 the page can be so intimidating when there is so much that wants to come out. i remember feeling this way a million times.
one of the first times that i vividly remember this experience was when i had to write my valedictorian speech for high school graduation in anderson, sc. at the turn of the millenium. i worked to be valedictorian primarily for one reason: so i could stand up in front of my class and talk when they would more likely listen to me, this group of people who thought i was confusingly both cute and weird as fuck. it was that important to me to feel heard for a brief moment and the only way i could figure out to do it. all those people might as well have comprised a different country that i had entered just four years prior. it was that much culture shock. my understanding of the world up to that point had been profound and immensely engaged – because how else can a megan elaine workman experience the world – but extremely-extremely sheltered. i felt zero power in the new context. other people could recognize my power, but i couldn’t. now i was holding the opportunity i had been striving toward, and i was intimidated by my own vision.
i show up at Mrs. McAllister’s classroom along with others who would be speaking at graduation. she had been my AP English teacher, a course that was probably the most transformative space for me of that whole shitshow of a high school career, and she was tasked with making sure our speeches were acceptable, oh yeah and help us out if we wanted it. i show up with nothing, nothing but a million ideas. how do i contain so much in an attainable speech? you have to just start then you’ll know. that was the advice she gave me in a strong, low voice, in a serious expression. i felt her intensity and my belief in what she said. then i sat down and proceeded to write the whole speech pretty much the way it would be delivered. i loved my speech. it said everything. all my million ideas were there. her advice was right on. and it was beautiful.
on graduation day, i’m in my graduation gown shit, and shimmery white eyeliner. yeah i fukkin loved that makeup style. clutching my speech in line to walk into the Civic Center main space, Mrs. McAllister looks me up and down and whisper-shouts, “Megan Workman, you canNOT wear flip-flops up there. You need to change your shoes.” WTF?! where the fuck am i supposed to get other shoes at this point?! and isn’t this MY graduation?! this is a moment where we are supposed to be taking claim of our lives and stepping off into the grand unknown of adulthood to become the people who inherit the decision making of the world!!!  Of course i just thought all those things, saying something like, “um uh” or something else equally uneloquent. so i passionately kick the flip-flops off and walk up to take my seat on stage barefoot, how i had wanted my feet to be all along. i was little by little claiming my power. despite her intent, Mrs. McA was right again. i did need to free myself.
it’s my turn to talk. an audience of – what at least 1000 people? graduating class a bit over 300, each having multiple guests, then all the faculty and whoever-de-who’s? seems like it’d had to have been at least 1000 – the whole audience is silent and pretty much focused on me. yes. i breathe deep and grin out at the whole place with a dramatic pause. this is my favorite place to be in the world: with all the eyes on me. then i calmly and triumphantly spoke the words i’d written days before, the words that were supposed to inspire all of us to be our whole big selves lovingly and defiantly on our next steps, to show up in ways that would not let the world forget we were there. i really could see or hear nothing no one else than my own self speaking out my own words from the utterly exquisite bottom of my heart. i don’t remember anything else happening in that ceremony except walking up barefoot and delivering my speech. afterwards the memories start up again. the most common response to my speech: i have no idea what you were talking about, but it was beautiful.
i don’t believe i’ve talked to anyone from my graduating class about those moments, maybe ever. i’m not even sure i remember it the way others remember it. this very well may be a construction of memory that has come to work as my personal narrative of identity. for now it’s the one i have to go on. i am absolutely certain though that a million other stories were playing out, that i was part of, and completely unaware of my role that, whatever it was, was probably insignificant or negative. it is impossible for me to believe my role was one of greatness. i still have trouble claiming my power, even though i think i believe in the inherent and equal power of all human creatures.
and that’s what Factual Fiction Press as a concept was all about, a repository for all kinds of stories of life as it was happening and looking at itself. my stories, your stories, the stories we wrote together, but in the end they were all snapshots in words, the capturing of eternity in a slice of understanding at a moment in time. i was determined to be painfully, and therefore courageously, honest and transparent and mistake ridden, honoring the intimacy of vulnerability in public space. it’s whole presence was a project of practice and observing how truth and imagination play with each other to propel our choices and our ways of keeping on.
it had no center though as an artwork of digital community making. others couldn’t experience it intentionally as an artwork because of that. that’s something it helped me find though. so now i’m letting all that go, and i’m creating Englishing, whose website is currently under way-early stages of construction at EnglishingTogether.com. haha, yeah it even has a button to follow on FB, but that won’t be active for another tiny while. a challenge i’ve always faced is the million ideas prostrate to the fear of trying to contain them in a medium accessible to those consciousnesses outside mine or rooting them in a ground that others can walk on. and today i again find myself intimidated by my own vision.
but i’ve been practicing just starting for a long time since Mrs. McAllister blew my mind with that nugget for the first time. this is work i must do. and the cosmos is big enough to direct my smallness. so i hope i’ll run into you in the new context. thanks for sharing the journey.
sunny smiles,
MegBeam
PS. before posting this, i did talk to one of my best friends, who was very much there, about this story. i’m still letting the story rest where it is though, as a last homage to the Factual Fiction mission. #loveyall #laters #alwaysgrowing
#Fin #SCstorytime #juststart the page can be so intimidating when there is so much that wants to come out. i remember feeling this way a million times.
