For Joan : “Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write.”
I. Language of love / a peculiar literary invocation
According to Ancient Greek philosophy, there are eight different kinds of love1:
1. Eros : Erotic
2. Philia : Deep Friendship
3. Ludus : Playful
4. Agape : Universal
5. Pragma : Enduring
6. Storge : Familial
7. Mania : Obsessive
8. Philautia : Self
According to me, there are eight different kinds of love but there’s also a ninth. I call it: Bibliophilic pragma. Literary philautia. Meaning to possess an unfathomable love of written works; a deep connection to ones essential, eternal being found solely through the distinctive source of literature and literary art.
II. The historical flashing familial frequency of reading and me :
As a toddler grandma Shirley gifting me my first set of My Little Golden Books complete with Poky Little Puppy.
Grandma kept a whole library at her house — Little Critter books, Berenstain Bears, Rainbow Fish, Brown Bear Brown Bear, etc. . . Her and my mom encouraging active listening, praising me for being curious
My kindergarten teacher Miss Hansen gifting each of us a copy of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff
Ordering hoards of books from the Scholastic catalogue, pouring over Junie B. Jones, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, The Stinky Cheeseman Tales, Shel Silverstein and Roald Dahl
Zoobooks and Highlights !
Reading the Calvin & Hobbes series repeatedly in my bedroom
Envying my older sister’s copy of The Secret Garden by Frances H. Burnett
In first grade sitting at a table in my elementary school library reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone for the first time
Hiding books in my lap during class and getting caught and scolded for it by my third grade teacher Mrs. Eloph.
Reading Dr. Seuss to my mom in the car until I would throw up
Me and the girls passing around Jodi Pocoult, Ellen Hopkins and Sarah Dessen novels all through junior high.
Walking through a Borders books for the first time when I was 10-11. ( I still remember some of the books I bought! )
Sneaking late hours of reading by my nightlight as a teenager. Scampering to hide under the covers and not breathe too obviously when my foster parents grew suspicious and checked on me
Walking through my high school library discovering Wally Lamb and Janet Fitch and Laurie Halse Anderson.
Reading White Oleander for the first time
Reading White Oleander for the 75th time
Stealing precious moments with a book during my time in Utah ( even though once they made me read Reviving Ophelia ), also reading Maya Angelou for the first time while I was in there
19 years old reading Eat Pray Love in the psych ward (haha)
My friend’s mom recommending the unforgettable John Irving to me ( I’ve read Cider House Rules, The World According to Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meany and they all were marvelous )
Crying the first time I read the following fiction stories — Frankenstein, Anne of Green Gables, A Little Princess, The Book Thief and Paradiso The Divine Comedy III…to name a few off the top of my head
Living outside and still having a fucking book to read!!
My early 20s going on long solo hikes to read beside snowy waterfalls or glacial sunny pond rocks
Entertaining the idea of pursuing writing, spending my 20s reading the work of Cheryl Strayed, Mary Karr, Elizabeth Wurtzel, Joan Didion, Soroya Chemaly, Virginie Despentes, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Alan Watts, Ray Bradbury, realizing that’s probably the best idea I’ve had in my entire life
Aging and changing while the books I love remain timeless and unchanged
According to me, there are eight different kinds of love but there’s also a ninth. I call it: Bibliophilic pragma. Literary philautia. Meaning to possess an unfathomable love of written works; a deep connection to ones essential, eternal being found solely through the distinctive source of literature and literary art.
III. Tears of a clown / prayers of a poet
I really enjoy singing. When I was a little girl all I wanted was to be like Avril Lavigne and Miley Cyrus. My foster dad would crack that I sounded like a dying animal but I would sing for my teachers during recess, in the school choir, in talent shows and at karaoke every chance that I got ( and I belted the fuck out of Broken Wing by Martina McBride every time) I even slept with a pink pillowcase that said ROCKSTAR on it. I could harmonize enough to hit all the notes in the PlayStation sing-along games so I figured I was a grammy winner destined for a huge record deal. My freshman honors literature teacher told me that I had the kind of thinking of a writer and I thought about Murder, She Wrote and quickly dismissed him as a random fucking lunatic.2 But it so happens I was actually eight years old when I wrote my first “book.” I did great in rudimentary literacy classes so my teachers at Clover Valley Elementary kindly selected me for a program called Young Authors and I returned the favor with some goofy illustrated story about an ant farm. What was the plot of this or why it was centered on a family of formicidae I couldn’t tell you. I went on through life writing all kinds of crap that’s been trashed or lost or forgotten. Journals, poems, essays, book reports, online ramblings, letters I would never send. Sometimes I would pretend that I was Harriet the Spy and take note of each and every thing I observed or ate or dreamed. As the years went on I wrote more poor poetry than anything. It would be 15 years before I had the courage to inwardly examine myself deeply enough to create anything real, when I was 23 going nowhere, typing on this shitty pink imitation laptop I was using that I got for trading an ounce of weed what became Raising Amy ( I’m sure it’s totally coincidental that I began twice weekly dialectical behavioral therapy and my first anger management program less than a year after I started. . . ) That’s the arbitrary, wildly momentous day that I turned down an exponentially different more rewarding road. If you’re not including the story of the forgettably titled ant farm.
I became a Writer.
And I’ve truly never stopped writing since ( or singing for that matter ). I can’t imagine I ever will.
Even when I later spent time in my twenties living at a park n’ ride off the CA-180 freeway in my broken down car during the hottest summer on the county record since 1999, I was still trying to write. I kept Zen in the Art of Writing on the dash. By that time I no longer had a choice anyway. I had learned that it was write or die.
I had learned that it was write or die.
I’ve never done much to try to gain likability by anyone, least of all being courageously pursuing my greatest passion. I knew trying to find validity as a writer from other people was almost never going to happen. I will never forget when someone at a major publishing house said to me it’s so exclusive to find someone willing to represent you. You will never make it [successfully publish] , sorry. I thought to myself, you know, fuckin bet bozo! And I spent 5 years writing so. many. fucking. drafts. Trying desperately to find perspective, find my feelings, who I was underneath everything that once shamed and shaped me. Trying to figure out what do I know is true, what do I believe with no doubt, who am I narrating for ? Turning myself inside out. Clawing everything about this experience up from the deepest coldest parts of the dirt into fresh light, letting it heave its necessary sigh, then making it whole and new again. I had drafts with small print and small margins as many as 400 pages. Drafts with large print as short as 75 pages. I had drafts with people’s real names and drafts with fake ones. Drafts that I handed out for feedback that I never got. Drafts that I literally burned in the bathtub. I died and was I reborn. At last I self published with the generous New Jersey service BookBaby and ended up exceedingly rewarded for my endeavor. I’m in the fucking libraries !! I officially threw my hot hat into the proverbial ring. Nobody could tell me I was not what I am!
When I decided to join Substack a year later, I originally titled it Ames in Flames. Ames has always been my favorite nickname, in flames has always been who I am. It wasn’t until I accepted that I’m a passionate, unruly novice I realized Amateur on Fire was a more than perfect way to describe my literary talents and ambitions and art. I think I’ll always be an amateur writer no matter how high falutin I can write, of books that I publish, or receive recognition because I’m eternally an amateur at being alive and clearly an amateur at articulating my way through this vulnerable, uncomfortable experience. And I’ll always be on fire. I prefer it that way. I take no offense in being at the beginning, it took me such a long time to stumble my way this far. I’m just very, very fucking glad that I did. Maybe there is no earthly address where a house with a vacancy inside reserved for me is standing, but I’ll be damned if I haven’t finally found my place to call home.
I think I’ll always be an amateur writer. . .because I’m an amateur at life, and clearly an amateur at articulating my way through this vulnerable, uncomfortable experience. And I’ll always be on fire. . .Maybe there is no earthly address where a house with a vacancy inside reserved for me is standing, but I’ll be damned if I haven’t finally found my place to call home.
IV. Enter the inferno
So now hopefully you see.
I write because for my life this is all there is. I write and I read because they’re the heart of my life. Who I am. They go hand in hand. It’s how I feel close to my family or to humanity or to myself. It’s how I process being a humanly creature. It’s how I face the fear of God. Through the faithful penning of my own poetic prose or by reading the words of other’s that stirs something strong and insatiable within me. I write because I remember how it felt to love to read when I was a child, when I was a hellish teenage girl, as a mixed up adult. I write for each person who’s told me I deeply understand this or said because of your writing I want to tell what I know. I write because I believe that loving literature is an act of faith. Giving my unmixed attention to it is a form of prayer. For some of us, surely for me, giving attention to this art creates an important — fatal — difference behind the mind.
Saint Joan told you so!
I write because I believe that loving literature is an act of faith. Giving my unmixed attention to it is a form of prayer. For some of us, surely for me, giving attention to this art creates an important — fatal — difference behind the mind.
Thank you very much for reading, I appreciate it more than you will ever know!
Arguably 9 if you include Xenia: Hospitality, which I am not
forgive my childish ignorance Madame Lansbury PLEASE!
This was really good. Perfect.