For my friend Sarah’s birthday, we spent the day in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. It was mid-October and thick fog formed a capsule around our car as we sped through the mountains toward our destination. Our Volkswagen hatchback cut ribbons through the powdery smoke and left a billowy sheet trailing behind us for miles. Downtown, we wandered into a candle shop and the signature pumpkin smell of fall immediately greeted us. It was a small, uneven shop with gentle “watch your step” signs posted throughout. In one corner, a white haired man was vigorously dipping a candle in bins of different colored liquids. The candle emerged each time valiantly dressed in a new hue. After each coat, he dipped the candle into a bucket of ice cold water to help it cool and harden. A few tourists crowded around him to watch the process. I wondered if his arms were sore, and why so many people wanted to watch a candle be made. My friends gravitated towards the action and I saw dozens of ceramic-looking candle holders around the craftsman. The crowd seemed to know that the craftsman was performing a preliminary step, not simply dipping a candle in various waxes as I thought. After a few more coats, he held the cylindrical block of wax at shoulder height to let it cool for a few moments. He then reached in his pocket for what appeared to be a dinner knife, only slightly sharper. He made the first incision into the side of the wax and it all made sense; all of the coats of different colored waxes became visible. Six vivid hues spilled out of the wound. His cut sliced down the side of the cylinder at a 30 degree angle and his knife paused about two inches from the bottom of the candle. The thinly sliced section of wax folded over itself and exposed the layers in the center. He repeated this action five more times around the circumference of the candle to create an ornate rim around the bottom, composed of all the sliced pieces. I was amazed at how malleable the wax was, but the artist said he only has about 12 minutes to complete his design because the wax hardens and becomes unworkable after that. The artisan continued to work, using different tools to create exquisite ripples and twists in the once smooth, solid-colored wax. The candle ceased looking like a candle but became an intricate sculpture. The wick was the only evidence of its previous life. Then a horrible thought crossed my mind: “what happens when you burn the candle?” All of his work will be a waste. Thankfully another onlooker asked my question for me and the candle-maker replied that the candle only loses its shape if it burns for more than six hours. His design allows only the center to be burned; the outside remains intact. The inner parts sizzle, but the candle maintains its distinct design; the aesthetic beauty is not compromised. The inside melts more deeply into the form of the candle, becoming more connected, more incorporated into the candle as a whole. They are no longer separate entities, the center and the ceramic outside; they are ultimately the same and heat merely diminishes their difference.
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I ended up watching the candle-maker for two hours. He made approximately 6 candles and none of them looked the same, which is the nature of human creation. We are not robots capable of churning out identical products. Although the craftsman follows a formula to make his candles, the strokes of his knife are not always precise. He might cut a centimeter too deep into the wax. Impatiently, he might begin working when the wax is too soft, leaving finger prints and imperfections on his canvas. For these reasons, I cannot decide if human creation is the epitome of humility or hubris. Man is messy, untrustworthy and mistake-prone. Man is innovative, empathetic and resilient. His creations reflect his best and worst qualities. My excruciating awareness of my human nature deters me from reaching and creating. My inaction is not out of humility but out of pride.
But I feel ready to take on my pride at Salem Presbyterian Church. There, I sternly hush my pride like a misbehaving child. Salem Presbyterian Church is the name of the body of believers who gather every Sunday night at 5 PM, but the actual church building is called Green Street United Methodist Church. We do not have a worship space of our own, but we gladly pay a modest rent to gather together at 639 S Green Street. It is located in the West End district of downtown Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I have been attending Salem Presbyterian since last March, and it is now November.
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Inside, red carpet covers creaky wood floors. I’m not sure why there is carpet covering up the beautiful wood floors, but maybe it serves as a noise buffer. The building already carries sound so the squeaky floors only add to the noise pollution. The pews don a deep forest green velvet that ages the place 50 years. The thought of a church with the primary colors of red and green seems trite, but their combination is oddly inoffensive. Instead, the color combination allows for a year-long Christmas celebration. There is no center aisle to the church, but is broken up into three sections of pews with two aisles cutting through toward the front. I’ve wondered what weddings look like in this setting, whether the bride must choose an aisle to walk down or a default aisle exists that all brides walk down. I would choose the right aisle because all of the college students sit on the right side of the church. I feel that I belong to that side; when I walk down the aisle I would pound my chest twice with my fist and point to my section as a shout out.
For my entire life, I’ve gone to church in the morning. Sometimes my family felt ambitious and woke up for the 9 AM service, sometimes we slept in and attended the 11 AM service, but either way, church was a Sunday morning activity. I did not think that attending church in the nighttime hours would make such a profound change. And perhaps I am making meaning out of nothing, as I tend to do, but it feels different. The light at 5 PM is unlike light at 9 AM or 11 AM. 5 PM light is subtle and soft and comfortable, whereas 9 AM light is radiant but frequently jarring.
Since I started attending in March, I have witnessed the entirety of spring unfold within the church building. At the onset of spring, the doors are flung open and remain ajar for the entire service. The scent of cherry blossoms fills the room and the startling sound of motorcycles barreling down the street resounds. Once summer begins to set in, the air grows stuffy but not stifling. The weak air conditioner churns out cold air to the best of its ability but sweat is an inevitable reality during the summer services. And fall! The air is turbulent inside the walls of the church as if it’s calling each person to swirl in a great fury with it. People track in leaves on their shoes and they remain littered on the red carpet, not wholly out of place. I have not yet experienced the magic of winter at Salem Presbyterian Church, but it is fast approaching, and I must prepare my heart for amazement. I imagine that people wear their coats during the service on especially chilly evenings. I imagine that “On Jordan’s Stormy Banks” sounds different when sung out into still, static-filled air. I imagine that as the darkness sets in early in the evening, the congregation feels a collective nostalgia.
Last week in church I sat thinking about the wonder of walking outside after church and finding snow just starting to dust the ground. I fear I would be overcome. I vowed I would write poetry about that moment, but poetry makes me vastly uncomfortable, because I feel the great need to be understood by a reader. I need to be commended in my literary decisions, else my confidence crumbles. But I cannot think of any other situation which more deserves momentary discomfort. I will take a risk for the snowfall, because it demands it of me. Failing to write poetry about an experience so transcendent is a crime.
So I intend to write three poems about this imminent experience. They will be succinct and masterful and understated and every reader will feel what I felt and they will be published and highly acclaimed. I see that as the only outcome because, again, the situation elicits nothing less than excellence.
I am equally thrilled and terrified for when it snows at approximately 6:30 PM on a Sunday. I don’t know the effects I will suffer. I hope I fall into a faint, and when I wake there are delicate snowflakes on my eyelashes. I hope I awake with words flowing through my head and I write them down exactly as I see them, else they disappear forever. I wish women still fell into faints these days. There is something so frivolous about physically losing consciousness from an experience. I think I would fit in wonderfully in Scarlet O’Hara’s era in Gone with the Wind. Scarlet was a girl who knew how to faint.
The way I see it, the snow is an ordination to go, write, create. But until that very specific event happens I am free to live in apathy and let experiences whiz by me without processing and molding the events with my keyboard. The snowfall will transform me into a writer, whether I like it or not. This singular event will jerk me out of the cloud of doubt I so comfortably abide in. And I do not know which is more terrifying: the snow or the lack of snow. I cannot create my own snow, not the perfect, fiery flakes that melt immediately upon contact with skin. I am completely at the mercy of weather. If I may be so bold, I am at the mercy of God.
I sit down and the chair has spikes on it. My skin crawls at the thought of spreading lines of text on a blank page. The blinking cursor is not an invitation, but a mocking reminder of my fumbling. My friend, Will, once said that he could never be a writer because it is such a solitary experience. He craves interaction and collaboration. No number of editors and revisions can change the fact that it is only me and the spastic, blinking cursor. I try to solidify my experiences by writing but my words fly immediately off the page as I type them. They refuse to stick to the page and dissolve, like snow falling on warm concrete. I rethink the symbolism of the snow. The snow is surely a symbol, but a symbol of the transience of writing. Both snow and writing are rebellious and fleeting and dance away as I try to capture them.
The impossibility of perfectly capturing an experience through the written word keeps me in the realm of cynicism. But I am freed by the thought that I am not recounting the past but creating a new experience altogether. My writing is not about recording but spinning something new out of the thick, charged air around me. The material is there, but I must make the first incision into the center to see the colors bleed out and find what I was looking for.