Essay #2 (The Last One...)

James Baldwin and American Identity Issues

James Baldwin’s address “Notes on a Hypothetical Novel” speaks about the American identity. In order to speak about the problems with this American identity, Baldwin frames his points within the idea of writing a novel using his own life for examples and inspiration. Baldwin begins by telling his audience “We’ve been talking about writing for the last two days, which is a very reckless thing to do, so I shall be absolutely reckless and pretend that I’m writing a novel in your presence” (141). Why is talking about writing reckless? Is it because writing allows for an intimate connection between reader and author, and so writing is a sacred practice that enables people to cross over social and class barriers that otherwise would be blocking their paths? I think this is the reason. In the 1950’s when segregation was still a serious problem, writing could be the link between groups of people that may have very little contact with one another. In this essay, I think James Baldwin is asking his readers or listeners to put down their walls and rethink the American identity, as it blinds them to their actual, personal identities.

Baldwin paints the American citizen as confused about his or her place in the world, talents, and class status. He pushes the readers of this piece to see that we are not who we imagine ourselves to be, “…to try and find out what Americans mean is almost impossible because there are so many things they do not want to face” (151). This is particularly true of segregation and civil rights. Many white Americans probably believed that they were supporters of African-American rights and freedoms but in reality, did nothing to allow other people to see this. People cover up their true selves using class, race, education, and gender stereotypes as their means. Soon, it will become easier to believe the stereotype that one has painted for the world than to reach deeper and pull out one’s personal and private beliefs. In “Notes on a Hypothetical Novel” the most memorable quotes was:

There is an illusion about America, a myth about America to which we are clinging which has nothing to do with the lives we lead and I don’t believe that anybody in this country who has really thought about it or really almost anybody who has been brought up against it—almost all of us have one way or another—this collision between one’s image of oneself and what one actually is is always very painful and there are two things you can do about it, you can meet the collision head-on and try and become what you really are or you can retreat and try to remain what you thought you were, which is a fantasy, in which you will certainly perish. (153)

Baldwin urges his readers to break down who they thought they were and become who they really are. Is this a positive action? For the most part, I would say yes. But I also think that some people pretend to be better people than they truly are. In this case, it seems important to work on merging the self that one pretends to be, and the self which one really is. And why is this confusion an American trait, as Baldwin claims it is. Clearly we can look to our history and see that America was created (the idea of America, anyway) by people who believed so strongly in their own religion that they were forced to move from their home to a new physical space on order to safely practice those religions.

And then things become complicated. As race enters the picture, our “all- encompassing, all-inclusive” American identity falls to pieces. For America is a “melting pot” of people who have been at odds against one another for as long as “Americans” have existed on this piece of land. It is strange to look at the history of this place and feel as if we have accomplished much in the way of protecting or even respecting human life. But I also do not want to become that tacky American who hates America. I do not hate America. I am, however, at odds with my American identity and I don’t know whether I should be embracing the person I think I am to improve myself, or throwing that person away in order to become my true self. As a Vermonter, my exposure to racial diversity has been limited, and I am ignorant of much of the slang and rhetoric of minority groups. I am very possibly naive to prejudice and just how much prejudice there is left in the world. But I am not racist, and I seek to learn as much as I can about culture and identity…because it interests me, and I can feel it making me grow.

In my small town of five hundred, there was an African drum in every house and a great hunger for textures and colors and rituals from other places. It is because of this odd community that I learned anything about peoples other than the backwoods artists and laborers that make up Saxtons River. Thus, I cannot call myself racist, because I am not…I am a white girl from Vermont rather than one who can claim a strong attachment to the identity of an American. And although I have traveled, I identify less and less with other Americans that I meet. Maybe because America is so large, or so fractured, or so full. I am uncertain of how to remedy this dis-attachment to my own country, but I suppose it would begin with working on what America means to me.

A Temporary Halt in Willow-things

So I slipped on the ice and fell backwards onto my right hand, and in the process dislocated my wrist. The specific bone is called the "lunar bone" or something similar. I spent the night of the total lunar eclipse in the Emergency Department staring at the "how to disinfect equipment properly" sign. The doctor put me in a splint.

Here is a list of things I cannot do in pictorial form:

Dishes...

Weaving...

Spinning...

(love my drop spindle)

Knitting...

Celling...

Pity me, pity, all my favorite things have been taken away from me. Six week healing time, but I am going to be optomistic and hope for less.

Essay #4...which I am not proud of (about Knitting)

Knitting and Writing

The best method for knitting a hat is to use five double pointed needles rather than the round needles (which are really just two regular needles joined together with a strand of plastic). Wooden needles are ideal, for what is the point of holding synthetic, uncomfortable materials in your hands for hours and hours and hours? My favorite type of hat to knit is a fisherman’s cap with a ribbed brim that flips up to adjust with the dome part of the hat knit in stockinette. Knitting hats is one of my favorite items to knit because they are swifter than scarves, and keep one warm during the bitter cold months of Vermont winter.

When I was thirteen the principle of my high school taught me how to knit. The new knowledge allowed me to sit quietly in class without fidgeting, which was a new experience for me. Knitting also gave me an outlet for frustration, instead of sulking, I could knit a pair of mittens. Thus, needlecrafts became a coping skill, a way to stay focused, and a source of joy through creativity. There is nothing like creating something to give away.

Writing serves a similar purpose for me. I write poetry as a way of working through difficult emotions, or to express joy, anger, etc. Writing has been associated with textile crafts for thousands of years. Even the word text comes from the Latin texere which means “to weave.” Even the language can be interchanged, we are able to “spin a tale” or “weave a story.” Although it was accidental that writing and textiles became my crafts of choice, I do not think that the two art forms are unrelated themselves. Working with both fibers and words are so comparable to me, that creating a scarf is almost the same as writing a poem. Both the scarf and the poem are unique, they will both inevitably carry mistakes, and both can protect me from the world.

For the holidays this year I was given a loom and a drop spindle. My mother took me to the woodcarver who made my spindle and his wife showed me how to twist the soft wool roving into thread that is stronger and softer than I could have ever hoped. Holding the spindle correctly was awkward for a moment, but once I got the motion and rhythm, I was able to spin the undyed sheep wool into a half ply of yarn. In order to make a full yarn that one would knit, crochet or spin with, one needs to spin two single plies and then twist both of those together. Writing poetry has progressed in much the same way. Every year I learn a little bit more about twisting the words, spinning them into something else in order to create something completely different. My Latin instructor told me once that words are not definitions, they are ideas, and that phrase has stuck.

Strangely, texts and textiles have continually connected and related themselves to each other throughout my undergraduate and my graduate career thus far. As a double major in English and Classics I was able to learn about the importance of weaving to ancient cultures, as I was also learning to unravel Latin and Greek texts and weave them back into English translation. For my honors thesis I wrote about the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty who pricks herself on a distaff and falls asleep for a hundred years. This past summer I studied at Oxford through the Bread Loaf program and focused on writing essays that would hold texture and meaning and color for the reader in a way that I had never experienced before.

My current project is weaving a plaid scarf on a rigid heddle table loom. The process involves beating the heddle into the warped thread, which pounds the loom against my chest. Sometimes I feel as if I will bruise there. Strangely, this does not stop me, but I get a kind of satisfaction from the idea that my craft leaves a temporary physical mark on my body. Just like when you are learning to play an instrument and you finally see a callus build on your fingers. I will continue to study writing, to try new types, to create and to encourage other to create. This year I started the Burlington Poetry Journal with two close friends. I don’t know what it will turn out to be, but the process has been incredible and I am looking forward to the next edition. It doesn’t seem possible to stop writing, and as most of the English grad students I know, I desire to make my living from my work. But first I need to learn how to knit a sweater.

Desire...

Free People has put out their new catalog for early Spring. I think Free People is an amazing brand and I would recommend their clothing to anyone. The quality is extremely high and the designers are fantastic. I love the dark colors with the gypsy/1960's inspired cuts and shapes.

Here are some things I especially desire:

Kenzo is a high fashion brand which has released some of the same sort of styles for this year. I learned about the designer through Lula (girl of your dreams) magazine. Which you should read if you don't already.

Also, I think that the best jewlery to pair with this gypsy look would be leafy:

Essay #3 (About Crazy People)...Yes I am skipping #2

Creativity and Crazies

For weeks she had been screaming. The cries came from the room closest to the door, which is always locked, and always she cried out the same thing: “Help me.” Inside my glass cage I was safer than the nurses from potential threats, but the screams cut me still. Katherine was a patient at the hospital when I was still new and unfamiliar with what “crazy” people do. Eventually, she began to walk up and down the hallway, clinging to the railing, her long black hair hanging grossly down her back, she was always dripping drool. Yes, she did scare me, especially when she groped to my window hunched over, spittle drizzling down her chin, asking me, “Did I want a ticket to the show?”

Catatonia is a strange thing, and it is even stranger when this absence of just “being there” is undercut with bizarre, terrifying schizophrenic hallucinations and the inability to control the body’s natural functions like bowel movements.

Since beginning my job at the locked psychiatry ward of a hospital, I look at the mentally ill in a different way. It is difficult to see those who are screaming, tearing at their skin, talking in tongues, or urinating on their pillows as people. When humans are not acting like humans, something makes us recoil from them, both in fear and in disgust. Katherine was the first “crazy” that turned back into a person right in front of my eyes and she changed the way I viewed mentally ill people, and forced me to acknowledge that I needed to change my view in the first place.

It seems as though Zelda Fitzgerald was not viewed in the light of humanity, but rather as a fragile “thing”—according to Elizabeth Hardwick’s essay. I don’t want to assume that Hardwick’s miniature biography is the complete truth, and I would like to believe that F. Scott Fitzgerald did wish the best for his wife, but that little was known of mental illness during the 1930’s. Is it possible that the mentally ill were treated not as human, but as subhuman creatures that needed to stay out of society’s way as much as possible?

One day, I was sitting at my secretary’s desk, dealing with the usual administration, and Katherine sauntered up to my window. She was walking straight; her hair was not stringy but brushed smooth and luscious. She had hazel eyes that were clear and sharp. I opened the window and she smiled that full, warm smile of a woman who has spent her entire life caring for others. She was only the day before a creature living in a person’s body. Now she was telling me I looked lovely, and about her education at Columbia University, about her beautiful children all grown up and doing work for their communities. She was married and worked as a Pastor at her local hospital.

Creativity is something that we all have, and as human beings we are constantly creating things, from art to children to clean space, safe space, all numbers of things. Zelda’s creative energy intimidated her husband, possibly because the energy of a schizophrenic could be seen as subhuman, or inhumanly intense. Some of the artwork and writing I’ve seen at the hospital has been unsettling. Some of it has been beautiful; some of the artwork has been given just to me and is hanging on my wall. If Zelda had been allowed to create as freely as she had desired, what would she have made for herself, and her audience? The nurses will often discourage patients from drawing sexually disturbing pictures especially if they depict staff members. Are the two comparable? Every time that a person is told to stop creating that thing, are we unknowingly hindering the birth of something that will be truly genius?

Katherine never drew any artwork, and if she wrote, I never saw anything. She left the hospital with her husband, wearing one of the nurse’s sweaters because her husband, in his excitement at taking her home, forgot to take her jacket. She told me I was sweet, and wrote down her address for me. I never did write to her, thinking that the long interruption in her life was memory enough.

Even now I see people shrink away from “crazies” on the street. They might be dangerous after all, which is true. But I see passers by looking at these people as if they are not people, but a suspicious and troublesome type of animal, or is the carrier of a contagious disease. Neither of which is the reality. I am sincerely grateful that Katherine was able to teach me to treat all people like people. And I hope that F. Scott Fitzgerald did not have to learn this lesson as I did, but recognized the humanity in his wife, even as the schizophrenia did its best to mask it.