Between the lines

They told us we should read between the lines. This was important. Even though my own mother used to say, a lot, “I expect you to miss the deep thing (in the books), but gottdammit, don’t miss the obvious!” Thus, I grew up with the conflict or struggle, whatever, of not even trying to go deep into the story but making sure I got “the obvious.”

Then along came Mr. Martin, my English teacher in my senior year in high school. He cussed like Mama did, only he swore he’d fail me if I didn’t start reading between the lines. I managed to finish with a B+ only to learn that wasn’t good enough. The relevant task was not to read between the lines after all, but to WRITE between the lines since, “Your [my] writing is emotive, expansive and imposing.“ Had not the foggiest at the time what that meant but knew to keep from failing, I had to “write between the lines.”

This was intimidating, overwhelming, and stressful. I thought at the time that it was an impossibility. In addition, I had no idea what “writing between the lines” was until I realized I was already doing it and it wasn’t as impossible as I thought. Writing between the lines was simply being true to the story as I both knew and imagined it to be. No frills, no fluff, no flowers but more than just the facts. It helped that I had to read many books to understand what it is to write between the lines, creating depth, mystery and suspense in order that the reader could read between the lines.

I flash on the experience of reading George Orwell's, Animal Farm the first time. At the time I was eating every allegorical book I could digest in one sitting. Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist, Antoine de Saint-Exupery's Le Petit Prince, Richard Bach's novella, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Lord of the Flies by William Golding, etc. I was out to get my fav decaf latte after the evening walk and had Animal Farm in the backpack. Once in, I was in! The cafe closed but I could not close the book, nor could I waste a line wallking back to the house.

I sat in the closest park under the closest street light and with my rare copy of the gifted book, I sat among the homeless until I finished it. The "obvious" was apparent, but as for the "deep," reading between the lines, well that was an entirely different story. I had to run home for that.

Little did I know I'd be up all night doing the read between the lines. Every animal character in that book, the revolution, Mr. Jones of Manor Farm all spoke to me. I knew them all, deeply. For an obvious reason, Boxer in particular. Although many reviewers distilled it down to an allegorical mirror on Stalin--and that was very obvious--yet, it was so much more. When the sun rose that morning the impact it left me with was the deep gut need to write like that. To write between the lines like Orwell.

Honestly, I'm still working at that.

Then I read Tony Morrison's Beloved and really got intimidated. Although not my love, YA, nevertheless, reading between the lines in that book still haunt. Those were the voices that made you want to quit, that did make me quit and go back to the day, no writing jobs.

Until that writing fire shut up in the bones got too hot to ignore.

It burned out the wannabe like, wanna write like to ashes. What rose from the Phoenix was the logo of truth: I am, therefore I write. Off the page, down to the page, on the same page in between the lines.