Elise Talks About Zen and the Art of Hula-Hoop

My best friend and I now have matching Hula Hoops. I turned thirty-five last weekend and she surprised me with my very own, handmade, adult sized Hula Hoop. I live in that kind of town . . . the kind that has a Saturday craft and farmers market full of things like, well, artisan Hula Hoops.

I was tempted to post a video of her Hula Hooping and pretend it was me. Sadly, I’m the one that looks like her back has just gone out and has a look of total hysteria on her face.

As I was nursing my bruised ribs the next morning, it occurred to me that perhaps there is a disconnect between the way I see myself and the way I am. Yes, I realize this is not a breakthrough moment in the fields of psychology or philosophy; we’ll call it instead a moment of clarity in an otherwise befuddled brain.

My writing is from the perspective of a teenager. I am now thirty-five. This has never seemed like a problem to me because in my own mind, I’m living in a continuum where the humiliation of my teen years seems to linger on and on. But thirty-five gave me a moment of pause. Can I really remember what it is like to be in love for the first time? Terrified to tell a friend my true feelings? Desperate to appear mature enough to try something I knew my parents would say no to?

Well, I pulled out my Hula Hoop and went outside to think it over.

My conclusion? Yep. No problem.

My teenage self is readily accessible to my creative mind, and not just because I am immature (Hula Hoop, Anime DVD collection - Totoro being my all time favorite, and love of Pez candy aside). Maybe it is indicative of my glass is half empty philosophy, but I still fee like a teenager every day. It still hurts my feelings when friends get together without me, I’m still likely to say something stupid and insensitive, I cry with the least provocation, and I can still sit down and eat an entire bag of Lays chips with Ranch dip (not the bottle kind but the packet mixed with sour cream kind).

I believe writers have a unique view of the world, and it is one in which we mine every tiny detail from our present and past. How many other professions focus on the deepest corners of the mind (yes, I realize neurologists and probably some other kinds of ‘ologists do, too). We writers spend all of our time remembering, trying to capture a feeling we once had, a smell, a quality of light, and translate it into words that will resonate. I know I can sit for an hour, staring at a phrase, knowing there is something not quite right about it and searching my memories for an authentic moment. When I find that little kernel, it slips into the sentence, the light falls at just the right angle, and the entire story is illuminated.

Just today, as I was sitting with The Dog (I am withholding her name in order to protect her privacy), trying to write, and trying to ignore my husband’s loud phone conversation from the next room, I was struggling with a certain nuance in a sentence. It was one of those sentences you need to write just to get on with the story. But at the same time, I labor over those sentences because a single word can carry an ambience, a feeling of place and mood, like an undercurrent. Today, the missing words were: Creeping Vines. These Creeping Vines are just like the crimson Bougainvillea that bloomed, and criss-crossed thorny boughs through my backyard when I was a child. I can see it perfectly in my mind, and I can even remember the smell if I focus hard enough; a little too floral, a nose tickler.

The hula-hoop is a good fit for me, then. It’s just a memory from long ago that I’m reintegrating into a new story. The bruised ribs are part of the fun, too, and that is a memory I can borrow back when I turn sixty-five.