Tell all the Truth

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I first encountered what is now one of my favorite Emily Dickinson poems in a class I took on memoir writing. Here’s the short, two-stanza poem:

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
 
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —

 

I’ve found that “tell it slant” has been great advice for me as a writer.

In argumentative writing, it means I don’t always come out with my argument from the gate. If you start with your argument (i.e. we need strong gun control) you can sometimes lose all hope of persuading an audience who doesn’t always agree with you. From the start they already know they disagree with you, whereas if you use a point last structure, you can start on common ground and at least get your audience to listen to you.

In creative writing, to me “tell it slant” means to focus on craft and character and dialogue, to not be overly didactic with whatever “truth” I think I know, to let both characters and my readers figure things out on their own, and allow them to learn their own lessons, which may or may not be what I had originally intended.

The book Tell it Slant takes its title from Emily Dickinson’s poem, explaining, “she meant, we think, that truth takes on many guises; that the truth of art can be very different than the truth of day-to-day life” (2).  The authors go on to quote Salman Rushdie:

Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination and of the heart. (3)

I hope that I can learn to tell the truth in my writing, to speak to the imagination and to the heart.

Guardians of the Hearth

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For an LDS woman, being a “guardian of the hearth” is about much more than cooking food on a fire (or on the stove)–it’s about the entire spiritual responsibilities and divine roles of women in the home.

(Frederick Childe Hassam’s “The Fireplace”)

This month’s visiting teaching message is titled “Guardians of the Hearth,” quoting President Gordon B. Hinckley, who said the following in a 1995 address to women:

You are the guardians of the hearth.  You are the bearers of the children. You are they who nurture them and establish within them the habits of their lives. No other work reaches so close to divinity as does the nurturing of the sons and daughters of God.

It’s insightful to read this quote in the context of the woman and her relationship with the historic hearth. Recently, I’ve been reading the book Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light. The educational yet entertaining book spends most of its pages talking about the development of electricity and how it changed Western culture and society, but the first quarter of the book is about what life was like before electric light.

(Photo of tenant farmer and family in front of fireplace taken as part of the FSA project in 1939.)

The hearth–the fire–was often the figurative center of the home. It was used for cooking and the heat for ironing. In the evening, candles and lamps were often used sparingly, because of their expense, so the hearth was often the main source of light. It heated the home–or at least the portion of it closest to the fire. Without the other evening diversions and entertainments made possible by electric lights, families congregated in the evening around the hearth–it was a place of warmth and a place for stories and for the shared weaving of lives.

I don’t have a fireplace in my home, but I still can be the guardian of the hearth. I can be a guardian of light, of time spent together as a family, of warmth, of safety, of food, of shared stories. As a wife and mother, I am not the only one with responsibilities for the hearth–others often light and tend to our home’s fire. But I am the guardian–a guard and protector of light and spirit, one who preserves the fire and makes sure its embers do not go out.

(Helen Allingham’s “In the Nursery”)

The Compulsion to Take your Own Piece of a Place: A Visit to Las Vegas

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I remember going on vacations with my parents and younger siblings to historical sites–Gettysburg, Bunker Hill, Nauvoo, and others. I would always want to take something with me, like a rock from Gettysburg. I wanted something tangible, substantial, something that would create resonance and connection to the place and its events even when I was gone. My parents would tell me that if everyone took a rock from Gettysburg there would no be no rocks left. Thus, the invention of the souvenir shop: you can take something that feels significant and create connection even though whatever it is you bought was probably made in China. The place is preserved, the economy is stimulated, and you go home happy.

I went to Las Vegas a few weeks ago to see Phantom of the Opera, and even though I’m not a Vegas type of girl (I don’t gamble, drink, or go to “adult entertainment”), when touring I still wanted to bring something back with me. I really didn’t buy anything, besides a bottle of water. But I did bring something back with me: videos. Yes, I know, I could search on YouTube and there are plenty of videos of Las Vegas. And there are movies, like Ocean’s 11, that memorialize it. But just as you want your own rock or your own t-shirt, I wanted my own videos.

First, the Venetian was all decked out for the Chinese New Year, so I had to get a shot of a dragon I  saw:

Second, I loved the fountain show at the Bellagio, so I cut together a few of my favorite parts:

Pictures and video are the new thing to take away from a place. We take them, trying to personally capture a location’s essence. Especially in the 18th century, and continuing on today, there were fears that perhaps photography could actually steal a piece of someone’s soul, or at least damage it. It’s an interesting thought, because we do change our experiences of things by mediating them.

Here’s a few books that I’ve enjoyed on the history and theories of photography and film that consider how the camera has changed our lives:

In truth, that’s my personally collected bibliography of cool film and photography books. I am officially a geek.

Manipulating People When They Try To Unsubscribe

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You know the drill–once upon a time you thought it would be interesting to get a company’s regular (monthly, weekly, or, heaven forbid, daily) emails. Or, more likely, you entered a contest, completed an online quiz, or got a special offer on a purchase and did not read every word of fine print. Sometimes, this turned out to be a good relationship–I don’t mind Amazon’s book recommendations or Winkflash’s photo book sales, for example, and I’ve been getting them for years. But most of the time, at some point you’ve had enough. You’re ready to unsubscribe.

You’ve made your decision. You go into their most recent email, click the unsubscribe button, and then are taken to a special webpage, designed not to help you unsubscribe, but to convince you not to. Here’s a fairly standard message:

Retention is important for companies, and they want you to stay on their email list for as long as possible. This is the standard message to get you to stay: you will lose something by leaving us. We like you, you like us. Please don’t leave. It’s like a needy boyfriend that you never meant to say “yes” to, standing next to your middle school locker.

Other companies are a little more heavy-handed. Let’s give a little background first–I once took a quiz on RealAge to find out, well, my “real age.” I got on their email list, and never actually read a single email. In unsubscribed from them in 2010, and spent 2 years of bliss, enjoying my slightly-less-cluttered inbox. At the beginning of 2012, they re-injected my email into their system, and started me sending emails again. (Note: they are not the only company that recycles their unsubscribed customers, a practice I disagree with. I’ve also had to unsubscribe twice from KOA.)

Here’s the message I got from RealAge when I attempted to unsubscribe (the second time):

Same argument as the first, but heavy-handed and even manipulative. But don’t worry–I held on to my original plan to unsubscribe, clicked the necessary buttons, and (probably) managed to be removed from their email list. Of course, it may take up to 10 days for my request to be processed–a standard caveat. It would have been easier to mark them as spam, and next time I will.

The thing is, they wouldn’t make these arguments to get people to stay unless they worked a healthy percentage of the time.

I’ve also gotten these email when I’m not as connected to my social networks as they’d like me to be–unless you change the settings, Facebook now emails you with what you missed if you don’t log on regularly, and Twitter is rather concerned that I haven’t tweeted since June 30th (I’m not sure whether it was of last year, or the year before). Here’s the email they sent me:

The assumption is that there is something lacking in my life–or if I don’t feel like something is lacking, it’s only because I don’t realize what I’m missing. Each of these companies–RealAge, KOA, Twitter, and many more–believes that they can feel that gap, that I will feel happy and whole only through them. They all have things to offer, and maybe some day I will go back to Twitter or camp at a KOA. I find fulfillment through blogging and through interacting with my friends on Facebook. But if I’m relying on email subscriptions or social networks to make me whole, then something obviously is lacking, something that the Internet can’t solve. Perhaps there’s a big “Unsubscribe from the Web” button–I need it sometimes.

The Trouble with Holiday Crafts (Ah, Kairos)

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Last night, I finished an afghan for my parents’ Christmas present:

(In case you’re interested, I slightly modified the  free poinsettia throw pattern from Red Heart.)

I’ve been working on it since late October, and I’m happy with how it turned out. The trouble is that this afghan was supposed to be my parents’ Christmas present six weeks ago. My sister, who was heading home for Christmas, even volunteered to carry it with her on the airplane. Not only that, but it’s a Christmas-themed afghan that they may not even take with them when them move to Africa this summer–kairos, alas!

(And yes–I did cross stitch on top of the single crochet. You could do really cool things with cross stitch on crocheted pot holders…)

Kairos is the opportune moment. That moment in time where things can change, where your words make a difference, where what you do is relevant if you do it then. It’s the reason holiday-themed arts and crafts are so popular: they’re perfect for the season, make meaningful decorations, and help get you into the holiday-spirit, whether that holiday spirit is about scaring children or blowing kisses.

Luckily, I did manage to hit one kairotic moment with this crochet project–my mom flew out this morning, and I finished it just in time for her to take it with her.

It’s easier for me to meet kairotic deadlines for smaller projects like these hand warmers I recently made:

Hand warmers must be given away while it is still cold and wintry. Check.

(I was inspired by these instructions on hello dearie, though I skipped the liners and just used cotton fabric. I used my sewing machine to sew most of them, flipped them right side out, filled them with rice using a funnel, and then closed them using this invisible closing seam.)

The heart hand warmers I made would make great Valentine’s Day presents:

And the four leaf clover hand warmers could be given for St. Patrick’s Day (though I failed the first set by making the stem too narrow, leaving it impossible to fill them with rice):

I was skeptical about whether home-made DIY hand warmers would actually work, but luckily they do. (Heat them for 30-45 seconds in the microwave, and they’ll stay warm for at least half an hour.)

I have no holiday-themed arts and crafts currently played, so hopefully I won’t run into more kairos problems in the near future…