In the depths of revision: what to leave behind, what to rework, what to create anew.
My husband and I have spent much of the last two weeks and ALL of yesterday cleaning out an apartment in a multi-family house we own across town. The tenant vacated in a hurry and left much behind in the forms of trash, discarded belongings and a great measure of grime. (I could have taken a photo of what we found under the refrigerator to post here—be grateful I spared you.) It’s strange to sort through the detritus of a stranger; to bear witness to their personal lives in their absence. To see the things typically kept secret and close to the self. Old necklaces in corners, torn packaging of the body care products they used, drips of blue toothpaste, pink liquid medicine. I found a lock of hair tied up with an elastic on top of the medicine cabinet. On a windowsill of the sunporch there was a clear glass sphere, and I held it, heavy and round in the center of my hand. Air bubbles suspended. My sister—there helping us weed through the overwhelming chaos—said her son would love it. I had been thinking the same thing before she uttered the words. I gave it to her. I wondered whose it was, why they owned it in the first place, why they let it go. Did they mean to let it go? It brought to mind scrying, foretelling.
Even as I wiped away the grimy fingerprints, I could not help but feel their lingering presence. I’m certain the energy they left behind will dissipate, but slowly.
I sit at my desk today, going back and forth between writing this blog post and editing my novel. As my fingers tap out words on the keyboard, they bear the paint left behind from yesterday—the creamy color with which we covered the walls and trim. Neutral and clean—a wiping away of the last year and a half of these tenants’ residency. Outside my rain-spattered windows, Irene (no longer a hurricane—our cold northern Atlantic water has tamed her down to a Tropical Storm) bears down. I watch the news reports of my beloved beach on the south coast as it is battered, roads being torn up, erased—as they are every time a big storm comes through. (And the shore will mend and persist, as it does every time a big storm comes through.) What will Irene leave behind? A lot of things moved around, surely. Things transplanted, things lost. Some things irreparably broken.
I’ve been fooling around with Scrivener off and on since I stumbled upon it a few weeks ago. Even though I should be at the filthy apartment finishing up the cleaning today, I have been spending this rainy day breaking my novel into sections and pieces which I will then reorganize. Move pieces around, combine, carve out. Lose, toss away. A ton of cutting, pasting and filling. As I drop segments of my novel into the Scrivener interface, I recognize some repetitions that will better serve the story if condensed. I can spot some gaps to bridge, some abruptnesses to smooth. Culling, moving, choosing and discarding. What essence will those discarded words leave behind? Will something remain in the subconscious aspects of the writing? Of that which I created and now discard, what will persist? How will those grimy word fingerprints help shape the whole in the end? I can’t help but think that some essence of that which I cut away is what is left behind. Some flavor, some color, some odor. If nothing else those words will lead me to the words that will endure. Those words that are rendered invisible, wiped away, perhaps the idea of them, of what they helped create, will linger.
I’d like to believe that not a word is wasted.
About Melissa Corliss Delorenzo
Hello Melissa,
I thought it is so beautiful what you have been writing about in this post. It is so interesting to look at the sentimentality in objects. Often it is not the physical object itself which it meaningful but the stories that surround it. I can’t help but think about the watch in Pulp Fiction, although quite humorous, without this information the object is meaningless.
The traces of our bodies is also very interesting: the hair left on a hair brush. I had a really lovely cat that sadly died about 2 years ago. I found the brush that I used to stroke her with in that drawer everyone has containing almost everything; old batteries, cassettes, rubbers, cake cutters etc. I saw the brush and noticed a large chunk of her hair on there, I rubbed it through my fingers, raised the brush to my nose. The smell was faint but took me straight back as though she was sat next to me.
How do humans live on through objects? How does the introduction of digital information affect the sentimentality of objects? Is our relationship with them two way, they must allow us to put information into them as much as we take for them to become really sentimental. Maybe there is opportunity for digital information to do this?
I would love to hear your thoughts. What you have written here is very interesting an inspiring.
Thanks.
Greg (gregcsmith@hotmail.co.uk)