Alone, Together

In the 1980s I fell in love with Barbra Streisand’s anthem for that decade, “Lullaby for Myself” from her album “Superman.”  It was the time of celebration of a bleak truth that we are, at our core, discreet individuals, solitary entities, singularities.  The joy of living alone, of owing no one an answer, of not sharing “a pair of pork chops when you crave champagne and cheese” – I was sold.  My friend and I argued about the final lines – was it his interpretation: “If just one damn man could share the need/to be alone with me” a message that she wanted to be with someone else in spite of her cry for independence, or was it mine: “If just one damn man could share the need to be alone/with me,” suggesting she wanted a relationship but she also needed her alone time?  We had several loud arguments over that line ending.

My study

I have always enjoyed time alone.  There’s something delicious about being able to act or speak without being watched.  Maybe that’s what appeals to me about writing, for the act of writing is, for me, a deeply solitary endeavor.  If I’m not physically alone (Virginia Woolf famously said that what a woman writer needed was “money and a room of her own.”) I must somehow shut out all the sound and fury of the world outside me, and disappear into my own isolation in order to hear an inner voice.

Direction sign in an island park

When I go back to the city for a visit, surrounded by traffic and crowds, I wonder how I ever lived there.  I long to return to the deserted winter beaches and forest trails of my island. I love to curl up with my book in a quiet house in front of the fire. I relish my study, where I can close my door and vanish into my imagination.  The trail to nowhere beckons me.  

Walking group

Yet, when I have drunk my fill of being alone, when the sound of my own voice begins to bounce irritatingly around in my head, I have to reach out.  I join the weekly walking group and tramp the trails with 30 plus people instead of alone. I go farther and faster, and I talk non-stop when I’m with them.  I go to rehearsal for the play I’m part of, work on scenes, drink tea and stack chairs and share lives.  I go online and read and respond to posts from my communities.  I invite neighbours and friends for dinner and cook all day in anticipation. Our little island has a thousand ways of being alone together.

Winter Beach

Sometimes I take a ferry to the city, where I walk through downtown streets, craning my neck at the tops of the towers, nodding to strangers on the seaside walking trail, enjoying the buzz on the crowded Skytrain, drop in on old friends and soak up their company.  I’m not sure why, when I embrace solitude, but I recognize that being with others feeds my soul. I return to my solitude overflowing with stirred-up ideas, new ways of seeing, new voices, and the knowledge that the teeming world out there is full of sparks, of sound and fury, of light and delight.

And sometimes, my lullaby for myself sounds better sung in harmony.

Ways of looking -- Opener #2

Time for another writing opener.  I got this exercise from a writing workshop years ago.  It helps me break open my ordinary ways of looking at the world, always a good start to writing.

1. Begin by reading aloud the startling poem by Wallace Stevens, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird."  Click on the title to go to the Poetry Foundation webpage version.  For convenience, I've reproduced it below:

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

By Wallace Stevens

I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he  mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be  flying.

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

2. Next, choose a concrete object that prompts different emotional responses for you.  Write an imitation to “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” using your own item.  Try changing perspective with each section.  Number each one.

3.  Here's an example of one I started when I looked out the window a while ago.  Try it yourself to get your eyes seeing through a different lens.

Thirteen ways of looking at a cloud

 by Wendy Phillips (with apologies to Wallace Stevens)

I

Cheerful puff of friendliness

Cloud against the blue sky.

II

In the dark of night the cloud hides the full moon

Light pulses within

I think

I hear rumbling.

III

As the jetliner climbs through the rainclouds

Into the thin sunshine

We cry in rapture

At the sight of God.

IV

O Joni Mitchell

Clouds, love, life

It’s all so

Confusing.

Only 9 more stanzas to go!  

The Devil in the Details

Sometimes when I walk in the forest, I keep my eyes on the trail ahead, the climb up the steep hill, the splendid view when I get to the top.  But the other day I decided not to focus on the goal or the panorama that awaited me, and to stop and focus on details.  I noticed the drops of water on the bramble, the gleam on the blackberry, the colours of mushrooms.  Suddenly the world was filled with small miracles.

After my walk I was reading Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, marveling at the way I could be transported into the bizarre underworld, feel the character’s pain.  Neil Gaiman’s focus on carefully selected details was what created that sensation for me.  He didn’t include every detail – that would be a tedious reading experience – but he focused our attention on details that brought the world alive.

When I was younger, I loved writing descriptive paragraphs, amazed at my own ability to notice little things and put them into strange and (to me) wonderful contexts and metaphors and similes that no one else might have thought about.  I filled my paragraphs with everything, and if I thought of something new,  I would rewrite to pack it in. 

Soon, though, I noticed the story began to bog down.  When I described every detail in a setting or a character’s clothing or physical sensations, I lost momentum, and couldn’t keep the narrative going.  That’s when I discovered the importance of selection.  Every detail had to contribute to the overall effect I wanted to create.  Would I describe eyebrows or nose?  Would I focus on the painting on the wall or the crack in the leg of the coffee table?  Which one would push my story forward?  Now the challenge is not so much the noticing of details – after all, that’s the thing that nourishes the sense of miracles, the seed that bursts into bloom when I fit them in where they belong – but the selection of which details are the best of the best. 

Reading theory suggests that the act of reading is a series of intuitive leaps.  I like to think it is also a series of sensory leaps, from one image to the next, a sensual feast of mushrooms and blackberries and water droplets.

Wood Gathering

I've been splitting and piling wood as the days cool and shorten. The smell of fresh pitch and sawdust, the "sprong" as a tough chunk of fir splits, the satisfying clunk as it all piles into place -- it's a delicious way to spend a morning, even though it leaves me aching in hands,
back and arms.  I am grateful for the long work gloves given to me by my friend, Kevin, as a farewell gift when I left the city for the island.  Without them, my arms would be sticky with pitch and prickling with wood splinters.  There's nothing quite like the joy of watching the pile grow, knowing that, as my Dad often remarked, it will warm me in many ways--cutting, moving, stacking, unstacking, moving again, building the fire and finally, sitting in front of it. He also used to quote Albert Einstein, who said, "People love chopping wood.  In this activity one immediately sees results."  If Albert Einstein liked it, my father implied, so could he.

My sister is a real woods woman (she quickly embraced being a "woman with a chainsaw" after an unexpected Christmas gift from her husband) and while she visited this fall we tackled the wood. We tossed and piled, chopped and calculated how to fit everything in.  Meanwhile, with the rhythm of wood stacking moving us in a united direction, we talked about everything -- families, friends, getting older, the future, what really mattered in life.  As we saw results of our labour grow, we also rebuilt our own connections.

Of course, it's not without discomfort.  My finger turned purple after being caught between two big chunks of fir.  My clothing has been shedding sawdust for days, even after washing.  But it's worth the labour to stack the wood in the fireplace and set it alight, curling up on the carpet in front of it on a pillow, book in hand.  The crackle of the flames takes me to another world and warms me through in many ways.

There are times when I am writing that I wish I could just stack the words one on top of another, pile the sentences wherever there was a gap and wear protective gear to save me from the flowing sap and detritus that dribbles out of a paragraph, sticks to my skin and gets into my hair.  I have days when I don't see results, when the pile looks the same -- or worse -- than it did when I started in the morning.  Those are the days when I wonder why I'm doing this, the days when I want to throw in the writing towel and get outside to chop kindling.  Some days that's what I do.  But other days I decide I will write like that, stack words and sentences and paragraphs wherever they will fit, start a new pile when the previous one teeters, and, painful though it may be at times, the page begins to fill.  And, like Thomas Edison, I will appreciate those results, too, that I know several thousand things that don't work.  Writing is not without bruises.

Bikes in the forest

Since coming to the island I have started to cycle the forest trails with a group of women on Sunday mornings.  For a rider accustomed to the flat, paved cycling lanes of Richmond, an island city in the Fraser River delta system, it has been a shock to the system (and to my bicycle!). 

The trails are full of dips and curves, roots and rocks.  Sometimes the hills are so steep that standing up makes my back wheel spin out from under me and I have to sit down to keep moving through loose gravel or bark (I really need to trade in my city street rain tires for knobby off-road tires!).  Sometimes the salal grows so close on each side that the trail disappears and I have to keep my eyes ahead and forge on through, trusting that my tires will find purchase and that my forward momentum will get me through.  I have at times seen an upcoming root or rock and thought, "No way can I navigate through this," but I'm going fast enough and the riders ahead of me have done it so I launch myself through it.  Sometimes I even make it without crashing.

A few weeks ago I was feeling more off-balance than usual, seeing that the trail curved tightly between two small trees but unable to pour my bicycle through the gap without sailing off into blackberry brambles.  I hauled my bike back on the trail by the handlebars, brushed the leaves off my shirt and climbed back on.  Within minutes, I was concentrating on avoiding a rock when I missed another turn and landed (more softly) in the salal. By this time my fingers ached from my tight grip and I forced myself to concentrate on the trail. We plunged on through the bushes, vines reaching out to grab my handlebars, branches scraping my legs.  We climbed, panting, up another hill, and I felt my back tire skid.  I looked down at the rounded rocks of the trail and felt myself careen off into the bush again.

The woman behind me was patient and tactful.  She stopped, waited until I was ready to start off again and said mildly, "I was told that if you look where you want to go instead of where you are, you will find your way through. It's a way of trusting yourself and your bike."

Cycling crew

"Huh," I answered, too breathless and frustrated to say more. I would try it.  Look ahead, I thought, not down.  Trust myself, trust my bike.

As we took off again, I tried to take her advice.  I was so accustomed to watching the obstacles just in front of me that it was a conscious effort to look beyond them.  I forced my eyes to see ahead to the open trail, through the curve and between two close trees that resembled a needle to be threaded by me and my bike.  But this time my hands were looser on my grips, my stance on my bike more relaxed.  And without quite knowing what had happened, I was through, gliding along the wide pathway, lifting my eyes to look ahead.

We stopped for a water break, and I marvelled to the group what a difference it made.  They nodded.  Tensing up and looking down, they agreed, was a sure way to end up where you don't want to be.

Tiny cottage and bike

That afternoon I sat down at my desk and looked over my new writing project.  I corrected little typos and wordy phrasing, moved some details to the other end of a sentence. I started a new paragraph, my hands tensing over the keyboard, my words stumbling on each other.  What was this sentence adding to the narrative momentum, I thought, and erased it.  The cursor blinked.  Come on, come on, get the sentence down.  My phone whistled and I turned to it in relief.  Texted pictures from this morning's ride.  I thought about what I'd learned from my cycling group.  Look where you want to be, not where you are.

My fingers relaxed and the words stuttered and then began to flow.  I knew where I was going -- writing was just a trail to get there.  Full of knots and roots and rocks, of course, but if I kept my eyes on my destination, trusted myself and my story, I would stay on the path.  My fingers began to fly and soon I was blasting downhill to a chapter end.  Euphoria twice in one day.

Cover Story

It's an adrenaline-fueled moment when I see the subject line in the email:  "Possible cover image for...".  To see how a designer imagines my story, works it into images, massages metaphors into the symbols, colours and font design makes the publishing process real.  I won't share until it's confirmed and released, but I'm happy with it.  I have students who obligingly tell me they won't judge a book by its cover, but as a librarian I know it happens all the time.  I do it too -- there's an emotional quotient to a cover that affects readers before they read the title page, and designers who get it right know how to strike that fine balance between the content of the story and the audience appeal. 

The cover of Fishtailing gave me a jolt.  It was strange to think of someone putting hard images to the characters who had taken such deep root in my imagination.  I saw where they came from, and the click of shared understanding made the somewhat frightening process of publishing my book a little easier.  It was out there in the world, on its own trajectory, not just a piece of myself.

I appreciate the emotional connection with the cover designer of my second novel, Baggage, and I look forward to the connection with readers as well.

Smoke and mirrors

The Gulf Islands have been relatively free of the forest fire smoke blanketing the rest of the province this summer.  But this week, it rolled in, blocking the sun, turning the nearby islands into foggy shapes, catching at the back of my throat.  Our walking group was cancelled today, and the radio recommends avoiding all outdoor exertion.  In the evening the strange orange light casts an apocalyptic haze over the world.

It's frightening to hear news pundits predict that these last two smoky summers in British Columbia will become the "new normal" as climate change takes hold and inches the thermometers higher until the forests are tinder dry and the summer skies are filled with choking smoke for weeks on end.

But the smoke does provide new imaginings.  From last blog entry's writing opener I take a line, "I am a part of all that I have met, yet all experience is an arch wherethro' gleams that untravelled world that fades forever and forever."  The worlds begin to rise.

• a boy from the city is trapped in an inflatable boat with a girl he doesn't like, with a broken motor, dangerous currents and smoke that destroys their sense of direction; 
• far in the future, a subsistence farmer scrabbles an isolated living from the former tundra boglands, the smoky Southlands uninhabitable, the air unbreathable.  He's been alone since his brother died a year before.  One night, he hears a knock on the door; 
• after fleeing a fire that destroyed her home, her school and much of her town, a girl returns with her family to start over in the charred landscape of what once was a sheltered suburb.

The smoke is a mirror, and if I look deeply into it, the stories swirl around, bubble like steaming broth.  I can't see the blue sky behind the smoke, can't go walking through the forest or cycling on the trails, and the visibility makes kayaking a bad idea.  So I go down the stairs to my writing room, power up my computer and look in the mirror for the untravelled world.