5 Decades of a Tuning Fork
The strike of a tuning fork resonates foggy images for me of middle school science experiments and the distinct elementary school smells of stale crayons and brown pungent erasers. Learning about the physics of sound waves and frequencies of vibrating objects didn’t dispel that early captivation with the unmistakable, clear hum of that metal object.
In stunning moments, my life has felt like a tuning fork: a confident strike vibrates with a pure frequency and the note resonates with citrus-crisp clarity, buzzing everything in its vicinity.
I turned 50 in my last semester of my MFA program. Although I have questioned my sanity for participating in the highly capitalized revenue-focused market of higher education, I’m grateful for the education. Meanwhile, the clock continues to mark the hours and the horizon advances and I finding myself wondering how many more ticks are left in my tock. Age is a number, but try to convince my joints of that.
Some of my classmates were young enough to have been my kids: will I ever have the chance to be someone’s “Dad”? Something I’ve wanted, but I also wanted a doll house when I was six and that never happened. Every page must turn, before the story can play itself out.
A cross-country move back to the Deep South for a post-graduation fellowship at the mid-century mark is potentially formidable: I get to experience every writer’s dream, at least for 8 months, to be paid to be a writer. Not a grant writer, not a copy writer, not a communications associate, but a writer who gets to focus and pick and research and craft and collaborate.
My co-fellow and I have started mini-creative prompts, and shared work with each other. I’ve got their piece in our first exercise to digest and then see what/how/where/when it sparks my own addition/contribution/subtraction.
One word pairing from a randomized assignment: “ink rollercoaster.” Writing is not unlike a rollercoaster: wait, digest, strap in, research the steady climb, and then feel the rush of wind and stomach drop from g-force turns. Sometimes, the momentary panic of “how safe is this, anyway?”comes to mind. When my own writing scares me, when I veer away from what’s safe, that’s when the adventure starts.
Plus, I love ink. Especially when it’s messy and smears. Inked words that smear a trail across the page and into a reader, that’s magic.
Ink rollercoaster.
Maybe that will be my theme for the next 8 months.
