This main chapter, poetics, is brimming with exercises; one at least on every other page. This time Mark is talking about the writer’s voice and tells us, the reader, how we must be “most utterly (ourselves)” and “bring… everything (we) are to the page.” Also, “… be prepared to hurt.” I have noticed. The writing does get better when you pour all that you are into it. I remember well from writing about my biggest loss yet.
Recall a moment of high passion from your life – a birth, a death, an awakening, a loss, a love found or a heart broken. Whatever. See if you can write it in tranquillity. Out of everyone you are. Three hundred words.
There was nothing to do. All the things that had seemed so big and important the night before – gone, only a faded memory now. I had spoken to him that very night, full of excitement about the trip I had just come back from. He had waited for me, they said. Waited to be sure I had returned safely before embarking on his own journey, his last. We were just sitting there taking in the news, comforted in each other’s company; yet alone in our own grief, each with their memories and pictures and questions. He was a father and a grandfather, a husband and a brother, a good friend – I am sure – to others yet. But now, already, the man we knew became a memory; he would be whoever we wanted him to be in our minds for the rest of our lives. And who he was in each of our memories would be gone on the day of our own deaths.
I wish in our house we’d talk about the dead with laughter and joy, because we’ve been lucky enough to know them, to care for them and to be loved by them; I wish we would recall funny stories and laugh until our bellies hurt; I wish we’d share our memories of deepest connection and bring the dead back to life, make them whole again for a moment out of the fractions of our separate memories, at our dinner table. But those are not the things we do in our home. We are silent. We look at old photographs with regret for the things that might have been; missing the chance to relish the joy of the things we’ve been fortunate enough to have had.