Mineral Point (Part 11)

Getting at the motivation to write, to tell these stories about my dad and Mineral Point and life in my early 20's was prompted this summer from when I started to write about playing basketball in China, about the story I wanted to tell about the tournament I played in last Spring. In my notes I had started to write about how I got started playing sports and about swimming, which lead me to some more notes about the summer swim team in Mineral Point and to thinking about moving between Mineral Point and Madison and a bifurcated lifestyle; about being in two places at once and maintaining two identities, one for my mom and one for my dad. Like Ghostbusters, never cross the stream or else risk annihilation. Shift. Like a lot of this kind of writing though, I set out to write about one thing but the momentum of what I actually write ends up taking me in another direction. I mean to get back to basketball but am still trying to dig into this phenomenon of perception, to outline some of the contours of why I see and act in particular ways such that I can tell the story of that tournament in a way where I can maintain if not a moral high ground then at least a reasonable response to the situation. As if I can control the way that a story is received by providing enough backstory.

This habit of speech and of mind has been with me for as at least long as I have thought to reflect, that often instead of getting straight to the point, instead of saying the thing I mean to say, I provide so much backstory and contextualization that I forget why I started in the first place. Like reading a sentence so closely you forget the beginning before you reach the end. This is more for speech than writing, though it takes on a slightly different form in writing, depending on the kind. A blog and its essays forms are more speechy whereas a work email keeps the equation simpler most times, writing to colleagues or students; that our roles clarify our relationships to each other and therefore I either am asked or ask others, no explanation necessary. Or, we assume that we understand the larger context since we all work together, no explanation necessary. But when it comes to a situation where I am not sure how much the other needs to know, a situation where I feel the need to justify my actions or beliefs, which sometimes feels like all the time, I contextualize, assuming that if I say what it is I have to say directly then the other person is likely to misunderstand. This then is a kind of pretentiousness, a pre-rhetorical habit that probably comes out of past experience, one part paranoid projection and one part necessary defensive measure against a conditioned belief that speaking my mind will get me into trouble. 

To be direct then, writing about Mineral Point is about writing about death, or specifically, my own death, a thing that I have been worried about since my early 20's and possibility that what he had is what I will have. One aspect of being in China is language learning, an ability that has been empirically demonstrated to be a factor in delaying the onset of dementia. Exercise as well has shown to contribute delayed onset. Whether or not my thoughts at that time, now vestiges, were simply projections spurred by self-indulgent existential quandaries or justified response to uncertainty (I should also mention that 9/11 occurred shortly after I returned to Seattle), this idea that I have a limited amount of time was particularly salient during that period of my life. Therefore, I figured, I better pursue poetry because I need to leave something behind, that I need to get to it and get to it now. That, and when I met Poet Liz during my last year of college there was literally nothing else other than poetry than anyone had said I had talent for. I've always thought that if my dad had been cognizant that he would have been critical of my decision to pursue poetry, would have asked me to hone in on something more achievable. God, I missed him so much. I wanted to ask him what he thought I should do, should be doing, how to go about it. A few years before he was diagnosed one day I asked him what he wanted to be as an adult when he was a kid. He said he still didn't know what he wanted to be, yet, he was, I thought, and admired him for this.