It's about a year since I've done any serious writing. I decided to detox myself from the phony literary world of publishers, prize-winners and book launches. I realised how much, since the age of seven, when I first stood on my father's bed to type a story on Aunty Molly's old Olivetti typewriter, I had been groomed and lured into the Cult of Literature.
My father's room, "The Little Room", previously and euphemistically referred to as a "sunroom", was off our narrow galley kitchen. Originally, there was a plank door, but it ended up with a curtain across the doorway. I don't remember when that happened. I have a few memories of it before it was my father's bedroom. I recall mounds of fresh washing lying on the single bed, waiting to be ironed or folded. And there was the old cane basket that was my mother's only laundry basket. I had it for many years, when my own children were small. I remember the creak of it. I ended up setting fire to it, one afternoon. Lucas had been away somewhere, and we had a small birthday tea ready for him on his return. I had already hung the old basket from the central pole of the house and had thoughtlessly lit a candle on the tiny ledge underneath it. It soon caught fire and ended up with a burnt gap under one handle.
My brother slept in the Little Room when he was very ill with gastroenteritis ("tincter-tincteritis", as he referred to it). We must both have been very young. Our childhoods were plagued with various tummy wogs, most likely due to the can toilet down the back that was not enough for a family of six.
The Little Room was unlined. There was one single bed on the left, and the aforementioned wardrobe on the right. The big, old, black typewriter could be reached by standing on the edge of the bed and leaning across. Above the doorway, there was a shelf that held miscellaneous boxes and things that seemed mysterious to me. I often dreamt of it as a passageway or portal. I think that notion went far back into my pre-verbal days.
Being unlined, the walls of the room were pimply grey asbestos. Beside the wall joist that was halfway along the bed, there was a hole that had, possibly, been punched or kicked in at some stage. The window consisted of mottled glass louvres, and outside the window was the crimson-leaved plum tree, though it never did produce plums, so it may not have been a plum tree at all.
So, it was at the age of seven that I would lean across that abyss, pushing down the letters of the ancient typewriter with great force, teaching myself how to use caps and how to go down to the next line, how to indent, and how to go from red ink to black, that I wrote my first short story entitled "How the Red Sea Got Its Name". It was a Biblical kind of story, gory and prophetic. Likewise, my first poem, "The Weeping Willow", was very earnest. "As I watch you, weeping willow, your branches hand down straight; they fall to make a pillow for the man who opened Heaven's Gate"...I took that poem to school and my teacher read it out. At that age, I was oblivious to my peers' hatred.
And so it was at that age that I started to think of myself as a writer. In high school, my English teacher referred to me as "the Professor". I was deep and introverted. I got to read the part of Laura when we studied "The Glass Menagerie". It was my use of language and my depth that made me special, and that little kernel of the extraordinary planted itself firmly in my self-concept.
It was just like a religion! I see that now! Writing would be the means to my salvation...my immortality. Every rejection letter would be the lash of the torturer...every success of other, less thoughtful writers, my Crown of Thorns. Perhaps it was merely age, or the fact that a close friend had left a visible cult, that I started to see the reality of "the literary world". How did I ever fall for such a crock? I asked myself.
I did not like the person that literature turned me into. I did not like the bitterness and rage I felt when I realised the feet of clay of the literary world. I started scrolling past online news of others' success. I glowered at authors spouting tired cliches on arts programs. I saw how being an ex-writer was not unlike being an ex-Jehovah's Witness. I realised how religious trauma might expand to include the trauma of aspirant authors in the DMI.
Perhaps I exaggerate.
I decided, about a year ago, to de-tox from the Cult of Literature. I hope I have regained some perspective. Perhaps I feel a little less wounded. The struggle continues.
