summer talk, 2008
I am finally getting comfortable with my camera—snapping shots of people hugging, thinking, smiling. And sunflower fields on the side of the highway. The leaning wooden shacks in the lone texas meadow, made into black and white and my highway 123 drive captured at last. With a car window border. Oh, sometimes I get out and shoot. But I like the edge of the picture filled with windshield; it reminds me of my life on the go, and that it’s time to stop.
Well, I printed up pictures for everyone in Pitts. And I mailed them, and I framed them and I put east texas reunion pics in albums for family. I will call myself a pseudo -photographer as I know nothing technical about cameras. But then I guess I am a pseudo-blogger, too. Who knows, I might be able to figure out how to post my photos on my blog someday. I figured out the blog somehow.
Most days I feel like a pseudo-person, going through the motions of a person, doing the things that go with my name or profession. Going to the right places with the right people but waiting for the real me to jump out any time now. The one that tells it like it is, without fear of consequences. The one that stands up and screams for people to just say what they really mean—the one that chucks it all for a life on a river, spent walking or rocking, listening and talking.
I got better this summer at the talking thing—the light talking, the fine art of talking about little things, understanding it’s not always what I say that counts. It’s taking the time to sit and say stuff, to sit with someone, to hear, to listen. I did this on my two vacation trips, east texas and Pittsburgh, but also I am doing it more at the clinic with my co-workers. Getting the hang of it, I think.
This summer I tried to make time to write-mostly handwritten thoughts in my journal and I began work on my daughter’s senior journal, my down-home version of Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture, which I also read this summer, along with a similar collection of sage advice by Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten) They both wrote about crayons and other simple, nice things. Mostly about making and taking time.
I submitted a poem for the university newsletter, changing its name so my blog still won’t be identified (chicken!) and that was nice seeing it in print. A huge step for me. The 2nd step since reading one of my essays aloud at a reading on campus last Spring. Still not sure where I want to take my writing. How open I want to be. With whom I want to share my words. Why I want to share them. Just talking here. Light talking.
There’s a very different form of talking that appeals to me, but I didn’t realize just why until I read an old book by Dale Carnegie about public speaking: The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking. This is about practicing your words, and saying them just right, and talking with a purpose to as many people who will listen.
Mr. Carnegie’s basic philosophy is that effective speaking is “the revealing expression of a human personality.” Oh my. Yes, I have experienced this. I have spoken publicly and I felt that I was known. I also felt content and whole. In Dorothy Carnegie’s updated forward to her husband’s book, she writes, “every activity of our lives is communication of a sort, but it is through speech that man asserts his distinctiveness from other forms of life.” Through speech, man “expresses his essence.” And “when he is unable to say clearly what he means, through either nervousness, timidity or foggy thought-processes, his personality is blocked off, dimmed out, and misunderstood.”
Whoa there, now she’s really got my attention. I can never seem to say the right things when I am caught off guard. Even things I feel strongly about and know a lot about. And when it comes to negative feelings, well, forget it, I can’t seem to say things clearly and constructively. Ms. Carnegie goes on to say, “Personal satisfaction depends heavily upon a person’s ability to communicate clearly to his fellow men what he is, what he desires, and what he believes in.”
Hmm, so maybe that’s why I blog/write. A bit easier to express myself. (Especially when so few are listening.)
After reading Carnegie’s book, I also realized that public speaking (and the preparation for it) helps me “de-fog” my thought processes. And it also affirms my passion for educating others on important issues—issues that cross over into our relationships and self-affirming needs. Mr. Carnegie insists that when we speak about the things we know, we will be effective in getting our point across. I thought about how much I know about STI’s, unfortunately. I see them and treat them every day at my work. And I experienced sexual exploitation and I have spoken about it to other professionals. Still, I hesitate to pursue this speaker side of me. I get so nervous and feel so insecure. Apparently, this is something I can improve on as I go…with the intro’s and endings and in-between stories. Yet, stay “real.”
The most enlightening thing Carnegie says about public speaking is that it links us to ourselves. Our personality is seen through our speech. Especially if we speak our truth, what we know, what we have experienced. Our personality linked through our speech. I just have to say it again. I think I know now why I am always trying to pull more words out of my husband. (what’s inside there..please…)
Perhaps I am drawn to speaking for the way it opens me up to others, a sharing of thoughts and pain and a path to healing. And sometimes I see a tear or someone walk out and never know, never know how my words affected them.
Perhaps it’s why people blog…to throw themselves out there, at first “just for me,” they will say, (Ok, that’s what I said.) Then after getting to know themselves more, they are then known by others, and they know others and on and on it goes, connecting one by one. Ok, I stole that from Mary Chapin Carpenter’s song on her Calling CD that I have been listening to all summer.
But one of my biggest fears in public speaking is the whole vanity issue. I have to be confident to speak. I have to believe that I have something they need to know. It all seems very ego-centric to me. It’s the same reason Christmas letters and alumni newsletters make me twitch. Perhaps i confuse self-assurance with self-centeredness.
I wonder why we never read this in our friends’ and fellow alumni’s letters: “Here I am, just living my life the best I can with no instruction manual, warding off crises as they come, keeping me and my family intact and seeking joy in the everyday, common things that remind me of my ultimate purpose in life—to draw closer to the One who has known me since my beginning.”
But maybe I’ve rambled a bit too far from my beginning. Where was I? Oh yeh, talking and taking pictures and finding ourselves in what we say. I really need to lighten up. My daughter just drove in from Austin. Her summer is over and I get to help her load up the car for her road trip to D.C. in 4 days. We’ll be talking a lot, I hope, and maybe I’ll get a picture of her driving away, or maybe not.
1:01:17 AM 
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