The Vulture that Didn’t Fly

Virginia Woolf and I have very little in common as writers. But there is at least one confession she makes in Moments of Being that I can relate to. Her admission to loathing her own writing shortly after having written it seems to be a reality in which I too constantly dwell.

However, the script I recently wrote for my class presentation entitled, “The ‘Mother-Cake’: Warm, Porous and Somehow Blue,” was quite rare. I loved it. It pleasured and prided me to read the words aloud and to revel in an uncommon confidence in my own turn of phrase. Ideas-wise, I was also on the mark. A tidy package, I thought I had, wrapped in playful wit to keep attention spans from waning.

“…I thought I had…”

When I did present my own bundle of joy to my classmates/you, I noticed some nods and smiles at different moments as I spoke. But after the crux of my argument had already been laid out, I read the two lines that described one aspect of Freud’s interpretation of Da Vinci’s Madonna and Child with St. Anne – A.K.A. the vulture analysis. The series of comments that followed were directed toward my paper, and toward this vulture analysis in particular.

One person said that he/she didn’t buy Freud’s vulture thing, but that maybe I didn’t write about it well enough since my listeners got lost half way through… Another said that maybe the confusion came from too many theoretical voices who were only cluttering up my writing, and that it would be better to focus on one voice and to use the others in footnotes. Many people nodded in agreement. Another person claimed my facts were wrong about Freud’s view that Da Vinci was a perfectionist. Another person insisted I need more evidence from Proust’s writing to buttress my argument that Marcel is nostalgic – perhaps incestuously – for his mother. Another person said that she once read an article by Freud and did not like it.

In short, the vulture didn’t fly.

Yes this series of comments was directed toward my paper, but I absorbed them as a part of myself, because that is just how self-absorbed I am.

Ignoring the proper academic code - of accepting criticism and admitting ruefully that it is all my own fault and I will seek to improve and give thanks to those who generously offer their dislikes of my work - for the moment, I will confess to my true feelings.

It hurt.

As I sat, listening to my classmates’ comments, I could not think about whether they were right or not. I rather was concentrating on maintaining a performance. A poker face that expressed welcome to my colleagues, a face that nodded and said, “ok thank you, yes, I should consider that,” and “oh, I apologize for my lack of clarity here…” It was a different script that I was reading. It was a survival script in the face of criticism that we are not allowed to take personally. I had a few things going on in my mind, behind this face. I was wondering if anyone liked my initial question of “what is Marcel nostalgic for?” I was wondering if anyone truly understood any of Freud’s psychoanalytic writing that I so dogmatically loved (yes, I admit it). I wondered if there was anything salvageable in my entire presentation, and if so, why didn’t anyone, anywhere say so? I wondered why it is automatically and entirely the writer’s fault if a listener gets lost. Most of all, I wondered, how I could have been so completely off the mark? I loved this one set of ideas, the writing, the question and the creation of my compiled voices of theory and literature so much that I had been sure others would enjoy it. So I was not prepared when they did not.

For the days following and since that presentation, I have wallowed in a mix of bewilderment and self-pity. The complete range of emotions I found myself tangled in tugged at me from every direction and in all states of mind. My poor husband became the target of my emotional purge and out-stream of questions. With hot tears I half yelled, half whispered to him in church, “I read the paper to you the day before I presented it. Why didn’t you tell me it was garbage?!” He has been patient and encouraging and honest toward me the whole time. Then he told me I have to let go…

My work means a lot to me. In fact it is not even different from me, it is a part of me. I know I am pathetic about my work because I am so emotional about it, but I am learning to let go. Or, I should be more precise: I am learning to let go of the emotions that limit my abilities, and hold on to the ones that fuel my passion. I love my work, this work. I want to hand-write the word love because I cannot press the keys on my computer down hard enough. In writing down all my colleagues’ comments on my presentation, in seeing them mirrored back to me in the black and white linear type on my computer, free from the gnarly vines and shrouding thicket that bound them when they stayed trapped in my heart, I am able, only now, to address them in a constructive way. I am able, after whining to my husband, after writing and after finding humour in my own pathetic-ness, to honestly thank my classmates for their thoughtful concern and generous attention to my work. I will rework my presentation. I will graciously accept your comments.

Thank you.

And now, if you are still reading, you have tasted just a crumb of the neurosis I embody. So please, praise my patient husband who puts up with it every day!