For Vicky

Russell Banks

Thanks so much to Midlife Matters for dedicating the beautiful winter photograph to me.

In contemplating this act of dedicating entries to one another, I realize that I haven't dedicated an entry as yet to my friend, Vicky (My Incentive), whom I met online just this past August.  Since, we've had many fine conversations.  We recently wrote to each other of the pleasures and perils of talking, and so this poem from the Writer's Almanac reminds me of our discussion:

"About Friends" by Brian Jones, from Spitfire on the Northern Line © Chatto and Windus.  

About Friends

The good thing about friends
is not having to finish sentences.

I sat a whole summer afternoon with my friend once
on a river bank, bashing heels on the baked mud
and watching the small chunks slide into the water
and listening to them - plop plop plop.
He said, 'I like the twigs when they...you know...
like that.' I said, 'There's that branch...'
We both said, 'Mmmm'. The river flowed and flowed
and there were lots of butterflies, that afternoon.

I first thought there was a sad thing about friends
when we met twenty years later.
We both talked hundreds of sentences,
taking care to finish all we said,
and explain it all very carefully,
as if we'd been discovered in places
we should not be, and were somehow ashamed.

I understood then what the river meant by flowing.

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This poem just works on so many levels.  Here are the three that interest me now:

1--  It reminds me of Vicky because I think if we met in person, we would not have to speak to each other in complete sentences. 

2--I think the poem also says something about the way we grow away from ourselves (The Bush people of Australia call this being "far hearted") as we get older, and so lose our  connections to people and to the very rhythm of the earth on which we live.

3--The poem says something about storytelling because sometimes what we DON'T say in a story is as important as what we DO say.  My own writing process is a matter of constantly taking out unneeded material.  I am reminded of an example that the novelist Russell Banks once told about sending one of his manuscripts to his editor.  His editor told him he needed to cut several pages from his manuscript.  He did cut the pages.  However, by cutting the fat out of his manuscript, he discovered new intriguing details and scenes that he now wanted to add.  He added the new material and the manuscript swelled and ended up being longer than the manuscript he originally sent to his publisher.  The publisher called Banks and said, "Good, it's much shorter now."

The "fat" in the manuscript kept him from seeing the possibilities in his story.  Also, the "fat" in the manuscript is a lot like the "fat" in some of our friendly conversations.  We often use it to pad our nervousness, our perceived inadequacies, or our lack of connection.

The connection that I feel to Vicky is a lot like the one I feel to my writing.  Both quicken the blood.  Both bring purpose and meaning to my life.