long catchup letter to Amy

Dear Amy,

I’ve been thinking of writing to you specifically this week—I could easily write any of a dozen fabulous writers I know to tell what this stretch of days feels like, but you’ve considered me a writer of some sort since my days of letter-writing, perhaps 20 years ago. So I think of you first.

To tell you about today, the wind on this green, green isle is almost brittle with cold: my winter gear and layers will only protect me for twenty minutes or so before it feels painful to be outdoors. Still it looks like the Irish countryside, all moss and florals and even the cliffs are green. At the end of this short street is a beach covered with smooth stones of all colors, then Puget Sound, then Port Townsend on the other side, then the Olympic Range beyond, snow-covered and mostly cloud-covered, too. By now all my oddities and foibles seem exposed and embraced by my classmates, and they send me out into the cold to see how much of those peaks I can see. They refuse my invitations for Frisbee today: too cold.

Indoors, we are in a converted army barracks, I believe, a utilitarian structure characterized by thin walls and a loud heating system that bangs, and throughout the day the wind has thrown open doors and rattled window panes. In the main room, though, the podium is flanked by two elegant floor lamps, tall green plants, and strings of paper lanterns hanging from heating vents—the furniture looks like it’s been scavenged from dorm lounges, but that is fine. It’s comfortable and it works. When no lectures or readings or classes meet there, folks treat it exactly like a dorm lounge. Half a dozen students are gathered there now, reading lyrics off a huge projector screen (Simon and Garfunkel, just now, music far older than these young singers). I’m upstairs in my utilitarian room. I can hear everything in the building. This reminds me so much of our Beach Project days, and the inescapable quality of community life. You know me: I’m mostly charmed by all the hubbub.

This MFA group is thirty students, I believe, and seven full-time faculty, two chaplains, plus guest faculty including Patricia Hampl and David James Duncan among others.

You in particular would appreciate Patricia Hampl, both on paper and in person. She’d be the first to admit that her life is modest, middle-American, relatively quiet, and yet her prose transcends the ordinary circumstance and draws connections that surprise. Several of her essays can be plainly described as “perfect.” In person, she is a woman of faith, she is witty and warm, and she can teach. When I asked her questions about how to learn to write “a fluent personal essay,” which she said every writer needs to do, I explained that I have no formal background in literature.

“Oh, so you’re one of those feral writers!” she exclaimed and we all laughed. I’m picturing long fangs, big claws, and speed, claiming the title for my own. Feral! I love that! She suggested we develop a ruthless desire to “rob” from the skills of other writers, learning like artists do, by copying, by dissecting other’s reading, by being willing to sacrifice some of the pleasure of reading, in the service of the writing craft. I will need fangs to do this. She assures me “feral” is not a bad place to be, as long as I find some ways to discipline my writing.

I wrote about David James Duncan earlier—he’s a joy and a ferocious challenge, and I’ve been learning from other writers’ responses to him.

Another writing friend expressed envy of my experience here this few weeks, and I’d be envious from the outside, too. Not only do I get these great teachers, and to examine my own writing, but I get to hear my fellow students’ work, and to come to a good place in my strategy for the coming year. I’ve chosen a final manuscript project (the Karen stories), but I’ve not started really digging and overhauling the work yet. So I get the goodness of being settled and happy about “this stage” for a few more days, until I get home and expect to get back to work. I’ve got a reading strategy set for the next ten weeks: I’ll be studying memoirs that explore the lives of writers, starting with Scott Russell Sanders’ A Private History of Awe. I will likely map out my next critical paper, too, looking at Sanders’ use of reflection and summary in addition to “scenes.” I get to use highlighters and scissors and get physical, figuring out how the writer gets from “here” to “there.”

I know this is a very “practical” letter, with just a small glimpse of life here. We discussed Temple of the Holy Ghost (O’Connor) this morning, and then an insightful panel discussion about “writing mistakes, professional mistakes.” Two poetry readings, both engaging.

Tomorrow I’ll need to pack my suitcases as well as attend classes. Remind me to walk the beach ten times tomorrow, to hike up to the tiny lighthouse again. For several days I’ve wanted to tuck myself under the wings of all my classmates, and it’s a delight to “pull” for one another so fully. Leaving will be hard.

If I’m able to write again, I will try to find words for what it means to work with a mentor, what a great gift this is— I’m not sure I can find words at all. I get to witness a year of another writer’s life, and something about that tipped off tears today, and I don’t think it’s just because I am tired. Tomorrow, perhaps, I can say more, if I haven’t overwhelmed already.

Thanks for your friendship and support, Amy. Keep writing.

Sunday lazy writing from the green island writing residency

For the first few days of travel, I woke crisply at 3 a.m., which would be six a.m. at home, and I struggled to get back to sleep, muttering to myself and finally conceding that horizontal is “rest” enough. I’m glad to shift this fifth morning, midway through my travels, when I wake at six a.m., ready for a dawn that won’t emerge for another hour, at least.

Each morning Anna, one of the new administrative assistants for the MFA program, rises at dawn too, and I hear her walk down the hall. Like me she is enthusiastic and like me her walk is heavy and unselfconscious on these long cold hallways. She will haul a cappuccino maker down to the dining hall and start taking orders as soon as she gets set up—she tells me she quit working at Starbucks six months ago and she misses it, she loves making people happy with good coffee.

By seven-twenty, Vic will be arriving from up the hill, in his blue down vest, carrying his thermal coffee mug, waiting for breakfast to be served. Each day classmates arrive later and later for meals, but Vic is like clockwork, ready. I am not as consistent but I like knowing he will be there. Most meals I arrive at the buffet fifteen minutes after the official start time, or later, depending, so it’s a treat to eat with just one or two people. I need to gage whether I can linger over breakfast: here, too, are the flickering florescent overhead lights that tip off my headaches. I can find a way around the headaches by sitting near the window, or by just leaving the room with my food on a warm plate.

We will see sky today, actual open sky. I would run outside to view the stars (it’s been so long!) or celebrate the blue (long!) but I’m already freezing right here by my window. I wrap in blankets and the pashmina shawl, throw my dorm door open to the warmth of the hallway. I should’ve shown my classmates how to work the thermostat, since I am so forgetful, but then… I am so forgetful. Perhaps today.

Each morning a meditative prayer service is offered, shared between our two literary chaplains who seek sermons in Flannery O’Connor (!), who marvel daily that Flannery is a good read for Lent, for being dust and coming from dust. While it’s not in any way mandatory, who could imagine missing Luci Shaw’s sermon? Or Dave’s, either. Today is the first day I wonder about skipping it, since I’m getting tired—but I won’t skip it. Tomorrow is a full “day off” of classes, and I’ll find more open time then, to be alone.

Yesterday I learned The Weather Law of the Northwest: when the sun breaks through, you throw boots on and run outside. I’m reminded of the ways my family haunts the window at home on days of mix and sun, hoping to be the first to spot a rainbow. The Olympic Range is on the horizon, I hear—so far I only see glimpses and then the shroud closes over again. One little stretch opened yesterday morning, stark in the pink sunrise. I grabbed coffee and stared for half an hour with Dan (I knew he’d be there, too, at the water’s edge, the contemplative who is city trapped for most of the year.) Another stretch of sun during the day, I ran down the gravel path to see if the mountains were visible, only to find twenty other students standing and gawking just like me. The wind whipped through our coats or I’m sure we’d be standing there, still. The same bitter damp wind blew all night, while the thermostat was set far too low.

What else? I selected a piece and read aloud from my work yesterday. It went remarkably well—I stammered over a few words, but very few, and one of my classmates said my voice “went all Southern” and I know what he means, how I slow into Hoosier when I’m concentrating. I knew I’d enjoy reading, and usually I sweat profusely but I did fine, and hearing my classmates read is a great, great joy. Kevin read an amazing, touching, hilarious piece on Lincoln. Allison read about learning to live with her mother. I can’t wait for more.

Afternoon found me torn between those glimpses of sun and napping (waking at unfortunate times is leaving me tired, all this people time is making me exhausted), so I welcomed the cloud cover as a sign to nap.

I’m afraid all of this reads as sleepily as a too-early morning before the caffeine sources are properly available. (I could go downstairs and fill my French press, but I’ve become terribly spoiled by Anna. Still she’s not stirring yet. And I might.)

We ended last evening with another jaw-dropping heart-rending reading by David James Duncan. Because you can’t hear him in the flesh, I will try to say how he “is.” He is both incredibly lightfooted, prone to shoulder-shaking red-faced laughter that shakes his tall lanky frame, and prone also, more than anyone I’ve ever witnessed, to pause long, pause startling while reading his material, and it’s clear that while he was reading a prayer from The Upsinads in his writing (I may not be spelling it right) that he is praying it while he reads, and his heart is rent open. His tenderness to his own written material means he is near tears, near shaking, leg braced against the podium to keep him from flying through the air I think. As a writer, Duncan is fearless, and he reads fearlessly also, reading about anguish, sex, spiritual fervor, humor, deepest humility and wonder. This man is my favorite living author, and I can hardly believe I’m saying this, but he’s more than I expected. It’s a joy to be here for his visit. Today is his last day with us. I think he may be teaching my Creative NonFiction class this morning, after the worship service.

The sky is only now white, just now opening to blue, and I wonder if it will seem like a thousand shades of blue, like all the days so far have meant a thousand shades of green—and I would say gray, too, but the green is more prominent. My feet are warming up and Anna is nowhere in sight yet. Vic will arrive on the doorstep below, with his vest and his mug, in about fifteen minutes.

A friend wrote to say, drink every drop of this and I assured him that I am, for myself and for everyone who can’t be here. Thanks for all of your support and enthusiasm for my writing life—the residency is going well, and I’m eager to find what the day will hold. Looks like I better plan for my own coffee needs, and a shower, and a sunrise, my first in five days.

And there is Vic, earlier than usual.

makeshift writing studio

I pull into my friend’s empty parking space, off the winding ocean road with its beautiful houses. Barbara’s looks like a Rumplestiltskin house, all angles and not one window shaped like another. Her house is three rooms, one stacked atop another, with a tiny room up top, filled with ocean light, a tiny deck off to the side. The weather report names this day “brittle cold” with a high of twenty degrees.

Eager to get here, I took an extra ten minutes to locate my wool undershirt and capilene long johns, the silk sock liners, the pashmina scarf. “You may turn the heat up to sixty-five,” Barbara said, “but I prefer to keep it at fifty, most of the time.” The top floor collects sunlight like my living room window—it won’t require much heat. I haul out my laptop bag, a thermos of steaming tea, my messenger bag with its books and journals. I’ve been home with children, or out with children, for four days and this is the fifth. Two of those days I’ve suffered a sore throat, worrisome and tiresome. Scott attended a conference three of those days. All I want is this quiet.

Except the spare key is not in its place above the gas meter. I check everywhere. I return my bags to the van so I can use both hands and search with a fresh eye for the tiny blue key tag. Nothing. I try the door handle to the studio—locked. Since I’m dressed for outdoors, I throw on my thick berber coat and walk to the end of the road. It’s been so long since I walked these narrow roads I have to remind myself to walk on the left, as if I’d see any traffic. I turn and walk as far as I can go the other direction, too, with my spruce coat collar turned up to protect my ears. I remind myself I’m just getting over a cold, and as much as I’d love to walk, I came here to write. The sun is beautiful, my laptop is charged, and my due date is… well, it’s today, though I’m not getting anywhere, like I didn’t get anywhere for the last week. I think of all the places I could go to type, all noisy, all possibly crowded. And I’m dressed for the arctic.

I sit down in the minivan, start the engine and throw it in reverse, while blaring the heat. I turn around in Barbara’s driveway, and back the van in, parked to face the sun. I turn off the engine and walk around to the passenger seat to haul my gear out. I sit down and throw the spruce berber coat over my lap as a blanket. No ocean view today, no comfy chair—but those are extras, really. I fire up the laptop in my own quiet minivan studio. I should remember any minute now how to reserve power on this little computer, or maybe I’ll see if I can find this information under “help,” or maybe I’ll just keep writing, right here in the scenic-ish passenger seat of my van. I probably won’t make it for the two writing hours I allotted, but quiet and ocean light and a warm enough place—it will do. No one needs me here. It will do.

humbled and inspired by Hampl

I’ve just read the sort of essay that makes me wonder why I even bother to pick up a pen—and immediately after asking “how did she DO that,” I recover, inspired, and I DO pick up my pen to find my way, too.

“Red Sky in Morning” is the opening chapter of Patricia Hampl’s I Could Tell You Stories: Sojourns in the Land of Memory. I want to memorize the essay for future reference—all of it. Hampl begins her essay with a clear incident, actually an “incidental” incident, just a moment of listening carefully to the world, a brief chat with a nameless stranger. From this tiny beginning she launches into the nature of memoir, the nature of story, how the writer wishes not to embody a simple story but

to tell all—the all of personal experience, of consciousness itself. That includes a story, but also the whole expanding universe of sensation and thought that flows beyond the confines of narrative and proves every life to be not only an isolated story line but a bit of the cosmos, spinning and streaming into the great, ungraspable pattern of existence. Memoirists wish to tell their mind, not their story. (page 18)

The title of the essay is from a weather rhyme, red sky in morning, sailors take warning, and perhaps the red sky she sees on the morning of her incident wakens her to nuances of her day. The essay itself, however, has a “take warning” feel to a beginning writer. Take warning: this is bigger than you think. Much bigger. Strap yourself in. Hampl goes on to examine the popularity of memoir, the nature of memory, what it feels like to encounter someone whose life seems too big to fit “in the small shrine that a story is.” And what it means to grow into a life too big to fit entirely into any shrine of any story.

It’s a powerful call, story to universe to cosmos and pattern, to tell all, to live while taking warning. I take warning, throw my spiral bound journal into my bag next to the sunglasses and reading glasses and keys, and head out the door for a walk and a good place to write.

I pack Hampl with me. That’s just the first essay. The next is devastating, as well.

reading list for winter quarter

Linda always wonders what I’m reading from her workplace in Muncie, Indiana—she’s an amazing reader, so I’m posting a sketch.

I just read these:

Surviving the Island of Grace: a Memoir of Alaska by Leslie Leyland Fields
Remembering the Bonehouse: An Erotics of Space & Place by Nancy Mairs
Auralia’s Colors by Jeffrey Overstreet (this one was “for fun.”)

I also read Orion Magazine, The Image Journal of the Arts and Religion, and Books & Culture. Currently I’m harboring a copy of The Sun, also, which is always full of surprises.

Next I am reading these titles for my graduate work. I need ten titles per ten-week quarter, and I just read two listed above. So here is my plan, which I try to hold loosely…

I Could Tell You Stories by Patricia Hampl
Blue Arabesque by Patricia Hampl
A Private History of Awe by Scott Russell Sanders
A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmell
The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James (if I can bear it!)
The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor
Mystery and Manners by Flannery O’Connor
Fierce Attachments by Vivian Gornick

… and/or perhaps Proust and the Squid by Mary Ann Wolfe, on neurology and artistry. I suppose I would need to read some Proust before starting that book. Hmmm.

I may also reread the women’s anthologies Mothers Who Think, The Bitch in the House and Kiss Today Hello, recalling how powerfully those books affected me. I need to choose a critical paper topic, preferably from within these titles so I don’t need to read even more!

My quarter ends in mid-March, and then I run off to a writing residency on Whidbey Island, for ten glorious days with my favorite classmates, my favorite faculty mentor, and Patricia Hampl and David James Duncan.

That’s the update!

what ought to be a simple conversation with a classmate

The day begins with a cold rain, day fourteen of the children’s school break with five more days to go. They’ve been more or less “in” most of the last four days, with the exception of New Years Eve. The Charlie Brown Christmas tree is still full of lights and ornaments, unlike the Charlie Brown cabinets which are more empty than not, and certainly empty of anything “easy” or festive. I wake late and sneak into the living room after Scott leaves for work, to squeeze a little quiet writing time before the children wake. The absence of solitude seems so much like my life as a full-fulltime mom, as close to me as the summer months that passed not so long ago.

But a long way away, too. My status as a full-time graduate student is a godsend, a motivator to do something with this gift that is my life, for twenty-five hours a week. I’ve read literally thousands of pages, and though a breather is good, I’m eager to dig in once again. I haven’t written almost anything since the last due date, except my entries from my writing group and a few scattered journal entries. First came Christmas preparation, followed by a desperate stomach flu, and I’m just now catching up with myself.

I lose myself, only a little I think, but then the children wake very late and I remember my classmate is visiting from out-of-town and I need a shower. I don’t know if the visit will be short or long, if my friend will want to walk or sight see. I corral children to tidy, to make cards and welcome signs, and I search the cabinet for anything worth serving… each soup that comes to mind is one ingredient short. Not today. The dryer vent is loose again and the living room and kitchen fill with humid steam—I open windows to remedy it, because we are out of towels, too, and I am out of clothes. I make coffee and think about biscuits and honey. I find one jar of homemade raspberry jam, and they are walking up the street to our house. My children begin to jump and smile and swear to me that they are far too shy to say hello.

Matthew and Jolene duck in the door and come in. My children are in jumping bean mode, in show-and-tell-all-the-Christmas-presents mode. Brendan dressed in Red Sox garb and he brings out his card collection. Madeleine tells me she would make biscuits but the cookbook has fallen into loose pages, and she cannot find the index. I offer coffee but I need to find page 66, which is somewhere near page 266 and page 366. When the recipe is located, Madeleine sets about climbing the kitchen counters to find ingredients and bowls, and I try to pull together coffee beans, a grinder, mugs and hot water, but I am thwarted by a pair of ten-year-old legs and bare feet on my countertop. Brendan shows each treasure at the top of his lungs (too shy to say hello, yes), the tea whistle blows, and I pull out cookie sheets, spoons. Madeleine stacks the sugar and the flour canisters and a large glass bowl on top of them—I rescue it before it crashes. Brendan puts on Salsa music. Flour goes everywhere and my guests watch me, bemused, as I am interrupted at every possible juncture—I pour two mugs of coffee, add milk and sugar, and then the coffee pot is empty, so I go through all the steps again, now that the ten-year-old legs are otherwise employed in a kitchen covered with flour. Do not ask how long it takes to make a simple batch of biscuits, or how many accoutrements can be found to adorn biscuits.

But we talk books and reading and share notes and impressions from long ago in Santa Fe, and tell how work goes, what ideas are out there to pursue, whose work impresses us, how we are humbled to be included in this masters program. Somehow, with the windows fogging and the coffee mugs emptying and the steam emitting from freshly opened biscuits, Matthew and I don’t stop the conversation at all, only pausing here and there to admire the Hot Wheels race track and the Rat-a-Tat Cat game. His date Jolene takes my two in hand to play games on the floor and try a science experiment and raid the refrigerator, and I slice apples while talking, and set out trail mix and dried cranberries and I hope this very thin hospitality will “do.”

Did we talk for four hours? I think we did.

Goodbyes set children to pestering me and we make a quick shift to a quiet hour. I’ll see Matthew next in March, and Jolene not for a long time, likely. When we return from the quiet hour, each from our own room, I thank them for being so welcoming and mostly helpful, for baking and playing games well.

I promise a special treat, which is a movie, Little Women, and a big bowl of cinnamon popcorn. I serve mugs of hot soup, from a can today, and when the movie is over, the day is over, too. We quickly grab a dessert and children fall into bed, much later than school nights but early enough that I can write a little, read a little. Scott will be out finishing his student reports for as long as he can stand, and I am digging into Nancy Mairs’ Remembering the Bone House, from the Saxon word for “body,” or a bone house. Tomorrow I will wake to the list of things I put off today, and I’ll need to take the pantry and the groceries seriously. But not yet. In some ways I don’t love vacation—interruptions keep me from some sorts of work. In some ways though, my children charming my friend’s girlfriend, so I can keep asking more questions, keep getting to know him—I’d choose a different sort of visit with some quiet to learn another’s rhythm, but this day is the day I have. These are the merry children I have, and this the life I have.

And it’s a good one.

the writing group: a glimpse

We gather to write, every other Tuesday for two hours. But we hem and haw over the coffee, over our coats, over the weather. You’d think we were performance artists suddenly gone shy: do we want to write, or don’t we? Why does it take so long to get settled? Where are these nerves from? We start other topics of conversation until the silence becomes embarrassing. We refill coffee.

The timer is set. A prompt is read aloud and five women write furiously until the bell rings—usually five minutes. We read our writing aloud, each writer taking notes on the other. What emerges is not usually “finished” work but interesting beginnings. The highest compliment is to be forced to read the same few paragraphs a second time.

My writing group consists of one MFA graduate, one MFA wanna-be, one woman who mysteriously writes crime scenes, though she is mother to three young children and has an MDiv from Harvard. And one other writer, and me. All are amazing, funny.

Here is a slice of five-minute writing from last week. The prompt was a line from Seamus Heany, “on one side under me, the concrete road.”

My friend Linda graduated from MIT, a fact she needs to reiterate on any possible occasion, not to show off but to apologize for the scars of anal-retentiveness rewarded far too well. We are driving to a nice dinner, for a break from lengthy seminars. She wears a pleated skirt and silk blouse and her mad desire, when the rear tire blows, is to fix it herself. Because she is from MIT, she is an engineer, and if she can fix it then by God she should fix it, pearl necklace be damned.

Unfortunately, Linda is fast, exiting the car by the side of Topsfield Road at dusk, and I find her emptying the trunk of my Jetta, to find the jack. The two women in the back seat are equally mortified, but it’s my car, and she’s my passenger, and it’s me who must go challenge the merry glint in her eye. I lean down onto the shoulder and whisper firmly, “Linda. Get up.”


I stalled, stalled, stalled right here, distracted by banana bread and gloves on the table and a curl of metal, by the name “Fred” mentioned earlier and all the Freds I have ever known, by the shadow of my writing hand on the page, cast by the angled sun from the French doors. The shadow is blurred because I’m ignoring my eyes as they call for my glasses.

Distraction is my love. Eliot complained of it, but I rejoice. Bread (warm). Coffee (strong, good). A ball of yarn. The scratch of five pens on five sets of paper.

Who cares about my friend Linda, the anal-retentive one?


Me, me, me, cried my friends as I read the last line. They demanded to know more, just when I thought I was very boring. I still think it’s very boring. Writers! One claimed she “was not crying, that’s just banana bread in my eye.” She liked the part about distraction. Writers. We are a strange lot.

We do this three or four rounds, the writing, the reading around the circle, and then we leave, caffeinated and exhausted.

the waiting room

What I love about the low-residency masters program is that my work written from the waiting room of the dentist’s office—the hygienist interrupts me to say she doesn’t think we need to worry about my daughter needing braces just yet—looks exactly as 8 ½ x 11 double-spaced scripted as my writing from a desk with a stack of books nearby.

I fight through layers of essays, like leaves of paper, back to the surface to meet the eyes of the dark-skinned woman speaking to me. Was I supposed to be worrying about braces? Why should she need braces? Did I miss the memo about parents worrying about braces? Am I a bad parent that I never considered this? She told me not to worry. Didn’t she know I was already not-worrying? And now I worry. When she tells me not to.

I don’t think that’s what she intended. Are her parents Pakistani? Central American? Her dark glossy hair is pulled back in a practical barrette, a ponytail that falls straight down the back of her scrubs in spring green. The other hygienists wear spring green, too—do they plan this? I nod and say thank you, and yes it doesn’t surprise me that Madeleine is behaving perfectly in the dentist’s chair. In the fog of leaves of paper I remember her first visit to this dentist, how panicked she was, how I brought the camera and told her Daddy wished he could be here for her first appointment, too, and could she please smile from that tipped back chair? Her blonde ponytails, her yellow flowered dress, her nervousness fading away with the animated conversation of the calm and sweet man who is our dentist.

Thank you for the information about the cavities in her baby teeth, which do not need filled. I nod.

Where was I? Oh yes, I was writing my evaluation of my first quarter of graduate school, some 8 ½ x 11 form, and for just one last minute I wasn’t worrying about if my daughter would ever need braces. I wasn’t worrying, when she interrupted my homework session and suddenly I knew I’d also need to be thinking about dinner, about the sleet falling outside the window and if I still remember how to drive this enormous minivan on icy roads.

This will now mark the last moment in which I did not worry, at all, about whether my daughter needs braces. I’m so glad the woman in green was pretty and calm and her intentions were so apparently kind-hearted. I shake my head at her youth. She clearly does not have children, and doesn’t understand the scars of worry, and the psychology of writers is not her business. The oath says to do no harm, and I’m sure she meant none.

What I appreciate most? I write through everything. There are deadlines, and the writing continues despite moods, despite interruptions, despite weather setbacks and driving conditions and growling stomachs. I do my 8 ½ x 11 best, and bury myself beneath the leaves again when the spring green young woman retreats back through the swinging door.

tangle

In my writing, I’m pursuing two stories involving loss of sight, and one about kindness and hospitality. I’m also pounding away at two essays by David James Duncan. I’m at the end of the quarter and need to edit, edit, edit my work but on my way I’m making a note: At some point I wake up and all my story lines intertwine in a confusing tangle. My blind friend offered life-changing hospitality, making workdays a joy. Duncan asks “how to see more?” how to peel back the layers of blindness. Even the story about the depths of the ocean, and mortality, is also about the perception of light. Sight and seeing, simple thoughtfulness and the willingness to see truly with such sight as one has, to see, as Duncan suggests, with the ability to illuminate, to see in such a way that gives light and even to see in a way that brings healing.

I ask myself, now which of these stories needs to include that line from Bruce Cockburn?

All the diamonds in the world that mean anything to me
Are conjured up by wind and sunlight sparkling on the sea…

And the answer seems to be, all of them.

My work is due in less than a week, and I couldn’t wrangle all of these story lines to converge, even if I wanted to. I just letting you know: it’s one life, one story. I’m writing pieces as best I can, reading as well as I can. It’s good to wake up in a tangle.

Now I need to pick one strand and get to work.


Annotations nine, ten, and eleven are complete. One more book and its accompanying annotation is due, but I CAN’T READ ANOTHER THING until I work on the REAL writing.

Draft two of critical essay is still not remotely meaty enough. (I swoon instead of critiquing. What good is a swoon? If readers want a swoon, they’ll read David James Duncan for themselves!) And at least two of my three essay lines need Massive Overhaul. I’m thinking I’ll get physical, print them out one essay at a time and use scissors to cut pieces and rearrange them on my new floor. In college, I used to write longhand on legal pads for my college courses, and I’d often run out of tape, crafting long scrolls for the (poor) typist and hoping my papers contained “enough.” It might work, who knows?

the scorecard

It’s nine-thirty in the morning before I realize my watch is fastened upside-down. I started to read a fascinating article on Puritans and the practice of the Thanksgiving “public day” (which involved fasting as the centerpiece, and feasting as more of an afterthought). Want to read? Here. Then I needed to send it to half a dozen friends. Then I needed to serve orange juice and find a handkerchief…

The sound of a penny dinging around a wooden case is not exactly musical—Brendan is home with a cold, and he’s playing his favorite “penny hockey” on the couch, practicing the little finger flicks to hit the goals just right, between sniffles and nose-blowings. He hopes to be well enough to go to school tomorrow for the long and delicious Thanksgiving assembly, with its music and class presentations. So today we will finish crafting chicken stock into hearty soup to heal the weary boy, and we’ll finish off the roasted pumpkin into puree or pumpkin butter.

I turn on the folk radio station to cover the sound of penny on wood clickity-clicking. I prefer quiet, but this boy needs a constant something. Thank goodness for wood and pennies. I settle in for a moment with the laptop here, another there. I can’t seem to keep that small cup of coffee warm.

Grad student deadline-terror update:

In ten days, I need a five-page critical paper, four annotations of books from my suggested reading list, and twenty pages of creative writing, preferably polished writing.

Yesterday I crafted a DREADFUL first draft of my critical essay assignment, just to get that first draft out of the way and to dig into the material. At some point, I’m just happy to have my subject matter set, to type in the quotes from the text I’m studying. (I’m looking at two or three essays by David James Duncan, a contemporary writer with fresh and unorthodox views on religion and the environment. His writing carries the unmistakable scent of the Pacific Northwest, edgy and compassionate and furious. I set out to do a close read of the first two essays in My Story as Told by Water—sitting at the tea shop with a small pot of vanilla rooibos on Sunday, I ended up re-devouring the entire book.)

I finished Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer and quickly zipped off an annotation. Annotations are “like a writer’s journal, but thoughtful.” I’m not sure I approach “thoughtful,” but I tend to revise after a few days.

Four texts to go for this quarter! Ten more days, and most of my time needs to be for writing that paper and editing my essays from earlier this quarter. I hate “speeding” so, but it must be done and at this point I need to simply go for the numbers and get the list done. (That’ll be TWELVE books this semester, most of them enormous and packed with the work of thirty or more writers.) My suggested reading list includes many old favorites right here on my bookshelves—I step into Madeleine L’Engle’s Walking on Water like a warm bath. (I have a poor memory for content of books. I forget everything but the flavor within a few years of reading, and it’s been more than ten years since I read this volume. The sticker inside assures me I bought it from Byron, and it’s inscribed with my maiden name. I can’t wait to see my notes in the margins—Hey! I read this twenty years ago!) I’m hoping to quickly read (alas, but it must be done QUICKLY) and update my thoughts on Buechner’s memoir or possibly my dear Capon, to finish the total number of texts required.

But first, today. Pumpkin and chicken soup and a boy who is now listening to audio books of Winnie the Pooh, holding the tiny texts in his hand. He tells me that some of the stories are dumb (um, okay) and he doesn’t work too hard at following the sentences with his finger. He smells of Vick’s VapoRub and tea with honey. I’ll make a new cup of tea for us both, then pack my L’Engle and my boy to go to the dentist. We’ll be back for soup soon enough, and another go at the paper or editing, if the boy is quiet enough.

Note: I wrote this “diary” on Tuesday, finished L’Engle on Wednesday. On Thursday, I produced large quantities of mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, peas in cream sauce and homemade cranberry sauce (from LOCAL cranberries, picked by my children), and potlucked for Thanksgiving at the tiny farm, with some of my favorite families.

I also read four essays from Gregory Wolfe’s The New Religious Humanists, while cooking. Challenging and interesting reading. I’m working my way through more of that book’s essays, today. THAT LEAVES ONE MORE title. Then one week to dig, dig, dig into the next edit of the critical essay and the next edits of my creative writing.

IT’S DO-ABLE. I think. If I keep up this pace for one more week.

I also started to knit a pair of gloves, if for no other reason than “because I needed to.” I only knit when I am waiting or listening, and never when I could be reading. Halfway through the first glove, I stop and ask myself if I wouldn’t prefer fingerless “mitts” to allow me to type and read with warm hands… regardless, it’s beautiful yarn. All goes well.

day in the life of a student

The pumpkins are roasting (finally) and the boy is bathing. The girl practices violin. We finished the last of the ice cream for dessert and Scott should be home soon. And we finally have a new floor, which looks GREAT.

In two weeks I need to produce a five-page critical paper (my first literature paper in twenty years) and four book annotations (which means I need to first READ the four books) plus twenty-five more pages of creative writing. I just turned in nearly fifty pages of fresh creative writing in the past month.

In the past five weeks, I traveled 2000 miles by car, with children, then disassembled my house for two weeks. I was named “contributing editor” for a gorgeous magazine. I’ve yet to catch up on laundry. And I’m about to complete my first quarter of full-time graduate work.

It’s going to take some time to figure out to do this well—I’ve not touched knitting or spinning, and I only crafted one felt project under duress. I need to MAKE THINGS, and I need to read fiction, and in this three month quarter, there’s been no time for either. I’m not volunteering at the children’s school fair, and I’ve made nothing to sell, for the first time in a decade. It’s okay, on one hand, but I miss the satisfaction of handmade things, and my tiny wallet will miss the satisfaction of Christmas spending money.

When the door opens, Scott will man the kids, the stove and laundry for awhile and I’ll rush to help set up the candle-dipping room for the fair. Tomorrow, whether or not I am signed up to volunteer at the holiday fair, I know I’ll be cutting wicks and listening to musicians in the warm little room with the melted beeswax. Each year I wonder how I could write of such intoxication, and then I don’t even try—it’s too sweet, too quiet, too sedative. We will eat pumpkin soup (not mine) and fresh bread, and children will shop for gifts for parents and friends.

Then I’ll come home and read, and write some more.

On my turntable, by the way, is We Walked in Song, Innocence Mission, highly recommended.

weather report: Atlantic commute

Each moment I stay in my house, the workman blocks off another vital pathway to my desk, my purse, my kitchen, and with the aroma of industrial flooring glue, I finally grab my sweater, my book bag, and thread my way through the maze to my door. Neither the workman nor I know exactly what the day holds, but we are each doing our best. Perhaps tomorrow most of the new floor will be installed—that is the hope. Perhaps by the end of this week, I’ll be ready to turn in my next round of homework. I head for my borrowed studio on a stormy Tuesday, on the Atlantic.

A road detour winds me through back streets, but right past my favorite independent coffee shop. Dorothy, the owner, waves to me as she pokes her head out of the drive-up window to assess the line of cars waiting. When it’s my turn, we chat only long enough for her to pour my coffee—the wind promises rain, any minute.

And then I have a hot cup of coffee in my hand, and the road detour threads me past my favorite beach for watching surfers. Just as I’m hoping no one is crazy enough to be surfing in this tempest, I see the flashes of bright blue and green, swooping and jerking—two kite-surfers! Twenty cars line the beach-side of the narrow road, spectators alongside the parked cars of the wet-suited athletes. Usually, the surfers walk calmly by to their cars, but today the men scamper like children to tell tales to one another, faces alight and hands gesturing, like boys describing a soccer game. The two closest men are my age—one balding and one who looks like a handsome college professor I remember. I wonder at men so in love with the sea and the weather.

After I study the joy on their faces, they haul boards across the footbridge, and I turn to the kite-boarders again. As far as I can tell, the rider wears the kite’s harness around his waist and rides a board that attaches to his feet. One kite-surfer rides the shallow edge of Good Harbor Beach back toward me as far as he can come, then cuts wave after wave in the opposite direction down the mile of shoreline. At several points the surfer flies in the air—more than twenty feet into the air—then “lands” again on a wave and rides. He is leaning back hard on his kite-lines and nearly touching the water with his back. I can’t imagine the training necessary to evoke this confidence. I drink my coffee until I see one kite surfer walking onto the beach, wrestling his kite to the ground and folding it. The other rider walks ashore, too, and the first runs to help the second fold his kite. I imagine their faces radiant, like the men who just passed me on the footbridge, and their hands and storytelling as they pack their cars and maneuver the heavy wetsuits. Will they be going to office jobs, next? It’s only nine o’clock in the morning. Perhaps they will sit at a desk by ten.

The road detour takes me along the rocky Atlantic coast for another mile. Drivers rubberneck to see the grey-green curls of wave, veering toward my half of the two-lane road. I drive carefully through the sea spray until I find Edgemoor Road. I take a right once again and familiarize myself with the house numbers. The owner of a boutique in town told me he’d introduce me to the new residents of T. S. Eliot’s childhood summer home. The boutique owner is charming and lonely to talk books and reading, but also he is lonely to tell me how atrociously Americans use the rules of grammar, how shallowly American literature compares to European. This makes me self-conscious of the looseness of my childhood education, the Midwestern drawl and rhythm that won’t be parsed into sentence diagrams. I have little desire to defend my literary loves, but he is an interesting character. I’ll offer him a cup of coffee some winter morning when I can be patient. I believe it’s 3 Edgemoor or 5 Edgemoor Road. I consider pulling into St. Anthony’s By-the-Sea—surely someone there would know the answer to this question, and perhaps hold insight as to why Eliot named his road Edgeware instead of Edgemoor in his poem. Edge-Where? Edge-More? The crest of homes does overlook what could be called a moor, I suppose. I decide not to pursue this question today, either. I need to write.

I make a left onto Eastern Point Boulevard and within five minutes I open the car door to the sea howl and the foghorn. The lock gives way without a struggle this time. I climb to the third floor with my book bag (Eliot’s thin volume is in there, along with a Cowley Brothers book of meditations on Eliot) and laptop, find a blanket and settle into the eaves. I begin writing at nine-thirty in the morning in a stormy paradise.

The kite-surfers have me wondering—perhaps writing is like that, though with less muscle. The surfer rides one ocean with his feet, one weather system with his arms, one unpredictable self inbetween and from the looks of the faces after, I can only imagine how fully engaged he is. The call to writing, as I am learning, is to become more vulnerable, more in touch with rawness of feeling, and more persistently in pursuit of truth. Harness the wind of a story, ride the undercurrent of the deep, be ever aware of all the unpredictabilities of weather and self. Watch for dangerous rocks. If you are not a writer you might think this description is self-indulgent—and it might be. I am sitting in a chair, after all, not feeling the wind and rain on my face.

But I’m playing just as hard as they are. I joined this writing program to change my writing, with no thought that my writing may change me. Like those surfers’ faces on the footbridge, perhaps I will be changed, if I do it well. Who could possibly encounter that tempest and still be the same?

tilt-a-whirl life

My friend Linda asked me to describe my graduate school program—in the midst of my academic notes from August, I found this paragraph that serves as a nice metaphor:

The dizziness is not the altitude. The dizziness is my world as a tilt-a-whirl, the sudden swing to the side, 360, 360 degrees again and so fast. Long ago, that ride made me laugh and clap my hands, if I was not too crushed into the side of my spinning red car. Perhaps like the amusement park ride, I bought the ticket hoping for the adventure, and am now complaining of my spinning head.

But with a smile creeping up—the dizzy is what I paid for.

My MFA in Creative Writing is just over two years of schooling, including five “residencies,” or ten-day academic sessions. The residencies just happen to be located in exotic, beautiful locations, but that’s another story. (Tell you about the next one in a minute.)

In addition to the residencies, each school year is comprised of a Fall Quarter, a Winter Quarter, and a Spring Quarter. Each quarter is about three months long, with three due dates for “packets” per quarter. Each packet contains 20-25 pages of my creative writing, new or revised from the previous packet, plus any annotations I’ve finished from the quarter’s reading. This quarter I need to turn in twelve book “annotations.” An annotation is “a little bit like a writer’s journal. But thoughtful.” Hmmmmm. I’m still wrapping my head around this annotation-thing.

In addition to the annotations and the creative writing, I write one “critical paper” about a literary issue, 5-7 pages long, each quarter. In total, I’m turning in nearly 150 pages each quarter, and three quarters in a year equals nearly 450 pages, and my program is two years long. Whew!

Some of the books I’ve read and annotated so far:
The Art of the Personal Essay, edited by Philip Lopate
Modern American Memoir, edited by Annie Dillard and Cort Conley
Writing True, the Art and Craft of Creative NonFiction, by Sondra Perl and Mimi Schwartz
(these titles are to help me understand the breadth, history and craft behind the great essays and memoirs—I’m reading to see how these writers do what they do.)

In addition I’ve read two “common readings” (books all the MFA students read and discuss together, the poets, the fiction writers, and the folks in my Creative NonFiction genre). Eliot’s The Four Quartets and a wild translation of Genesis by Robert Alter.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows does not count, unfortunately (though it did take quite a bit of time and energy, it’s not considered ‘literary’), and I struggled to put down the new fantasy novel Auralia’s Colors by Jeffrey Overstreet. (I heard him read the first chapter in Santa Fe, and I can’t wait until Christmas break to finish it!) Neither can I count my “professional” reading of crafting magazines.

I also read Dillard’s The Maytrees because I was begging for fiction, and I hope to move onto Scott Russell Sanders’ A Private History of Awe, and Reading Like a Writer. In addition, I’m expected to read The Image Journal of the Arts and Religion, and Books & Culture, which I read anyway, and Orion magazine is a favorite, filled with great writing.

My packets of writing are submitted to my faculty mentor, Leslie, and I hope to read her memoir Surviving the Island of Grace this quarter. She lives in Alaska, my school is in Seattle, and I still live north of Boston. As a freelance writer on the side, my magazine editors are in California and New York. It’s a beautiful internet world!

The next packet is due on Monday, then the final packet of this quarter is due in the first week of December. I’m still developing my topic for the critical paper.

In March, my next writing residency is on Whidbey Island, near Seattle. The guest faculty include Patricia Hampl, a notable creative nonfiction writer, and David James Duncan, one of my all-time favorite authors.

I’m still hoping to find a working “routine” for writing, but so far I’ve had no routine weeks! I’m still “unpacking” from a two-week sojourn to the Midwest, with children, and the coming week is filled with two special concert dates, Halloween, a second-grade Lantern Walk and one eight-year-old birthday party. Oh, and then that packet due date. Did I mention we might be ripping up the floor of our condo? After the birthday party.

Up to this past week, I’ve been madly in love with my writer’s life, and though I still am, I’m feeling the sweat on my brow, wondering how I will get this reading done. I miss writing as I did last year, and I need to re-assess that for next quarter, to make sure writing itself feels more central. But that’s all for later. For now, I read, I read, I read, and I look forward to the writing of fresh material, as soon as I get the chance to sit down without a fabulous book in my hands.

How does it feel? It feels great. It feels important and life-giving and like my life is an adventure once again. Go tilt-a-whirl, go. Dizzy, I can take.

homework

I'm pulling together thirty to forty pages of work-- it's my first "homework assignment" in ten years, my first literary reflection in twenty-five years... cross your fingers...

Meanwhile the days are eighty degrees, in October, which means weather perfection: cool breeze, hot sand, beach full of surfers nearby. We spent Thursday afternoon at the beach, with pizza for dinner as the sun retreated into a hazy sunset.

more soon...

poll

What is a blog for? What is my blog for?

Three years ago (yikes!), my writing friend Dave sent me a link to set up this blog, with the explanation “a blog is a commitment to write.” Dear reader, you would laugh if you read my spiral-notebook journal: when I write to me, I rarely finish anything and I mostly rant and whine, or I write long descriptions of the place where I am sitting. I write myself into nowhere, often. My journal holds a few exciting flashes, but nothing like the pieces I write here. When I write with a sense of audience (you), I write a letter. I think of a dozen people I love and I write with a purpose, with eyes and ears open to gratitude. I find I have stories when I write for other’s ears. I begin and end sentences and I avoid muttering. Writing clarifies, crystallizes thoughts and feelings for me, and there’s joy in it.

This blog, then, has been my school of writing, a first step beyond writing letters. I joked at the beginning about writing “for me and my six friends,” but now there are a number of readers who check in with me regularly. Several readers link to me on their own blogs. I enjoy sending people here to find my stories—though I do need to weed a bit from the archives.

As an MFA student, now I’m in a different school of writing with some different (um, enormous) requirements. One of the cautions offered by respected faculty mentors is the caution about “sending ‘work’ out before it’s ready.” When Dave suggested a blog initially, he cautioned, too, “treat it like a publication.” Revision and polishing are not my strong points as a writer, and I’m often eager to post what is going on right this minute. I err on the side of sharing too much. So my blogging—which has been my writing strength—is now a potential weakness, at least as a student in a masters program in creative writing.

You, dear readers, have been my writing strength and continue to be so. I write with your ear in mind. Want to help me wrestle with this?

Rightly, my respected and affectionate advisors suggest blogging might detract from “serious” writing. There’s the “before it’s ready” temptation. In addition, I currently work-for-pay online, so it’s possible to spend way too much time on the internet (which I can do without even looking at my blog) instead of “serious writing.”

But on the other hand, there’s you. I gotta confess, here—I’m not losing this blog. That’d be crazy. I have readers! Writers need readers. The respected and affectionate folks mentioned above want me to do my very best, but no one is absolutely insisting that I ditch my wonderful blog. (I call it wonderful because you are here, not because I am enamored of all-things-me.) I’m in the process of “holding” my writing longer, revising and polishing and asking for professional feedback. That’s why I’m posting less frequently. And (sigh) that’s why I’m not posting my “best” writing. This is not an easy change for me.

I’m jealous of my blogging friends who get a zillion responses to each written post, and sometimes I wonder why I don’t get more comments. I hope I’ve not put you to sleep.

I wish I had a guest book! Would you like to weigh in? To sign in? I know some readers read my posts via RSS feeds, so I don’t get to see your visits on my sitemeter. Would you like to say “hi” to remind me you are here? Any insights on this question? What is my blog for?

book report: art of the personal essay

The Aaaaaaht of the Puh-sonal Essaaaaay...that's the way my children repeat the title of the fat book that keeps sliding around the dash of my car, in their best mock-Brahmin voices. Here is my grown-up book report. I need twelve such reports this semester, and yes, all of the books are huge. I'm on book six, I believe.

A year ago I sat at my local coffee shop with a journal and a pen, an Orion and an Image Journal, and proceeded to write for several hours, interspersed with reading. In the overstuffed chair opposite me sat an older gentleman with a herringbone tweed hat next to his stack of books. After a break to refill coffee cups, he asked what I was writing and I said memoir. “But I don’t have much of a sense of what I’m doing. I just write like I talk, mostly.” He suggested I might like to look up The Art of the Personal Essay. We let each other write in peace, with an occasional break for a comment or two. For some reason, I thought the book would be a “how-to” rather than a “best of,” and while I wrote the title in my journal, I never managed to pick it up until now.

What a delight then to discover an anthology of great essay writing! It’s a feast! A month ago, I was despairing over those lucky fiction writers who get to read FICTION, but I feel certain these essays are some of the most honest writing on earth, and honesty is perhaps even better than a good story. (Did I really say that? Remind me I said that.)

While I love good reading, my current need is to learn terms and categories to help me understand the writing craft. Though I’m capable of a scathing and particular movie review, I’ve read purely for content, somewhat conscious of style, rarely for form. I know I love a piece or an author, but I can’t name why. Phillip Lopate offers several ways to look at essays, ordering selections first by historical era, then by topic, such as “City Life,” “Hatred and Opposition,” “Thresholds.” I will list some of these headings in my writing journal, common human themes and possible beginnings to my own stories.

Lopate’s introduction names two features of the personal essay especially helpful to me: “the hallmark of the personal essay is its intimacy” and “at the core of the personal essay is the supposition that there is a certain unity to human experience.” (p. xxiii) Whether an author conveys intimacy or convinces the reader of unity of human experience—these become means of discerning whether personal writing “works” for a reader. Lopate further delineates writing as “conversational,” honest, and notes author’s penchants for what he calls contractions and expansions of the self, irony and “cheek,” and he explores the inner workings of writers and the dance of privacy. Lopate’s interest is in “the tradition” of the personal essay, the “greats” to which other essayists pay homage, and a peek into some of the ways essayists quote earlier essayists by way of that homage.

Reading his selections for myself, I enjoyed Seneca on quiet and on slaves, Plutarch’s letter to his wife, and Sei Shonagon’s Hateful Things, then found myself skimming ahead to Chesterton, an old favorite, reading my children to sleep with the cadences of A Piece of Chalk. While the sparsity of women is frustrating, and Lopate defends his selections, I find myself gravitating toward the women writers immediately. Perhaps it is that notion of universality—I feel slightly more likely to resonate with human experience voiced by a woman.

Virginia Woolf’s Street Haunting begged to be read first to my husband and then to my children at bedtime, also, with the same effect of mesmerizing even my two quizzical children into a trance of rhythmic reading, so beautiful are the words that there is no time to slide a question in edgewise, and my great joy in reading swept them up. They chimed in weeks later, remember the story about the pencil? Does anyone care what Woolf is writing about? In comparison to the way she writes about it? If the melodic writing were not enough, the sudden stops before sinking too far into a stranger’s story are breath-taking. From shopping for a pencil, Woolf takes a plunge into the deepest of questions—am I my physical reality, or am I my imagination? And the beautiful reason behind this dilemma charms me:

…it is nature’s folly, not ours. When she set about her chief masterpiece, the making of man, she should have thought of one thing only. Instead, turning her head, looking over her shoulder, into each one of us she let creep instincts and desires which are utterly at variance with his main being, so that we are streaked, variegated, all of a mixture; the colours have run. Is the true self this… or that…? Or is the true self neither this nor that, neither here nor there, but something so varied and wandering that it is only when we give the rein to its wishes and let it take its way unimpeded that we are indeed ourselves? (261)

(This is the point during which I am jumping up and down reading, announcing she’s writing about a pencil, when she dives to question the whole enterprise of imagination, and the whole of the question is embodied in the very act of meandering in her shopping task.) I love her obvious joy describing her own irritating shopping habits, and the circle back to her home, with her pencil, reconciled.

This is my first Virginia Woolf and I can’t wait to find more.

Fascinated with one description of a hashish trip and another of political fasting, I continue headlong into Natalia Ginzberg’s Him and Sara Suleri’s Meatless Days, rich descriptions. I’ve always thought of F. Scott Fitzgerald as someone entirely “other,” and yet I find myself reading “in the dark night of the soul, it is always three a.m.,” over the phone to a friend.

While my eyes skim quickly the other essays, I’m interested in those with pull, with Lopate’s described intimacy and humanity. I’m also fascinated by how the writer gets from here to there. “Frisson,” (p xxvi) for instance, “which all lovers of the personal essay await as a reward.” I’m fascinated that there is a way to move a reader through a story, beyond simple storytelling. When Lopate names lists of “how the world comes at another person, the irritations, jubilations, aches and pains, humorous flashes, (p. xxvii),” I begin to see what to look for, what works. And with the simple phrase “the capacity for perception,” (p. xxxiv) at last I see myself, not lost but in the right place. Craft is the issue for me, but I possess the eye, and in the editor’s discussion of idleness, I see why the perceptions bubble to the surface differently in the past three years: I felt my role to be so very important when I lived in the professional world. I’ve felt utter delight in being “useless” by all societal standards, and what Lopate terms idleness has been the gift to play with what I’ve perceived.

So, half the task of the reading up to this point has been to find my way into this world of writers, to find a way to use the word “we,” and own it, about myself in this lineage. Perception, writing intimately, finding ways to build frisson, these all seem quite possible. On the other hand, Woolf makes me wonder how I can ever seriously use the word “we” about writers again. I might need to find all of her non-fiction and use it to reward myself for writing tasks completed. I’ve been married to Phillip Lopate’s The Art of the Personal Essay for three weeks, it seems, breakfasting with F. Scott Fitzgerald and lunching with M.F.K. Fisher, reading in the passenger seat across many states and reading while listening to a local band play. I’m surprised by the delightful writings of Seneca and Plutarch, as well as the Eastern writers completely new to me.

As of this moment, I’ve not moved to the most modern of the American essayists. The names are quite familiar and I will certainly continue, but it seems necessary to Annotate and move on today. I’m familiar with Dillard, Saunders, Berry, and I’ll be reading more of them, soon. I’m encouraged, excited, daunted. And while I’m still stretching to see craft and form as means of conveying a story, I’m exceedingly well-read—and I’m just getting started.

my interviewer

My husband Scott has the gift of asking good questions, and he wrote me a little interview. Though it's not sharp writing at all, still I'm interested in painting out "what it's like," and I thought I'd let you peek into our conversation about The Writing Residency, on my hill here in Santa Fe.



1) I'm wondering in what ways do you find yourself learning best these days
(e.g., reading others' work, having conversations, getting input on your
writing, wondering around...)?

First, (and this is why I'm here) I learn best when I can concentrate, when there is quiet interspersed with rich reading material. Thus far, I've learned most by giving a "close read," in a small group, of great pieces of writing, analysing what works and how the writer organizes her thoughts into a specific pattern. Having said that, I learn much also while wandering, letting the landscape work on me-- tears feel close to the surface, watching light on the distant hills.

I'm also inspired by the possibility of friendships, the goodwill and affection shown to me, though I chatter too much and feel more than ever that my narcissism (writerly stumbling block) is so visible. My hair seems to be it's own show, with my new classmates walking up to sproing a curl here and there, and yesterday two happily-married fellas were joking that they wanted to sit near me just to be near my curls. An older woman also asked if she could tug on a curl, just to see it spring back. (It's all good payback for the years in which my hair seemed an uncontrollable mass. And it's an antidote to feeling lame and out of shape.) For all the hair-talk, the curl-sproingers are parents and bread-winners, and I continue to dig deep with them, to interview how they manage responsibilities while pursuing the writing craft.

2) Is your learning as a student/professional any different from other
times in your life - as an RD? as a campus minister? as an Intercultural
Relations student?

In the past, being a student has been its own end, and the assignment was its own end. It's a different beast to learn "in order to" do something, in order to write better. My focus in the past was on the material I was learning. Not so, here.

I'm stunned by what an emotional experience it is to share writing with others, what a half-panic. Education has not "laid me bare" before. It's no longer about the books alone: it's about steering the gift of writing.

Like being a college student, I'm impressed by how many assignments I can outright forget, and by how infrequently I write things down. Oddly, I am unmotivated to read, which is new. When I open the page, though, I find myself happy in the act of reading and delighted to look for "how" the author did that, and why.

It's good to note, also, that I've needed to protect my time and my talkative self, here, to focus on investing myself in a few people, on leaving dinner early in order to get things done or to find enough quiet to keep going.

3) What have been some of your most serendipitous moments?

I found myself waiting in the hot sun for a bus that never came, in Santa Fe, and turned to walk back uphill to campus though my injured foot was throbbing. I literally stepped in dog poop just to reiterate the low of my day, and while scraping my shoes I looked up to find T.J. Pendergast and his wife Brianna asking how my day had been, telling me they were driving back to campus. T.J. stroked his long white mustache and said he'd been asked to write prose about a course on servant leadership. "But I'm a poet. I don't know anything about creative non-fiction. How do you suggest I start?"

Now how funny is that? Throughout the week, I run into T.J. and Brianna when we have moments to talk.

4) Is your experience helping you clarify your personal
desires/expectations for yourself in this program?

Hmmmm. I'm revising an earlier post: the thing "caught" in all this is the vision of what it means to put stories on paper, how powerful the written word can be, how big a project this is. And that's terrifying at times, to take writing seriously.

This program's emphasis is not on publication, at all, so I shift to examine my own desire to see my name in print, to have people hunger for my writing. Shockingly, I don't believe any of my classmates have been published in Image, the journal which this MFA program grew out of. Brian, my physician classmate, was published in Image before he began the MFA. So I think I've needed to remind myself, the degree is not a magic bullet. I've needed to remind myself, it's about improving my writing.

What I learn about myself? I'm surprisingly ambitious-- it's a new thing to me, having always been content with things somewhat within reach of me.

I'm also learning about the work of writing, versus merely the play of writing-- I don't think the work of it will kill off the play, but it's good to hold a sense of caution about that.



5) Will you want to/be able to connect w/ classmates between sessions to
support one another?

I feel sure of that! Every three weeks, we'll be sending stuff to our faculty mentor and I assume to one another. (I'll check on that.) Email! Hooray for email!

Four days left-- which is a lot, and I'm sinking myself into the experience. Two papers to write, books to study, sun to enjoy.

homework

I'm going to school. An official decision was declared on Father's Day, and I've been so busy and so close to elated disbelief that I haven't yet made announcements.

Not without fear and trembling, but I registered for classes and purchased a plane ticket, and I'm reading my textbooks. Frederick Buechner says the most important moment of a sermon may well be the silence before the speaking begins, the hopeful anticipation that something deeply meaningful will occur. Amidst the little tasks, setting up a school email account, wondering how I will pay all the school bills, needing this to work out, that silence of anticipation is where I live.

There and also atop Louise Erdrich's layer of earthen scum on the kitchen floor (see below). Where I live.

Madeleine and Brendan have crowded beneath my feet to make copies of sheets of paper dolls and all their paper accessories. Let's all wish them luck. Perhaps I should do the same, hawk something concrete at the yardsale to raise cash for school... Would anyone like to buy a blog entry?

writer's advice

I can't even tell you where I found this, or how very much I needed to hear it.


Advice to Myself
Louise Erdrich

Leave the dishes.
Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.
Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.
Don't even sew on a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic-decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in though the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.

the beautiful journal

I am transferring files from the borrowed laptop computer, cleaning house at the end of this school year. I located this piece of noodling, written from a long self-directed writing retreat at Adelynrood.

Years ago I bought a beautiful journal, suede and a brown floral tapestry, gilded page edges, a ribbon page marker. I hoped to make the leap to a journal-looking journal rather than the terribly practical-looking journal. I tried to make a similar leap perhaps twenty times in the past twenty years, but I only write comfortably in a journal I carry at all times, and I’ll only make space to carry one book, and a hard-cover simply weighs too much to also carry a date book and to-do list… I have stopped trying. I write in spiral-bound notebooks, a particular kind with a column for my ever-rolling to-do list and for stray thoughts. I am fond of the stray thoughts. I am fond of my current projects living close-at-hand as I’m off running errands. I pull the car to the side of the road when I need to. I keep a long list of writing prompts in the front cover of my notebook at all times.

What is handy about this spiral notebook is it’s apparent no-nonsense look. Thus I can appear to be note-taking, while listening to the odd thoughts inspired by the room (this feels like summer camp), the smell (garlic bread baking somewhere and I wish it was for me), the quality of light (God is good), the stiffness in my back (must phone chiropractor). I can take notes, yes, and I can take notes for several subjects at once. I can jot down a brilliant line. “Like a kleptomaniac lecturing to her itchy fingers, ‘thou shalt not steal.’” Then I can return to the thought at hand, thinking about the beautiful journal, I believe I was saying.

Somehow, then, the beautiful journal has become the place for now-and-then entries, entries that are earth-shattering or writings I would not carry in my purse, or fiction ideas or revelations. I pick it up—the first page is that April day when I wrote in the sand with a stick.

The next entry, I prayed for relief for my housing situation, and the following entries are about moving to the summer camp—relief for the housing situation, and a good change. There are some funny entries about a terrible crush I had on a handsome young man—how Scott and I laughed over my fuddy-duddy old self as I nearly fell down each time the sweet fella walked by. (He was also quite, quite a dear person, and we were surrounded at the camp by gorgeous specimens of youth and vigor. We felt alternately “just like them” and like we were their protective, wise parents. These twenty year olds guessed our ages at 28, they said, as their jaws hit the ground with the word “forty.” It was strange. That’s a notebook note to follow up.)

I’ve written often about how angry parenting makes me, how hard it is. At this writing, it's less hard now, less wringing-- though it might not always be so.

So I pick up the beautiful journal, and open the first page, where I wrote “I AM A WRITER” in the sand, three and a half years ago, before I’d typed anything more than a journal page or letter. I found the original story, today. I wrote also, “WHAT I AM DOING IS WORK—MOTHERING IS NOT A LUXURY OR AN EXTRA. IT IS A NECESSITY.” April 2003. July 2006 I wrote that story in a grad school application essay, not having laid eyes on it in three years. It reads exactly as I remember it.

Where have I been, this past three and a half years? Right here, all along, and across the universe and back. I’ve just started reading the beautiful journal, and I wonder what else lies in those pages, now. It’s full of secrets, a letter to me. Someday I will likely burn the thing, likely, although just now I can’t bear to part with any of my writing, ever— it’s like following a trail of artifacts. Maybe I’ll follow the trail of artifacts all afternoon, and see what surprises are within.

Maybe I’ll add some more.