Was it Sacajawea buried here? All the people carrying
burdens to hold over the Pacific ocean. All the ways a horse can lay down its
head. Roads unfurling into what? The forests of Seussian trees; the carpets of
wildflowers: resourceful, jaunty. Outside of Ennis, Montana, the foothills roll
into blue real hills. The real blue hills fold into real blue sky. Big Sky.
Plains and glaciers. Glaciated plains with their screes of debris. Cows roam.
When did you decide on blue and gold? When did you decide on green? The road
unfurls into dilapidated farms. The image of a Ford driving away down the road.
The image of the first timid deer over the doorstep. And they – deer and
antelope and foxes – flushing out onto roads or wandering the stalks of corn.
The real cowboys with their round chew silhouettes; rubbed raw, back pocket.
And you can still be born and still go to high school and still die in these
places. The ladies used to come and look in consternation at the lakes,
fanning. You can see where the photographers brought their plate glass and
curtains thousands of feet up. A bear is above you; the sunset’s unfurling
below. The sunset is a cloud threading its hand over the crags. The sunset is
the ring of blood on the trees. The bones of original ancestors lie here. The
Blackfeet called this the backbone of the world. Even Sacajawea was buried
here. Even she.
This collection intrigued me and I stuck with it, though in the end, it didn't stick to my ribs or blaze through with an unforgettable line. I think the more colloquial, story-telling prose poems were the most accessible of the collection, though they, too, seemed to deliberately elude a complete grasp.
I admit that by the end of this large collection of stories, I was praying to myself, "please don't go crazy, please don't go crazy." Madness, obsessive thoughts, anxiety, drug use, familial death, and physical disfigurements all feature heavily in these dark pieces, all originally published by 1970. These are stories of their time, too: racial integration, counterculture in conflict with suburbia, trapped housewives, the decline of Detroit.
"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" is by far the most famous story here, and it's really not overrated, in my opinion. I would group it among the most perfect, unsettling short stories written in the past 100 years. It's a distinctly American classic. Another classic would be "How I Contemplated the World from the Detroit House of Corrections and Began My Life Over Again." Love and sexuality loom as disruptive forces for the men and women of these stories, especially the women. Characters are paralyzed in adulterous hell or transfixed in moments of despair over a life that stretches predictably ahead. On the other side, those who choose the bohemian way fare no better. They are flying dangerously free, unmoored and despised.
Oates' stories depict a culture at a crossroads and railing within it. The smoothness of artistic production can be ripped apart by the intrusion of the other. The burden of performing personality is a sentence of permanent psychic anxiety.
From a stylistic standpoint, these are also worthwhile fictional experiments. Rather than conventional plots, many of the stories in this collection rely on snapshots in time of the same character. Sometimes, they are told backward. Sometimes, groupings of experience and advancing psychological states are captured beneath obtuse or leading subject headings. I enjoyed this organizational ingenuity and the way Oates' distinctive prose lingers on mental states and character impressions. Nothing is described dispassionately; in contrast, everything is experienced as intense, jarring, and grating on the senses. This technique does a good job in creating unease for the reader and illuminating the interiors of Oates almost uniformly troubled characters.
This was my first time reading Oates at length, but I definitely would like to read more of her fiction. I feel after completing The Wheel of Love that I've experienced that time period more viscerally than I have before.
I am thinking over a phrase of Annie Dillard's this morning, encountered in her collection of meditations on writing, appropriately titled The Writing Life. "There is no shortage of good days," she writes. "It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days lived in the senses is not enough. The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage sweet. Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading -- that is a good life."
It's an uncomfortably wise insight. Although I have never confused sensation-seeking with writerly preparation, it has nevertheless been an underlying motivator in many things I have done. I always feel an anxiety about missing things, or allowing experiences to remain undiscovered. In Jackson, it is some mythical canyon that haunts me: somehow obscure and crystalline; a field of wildflowers where no one is walking; a view from so high, that as I wrote once, "I can feel the cold on my eyes." Other places, it is about the potential of art, the potential of hitting just the right point of intoxication on food or wine, the potential that some person hides behind one of many turned shoulders, and that person has keys to unlock any number of things. It's what leaves me hungrily scanning the walls of cathedrals, looking for the original, homely paintwork, obsessed with even the humblest joints of the ceilings. I'd hate to think I missed it.
I think my assumption has always been that these moments of beauty will accrete, one layer of sand to the next, to make my soul altogether something fine and glittering, honed carefully and curated as I go. And yet, I often write so little of it. Why, I wonder.
Summer is upon us now, with its exquisite songbirds and trails, cleared at last of snow. In mid-May, it seemed that all the aspens and cottonwoods turned green at once. I thought of it as a susurration of some kind, completely undetectable to human ears, but nevertheless communicating spring through the groves, vibrating the landscape into a new incarnation of being. The green was so new; the operation itself so delicate. A miracle was gifted in a day, but a quotidian miracle, too, happening each May in a sudden sweep. And then summer. And then the sun and the obstinate eggshell blue.
It is a time of golden water in the evenings, and green trees etched in gold around it. The yellow of balsamroot flowers and the sentinels of violet lupine and monk's hood. Baby elk, tremulous on newly-jointed legs; a rather fat and pleased-with-himself marmot, like a caricature of an English friar; a miniscule duck who fed at the edge of a quiet stream, buoyantly bobbing up after each quarry.
A hard thing it is, to revise, when all of this is happening outside. The outdoors are a constant imprecation to leave the room and abandon the work. That mythical canyon taunts like a mirage. But ho hum, another chance to gather strength and plug along anyway. To remember the life of the spirit. So many moments of muster, and then finally, I write about this color of green at last, and let go of that last nagging sensation, returning concentration to where it ought to be.
This morning, I couldn't sleep, so once more, I pulled out the warm slab of my laptop, and let its screen keep me company in that early hour (early for me, anyway), as the light of a new day spread across the walls and the floors.
Ten minutes ago, my wonderful sister and her wonderful boyfriend Sam brought me a mimosa and breakfast in bed (woot!) . Their timing couldn't have been better, because just moments before, I wrote the last sentence of my novel draft. Time to celebrate the next step, a new year, and a new decade.
It feels a little surreal and emotional. Soon, we will be packing up and heading for two days of relaxation in Montana. I'm bringing books, but not my book. Of course, there is still work to do. Hello, revision and rewrites! But for now, I'm settled in with the happiness of being done and leaving behind this stage for a new one, just as my character did an hour ago, crossing into her imagined future and spinning out into the ether of narrative possibility.
I want to toast my beautiful, supportive family and my wonderful friends and cheerleaders. I am so lucky to have you along on this ride. Your love, even from afar, gives me faith in myself and humankind in general. See, I told you this was the year of feeling feelings!
Okay, it's party time. Raising a glass to all of you!
The best writers truly love people. I mean, really, why write fiction if you don't? Saunders' humanism, compassion, and empathy stand out on every page, as does his absolutely delightful facility with language play, and the voices in our heads. His imagined fantasies within his characters' inner monologues are completely hilarious, while at the same time being that rare something -- true. I laughed out loud many times while reading this collection, and the title story had me weeping. Most of these stories are five star stories, but since not all of them were at the same level, I went with four stars overall. Highly recommended!
As I pondered what my theme would be for 2013, a friend told me about her own goal-making for the upcoming year, which is based around aiming for desired feelings rather than achievement-oriented goals. I did some poking around, and liked what I saw. Happiness is never the sum of things we check off our list, but rather the product of how situations make us feel. It's not that accomplishing our goals does not bring happiness, but goals are not just a phrase. For instance, goals of my past like "finish my thesis" were not happy-making in and of themselves -- the attendant emotions of pride and accomplishment were. Not to mention, there are plenty of accomplishments or things we have finished that haven't made us happy at all. (Hmmm...actually, completing my thesis may be among those).
I know I have a lot to decide this year, especially when the book is finished. Where will I live? How will I construct that life? What are things going to look like, wherever that may be? If I stated it to myself flatly as "Figure out where to live and how to do that," I know I would instantly feel panicked and destined to fail. Instead, I want to take a page from Rilke's book and live the questions themselves. I want to pay attention to how things make me feel, and no rationalizing, no neurotic mental backbends -- I want to go from there. The past, as ever, provides a fruitful place to mine. As I drove home on what has become my Rumination Road two days ago, I listened to this song, and thought back over the past year and the moments where I felt truly happy and at peace...or one, or both. I got choked up and turned down a side road, and kept thinking. I listened to the song again. And then, lighter, I drove home. In order to start thinking about what I want to embrace this year, here are the memories that embraced me first. In no particular order, my Greatest Hits of 2012:
1. Standing in bare feet in a 1960's cocktail dress on my 29th birthday, eating cake with a spoon straight out of the pan with so many Seattle friends around me.
2. Skiing in the first 10k ski race I had done in 10 years (thanks, Becky!).
3. Singing mournful country ballads in a two-person karaoke room with Elizabeth on Valentine's Day. Also, the surreal moment of singing "Ring of Fire" a couple of octaves higher in the room by myself, all full of ghostly reverberation.
4. Running in bare feet around the Cal Anderson Park baseball diamond on the night of Michelle's bachelorette party. That was springy, yo!
5. Camping with my Dad in Idaho on the shores of Lake Coeur d'Alene the night I left Seattle.
6. My mom and sister and I getting serious about Easter Brunch in Yosemite. I had seven mini-desserts. Dinner and conversation with one of my oldest friends in Oakland a couple of nights before.
7. Running on the beach in La Push during one of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen.
8. Maggie and I taking the ferry to Bainbridge Island, walking ourselves to a sunny pub, and then treating ourselves to a wine tasting before ferrying back.
9. Sitting on a crinkly tarp in the middle of the woods, quieted down like middle schoolers, as we listened to a midnight troubadour at Doe Bay. (Trixie!)
10. Going on an 8-mile hike by myself and standing absolutely alone at a trail crossroads as the late afternoon light flared from behind Mount Moran. True gratitude.
11. Being whipped by the wind at the top of Jackson Peak with the whole valley spread out below, and good company.
12. Sitting on a sunny patio, post-Pride parade.
13. Fresh tomatoes and green beans and a glass of wine with my parents on our back deck.
14. Knowing that my family loved me during a hard time. Probably the most important one of all.
15. Holding my Grandaddy's hand and seeing my family in Ohio.
16. Dancing wildly with my college friends at my friends' Erin & Mike's wedding, with my best friend and her husband there, too. All staying in a hotel room together.
17. Every time I turn a corner and see the Tetons.
18. Rambling, long phone conversations while out for walks. You know who you are, ladies!
19. Bluebird skiing with my brother.
20. The aspens turning colors in the fall. Driving the curve of Oxbow Bend.
21. Treat Yoself days.
22. Leisurely Cinco de Mayo tastiness and conversation at the Owlery.
23. Shivasana, and in a similar vein of peacefulness, W.G. Sebald and compline at St. Mark's.
24. Cracking ice on the Snake River at the first hint of winter. Watching the fish dart past even in the cold.
25. Picnicking at Gasworks with dear friends on one of my last evenings in the Northwest.
Honestly, I could go on and on...which begins to feel self-indulgent. I mean we're already up to 25 here! And I've probably forgotten some, too. Lucky to have gathered so many special times together, like picking up smooth stones and sea glass. Common themes to all of this slip-slide through memories of the last year? Friends. Family. Connectedness. Meditation. Nature. Silence. Love. Those are the feelings I need to seek out again, no matter where I go. Here's to finding the way.
I am currently backing up my hard drive. You mean, you've had a novel on your laptop, 6 years' worth of writing, photographs, music...and your laptop is from 2006 and incredibly slow...and you've never once backed it up? Nope. Haven't. Stop looking at me weird. Although, the novel has been living in Dropbox since the spring, and I have used one of those online back-up thingamabobs. I remain a technology neophyte in many ways.
A task such as backing up one's laptop always leads to the most delightful writerly navel-gazing. In succession, I opened languishing Word documents entitled "Dream Transcripts," "The Savage Dentist," and "Even the sound of cars driving by is hurtful after the end of a relationship." Raw. Ouch. Like the true hoarder I am, I suddenly felt pained to even transfer these long-forgotten and yet obviously beloved documents to the external hard drive in order to delete them from the laptop and thus free up much-needed memory. I suppose, at heart, every hoarder feels a sense of psychological ease in knowing that something will stay and live where it has always lived, instead of the "banishment" of storage, deletion, or (unspeakable!) actually throwing it away. This exact drama had a preview as I felt pangs thinking of storing even one box of books or papers in my parents' garage, despite the fact that I haven't yet scratched the surface of unpacking them. I had bought that used copy of W.H. Auden's Selected Poems, and now, in the dead of winter, on CHRISTMAS DAY, a rat was probably going to chew through its center, and then I would have never really read Auden, and his Modernist words would be masticated and forever lost to me. This line of thinking would occur with each book.
Another thing I save with a hoarders' obsession are the drafts of stories that I wrote in grad school and submitted to workshops. I save every single copy that was annotated by professors and fellow students: many covered with loopy script, and even personal, page-long comments sheets addressed as letters. Same thing goes for the comments my writers' group of 3 years in Seattle was kind enough to bestow upon me. The last time I really looked at some of these comments--some dating from the very first quarter of grad school--it struck me that in that period of my life, I received the most validation and well-wishing and good old-fashioned understanding of my writing than at any other time before or since. I am aware of the flurry of critiques that surround MFA programs, and I have found myself on both sides of the debate. Still, it is a special time: when you are a serious person in a serious city, writing late into the night, printing out multiple copies, receiving engaged attention, even when it is salted liberally with criticism. For me, it was a time that made sense. Not in every way. But in one important way. Each day, I do the thing I am best at doing. Each day, others witness it. Others care. I cared about them, too. Some of the writers I worked with at the University of Washington became my dearest friends (holla!) and through its hive of networking, I connected with the three fabulously talented women who traded work informally with me for several years. Some of my colleagues wrote indelible stories and poems that I still think about, even if it has been years since I've seen them.
When I speak of the "ugly truth," what I mean is that, as any writer knows, the image of Hemingway and Fitzgerald drinking gin fizzes at a cafe table in Paris while also casually writing masterpieces on their napkins and/or moleskin journals is simply not a real thing that occurs. Take me, for example--maybe not writing a masterpiece, but plugging away nevertheless. Mostly, I am unglamorously dressed. (The nice thing about living in a cold place is that you can wear a hat all the time). I write on a Saturday night. My dog seems confused by what I am doing. I dream about my characters more than real people I know. I set aside a day of unfettered writing and end up reading a book about the history of marriage until noon. I queue up the novel and then hear the opening score to Downtown Abbey downstairs and spring from my bed in a second. Truly Pavlovian. I write. And also, I don't write. Or I write content for jobs, which are not novel-related. The secret shame about working on a big project is that you've said "Goodbye! I am off to make my fortune!" and you have been waved off and embraced and supported. And every day is a litmus test as to your commitment to the goal. Some are banner days, and some are struggles--especially that old, beastly struggle of the will.
So, this is where I get to the "thank you" part. Sometimes, I barely recognize myself. Like an adolescent in limbo, I no longer live on my own (aka with the best roommate in the history of the world, ever); I no longer go out much; I no longer dress up (although I wear waaayyyy more hats); my evening calendar is often bare; I watch more television than I have in almost 10 years (unfortunate confession, but the fact that a show called "Duck Dynasty" exists has sadly not escaped my notice); I read about the same amount, but with a sense of guilt that I really ought to be writing my own words; I no longer report to the same office at the same time every day (give or take an hour); I no longer see the majority of the people that have provided my everything-or-close-to-it for the past seven years. It's hard to know, without enough perspective, if all of these changes are bad or good, although certainly none of them have to be permanent. I am not unhappy. Sometimes, I feel happier than ever. But, still. Often I am confused and discouraged and demoralized, traded off equally with being ecstatic and purposeful and hopeful. I suppose there is no way to know what this time has meant until it is over, and the novel is done. And even then, so much is uncertain.
So, thank you, friends from near and far. And family, too (of course). Every time you ask me how my novel is going, or we talk novel-shop, you comment on my blog, or you tell me that what I am doing is inspiring to you, it adds one more drop to the bucket of this is a time that makes sense. Every time we talk in general, whatever it's about, my heart is gladdened and lightened. The work is made real. It seems less like the undertaking of an underemployed 29-year-old woman in her pajamas, and more like a valid project, and a dream that is worthwhile to pursue. Obviously I wouldn't have come to Jackson if I didn't already believe that, but as obstacles rear themselves along the way, it is still heartening to remember. I am so fortunate to have this time, to have the support to make it happen, and to have all of you. Thank you. Even though I am thousands of miles away, I could not do this without you.
P.S. Miss you. Love living vicariously through all of your news and adventures!
After the passing of poet Jack Gilbert, my friend Jessica wrote a beautiful tribute to him on her blog, and mentioned that his Paris Review interview was one of her favorites. Intrigued, I read it myself, and it's full of wisdom and just the kind of love we should wish from great artists. Here is my favorite quote:
"I think serious poems should make something happen that’s not correct or entertaining or clever. I want something that matters to my heart, and I don’t mean “Linda left me.” I don’t want that. I’ll write that poem, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about being in danger—as we all are—of dying. How can you spend your life on games or intricately accomplished things? And politics? Politics is fine. There’s a place to care for the injustice of the world, but that’s not what the poem is about. The poem is about the heart. Not the heart as in “I’m in love” or “my girl cheated on me”—I mean the conscious heart, the fact that we are the only things in the entire universe that know true consciousness. We’re the only things—leaving religion out of it—we’re the only things in the world that know spring is coming." --Jack Gilbert
We are also the only things in the entire universe who know winter is coming.
It seems only yesterday that I was rhapsodizing about autumn. Then this happened:
You may be able to make out the Wyoming flag flapping in the breeze. A metallic edge is in the air and crystals are forming on our windshields at night. In high school, I drove my sister to school in the mornings and we were always running so late (totally my fault) that I would scrape the tiniest little square using my driver's license and then force her to roll down the window and watch the edge of the road as we careened into the school parking lot and tried to make it to class before the 7:55 bell. We were successful about 50% of the time. Scraping a windshield in 10 degree weather on a dark, moonless morning with snow clogging the bottom of your flats? Probably not the most romantic part of Wyoming. But, of course, even with the trees bared and the grasses grayed, a beauty of desolation remains.
In the past two weeks, a lot of things have happened, some of which I am choosing not to write about here. I visited my grandfather and family in Dayton, Ohio; I started reading a book about the tracing of a family heritage through objects. I started writing a children's book. I wrote a description of Seymour, Indiana for a hotels website. I want to write at length about stories and families and the beautiful sculptures of glass, light, and stainless steel that I saw at the Dayton Art Museum. Several friends have been blessed with new joys, and some have met new griefs. And, the other things that have happened...well, they have renewed my gratitude for life and for the people I love in ways I could not have imagined. It truly is a gift, this life, and being able to see it as a gift...well, at the risk of sounding trite, that's a gift, too.
Also, I got a library card.
One thing I love about my life here is the repetition of my walks. Readers of this blog may even notice that many photographs are taken from the same areas. Each time I tackle Game Creek or Cache Creek or what is fondly known in town as "the high school butte," I feel rewarded with the incremental changes to the landscape I see. Geese were migrating, and now four swans are flapping by like white linen on a windy day. No more two-stepping herons in the field; but on a still night, the coyotes whine. The yellow leaves I love are also gone, but in their place are bundles of ice, binding the grass together in little clumps, little secrets. The stars, even, seem colder and more inscrutable. The characters in my book feel ignored; they, too, are cold and fractious and on edge. That's what this in-between season is all about. It's about the portent of changes, and oddly, amidst the tumult, about settling in. It will be a long winter. Better keep writing. Better keep walking. Better keep pausing to say thank you, under my breath, and yet loud enough for the world to hear.
I am a writer of fiction and essays with an abiding interest in literature by and about women. My work has been nominated for inclusion in the Best New American Voices anthology, a Pushcart Prize, a four-time finalist in the FENCE/Summer Literary Seminars annual contest, and has been featured in Quick Fiction, City Arts Magazine, Hoarse Quarterly, Pacifica Literary Review, District, & Wigleaf. In August, I left Seattle for Wyoming with the goal of finishing my novel. Please feel free to contact me at kirstenruewrites@gmail.com.
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