It's Like Pulling Teeth

In his essay, "Writing Personal Essays: On the Necessity of Turning Oneself Into a Character," Philip Lopate warns that when writing in the first person we should "resist coming across at first as absolutely average." We have to approach autobiography, in other words, like any other writing task, and instead of describing the all-too-familiar or documenting the mundane, we should instead be mindful of the unusual, the odd, and the offbeat.

In his 1924 autobiography Everywhere, Arnold Henry Savage-Landor Landor, the famed traveler and painter and grandson of Walter Savage-Landor, describes the following moment from his childhood.

There was in our garden a big tree, a Mespilus Japonica. The lowest branch was too high for me to reach. The tree was laden with fruit. I went to the stable, took a long feather strap and threw it astride the lowest branch, then held one end firmly between my teeth while I jumped up, pulling at the same time with my hands the other end of the strap, thinking I could thus lift myself up. Result -- my eight front teeth were torn from my gums. With a bleeding mouth I picked up my incisors which lay scattered on the ground, and ran to show them to my horrified mother. You're lucky you're not seven yet," she said. I was then four and a half years of age.

Lawrence Lessig: Three Stories on Their Way to an Argument

Postcard from Syria

I received a postcard the other day from Syria, from a friend who has been traveling in the Middle East. I didn't know he was there.

I've known him for many years. We both come from big Irish Catholic families. We went to grade school together and had many of the same classes, though I don't remember which ones. In 3rd grade we both had a crush on the same girl. We took swimming lessons together, went to religious ed, etc.

He's one of those friends who I don't see or hear from for many years at a time, but when we do get together it's like we pick up in the middle of a conversation that has left off a only few minutes ago.

The fact that I didn't know he was in the Middle East means very little. I remember one time when we were in college I called his house for some reason and got one of his younger brothers on the phone. I asked if K. was there. The younger brother turned his head away from the phone without covering the mouthpiece and yelled out "Is K here?! It's David!" I then heard a return yell in the background (yelling being the preferred means of communication in both of our families) "He's in Venezuela!" The young voice came back to the phone and said "He's in Venezuela." "Okay." I said, and hung up. I knew there was no use asking when he would be back since they probably didn't know themselves.

While in college, we traveled to the USSR together. This was back in the heady days of glasnost and perestroika, not that we knew what those were, or cared particularly. I remember that when I would take the subways in Moscow, I would always get people coming up to me and asking directions, whereas when he walked around he looked very much the American. (He used to wear this t-shirt with a big picture of Opus from Bloom County on it.) And yet for some reason he always seemed more at home there, more comfortable meeting people or just letting his feet wander. I think those early trips (there were several of them) impacted us both in different ways: he continued to travel to many different places and continued to meet people and see things; I wound up writing about travel writing...

This postcard, as I mentioned, was from Syria. It said little, as postcards do. Just, "I wanted to send one from Lebanon, but the postcards there weren't as nice." There was something reassuring about it. With this "war on terror" still raging on, with all the talk of security and borders, with the use of airplanes as weapons, with the travel restrictions, the travel warnings and the general small-mindedness that seems to characterize many Americans' world views these days...it's nice to think that K. was walking around Syria and Lebanon, probably wearing a worn t-shirt that says "Who farted?"