Taming Wild Animals
by Lisa Bubert
The first sentence always comes fully formed. Always at the worst times, usually when I’m in a dead sleep. Wake up! it prods. Look! Listen! Something grand is passing by! It requires me to first freeze so I can listen closely, then rush to anything word-making—a computer, a notebook, my phone, sidewalk chalk. This first sentence is the Achilles heel of my concentration, the equivalent of being kicked in the back of the knee. It doesn’t hurt, not too much, but you must go down when it happens. It is that reflexive. It is that pathetic. There is no doing it later. Even the suggestion disrespects the process, the punishment of which is to lose the shimmer. The shimmer is the reason we are here, what we long for, the reason anything is created. It is hyperventilating breath. It is the thing that shoves my head between my knees. It is compulsive, a shout from beyond. It is God telling me they exist.
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The shimmer is the only magic part of a practice that is so un-magical. The un-magical parts: eye strain from staring at a computer screen for hours on end; stress injuries in my wrists and elbows; poor posture that years of dedicated yoga have yet to correct; the anxiety, oh god, the anxiety; the addictions tied to the anxiety; the addictions tied to the act of writing; the utter dejection of checking an email inbox that yields no important emails; the impulse to do this several times an hour.
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I suffered my first anxiety attacks when I was fourteen. My anxiety has always manifested at times of great change, which means it manifests always. I am the anxious sort who picks, straightens, lists, checks, lines things up so everything can be looked at, planned for, all the unknowns forced into the light. I have three running to-do lists at any given time and am deeply comforted by the act of crossing things off those lists. I am deeply comforted by picking the loose skin around my nails until I bleed. I am deeply comforted by finding that one black hair among a sea of blonde and plucking it from the bunch. I can spend hours at this. I am embarrassed to admit that sometimes I do. I went to a therapist once who said I was obsessive and compulsive but did not qualify as someone with an obsessive-compulsive disorder. I cannot tell you how disappointed I was not to fit neatly into that box.
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I hate drafting new work. To an anxious person, it is an excruciating task. No lists to follow. Nothing to pick at. No way to know anything I’m doing is right. The act of drafting is an act of blind faith, and faith is a muddy thing. I wait and listen. Then—shh! There it is.
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When I was a little girl, I had a knack for taming animals. She speaks to them, my grandmother said. But it wasn’t speaking—it was patience. It was me sitting still for hours on end and waiting for the creature to think me nothing more than another tree stump in their forest. They would eye me, wary about my look, my smell. Eventually, my look and smell blended with everything they knew and they would forget me. I would move slowly, like a leaf in the wind. I would reach out a hand and they would reach out a nose. Smell. Touch.
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This patience allows me to squirm through weeks of unknowns until I am rewarded with clean-up. My anxious soul loves the mundanity of editing. I wait. Three days, a week is best. Print. Re-read. Re-type. Revel in the comfort of tossing aside page after page, tasks crossed off a list. Everything re-written, corrected. The story unravels differently each time. But the editing process is always the same, dull and soothing as an assembly line.
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Something is lost when you tame an animal. They are less vigilant, less apt to run. This benefits whoever tamed the animal and can benefit the animal itself, though not always. My grandmother had two Siamese cats when I was growing up. German, and finding no need to get cozy with their presence, she named them Tame Kitty and Wild Kitty. Tame Kitty was the cat who would sit in your lap, eat from your hand. Tame Kitty lived indoors. Wild Kitty was rangy, only showed up on occasions. Wild Kitty ate food at night when no one was looking. My grandmother acquired these cats the year before I was born. We moved her into assisted living when I was twenty-five. Tame Kitty was long gone. But as we cleaned out my grandmother’s things, at the edge of her fallow garden, I caught a glimpse of a wild Siamese cat.
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I hate drafting, but I hate even more having nothing to draft. When you have written as if you’re out of body, it’s terrifying to think you may never experience that impossibility again. I spent years at therapy taming my anxiety. It helped, but there was a constant condition to my good days and bad days. When I was writing, I felt good. When I wasn’t writing, I felt bad. It didn’t matter what deep-seated memory we uncovered in that week’s session. Not writing makes me feel full, in need of confession. Something nagging, left undone. The internal stove left on. I long for that shimmer. But I also have patience.
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And so, I listen for that wild voice from beyond. The compulsion to words. The hand at my shoulder. Go on, it whispers. Say more. This is important.
Lisa Bubert is a writer based in Nashville, Tennessee. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Puerto del Sol, Washington Square Review, Carolina Quarterly, Cleaver Magazine, and more, and has been nominated for Best Small Fictions 2020.
She is currently available for hire as a developmental editor. Learn more at www.lisabubert.com.