Writing with Rox WEEKLY—A funny thing happened on the way to love

There was no point in trying to hold it in any longer. Once the innuendo had worked it's way around the table, there was no going back, and I was going down fast. It wasn't obvious the first time she read it. Not even the second time. In fact, they were just four innocent words in a seemingly innocent poem about a seemingly innocent time of life. Before our minds hit the gutter, in fact, it was a very moving, insightful poem about how, as parents, we struggle to let our kids learn their lessons in their own time without us having to save them from inevitable strife. Well... that's what I heard. Others heard the poem as a spiritual journey, which naturally led to a lot of excitement. Another member was caught up in punctuation.  But I don't know... you throw in a little Buddha, a little Jesus, add that to the Lotus blossom and one thing leads to another. And like I said, once someone goes to the bedroom, well... that there leads to dancing. And at that point, the image just replicates itself, over and over, the meaning new and fresh and expanding. 

It reminded me of the time in my young adulthood where my dad and his brother Charlie came over to Ma's for a holiday dinner of some kind, having not seen one another for a long time since my dad had been doing a few months locum tenem in West Virginia. Ma, knowing dad and Charlie were regular tennis partners asked what Charlie had been up to since my dad left him without a tennis partner for the regular Saturday game. "Well... " Uncle Charlie said, in his cool, So Cal manner, "I've been playing with myself quite a bit.." 

The dinner was shot.

Now, one might argue that this is no way to run a family dinner, let alone a writing group. But there's no changing what was and where our minds went and what our bodies needed and quite clearly mine needed to heave with hysteria, roll along the blissful wave of out-of-control laughter. I can just assume we all needed a good laugh last Wednesday. Who knows why. Heck, it's Halloween time—the veil is thin—that's why. 


Inevitably after the fits of laughter died down, somebody said, "god, I haven't laughed that hard in a long time." Doesn't someone always say that? It always takes me back to my brother's Bar Mitzvah in 1981, where friends and family gathered to celebrate in my sunny backyard in Los Angeles in the dead of winter, fleeing their native winterlands to see my brother off to manhood. The service was held beneath a long white canopy between the line of cypress and cumquat trees, transforming the basketball court into a temple, including the inevitable house of emotions which resulted from Ben's reading from the torah. Immediately following, we descended to the patio, where the reception and luncheon awaited us in paradise; elders stood around in circles with little plastic glasses of wine, a klezmer band played, kids dashed around lemon trees and founds things to throw and chase, adolsecents stood around awkwardly with their parents, wishing they could join. I must have been somewhere in between the worlds, harrahing around with my girlfriends, but also proud, obligatory, sister of the Bar Mitzvah boy. Amidst the merry celebration, suddenly, all eyes were on my Uncle Melvin, rotund, red faced, Irish in another life, perhaps, always jovial, engaged in a fit of indestructible laughter, loud, born deep in childhood, cooing and cawing as he tried to catch his breath, at last giving way to reverent, silent, laughter, his head bowed and bobbing, eyes crimping and crinkling.

The whole thing stopped us kids in our young tracks; was something wrong? Was he alright?

 "Man!" Uncle Melvin said, finally returning to his circle, "I haven't laughed like that in a long time!"

How could that be? I remember thinking in my young kid mind. How could laughter like that be so hard to come by? Of course, how could I have known then, on a day so idyllic and bright, that things would change? Somehow, the day my brother became a man was also the day I glimpsed life beyond the merry laughing lemon trees of my childhood. The lens shifted a bit toward serious, beyond the castle walls.

Last week at Wednesday Writers I was reminded that laughter is undervalued when it comes to appreciating writing. Typically, we don't expect to find ourselves laughing hysterically writing and/or workshopping a group member's writing; we don't think, "Gee, I hope this makes me laugh hysterically for reasons I do not even understand." We are more often geared to be moved, impressed, changed somehow by the good grace of well-used adjectives, perhaps because "good writing" has become oh so literary and perfect in it's old age of pretty bound books and polished perfect poetry. In this wise, erudite age of google university, we are in a battle of wits, on and off the page. All good, too, I say, but what happens if we come back down to earth, lower our expectations and simply expect to be gifted by merely being together in truth, perhaps expect to be enchanted? The point is, though I fear I've lost it somewhere along the way, is that whether we laugh or cry or argue, or fear or question, etc, as we are listening to someone's writing, this is all a sign of a strong piece of writing. And, no, we weren't laughing at her or her poem; she was laughing with us. 

And perhaps that laughter had nothing to do with the poem, but it was the catalyst to something deeply needed. Because later in the afternoon, the sky turned dark and, like all things, my mood had changed. I called TCF, hoping that sharing the morning's guffaws would lighten me up... but inevitably the lens had reverted back to seriousness by then. I remember thinking, but not saying, why don't we laugh anymore? Not saying because I knew it wasn't really true, but simply just true in the moment. Still, I'd already forgotten the deep gift of the morning, the reminder of another way of being in the world. I'd already forgotten about enchanted. As I write this, I remember.

So where does the love come in? To write with someone is to love them. To share writing together in community, whether it brings tears of laughter or joy or all in between, reminds me of my own humanity—that I am a being with a large spectrum of emotions, memories, thoughts, ideas, dreams, etc. If I didn't love the people I wrote with and the things they wrote (which can happen fairly quickly when you write together), I don't believe I would have laughed as hard and recklessly as I did last Wednesday; to write with someone or an entire group is to know them in a way where you can't help but love them. 

Ironically, it's hard to put into words.

WRITE WITH ME?
LAST TIME YOU HAD A GOOD LAUGH?
LAUGHING HARD MEMORY?
MOMENT YOU STOPPED SEEING THE WORLD THROUGH INNOCENT YOUNG EYES?
ANYTHING ELSE? GOD KNOWS I WENT EVERYWHERE WITH THIS ONE. DO YOU KNOW WHAT I WAS SAYING? :)