An Introvert Walks Into a Bar

Jul 01, 2021

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June was a weird month. Under a starry sky in Ithaca, New York, my writing besties and I read each other our work. Then I dove into Cayuga Lake for a chilly summer baptism. I ate in a restaurant and journaled in the chapel of the Charlotte airport. Writing students who had been coming to me through my computer screen for over a year materialized in the flesh, including one I’d never met in real life, despite knowing her bedroom from Zoom. On the longest day of the year, I wandered past my childhood home then drove down an empty Independence Avenue to Arlington National Cemetery, where I sweat through a black dress as young men in uniform performed an elegant dance of flag folding. I put miles on my car, flew above the clouds, and fell into the arms of people I hadn’t seen in years. I’m not sure yet what all of it means, only that I am content, and that meaning takes time to arrive.

Back at my desk, I’m revising an essay I wrote three years ago. When I reopened it, I had a sweet moment of being mystified--did I write this? Did I think the sentences and paragraphs needed to be in this order? Is this what I believed those events signified? I have different thoughts now on what those events mean. Writing is a process of continually meeting the person that you are, and, through the artifact of earlier drafts, re-meeting previous selves. I will revise this essay based on who I am today, this month, this year. I will send it out into the world knowing there’s a good chance the meaning will change over time as I do.

Part of my revision process is exuberant deletion. I write messy, chaotic, barely comprehensible first drafts and then slash them to hell. Many of the sentences I once thought necessary to this essay won’t live to see the weekend. Their number is up. They’re toast. Goodbye, old sentences. You served me well, and now we must part ways. Removing the old makes way for the new.

As we move back into the world, I’m still thinking about subtraction, about all the dumb shit I did and worried about in the before that I don’t want to waste my time on anymore. Although I traveled hither and yon to reconnect with loved ones, I’m still a stone cold introvert who requires several hours per day of solitude to function optimally. No matter how much the world opens up, I will still stay a little closed, a little quiet, a little still, because, even with a few Manhattans in me, that’s who I am.

Drafting, discovering, digging, deleting—I hope you are finding time to be with words and be in the world in whatever way feels right to you. Send me a postcard.

Poet and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib posted the above photo on Twitter last November. I immediately baked that bundt cake myself, and though it did not come out as well as his did, I was able to cover all my mistakes in chocolate (could I do that with an essay, I wonder). For reasons I cannot fully explain but will somehow become an essay one day, I kept thinking about this man and his bundt cake. So I was excited to recently be stuck in the car and have the opportunity to listen intently to this On Being episode in which he says, I really love seeing how people are impacted and affected through a moment of shared witnessing. And that compels me and brings me closer to what feels like a type of emotional salvation. Some of it is because I think I just am prone to feeling very big feelings all the time, and it’s somewhat comforting to look around and realize I’m not by myself in that, in this pursuit of feeling first and processing second. A fascinating conversation worth your time.

I finally read The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead, which you should read if you haven’t. First off, it’s an essential story, giving voice to an unheard population that was decimated by racism and brutal violence. But you should also read it because it’s technically brilliant—the structure, the point of view, and the sentences are continually startling in their perfection. The final shock for me was the very end of the book, which reminded me of City Limits, an essay from Whitehead’s 2003 collection The Colossus of New York that includes this line, “Go back to your old haunts in your old neighborhoods and what do you find: they remain and have disappeared.” The whole essay is great, a must-read for anybody who’s ever lived in any city. I find it fascinating to track a writer’s preoccupations and watch how they evolve, reappearing in different forms over the course of their career. And I find it comforting and nourishing, no matter how difficult the material, to interact with brilliance.

Creative Writing for Teens

Last call for in the in-person creative writing camp I am teaching July 12-16. Perfect for any teen who wants to spend a week writing their brains out and hearing me tell boring stories about when I was their age.