A Month of Sundays

Definitely, it was a woman of hearth and home who first spoke the phrase, “a month of Sundays” – and I imagine she was toiling at the hearth on that fine day of rest, baking and bubbling the traditional foods for the typical Sunday feast at the end of a week of toil – and this particular Sunday was at the beginning of a holiday season such as this one, in which family would be home, resting and eating and enjoying the fruits of the end of a season of toil and harvest – and this woman, I imagine, would be happy to see her family but yet she would be in quiet contemplation about the work to be done while kneading her batch of bread and keeping an eye on the bubbling pot of stew, looking out the window at untread fields of snow – anticipating not only the forthcoming meal but the nextcoming meal and the one after that and the day after that – 89 to go after this one, she would think in disbelief while putting pans of bread up to rise – and then at some point, though she had been quiet till now, her thoughts would boil over into voice, “And ‘twill be a month of Sundays before me now . . . “

But someone heard her – perhaps a precocious, thoughtful son or grandson heard her from his sleeping loft – and the literary flavor of that phrase struck him for he had noticed her toil on this day of rest for quite some time – and I don’t know how, but at some point, as I imagine, a Shakespeare or a Dickens picked up on the phrase – for they say that you could not pass Dickens on the street but what you, or some part of you, would end up in a book of his; and of course Shakespeare’s best genius was for listening and watching and stealing bits and pieces of all that had gone before him and placing it heroically in the here and now – and so I am going to predict that she, a woman of the hearth, was the first to speak that phrase while kneading bread on a Sunday at the beginning of a long holiday season – and that someone else, with time on their hands, had repeated it or written it down, and somehow it meandered its way to be the catchphrase we say today . . .

Now, I suppose that I could google that phrase right now and find something of its meaning and origins entirely different from my imaginings . . . but that would render unnecessary this short break I take on a Sunday morning to write down this simple contemplation of mine . . . which would make the kneading of my own bread to be no more than toilsome kneading . . . and the spell of she and I together – baking and writing in this kitchen on the first Sunday of a month of them – to be broken.

This, Which I Call Mine

I made the deliberate decision to not write yesterday – and that is something I fully intend to incorporate into my writing schedule – time off. My back gave me that signal – an old ache in the place where wings used to be attached. I woke up in the morning thinking such an image – It hurts just where my wings used to be . . .

Instead I took an extra long walk, fed my sourdough pets, and took my inner writer on a field trip to the Library of Virginia for a book talk and signing by author Woody Holton who has just published a non-stuffy biography of Abigail Adams. I always love these book talks – authors who seem ordinary and plain as they talk about their book and, more importantly, about their struggles in writing the book. Often the insights they gain while struggling to write the book are far more interesting to me than the distilled and dressed up version of the book itself. After buying the book, I often can’t find all that good, behind the scenes stuff they talked about.

He spent years reading the thousands of letters written and received by Abigail – at least 1,500 between her and her husband, John Adams, and thousands more to and from others close to her. He said he was struck  one day, years into the project, by the oft repeated phrase she used in many letters to her husband, nieces, sisters, friends, sons and daughters -- This money which I call mine.

Married women were not allowed to own property or money. Her husband, second President of the United States, told her he would be the laughingstock of the Republic if he suggested the laws be otherwise. He called her “saucy” and “a wit” for speaking such a thing. She was allowed “pocket money” to run the household during periods when her husband was in England (once he stayed there 5 years). Unbeknownst to John, a conservative investor, she had persuaded his investor to buy government bonds with some of her pocket money – yielding 25 percent profit as compared to her husband’s 1 percent profit in land he bought and sold. Much of Abigail’s profit was given to women in similar positions – married sisters, nieces, grown daughters. Once her sister wrote back in gratitude – “Sometimes it is best that the right hand not know what the left hand is doing.”

When Abigail became ill, she sat down to write a will – also a thing which married women were not allowed to do since of course they had no property to will. By that time, in spite of what she had given away, she had amassed $5,000 in “pocket money,” well over $100,000 in today’s terms, according to the author. She willed virtually all of her money to women – daughters, nieces, sisters-in-law, daughters-in-law (leaving out her own two sons whom she had financed through Harvard and who ultimately died of alcoholism), and a few other women whom she deemed ought to have their own money to do as they pleased.

Her husband had the right to destroy the will since it was not a legal document (his signature was not on it) and since she had no property to will – but instead he chose to let the will stand. Of those women to whom she bequeathed money, not one of them gave the money to their own husbands as would have been legal and proper at the time.

She could not change the law, and so she defied the law -- that's what the author said.  Soon after her death – I don't recall how long – the laws were changed – and in many ways I am the richer for having taken myself to this wonderful book talk about a saucy woman, Abigail Adams.

A Pen in Hand

Eager for Monday morning, the reverse of what most people might feel, eager for getting back to that thing I was saying last week about this time. I’m two-thirds of the way through an essay/chapter called “The Way to Hold a Pen.” There’s more to it than one might think -- and not necessarily what it seems.

Went outside early this a.m. to fetch the newspaper to begin the day . . . The air was pink – that’s the only way to describe it – the air was pink – so I came back in the house and got on my shoes and coat – and I took a walk down to the pond where I go – it’s a little neighborhood Walden pond save for the occasional airplane overhead and the din of distant traffic through a barrier of trees – but then again, Walden was besieged by a train nearby, not so secluded as we’ve been led to believe – and so I walked around the pond at 7 a.m., before anyone in the house knew I was missing.  I saw a tree with a dozen or so worn out leaves, one leaf tottering at the end of each bare branch. It looked so comical to me at that time of the day in the pink air – like an old man with a few short hairs left atop his pink head.

But now I’m back and I’ve done my journal warm-up writing – so much longer than I thought it would be – and not about anything I thought it would be – but there was an idea for another thing I might use later – nothing is ever lost in writing. I’ve learned that. I might ramble and ramble about narcissus bulbs for example, and the need to get them buried in gravel today so they’ll bloom by Christmas, but at the end of all that rambling I see a thing I can use for my book – if not now, then certainly later . . . and so the walk and the ramble become worthwhile.

This is where I took a break from this blog to run back down to the pond, in a light rain, to grab a picture of the tottering leaves before they succumb – already less than I saw in the pink air of the morning.  The pack of men with their noisy leaf blowers . . . what did they think of the woman running with her camera and pen in hand? 

Now I finish the thing I was saying last week about how to hold a pen -- and I’ll file away my fresh idea for another day . . .

The Season Upon Me

This Monday  has the feeling of "bothersomeness."  I want to write a new chapter/essay today, want to write my journal pages, want to publish a blog -- but it all comes as a bother between ordering Christmas and birthday presents while researching the star-ratings of other items . . . making a Thanksgiving grocery list . . . watching disappointed birds peck around at nearly empty feeders . . . noting wet leaves layering themselves like beds of mica. All these lists I write. I come back to the table of my atelier to really write, assuring myself of two safe hours, but my mind won't buy the promise.

So I do what I've learned to do when I can't sit down long enough to write so much as a poem much less an essay/chapter -- I grind wheat berries into flour . . . which will make the bread . . . which will enable the crumb . . . which will become the dressing . . . that stuffs the bird . . . that feeds the family.  So much work going from hard wheat berry to moist stuffing -- and not because it's so much tastier or superior or even thriftier than a boxed mix of dried bread crumbs and herbs -- but because I am doomed to suffer small amazements such as the transformation of hard winter wheat into nourishing bread.  I think about writing while I work . . . about how to transform harsh experience into words that might someday feed.

I always wax poetic when I run my open palm through a bin of amber wheat berries – individual kernels so hard and unyielding on their own – yet fluid and fragrant in the collective sense.  I wish I knew the name of my farmer who grew this hard winter wheat for me, someone in Montana . . . my poem would be complete.

Yes, I'd rather be writing.  But the collective anticipation of the season has got me in its gulf -- me, one leaf in the sweep of a season -- tossed and turned upside down, inside out, to where the thing I want to do is a big bother . . . and so I do the thing that enables me to think about it.

This Little Monument

I have never found a decent pen to work with – like the blacksmith having no good hammer – like the cobbler having no good stool or leather. Just this morning I tossed three pens with a dart-throwing motion into the trash can, my frustration finally taking action. I am so tired of this quest for a good pen.  So I'm using a pencil I rediscovered in my drawer, the Palomino 2B, supposedly the next best thing to the now collectible but defunct Blackwing 602 which Steinbeck had sense enough to choose after a two-month pencil search before beginning his East of Eden. Once Steinbeck determined the Blackwing was worthy of his project (though they were the most expensive pencil at the time, 50 cents each), he ordered four dozen of those graphite tools per month – worth a medium sized fortune today when considering that each pencil might go for $35-$50 on eBay.

He wrote this to his editor while on chapter four of East of Eden: “I just looked up and saw how different my handwriting is from day to day. I think I am writing much faster today than I did yesterday. That gives a sharpness to the letter. And also I have found a new kind of pencil – the best I have ever had. Of course it costs three times as much too but it is black and soft but doesn’t break off. I think I will always use these. They are called Blackwings and they really glide over the paper. And brother, they have some gliding to do before I am finished. Now to the work.”

They say this Palomino 2B (or the HB, but not the B, H, or 2H) is the next best thing to the Blackwing 602 which went out of production in 1998 when the eraser crimping machine broke. It’s not as waxy across the page, I've noticed; I have to sharpen it after every paragraph, and the smell is not so transporting -- even though they say it's made of California cedar – but it’s smooth, soft and dark, and better than all the pens I’ve tried. I'm ordering one dozen Palomino 2B pencils today -- about a dollar each including the postage -- and I'll write with pencils from now on.  

I’ve got a few Blackwings I’ve procured for myself or received as gifts over the years -- and I've always used them because I believe a collectible is not worth anything if you can't enjoy it -- so I’ve got several that are half-used or reduced to stubbles.  But – I enjoyed them. It's truly the best pencil ever made, smelling of strong cedar and long ago times when freshly caught salmon was smoked on freshly felled wood and leaves. I can hear drum beats when I use the Blackwing 602 . . .

I leave these stubbles to lie around my house where I might see them or pick them up for use as accent writing – that is, underlining or making brackets and stars in books I’m reading along the way.  Sometimes I just sniff them. And I always remember that I enjoyed these pencils – much as an old man might look at portraits of women he has known, or maybe at cigar boxes he has been left to ponder – or as an old woman might look at the tins of fine tea she has sipped of a Sunday afternoon . . .

I remember when cleaning out the kitchen cupboards of my mother’s house soon after she had died, and I saw a little monument of tea saucers which she had hidden all the way in the back corner of an uppermost shelf – they were wrapped in a bit of yellowed tissue paper, probably from a gift she'd received nearly 40 years before – and I unwrapped that little monument of saucers, shuffled through them with two hands and carefully spread them out like a game of solitaire upon the kitchen countertop in front of me – and I saw the designs of each, like seeing photos of deceased relatives, their familiar features and would-be smiles coming to life within memory – and I looked up to see if there were any cups to match – and there weren’t – and that is when all became clear to me, that my mother had used her fine English bone china teacups in the same way I used my Blackwing 602’s – to enjoy them. They were the only nice things she ever had, gifts from my father for each of the 39 wedding anniversaries they had together before he died.

These stacked saucers are like the stubbles of my Blackwing pencils – a testament to what she enjoyed – because in the enjoyment of things we love, we use them up – or break a few.

A Tote of Sticks

The first draft of anything I do is the one that has the Life in it – and then I start making it grammatically correct and taking out the dashes and the dots which I love so much – taking out the made-up words that say it better anyway – putting in commas so my imaginary critics have nothing to say – I’m the worst critic anyway, a trained editor of Life and licensed English teacher – and I feel by the tension in my neck that the Life is being drained out of me – blocked off – as though periods were sutures and semicolons were clamps, commas were scalpels and parenthesis were boxes where little bits of Life get held in check.

And then I have a headache and I want to throw it all away – the thing that made perfect sense when it first was born, first drafted – because I don’t want it boxed up like pictures cropped and trimmed and clarified to take out all the rubble of sticks in the background. Real Life is a run on sentence like a ghost that flows through walls, would never stop at lights or signs. Like ganglion, I get twisted in knots and confusion once the editor/teacher in me sets to the task – the nerves in my back can attest . . .

I took a walk yesterday after feeling this ganglion in my being, walked through a forested pathway that leads down to a lake where I take a few laps to see the herons and – this time of year, the geese should be arriving from Canada any day now, always a week or two before Thanksgiving – and on the forested path I saw an old lady’s purplish blue and whitish legs moving through some leaves and I ran over to see that a frail old lady had fallen. She was fine, I deduced after a few words, but she couldn’t get up – so I reached under her arms like I’d seen them do for my mother at the nursing home, and lifted her to her feet. She smelled like a dirty old stovepipe and stale crackers. “I’m steady now,” she said, and I let her stand on her own. “You sure are strong,” she said. The conversation went on for about 10 minutes – “I should be in a hospital, shouldn’t be living alone any more” – and she pointed out her house to me, a view of the lake I thought, and I learned all about her son who she said did the best he could for her -- those leaves in the yard really bothered her -- and that she couldn’t see to push the buttons on the phone to call anyone to clear them . . . so many details of her life . . .

She had a big tote full of sticks and she went about the task of picking up more sticks and putting them in the tote as we talked . . . so finally I told her I’d be walking around the lake and I’d be coming back this way if she needed me to pick her up again – we laughed – or anything at all, I said. I looked back up the pathway after a dozen or two steps to see her hitting one stick with a bigger stick to make it go into her tote full of sticks. I went around the lake just once and came back – but she had gone.

I dreamed about her all night . . . the son too . . . so many thoughts about life as it gets old and can’t see enough to push the buttons on the phone . . . starts collecting sticks in a bag . . . just feeling and sensing, as I lay in bed this morning, that ganglion of chopped up nerves in my neck and back like the old lady’s tote of tangled sticks.

Speaking of Silence, Just Once

Just this week I’ve read two articles about silence, the need for it, – one in Newsweek magazine, the other an editorial in the local newspaper – and I’ve come across at least one newly released book, A Book of Silence, by Sara Maitland. And when I say this week, I mean the last three days.

All of this would and should make me feel very relieved because it’s the thing I’ve been odd enough to advocate for as long as I can remember – the thing I’ve unsuccessfully fought for since early marriage and family life; the thing I’ve known well by wanting it so desperately; the thing I’ve finally taken action to have and to hold for myself if not for those around me.  Silence.

I’ve always rejected the ever present cell phone, the stereophonic TV and music in the house, the earphones to pipe music or anything else into the eardrums while walking, etc. I’m very aware and unusually angry that one cannot pump gas, eat an expensive meal, grocery shop, get one’s hair cut, or wait for novocaine to kick in without the onslaught of piped in music or advertisements. But no one hears me! When my son was unusually stressed and overwhelmed during his first year of college, my plea and only advice to him was, just leave the cell phone for an hour, go take a walk in a quiet place, just one hour! I knew this from experience.

Now that people are talking about silence, writing books about it, publicly advocating it – uh-oh, I say to myself – it won’t be long before it becomes another national obsession – and every national obsession eventually becomes law.

I imagine there will be silence zones just as there are no smoking zones now. Silence will be enforced because, let's say, a study was done at a major university proving that it is good for us. Many people of the current generation, who cannot leave their cell phones or iPods at home for one hour, will receive grants and earn their PhDs by conducting such studies about silence and writing grand dissertations. We will all start talking about it – silence. How good it is for us. The media will report it ad nauseum.

Very soon an industry of silence will rise up – you will join a place called Savoring Silence Hostel (SSH) in which you pay to sit or lie down in a dark quiet room for an hour or more. Or perhaps you will pay to take a walk in a quiet forest. Noise cancelling earphones will be the craze for holiday shopping. People will compete to be cool in this way. An industry that offered us cleaned water, cleaned air, and supplementary nutritious foods (because we no longer have those things which humans took for granted until 50 years ago) – well, they will see a market for silence too.

Eventually the CDC will declare that we must have silence for good health. Some roguish Senator will make her mark in history by advocating these so-called silent zones. Laws will be passed. Signs will be made – I imagine a large ear in a red circle with a wide diagonal line marked through it. That means, Don't Listen. Or maybe three successive right-parenthesis-looking curves to indicate sound waves -- that means, No Sound Waves Allowed.  Eventually it must be enforced, and that means police officers . . . time in jail . . .

When I was a young mother and inundated by sound, I would often imagine time in jail – provided I had my own cell or solitary confinement. I used to think: ah, silence . . . my food prepared . . . no vacuum cleaner . . . no TV or radio . . . time to read and write . . . lights out early . . . a full hour designated for fresh air and exercise. Anything less would be considered cruel and unusual punishment, right?

I won't join the bandwagon that talks about silence.  I won't even say -- Just do it!

The Creature and His Tale

It’s so much fun to see this creation of mine take shape and form, even sometimes taking on a life of its own. That’s the most fun – when I’m writing along to a plan, and then suddenly I feel my fingers typing or writing more furiously as though off the radar screen or out past sight of land. No one’s watching, my fingers seem to say. That’s when a bit of life quickens in me and I sense that creation is a spark, not a plan.

A book is really just a protracted speech. We’ve got a tale to tell – and it’s lengthy – and we write it because we’re afraid no listener will sit long enough to hear it without boredom or disapproval. By writing, we get to say all that we want to say, but you, the listener, don’t have to be burdened by the story. And you won’t interrupt us.

I think that’s why I’ve always preferred writing to the medium of talking. I grew up in a family in which no one listened to the half-sentence I might have squeaked out before I was cut off or plowed over with others’ more important speech. That’s how and why I started writing as soon as I could hold the pencil and sound out the words, match letters to those sounds . . . as a way to finish a sentence.

Of course it’s ideal to be heard as well – the flip side of talking. If communication were a coin, then I’d say talking is the heads side. The substance and feeling of what you say is the alloy of the coin. Being heard, the tails side, is what gives the coin its recognized value, its rate of exchange – but it’s not necessary if you’re only taking a snapshot of a coin or tossing it around in your pocket forever.

As a very young child, I would get ready for sleep at night by placing the heads of my 7 or 8 stuffed animals in a crown-like or starburst-like position around my own head so that each one of their heads was touching mine. In that way, as I imagined and created my story for the night (often continued from the previous night – a saga not to be missed), so could each of those animals “hear” the story my brain was relating. It was a way of having listeners before the time of my own literacy.

That’s how important it is for humans to be heard – any way they can. A child will often act up, not because they are bad creatures, but because even bad attention is better than none at all. I also consider that when people become hermits, or get banished to distant islands, or get held in confinement, they often write – or go crazy!

I think of when Dr. Frankenstein first comes face to face with the monster he created after it ran away from him two years previously. The good doctor is repulsed by that monster, hates it, and rejects it. The monster implores him over three paragraphs in the text merely to listen to him before doing away with him. This highly distilled version of the three-paragraph monster’s speech is from chapter 2 of part 2:

“Listen to my tale . . . But hear me . . . Listen to me, Frankenstein . . . Yet I ask you not spare me: listen to me . . . Still thou canst listen to me, and grant me thy compassion . . . Hear my tale; it is long and strange . . . you will have heard my story, and can decide.”

Finally, Dr. Frankenstein, after much protestation, agrees to listen to his creation. “I determined at least to listen to his tale . . . For the first time, also, I felt what duties of a creator towards his creature were . . . the fiend with an air of exultation, I with a heavy heart and depressed spirits . . . But I consented to listen . . . he thus began his tale.”

Stopping Cold

Thursday, October 22, 2009:  I’m always amazed at my ambition – 10 books to read and all 21 of the journals to review and organize for the writing of  "The ---------------," this book I’m writing. That’s what I brought with me to Gethsemani, my quiet weeklong retreat – these foods for thought – as though gluttony were the goal of spiritual silence.

Fortunately my work ethic is less powerful than whatever force in me said NO to all that. This is my last full day here and I’m not even sure what I’ve done this week to fill the days -- but I feel brimful nevertheless.  Was it that sunrise that took an hour to bare itself yesterday? Was it the sunset that seemed so reluctant to leave on the previous night? How long did it take to watch that flock of geese traverse the sky from one end of this world to the other? – Certainly long enough to witness three volunteers from its hindquarters rise up to relieve those with the hardest job in the front. And what about that bird that’s been following me around all week to keep me from reading even the first of those 10 books? . . .

That bird is a real mystery to me. I’ve never heard a bird’s song with more notes – or even as many – as this one had in her repertoire. It was a melody – not the repetitive four- or five-tweet pattern which I hear from the birds at home. No, this bird had melody, cadence, and even rhyme, I'd say. But I never saw her . . .

I had positioned my chair at my favorite reading spot between a large tree and the gravesite of my first favorite writer from my teenage and early bread baking years, Thomas Merton. Last year I re-read most of his early classic, “The Seven Storey Mountain,” while sitting at this spot. This year I tried to start the introduction to a book by Robert Hopcke, “There are No Accidents.” The bird began singing as soon as I sat down. I stopped my reading attempts, looked up, tried to read again, sat up and craned my neck, stopped, gazed out to the mountains, thought a while, got up from the chair, craned my neck while standing this time, sat back down, got up to circle the tree while looking upward – no bird. I even said, Who are you that sings? – thinking I might scare her out of her hiding place so I could see her – desperate measures – then I rapped on the trunk of the tree – that was ridiculous and painful too – thinking the same thing, that she might expose herself to me.

I wasn’t annoyed in the least bit – more dumbfounded – even considering whether the monks might “plant” these bird song devices in the trees and turn them on from a switch inside a nearby window. Maybe two or three monks are looking out the window at me now, I thought, snickering at the way I rapped on the tree trunk as though to say who’s there? That would be ridiculous. But I wanted to make sense of the talented bird, or at least see her, and people can be pushed to think odd ways in times of great no-sense. Nevertheless –

She (and I) must have gone on like that for 30 minutes. Then, thinking I was cold anyway, thinking I couldn’t read here anyway, I got up to walk back to my room – and the bird stopped cold. Why stop now? I’m sure I said that. I ventured back to the chair, thinking the device might somehow be linked to the chair – hoping no one saw me – walking to and fro the chair, even sitting once and circling the tree once. But she never resumed.

Then last night I heard it again – in another tree – by the parking lot – I looked up as others walked by for their after-dinner stroll, or got in their cars to leave, or just ambled aimlessly.  I wanted to scream through their silence, The bird! She’s doing it again! But – I can’t see her . . .

I looked, craned, whispered . . . but she just sang.

Gone to Gethsemani

In Search of Bones

Writers always talk about “finding their voice.” I know what that means, or what it must feel like, to find one’s voice – but I don’t think I’ve done it. I think “my voice” is much younger than the one I’m writing from. Maybe it’s really young. Maybe I should be writing children’s stories. Maybe my voice isn’t even human – maybe it’s a bird’s voice – or a dog’s.

I often think of the made-up “Fetch stories” that I told my youngest daughter before bedtime for many years. Fetch was a golden retriever beanie baby who loved lamb bones. I don’t remember how he came to love lamb bones, but it was crucial to his persona – and to the stories. Fetch eventually infiltrated the daytime hours as well, especially during dinner time, and most especially if roasting lamb wafted upstairs.

If someone had been recording the spontaneous Fetch stories all those years – if only – if only I’d had someone to follow me around the way I followed everyone else around to clean and pick up after them – if someone had followed me around that same way to write down the simple dilemmas of a dog whose sole ambition in life was to procure and enjoy lamb bones. . .

Let’s see if I can retrieve some of those characters -- Lucy Goosey, the brassy Christmas goose who wanted to marry Fetch (she cooked up some lovely lamb bone soup) – but Fetch didn’t want to marry her. Then there was Knuckles, the self-righteous pig who marched around carrying a sign that read, No Lamb Bones! His protests disturbed Fetch and made him feel bad about who he was. The Baba Yaga was a cackling witch who threatened to put Fetch in the washing machine. "But my beans will swell!," Fetch yelled. Fetch’s dad came around for occasional advice and protection, but mostly he was a device by which Fetch was read the nightly stories which he savored: “The Case of the Missing Lamb Bone,” “The Mystery of the Lost Lamb Bone,” “The Hidden Lamb Bone,” and “In Search of Lamb Bone Treasure.” I’m sure there were more – and similarly named. There was no mom to speak of – I guess she was cleaning.

. . . If only I’d had the foresight to spend 10 minutes a day writing down those stories, the many tales spun from the primary plot of a gentle, golden dog who loved lamb bones. Could one even publish a book like that today? The vegans would protest just like the pig that carried the foreboding sign, No Lamb Bones!

Frank McCourt said in an interview that he “found his voice” one afternoon when he was babysitting his 4-year-old granddaughter. As he watched her play contentedly on the floor, he “heard” what was to be the first paragraph of "Angela’s Ashes." He went home and began to write from the voice of a 4-year-old boy. He invested 30 years of “writing starts” before finding that moment.

Willa Cather said she found her voice after her failed first novel about a man who loved two women. She dejectedly took a train ride back to her family’s farm in Nebraska. She “heard” the 9-year-old child peeking out from the cracks of a covered wagon. That’s who wrote O Pioneers! and My Antonia – a nine year old.

A.A. Milne’s wife brought home a small stuffed bear from a London department store to give to their son, Christopher Robin. It was this voice, “a bear of very little brain,” who spoke up for A.A. Milne. This example comes to mind because I hear that a sequel to the Pooh books came out last week. It’s called “Return to the Hundred Acre Wood” – and the author is not Milne or his relative. It makes me want to buy a nice hardback (with dj) edition of the original Pooh books.

It would be nice if finding one’s voice were as magical as stumbling over lamb bone treasure. But I have to remind myself that Fetch never stumbled – he spent his entire life in search of the missing lamb bone!

Whose Voice?

I’m thinking about my audience too much. I recall my school-age writing classes – always the advice, Think of your audience. Who is reading this? I gave the same advice during my own brief career as a high school English teacher. I suppose it’s good advice to give narcissistic young people when they've been assigned to write an essay for parents about how to operate an iPod.  Know your audience. The audience dictates how you write.  But I longed to throw out the old advice, including the five-paragraph formula: tell what you’re going to say, say it in three paragraphs, and then tell us what you just said. I spent that year remembering that I wanted to write, not pass on “lame” advice to disinterested students. I no longer believed the advice. That’s one reason I’m not an English teacher any more.

In my original career as a journalist, I was instructed to write for an audience of adults with the average intelligence of a 13-year-old. That was a long time ago, so maybe the advice has changed by now. I was to write on that level -- so, for example, if I were to mention Hemingway, I would write, "Twentieth-century American author, Ernest Hemingway . . . "

Later, I spent a few years at the CDC editing articles for medical journals.  The doctors who wrote these laborious tomes told me their readers would already know what they were talking about. There was no need to define laparoscopic salpingectomy, I learned.

Public relations writing is the hardest work of all -- feigning urgent excitement in order to peddle treetop resort homes to an audience of bored retirees, convincing them that the fountain of youth is at Big Canoe!

I’m discovering that, for the first time in my life, it's time to stop thinking about the audience. First of all, I don’t know who my audience is. Some days it occurs to me that my audience might be my own children many years from now – that is, if they don’t throw away the manuscript along with my worn slippers and unfinished knitting projects. Maybe I’ll have a curious, like-minded grandchild who actually longs to know who his or her grandmother was – maybe he or she will publish my book!

Some people will get it; some won’t. That’s why I like the picture I’ve included at the left. The young girl in the center with the blue skirt and pinkish sweater – that’s the one I fear most of all. She’s humiliated for me, worried, shrinking inside herself on my account. Maybe the writer in me is about her age, and she can't believe the things I'm saying about us.  The two girls next to her are dumbfounded and bored. I saw those faces every day when I was teaching. The guys don’t matter. Who are those women in the front? 

I think I have to write this for myself right now. That's what real writers who give advice about writing would say.  They say, write what you know.  Be yourself.  Write the thing that comes out of you.  Find your voice!  Find your voice! Later . . . if that doesn't work . . . I'll figure it out when we get there, Little Girl.  

Pretend Writing

There is a bit-o-thing that I’ve been trying to write for two weeks, and although I’ve skipped around and done other writing, it is the one thing that I knew I had to break through before I could continue . . . but for some reason I just couldn't do it.  Then finally the other day I started writing about what I couldn’t do and about the things I wanted to say but couldn’t figure out how to say . . .

. . . and this is where I have to interrupt and say that it’s a trick I use when I can’t write something – I write about the thing I want to write. I have to assure myself that I’m not really writing it. I'm just pretending. Why? I don’t know. But for me, it feels as though a trusted person has just come in the back door and has taken a seat and had a cup of tea with me and said, OK, tell me about it – and all the while I'm talking, they are taking notes and listening – and then they leave me the notes, and I take a walk and feel much better for having talked about it.

This is another essential part of the trick: I have to let those notes set and congeal for a day or two, as though they were written in invisible ink and they needed a few days of solitude for the ink to appear. I do other things during that time – vacuum, clean out drawers, wash windows – and then I go back and read those magical notes about the thing I couldn’t write.  And with a sort of smile on my face I begin typing the notes as though they could be the real thing – and then after I’m fully tricked, I say, Wa-la,  the real thing!

It’s a trick that has worked for me since I was in college or maybe even earlier. There may have been a paper due for an English class, something I wanted to say but didn’t know how to express it or how to begin – and so I just started writing about the thing I couldn’t do. Then I looked back and saw most of what I needed – as though someone had gotten me started, and all I had to do was copy and edit.

Through all the many years I’ve been using this trick, it hasn’t failed me. But part of me can’t know it’s a trick. I honestly have to say to myself, This isn’t a trick. I just want to know what you'd like to say.  You can throw away the notes when we're finished. Let's just play.  It's important to know I can throw away the notes when finished.  And so I start answering (on paper). For me, some things just have to be written that way – from outside a window, looking in; or maybe from the back door, walking in; or from a mountaintop, looking down.

From what my notes tell me, that bit-o-thing is turning out to be a much more important thing than I thought -- so  maybe that’s what we were trying to say these past two weeks.

Slow Riser

I read in today’s newspaper about Sarah Palin’s first book which is coming out “much sooner than expected,” and has already scored as Amazon’s best-selling book before its release date in six weeks. Her 400-page book was originally slated for release in Spring 2010, but SuperWoman was able to finish it in just four months after the book deal was announced. Her publisher assures us that Palin has been “hands on” at every phase.

I sit at my kitchen table, in my atelier, and let out a big hrumph . . . like a bowl of maximally risen bread dough imploding with a swift punch to the belly. 

Many years ago I learned of a woman willing to share her recipe for a whole wheat bread that went from grain bin to table in less than two hours. “You can prepare the rest of your dinner while the bread is baking,” she assured me. I never met this woman in person, but I spoke to her many times on the phone regarding troubleshooting the technique. She had a mucous-y voice -- as though something were gurgling deep inside her lungs.

Very simply, her technique is to grind the wheat berries into flour; to add three times as much yeast as a normal recipe would call for; to decrease the salt somewhat (because salt slows yeast); to eliminate the first rise in the bowl and rather put the shaped loaves directly into bread pans where they will have their one and only 20-minute rise in a cold oven before you turn it on with the pans still inside and let the preheating act as a booster to the yeast cells that have yet to figure out what’s happening. The bread seems to explode with height in the oven – a fun spectacle to watch if you keep the oven light on. Thirty or 40 minutes later you have bread on the cutting board in the middle of the kitchen table.

I made the bread many times, always pleased with the rise, but somewhat suspicious of the doughy, moist and dark crumbs left on the cutting board – and the sensation of heaviness in the belly. It was no good at all the next day. Now, 20 years later, I think of her technique as similar to giving great amounts of fertilizer to plants, or to feeding corn and hormones to a young cow bound for slaughter in the year it was born.

Then I discovered the three-day bread – a technique using the natural yeasts of grape skins and kitchen air. A dough kneaded on Tuesday will gladly repay you on Thursday, I like to say. First you give the ingredients a slow kneading with plenty of 20-minute resting periods; then a 4- to 6-hour rest in a large, beautiful and old bread bowl; then a gentle deflation, removal from the bowl, and another hour-long rest while laying naked on the countertop (the dough); then you separate and form the dough into round loaves and let them rest some more, this time covered with linen towels from a beach gift shop you once visited; then you place the swelling loaves into bread baskets and let those rest for maybe 2 hours in that position; then you place the bread baskets in the refrigerator and let them rest 24 hours or so; it's Thursday now and you set the well-rested, dough-in-baskets onto the kitchen counter and let them rest and warm up for a few or several hours. You've got to preheat the oven for at least an hour to thoroughly heat that inch-thick baking stone -- now remove the loaves from their cozy baskets, let them rest naked again; carefully slit a smiley face across each top, rest again; then thank each one before sliding them onto the baking stone in the oven where they will gladly rise for you. Forty minutes later you will gingerly place each one on a cooling rack where they will rest for about 2 hours, all the while whistling and whispering and cackling to all those passersby who care to listen . . .

I know I’m a slow writer. It might take me four months of observing my birds at the feeder to come up with a metaphor for . . . something. It’s taken me 20 years to recall the dangerous technique of a fast riser I’ve never met.

Without Beginning

. . . without beginning.  I like that.  From Ueland's book, If You Want to Write.  She passes over the term very quickly, and in mid-sentence.  She describes a friend of hers who will start telling a story without beginning:  " . . . never leading up to it with apologetic explanations, proofs and qualifying phrases."  The necessary information comes later, when she's caught her breath.  It has a Biblical ringtone to it -- without beginning, amen.

I think of another term, a Latin one -- in medias res -- in the middle of things.  To begin right in the middle of a story, in the thick of it, from where you are floundering or maybe even drowning -- do that first, then once you've survived, tell how you got there.  It's a technique employed by most oral traditions  -- The Odyssey, The Iliad, Nibelungenlied, The Kalevala, on and on.  These have been given the status of high literature, but really they're just good children's stories meant to grasp and keep the attention of rowdy men in the mead hall.  I think a Bruce Willis movie might employ the same technique. 

"Nor does he begin the Trojan War from the double egg,
but always he hurries to the action, and snatches the listener into the middle of things."
--(Horace, "The Art of Poetry," lines 147-148)

Maybe that's why I'm having a hard time going linear with this thing I'm pretending to write.  I instinctively want to start in the middle, plunge into it even if it feels like drowning, then fill in the rest later -- like a survivor shaking herself off.  Now . . . let me tell you how I got here . . .   

I think I'll go with my instincts for writing the middle portions first.  The order will find it's own way to correctness later -- like birds flocking to a spot on the wire.

Too Many Colors

For so many years I wrote poetry because there wasn't time for the short stories or essays or character descriptions I had in mind. I would be driving from here to there in a series of things to do. I would catch a dialogue or an irony or a gesture -- and an idea would cross paths with me almost as though someone had yelled, hey!, before throwing a ball in my lap. I'd catch it that way. But then -- my mind, having caught it, would be spinning with what had to be done; and there was always so much noise around me, and so many things to do once I got home, and so much needed out of me -- and the best I could do was to jot down the phrase I heard or a few words to describe the idea or the irony. After a day or so -- still no quiet time to make it into a short story -- I'd say, Well, I'll just turn it into a poem. It was the best I could do.

I went to Tangier Island yesterday. This is a working island, not a resort island. It is the soft shell crab capital of the entire world, a one- by three-mile strip of land, 18 miles out from shore in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, accessible only by ferry boat. The 458 residents are watermen and watermen's wives and watermen's children. I went there because I've always heard that the islanders have retained their Elizabethan dialect -- and I wanted to hear it. Also, the world was too much with me, as the saying goes.

There are three primary family names on the island as evidenced by a walk through the cemeteries -- Crockett, Parks, and Pruitt. They say many older residents have never been off the island. The old men line up like birds on a wire at the only fueling station on the island, this one at the marina since there are no cars on the island. I walked not-so-inconspicuously back and forth in order to catch what they were saying. It's not even an English accent, more ancient and Scottish. One old man said something about another man, "Hez gote no doge, gote no wefe . . . " I couldn't decipher what was becoming of the man now that he's got no dog, got no wife, but it seemed sad. I sensed that I was looking at the strange combination of 17th century America and circa 1952.

So far no developer has touched the island other than a local man who offers this seasonal once-a-day, 90-minute ferry boat ride to another world so that mainlanders can stay in Hilda Crockett's bed and breakfast and eat her lunch or dinner of crab cakes, clam fritters, Virginia ham, corn pudding, pickled beets, and so on and so forth.

I stood in the small history museum put together with backdrops of newspaper clippings and maps; with frames holding local artwork and watermen's poems -- and I looked at a disturbing map which illustrates that, in the past 150 years, Tangier Island has lost 2/3 of itself to the waters around it -- swallowed up at the rate of 9 square acres per year. I made my own grim calculations -- taking the 750 or so square acres that remain of the island, dividing that by 9 -- and I figure that in 50 years or so the island will be no more than a strip of land on which to stand and watch the tide from either one's front or back sides.

One of the Crockett clan, a middle-aged man with a guitar cradled in his arms, said, "I tried to live on the mainland once a long time ago, but there were too many . . . colors." He hestitated for a while, as everyone does on the island, and then added, "too many sounds, strange faces . . . cars."

The senior graduating class this year will total five, about average for any given year. For the first time in the island's 400-year history, however, all five seniors will leave the island for college -- and none plans to become watermen like their fathers.

I rode back to the mainland, seated at the stern all by myself for the first 30 minutes or so, holding that old familiar feeling of a story in my catch and not enough time to write it. An older man came to sit down on the bench beside me -- and the two of us sat looking out to the faded island for the remaining hour of our trip  -- and we never said a word.  I'll call this "On the Stern":

Dazzled by pin pricks of light --

    this sun off the sea.

As though astounding me,

-- its diamond sweep, dust

    particles settling

    at peaks.

Watching Over Me

I came across the word atelier while looking for another word in the dictionary. I liked atelier so much that I have been repeating it to myself all morning -- at'l - ya. The ya is a long a sound, and it is stressed, so it comes out like yeah! At'l - yeah! At'l - yeah!

It means an artist's workshop or any kind of studio that is meant for design or artistry. My kitchen is my atelier. I sit here at the kitchen table where breakfast, lunch, tea, and dinner are cycled endlessly; where bills are paid; where much bread has been let to rise; where arguments have never been resolved. But in its off-hours, this kitchen nook becomes my atelier. I think of one of my favorite children's books, In the Night Kitchen, by Maurice Sendak. Everything becomes wonderfully animated and alive in the night kitchen (as long as we think no one is watching).

I sit on a sturdy chair made by Gustave and Leopold Stickley in 1910. It was bought at an estate sale belonging to the former curator of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. It had the aroma of pipe smoke when it arrived here. The wood of the wide arms is worn many shades lighter than the rest of the chair, especially the left arm -- as though this curator had placed one great hand to rest on the left side while his right hand went about the business of alternately smoking and resting (or maybe writing and resting). I believe he had great thoughts about art while sitting at home in this chair -- what to procure, what not to procure . . .

The table where I write was bought at a flea market when my children were all babies and it was finally decided that we needed someplace to set them all down for a family meal. I was told it was made from the siding of an old barn in North Carolina. It is put together with the original square nails and wooden pegs. I can only imagine what these old planks saw and heard before they became a docile kitchen table.

I look up to see my mother's unfinished oil painting of a pumpkin and apples and Indian corn from the fruit cellar of my childhood home. I had followed my mother down to the basement that day when I was a few years old. She retrieved a few things from the fruit cellar and the freezer -- her plans for dinner, most likely -- and placed them on the steps. She turned and saw a few things in the corner on the cold basement floor. She arranged them and rearranged them, tipping her head, standing back, that sort of thing. Then she got out her easel and paints and went to work. I remember being very cold. She never put her name to it because it was never finished -- or maybe she didn't like it. She gave it to me one day many years later when I was walking around the house procuring items for my first apartment. I've always wondered whether I was the reason she never finished it.

A generation hence, I've brought this painting down from the attic to grace my atelier. I'll use it as my reminder to drop everything when the vision takes me -- to capture it -- even if I never put my name to it (for whatever reason).

What's it About?

September 18, 2009: No -- I say this in response to myself from yesterday -- I think the blog is a good thing to play around with. It gives me a place to figure out the rest of the story -- as when Steinbeck wrote a daily letter to his publisher before beginning the real writing for East of Eden. I have that book of letters -- Journal of a Novel -- and I read it right along with the novel several years ago. His own two boys had a big influence on the writing -- who knew?

For some reason I thought this morning about a book I read in college -- Chauncey? -- about a mentally retarded gardener who seemed to say all the right things, unbeknownst to himself of course, and was therefore greatly admired by others and even made upwardly mobile in the social world. He kept being misinterpreted and lauded at each new level -- a pre-Forrest Gump kind of book. My English professor wanted us students to discuss the great and hidden meanings.

I was far too shy to say anything, much less something, about what I really thought. I had grown up with real-life Paul, my older brother whom no one ever mistook for clever or wise. There is no mentally compromised person who does not show some physical hint to give his self away before anyone has a chance to misinterpret what comes out of his mouth. I was an angry student sitting there the day of that discussion. I knew what it was like -- there is no glamour, no upward mobility, no wise words or magic. If I'd been a different sort of angry young student, I might have screamed, "You Fools! It's not like that at all! Chauncey is make believe -- book glamour! Book glamour!"

As it was, I sat there in my damaged, quiet soul, comfirmed to solitude and hiding. I listened to Fools talk about the wisdom of fools -- and I don't say that disparagingly. No one would believe what it was like to watch your own brother be taken for exactly what he was -- and worse.

My mother always insisted, "These people (like Paul) have a lot to teach the rest of us." I think she spent most of her life trying to figure out what that was.

Becoming a Bowl

September 15, 2009: Wiled away a day of writing by playing around with my great idea for this blog and its profile -- then took a hack at the chapter/essay, "Becoming a Bowl," which is not on my approved list of write-abouts this week (it should go somewhere in the middle) -- then experimented with listing books on Goodreads, and that is the one thing I succeeded at doing, and so I listed about 20 or more books with personal reviews and ratings.

"Becoming a Bowl" is one of my favorite chapters/essays -- though I haven't done it justice today -- but at least I've got something to work with when I officially get there.
I think of something Stravinsky said regarding the creative process: "I know exactly what I want to do . . . and then I do something else."

Against the Wind

September 14, 2009: I think of the song lyrics, "What to leave in, what to leave out . . ." I look back at the first two of those 21 notebooks I wrote over 18 months and I see that it is all relevant -- but can't possibly all be included. I had planned to find the material for about three chapters/essays as my planned work assignment for the week, but instead found about eight or nine -- not all big and great, but important nevertheless.

I keep saying (to the wind, I guess) that I don't want this to be about me -- but I know that I was searching for my own route in life all the while I was making those 500-mile trips to visit my mother in the nursing home. Those monthly trips were as much about my transition as about hers. And so, while dawdling with that thought. . .

I came upon an online reflection by Sue Monk Kidd in which she talks about the transition from writing non-fiction to fiction: " . . . my dream was to write fiction, but I was diverted from that almost before I started." Her firsts two books were narratives of her spiritual experience.

"I think many people need, even require, a narrative version of their life. I seem to be one of them," she writes. Blown away by these unplanned books (but not fighting them), she was somewhat surprised to find herself writing The Secret Life of Bees -- a very successful fiction.

Outliers

September 11, 2009: The big guy at 7 a.m. yoga class today just so happened to mention a book he was reading, "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell. He (the big guy) reported that anything can be mastered in 10,000 hours -- and he plans to do such a thing with yoga.

"Basically ten years," he said to me. I did a quick calculation and replied, "Basically three hours a day?" He nodded in approval.

I recognize that thing called "synchronicity" or "divine guidance" when I see it. Usually it arrives off the wall and out of context, yet is completely apropos. It turns to me. It has that bottomless look of wisdom in one eye, and it often nods. It is short and to the point -- and then it's gone.

I came home and requested the book from the library. The bugaboos must have heard me, for it seems the AC is not working today. One or two of them must have fiddled with its workings while I was at yoga class.

Bugaboos

September 10, 2009: It's important to have a routine for writing. I already knew that from reading what writers say about writing these past decades. Early morning seems to "get the worm" -- though I could never have that time when the children were young no matter how early I got up. I've given much thought to women writers over the years -- Willa Cather, Virginia Woolf, Isak Dinesen, May Sarton, MFK Fisher, many more -- childless and often spouseless too.

My committment is three to four hours a day -- all I can really manage. This morning I woke up to the sound of the radio announcer stating a famous quote which I'll have to paraphrase from my reverie: When you make a solid commitment and goal, the rest will follow . . .
And so I got out of bed to discover there was no hot water -- which necessitated a phone call, which invited a plumber, which interfered with my writing commitment.

Now I add my own quote: When you make a commitment or goal, the bugaboos will strive to stop you. For every action forward, there is an equal and opposing reaction. Recognizing this principle, I followed through on my commitment once the plumber left at 10:30 a.m.

Now What?

September 9, 2009: But is it really about her? I'm not sure what it's about. I'm surprised to find more of me than I had hoped. I consider leaving this out (me), but I know it's best not to second guess the writing process. The best I can do now is to show up for work at this kitchen table, pick up the pen, and stay out of the way -- as any good parent watching her child learn a new skill while wielding dangerous gadgets might do. It's best not to edit, fix up, or prettify too much right now. It's easier to take out later than to fill in pieces I have regretfully hacked away. I have this messy feeling inside about the two chapters/essays I have typed this morning.

One of my biggest character flaws for writing is that I am not comfortable with chaos. I get very edgy and don't trust a mess. I'm always trying to fine tune the details before the large picture has had time to settle. This is something I have to challenge: Be comfortable with chaos.

The Beginning

September 8, 2009: A propitious day to begin my book since this is the one-year anniversary of my mother's passing. I woke up early this morning thinking of her, knowing she wishes me well in this pursuit. I remember one Sunday afternoon a few months before she died -- I was sitting in her room at the nursing home while she dozed, writing about . . . various things . . . and she awoke suddenly, looked at me, and said, "Writing a book about ME?" I said, "Yes," because that was the easiest answer to give. She smiled, nodded her head, and went back to sleep. I think she smiles and nods to me this morning . . .