Who Can You Be?

I was walking down the street and a favorite song was going through my head. So I sang a bit of it, and a guy passing by said, “Hey, if you can’t be yourself, who can you be?”

The last time I remember walking with my sister and starting to sing something, she said, “Would you cut that out?”

And there’s the rub.

My brother once told me, “You have to understand that when Mom and Dad look at you, they see you two feet shorter, age twelve.”

A bit annoying. So how come we all do it?

The late Richard Hugo used to say, “Writers want the world to stay the way it is, so we can change it in our imagination.”

Maybe it’s not just writers and family members. We deal with so much change, all the time. When we’re kids, it’s the pecking order in school, crushes that keep us on edge (“He looked at me on the way to the pencil sharpener. What does it mean?”), new schools, new houses, sometimes changes in family structure (new siblings, siblings going off to college or to the service, illness of a parent or sibling, marriage problems). As we get older, it’s college and work and relationships and—it never ends.

No wonder we want to keep things under control. But we can’t. Well, except for ourselves.

When I started creating rebus stories six years ago (word-and-picture stories; remember the game, “Concentration”?) I was really excited to have found a new form, one that could be funny and deep, that presents a lot of challenges (the pieces usually take a couple of months to create) and that has a lot of life.

One of my friends was less than thrilled. She wanted me to write poetry.

Now, I happen to love poetry. My MFA is in poetry. I was doing undergraduate work in poetry when I met my friend. But I started writing songs when I was nine—five years before I wrote my first poem. And a few months before I went back to school to study poetry, I had begun writing short stories. So it’s not as though songs or stories came late to the party.

When I talk with my clients about their work and their goals, one of the things I always ask is, “Where’s the energy?”

The energy for me these days in new writing is in songs and stories—rebus stories, and stories like the one I’m telling you now. Doesn’t mean I don’t still love poetry. But I want to write and record more songs and tell more stories.

We nearly lost our friendship over it. She thought I was abandoning the work I should be doing, and I thought she didn’t get the work I was doing now and was being unsupportive.

Enter Rabbi Akiba.

My father, rest in peace, used to tell the following story:

Two women had a terrible quarrel. They each went to see the rabbi.

The first woman walked into the rabbi’s house and said, “Rabbi, this woman did this, and this, and she did that, too.”

Rabbi Akiba said,”You’re right.”

She went away happy.

The second woman averted her eyes as the other woman walked by on her way out of the rabbi’s house. She said, “Rabbi, I don’t know why you would even allow that woman in your house. I don’t know what she said, but she did this, and this, and besides, she did this other thing, too.”

Rabbi Akiba said, “You’re right.”

And she went away happy.

There was a third woman, the rabbi’s wife, seated in an adjoining room. (Maybe she was in the kitchen. Somebody had to make dinner.)

She said, “Rabbi, I just heard a woman tell you a story. You told her she was right. Then I heard another woman tell a story that contradicted the first one’s in every form and fashion. And you told her she was right. Surely they can’t both be right.”

Rabbi Akiva said, “You know what? You’re right, too.”

And so: I’m sending out my poems for publication, and I’m working on new songs and stories.

And you? What are you itching to do? Where’s the energy, for you?

Who can you be?

©2011 Laynie Tzena.