My little blog is growing. Like a seed that has been dormant for months, I see tiny green shoots peeking out of the soil. One hundred and eighty-eight people read my last post ~ in one day! No...it's not one hundred and eighty-eight million, to be sure, but fifty-seven people read it the following day, and ninety-one, the next. Who are you? Do I know you? As Meg Ryan's character Kathleen Kelly types on You've Got Mail, "I just want to send this cosmic question out into the void."
Unfortunately, I don't know how to water or fertilize my little posting plants; all I know how to do is write. I am a native writer; I am a digital immigrant. My kids are technophiles, and I am a technophobe. I know so little about the self-possessed social networking world. I have never taken one "selfie" in my life, and I would never take a selfie (holding a phone camera at arm's length and clicking pictures of myself) with platypus, puckered, or pouty lips. I have, at long last, created a Facebook page in order to participate in the library system's social media campaigns. Still, I have yet to post an event, add a picture, or even update my status. I can't imagine reading an e-book; however, I have maxed out my check-out limit at the library like a compulsive shopper with a zero-balance credit card. Going back to work at the library after a three-year hiatus is like walking into an all-you-can-eat buffet after a forty-day fast. With hundreds of shelves and thousands of books, who needs millions of apps? I am most definitely a book native.
One of the books I am currently reading is entitled Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed. Her bestselling memoir Wild, which I have also read, was chosen as an Oprah Book Club selection. Even though the content of Tiny Beautiful Things is crude, challenging, and cliche at times, the range of questions fielded to Dear Sugar represents lives of missed opportunities, shattered dreams, tragic consequences, and palpable pain ~ as does the advice.
In the introduction of the book, Steve Almond explains how Cheryl Strayed ended up as Dear Sugar ~ an online advice columnist for The Rumpus, which is defined on the home page as a "place where people come to be themselves through their writing...." Don't you just love that? According to Almond's account, "the column that launched Sugar as a phenomenon was written in response to what would have been, for anyone else, a throwaway letter....People come to her in real pain and she ministers to them, by telling stories about her own life, the particular ways in which she has felt thwarted and lost, and how she got found again. She is able to transmute the raw material of the self-help aisle into genuine literature."
In the last paragraph of the introduction, Almond writes, "Tiny Beautiful Things will endure as a piece of literary art, as will Cheryl's other books, because they do the essential work of literary art: they make us more human than we were before. We need books, and Cheryl's books in particular, because we are all, in the private kingdom of our hearts, desperate for the company of a wise, true friend. Someone who isn't embarrassed by our emotions, or her own, who recognizes that life is short and that all we have to offer, in the end, is love."
The power of that paragraph...Wow. I understand the disconnect I often associate with social media...why I simply can't process it. While the world is desperate for a thousand likes or a million views, I am desperate for the company of a wise, true friend. I need books. I need books with a transmutable energy that abides in genuine literature and flows from the fingertips of my two hands into my soul. I need the stamina and strength of an enduring piece of literary art, not the fleeting noise of a news feed.
I know for sure that The Tomorrow Trunk is my essential work ~ the place where I have come to be my true self. For me, the metamorphosis occurred when a small wicker trunk seamlessly transitioned into this grand piece of luggage filled with the very best stories of substance that each day has to offer. Even if the best of today belongs in the trivial top-tray or if it is best hidden in the private kingdom of our hearts, the trunk is always ours to fill: that IS our essential work.
People often ask me, "How did The Tomorrow Trunk come about? When did it start?" The Tomorrow Trunk was born out of the most painful period of my life, which is so weird to think about now. The year was 1993, and we had moved from our first family home that we built during prosperity and sold during loss. My family of five moved into a hundred-year-old shack that we rented for $55 per month. As a former newspaper editor, I instinctively began looking for something to write about everyday during the painstaking period of recovery ~ Today's Big Story. I had a brown wicker trunk with a compartmentalized top tray and a hidden area beneath the tray. I owned an IBM Selectric typewriter at the time, so I started storing the daily typed manuscripts in the trunk. When I purchased my first computer, I began saving the stories to the hard drive ~ always sure to print out copies for the 'real' trunk. I know for sure that this twenty year process has made me more human than I was before.
My saving mantra began during that transitional time of my life ~ take the best of today, tuck it way, and keep it for tomorrow. Most importantly, my essential work has taught me to recognize that life is short, and that all we have to offer, in the end, is love.
Dianne ; )
