001: 320 Sycamore

Favourite saying of the week: “Why I Oughta!”

I always thought I’d be really good at being a man in the 40s. Of course that’s stupid because I couldn’t be further from that, but I just really love the way they spoke. It must have been so easy to get married back when men were writing letters from war and smoking cigars on train carriages without knowing what harm they could cause. 

…They said stuff like “I’m gonna get some shuteye,” and “why I oughta—,” with a charming, half-witted smile, a chuckle beneath the sigh, and a wife back home. 

Contextual rambling:

I was named after George Bailey in It’s A Wonderful Life (1946), my parents’ favourite movie of all time. He was a kind man, an upstanding one. Deaf in the left ear but giving you his undivided attention with his right. The kinda man I would want to be. He spoke as if he constantly had a toothpick in his mouth: casually yet also matter-of-factly. I used to hate it when I was a kid and my parents forced me to watch the film every Christmas Eve because I found black-and-white films to be utterly boring. But I’m glad they kept forcing me to watch it, because it finally made sense to me on a November afternoon, a couple years ago. Of course, the ‘Auld Lang Syne’ scene at the end brings me to tears every time (even more so in recent years, since my time spent studying in Scotland caused me to grow incredibly fond of its silly yet formal traditions. I am referring to the simplest of reeling dances where the entire room holds hands and runs towards and away from the centre, increasing in speed every 8 bars of the song, to close out the evening. We don’t have a sense of community like that in America. At least not since the 40s, as I imagine them). But the scene that really did me in was, what I like to call, the 320 Sycamore Scene. 

For those who haven’t watched it, I’ll give a minimal-spoiler summary: Newlyweds George and Mary get their honeymoon ruined by a huge business disaster. George — selfless and reliable as always — puts all his customers before himself even on his wedding day. Lots of his customers are also close friends because Bedford Falls is such a small, close-knit town, but it’s still an incredibly noble thing that I would personally never do. After a long, stressful day of business ordeals, George is driven by his best friends, Bert and Ernie (yes, the Sesame Street characters are named after them) to an abandoned house that Mary has done up all nice as a surprise for their honeymoon dinner. It happens on an incredibly rainy evening (oh, how romantic) and the house represents their ever-persisting ability and desire to dream, even though they live such a small (but we mustn’t forget, wonderful) life together. 

Back when I was a child, this just felt like a plot point to show how caring Mary is. But two Novembers ago, I put on the film because I was feeling awfully homesick. I sat on my couch in absolute awe, as the Scottish sun shone its final efforts through my windowsill around 3pm that afternoon. I thought: Damn it. That’s love. 

(Come to think of it, I could never really be a man in the 40s. I wanna be someone’s wife too bad.)

Buffalo girls, can’t you come out tonight? // Credit: Paramount

What this has to do with my writing:

(SEE: ‘soppy, sloppy, sincere sestina’)

I wrote a poem shortly after, where I mention the scene. It was a dreary winter, for I was lovesick, malaise, and the most beautiful I had ever been — despite being practically nocturnal and staying in most days to linger in my forlornness and drink lukewarm soup.

The poem is still my favourite I have ever written. It’s messy, but every word I wrote was a hill I was willing to die on, at the time. Thank God I had a pen and paper even if I lacked the will to possess much of anything else. All I wanted was for it to work. It was my disposition; it was how my life was “supposed” to be; it was how things were “meant” to go in the love story I was sustaining; it was forever. It was forever and forever was it in that moment in time:

“Everyone else is wrong. They don’t understand that forever lasts this long.”

That November, I was stuck in a moment and, as Bono might suggest, I couldn’t get out of it. I wouldn’t and couldn’t have it any other way. I’d fix up dinner, fix up a house, fix up myself — whatever it took to hold onto the life I had pictured for myself. I was convinced I was the only person with rationale in the whole wide world. The line quoted above is meant to be equally romantic as it is stubborn, just like me.

I figured the sestina was the perfect structure for my feelings, with its repetitive, pre-determined pattern of end-words, but also its necessity for intralineal variation. Its simultaneous restriction and possibility. It’s like a battle in and of itself, much like the one I had created in my mind. 320 Sycamore is the moment of peace in my sestina: a worn-down house wherefrom to dream of what could have been home.

(also Trump got re-elected that week and I hardly noticed / hate to admit it / oh what doom all around / may as well stay sad)

Another year-or-so before that, I told ******** I was named after George Bailey; and he joked, “that makes sense because you look a lot like Jimmy Stewart.” 

(Of course, we couldn’t look more dissimilar). 

I’ve only recently thought about the above anecdote due to my current fixation on the following: Do I really sound somewhat like a man-from-the-40s in my writing? Does the subject of love reveal the old timey charm in my soul? Or do I just sound exactly like what I am: an American girl born in the early 2000s? Maybe I sound just like anyone else to everyone else, and I’m being ridiculous. 

But I don’t care!

Alas, my father fancies likening himself to Gregory Peck, but he is just a rather modern Filipino man who wears oversized eyeglasses and, a couple years ago, frequently sported a pair of mary jane shoes (purposely designed for men, but mary janes, nonetheless). He is charming, though. I will give him that. 

But so am I!

(Point is, I get it from somewhere.)

Big fan of these somewhat corny messages on the NYC streets. Spotted on Ludlow St/03:29am/90ºF

Back to where I started:

It’s really ironic that I still write in British English, because I feel like my poems need to be read in a sardonic transatlantic accent (leaning American), like that of Jimmy Stewart. A British person would never say “Why I Oughta!” Plus, I just moved back to New York (probably) for good. But I am extremely attached to saying that I’m getting on the lift, or that I don’t like rocket in my sandwiches, or that my favourite colour is purple. Ohhhhh I wonder why I oughta

change a thing

just cuz I moved

get rid of “u”

keep on writing

start this blog

or spend a day longer in this ****** heat!!!

Conclusion:

I suppose my aim was to share why my poetry reads like that. I think the dashes help the cadence sound casual, and that my longer poems are best read out loud. Though I did not publish that sestina on ampersand, the approach I took with it is the one I try to take with most of my poems: start with one image or phrase — an awful melancholy one, more often than not — and make a whole big deal out of it. What a bunch of baloney.

Alright, now. Until next time.