
Day 21: The Word As the Tool Of Co-Existence
And where the golden fault line lies
Feet on the floor, calisthenics, yoga, oatmeal for kids (with honey, this time), ate with them, helped kids with questions about school. Then we all sprinted into the van, bringing W and X to school by 07:57, walked around lake with Y and Z. Beautiful morning, with clinging mists above sun-glazed water.
Picked a lot of garbage out of the dry waterfall bed, spoke with fishermen and lame-dogged man — they wanted to know our nationality, they guessed Dutch, then English (which are both, in fact, partly right); when I told them ‘Canadian,’ they said ‘even better,’ and I, knowing firsthand the prejudices that many French have toward the both the Dutch and the English, and the slight soft spot they hold for Canada, agreed: ‘yes, much better than the two,’ trying to be cheekily droll, but instead coming across as ignorantly egotistical, or just downright stupid, judging by their bemused expressions. Brought Y and Z to school by 08:45. (No crying! Even cheerful!) Delighted in the miraculous and decidedly rare (in my case) good feelings of arriving places on time.
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After school is a rush. I pick up the kids, we go to the shop for last-minute items; then drive home. They want to relax and play of course, but there is far too much to do for that. Many various slips of paper to be signed, further books and book covers to be organized, decisions to be made (Spanish or swimming, German or swimming, homework class or not, etc.), homework to be helped with.
All of us around the paper-strewn kitchen table, talking, asking and over-talking, cooking dinner, stirring pots, sliding trays into the oven, clearing space for plates like so many crop circles between fields of forms, and wondering (yet again) if I’d (/we’d) made the right decisions about all this. Occupying the darker corners of my mind, as I buzz around and try to answer this, tidy that: nagging anxiety about certain people or events, simmering resentment toward others, anxiety about the kids’ former schools, and how they must resent me for taking the whole summer to decide; anxiety about not having yet visited the elder neighbours nor aunt J, thinking everyone must despise me and must think I’m a terrible person… anxiety about not going to Holland (I mean, the Netherlands) for the family party with my parents, next weekend. Also relief about not going to Holland, because how could I possibly have managed that, on top of everything else? But I feel terribly inferior, strange and useless, or at least, that’s how I imagine folks must see me, even if I don’t really think I am those things. The reality is I’m just equal (though not the same), different from many, in terms of not joining completely in the same kind of rodent race (which is why I must appear strange) and useful in a lot of ways, to at least five humans on this earth.
But at the moment I feel that my writing is terrible; that the stuff I’m publishing, for this challenge, at least, is complete crap; I think longingly of Glennon Doyle’s writing; I imagine her as a miniature cowgirl Barbie (I was a huge fan of Barbies, in my youth), with one perfectly bronzed and manicured hand on a white-jeaned hip, loose waves cascading down golden shoulders, standing in slim western boots like a sun-streaked super-mama, atop her pillar of (truly) meaningful, world-changing work; meanwhile I feel inadequate as a mother, as a father (sometimes I have to be both), as a friend, as a neighbour (how can I keep failing at this?), as a community member (why am I not filling up every spare moment?), as an editor/translator (why do I not search harder for paid work?), as a wife (shouldn’t I go back to book-keeping? And why am I not cleaning the house, organizing files, ordering building supplies, at this moment?) and most of all, as a writer (why am I writing this, instead of something important to the world at large?).
Truth entombed
It’s funny how when I really get going with words, it’s because I’ve started with the mantra, whether silent or written: “This is for me, for my eyes only, for nobody else but me.”
But invariably, PR (let’s call her Patty Robinson, my imaginary networking/public relations persona) takes over at some point, clarifying the phrasing, driving the topic, closing up the cracks in the bits of fractured pottery, with a nice coat of lacquer. (“Nice work, we can hit ‘publish’ on this one!” she’ll crow, gleefully rubbing her hands together.)
And yet the cracks in the fractured pottery are where the gold might have been poured, instead of white lacquer; the cracks are where the light shines through, when the surface is otherwise closed off; the fissures are where enlightenment glows, waiting… and so in the wake of PR’s meticulous lacquering, the truth is sealed up, and I have not accessed it.
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There’s something I want to clarify, before hitting publish, on this work that started out as private: Contrary to the internal self-berating that PR left intact (but lacquered) above, I do think mundane, thought-purge writing like this is important to the world at large. Why? Because 1) it is self-developing (“change yourself, change the world”); and 2) it is a kind of truth; even if it’s “just” the truth of one average human being.
If I write (and publish) my own story, no matter how banal, you can understand someone like me better. And if you write yours, I can better understand someone like you.
Understanding breeds compassion, and compassion stops resentment and prejudice, which may in turn prevent wars (if the intention for peace was there in the first place, that is).
We are each best equipped to tell the truth of our own story. Even if it’s not spelled out plainly; even (or especially) if it escapes the notice of our own internal PR; even if it manages only to shine through the cracks of what we say.
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Mine truly,
With love and gratitude for you, and yours (specifically, your own stories),
xo N
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Notes/refs:
- This is Day 21 of a self-imposed 31-day “Write AND hit Publish” challenge, sometimes using Jeff Goins’ “My 500 Words” prompts. Day 21’s prompt was “Write a Confession,” though any resemblance of this post to a confession is purely accidental.
- Title inspiration “The Word As the Tool of Coexistence” came from the stated ethos of The Cesar Egido Serrano Foundation and its Museo de La Palabra, the Museum of Words, in Spain: “The word is the tool of coexistence between different cultures, religions and ideologies.”
- To read a process post about submitting to the above-named Foundation’s amazing micro-fiction literary contest last November, click here.

