Wings from words

Vaddey Ratner

The father of the narrator of In the Shadow of the Banyan, the novel by Vaddey Ratner I reviewed here a few days ago, is a poet. That narrator remembers her life as a little girl in Cambodia during the brief, terrible reign of the Khmer Rouge, and many of her memories have to do with her beloved Papa, his poems and what is said to her about the importance of poetry, stories and words in general. I'd like to mention some of those passages today and add some comments of my own.

Poetry is like that, Papa said. It can come to you in an intake of breath, vanish again in the blink of an eye, and first all you have is

          A line weaving through your mind
          Like the tail of a child's kite
          Unfettered by reason or rhyme

Then, he said, comes the rest -- the kite, the story itself. A complete entity.

If that is true with poetry, and I can believe that it is, it is also true with the writing of fiction and, at times almost any kind of writing. Writing starts with an idea, often a fleeting wisp of an idea. Often a glimpse of an idea for a possible blog post comes to me while I am reading or listening to someone talk or even just thinking absentmindedly. That idea may disappear as quickly as it appeared. If I am lucky, and if the idea is any good, it may reappear later, perhaps in another form, perhaps with more complexity. Eventually may come "a complete entity."

Milk Mother said that stories are like footpaths of the gods. They lead us back and forth across time and space and connect us to the entire universe, to people and beings we never see but who we feel exist.

That strikes me as a pretty good description of the virtue of stories. They somehow connect us emotionally with other people, if not necessarily real people then at least possible people. We realize what we have in common with others, as well as how we differ.

He looked down into the well, and his blurred reflection said to mine, "I write because words give me wings."

Musicians, bakers, carpenters and others may find their wings in their own pursuits. For writers, however, words bring wings.

"We are all echoes of one another, Raami."

And this, from Raami's father, is an echo of the wisdom imparted by her Milk Mother above.

"Words, they are our rise and our fall, Raami. Perhaps this is why I prefer not to say too much."

Papa's words made his poetry beloved by his people. They also made him an enemy of the state as far as the Khmer Rouge was concerned. Most of the rest of us, whether we write or just talk, know this to be true as well. A timely quip. A choice bit of gossip. A comment to a reporter. A powerful sermon or lecture. A letter of complaint. An influential book, article or essay. Any of these can make us feel good about ourselves. Until they get us into trouble.