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September 6, 2005

Jewels in our mouths

From Alesia

To sink into the mires of the mundane, it has been a damn hard week to write comedy. I wish I had Lani’s gift for bad jokes, but my humor tends to run to the dark and twisted when I’m surrounded by devastation. Since, in spite of everything that is happening, I have a deadline the 15th (and the book is not quite done), I’ve tried to be funny on the page this week.

It SO didn’t work.

So I retreated. Retreated to the mindlessness of unpacking boxes. Retreated to the comfort of reading books I’ve already read – one of which was ANGELA’S ASHES, by the brilliantly funny and poignant and true Frank McCourt.

The book didn’t win a Pulitzer for nothing – a child's hope, shining through utter desolation, pulls you into his world. This is the book I kept in mind when I wrote my own nonfiction book, because if you reach for the truth down deep in your gut and pull it up past your heart, you’re maybe, just maybe, a writer. And I like to set star-high goals, because the act of reaching for them helps me grow.

One line from the book played in my mind over and over this week. It’s when young Frank is in the hospital after he nearly dies from typhoid fever. He reads a book of English history, and there is a two-line bit of Shakespeare:

I do believe, induced by potent circumstances
That thou art mine enemy.

Frank says: “I don’t know what it means and I don’t care because it’s Shakespeare and it’s like having jewels in my mouth when I say the words. If I had a whole book of Shakespeare they could keep me in the hospital for a year.”
Imagine this: A child so desperately poor that he’s literally starving, alone in the hospital, and words written on a page are jewels in his mouth.

My own small gift, from God or the Muses or the lights in the universe that are really aliens with mind probes, is to make people laugh. And yet – and yet. And yet I don’t even know how to begin to be funny on a week like this. Isn’t a book written solely to entertain superfluous, frivolous, the worst kind of wasted effort?

I wrote to one of a handful of people I can trust to tell me the unvarnished truth, my wise and kind agent. I said, “I think I’m going to start writing serial killer books, because it’s awfully damn hard to write comedy these days.”

Within minutes, he wrote back: “It’s because it’s so damn hard to write comedy these days that you need to keep getting us to laugh.”

And you know what? He’s right. The funny books, the ones that entertain me and make me laugh and cry and smile and tell my friends about them, those are the ones that help me get through tough times.

Because laughter, like the words of Shakespeare, is like having jewels in my mouth. I want to thank all of the writers who make me laugh and give me jewels in my mouth and heart and mind. I’m going to send boxes of books to a shelter, in addition to financial aid to relief organizations.

And then I’m going to sit down at my keyboard and try again.

Hugs and prayers for everyone affected by Katrina,
Alesia

Posted by Alesia at 9:04 AM | Comments (1)

Comments

Posted by: Cee Cee at September 6, 2005 10:51 AM