Letters to the Editor
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this is my truth; tell me yours
I'm willing to bet that this little essay garners upward of 75 comments. Why? Because it deals with one person's unorthodox, highly personal choice, and that is always a magnet for people whose worldviews are threatened by others unorthodox personal choices.
I believe fiercely that any writer's work must be taken in context of all of her other work. If some of you people who automatically recoil at Ann Bauer's choice would go back and read some of her other essays, I think you might be willing to see things in a slightly different light. I always look for (and look forward to) Ms. Bauer's work, because she has an intense and unapologetic individuality that resists easy sentiment and stale cliches.
The truth is that love does leave scars, and there is a certain sort of empowerment that comes along with choosing your scars before they choose you. It wouldn't be my choice - at least, it wouldn't be the choice I might make in the life I am currently living, with my own experiences behind me and my own future in front of me. But my life is immeasurably enhanced by unflinching accounts of other people's choices, of other people's decisions, of other people's experiences. Their truths may not always be mine, but I honor the act of sharing, the act of offering.
I completely agree with Bauer's assessment that with writing - as with any art form - it's all in the slant. Think about how beige the world would be if we all stuck to a neat template, if none of us ever made reckless or unconventional choices. Then think about how irrelevant the art in such a world would be. Artists mine their own lives for gold, and a life less ordinary always seems to offer up the greatest treasures.
Emily Dickinson is an appropriate muse in this situation. She was a poet - an artist - who lived a small, quiet life overlooking a graveyard, who spent her later years in a highly agoraphobic state. Her work springs from a dark fascination with death, an uneasy relationship with god and her fellow man, and the sort of longing that only a shut-in can feel. Many of her poems were written on the backs of recipe cards and receipts, strewn around her home and tucked into corners. She wrote because she had to write, because she was wired to write, and her writing is the only evidence we have of her rich interior life. Her life was unorthodox - it's certainly not a life I'd choose to live - and her poetry is priceless.
So yeah, I might not choose to do what Ann Bauer did. But I'm moved by her words. I'm moved by her experience. Most of all, I'm moved by her ruthless honesty. I can't explain exactly why it is that her story spoke to me, but I respond viscerally to the honesty of her voice.