Even if it's Hokey

Cliché, cliché, cliché. God, I love all three of them! That’s why I am writing a book in which cliché plays the leading role, a book I can’t seem to finish for a very clichéd reason: writer’s block.




Here's an excerpt:



This story is not new. And we all know how it ends. It ends. So why do we watch the same movie over and over again as if it might have a different ending? Because we love a good middle, and our only access to the middle is either by jumping back to the beginning again and starting over (again) until we hit the middle (again), or, retracing our steps backwards from the ending until we get to the middle (again). Back at the middle, we have this feeling of safety because we know what came before and we also know what happens next. But we also half hope it won’t happen, that the end will surprise us. We tether our ankles to the bedpost so we can lean out the window and pretend to fly. And it’s this mightness for which we hold our breath, in the meantime telling ourselves we are hearing this story for the first time. We want both things. We want the story to be predictable. And we want to begin again, and to change the ending.


But it’s the not-newness of a story that I find most comforting because if the story is known, it becomes like a familiar portrait I can either stand in front of, naming the person in the picture, or walk away from until the face becomes an unrecognizable speck in my mind’s eye.


I feel the same way about stories as I do about portrait paintings, and I feel the same way about stories and portrait paintings as I do about cliché. What underpins them all is basically the same thing: a grisaille over which we glaze layers of colour and shine.


To be honest, I experience an all-out erotic frisson when cliché’s deft hand scrapes back coats of subterfuge to reveal a naked structure we all share: not flesh tone. Grey scale.


Cliché is like portraiture because it is like a face; we know its structure well: eyes, nose, mouth – always the same three, yet each feature combines with each feature in a different way each time, and each assemblage delivers an unexpected gestalt of the never before seen. So while I suspect most of us share this feeling that the world is filled with limited, identifiable face types, we still only admit to resemblances, not to verisimilitude. Even in the case of twins.


Take cliché and metaphor, for instance. They are clearly related, yet beholders too often claim superior status for the latter as if metaphor possessed a more sophisticated beauty while cliché was the plain Jane of the family.


But cliché is not a one-trick pony to metaphor’s three-ring circus.


No, cliché’s hidden power shines right before our eyes.


Cliché is what bestows metaphor with her beauty. Or, put as a cliché, you can’t grow a pearl without sand in the oyster. Trite and true.

But, like a pregnant double agent, cliché’s condition is so obvious that people have stopped noticing. Sure, we can all see she’s hiding something under her skin, but since we can’t see what the hidden thing looks like, we tell ourselves we'll just deal with it when it finally emerges. But the truth is, we fear what cliché will do to our lives when it does reveal itself. And that’s because cliché is not just a shell. It is the shell that protects a kernel. And when the shell cracks – as it inevitably will – cliché’s kernel will pop out like a stripper jumping out of a cake. And those of us watching will find ourselves pulled from the sidelines, where we were safely clapping (bachelors all of us), now forced to participate in a spectacle that puts us face-to-face with our unbridled desires.


And it is because we don’t really know what cliché will become when it disrobes that we don’t really know what we will become in relation to cliché's nakeness.


That’s the real reason we fear cliché, and why we bully it into submission, calling it names as if it was a lower life form. We want our own voices to drown out the sound of the kernel popping.


But that’s how cliché gets the job done: by tricking us into thinking it’s the side show, lulling us into believing we are merely anonymous members of the peanut gallery while it matter-of-factly yanks off our cover ups to expose the main event -- us.


Take a portrait painting: the person in the picture seems like themselves, someone you might know, someone you might even love, but do we really know them? I return to the portrait like a soon-to-be-bride in an arranged marriage, scrutinizing my intended’s photograph for clues. In the absence of the person, this image is the only thing I have with which to build the story of the rest of my life. I stare and stare, even when I know that behind the photograph there is nothing but my own wall, or my coffee table, nothing but the world that frames the picture, and all my ideas about that person, but never the person actual.


With my own story, I draw upon both cliché and metaphor to get the telling done, seducing one or the other depending on my need. There’s no question about who will be loved. They both will. The only question is, when?

What to write when you can't write

I could not write this week. What I mean to say is, I could not write what I thought I wanted to write. I sat in front of my computer thinking I would craft the next chapter of my so-called book but nothing came. To help myself get going, I watched Elizabeth Gilbert give an inspired talk on TED about the nature of genius (she said it would be more productive for creative types to think as the Greek and Romans thought: i.e. that mortals are not responsible for genius, rather we are mere vessels through which the gods speak, kind of like TV transmitters). While at TED, I decided to watch another talk, this time by a microbiologist-turned-monk who, with his delightful French accent, made charming jokes about winter camping in the Himalayas before he proved, scientifically, that meditation can remap our neural pathways (mental note: perhaps if you meditated, Liz, you might be able to write!) . . . and still nothing. No inspiration moving through me like an Aeolian harp, no serving as a vessel for anything but popcorn, and no productive Buddhist nothingness, just a whole lot of garden-variety Liz nothingness.


I have been distracted. I have been distracted by my life. This week I am dog sitting an extraordinary creature. Fink. Rat Fink being his full name. He’s a hairless Chinese Crested Terrier and he’s more addictive than crack.


Let me be clear, I am definitely NOT one of those people who likes cutesy dogs. In fact, I think of them as vacuumable hairballs. And I’d do it in a heartbeat. But Fink is different.


Loving a Great Dane requires no effort because Danes are majestic, sweet natured and they plant their asses on the couch beside you, human like, which is great if you want a sympathetic listener who won’t interrupt. And it’s adorable. Which is why you don’t get points for thinking a Great Dane is great.

Whereas it takes very special folk to fall in love with a Chinese Crested Terrier.


My so-called ex life partner put it best when he said these are the underdog of dogs. Being an underdog lover, I opened my heart wide to the first CCT I ever met, and then, ten years later, to Fink. Fink is ugly. But compellingly so. Apart from the tuft of hair on his head, paws and tail, his congenitally hairless body feels like a shaved ball sack. There, I said it. And, if you’ve never felt one, believe me when I say there is no keeping your hands off of that.

Before Fink arrived, I told the other new male in my life that Fink was about to arrive and stay for a week. New Male responded with a diatribe about our consumer sickness for investing fortunes in pure breeds, and I think he added something about it being bourgeois and a few other criticisms I can’t remember but the tone was clear: Fink was Terrier non grata by virtue of his breeding.

NM must have been feeling sheepish about his outburst because later that night I got an e-mail from him with a paste job of the research he’d done all about Chinese Crested Terriers. His apology gesture clearly did not do the trick for him, however, because first thing the next morning he called to say, “I must see this dog. I’m on my way over.”

So, how did it go between Fink and NM? Let’s just say that within ten minutes of NM’s arrival, I came out of my kitchen after putting on the kettle for some civilized tea and conversation and found NM with his shirt pulled up and Fink’s shirt pulled off, and the former pressing the latter to the former’s belly. They both looked at me askance, but they were not asking the same question. NM’s said “am I busted?” while Fink’s look was inscrutable yet loaded with subtext, I just don’t know what.

“I don’t even know which agency I should call about this!” I yelled. Neither dog nor man seemed too fussed about their entanglement, however, and later that day when I confided the event to a girlfriend she told me she’d done the same thing with one of her friend’s dogs. My options were few. I realized that it was probably better to have this happen in my living room than, say, at the dog park. I felt like one of those parents who prefers her kids to do their drinking and drugs at home.

The day before I got Fink, I suggested to NM that his daughters might want to come over to meet the dog – a good ruse for them to also meet me. NM came up with some lame excuse about why that would not be a good idea. But after meeting Fink he was all, “would you and Fink like to come over for dinner so that the girls can meet him?” Of course I went over because I honestly thought Fink was subterfuge for getting me over. But no. It was definitely not about me. It was not even about the girls. They got about two seconds with Fink and then NM hogged Fink the rest of night, leaving me and the girls to snuggle up to Harry Potter while we tucked into some cuddle-replacement ice cream I’d brought to curry favour. Casting a somewhat worried glance to where NM and Fink were snoring together on the couch, I told myself the novelty would wear off soon enough.

I was right. Sort of. The next day NM sent me this very romantic e-mail:

Title of your next book: My lover ran off with my best friend's dog

It's because his skin feels like well-written prose. That's why I love Fink. That and he was designed by a committee chaired by Kafka and Foucault.

Appropriately hopeful, I wrote back a little subterfuge of my own.

Fink wrote you a piece of prose today:

Your everywhere hands, my belly yours, our becoming. My tail and your elephant memory salve my dry hinds. Your cold fingers seek to warm, but I am the one who does the warming and all the longing that hurts melts in your cradle arms, my sleepy snore.

Love, Fink

NM wrote back to say his book title sounded more like a country song. Because I’ll do any trick for a treat, I wrote a country song:

Three hearts, my love
All on the brink
One drowned in art
One drowned in drink
One stole the dog
His name was Fink
Crossed two state lines
His eyes all pink
What love will do
It makes you think
To lock it up
Inside the clink
Then walk the line
Far from love's stink

The next night, NM came over to my place with his girls. They said hi to Fink, drank tea and asked me why I’d put one of those veterinarian Victorian dog collars on my own head in one of my self-portraits (um, to stop me from licking my wounds?)


When the girls realized they would not get access to Fink, they disappeared up the ladder to carouse in my loft while NM and Fink communed on the couch. I sat opposite, stunned, trying to get a handle on what it was I was feeling. I have spent oodles of money in therapy trying to learn how to say what I want in a clean, direct way, but last night I realized I could have saved myself a whole lot of time and expense had I just befriended an eight year old.

NM’s eldest came down out of my loft finally and stood in front of NM, who was holding Fink, and said, “Daddy, I am feeling jealous of Fink. I want you to hold me.” And there it was. This sweet statement hung in the air as long as a zeppelin made of ice cream would. Not long. It made a soft landing on a melting heart. NM immediately put down the dog and picked up his daughter and held her close.

This little girl taught me in that moment something Fink was also trying to teach me. Love is not complicated. It’s simple. NM’S love for Fink is unconditional. To say NM loves Fink because he is ugly and cuddly is adding too much story. NM loves Fink because Fink just commands love, by simply existing. And NM’s daughters love NM and NM loves them for the same reason, or non reason. Just because.

Later that night, I sent NM and e-mail asking if he’d consider trading his girls for a box of Chinese Crested Terriers. Not surprisingly, he said not in this lifetime. But he did share this with me, a poem his eight-year-old daughter wrote to one of her eight-year-old friends:

What is life. Is it the universe trying to teach us about the world around us. Is it important that we know or does it not matter. These questions need no question marks but still remain unanswered.

I wonder if she’d let me pay her in ice cream to be my therapist.