TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 124

[Tobie Shapiro]

January 18, 2000007


Dear One for All and All for One,

	I'm taking a writing class every 
Wednesday morning from 9:30 to 12:30.  The 
teacher is Andy Couturier (Ko-TOO-ree-ay).  He is 
wonderful.  All the suffering I've done in other 
writing classes is disappearing into this healing 
experience.  He wrote a book, "Writing Open the 
Mind," in which he lays forth umpteen exercizes 
to inspire the unconscious mind to take over the 
pen.  They are ingenious exercizes, fun to do, 
fascinating even.  His manner is all positive. 
No one is allowed to hack into someone else's 
work and say, "I didn't like it.  It sucks."  or 
"The narrator is screwed, and you have no talent."

	Yesterday, we shared some stories of past 
abuses of critique.  I retold the story of the 
teacher in a novel writing class I took through 
the University of California Extension.  I can't 
remember the teacher's name, which is an insult 
to him in itself, but he was always cutting off 
the students in mid sentence to say things like, 
"But where's the action?"  And they would stammer 
and say that it came on the next page, or in the 
next paragraph, and he'd smirk and say, "That's 
what they all say.  On the next page!  It has to 
come now!"  and  he'd dismiss the student and 
call on someone else.  The next someone else 
would think that he or she would be lucky, and 
begin to read, only to be interrupted a ways down 
the road with a laugh about a grammatical snafu 
or a turn of phrase that was clumsy.  Then he 
called on me.  I was writing a novel about the 
era in my life in which I was hooked on cocaine. 
I read for a paragraph or so, and he interrupted 
me sharply.  "Why should we care about this 
character?"  and he dismissed me.

	Another woman told the story of a chance 
to pitch your novel to an agent.  It was a whole 
event.  The agents sat in a row, and the lucky 
pitchers waited in line for three minutes with 
them.  When it was her turn, she sat in the hot 
chair and began talking about her memoir about 
her mother who was a lesbian in the 1950s and was 
given shock treatments to cure her of her 
homosexuality.  She got half way out of the first 
sentence, and the agent said, "So what!" and 
tossed her out.  This stuff is supposed to make 
us stronger.  But why should we have to get 
toughened up?  It's not necessary.  It's an 
artificial construct, an excuse for sadists to do 
what they do so well with impunity.  Having been 
tossed around by the music business as well as 
the publishing business, I feel very strongly 
about this.  You really can show your humanity 
and be helpful to nearly every person who crosses 
your path if you are a person in a position of 
power.  Why not be helpful?  Oh.  'Cause they 
don't feel like it.




 
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October 20, 1991

	I was reclining at the breakfast table, a 
mug of good coffee in my hands.  David had taken 
the twins to Tilden Park to the Merry-Go-Round to 
give me a break.  My intention was to take a nap. 
I hadn't had one for it seemed like years, maybe 
the four and a half years since Meyshe and Feyna 
had been born.  It was a hot day, the hottest on 
record, and at ten in the morning the 
neighborhood wind chimes were all going off, a 
high tinkling chorus of alarm.  A mean north wind 
had kicked up.  A lone cardboard box blew down 
the middle of the street, tumbling over itself, 
unfolding.  There was something haunting about 
the day: something not right, something wicked, 
in fact, Sunday morning, a bad mood in the air. 
But of course that's in retrospect, holy 
retrospect.

	The phone rang and when I answered, it 
was Yuri, Yvonne's son.  He said, "Guess you guys 
must be roasting up there."  I asked him what he 
meant, and he told me there was a fire, a big 
fire, in the Oakland hills.  Was it near me?  I 
got up and walked to the window, peered out and 
saw a vibrantly blue sky with fluffy white clouds 
ambling along.  I said, "It looks fine out 
there."  He told me to look out another window, 
and I turned ninety degrees to the western wall, 
looked out the glass and saw a huge angry plume 
of smoke, red at the base, black at the top, 
billowing out of the hill beyond the houses.

	I will never forget what I said to him: 
"Oh my God, it's beautiful.  I hope it's not 
dangerous."  I told Yuri I would find out what 
was going on.  We hung up.  I dialed 911, cross 
examining myself.  "Is this really an emergency? 
Shouldn't I leave the line clear for really 
urgent calls?"  An operator answered.  Before I 
had a chance to ask her a question, she said, 
"You should be evacuating."  I shook my head 
clear, "What?!"  "You should be evacuating," she 
repeated.  I know that a lot of people piled 
their stereo sets into their cars, and loaded the 
contents of their filing cabinets in after them. 
There were people who brought nothing out with 
them.  And people who brought their camping gear. 
People who rolled up the Persian rugs and forgot 
the baby pictures.  Jewels and tuxedos and the 
favourite formal gown got tossed into the car, 
the skis strapped to the roof.  People get crazy 
during emergencies.  But I teethed on 
emergencies.  My whole life had been an 
emergency.  With my father before me, my sister 
aft, and my mother hiding her head in the corner, 
I had no insular feeling that this couldn't 
happen to me.  I knew that anything could and 
would happen to me.  It was a matter of how to 
celebrate that.  As I looked around the house, I 
did so in a fantasy world, act two, scene one, in 
which our heroine's house burns down.  Now, what 
should she take with her on the run?

	I started gathering a pile of items and 
boxes that would go to the car, just a little car 
on loan from the lab where David worked.  His car 
was in the shop.  A little white sedan.  What 
could I fit in it?  I dragged the box of 
photographs into the hall.  I fetched my cello, 
my guitar, the picture of Yvonne that graced the 
top of the piano.  I opened the filing cabinet 
and lifted all my writing out of it.  Then went 
back for copies of my art work.  I took none off 
the walls.  I went to each step son's room to 
rescue something that must be important to them. 
Ben's guitar.  I looked at his school books and 
homework lying around on the floor.  There was no 
way I was going to rescue those things.  He'd 
hate me forever.  Alex had gone off to U.C. Santa 
Cruz a few weeks before.  He had all his vital 
objects.  I thought of bringing his bass viol out 
of his closet.  But I imagined strapping it to 
the top of the car.  It would fall off while 
backing out of the drive.  It would shatter into 
a million toothpicks and then the house would be 
fine.  We'd be minus a bass viol.  I kissed it 
goodbye.

	I went down a list of what was necessary: 
medications, the kids' blankies, a few cloth 
diapers that Feyna used as security blankets, 
videos of their birthday parties, and a handful 
of videos to amuse them, a bag full of toys.  I 
was industrious and efficient.  When I'd 
collected a mountain of necessary, I started 
hauling it all to the car.  As I struggled out 
the back door the first time, the sky was raining 
down chunks of burning embers and debris.  The 
air was shimmering with heat, the undulations 
that warp vision.  Then as I carted off the last 
of it, I brought the cat carrying case and called 
to my cat, Vogelsang, who came quickly and 
climbed right into the cage as if she knew what 
was happening.  With Vogelsang in the carrier, I 
suddenly knew I was serious.  The illusion of 
this being an act evaporated.

	I got a big piece of paper out and wrote 
on it, "Do not enter.  Go directly to Yvonne's 
house.  I will meet you there."  I taped it to 
the back door.  I looked around, my eyes sweeping 
the house for memories, for preciousness.  I told 
the house, "Goodbye," and went to the car.  In a 
hurry, I backed down the drive and into the 
street, but stopped the car and went up to the 
neighbors' houses, the ones who were old and hard 
of hearing.  I banged on their front doors.  No 
one answered.  I rushed back to the car.  Now I 
was on my way out.  I drove to the end of the 
street and turned onto the main road.  There was 
an endless queue of cars, packed to the brim, all 
waiting and honking in the bumper to bumper 
traffic.  I took my place in line, another line. 
I knew how to wait in line.

	Open your gates wide.  Let all the 
refugees enter into your waiting arms, dear God. 
We are packed and ready.  Show us the way.



 
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-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net