Emily Neil--The Layers

Hey all, I’m Emily, I’m also going to contribute some thoughts throughout this year as I move to Palma de Mallorca, Spain, to teach English. I don’t leave for another week or so, but I’ve been thinking some about the purpose of writing/blogging in general, and why it can be worthwhile to do it in a more public way. I love to write, and as Jake and Leo have discussed in their original posts, for the first time in my life I will be in a place far away from most of my friends and family, without a clearly defined community. This makes the idea of staying connected in some way with everyone one of the most appealing reasons to write/blog.

But it’s hard to write posts for a general public, rather than solely individual correspondences, without working through the thought process of why it matters, what the point is, why create or write or throw more stuff out there in the teeming Internet universe. For me, that thought process starts with one of my favorite quotes:

"It is so fine and yet so terrible to stand in front of the blank canvas."

So said the French painter Paul Cezanne, one of my favorites. The act of marking a page and putting something in space is absolutely terrifying. There is something complete and beautiful about the blank page, or silence, for that matter – it is divine, in a way. It is pure - unmarked and constant. So in that sense creation necessitates an initial imbalance, a rupture of perfection which shatters the flawless nothing before it achieves anything else. Creation at its core is a balance of enduring imperfections.

But that is exactly what makes it so essential, and the opposite of self-indulgent. By writing we confront the fact, the fear, of the blank page. And when we share what we write and what we create, we develop a comfort with this fear and the vulnerability that comes along with the decision to risk that rupture in perfection.

I sit down to write, I have a blank canvas before me - and yet, I'm afraid to mark it. Why? Why are we afraid to create? Because we’re afraid no one will care. That even if they do care about our words, whatever act of creation will fail in its intent. That it is so much striving and building and perfecting for the self alone while the world rages on outside of this blank page, hatred and conflict burning to ashes the blank pages of so many others lives, the ones that they will never be able to mark with their own creations.

But within this - within every reason not to create - exists a window into certain conclusions, certain principles, which provide hope. And hope is the necessary foundation for any act of creation.

I want to create, I want to write and do whatever this year, make some kind of mess on the blank page, because of everything that the poem "The Layers," by Stanley Kunitz, expresses about engaging with memory while at the same time stretching forth from the roots of the past, the roots that can entangle you. These verses are what I'm holding onto right now in a time of personal transition and uncertainty (and have been a great source of comfort/strength to me in the past). I just graduated from college, and I'm going to Spain for a year to teach English - it isn't anything dramatic in the least, but at the individual level it is a breaking out of a mold of being, the mode of being a student, of having lived life in similar settings with the same expectations. I think this poem can speak to anyone, really, at any time in their life, but maybe especially so to those of us who have just graduated, or are experiencing new jobs, places, and whatever other layers to life. For us, assuredly, it's another “chapter in our book of transformations.” Check out the full poem "The Layers," by Stanley Kunitz, below:

The Layers

BY STANLEY KUNITZ

I have walked through many lives,

some of them my own,

and I am not who I was,

though some principle of being

abides, from which I struggle

not to stray.

When I look behind,

as I am compelled to look

before I can gather strength

to proceed on my journey,

I see the milestones dwindling

toward the horizon

and the slow fires trailing

from the abandoned camp-sites,

over which scavenger angels

wheel on heavy wings.

Oh, I have made myself a tribe

out of my true affections,

and my tribe is scattered!

How shall the heart be reconciled

to its feast of losses?

In a rising wind

the manic dust of my friends,

those who fell along the way,

bitterly stings my face.

Yet I turn, I turn,

exulting somewhat,

with my will intact to go

wherever I need to go,

and every stone on the road

precious to me.

In my darkest night,

when the moon was covered

and I roamed through wreckage,

a nimbus-clouded voice

directed me:

“Live in the layers,

not on the litter.”

Though I lack the art

to decipher it,

no doubt the next chapter

in my book of transformations

is already written.

I am not done with my changes.

Looking behind, we can feel that we’ve walked through many lives- those of ourselves, as we have grown, those of friends and family. I can't describe the surge of joy I feel, though, when I think that in the midst of change and uncertainty, "some principle of being abides." And it is a struggle not to stray from it, a constant struggle of trying to uncover the simplest truth of the you who is existing, underneath all of the words you say and things you do – the constant river of your essence. But it is there, in the same way that though our tribe of true affections may be scattered - may be constantly scattering as we all branch off and enter into different phases, dispersing throughout the world - the scattering only deepens the layers of memory and being each person contributes to our lives, to our formation of ourselves. Writing can be one part of the struggle not to stray; it is the act of uncovering some thread of truth. Not reaching it, not possessing it, but glimpsing it - holding it if only for a moment. Keeping it within sight.

This sounds like a lot of philosophizing, but it’s just my basic thought process for why I’m going to try to write/blog some while I’m in Spain, thinking whatever thoughts I end up thinking, doing whatever I end up doing - and why I think it’s great to have this platform in general to share our experiences. We are not done with our changes, and as we record them we can recognize within our words some semblance of guideposts along the way – a few wavering flags to catch at as we stumble on.