For any new readers, I promise I will soon get to What Happens Next on the whole German Identity Tip.
For stalwarts who’ve hung in there, a recap.
Tonight, I went back and re-read No. 23: The Parable of the Queen, the Ant, and the Croissant. This exercise was slightly like finding one of the notes you wrote to your best friend in high school, and confronting not only your i’s dotted with hearts, but the crush you had on your Honors English teacher, and the fact that you took his suede elbow patches seriously.
But here’s how some Big Things have changed — big, I tell you — since I wrote that blog post in October of 2009.
1) Madame Y, who told me back then that this blog is a book, is no longer a professional associate of mine. We parted ways. I did the parting.
2) Madame X, the New York literary agent who, regarding this blog, said: “I have no idea if what you’re doing is a book. I have no idea if it can be sustained. Keep going, but don’t let it swallow up your entire writing life. I’m ready and willing when you’ve got that novel,” became my agent last week. We’ll sign papers when my novel goes out. Madame X anticipates two more drafts will be necessary, but she thinks I can nail it by the end of the year. Madame X has a vision.
3) Yup, I finished the first draft of my novel. At 440 pages, it’s a hundred pages too long. Back in October of 2009 my novel was an idea. Now it’s a game plan.
Here’s another Big Change.
Back when I wrote No. 23, I’d cooked up an unwieldy parable to describe where I found myself, lost in a forest in the middle of my life and all that:
I become aware of how much of my life my absent father has gobbled, I wrote back then. How much he has tormented and influenced me, from college applications to career moves to financial habits to love affairs down to what I have and have not allowed myself to write. And what I think I am and am not “supposed to be doing.”
I thought my father was the ant on the croissant of the queen. But my father was the queen. (Not a queen – that’s somebody else’s blog.) But the dominant force, the dominant voice. My own spirit was the ant.
And the croissant was the life I had built, on its way right down the gullet of the queen.
Or, here’s another interpretation.
Desire to be a recognized, lauded, wildly remunerated writer: the queen.
State of actual writing life: the croissant.
Connection to authentic voice: the ant.
I’m trying to go Buddhist with this parable, so that eventually, my life will look like this: Voice, truth, creative flow: queen.
Dog-and-pony show of personality: croissant.
Bottomless need, infantile itch, asking esteemed father-figure proxies for permission and approval: ant.
Today, I recognize that the story I always told about my father – the story that launched this project – isn’t entirely true. In my timeworn telling, I always played the innocent victim of What Happened With My Father.
But I was a participant in our relationship. I was a scared child. I was scared of my father. And so I rejected him. It was an understandable action, perhaps, but it was an action.
The phone rang this morning.
“Mrs. Ebel?” said the voice. German accent, cheery.
“This is Kathy,” I reply.
“This is the German consulate. I am happy to say that your passport has arrived in our office, and you can come to pick it up.”
“Wonderful!” I cry. “Thanks for the call!”
“Yes!” he echoes. “And have a wonderful day!” (This gentleman was much warmer than the bureaucrat who processed our naturalization and passport paperwork. You can bet she will be discussed at length in an upcoming post.)
You think maybe Fatherland is leading me to the truth? Or, you know. It could be a vice versa type thing, with the truth leading me to Fatherland.
Many years ago, I wrote poems and was involved in the Spoken Word scene out of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in New York’s East Village. One night, I participated in a poetry reading. Afterwards, a member of the audience approached me.
“Was that a real poem?” he asked, “or did you make it up?”
