Suzanne Martin

Inventory

Visual Description:
A red line winds its way down the page between words, eventually branching once, then more and more as forks intersect with other forks, and then continue running down out of the bottom of the text.

Full Text:

For a while I was interested only in the way words sounded.
-Tell me what you write, the doctor asked over drinks.
-It’s hard to explain.
-A sentence. A simple description.
-OK. Plot is boring.
-That’s such a pretentious thing to say!
-What do you want me to say? I know what I like.
-I like sticking tubes in people. I don’t know why. I should probably analyze
that. He was ugly, but he was funny, and I had just broken up with someone, and I was
drunk, and it was Christmas, so I made out with him.

I wasn’t only interested in the way words sounded. I was interested in the way
they looked, too. Font, kerning. Dashes. Hyphens. I could—can—read a whole poem
over and over and not know what it means and I’ve decided I don’t care.
This was—is—surely something to do with being easily distracted, unfocused. I
am helplessly caught up in the visual patterns formed by text. This period to that period
to that period, how they form an equilateral. No mere isosceles: something sturdy and
perfect and pure. See how daintily those parentheses scallop.
If you were to pour a glass of water into the paragraph from the top, it would flow
like a rivulet in the spaces between words.
Once while conferencing with a student he interrupted me on a certain page of
his rough draft—Hold on—and took his pencil and silently led it down the page to form a

rivulet, and I thought, You too! When he finished a moment later he said, OK, and we
continued our conference as if nothing had transpired.
I’ve always counted words and punctuation marks and Cheerios and driveways
and thumbtacks—rather, not counted, but paired up, so that none would be lonely, I
suppose—but there was a year a few years ago when I inexplicably began reading the
words in my head forcefully according to the number of letters in the sentence—
the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog

I find myself sounding like a robot shouting in my head, putting emphasis where
it shouldn’t go, and I am not paying attention to what is happening in the text at all. It
all seems so unimportant compared to the number of letters in a word. How could a
word like “iota” get away with so much and a word like “thought” so little.
I hardly know what this essay is. An inventory, I suppose. A check-up.

My mother always told me never to say “always” or “never” but when I got back from my
reading in Memphis last year I told the man I dated before the doctor, How come you
never ask me about my writing?
-You never ask me about hockey.
-How often do you play hockey?
-Once a year.
-Once a year. . . .
-I didn’t think it was a big deal. It’s not like I read much. . . . I never understand
the literary references you make on twitter.
-My writing isn’t . . . it isn’t complicated, I said.

I don’t know what that meant. What is complicated writing? I wish my writing
were more complicated sometimes. I wish it were inscrutable.
I wish I could write whatever I wanted in beautiful twisting language. I wish I
could put it all there so that it was there but nobody could decipher it, unless they really,
really wanted to, unless they analyzed the patterns, unless they paid attention.
I write for a limited audience.
He said, What do you want me to read?
-I don’t WANT you to read anything. But I want you to WANT to read it.
Here’s what I wish I could write, once and for all: I wish I could write that I cared
about him but he didn’t pay attention.
Is that really what I want to say? Anne Lamott said to write what you want, they
should have behaved better, etcetera, etcetera. But we all know that’s not really how it
works.
It’s always more complicated than just saying whatever you want.

You aren’t supposed to have favorites, but that student drawing the line was my
favorite. Not strictly because of the line, but the line touched me, and it has never
stopped touching me. I suspect it would no matter what, but it is all the more
meaningful because it is something I do, have done—to become distracted from all else
by notches and details, to look to make connections, even when there are none.
Lately, though, I am thinking about how a paragraph might have a great number
of rivers running down it. How patterns and connections seem often the obsession of a
mind hellbent on unification and comprehension, but also how—hopelessly—the more

connections formed, the more lines drawn to attach one thing to another, the more the
thing distracts, fragments. Cuts you off.

Inventory

For a while I was interested only in the way words sounded.
-Tell me what you write, the doctor asked over drinks.
-It’s hard to explain.
-A sentence. A simple description.
-OK. Plot is boring.
-That’s such a pretentious thing to say!
-What do you want me to say? I know what I like.
-I like sticking tubes in people. I don’t know why. I should probably analyze
that. He was ugly, but he was funny, and I had just broken up with someone, and I was
drunk, and it was Christmas, so I made out with him.

I wasn’t only interested in the way words sounded. I was interested in the way they
looked, too. Font, kerning. Dashes. Hyphens. I could—can—read a whole poem over and
over and not know what it means and I’ve decided I don’t care.
This was—is—surely something to do with being easily distracted, unfocused. I
am helplessly caught up in the visual patterns formed by text. This period to that period
to that period, how they form an equilateral. No mere isosceles: something sturdy and
perfect and pure. See how daintily those parentheses scallop.
If you were to pour a glass of water into the paragraph from the top, it would flow
like a rivulet in the spaces between words.
Once while conferencing with a student he interrupted me on a certain page of
his rough draft—Hold on—and took his pencil and silently led it down the page to form a
rivulet, and I thought, You too! When he finished a moment later he said, OK, and we
continued our conference as if nothing had transpired.
I’ve always counted words and punctuation marks and Cheerios and driveways
and thumbtacks—rather, not counted, but paired up, so that none would be lonely, I
suppose—but there was a year a few years ago when I inexplicably began reading the
words in my head forcefully according to the number of letters in the sentence—
the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog
I find myself sounding like a robot shouting in my head, putting emphasis where
it shouldn’t go, and I am not paying attention to what is happening in the text at all. It
all seems so unimportant compared to the number of letters in a word. How could a
word like “iota” get away with so much and a word like “thought” so little.
I hardly know what this essay is. An inventory, I suppose. A check-up.

My mother always told me never to say “always” or “never” but when I got back from the
reading in Memphis last year I told the man I dated before the doctor, How come you
never ask me about my writing?
-You never ask me about hockey.

-How often do you play hockey?
-Once a year.
-Once a year. . . .
-I didn’t think it was a big deal. It’s not like I read much. . . . I never understand
the literary references you make on twitter.
-My writing isn’t . . . it isn’t complicated, I said.
I don’t know what that meant. What is complicated writing? I wish my writing
were more complicated sometimes. I wish it were inscrutable.
I wish I could write whatever I wanted in beautiful twisting language. I wish I
could put it all there so that it was there but nobody could decipher it, unless they really,
really wanted to, unless they analyzed the patterns, unless they paid attention.
I write for a limited audience.
He said, What do you want me to read?
-I don’t WANT you to read anything. But I want you to WANT to read it.
Here’s what I wish I could write, once and for all: I wish I could write that I cared
about him but he didn’t pay attention.
Is that really what I want to say? Anne Lamott said to write what you want, they
should have behaved better, etcetera, etcetera. But we all know that’s not really how it
works.
It’s always more complicated than just saying whatever you want.

You aren’t supposed to have favorites, but that student drawing the line was my
favorite. Not strictly because of the line, but the line touched me, and it has never
stopped touching me. I suspect it would no matter what, but it is all the more
meaningful because it is something I do, have done—to become distracted from all else
by notches and details, to look to make connections, even when there are none.
Lately, though, I am thinking about how a paragraph might have a great number
of rivers running down it. How patterns and connections seem often the obsession of a
mind hellbent on unification and comprehension, but also how—hopelessly—the more
connections formed, the more lines drawn to attach one thing to another, the more the
thing distracts, fragments. Cuts you off.

Suzanne Martin is a writer from Ohio. She has had nonfiction in Indiana Review and was Blue Mesa Review‘s summer 2021 essay contest winner, judged by Kim Barnes.

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