Can I Have That?

A few months ago, I’m at an Indian restaurant with my friend Jason. We’re eating curry and paneer and naan. He’s smelling each dish, each forkful before he takes a bite because he literally smells everything. And I mean everything: when we’re at my apartment weeks later, he’ll smell the blanket he’s wrapped in; he’ll smell the pillow he leans against on the couch. At the restaurant, he declares, between sniffs, “My blood is going to run turmeric.” I laugh. Then, thinking how great the word turmeric sounds —the way you bounce off the t quickly just to get caught in the u— ask, “Can I have that?”

The degree to which Jason loves scent, I love sound. I think this is how I fell in love with writing. When I was a little girl, never quite the average kid, I went through a phase in which I said, almost exclusively, manure. I loved its sound. The way its syllables rolled around like marbles in my mouth. The shocked looks I received after it had rolled out from between my lips. I went through a similar anus phase.

But really, I’d like to use this post to discuss what we take from the people/world around us—whether it’s a single word: manure, or an image: a vein filled with spice.

Because I write, and I think this is true of a lot of people who write, there are two things you have to accept of me: one, nothing is sacred; and two, everything is sacred.

One: Nothing is Sacred

If it happened, if you said it, it’s fair game. Sorry.

Lissa, one of our Blue Earth Review editors, recently wrote a piece on this blog about people requesting (er, “offering”) topics for your writing. Similarly frustrating, what happens when a friend/a family member declares a topic off-limits? How do you write about people you care about honestly without hurting or insulting them in some way? Having taken nonfiction this year for the first time in my life, these felt like concerns I had to face. Unlike with fiction, or even with poetry, I couldn’t claim the character was only loosely based off of someone. These were real people on the page, no edits, no amalgamations.

Ann Lamott once wrote, “You own everything that’s happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”

Ms. Lamott has a point. When it comes to writing, what you are placing gingerly on the page is from your life experience, and to hell with pleasing everyone. Not possible. Never possible. If it’s honest, if it sounds real nice aloud, I say success!

So, no, nothing is sacred, nothing is off-limits. Not sorry.

Two: Everything is Sacred

Because everything in life is contradiction, why should writing be any different? Beyond sound, what I love most about writing is how the small, the seemingly mundane daily moments become sacred through the written word.

About a month ago, I’m at a local organic shop, looking through the shelves. A round woman with short brown hair comes over to help me. She’s the owner, or one of them. She lists the items they carry: serenity tea, intensity tea, shampoo with no sulfides or parabens, essential oils, organic perfume. Then, she tells me, they do not carry nail polish. Never nail polish. She tells me, we breathe through our nails, did I know? I’m thinking, this lovely stranger has no idea she’s speaking poetry. I’m thinking, I cannot forget a word she says. Is it any surprise she and her nail breathing end up in a nonfiction essay of mine a week or two later? Somehow, against all odds, she has made nail polish and fingernails and a stranger at a small local shop sacred.

And my friend Jason, happily smelling each item on his plate, Jason has made a spice, such a small thing, sacred to me through his poetry of sound and image.

My point? Borrow freely. Ask, “Can I have that?” Yell, “I’m taking that!” Inspiration is everywhere— the little shop on the corner, your good friend, a new word, a bowl of curry. No limits. And that is what is beautiful about writing.

-Debbie Ernie, Poetry Editor at Blue Earth Review