Just take it bird by bird

"In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty." – Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the past few years, I’m proud to report that I have written several quite successful books under my pen name, Anne Lamott.

Okay, I lied.

I just wish I had written those books. Sometimes when I read them again and again, I even believe I have written them—like that weird thing that happens when you write a word like “suppose” or “nostril” or “petulant” over and over and over again until it becomes something unknowable, like you’ve made up a whole new word all by your lonesome. Well, it’s sort of like that.

The one I most wish I had written is Bird by Bird. If the truth be told, and I guess now it will be, I carry my beloved hardback copy of Bird by Bird around with my own photograph pasted on the back of it, as if I myself, my little person, this one, had written it. (And it’s an old photo, the kind that when you use it to announce your speech in a conference program, people act puzzled and disappointed when they finally meet you because, truthfully, you no longer look anything like that younger version of yourself, what with the prematurely gray hair and all…)

I read Bird by Bird several times a year, particularly in those moments when I think I should be writing, but am doubtful that I actually can, or when I’m in need of a reminder about what it means to write (not what it means to appear as a delightfully witty, thin, best-selling author on Oprah with good hair and eyebrows and a nifty bohemian chic outfit that you’ve designed and sewn yourself and that starts a fashion stampede, but, rather, what it means to actually sit down every morning and write, remembering Gene Fowler’s somber acknowledgment that “writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.”)

In moments of sheer identification with what she’s saying, I guess I do believe I’ve written Bird by Bird, the connection between her words and my thoughts are so close. Like reading Book Three of War and Peace, that part where a soldier looks at the man who is about to execute him and says, “but you can’t do this because you have no idea what my life means to me.” “Yes! That’s exactly it!” you think to yourself. Or reading that essay about having a fear of heights where the writer finally surfaces what your own fear of heights is all about, but which you had never known or articulated for yourself, even through all those years of watching the fourth of July fireworks from the flat-roof-with-no-discernable-edge of your Capitol Hill house: “it’s not a fear of falling, but a fear of flinging yourself off.”

Lest you believe me insane, the idea of plastering your own photograph onto a book with which you so closely identify is a fantastic and poignant image from what I consider to be The Greatest American Novel and not just because I spent many tortured months writing my thesis on it—The Recognitions by William Gaddis. A head-on masterpiece, it is a complex and spectacular work about the simple distinctions between real and authentic, between faiths and fakes. Its theme is, shockingly, recognitions. On many levels, people and artists in the book identify and recognize themselves in others; they hear their story in the voice of others, the way we sometimes meet someone and know that there is a connection there, unspoken and perhaps indefinable, but there, as if we were standing on a balcony looking down and recognizing people on the ground below with whom we share some indefinable something. In it, among other moments of identification and recognition, a man carries around a book by Dostoyevsky with his own photograph pasted onto the back of it, calling into question the very concept of real and serving as the model for my own appropriation of Bird by Bird. Whew, that’s a mouthful.

That moment of recognition, identification. Reading something that so articulates what you believe and even what you didn’t realize you believed. It’s a magical moment, that. It’s how I feel when I read Rilke telling me that I must change my life, when I watch Atticus Finch and Scout, when I first read Ellen Foster, or when I hear someone read the hot music of  Under the Volcano to me in a slow, languid voice. Or that odd feeling I had when I saw “Slingblade,” my husband John recognizing it immediately when the lights in the theater came up: “That was the movie you were supposed to write, wasn’t it?” he asked magically, right on target as usual.

But back to my book. The title of Bird by Bird is from a story that I Anne Lamott tells about her little brother who has procrastinated for months on a research project about birds. Sitting desperately surrounded by mountains of books about birds, he is trying to do in one night what he has had months to do. Paralyzed by the desperation of the situation, his father emerges and once he realizes what is happening, offers these words of advice: “Bird by bird, son, just take it bird by bird.”

The cover tells us that the book holds “some instructions on writing and life.” Even if you’re not a writer, (though-–really-–everyone is), read it for the life part. Taking it bird by bird is one of those life parts. Sometimes when the world seems bloody overwhelming, like right about now, it’s good advice to remember. No, I can’t solve the world’s problems overnight—and perhaps not ever—but I can take it bird by bird.

When we read something we identify with, articulating what has been ineffable until then, matching the very tone of our own heart, it goes far beyond recognition. We are buoyed by that connection, what Walker Percy calls certification or validation, the idea that a place isn’t real to you, even when you live there, until you’ve seen it in a movie. The idea that if other people are aware of the place in the same way (onscreen), then you really are Somewhere and not just Anywhere. If Anne Lamott or Carol Shields or Carlos Fuentes or Billy Collins writes something I so identify with, then I’m not alone here on this planet thinking these thoughts.

I Lamott ended Bird by Bird like this: “Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It’s like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can’t stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.”

I can’t help but wonder if we can find that song that will help us ride this terrible storm in New Orleans and beyond. To find it, perhaps we have to start by writing about what happened there, bird by little broken bird.

~*~ 37 Days: Do it Now Challenge ~*~

First, find your book, the one you wrote (or, okay, the one you wish you had written, that special one in which you recognize your own thoughts coming back to you with a certain majesty) and paste your photograph on the back of it with abandon.

Then, whatever you are facing, just take it bird by bird, my friend, bird by bird. Whatever the task—writing your own Great American Novel, cleaning out your closets, training for the Ironman Triathalon, patching the screen door, rebuilding New Orleans, or holding the Federal Government accountable, just take it bird by bird.