It’s strange, isn’t it, the ideas we get as children that we carry into adulthood, ideas we keep secret, ideas that keep us from doing certain things like dancing or singing or speaking in public, that keep us from even admitting that we cannot do something or do not know something? Isn’t it strange how we will make up a story to cover up, like, Oh, I don’t dance, or Oh, I have no interest in traveling, when really in our hearts we so sharply long to dance, or to travel!
We did not travel when I was a child. We did not stay in motels. We did not travel on planes, or even on trains or buses. Money was short. We lived without the things that other people enjoyed, things like boats and home remodels and new cars. This not-having-things became for me not just a situation but a condition, a state of belief: We cannot have those things; we do not do those things; those things are for other people but not for us.
Isn’t it strange how a situation can become a belief? I do not think that everyone does this. I do not know if my siblings interpreted things the same way. I only know that I did. And I ponder why. It does make sense in one way, in that as humans we are always decoding, postulating, looking for the logic and the law in events. We do this so that we can know and predict. I understand that. I understand why others who did not have things in childhood believe today, without even thinking about it, that those things are not for them. I understand because I was that way too and still am in many ways.
It was not for want of wanting. I wanted. I was full of desire. In fact the beliefs I formed from my situation ran counter to my desires. For what did I want as a child? I longed to be a rich sophisticate!
When I was ten my grandmother went to Paris and came back wearing a beret and speaking French. I saw pictures of the French Riviera. I wanted that! At the same time, even though my own grandmother had gone, and had written a series of columns for the local newspaper about her travels, for me France seemed an impossible destination.
I wonder how that happened, how I came to believe that I could not go to Europe.
Pure and simple, it was fear.
Going to France was no more impossible than applying to college or preparing a manuscript for publication but it seemed impossible and therefore for me for the longest time it was impossible. Quite simply, it was fear; I did not want to be out of control, out of my comfort zone, unable to communicate. No, more than that: and here is where it gets odd; here is an example of the kind of crazy idea that a fairly normal person such as myself can carry into adulthood: I wanted to go to France as a famous author. I did not want to go as a tourist. I did not want to be recognized as simply another clueless American tourist.
So for the longest time I did not go to Europe. Other people went to Europe and came back and told tales. I studied French in college. But I did not want to go to France and be humiliated. That was what I thought would happen if I went to France. I understand that this is in some sense a very real possibility — now that I have gone to France I know that the French can communicate haughtiness and disdain and that this can be discomfiting to some. Not to me. I relish it. It is a mirror of my own haughtiness and disdain. I feel reflected back at me some of the self-hatred I feel for myself, for my disheveled and uncivilized self, that self that never did master the arts of civilized dress and deportment, that never did rise to the top ranks of society as I had dreamed of doing as a child.
What I’m saying is that these ideas of the self are real and powerful and that this is a strange thing, these strange ideas we carry, that they can be so powerful, that even knowing what they are does not change them or lessen their effect.
I am in Italy now. I have been here since May 29, about three and a half weeks. I love Italy. I am happy here. We have just finished conducting two nine-day Amherst Writers and Artists method writing workshops back to back, with three days in between. I am sitting in Room Number 7 at Le Santucce Residence in the walled medieval town of Castiglion Fiorentino, in the Tuscan region of Italy between Rome and Florence. Closer to Florence, about an hour and twenty minutes north by train; more like two and a half hours to Rome to the south. This is our second year of holding writing workshops at Le Santucce. I feel all kinds of good things now: immense peace, gratitude, wonder, relaxed happiness, fondness for the people we have been with, delight at the weather and the sights, pure pleasure at the food, happiness at the air, fondness for our hosts and their families, a love of the sounds of Italian, gratitude for the kindness of many people, both known to us and strangers. We have just been to the Lavanderia, where we put our clothes in, then went across the street for gelato, sat under shade trees having gelato — Norma chocolate and coffee, me fragola (strawberry) and mango. Then we went back across the street to put things in the dryer. Then we went back across the street to sit at the same table under the trees and drink espresso. A couple with a black dog came. We enjoyed the dog. We talked. We talked about maybe making a documentary film about the Palio. The Palio is a horse race, sort of. No, really it is a horse race. The jockeys ride bareback. We’ll get back to that. Really. I will try to say what it is like.
What amazes me, is how much I have changed. I used to think that the thoughts that flow through me were real, were mine, were who I was, and had to be defended. It was as though they were my family. These thoughts — that I cannot go to Europe until I am a famous writer, that I must not let anyone know that I have not gone to Europe, that I am afraid to go to Europe, that I am insecure in restaurants because we never went to restaurants when I was a kid, that I feel ill at ease among people unless everyone is speaking English, that I find it hard to enter the spirit of a group, that I secretly feel both superior and inferior but rarely just a part of — these thoughts stay with me but what has changed is that I no longer believe that these thoughts are the substance of me. They are just thoughts.
There was a belief in my family — my mother insisted on this belief, I think — that one ought to defend one’s position; one ought to know why one behaves a certain way; one ought to have a justification, and a position; one ought to be able to argue for one’s position. So there was a lot of arguing in my family. It was not seen as a problem; it was encouraged. Sadly, it was not enough to simply say, This is how I am; I don’t know why but this is simply how I am.
That was not sufficient, and that is sad, because one got the impression, then, that just being who you are is not enough. You must defend who you are.
