Speculative Fiction and Literary Snobbery

When I was a kid spending endless hours in bookstores and invariably doing my English homework first (often to the detriment of most of my other classes) there was “literature” and then there was fantasy/sci-fi and an assortment of other genres of fiction. There was the occasional stray outlier–I first heard of Possession and Joyce Carol Oates’ writing in one of The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy yearbooks, and I studied Tolkien in class–but on the whole there were boundaries.

The thing is, the harder you look at these boundaries, the more arbitrary they are–or rather, the boundaries are based on the writer’s skill, not the aspects of the story. Personally I find this a bit silly. I wholly agree with categorizing novels according to the skill and grace with which a given writer tends to construct sentences, plots, and characters, but not the variety of story he or she tells. I am hopelessly fond of Cassandra Clare’s Infernal Devices series and have never liked anything that Hemingway wrote, but pretending that the former is in any way substantively better writing than the latter would be absurd; looking down on a novel or other narrative solely because it involves ghosts or dragons or alternate worlds without regard to the quality of the writing, no matter how good, is likewise absurd, but it happens all the time. Where the quality of the writing cannot be questioned, the fantastical elements are either ignored or minimized, or the novel is cast as one that deals with heavy philosophical or existential questions, as though the fantasy or sci-fi setting is irrelevant rather than, as is true in most cases, necessary to the framing of said question.

When dealing with novels that are truly great, the sort of novel that is always going to be in print and studied in high schools and universities for generations to come, the label of “fantasy” disappears–there’s the South American tradition of magical realism applied to the work of Marquez, Borges, and others, but for the most part there’s a strong resistance to admitting that fantasy or any other style of genre fiction can be well-written.  Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus, Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Michel Faber’s The Book of Strange New Things, Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, Bram Stoker’s Dracula–these are all usually, if not invariably, classified on bookshop shelves and in libraries as “Literature” with a capital L, and never as fantasy, because somehow the skill with which they are written exempts them from being genre fiction–genre fiction being something to be embarrassed about. Even The Book of Strange New Things, which is set partly in a dystopian future Earth and partly in a new planet we earthlings are colonizing as our own civilization is falling apart, is described as “genre-defying” and “defiantly unclassifiable.” No, it isn’t. It is entirely and unapologetically dystopian sci-fi, and has a couple of significant flaws that make me question why it got such a long list of rave reviews, but that’s a different blog post.

Even among fiction firmly classified as genre, fantasy and sci-fi seem to be a lower-class label. When I was in Boston I was telling Margaret about an online course I took I few years ago on fantasy literature; towards the end of my long-winded description of the books I read for the course, I remembered that it wasn’t focused on fantasy literature at all, but on historical fiction. The problem was that of the six books we read, the three I had the strongest memories of were as much fantasy as they were historical fiction, two to the extent that they contradicted the ostensible focus of the course. (It’s hard to discuss representations of the Salem Witch Trials in fiction when the main text for the class is for the most part devoted to a woman in present-day New England who dives head-first into a sexy romance with a local handyman while learning how to cope with her newfound ability to cast magical spells.)

My favourite book for the course was Yangsze Choo’s The Ghost Bride, which deals with the practice of ghost marriages in late nineteenth-century China. There is some history–the beginning offers a clear explanation of the practice of ghost marriages, as well as some of the social divisions of the time and culture in which the story is set. The greater part of the action, however, takes place when the figurative titular “ghost bride” enters a realm of ghosts and demons, and is aided in her quest by a dragon who can take the form of a man. The fact that this novel is defined as historical fiction, while Amberlough and any novel dealing with Robin Hood are listed as fantasy, is beyond me, even as a marketing ploy. (My favourite novel version of the Robin Hood story is Jennifer Roberson’s Lady of the Forest. There is not the merest glimmer of magic in it, but because it’s a Robin Hood retelling, I have always found it shelved as Fantasy whenever I’ve noticed in a bookshop. The same is true of Robin McKinley’s version, The Outlaws of Sherwood, if I remember correctly, and Parke Godwin’s Sherwood, but I discovered them all on the shelves of the Fantasy section as a teenager. The Godwin version, at least, seems to be classified as historical fiction now.)

The Ghost Bride is fantasy. It no more deserves to be labelled historical fiction than Westworld or Firefly should be defined as Westerns. Why there remains a tendency in any corner of the reading world to look down on fantasy or any other sub-category of speculative fiction as inherently less good than other forms of fiction by virtue of its subject matter is beyond me; it isn’t as though Game of Thrones and the Marvel and DC comic book lines have been losing money for their creators. Neither is it a recent invention–the origins of fantasy lie in the mythology and folktales of every culture. Hopefully the growing number of writers who are as brilliant in crafting a sentence as they are in creating new worlds and compelling characters will continue to grow, and the literary snobbery of looking down on speculative fiction will finally become a thing of the past.

 

Two Beauties

Every book I have ever read has left an imprint on me. Sometimes it’s so slight as to be forgotten; sometimes, as with Robin McKinley’s Beauty, the mark is indelible. This telling of Beauty and the Beast represents the best of fantasy writing to me: a genuine sense of magic grounded with dimensional, fully realized characters, and writing that may be lyrical but never overwrought.

I did not realize until a couple weeks ago that McKinley–who wrote Beauty at the tender age of 18–returned to her favorite fairy tale as an adult to write Rose Daughter. Since on paper I ought to have loved it, it’s taken me some time to work out why I in fact disliked it so much.

What I did like: Lush descriptions, a carefully built world of real people with real jobs and problems and grime under their nails, the brooding mystery at the heart of the Beast’s story.

What I did not like, not one bit: The lack of magic. There’s plenty of magical accessories to the action of the story. Take your pick of sorcerers and greenwitches, invisible servants, unicorns. But there is no magic.

I took a playwriting class in college. I was terrible at it. I mean, that semester holds some memories so cringe-worthy that I can barely stand to touch on them 15 years later. The only thing my professor liked from me the whole semester was my final. I wrote 60 pages of a play in one night: I realized, at 11pm the night before it was due, that the piece I’d been laboring over for weeks was as dull and lifeless and hateful as everything else I’d done in that class. So I scrapped it utterly and started over with 8 hours left on the clock.

And overnight I wrote something magical–that is, a transformation took place on stage. It may not have been a play that anyone should ever produce (I never even wanted to finish it), but I had arrived at something. I stopped thinking about how an actor could change costumes that fast, or how something that size could get on stage, or how that effect would be visible to the back row; I just wrote the magic and it worked.

Robin McKinley’s Beauty is the true magic that I got a glimpse of that one frenzied night. Rose Daughter never gets there because it is crushingly concerned, like I was that whole awful semester, with how and why the magic could happen. It’s the difference between a rose blooming for a month and a day because it is enchanted, or because it happens to be from really great stock and its fertilizer was at just the right pH.

But Rose Daughter worked its own kind of enchantment on me–or broke one I hadn’t known was there. Over the past year I have written very little. I think about my novel and feel tired of it, defeated by it. Reading this lovely yet empty story by this wonderful author made me realize where I’ve gone wrong with my book. I’ve been looking behind the curtain, telling the stage manager what to do, worrying about how the sound will carry. As that so-frustrated professor kept trying to tell me years ago, I ought to be looking at what’s on the stage. That’s where the magic happens.

blooming orange rose

To Happier Anniversaries and Recommitting to Goals

This month Salt Sweet Bitter turned a year old. Happy birthday, little blog!

When Margaret first suggested the idea of a shared blog to me, I was not at all certain I was the right person to trust with such a venture–I have always had a bad track record for beginning things with great enthusiasm and abandoning them when I run out of steam weeks or months later, and at the time I was still struggling with grief and severe anxiety. I really liked the idea, though, so I said yes.

I have been glad I did so every week. I have not always been able to finish my posts on the deadlines I have set myself, but I have kept to them more often than not. My baking projects were a large part of what pulled me out of the depression I had been struggling with since before my mother’s death, and learning to write coherently about politics has been a buffer against some of the despair that set in after the election. Having a place to report about these things, however informal and forgiving, has proven to be vital.

Last week I got to spend time in Boston with Margaret for the first time in far too many years, and it was glorious. She graciously guided and drove me to various locales so that I could indulge my obsessions with history and chocolate and bookshops. We also did lots of talking and lots of eating popcorn while watching films and television, and lots of cooking. And more eating. If you have not been to Boston, the food is flipping incredible, whether it comes from Margaret’s kitchen or any of the innumerable awesome restaurants. (I expected I would lose a few ounces due to all the walking that I am not used to. This did not happen, because Burdick’s and lobster rolls.)

I do not think I am a bad cook, and I will certainly stand up and say I am a good baker of most things that are not bread–at least, not yet–but my range is limited. I can do a few excellent cakes, good roast potatoes, and I can manage baked salmon and fried pork chops without drying them out. I haven’t practiced enough to call it a talent yet, but I’ve had remarkably good luck with joints of roast beef thus far, even the cheaper cuts that are likely to turn out tough. Margaret’s abilities, however, remind me that if I’m not exactly a beginner, neither am I far into the intermediate level, and as much as I enjoy making salmon en croute and noodles and shrimp with lime-sesame dressing, there are only so many times one can serve these things to guests before everyone gets bored.

One recent success: Christmas morning cinnamon rolls using an ATK recipe, which were in all honesty the best I’ve ever had, if I do say so myself. Including Cinnabon.

Without quite noticing, I’ve found over the past couple of months that I’ve achieved a lot, if not all, of what I kept telling myself I had to do after my mother died. The house is mostly tidy, a great deal of the clutter has been either parted with or better organized, and cleaning takes a fraction of the time it used to, even if I still hate doing the ironing and the carpets need vacuuming on almost a daily basis (because cats…). The silver kittens are almost full-size cats and very affectionate, if still shy. I have done some reorganizing of the house, and have a clearer idea of what else I want to do. So far this year has been devoted to politics, writing, and reading. I have no intention of giving up any of those, but I have worked through enough grief and despair to start focusing on some of the other things I love again, especially cooking. I have a growing collection of cookbooks that I am quite proud of; it is time to start using them more frequently, trying out dishes I am entirely unfamiliar with and finding new ways to cook foods I know I like. I have a collection of herbs in the garden that have been entirely neglected while I focused on the inside of the house, so they desperately need some care and attention. I am also determined to become a very good baker, particularly of bread, including sourdough. It should be interesting, if nothing else; in between the political writing and gushing about chocolate and pop culture, I promise to get back to documenting more of what I’m working on. I would love to hear more from our readers–if you have any suggestions or requests regarding recipes, please do let me know.

 

Marching against a mirage

This past Saturday, I was one of ~150,000 people who swarmed the Boston Common–the largest demonstration in Boston in decades. We represented only a tiny fraction of the millions of women and men who took to the streets worldwide, responding to the threat posed by the newly-minted 45th President of the United States.

Women's March protest sign in BostonDetermining the extent of that threat is still in progress. Fighting it will be the work of many coming years. We know that his administration poses a serious threat to the health, safety, and agency of women (the gestalt of these protests); to the very life of people of color; to the health of most Americans, but especially the poor ones; to the longevity of human habitat on Earth; to the pursuit of science; to a free press; to truth; and to the American experiment itself.

The most frequently-heard chant at Boston’s rally was to that latter point. Call (from a few throats): “Tell me what democracy looks like!” Response (from many throats, deafening): “This is what democracy looks like!” And it is–or at least, one of its most attractive faces. The vibe in Boston was downright joyful. There was drumming, dancing, laughter everywhere, waves of applause. There was a sense that we were there to be uplifted and damn it, we would be uplifted.

But this was just one day. And democracy for a day, as was made abundantly clear on November 8, 2016, is not enough democracy to make this thing work. Our participation in politics must become consistent, passionate, and supremely well-organized for the resistance to stand a chance against the empire.

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I don’t have the slightest idea how to do this. I’ve been an armchair American for a long time. Fortunately, some thoughtful organizers out there have made it easy for those of us with occasional-democracy syndrome to take some baby steps out into the world of action.

10 Actions / 100 Days: The babiest of baby steps! The first one is sending a postcard with a nice note on it. (I can do this!)

The Big Hundred: Just a few days in, these actions to counter Trumpism seem geared to approachable, be kind to others-type things. Don’t be a jerk! (I can probably do this.)

Call Them In: I don’t even call people I love on the phone. Why would I call people I don’t even know? To save the world? Yes, okay, good reason. But I can’t just…like…do it. So these lovely folks have made it incredibly easy. I don’t even have to pick my own words. So easy. So democratic. (I will work up to this.)

Swing Left: This might be my favorite. Results-oriented planning FTW! These folks want us to take back the House in 2018. Without it, we just can’t have nice things–such as checks and balances! Or an impeachment! Find out where your nearest swing district is and get to work. I get overwhelmed by how much there is to be done; I like that this is not only clear but scope-constrained. (I look forward to doing this.)

And yes, obviously, find some way to support groups like the SPLC and the ACLU and Planned Parenthood and the Environmental Defense Fund, groups that have been fighting this fight for a long time and know what they’re doing.

I’ve seen numerous sources point out that yeah, this whole Trump thing is a disgrace and a catastrophe, but without it, would millions of us have taken to the streets to raise our voices for women, for people of color, for indigenous rights, for gay rights, for immigration justice, for environmental justice, for a better America? Would we have finally realized that a better America means all that other stuff, all at once? (Um. No. In case you were wondering.) Yet these issues have been taking their toll–on real human lives–not just throughout our country’s sordid history, but during the past eight years.

We’ve had a President we could be proud of for the past two terms. He was classy and smart, handsome and charming. He had his heart mostly in the right place most of the time, and plus he had Michelle and Joe Biden backing him up, so, yeah, we swooned. Now we have a President we’re ashamed of–but truly, there was a lot to be ashamed of all along. Our love affair with Barack Obama just made us overlook the flaws.

This is a serious lesson in silver linings. We’re being forced to decide what we want this country to be. We can choose to make this a country to be proud of, which will take an unthinkable amount of hard work and coming together and action and love, or we can choose to wake up from the American dream once and for all.

If the moral universe does indeed have an arc, then justice is the horizon. This weekend’s march made me view what’s happening right now across the world–the regression towards xenophobia and insularity, the desperate last gasp of the reign of the white man–as merely a fata morgana. That’s when our eyes get tricked into perceiving something on the horizon as bigger than it actually is, and unreachable: ships that seem to float above the ocean, or cities in the clouds. But America is not a city in the clouds. We can reach its heart, and lay siege to it, and take it back.

Fight or Flight: Or, A Dilemma of American Privilege

Donald Trump is the President-Elect of the United States.

There. I said it.

I couldn’t say it yesterday. I needed the day after the election to begin to wrap my head around what had just happened. The 2016 presidential campaign felt like a satire–often, a farce–from the very beginning, and it’s been tough to recognize that this is now my reality. We all know the facts: endorsed by the KKK, with a platform that articulates bigotry and misogyny, beyond anti-intellectual and into anti-conscious thought, this creature of America’s basest instincts was legitimately elected into power by more than 59 million of my fellow citizens.

The disastrous results of this election put the alt-right in the Executive branch of our government, to be checked by the hard right in the Legislative and the soon-t0-be-determined level of fucking crazy in the Judicial. Even if Trump manages to last four years without doing something incredibly illegal and getting impeached, or just quitting when he finds out it’s actually a really hard job, this particular conformation of government is going to screw the vast majority of people in this country for a long time to come. I expect we’ll get a flipped Senate, at least, in two years, but that’s cold comfort.

Before the election, my husband and I discussed what we do in the event of a Trump presidency. Of course these conversations had a flippant tone–such a thing wasn’t going to happen, after all–but we decided we couldn’t live in such a dystopian version of our country. We’d go to New Zealand: gorgeous, no language barrier, as far away as possible from nuclear strike zones. We recognize our socioeconomic privilege in having the choice at all. We haven’t had the heart to bring the topic up seriously now that the dystopia is here, but the talk is coming. My first instinct is certainly to flee this place. Why would I want to live in a country that chose white supremacy? Why stay in a place that is growing farther and farther away from my own ideals?

But Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by more than 200,000. Other than rubbing salt in the wound, that means that nearly 60 million of my fellow citizens are on the right side of history, on the side of civil rights and of basic human decency. If I left, I’d also be leaving them. I’m not sure what the Venn Diagram looks like of those voters and the most vulnerable to Trumper policies, but I’m sure there’s a lot of overlap there.

That’s where privilege comes up again: I’m not at great risk to Trump’s would-be policies, though as a woman some absolutely affect me in deeply personal ways, and I’m sure that I could use my position of relative safety to fight for the most vulnerable. I could use my privilege as a white person, as someone with financial security, as someone in a (relatively) safe state, to advantage by staying and fighting for the America that should be.

Staying and fighting also requires an acknowledgement that I have let my country down so far. Of all the emotions I’ve been facing over the last couple of days, one keeps rising to the top like an oil slick on water: guilt.

Democracy doesn’t magically come into being every four years and then go away. A government by and for the people demands the people’s involvement for real success. I have voted in every election since I turned 18, but that is not enough.

I am not an activist. I am not a politician. I throw a bit of money at likely candidates every few years, I sign petitions, I write to my Senators and Representatives if something big comes up. I understand that this is more involved that many Americans, but what a disgustingly low bar. How easy to step over it into real engagement with our political process.

At least, it should be. I don’t know there to go from here. What constitutes a step towards being a truly good citizen? Volunteering with some local org? Running for local office? Finding a job with the Elizabeth Warren office, hallowed be her name? What does fighting look like?

The loudest demographic of this election was a plurality of voters across America hungry for change–even change at the expense of human decency and the ideals of the American experiment, apparently. The establishment parties have seen that hunger and they’re scared. That’s why Republicans stuck by Trump, through all the unfathomably awful things he’s said and done; they were afraid to let go of this “change agent” and be left by the wayside. But they’re going to get back to business as usual to the extent their constituency lets them.

By the same token, the Democrats yielded to progressive pressure early on, incorporating much of the “Bernie revolution” message into the party platform. Will the party keep fighting for those ideals? It seems they have to–we must swing wildly left to counter the fast-sinking right. Change is hard, though, and it is our duty to make sure the DNC knows we’re watching. Or better yet, participating. Perhaps that’s continuing to put pressure on the party to change. Perhaps that’s committing to nationwide election reform so that we can make third parties viable parts of our process instead of wisps of St. Elmo’s fire that lead otherwise good people off into the wastelands when they’re needed most.

Flight sounds easy but of course it isn’t. I don’t want to leave behind those I love. Fight sounds hard, but maybe it’s not as hard as I think. The wounds of this election–the hatred and the bigotry, seeing progress shoved so forcibly back–will turn into scars no matter where I live the next four years. Over the coming days what I need to figure out is: do I still believe in America? Can this go from being my country by an accident of birth to a country I help build? The one thing I know is that I cannot stay here and remain a bystander.

I want to hear how you see us saving the dream of America. Or, toss out some good business ideas for New Zealand and let’s look at real estate. I’m open.

This is New Zealand. I mean, can you blame me?
This is New Zealand. I mean, can you blame me?

Make Halloween Weird Again

What is Halloween, anyway? It’s long been one of my favorite holidays, and it exercises a stronger hold on the American cultural imagination than any other. Yet it bears little resemblance to what it once was. It’s been sexed up and tamed down until it feels almost entirely divorced from its roots. A Frankenstein’s monster, if you will, that instead of barging off into the wilderness has gone for a well-lit stroll down cultivated garden lanes.

Deer skull on Icelandic house
Iceland, where they keep it weird.

Dia de los Muertos celebrations are closer in many ways to the original European All Hallows Eve than our current trick or treating. Halloween is rooted in Samhain (“sah-win”, meaning “summer’s end”), which marked the end of the pagan year. The Celts of the British Isles believed it was the day spirits were closest to our world–just as the people of Mexico have long believed that this is when spirits not only come close to our world, but come back specifically to be reunited with their loved ones. There remains a pervasive sense of otherworldliness about Day of the Dead celebrations, whereas Halloween has become all too worldly.

Dia de los Muertos decoration
flickr/Bart Heird

It didn’t start that way. Catholics, back in the 800s A.D., tried to turn the pagan Samhain into All Saints Day and held a vigil the night before. Called All Hallows Eve, this is what became our Halloween. It got a bit smushed up with another Christian holiday (All Souls Day) as well as old Roman days of the dead, and the roots of the modern holiday–costumes, trick or treating, bobbing for apples–grew out of a variety of traditions that immigrants brought to the New World.

Halloween proceeded to spend much of the 20th century evolving into a secular holiday, and the 21st devolving into commercial-dom. And yet there’s still some kernel of the original intent: using treats to placate mischievous children is not far off from using them to placate spirits, and Halloween still serves as a marker between the season of plenty and the season of wither. Half-bare branches and the scuttle of dry leaves in the gutter are as much a part of the holiday as jack o’lanterns and candy bars.

Gorilla, bat, and farmer Halloween costumesCostumes today may not be intended to confuse demons, but the trend towards satire does convey a sense of cultural exorcism. And then we have aspirational costumes–superheroes, royalty, pop stars–which seem uniquely and almost touchingly American. They suggest a world where everyone is encouraged to dream big and rewarded when they do.

Our Halloween may not be spooky. It’s no solemn reminder, as it once was, of the thin veil that separates us from eternity. It is a glittering daylight heartthrob vampire, not the monster you run from in darkness. Still, it’s a time to celebrate strangeness, to get a peek at what scares or amuses those around you, and to look at lots of extremely adorable small children.

I would like to see a return to honoring this liminal time. This Halloween, take a moment to think about our year sliding towards darkness. Watch a scary movie and feel how close you are to panic at any moment. Wear a mask to the grocery store to understand the mask you wear every day. Wear a “vote for Trump” button. Make Halloween weird* again.

*Suggesting something supernatural; unearthly.

‘Sounds emitted from the bushes: weird uncanny sounds made by unknown animals, for all sorts of things lived in forests.’

Synonyms: uncanny, eerie, unnatural, supernatural, unearthly, otherworldly, ghostly, mysterious, strange, abnormal, unusual

Vintage Halloween costumes
Halloween costumes: they don’t make ’em like they used to.

Talking to Horses

About a year ago I started taking horseback riding lessons. Yet it wasn’t until a couple of months ago that I could clarify what I really want out of my time with my horses: how to talk to them.

margskip8_29167657915_oThe moment of clarity came during a trick clinic. That is, an all-day affair where each participant worked with her horse on fundamental training principles with fun payouts–the tricks. Getting the horse to “smile,” or step up on a small block, or hug you. I was having the time of my life and we didn’t spend a single moment on horseback. It was the engagement with the horse, his interest in what was happening, the painstaking process of figuring out how to elicit the correct behavior that I loved. The conversation.

When I returned to horses as an adult, remembering only my confidence with them when I was younger, I was shocked to find how much I had changed. Sense of my own mortality, etc. I thought confidence would return as I spent more time with them both on the ground and in the saddle. Some has, for sure. But I realized at that trick clinic that I needed a tool set. Techniques for dogs don’t necessarily translate to horses; body language has different meaning; predator and prey cannot be equated.

Quarterhorse standing with two front feet on a block
Skippy is a bit clumsy and it took him ages to figure out this particular “simple” trick, but we got there eventually!

I feel like I heard a new language for the first time at that clinic and have been trying to practice ever since. My teacher always says that she doesn’t whisper to horses, she listens to them, and while I have intellectually understood the difference I feel like I’m just starting to understand what that actually means now. And although I’ve got a long way to go, it’s astonishing how much more confident I have felt simply having that insight and a new tool set.

Last week, I had the opportunity to take another “language lesson” with the same trainer. This clinic was divided into trick training for the first half and versatility for the second–that is, intentionally pushing your horse’s limits in order to build up their confidence and deepen the trust which is the focus of all training.

Skippy on a seesaw
The seesaw! Please ignore my posture, which is awful. Also he tried to eat the giant inflatable monster in the corner.

I got off easy for the second part. My partner for the event–as for the first one–was a hunky AQHA named Skippy who could be the dictionary definition of “bombproof.” At one point, I was riding him while holding a veil over his head, asking him to walk over a mattress and through a fence of pool noodles (at one point, while two hula hoops hung around his neck), and he acted like we were taking a Sunday stroll through the park. We had to work through a few tough moments, like walking onto and over a horse-sized seesaw or finding a giant plush iguana on the ground where there hadn’t been one a moment before, but on the whole our conversation was more like easy bantering than a debate.

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If only you could see his “yeah, whatever” face. Image c/o Kasandra Olson.

My second trick training clinic left me grinning like an idiot and reinforced how right this system felt to me. Of course, not all horses are the same, and just as with humans, you can’t have the same conversation with two of them. I was riding one of the most reliable horses at the barn the other day, an expert lesson horse who could do what I’m asking her with her eyes closed. But she spooked.

All of a sudden I couldn’t even remember how to have any conversation, let alone what language it ought to be in. So I panicked and dumped myself off onto the sand. She looked at me, I looked at her, we both felt a bit ashamed of ourselves. A few moments later the source of the spook ran by, and let me tell you, it was the most terrifying chipmunk I have ever seen. So yeah. The confidence recipe includes a hefty proportion of practice and I’m far from that magical threshold.

This spring, I wrote about being an adult beginner. I was out for 6 weeks as a result of the fall that prompted that post; then I traveled for a month during the summer; and lately, I haven’t been riding much as we’ve been busy moving the barn to new facilities. Honestly, I don’t feel a lot closer to answering the questions I posed to myself back in May. However, through my first few falls and scary moments, through a sticky hot summer and a hell of a lot of hard work, I can now say (with a certain amount of pride) that I have been sticking to it. Talking to horses will take a long time to do well and I don’t know if I’ll ever be fluent. Fortunately, though–time I’ve got.

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Changing Gears

The last time I wrote about my writing process, it was to tell you that I was stuck in the middle of painful restructuring. I have now finished that stage and am on to the final rewrite of my novel. Hallelujah! Followed by, Oh sh*t! as I realize how many weeks since the restructure have already disappeared in the rearview. The writing was to be the no-worries piece of this project because putting words on the page has always come easy to me.

My problem is that I always think I’ve got more time than I actually do. I tend to overschedule until I burn out and then I go into a sort of vegetative state to recover. If my overscheduling included getting tons of writing done, I could work with that. But I de-prioritize my creative work, thinking I can “fit it in” sometime. I focus on seeing family and friends, cooking, working, and at least for this past half year or so, taking full advantage of my open schedule to spend lots of time with horses. That is pretty spectacular and complaining would not be gentlemanlike. All the same this is not getting me any closer to my goal: to dedicate myself to writing. My brain is stuck in “Vacation” gear. What I need is several shifts up and clearly labeled “Writing is Actually Your Job Now, Go Do It.”*

20160701-DSC_0394Author Elizabeth Gilbert gave a TED Talk on this topic that sums the issue up pretty well. Whatever one’s particular problem is–lack of motivation or inspiration, or feeling overwhelmed–ultimately there is only one solution, and that is showing up to work. Saying you will solve the problem another day means the problem will not get solved. Not settling your hands onto the keyboard means no inspiration can speak through them. Any step you can make towards managing a seemingly un-manageable project can only be made by working on it, not by worrying about it. If you don’t show up for the work, the work does not get done. If you do show up for the work–well, some days you end up writing 5,000 words when you sat down to write 500. Mostly not. But those are the days that redeem the rest.

Changing gears is, like most actions in life, something that simply must be done. There’s no game plan for it. It’s not a multi-step process. It’s deciding to do it and just doing it. The only way I will sit down and show up for work every day is by sitting down and showing up for work every day.

As I write this, in itself a procrastination from the novel which is open in Scrivener a simple click away, it occurs to me I can decide to do it right now. I was tempted to pick September as a start point, only a few days away, but this is the failed “someday” approach. I wrote today and felt the rust flake off the gears as they started to turn.

I’m shifting up tomorrow.

 

  • Of course, I’m pretty good at getting writing done (or anything else, for that matter) when someone else is the boss. Getting paid sure helps, too.

Of time and the river

Time tends to pass me by. I’m late to things. I respond to an email and am surprised to see I received it weeks before, when it feels like days. I put off picking up the phone to call friends because I don’t particularly like talking on the phone and then somehow it’s been five years.

And yet this past month, during a roadtrip through the Ohio Valley, I was astonished all over again at the way time eddies around me. It had been four, fifteen, twenty-two years since I had seen some of the folks my husband and I visited–some of them close family. I’d like to think this was a big enough shock that it would initiate a system reboot, or something, and suddenly I’ll be the sort of person who just calls you when she’s thinking about you. But people aren’t computers. (If we were, I would totally go for a memory upgrade. Mine is super slow and frequently returns errors.)

The paradox of connection is that it might take years for me to reach out to someone, but it’s largely because the moments that make them meaningful to me feel ever present. Here are some of the ones from this trip, as a somewhat impressionist chronological recap.

  • Being handed a brimming mugful of hot toddy, iconic of the care and gentleness with which these friends treat even a sickly house guest;
  • Eating dinner around a family table that at one point felt like home to me, and finding that it still did–and that there was really no adjustment necessary for new faces, it just happened, it just was;
  • Everyone being tired, or sick, or distracted by spur of the moment real estate decisions, and it being totally fine and comfortable and somehow perfect to get takeout Thai and talk about nothing;
  • Hugging family for the first time in two decades and tearing up;
  • My five year old cousin hiding jingle bells inside my much-beloved late grandmother’s treasure box, so that when I picked it up to take it home the box rang out and instead of being sad in that moment we all laughed;
  • The tour of the chocolate factory and the tour of the house, everywhere present the work of hands lovingly crafting;
  • Nibbling on spicy arugula while picking kale and beets in the sun and drinking the coldest beer;
  • Toasting marshmallows while the sun set over the lake and the full moon rose orange over the marina;
  • Making total singing fools out of ourselves, for love;
  • That steely-eyed, coldly-reasoned, absolutely cutthroat game of Jenga;
  • Proving that yes, Steve, this family can eat that much Chinese food;
  • And a brilliant double rainbow after the storm.

During this trip we saw Genius, the sort-of biopic of Thomas Wolfe. While the book of his that I love is Look Homeward, Angel and not his second epic volume Of Time and the River, they share themes of the circularity of time and of the insatiable human need for connection. Though I didn’t like much about the movie I was impressed at the extent to which both themes were folded into the narrative itself. It resonated particularly because this trip, for me, was like stepping back into the river at a point I thought I’d left behind and finding it unchanged. You’ve heard this analogy before, of course, and I know as well as you do that it’s never truly the same river twice. Often I think I write as a way to try to dam it. That never works. Time is slack sometimes and then it floods; all I can do is sketch a moment to remember the feel of it.

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The Friday Fave: Writing Letters

Letters

I am an only child, and when I was growing up there were only a couple of other kids my age in my neighbourhood, so I spent a great deal of time playing on my own. One of my odder games was to sit down with one of my mother’s old fountain pens and pretend I was writing letters, immensely long sermons of letters in copperplate, the way I saw people doing in the costume dramas my parents watched on Sunday nights. The only problem was I couldn’t write in cursive at that point, let alone copperplate, so I mostly just scrawled loose lines of spikes and loops over good printer paper that I probably hadn’t bothered asking permission to use. I’d like to say I was three or four years old during these escapades but I was probably old enough to know better.

When I was in second grade my teachers announced that my class would be doing a pen-pal project with another second-grade class in Burkina Faso. I was captivated. Not only would I finally get to write a real letter–not just a Christmas card to a family member–I loved the idea that something I was going to write would be sent to someone on the other side of the globe, whom I’d never met. (I had it in my head that we would each be paired off with one other student in the other class–it didn’t occur to me that the other class full of students was likely much bigger than ours, and whatever we wrote and received would be shared by all the students.) When the planned exchange fell through due to political events, I was terribly disappointed–I’d been practicing my penmanship and studying Africa on the globe for weeks. I still wanted a penpal.

I got one eventually, later the following summer, although we only managed one letter each. I remember that her name was Chrissy, but not much else–I have entirely forgotten how I made contact with her, what state she lived in, and who found her address for me, but I still have her letter.

After that, letters were the part of summer I most looked forward to. I gave up attempting to make my handwriting look like copperplate, at least for the time being, but I wrote as much as I could. One stretch of two or three weeks was spent writing tortuously long recaps of All My Children episodes to one friend spending the summer in New York, because I was certain she wasn’t able to watch it where she was. I don’t know where I got this idea. Another summer was the year of a postman in Florida assuming that I was my best friend’s “little boyfriend” because I had taken to plastering stickers all over the back of the envelopes.

I started collecting volumes of letters by my favourite writers and artists. One Christmas my mother gave me the Oxford Book of Letters, still a favourite possession, to which I started adding hand copies of letters from other volumes when I found that it didn’t include Sullivan Ballou’s last letter to his wife. I was about sixteen, and took this as an almost personal affront, being convinced that it was the loveliest letter ever written.

I met Margaret by chance at my senior prom, and we hit it off instantly. I was due to leave for Scotland in a few months: transatlantic phone calls being both impractical and prohibitively expensive, and email being a thing but Internet access being unpredictable, letters were our only reasonable means of keeping in touch and getting to know one another better. So I started writing more letters. Lots and lots of letters.

Letter box
Some of Margaret’s letters to me

I don’t imagine they were particularly good, my imaginative life at this point being dominated by equal parts Shakespeare, Emily Bronte, Matchbox 20, and Sarah McLachlan. There were tearful letters and homesick letters and plenty of angst about boys, in between being breathlessly enchanted by living in such close proximity to the North Sea and plenty of Mediaeval ruins. There were also, later, drunken letters, which must have been dreadful to read. Sometimes I still want to go back and read these; the rest of the time I think it’s much better for my present and future state of mind that I never do. I’d probably die of embarrassment.

I lost a great part of my will to write at the end of 2001, so addled by anemia that I usually lacked the energy to concentrate. I started relying on email and phone calls more, and lost the discipline to make it to the post office when I did manage to finish a real letter. I made sporadic attempts and recovering my old drive to write letters over the next several years, but it didn’t come back properly, not like it was.

Writing Desk 1

After my mother died I lost most of my interest in writing any sort of personal document at all; whatever inspiration I had went into fiction, where I didn’t have to think about my actual situation and surroundings. I still haven’t resumed my journal, but a couple of months ago my itch write letters came back with a vengeance. I took possession of my parents’ old escritoire–it had been used for storing excess stationery and dried-up pens for most of my life–and all the good writing paper my mother collected but never used, and returned it to the purpose it was designed for. The hutch is still home to some of my mother’s favourite china, but the desk is all mine now, one place to keep my pens, journals, and letter paper and nothing else. It is the nicest place I’ve ever had dedicated solely to writing, and has done a great deal to re-ignite the joy I once found in focusing on what to say to another person.

We are in danger of losing letters as an art form, but I don’t think the rise of email and social media is the culprit. It started to decline at the same time that reading challenging novels and poetry for enjoyment did, which occurred long before we all got access to the Internet. Letters are so much more than a means of transmitting information; for the writer, they can be exercises in introspection, a means of illuminating how we feel about an event or another person, for ourselves as much as for our correspondent; for the reader, they capture something of the writer’s spirit that can’t be communicated over the telephone.

They are also invaluable documents of the past, both in the sense of our shared cultural and national histories and our own personal and family histories. Even the most trivial of comments shed light on the personalities that wrote them. In going through my family’s collection of photos and letters, I found a postcard that my grandfather wrote to his mother when he was away on a scouting trip, aged perhaps 13 or 14, about a century ago now. I never got the chance to know my grandfather well, and fragments like this are invaluable to me.

There’s a great trend these days for devoting all one’s disposable income and time to experiences rather than things, but it bothers me that along with the laudable impulse to be less materialistic we’re forgetting all sense of permanence. One tenet of the anti-immigration argument is that a high number of immigrants inexorably and irretrievably changes our culture (as though time and innovations in technology don’t alter anything). We inexorably and irretrievably lose our culture and our past because we don’t read enough of it, not just recent commentary on previous centuries but the letters and records that have survived. One of the Internet’s greatest blessings is how easy it has made it for us to rediscover and access those documents. Letters are one of our richest resources for learning about where we came for and growing as individuals, and I still continue to hope that it never quite goes out of style. So write a letter. Write to your family the next time you go out of town, in addition to the necessary emails that you’re alive and well. Write to loved ones who live out of state or across the country. If you are so moved, you can take part in awesome projects like this and write to random strangers. Also, there’s nothing quite like finding a handwritten letter in the post, amongst all the sales catalogues and bills.