On Wednesday, per the advice of my mother, I went to the Muskegon Hackley Library and sat in on a creative writing group that was set up by a local woman named Jewel.
The Muskegon Hackley Library!
I was about 6 minutes late to it and the only person that was actually in the group was the effervescent Jewel herself. Garbed in a purple dress, she also had a walker that one usually sees with an older adult or an individual with some sort of physical disability. The cup that she drank from had a straw sticking out of it and the chalice itself was encased in a MATS (Muskegon Area Transit System) Koozie.
Jewel had a few stubbly follicles protruding from her chin and as I politely asked her if I could pull up a chair next to her, I detected a pungent odor wafting through my nostrils from her. Truthfully, in haste of my presumptuous first encounter with this woman, I judged a book by the cover, which is a little ironic considering we were meeting for the first time ever in the hallowed halls of a library.
She gave me the rundown on how the group worked, in which we were provided with 2 writing prompts to choose from, upon each meeting, and we were given about 45 minutes to scribble down our thoughts. The prompts that Jewel had provided were as follows:
- Where does your mind wander to when you encounter stressful situations?
- What is a book that you’ve read that has had a great deal of influence on you?
I am incredibly fascinated by how the human mind works, so I picked the first choice and as the gears began to rotate in my mind, I let my pencil flutter between my fingertips. Jewel picked the second choice and also began to write with her pen and clipboard of lined paper resting on top of the round table that separated the two of us.
After about 35 minutes had passed we both looked at each other. She was finished with what she was working on and I told her that I was just wrapping up.
When I put my pencil down and looked up from the page, she took that as the sign that I had finished and then she asked me if I wanted to share first or if she was going to be the one to break the ice. I stared at the wall directly in front of me that was blanketed by a massive painting, considering the option, then I asked her if she would begin
The table we sat at and the painting I peered into.
Jewel took a deep breath, picked up her clipboard and began to orate in a beautifully steady, incredibly articulate and very soothing way. The book she had chosen was called “After Eli” by Rebecca Rupp.
If you’re like me and have to google what the backstory of this novel is, I’ll save yah the search. It’s about a 14-year-old boy named Danny who learns to heal and move forward after his older brother is killed in the Iraq War.
With that nugget of knowledge, Jewel starts out by stating how hard it is to face death and just how strange the grief can be for those of us that survive our lost loved ones. She told me a story about her fiancé who passed away three years ago whose name was Orlando but she called him “O” for short.
As she delved deeper into the story, I sat there, staring at that same painting I was staring at when she asked me if I wanted to go first.
Her story was transformed from 45 minutes of pondering and writing it down, to 5 minutes of a verbal encomium. It was clear, it was concise and it moved me to tears as the sun shone through the windows of that beautiful building.
In a room where two strangers had the courage to sit down with one another and share an incredibly intimate piece of their mind, it became very clear to me that we were connecting on a deeper level than the casual nuances of an everyday ordinary conversation. It was akin to a tether between two hearts that although they keep pace in accordance to their own body, they still find moments of circadian connection.
When Jewel had finished, I was very taken aback. It’s not everyday you have an encounter with someone who really wears their heart on a sleeve like that, let alone on a first encounter such as it was!
I thanked her for so bravely sharing her writing with me and made a comment about grief, agreeing with just how weird and spontaneously it can knock on the human psyche’s doorstep. I told her that it made me tear up, hearing about her fiancé and just how amazing a man she depicted him as.
I began into my own story, which felt like a fly buzzing around a pile of horse shit, at least in comparison to what she had just shared with me. I have to admit, it felt good to read aloud some of my own writing to an audience, even if that audience consisted of one individual. An individual of incredibly rarified air, that is.
Sorry to the folks who got their picture taken but didn’t ask for it haha
When I finished, we discussed my piece very briefly; Jewel asking a few questions and me providing her the answers.
After we had both shared, I circled back to her and began asking all sorts of questions, spurring a frenzied, yet intimate conversation.
Q: “How long were you and ‘O’ together?
A: “A little over a year.”
Q: “How did you guys meet?”
A: With a smile on her face “It’s funny actually, we met in a hospital as we were bother going through some health issues. I had actually given up on love when he came into my life!”
Q: “How did he pass?”
A: “He had a heart attack one night and died in his sleep.”
The conversation had a beautiful ebb and flow to it and as we became lost in a gilded talk about grief, time slipped by. Not after too long, one of the ladies who worked at the library peeked her head into the room and told us there was about 5 minutes until they closed up
Shakespeare/ Goethe/ Longfellow/ Prescott
Jewel and I said our goodbyes and went our separate ways. As we parted, I told her that it was an incredible pleasure to meet her and over her shoulder she hollered back “I’ll see you next month!”
Yes Jewel, yes indeed you will!
“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”
― Carl Gustav Jung
P.S. “After Eli” has certainly been added to my reading list!
I decided to set up my hammock under a bridge on the side of a bike path to jot down my thoughts about my encounter with Jewel
Eating Elephants 
Leave a comment