Why Dance with the Gorilla? It goes way back. My father fought a gorilla when I was a baby. (Long story.) The point being, wrestling the gorilla worked well as a metaphor for so many aspects of my life, including writing: wrestling with ideas, characters, nouns and verbs, commas, wrestling time away from the rest of my life to write, wrestling with a story taking shape on the page, wrestling with the imagined in nonfiction, the truth in fiction, wrestling with the line, the rhythm, the syllable count in poetry, wrestling with plot and subplot, the angst of rejection, the price of acceptance, the mechanics of grammar and the exasperating science of spelling, wrestling with my sabotaging surface urge to do the dishes or get a glass of tea or watch Lonesome Dove instead of nurturing my counter, deeper urge to sit down at the desk, keep my restless fingers on the keyboard. The list goes on.

As a teacher of writing, I witness writing students wrestling their own gorillas over and over—both in writing and in reading.  Writing lessons can be very useful for an aspiring or even a published writer. I had two books in bookstores before I went after my MFA. And writing lessons can be very useful for a reader who wants to read more challenging work, become more analytical in the way they think about what they read, and develop an appreciation for what a writer can accomplish on the page, using what sometimes seems like slight of hand. Learning to be a good reader can be as much a wrestling match as becoming a good writer, but in both cases triumph is a delightful and life-long gift.

So “Wrestling the Gorilla” was the obvious choice for my blog title. Fortunately, someone’s already claimed that handle. I write to learn, and once again, the universe nudged me toward a page-driven epiphany. The wrestling metaphor I’ve lived with for years is trouble. Whether it’s little ole me going up against a 300-500 lb. animal, or Rick Flair taking on Hulk Hogan for a diamond-studded belt, or two young gifted earnest athletes spinning on the mat, straining toward victory (and maybe a budding case of cauliflower ear and jock itch), this is not the best metaphor for living—or writing.

I considered “Taming the Gorilla,” a challenge to make the gorilla docile and cooperative, manageable, clean and orderly, less conflict driven: less man against nature, man against God, menopausal woman against the universe. For a brief moment, I longed for writing to be clean and easy. Yet, placid ploys don’t work with storytelling. Tame, happy, well-adjusted stories aren’t interesting anymore than extremely tame, well-adjusted people. (Luckily, there aren’t too many extremely well adjusted people.)

While a domesticated gorilla is a novelty, he will eventually stop being novel. He will lose his appeal and end up on a chimp farm in central Florida. To tame is to change nature. Wrestling, on the other hand, requires risk, requires embracing the wild thing and its frightening, exhilarating potential, to hang on to it, clinch it with all your might, and let it squeeze back. I prefer that push and pull. Spin and whirl. Roll. So where’s the middle ground?

The other morning at 3:30 AM, as I rolled around in bed, trying to get cool and comfortable, I understood what I really want is to dance with the gorilla, step out of the ring onto the dance floor, where both of us have some room and some agency, where we can play around, do that pointy finger thing John Travolta used to do, or pony, or something more gorilla-oriented like swing, or jump in a mosh pit and slam up against each other and pray we don’t break anything vital. I love a cavorting boogie woogie. Gorillas are natural cavorters. Just the sound of the words boogie woogie make me want to move.  Then again, sometimes its waltz, or foxtrot, or shag, samba or rumba. Admittedly, sometimes it’s just a skipping circle to some little ditty like “Ring Around the Rosie” or “A Tisket, a Tasket.” Two-step is common: one step forward, one step back. There’s frequent need to give in to wild shapeless dancing, arms flailing and heads shaking and hips jerking and gyrating, no pattern at all except rhythm. Deeper down, you’ll find prom-night-blues-club-hang-on-around-the-neck-and-feel-the-music-in-that-slender-space-between-you-that-looks-like-no-space-at-all dancing, that moment in sway when you don’t know where you end and the gorilla begins, where dancing stops and the wild thing starts. It requires grace and risk—the violence and sexuality of physical contact, body to body, body to place and space. That’s where any story has to live, any good poem, any good novel, where there’s contact: body to body, body to landscape, object and gesture, the push and pull, tug and spin, and dip—got to dip. And when it’s your time to be dipped, that tingle shimmies through the trunk of your body, one leg stretches out and the toe points at the nameless, your muscles push their limits, your head drapes back, your throat curves long and taut and exposed.

The goal is to find that intersection of space and motion and narrative, where the writer and the gorilla tame each other a bit, but not too much, where the writer admits the gorilla is stronger, and the gorilla admits the writer has some savvy, where the gorilla and the writer together hold the synergy of their combined frames and both win. Rick and Hulk skillfully make dance and acrobatics look like wrestling, while dance makes what is essentially a wrestling match look graceful and balanced, even when underneath it all, both partners may be vying to lead. My favorite dance is the one where the gorilla can teach me something and I know, for the moment, I just need to keep up. There’s nothing like it.

About Future Posts:

For one thing, they’ll likely be much shorter! Check back on Tuesdays and Thursdays for more pontification, suggestions about reading and writing, exercises and workshop info. Regular features: Tuesday writing exercise and Thursday word list for a scene storm.