about this person? Examples will illustrate, anecdotal stories, personal description.
Assignment #3: Write a profile or portrait of someone you know well and whose personality will be interesting to readers. Illustrate the portrait with graphic details: actions, words, appearances, contrasts, and so on.
A complex sentence has one independent (stand alone) clause (one subject-verb combo) and at least one dependent (can't stand alone except as a fragment) clause. Short examples follow here:
Because he could not be reached by phone, I drove to his house, anxious to see him.
Jimmi walked to work after he crashed his bike.
Unless you give me another chance, we can go no further.
John is a man who loves women more than anything in life.
Bring me the book that you have been hiding.
I cooked and cleaned as the storm raged on.
A compound-complex sentence has at least two independent clauses and at least one dependent clause:
Jimmi hated to be seen as weak, so he kept his mouth closed while the others freely confessed to backsliding.
If you are to write effectively, your sentences must be clear; words are wasted otherwise.
After the sun dropped below the horizon, and as the moon began her ascent, we set up camp, eager for a chance to relax and eat and talk; each of us was possessed by the sense of great adventures to come.
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