(I did not enjoy this essay topic, and yet, B+.)
Danielle Levine
English 12
Ms. Harrison
Period 4
Welcome back from the winter holiday, Ms.Harrison. I hope it was nice for you. I enjoyed hibernating during this break, lots of sleeping and reading.
Yes, a picture is worth a thousand words, I guess. There are a few that come to my mind and when I see them, epic stories are evident in an instant. Sometimes pictures even evoke sounds like a haunting oboe or something.
I like words more than pictures.
I don’t have a camera. My parents bought me one for my birthday, but when I took pictures and thought about looking at them, I instead tossed the camera in the L.A. river. Then I had to work to pay my parents back for the money I wasted. It was a whole big thing. But if I want to look at some kind of captured image, I have snow globes for that.
I don’t care if pictures are worth a million metaphorical words. I like real words. I should have been born in another era where people wrote letters and socialized over lemonade and a game of cards or a few cigars and talked about life’s pertinent experiences while being shrouded in mystery under elaborate hats and layers of clothing. All their talk floats away along the path of smoke. Maybe remembered but really gone. Each person can keep what they want.
I see most photographs today and all I can think about is newspaper articles, grieving, and a frozen moment in time. Photographs are cruel that way. A photograph captures a moment of truth that can’t be undone and makes it live on and on and on and on. They are reprinted, reloaded, posted, downloaded over and over and over again. They resurface and wound.
Teacher comments: Some beautiful ideas here. I really think Marv is helping you.
*MARV MISSIVE*
Letter #3 from Marv to me
Probing too deeply for my taste
Danielle,
I read your essay about photographs. It was interesting. Do you want to write more about that?
Just wondering,
Marv
*MARV MISSIVE*
Letter #3 from me to Marv
What he deserved in return
Dear Marv,
No.
Danielle
*MARV MISSIVE*
Pathetic letter #4 from me to Marv
What I felt forced to write to Marv because Stella is a crazy therapist.
Dear Marv,
Well, sorry about the curt previous letter. Apparently you called my mom because she just called me and said I have to go back to my crazy ex-therapist Stella if I don’t “open up” to you. So annoying. Look, I really don’t want to write about stuff that you already know about from my file. I feel like your asking me is just some kind of game to get into my head, which is my business. Things are neatly organized in there. If I write to you about these things, it may disorganize my filing system.
Danielle
*MARV MISSIVE*
Letter #4 from Marv to me
Marv is smarter than I thought.
Danielle,
I can understand that you’ve compartmentalized things in order to cope. However, I would ask you to really think about how that is working for you. Is it working for you? Do you feel content?
With understanding,
Marv
*MARV MISSIVE*
Letter #5 from me to Marv
After a few days of thought and knowing I don’t want to go back to Stella
Marv,
I would not say the “method to my madness” is a complete success. However, I cannot undo it at this time. I keep things stored away that must be stored away. When I write about them it loosens the spigots that have kept a hold on them. Please respect this. Turning a knob to full-throttle “on” could mean I can’t get out of bed. How would that work for you?
Danielle
*MARV MISSIVE*
Letter #5 from Marv to me
Marv finally gets it.
Danielle,
Understood. I have a feeling those spigots will loosen over time when you are ready for them to.
Marv
*AUNT JOYCE E-MAIL* 1/13
E-mail #2 to Aunt Joyce, who can manage this excavating of my brain better than anyone
Dear Aunt Joyce,
I hope that the fashion show in New York was a smashing success and that you also had some time to visit some vintage shops for us. Things are a little unwieldy here. My mom is insisting I “see” this therapist at school; although, I don’t have to actually see him. I just have to write back and forth to him. But I know what he wants. He wants what I’ve tied up and left neatly in the back of my brain. This e-mail is not for you to psychoanalyze me. Ms. Harrison, my parents, and Marv are doing that. I just want you to tell me if you have anything in the back of your brain that you’ve tied neatly in a bow and would like to leave there. Just tell me you have something like that.
P.S. Remember, anything you find for me clothing-wise needs to fit my enormous size 12 body.
*AUNT JOYCE E-MAIL* 1/15
E-Mail #2 from Aunt Joyce. She hides something in her mind, too.
Danielle,
I will share something with you, and then after you are done reading it, I will ask that you delete it, so it can go back to living “tied neatly in a bow,” as you describe it, in the back of my mind. I’m not sure how your parents will feel about me sharing this information with you, but I want you to have it, and I want you to understand it.
Seventeen years ago, the year your parents adopted you, I had an abortion. Now, have whatever reaction you choose to that. You won’t be thinking anything I haven’t already thought about my choice or myself. It’s not something you let go.
Your mother was very angry with me—she knew pain—because she had been trying for so long to get pregnant with you, and when it happened for me under very complicated circumstances, she couldn’t understand why and how I could end this life. I also believe she was very upset that life could work this way. And I understand her perspective. She wanted a child so badly. I didn’t. What sick forces were at work here, she must have thought.
During an especially virulent fight that I had with your mom, she begged me to have the baby so she could adopt it. It seemed like such a simple solution to her and something that, in her mind, the universe had worked out. But, Danielle, very little in life ever works so simply. I had gotten pregnant from a man whom I deeply loved but who was married. (Again, have whatever reaction you choose to that. Ditto, the above sentiments. You won’t be thinking anything I haven’t already vetted in therapy.) I was twenty-four years old, and child that I was, I loved this man the way I knew how to at the time. Danielle, you will love people in your life and the circumstances of that love will not fit into a neatly designed framework. You may not like it, but you will take it, or, at least, I hope you will. For all the pain, regret, and shame, I cannot change one moment of the affair or the decision I ultimately made.
It took years for your mom to forgive me. When you were gifted to them, I watched every minute of your coming-of-age thinking I could have had a son or daughter walking right alongside you. What might this child have offered you? But, had I had this child and allowed your parents to adopt him/her, then you wouldn’t be with us at all. That is not an option any of us can accept. And so, it is you, your existence, your presence in my life that has helped to heal this situation for me. You mean so much to me, and now you know even more why. You are the child we are meant to have. Yours is the life that is meant to be here.
I hope this story is not more than you were bargaining for.
Your Forever Aunt Joyce
P.S. I have clothes for you, but in a size 8; you are a size 8, girl.
*AUNT JOYCE E-MAIL* 1/16
E-Mail #3 to Forever Aunt Joyce
Forever Aunt Joyce,
I am just so über-sad that you ever had to be so distraught. I can’t imagine what all that was like, so I wouldn’t even start to judge you. Boy, you rea
lly have had problems.
After I read your e-mail, I held the snow globe you bought for me in Paris that time we went together, the one with the street scene by the Moulin Rouge. I shut my eyes, shook it, and held it close to my heart. Maybe you felt the love I sent you.
I deleted your e-mail, but I had to add it to my senior year me-moir binder first, but don’t worry, no one will ever read it. You remember I keep all my life’s important writings in individual sheet protectors in a locked binder wrapped in a pillowcase in a box under my bed. Your secret is very safe.
I’m just so selfish on some level because what stuck with me more than all the bad stuff you had to go through was the fact that I am really important to you. I’m so confused about what it is about me that is worth that kind of care. I just looked in the mirror for a bunch of minutes to see if I could see it, and I couldn’t. I don’t see the me that you see. I wish for just a little bit I could climb into you and then you could climb into me and then we could tell each other what we saw there. I really think that is the only thing that could help me feel better.
Also, I think it might be awful that a part of me is glad that you have something you keep hidden in the back of your mind tied up in a little bow. But, I have to tell you, there were a few times when I’ve looked into your eyes, and I saw that there was something messy about you. Don’t be mad at me. It made me love you. (Also, your kind of messy does not make you ugly in any way.)
XOXOXO.
Danielle
*CLASS ASSIGNMENT* 1/23
Essay Assignment #12: Something Beautiful
(Ms. Harrison is unable to see the real beauty I put forth here. And I even included parenthetical documentation, like we were working on in class! Poor Ms. Harrison! B-.)
Danielle Levine
English 12
Ms. Harrison
Period 4
Ms. Harrison, I really feel like I have to explain myself first before I get into the meat of this essay. I am going to write about something that at first is not going to seem beautiful at all, and I don’t want you to think I’m crazy and don’t know the difference between beautiful and ugly because believe me I do. But I have a father who told me that sometimes things we think are beautiful end up hideous and other things that we think are “lackluster,” as he says, end up really shining. (I feel like one of those “lackluster” things sometimes. I hope someday I end up shining.) Anyway, I don’t think I personally know about this shining business yet, but my dad is smart and I trust I will someday really get what he means. (There are a lot of things that people I respect say or write that I sort of get but not fully. Frustrating.)
My father told me about this news story that happened a while ago to the Amish people. He is very in to sharing poignant information with me. He said that a deranged man wandered into a schoolhouse in the Amish community and killed all these young girls. (This is NOT the beautiful part.)
My father told me that in a follow-up story in the news, we all got to learn how this community publicly forgave the man who did this to all those girls, who took all those girls from their families, who cut their lives so short. At first, I was mad at my dad for telling me this story even though he told me that “knowledge is power,” and we must be open to hearing about difficult topics so we can grow. However, my point was: How could those people forgive that man? How could they forget about those girls’ lives like that? My father said forgiveness does not entail forgetting about the people who are lost, but at the moment I was in no condition to process his point. I don’t want to get into all the details of how this conversation went down at my house because I actually got super upset. Even my housekeeper, Martha, ended up in tears, and she is usually very stoic; I have the hardest time figuring out what makes her tick because she usually never shows any emotion about anything. (Figuring out what to get her for Christmas is impossible; I think we just give her cash.)
Anyway, the point is, eventually, I opened my mind just a little bit about what a miracle forgiveness can be if you can actually do it. I’m not really there yet, but I am at the point where I can be completely amazed at someone’s ability to do it and recognize it as something beautiful. It is beautiful, I’ve come to realize (with help from my father) because it “is a sane choice under insane circumstances.” (Doug Levine)
Forgiveness instantly stops the crazy energy that keeps people violent, that keeps stuff ugly, that makes pain grow. (Ibid) Forgiveness helps people who grieve. “The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. It is twice-blessed: it blesses him that gives and him that takes.” (Shakespeare) My father reminded me of that quote from The Merchant of Venice, which I saw one year in Stratford. It’s not one of my favorite plays, but, still, when I realized how Shakespeare factored into this whole forgiveness thing, I saw how beautiful this Amish act of forgiveness really was. They really had an enormous thing to forgive and they did. I really need to learn from them.
So, I think they are beautiful and their forgiveness is beautiful even though I still realize I am nowhere near that beautiful or capable of forgiveness yet. I still let things bother me a lot.
Teacher comments: The topic of this essay is wonderful, but you are all over the place with it. You needed a printed news story to reference, not your father’s summary of it.
*DANIEL E-MAIL* 2/14
E-Mail #3 from Daniel
Hey, I love your hair. I was thinking of putting some deep red streaks in my hair, like your color. I don’t know if it will show up because my hair is so dark but would you mind telling me what hair color you use? I’d prefer if you e-mail me back about this because it’s a weird thing to talk about in front of other people. I’m just looking to do something that will shock my parents. Happy Valentine’s Day.
*DANIEL E-MAIL* 2/14
E-Mail #2 from me to Daniel
Daniel,
I don’t dye my hair. I’m just naturally stuck with this color all over my head.
Danielle
*DANIEL E-MAIL* 2/14
E-Mail #4 from Daniel to me
Wow, you’re lucky. I think I’ll just get a piercing instead of dyeing my hair.
*SECRET ME-MOIR ENTRY* 2/25
Secret #6 WTF
During the nutrition break today, I was sitting outside at the blue table by the library, the one where I like to chip off all the paint. It gives me something to do besides just reading, and it passes the time. On days when I think I’ll have time to sit there, I wear my blue Chucks. They match the paint perfectly. I’ve been chipping this one spot pretty consistently all year trying to make it look like the skyline of New York City. My artwork had to stop when Keira plopped herself down next to me.
“I’m totally unprepared for the Algebra II test. Did you study for it?” she asked.
“I did, but, for that class, I generally resort to prayer. My brain is like a sieve when it comes to math.”
“Prayer. Good idea. I need all the help I can get. I have to keep at least a B in this class or who knows what I’ll do for college.”
“You’ll get in to college. You’re what the admissions people see as a ‘full package.’”
“Aw, you’re nice.” Keira started nervously flipping through her math notes when . . .
Enter disaster in female form.
“Hey, Heather. Did you study for Algebra II?” Keira asked her.
And then Heather launched into this über-irritating tirade that I couldn’t possibly have memorized, but it went something like this: “Are you kidding? No. I’m too upset to study for that. James is all obsessed with learning this new soccer play, and he said I’m annoying him and all over the place with my needs or whatever, and he yelled at me to chill and I’m, like, chill? I’m always super chill, but he said ‘uh-wrong’ and I thought, well, maybe I’m not, so what. And then I tried to talk to Sara about this, but she’s lying down in the grass by the quad because her head is hurting, and she told me to go away. I guess I’m a bug
to everyone today or something. So I thought I’d buzzzzz over here, ha. Bzzzzzzz. Hey, Danielle, you’re on Adderall, aren’t you?” she asked as she lifted the straw fedora off my head like she owned it.
“Yeah.” Shut up! What was I doing?
“Great. Can I have one?” Heather asked as if they were M&M’s.
“Okay.” I am possessed by a demon.
“Awesome.”
But then I looked through my purse and realized I didn’t have my medicine with me. I never do. I take it at home. So I had to tell her I didn’t have it, and I looked like a scared freak and then she said, “Of course you don’t have it. Shit. You always disappoint.” And then she crushed my hat back down on my head as she walked away.
Keira said something about how now she could study without the chatterbox bugging her, and I picked at the paint on the table so hard that I made the skin under my fingernails bleed.
My own comment to myself: You’re a moron.
*AUNT JOYCE E-MAIL* 2/28
E-mail #4 to Forever Aunt Joyce
Dear Aunt Joyce,
So we are getting ready to go to England with the class. The entire class, mind you. Mom took me shopping and bought me some clothes I don’t want that look hideous on me. I don’t want to travel around England with a bunch of kids who can’t stand me, who talk to me only when they want something from me, who miss the bigger picture always, and who make me generally feel like a loser. Can you take me to the airport and pretend like you drop me off on Saturday but really you take me home with you and I just hide out in your condo? I won’t leave the premises. My parents will never know. I swear. When we get to the airport, I will fake cancer or the stomach flu or hysteria so my teachers let me leave . . . I won’t even have to fake the hysteria.
OCD, The Dude, and Me Page 5
