Lists

The question is: can we afford it?

The question is: why didn't you ask me?

The question is: where have you been?

I arose at 5:00 a.m. on Thanksgiving to write. I wrote for two hours. I wrote for four hours. I wrote a couple thousand words on my novel, and I started an essay. The following day, I sat at the dining room table grading papers. I graded forty papers in eight hours. The following day, I wrote. I spent eight or more hours at my computer, hardly moving, writing and rewriting an essay. An essay on lists. Lists.

I wrote lists. I researched lists. I essayed them. I copied them from books. I observed them.

I spent hour upon hour revising the essay.

Last night, my husband and I were about to do it ("it" it). It was 10:30 p.m. And we heard some fire engines close by. Two. Three. This was more than a five-alarm fire, I remarked. Marty wanted to know how I knew how many alarms. The number of engines, I said, determines the number of alarms. I don't know if this is true, but I know that we heard at least seven fire engines and four police cars. And then we could smell it, so we knew the fire was close.

We both went outside, but only Marty could go up the street to see it. I went inside. I revised my essay further.

In the morning, I made coffee at 7:30, fixed my daughter breakfast, and went straight to the computer, where I revised yet again. When Marty, whom I begged to read the essay several times yesterday, at last took it to read, I came running down with the third revised version of the morning; it had an entirely new introduction. Here it is:

"I collect hats and frogs and art and rocks and bones and books and bits of broken things, findings. I collect words and thoughts. I collect lists. I bring the outside in: a honey comb, a robin's next, a turtle shell, a snakeskin, a mammoth's tusk and humerus, assorted bones and teeth of various deer, a paper wasp's nest, rocks and shells and stones. They are in a bowl on my dining room table. What's left of a feast. They are the inside out.

"Lists: they are the inside out."

My essay on lists, entitled, "Lists: A List," is 4,370 words. It is fourteen double-spaced pages with many pages of single-spaced blocks.

I did not tell readers that my favorite song ever is Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run." I did not tell readers that I still find Bruce one of the world's most handsome men, just below George Clooney. I didn't tell readers that Willy Porter is my favorite guitar player; that, when the world is done, it will be agreed that U2 was the best rock band ever; that the ugliest names for colors are puce and quince. I didn't list my favorite movies, which change all the time (American Beauty, Bladerunner, Groundhog's Day, House of Sand and Fog, and The Usual Suspects among them).

I quoted nonfiction writers, fiction writers, and poets. I quoted a student.

And I did something I hadn't expected: I fulfilled the requirements of the lyric essay assignment, the last student essay due. I weaved three topics, tied them together neatly at the end. I used space and poetry.

When he finished reading my essay, Marty told me he liked it very much. He liked the writing. He liked the subject matter. He liked this and that of it, the weaving, the message, the music. But what makes me think, with my credit card debt, I should be sitting on my ass all day writing, doing things that don't pay me yet, expending all this effort on speculation that I might, some day, get this piece published? What makes me think we can afford the MFA from Goucher? Afford more time away from my daughter, my family?

I don't know. I don't know! I can only say that if people waited until they could afford it, most of us would never go anywhere. We'd have no children. We'd have no books, no art, no music.

And maybe it's true that we'd also have no debt. But what is a life, free and clear, without risk? Without following your dream? Without taking the leap? If we have no goals—or have some but make no move toward their fulfillment, what good is a life?

What is life without the list?