In 1999, I got a $25,000 advance from Hyperion Little Brown to write a book called “Writing from the Heart.” My husband and I had just gone completely broke. Our business of 20 years had gone under, and this money was manna from heaven.
Finally, after staring at my computer for days, I went to the library and took out a bunch of books on writing, and figured I could just copy some of what they had written and then somehow make it my own. Many of them had chapters on “Perspective.” I sat down at my desk and began to write: “‘Rashomon’ was a movie told from the perspective of three …”
So I’m sitting there, writing this drivel, and finally I decided to go for a walk and clear my head. I stepped out onto the deck, thinking, “Perspective, perspective. OK, what is perspective, actually?” I thought, “Well, there’s my perspective … which is right….. and then there’s everyone else’s … And if I could just talk to them …”
I waved a dismissive wave at a murder of crows who were circling and screeching in the meadow right next to my cabin, like, “Stop all that noise. I’m writing a book.”
As I rounded the bend of the driveway, I noticed the crows were actually following me, screeching right over my head. I stopped and I thought, “OMG, ‘The Birds,’ Tippi Hedren, Alfred Hitchcock; I’m going to get pecked to death.”
I almost raced back to the house. But I forced myself to keep going.
I thought, “Pay attention. Something big is going on here.” So I made myself keep walking down Flanders Lane, a walk I have taken a thousand times. Then, suddenly, I looked to my left and there was an opening I had never seen before. It was like “Brigadoon.” Remember that Broadway show about a town that appeared every hundred years? That’s what it felt like. So I ducked in there and … OMG! The crows followed me and landed in a semicircle. And got completely quiet. I stood still. I said to myself, “OK, this is otherworldly.” I knew — my gut knew — something my brain hadn’t processed yet.
Then all of a sudden, I remembered a secret I had never told anyone before, a secret I had buried so deeply my ego was able to override it, and I could continue thinking I was one healthy dudess.
OK, deep breath. I don’t even know you people. OK, here goes.
My senior project in college, in Spanish class, was to write a paper solamente en español … solely in Spanish. Being a professional procrastinator, I had waited til the last minute to write it. I went to the college library and stood in front of a row of books about Saint John of the Cross. I checked them all out. I went back to my room and copied — lifted paragraph after paragraph. It’s funny when you cheat how you can lose all logic, how you are able to compartmentalize. There was a part of me that thought, Well, he won’t notice that the stories don’t really connect. The part that used to be honest and would never do such a thing was apparently taking a long winter’s nap. Now I wonder if that part ever did exist.
Five days before graduation, Dr. DeSalvo called me to his office. From the second I got the message my heart started pounding. This is it. I’m getting thrown out of school. I left the dorm and was crossing the field to the administrative offices. My feet felt stuck in cement.
I could just leave and tell people I decided a college degree was too bourgeois for my creative soul. Which was better? To be thrown out of school, which was about to happen, or to run away content to keep my secret hidden?
But I thought about my mother and everything she had sacrificed to get me to college, and how proud she was of me, the first college graduate in the family. So I dragged my guilt-ridden body across campus and shaking, I knocked on his door.
There was my paper on his desk. I couldn’t look at him. There was a long moment of thick silence. From some far-off chamber in the depths of my addled brain, I heard, “This paper is a disgrace. You are a disgrace. I have reported you to Dean Alvey, and you are to pack your things and leave immediately. You’re a disgrace to the whole university.”
I think I was sobbing but I know I used every bit of courage I had left to apologize before melting out of that room when my actual ears heard;
“Meees Sloneem. I am so hoppy you are writing about Saint John of the Cross, a beautiful man. So I am reading … he was born in 1542 and he was educated and he this and he that, and then now suddenly I am reading about Saint Joan of the Cross. Eeet’s a different person.”
I hadn’t even seen that the pronouns had changed. I had combined two peoples’ lives. I stood there completely busted and totally ashamed. And then he said, “Don’t worry. I don’t throw you out of school. But now because I know you are a theater major, for me you go back to your room and write me a play solamente en español.”
A play? Write a play? In Spanish? I’ll write a play in Russian! In Sanskrit! In Aramaic! I wanted to jump into his arms and thank him for giving me my life back. I did write the play. Which he loved, and which got produced every year while he was head of the department. And the angel gave me a gift of a C− for the course.
So there I am, back in the woods of Chilmark, remembering what I had done back in college, and the crows were still silent. Looking at me. And then, I’m not kidding, five of them hopped closer. And I know this is weird, but they looked like rabbis.
And then I got this really strong feeling that they wanted me to turn around. So I very slowly turned in a full circle. And when I came back to my starting point, I realized I was in the middle of a beech tree grove with hundreds of spindly saplings. And every one of them had a different perspective, and EVERY ONE OF THEM WAS RIGHT. There wasn’t one tree looking across at another tree telling them that what they were seeing was wrong.
In that powerful moment, I realized my arrogant self had always bent everyone I knew into a pretzel with my desperate need to be right.
I got that creativity requires safety and integrity, that cheating is the opposite of imagination and that everyone, everyone, everyone has the chance for redemption. And that everyone, everyone, everyone has a different perspective.
But most of all, standing there in the stillness, I realized forgiveness doesn’t always come from professors or parents, or anyone outside of us — it has to come from within.
I still argue for my take on things, but I made a promise that day that I would learn to listen. And now, at 85, I’m losing my hearing, haha.
