On Driving Western Roads

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. 

Green Vibrations

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.

Marking Time With Words

Spring is a brown time in Wyoming. I noticed this anew as my plane flew low over the hills two days ago. Each time, I can pick out the road that curves against the bluffs south of town, and then we fly over one of the low hills that marks my own neighborhood, over the entirety of the town grid, and touch down--spectacularly--at the base of the snowcapped Tetons. That's what I noticed, however, as we flew over: a neverending swath of brown, and all the mountains still encased in snow. Bison welcomed me back, as did an intrepid weasel that somehow snuck into our suburban home, crept into my room, and, in illustration of every possible rodent horror story, hopped right onto the bed. This is the west, after all.

I was flying back from Seattle, my home of seven years, and where I had spent two luxurious weeks visiting with friends, celebrating a wedding, and remembering the riot of spring. Cherry blossoms, dogwoods, tulips, magnolias. Spring in Seattle is a time of carpet petals and palm-sized camellia flowers that fall, often unblemished, directly to the grass. It is a time of chill winds and spitting rain and oddly timed sunbreaks, too, but I couldn't help but feel that I'd picked an almost tropical locale as snow continued to drift in my hometown and the thermometer dropped back down to winter temperatures.

What does it feel like to be back in Seattle? It's an odd disjunction--more familiar to me in many senses than my life in Jackson, and yet the tugs of loyalty to Wyoming were there, too, as if, in choosing to spend these months in the mountains, I must swear fealty again to my vision, even as the warmth of my friends and the verdant scenery were things I could slip back into so naturally. I caught up with my friend Jessica, who now makes her home in the Bay Area after years spent in Seattle as well, and she remarked that visiting the city now feels like it once did to visit her hometown. This seems about right: the instant, comforting embrace of the known, not tinged by nostalgia, but rather by a deep sense of recognition. A marvel over what has changed, and yet an ease with what has not been forgotten: the buses I take, where we should choose a restaurant, where I should buy a book of poetry.

It's been months since I've ridden buses, and while I sat on one reading, I realized that the city had created a mode of thought for me in the rhythm of how I got from place to place; in the cadence of my walking, in my notation of businesses I passed, in my constant state of being around others in public spaces, and yet often burrowed into my own solitude. It was the same as I rode the bus from Portland to Seattle on a Sunday evening, a continuing drama of glowering clouds, rainbows, and sun outside the windows. I tried to take a picture of the clouds out of the glass, but I ended up taking one with the strip of setting sun from the opposite aisle smeared along the bottom of the frame. Like a double exposure or two counterpanes, tissue-thin, existing side by side. This was the feeling of being in Seattle. My old life close enough to taste and easy enough to resume, my new one waiting anxiously, afraid of being abandoned.

And yet. Part of living in Jackson feels like coming back to the beginning in the best way. Here, I have found new ways to think, too. In cars, playing my music and singing along like a banshee. On long, aimless walks while our dog Iris bounds unbidden into fields to chase the birds. In the feeling of electricity whenever a coyote howl pierces the dead of night or yes, even when a weasel sneaks into the house and brings everything that is outside, inside. I know the big question hangs there, swollen with the accumulation of months: Where will you go? And the truth is, I still don't know. I suppose I am still living the questions. I suppose my journey is meant to go a little further. At least the scenery will not disappoint. And at least I am reminded of the dear friends who support me and mean so much to me and whose much-needed company will no doubt buoy me through the rest of this month and beyond.

I am also turning 30 a week from today. It's a milestone that I want to meet with a marker. This week, I will complete my book. So, when I say I am marking time with words, I mean it very explicitly. This is the week. I will be holing myself up for as long as it takes so that I can emerge on the dawning day of my next decade and know that one thing I did in my twenties was finish my book. I will put the dot at the bottom of that question mark. I will move to the next sentence. And then, it will be time to move onto living another question, to finding another path in the trees.

Backward Glance

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.

Brushstrokes

One more day left in the Year of Being Brave.  Yesterday, I got out of bed and looked out the window and was shocked into full consciousness by the sight of a little red-breasted bird sitting on one of the crystalline branches right in front of me.  That little streak of red on an otherwise white, glittering world reminded me that so much of winter in Wyoming lies in brushstrokes: the planar snow, the dusky shadows of the trees, the days that lack dimension as layer of layer of snow fold down vs. the days that  are etched in true bluebird blue.  Those days dawn with an almost shocking clarity.  When I lived in Seattle, those skies -- so full of pigment -- were one of the main things I missed about home.  The dense, mysterious snowstorms have their own beauty, however, not least being the anticipation of skiing fresh powder...

It's time to set a goal for next year, but I'm not sure what it will be yet.  Last year, it came to me on a wan, sunny morning as I sat on a bench on Orcas Island, facing the water.  That's when The Year of Being Brave declared itself as the goal and the mission for 2012.  Like anything, the grandiose title was truly a product of incremental changes and decisions, as well as setbacks, because, well, that's life, isn't it?  This year has tested me in ways that I couldn't have imagined: some of it has led me to immense happiness and pride, and some to sadness and discouragement.  One of the oddest things that occurred was that life began to imitate art, the very art I'd set out to create.  It's a bit eerie.  Someday I'd love to share that story, but first things first: the book.

I tabulated today, and the first draft is very close to done.  Of course, after that there will be days and weeks and months (??!?) of polishing and reconfiguring and quilting together the two narratives.  But the actual writing part is definitely on the wane.  At this point, I am happy to report that I am as comfortable in the skin of my second character as I was with my first.  If anything, she has become my virtual stand-in -- the more neutral, dispassionate voice.  I wrote a love scene for her today and felt almost suspicious of myself.  Was I subconsciously writing it for myself?  Hard to say.  I have learned through this process that spending so much time with one work is often glorious rather than limiting.  So much expansion is possible, so many tangents (even if I need to edit them out later).  Overall, the process is more freeing than expected.  So, yay!  Onwards...

Friends, so many of you have accomplished amazing feats this year.  What are your goals and purposes for the coming year?  I'd love to hear.  In the meantime, I'll wait for that stroke of clarity that will hopefully arrive on the morning of January 1.  

They All Want to Play Hamlet

My friend and I were discussing the production of "Hamlet" we'd seen two weeks ago, and how we'd continued to probe it, remembering versions we'd seen in the past and the thoughts we'd had reading the text as younger versions of ourselves. As young women, we had fixated on the doomed romance of Hamlet and Ophelia. Ten years later, however, I identify far more with Hamlet himself and his classic wavering between thought and action; stunted resolve, and distrust of thought itself. To think and to do: these strike me as two of the greatest challenges of my twenties. The self emerges slowly, many-pointed. The world the self desires exists across a gap that can only be crossed through action, but how to turn those half-formed desires and images into the right action? That can also be the question. Of course, the character of Hamlet is far, far deeper than the mere action vs. inaction dilemma. In fact, discussing him, and how we might self-importantly identify with him, led my friend to introduce me to the following delightful poem by Carl Sandburg:

THEY all want to play Hamlet./They have not exactly seen their fathers killed/Nor their mothers in a frame-up to kill,/Nor an Ophelia dying with a dust gagging the heart,/Not exactly the spinning circles of singing golden spiders,/Not exactly this have they got at nor the meaning of flowers—O flowers, /flowers slung by a dancing girl—in the saddest play the/inkfish, Shakespeare, ever wrote;/Yet they all want to play Hamlet because it is sad like all actors are sad/and to stand by an open grave with a joker’s skull in the hand and then to say/ over slow and say over slow wise, keen, beautiful words masking a heart/that’s breaking, breaking,/This is something that calls and calls to their blood./They are acting when they talk about it and they know it is acting to be/particular about it and yet: They all want to play Hamlet.

Our hearts are breaking, breaking, and we are sad like all writers are sad. Self-importance pops, fizzes away: a deflated balloon. Still, it's interesting to consider how our relationship to texts and the characters therein change over time--in concert with our own situations in life, our richening perspectives. Once I have children, will I identify more with the blustering Polonius or the aching, mistake-riddled Gertrude?

I remember that I used to root for a reunion between Arthur Dimmesdale and Hester Prynne; now it seems preposterous that she could even tolerate his cowardly form in the first place. Jean Rhys has given me new perspective on the mad woman in the attic and her perceived "threat." I've realized that there aren't that many interesting women in The Lord of the Rings. I get bored with love stories. "But what's your job?" I feel I want to ask. I'm no longer so perturbed by Dickensian coincidence: coincidences can be magical, after all, and that's sometimes good leavening to serious bread.

So, my question is this: How has your relationship changed towards some of the beloved books and characters of your youth?

(poem published in 1922, found online here: http://www.bartleby.com/231/0206.html; image credit: http://www.theatrehistory.com/british/art_of_hamlet.html, Hamlet and Ophelia by Dante Gabriel Rossetti)