Slow-Slipping Words

I’ve got a pot of tea made from rosehips, dried apples, and blueberries that my sister sent me for Christmas. And red tulips, with equally stunning green stems, my husband brought from the supermarket. These don’t bring the pleasures of speed, whatever they might be, but remind me that all I have to do is move my fingers slowly across the keyboard now and then. Writing is not racing. It’s a slow sport, with breathing closer to dozing than dashing. It’s a tightrope, moving on, while looking back, checking out the word-footprints.

I’ve started a semester of teaching, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays I choose clothes from my closet instead of the handy ones in the drawers. It’s good to see beautiful young people wearing orange sneakers and whimsical hats and to hear thoughts about books. My classroom is not fast-paced, but I feel a certain pressure to get across ideas that will be useful to twenty-three people with different goals and needs.  At one point yesterday I said, “Let’s go back and just take a look at the first page. What pulls you in? What suggests the setting and where we might be going?”

There were a few beats of silence before a young man raised his hand and said, “The first word of the book is ‘where.’ That’s kind of mysterious.”

I’d been thinking about sentences and images, but I looked at that first word with newfound admiration. Yes, a brilliant way to start. We admired some other language and imagery before someone settled on the drawn-out beauty of the word “seemed,” the way it stretched out a sentence and linked two possible words.

We got back to a hastier style of running sentences together, making judgments. And a professor has to look at the clock.  But now back in my writing room I’m remembering to soak up the possibilities of words like “where” or “seemed,” to revel in vowels and single syllables and all the places they might take me. I stop to look back and fret about what’s ahead, but come around again to focus on the words just beneath my fingers. Maybe a petal will fall. The tea cools. That’s the pace I’m keeping.