magpie's shiny things

I’ve always had an unrea­son­ably inti­mate, if some­what stormy, rela­tion­ship with punctuation.

On one hand I want punc­tu­a­tion to make sense — to be use­ful, pre­dictable, and con­sis­tent­ly applic­a­ble. On the oth­er hand I want to be able to make use of it for my own ends — to fudge, push, pull, invert, and sub­vert its pre­scribed and pro­scribed uses. To make my par­tic­u­lar mean­ings just a lit­tle clear­er. I want to instruct my read­er in how to breathe my prose. In how to inhale its mean­ing and to exhale its sense.

I start mess­ing around with punc­tu­a­tion right from the begin­ning, my usu­al drafts are hash­es of frag­ments, rep­e­ti­tions, par­en­thet­i­cals, frag­ments, whizzes, bangs, splits, splotch­es, hen scratch­es and fly­specks. Type some words, throw down a com­ma to indi­cate a break in thought, add a dash — a minor detour if you will. Type some more words, drop in anoth­er com­ma for a slight turn to the left, use a peri­od to mark the end of the whole thought and it’s trail­ing lit­tle brothers.

Then a new para­graph, or maybe an extra blank line if I’m real­ly going to jump the hur­dle and land in some entire­ly oth­er field. I love ellipses, en dash­es, em dash­es, paren­the­ses; all of the brack­ets — angle, curly, and square. Each lit­tle glyph adding, to my eye, a slight­ly dif­fer fla­vor of pause or link­age. They cre­ate con­nec­tions or dis­con­nec­tions between the lit­tle thoughts that flow and stum­ble out of my fingers.

Eventually I make a prop­er first draft out of my mess. Using scis­sors, tape, and sev­er­al col­ors of high­lighter I take all of the frag­ments and push them to and fro and make them stand in, if not straight lines, at least con­vivial groups. Marshal them and march them out on to the field. Much of my crazy, lazy punc­tu­a­tion dis­ap­pears in this process. Not all of it. And some mis­takes are made.

A recent round of edit­ing led to ques­tions about how, exact­ly, to punc­tu­ate dia­log. Because I had writ­ten a whole sto­ry using my usu­al, utter­ly con­sis­tent form of punc­tu­a­tion. Which it turns out is wrong about half the time. Grade school failed me in so many ways.

Worse yet, my wrong­ness makes my favorite edi­tor twitchy because it involves commas.

Now I like com­mas as much as the next writer. In fact I like them a lit­tle too much. I’ve been known to sprin­kle them about in my writ­ing like jim­mies on an ice cream cone. With a free hand. But in dia­log? I have a prob­lem with them. I can nev­er get them in the right place when it comes to the dia­log tags. And now, after being asked specif­i­cal­ly to go look the damned things up, I know why. It’s because the rules make no sense.

To wit: this is the sim­plest, cor­rect punc­tu­a­tion of dia­log with attributions.

“Go away,” said Tom.
“Go away!” said Tom.
“Go away?” said Tom.

That com­ma in the first exam­ple is the source of my anxiety:

“Go away,” said Tom.

Why pray tell does the sim­ple declar­a­tive sen­tence lose it’s sim­ple declar­a­tive punc­tu­a­tion (the peri­od) and get sad­dled with the breathy lit­tle we’re-not-done-here-yet com­ma? That com­ma leads me to expect that Tom is going to have more to say once we get done iden­ti­fy­ing him. That what’s com­ing up is more like:

“Go away,” said Tom, “I’m not fin­ished wrap­ping your birth­day present.”

Meanwhile, the excla­ma­tion and the ques­tion get the full dig­ni­ty of their true it’s-all-over punc­tu­a­tion marks. But there’s no com­ma to set off the clause. Why? If there needs to be some sort of com­ma to set off the speak­er’s words as a clause in the first exam­ple there should be a com­ma in the sec­ond and third exam­ples. Why don’t we have:

“Go away!,” said Tom.

Or bet­ter yet…
“Go away!”, said Tom.

(Okay so we put the com­ma insides the quote because we always vio­late the order-of-operations and mis-nest our punc­tu­a­tion. We’re Americans. And we’re lousy pro­gram­mers. That part I can usu­al­ly remember.)

But still, why?
“Go away,” said Tom.

It com­plete­ly baf­fles my sense of how punc­tu­a­tion should oper­ate. It’s tak­en me almost 50 years to final­ly get this ludi­crous­ly illog­i­cal rule straight in my head.

But now that it’s lodged up there, I promise that I will do my best when re-working my dia­log to for­go the hum­ble peri­od and to get all the com­mas lined up on the right sides of the quotes. Because mis­placed com­mas make my favorite edi­tor twitch and he has enough twitch­es already.

Recently, after many years of being away from the art of putting pieces of fab­ric togeth­er with lengths of thread, I bought a new sewing machine. A sewing machine that requires not one but two get­ting acquaint­ed class­es for the new user, and whose owner’s man­u­al is con­sid­er­ably larg­er than the one for the Dodge Aspen sta­tion wag­on on which I learned to drive. 

But the absur­di­ty of a sewing machine with more com­put­ing pow­er than my first desk­top is a top­ic for anoth­er day. The thing that I want to dis­cuss is one of my char­ac­ter­is­tic fail­ings: my inabil­i­ty to approach a new craft or art with any sort of restraint or sen­si­ble plan. You see I got this new sewing machine and, rather than start back into sewing by mak­ing some­thing I’m famil­iar with — clothes or cur­tains — I fig­ured that I’d move straight into quilting. 

I mean, if I can man­age a princess seam how hard can a lot of straight lines be? Besides I’ve done this before. I think. Once. More than 30 years ago. 

Every craft or trade has its mag­a­zines and jour­nals. The quil­ters and knit­ters and wood­work­ers and boat builders and bike builders of the world can sub­scribe to and read and pon­der and hope­ful­ly learn from a pletho­ra of pub­li­ca­tions ded­i­cat­ed to fur­ther­ing their art. And there are always new tech­niques to learn: appliqué, mar­quetry, hand pin strip­ing. The mag­a­zines and books con­ve­nient­ly pro­vide instruc­tion in these things and along the way they pro­vide a series of projects designed to let you learn the tech­nique and put it into prac­tice, gen­er­al­ly on a small, nom­i­nal­ly use­ful project. Some tchotchke that will serve no great pur­pose in your life beyond giv­ing you a place to learn the new tech­nique. Scarves, jew­el­ry and cig­ar box­es, gar­den orna­ments — any of them could be use­ful, if you hap­pen to have a cold neck, a pile of ban­gles need­ing a home, a num­ber of loose cig­ars. But you can only wear one scarf at a time (cer­tain Hollywood prac­ti­tion­ers of the fine art of BoHo fash­ion state­ments aside) and if you have enough jew­el­ry to require mul­ti­ple jew­el­ry box­es, well … 

The patience to work my way through even a few of this astound­ing num­ber of prac­tice items isn’t on the hori­zon. I could have, for exam­ple, start­ed with a nice patch­work pil­low project. A sim­ple block. Something with only squares. Learned how to get the seams all lined up per­fect­ly, and to get that all impor­tant con­sis­tent 1/4 inch seam allowance. And then made anoth­er pil­low — some­thing that had tri­an­gles in it: learned to work with bias edges and their ten­den­cy to stretch. And maybe added a lit­tle bor­der. And then anoth­er pil­low, one with, say, four mini blocks, some­thing requir­ing the fine art of sash­ing between blocks. Something on which to learn how to get those blocks all to line up in per­fect ranks and rows. And let’s not for­get about the actu­al quilt­ing: putting togeth­er the sand­wich of pieced top, bat­ting and back­ing, then bast­ing the lay­ers to hold it all in place while you quilt it. Stitched in the ditch first — the eas­i­est — then on the next one, a few straight lines, mov­ing on to some curves and curls… maybe a lit­tle stip­pling, or some peb­bles? One lit­tle step at a time, end­ing up with what? An entire couch full of pil­lows that I hate. 

Because yes, I have to say it. I hate patch­work pil­lows. They annoy the crap out of me. Single blocks look unfin­ished and ran­dom. And not in that good, art­less, effort­less way. They look for­lorn, alone, bereft of their patchy buddies.

So here I am. I want to learn to do some­thing but all of the Learn To Do This projects are lit­tle, use­less time wasters, not the thing that I see in my mind when I think of being able to do that thing. There are no cute tea cozies in my knit­ter’s mind; there are beau­ti­ful sweaters. There are no cig­ar box­es next to that table saw; there are Mission style blan­ket chests. There are no patch­work pil­lows; there is a queen size bed quilt. And so I start with the thing I want, then fig­ure out how to make it. It takes me longer than it takes some­one who knows how to do it. I waste a bunch of mate­r­i­al mak­ing mis­takes that some­one who knows how to do it wouldn’t make. And it most cer­tain­ly is not as “nice” as it would be if it was made by some­one who knows how to do it. Truth be told, I’d be time and mon­ey ahead if I had just sat down and done all the lit­tle learn­ing pieces and then tack­led the final piece. But to Hell with it. I don’t want the lit­tle learn­ing pieces. 

I want to dive right in and make the Thing That I Want. And I will, and I’ll love it. All of it’s flaws includ­ed. Okay, most­ly, some­times. A few of them have need up being unten­able mess­es that can not be saved even by the blind love of a moth­er. I don’t think that there is a prac­tice piece in the world that would have made that lime green, knit­ted tank top a good idea for me, no mat­ter how per­fect the execution. 

So, no patch­work pil­lows. Nope, there’s going to be a siz­able blan­ket when I get done with this suck­er. And it’s going to be a bit of a mess. It’s going to have all of the begin­ner mis­takes writ large and repeat­ed a bunch of times because I’m kind of a slow learn­er and I’m going to try a cou­ple of my own solu­tions every time I run into a snag before I give up and actu­al­ly go to look up the Right™ way to do the thing. And every­day for the rest of the use­ful life of that object (and some of them have last­ed a good long time), I’m going to be look­ing at those begin­ner mis­takes. The unmatched seams and lit­tle pleats and wob­bly stitch lines and prob­a­bly a dozen more mis­takes that I don’t even know are there yet. 

Maybe you’ve always want­ed to learn to fish, bake, draw, gar­den, knit, med­i­tate, sol­der sil­ver, or frame a pic­ture. No mat­ter what there’s the sen­si­ble begin­ner, without-a-lot-of-cost-and-risk way. Knit a one skein scarf, plant some marigolds in a planter by the front door, build a bird house, weld a gar­den orna­ment. Then there’s the Lara Way. The full, damn-the-doubters, make-the-whole-thing-and-make-it-a-useful-thing-right-now way. Knit an Aran sweater, build a gar­den shed, tear out the lawn and put in enough raised bed planters to grow all of your veg­eta­bles for a year, weld up a rat-bike frame from that old Honda you found in your uncle’s garage, or make a queen-size bed quilt. Because no one needs anoth­er scarf, or bird house, or gar­den orna­ment, or pil­low as much as they need a sweater, a gar­den shed, a rat bike, or a warm quilt to sleep under. Especially a quilt.