Arrangement

"For weeks she looked in that eyepiece, always seeing something new. On her way home the world would seem utterly different to her, every surface quivering with a thin secret film. There was life on the leaves and in the rivers, on the food she ate, and on her clothes; it was wonderful, it was horrifying, some days she couldn't eat and she wanted to boil her hands. The world was a alive in a way beyond the way she knew. What did that mean?" --Andrea Barrett, "The Cure"

Yesterday I finished Andrea Barrett's 2002 collection of short stories, Servants of the Map. Loved it, despite wondering if I'd ever plow through the first, title story. The collection was a 2003 Pulitzer Prize finalist (Middlesex won that year). Barrett's prose is precise and measured. Each sentence suggests gradual development and depth. On a holistic scale, she arranged the book in paired stories, or stories with overlapping characters and time. In arrangement, the first and the last are paired, the second and second to last are paired, and then the two center stories (right next to each other) are paired. If you read the collection chronologically (which, in this case, I think you're meant to do) you don't realize the pairs until the middle of the book! A pleasant surprise, since before that point I enjoyed connecting the unpaired stories to each other...the pairs added another level of understanding to the whole. Although the stories occur in different time periods, thematically they all deal with how people map themselves and their world through science (primarily botany--Barrett has a Ph.D in zoology), relationships, and writing--such as letters, diaries, notes to themselves. Even before the shared characters, each stories converses with those around it; I craved the connections even as each piece held its own very well.

How do you achieve that? I'm reading single-author collections of essays, poetry, and stories in an attempt to figure out my own thesis. "What's the arc?" "What's the argument?" I hear. My goal focuses around "What are the connections? How can meaning be layered and enhanced?" Perhaps that will not be possible for a collection emphasizing form and family, but I believe it is.

Barrett's 267 page collection only had six stories; this shouldn't have impacted me as much as it did. I write short pieces overall--but I like the weighty possibility of both.

Daily I discover that the world is "alive in a way beyond the way [I know]" whcih leaves me wondering--"What does that mean?" Usually answers evade me, but the freshness does not.

Infinite Distances

"There were times Ruma felt closer to her mother in death than she had in life, an intimacy born simply of thinking of her so often, of missing her. But she knew that this was an illusion, a mirage, and that the distance between them was now infinite, unyielding." -Jhumpa Lahiri, "Unaccustomed Earth"

This weekend my mom, grandma, and Hollie Rae organized a baby shower for Holly Lynn and me. We call it a casual gathering, since Holly and I don't party. After conference Saturday, our female family swarmed for pie, ice cream, and little gifts color-coordinated blue, yellow, and brown. It occurred to me in the middle of swallowing tears at peoples' generosity that the ultrasound could have been wrong and I could be carrying a girl. I have no labor expectations (other than lots and lots of pain) but part of me believes I'll laugh--can I participate in such a miracle? After this baby, boy or girl, is born will we ever be so close? Because of my limited experience, I wonder if I'll be able to think more about my children...but I know that once he's breathing air instead of swimming, everything will connect to him and his future siblings. It does already.

I don't understand my parents. I've been disturbed by this knowledge since about age 12, but becoming a parent now opens my perspective a tad wider. Although aware of some of their sacrifices and joys, I've misjudged the depth of their love and motivations for me, for our family. Will they always be closer to me than I am to them? I fear the infinite and unyielding distance. But has it always been there?

When my parents' first names settled into my brain as their first identity, I was shocked. Before me, they were. Before they thought of me, they were. Oh elementary school epiphanies. I stared at them for a month slightly flabbergasted. What should I call them? Who were they? Again the door opens. They learn about grandparenting, connecting more to their parents; we learn about parenting connecting us more to them. In my imagination, this web of family and growth looks like a series of linked umbilical cords (that sounds monstrous, but I mean it in a very nourishing, wholesome way).

Is intimacy derived from physical or spiritual space? Or does it require both? Both. I discovered this morning that everything I do is because of the shape of family, my desire for family, my perception through family--even shapes are determined by family. I look for family in what I read. I cannot desert the theme of family in what I write. Most of what I do is an attempt to allow intimacy, to overcome infinite distances, to prevent gaps from forming in my family, to invite more into my family. (Perhaps this is why I struggle making friends, I demand they become family...intimates. Perhaps this is why I overwhelm my family.) I want our souls and our lives to overlap before death, during life, and in those strange crevices that gather dust between.

The Road

On Tuesday, I finished Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Road, for the second time. I thought my emotional response would be more controlled the second time through; instead I bawled in my office with other graduate students surrounding me and thought about the father and the son, and the Father and the Son. The things we sacrifice are so often the things we live for.

I don't think I could be like the mother; I could never willingly leave Wesley or Charles Lamb. I think I could last longer without food and water than I could without Wesley. If he dies first, I won't be able to last long. Or maybe my body will and that will be the torture of it.

Unlike The Border Trilogy and other work I've read by McCarthy, The Road echoes with redemption and hope. Despite cannibals, despite no light, despite soot and polluted water--there is the boy and the man who lives only for the survival of that boy.

I guess the question could be "Why continue? Why live?" and the answer is stuck in the boy's matted hair and dirty face in the trusting "Okay, Papa."

Marilynne Robinson

Recently, I finished Gilead and Home. Read them. Stop everything else, take up a pen, and devour these books. I read Housekeeping as a senior in high school; something about that book, or reading that book, changed me--but I'm not sure what. Gilead is definitely on the list of "favorite books in my lifetime." I loved Home; perhaps because of the ways it informs and plays off of Gilead. I don't know. They're both amazing. Part of me wishes I was a blend of Marilynne Robinson and Kimberly Johnson.

The term "grace" has been floating in my mind since reading these books. They deal primarily with God's grace, but also with the grace people allow each other. I fear that I am not a very graceful person, in movement or motive. I believe in severity, perhaps I prefer severity, because I do not grasp the possibility of grace. I have faith in its reality in God, but oh I am weak and ignorant and proud and selfish and prefer the gauntlet to the maggoty remembrance of my sins. How do I grant myself grace? And if I cannot accept even my own measly offering, how will I ever accept the Lord's?

After almost a year...

my essay "Sweet Execution" is published in abbreviated form by Juice: A Journal of the Ordinary.

At one point I believed it would be fun/exhilarating to edit a journal, to be in the midst of contemporary art. But editors have little time to write. Add to that list teachers, moms, dads, livers. There really isn't any time to write except the time I demand and create; which, sadly, is often mediocre.

"Mediocre" is one of those words like "disappoint." Both make me feel cold-sweat twisted, little pinchers of hell. This week I've been less than mediocre and trying not to feel disappointed in myself. Someday I will probably have to lower my expectations, but I hope I'm dead at that point and full of actual wisdom. Since fifth grade I've been composing silly lectures in my head (just for the sheer enjoyment of it as I shower, do my hair, prepare for sleep). One of my favorites (they're all personal and silent) sermonizes on the fact that life is hard for everyone, that we don't understand the others' circumstances, and thus we have no right to whine--since everyone struggles to endure. This is a lecture I need to start listening to. As far as pregnant women go, I'm running marathons. Who cares about some fatigue? Soreness? Discomfort? Inability to stand, sit, or lay for more than a few minutes? We have Charles Lamb--and he's worth a lot more than forty weeks of incubation. What frustrates me most is that I have to slow down, but I don't know how and I don't want to. So in my resistance, my emotions flare and poor students and professors have to decipher why in the world I'm weeping in front of them. I have no answers for them.

Point of this entry: (like a gate) my "newly married" essay is published, which is weird since I am soon to be a mom and ecstatic about it. I'm not displeased with the piece, but it is not published in the form I'd hoped. Oh well. Read it at your leisure.

Arts and Crafts

“…to see literary writing mainly as a “craft” also means to value (American) ideas like making, production, hard labor, and to believe in the virtue of repetition (i.e., mechanics) and rules. No one will argue against the fact that writing involves hard work, but so do most other things produced by humans. For in the end, this is what the word “craft” expresses in its essence: production.”

“Creating is negating the existing world, and reshaping it according to your own rules.”

“When the idea becomes methodical, it ceases to exist for its own sake, and it acquires the pragmatic goal of creating similar structures, that is, copies, imitations.”

“Our understanding of literature is always shaped by the frame given to it by our culture”

–Daniela Hurezanu

“Against Craft and Method—Some Thoughts on the Idea of Literature in Contemporary American Culture—”

As an American, then, is my art inevitably cast as a craft? Part of me does cling to the production factor as a measurement of success, but only if that "production" is quality, worthwhile, something worth valuing. Only if that "production" is a creation that has been shaped, reshaped, and reshapes others with a purpose.

I love Hurezanu's essay, actually. Yes: read more books in translation. Yes: trust in the magical reality. Yes: examine culture and understanding. Yes: understand the linguistic and actual perception of what I do.

At the same time, I don't look at my writing as a kitschy Popsicle stick formulation; finger-painting, perhaps, but not clutter. Perhaps art is only possible as individuals determine personal rules, follow them, trust them, and value them. Perhaps general values are only based on specific standards.

Birthdays

I am 22 today. Born at 1:30 a.m. my mom's smallest baby, cone-shaped bald head consisting mostly of eyes. Due on March 2, I slipped into the third just barely, probably breathless or laughing. Most likely my spirit felt the panic and punctuality of mortality and I couldn't put it off much longer. 40 weeks is a long time to wait in the womb.

Three months from today is Charles Lamb Cole's due date. The two of us our huge compared to our status two weeks ago. Every day I expect to find Wesley's paper-chain countdown to June 3. He's anxious to see his son. I am, too, but I could use another three months for preparation.

Three is my favorite number. I'm the third child, born on the third day of the third month. My name starts with the third letter of the alphabet and has three sets of pairs in it. It makes weird sense to me that my first child would be due three months from my birthday. I could be forming correlations that don't actually exist.

God and I have a deal about my birthday (I joke about this, but partially believe it). My birthday is always a beautiful day--springy if not sunny. This has happened since the day it snowed on my birthday (the year I received stretchy purple shorts and a big wheel I couldn't take outside for days, maybe weeks). We're celebrating with a picnic today, the clouds hint at rain, but the blue sky and temperate weather feel otherwise. Every year I forget how much I love my birthday. I forget the childish excitement that fills me with glee just knowing this is my day. (Wesley's goal for the month is to give me the happiest birthday ever. And each is, especially since we're married). Silly me, but I can't stop grinning.

Birthdays should really be a celebration of the parents (I felt this way before pregnancy). Birthdays mark the progress of their creations. I always feel compelled to say, "But what can I give you?" I hope I remember this question every year and try to answer it, knowing of course, that I never will.