In her bedroom, the young woman walks back and forth, consistently, intently, while eyeing a large ceramic container of pennies nearby. Its purple outer shell is slightly cracked, revealing some unknown material underneath. It is in the center of the room and her desk is on the opposite side of where she is walking, which allows her to pace exactly four steps before turning around and walking four steps again. She likes that it is four steps, she likes the pattern it makes. The container that was here just before this one had a base that was bigger than the top and it forced her to walk in a way she didn’t like. She had to make a curve, not a straight line so it ended up being about five and a half steps. Not a good feeling.
She is working on how to translate what she sees, what she can know about them, the pennies, into a thing—a feeling that can be felt. She is a poet, you see, and making these connections is her job, what she does. Don’t ask her how she knows this, she would probably say she just knows.
Anyway, today is a very big day. The day she moves from image and energy to writing and words. This is the day she knows she must make that leap from the ether to the page so that other people can see it, and hear the story. They might not always get it, get her, but that’s the way it is. This is how her brain works. That is her process.
The poet sticks her hand into the giant container of pennies. She needs to get the feel of them, all those cold slices of copper (or alloy) bumping up against her skin. She has heard that they’re going extinct soon and she doesn’t want them to disappear without booking this experience, saving it to her memory file for when she needs it, when she is called upon to write about this part of existence in the 21st century.
It was her mother’s idea—to make this collection. Her mother gave her the first container, a Mason jar with about twenty pennies in it. “Here,” she said, “this is one way to master something, while not destroying anything, including yourself.”
“What does that mean, Mom?” the poet asked. Her mother was always joining things that didn’t belong together, expecting the listener (in this case, her daughter) to fully understand.
“You’ll figure it out. For yourself. It’s better that way.”
The poet takes a big handful of the pennies and spreads them out on her desk. A few loose ones drop to the floor, making a sound like hard rain. She likes that imagery, the coins turning to water once they are lifted out of their home.
She spaces them out so none are touching. She marvels at how they are all the same, yet so different from each other.
“How can I manage this?” she wonders.
The poet lets the air around the pennies drift up, up to her face. She closes her eyes. She breathes. She waits. This cannot be rushed. She allows it all to happen. The sounds start to come. They arrange themselves. More space. More waiting. Words emerge. The words have different personalities. Some of them tickle. Some have sharp edges. Some glint, like some of the pennies. She invites the words, the sounds, to take shape, to coalesce into a pattern. She holds until she can see it, until she can recognize it. Only then can she put it down. On paper.
She knows people don’t understand. Her mother doesn’t understand, fully. Her mother walks past her bedroom. The poet can feel her mother eyeing her, looking and trying not to look. The poet gives thanks for the pennies. She knows there is much to tell here, that she will be called on to report many stories.
The poet looks at the words she has written on the page and marvels at how much they remind her of the pennies.
Bio:
Michelle Pauls is a theatre artist, writer, educator, musician and grief activist.
She teaches theatre and health humanities at Penn State Abington. She is lead singer in the bands, The Poettes and Don't Fall In! She is a songwriter and has had several plays produced. A mini-album of her songs, Sifting the Sand, was recently dropped on many listening platforms.