Ride the Divide!

Today in spin class, we did something very different; we watched the second part of the documentary Ride the Divide, a documentary about a group of people who competed to see who could be the first to ride from Canada to Mexico on their bikes.

Now we're not talking about the Tour de France, when people ride in groups, with support teams to provide food, hydration and medical help.  No, these riders were mostly out there pedalling away on their own.

It's interesting that what defeated riders most often was the loneliness or the boredom, not the exertion or injury or not having enough training.  We saw one of the riders confessing that the scenery was lovely, but she was just so bored, too bored to face another day.

I thought of my own days and how often I feel a similar way.  I thought of my childhood dreams of hiking the Appalachian Trail from beginning to end or riding a bike from coast to coast, the way so many people did during the summer of 1976.  It's good to remember that even if I was out there on a bike or with a backpack, I'd still face the problem of boredom.

I'd go a step further and say that boredom defeats many of us more quickly than lack of skill or lack of talent or lack of resources.  How many writers (or artists of any kind) have quit because they could not face another day alone with their thoughts?  How many marriages and families have been abandoned when the tedium became too great?  How many jobs have been left because at least the boredom in a new job would be unfamiliar, at least for a few months?

I daresay many of us if not most of us are never trained with the coping skills we need to keep at a task, especially if the rewards are few and far between or largely self-rewarded.

Now, an enterprising blogger would end with an upbeat suggestion for how to cope with boredom--or a 3 part podcast, available for download for a very modest price, or a book!  I am not that enterprising blogger this morning.  I write mainly to remind myself that even if I was out there living my childhood dream, I'd still face the problem of what to do with all the boredom.

Scenes from a Saturday

--I was with a group of friends yesterday, and we played the Righteous Gentile game described by Nathan Englander:  in the event of Holocaust, who would hide me and who would turn me in?

--Of course, "What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank" warns us of what can happen when a group casually plays this game.  Happily, my group of friends remains on speaking terms.  I think.

--We did generate intense conversation.  We did remind each other of how other groups, most specifically groups which help abused women escape, have managed to hide endangered humans and stay safe.

--I posed the question this way, "Let's say the government decides to exterminate Lutherans.  Would you hide me?"  Posed that way, the question is almost humorous, especially since Lutherans are probably one of the least dangerous religious groups in the U.S.  We tried to remind each other that even though the government has yet to set its sights on Lutherans, other groups, like immigrants both legal and illegal, are often not so lucky.

--I am aware of the school of theology that says if we were living truly Christian lives, we would be on a direct collision course with our government.  To say that Lutherans are the least dangerous Christian group probably means we should be stepping up our efforts as Christians.

--I came home to watch the movie Beginners.  Christopher Plummer won an Academy Award for this movie?  I don't usually think about quitting a movie once it's started, but I was sorely tempted last night.  Was I offended?  No.  Just bored.  What a slow-paced movie.  What a dull-witted main character.  It would have been better to focus only on the Christopher Plummer character, the older father of the main character.

--I did love the movie's transitional photo montages with narration:   "Here's the president in 1965; here's what pets looked like in 1965; here's what pets look like now; here's what love looked like in 1965; here's what love looks like now."

--The advantage to a boring movie is that one gets other things done.  I paid some bills and worked on my rock project.

--I'm in the process of creating a prayer chapel (see this post for more details).  My spouse and I have been creating rocks for the prayer chapel, rocks with words we've printed on them:

I really enjoyed creating them.  I have a vision of continuing to create them and leaving them in places.  It's a quiet form of performance art.

Dagger Twists: Art as Comfort, Art as Prod

I've written about Nathan Englander in several blog posts (here on my creativity blog and here on my theology blog), and now I've finally gotten the book What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank.  Last night I read the short story that bears the same name--wow!

At first the story struck me as humorous, which it is.  I wasn't ready for the dagger twist at the end.  I expect to think about it for many days, but I won't write more about it, because I don't want to spoil it for people who haven't read it yet.

There's a scene where the characters go into a huge pantry and talk about how it could be turned into a hidden space, should the family ever need to shelter people being hunted by the government.  This conversation is in the context of Jews being hidden from Hitler, but it made me think of other situations.

My all-time favorite Marge Piercy novel is Vida, about a leftist activist named Vida who on the run from the government in the early 70's; she's gone underground and relies on her friends who aren't similarly compromised to shelter her and help her.  It's a great depiction of the student movements of the 60's and how some of them moved into terrorism; as you might expect, one of the central questions of the book centers around how we should protest when we feel our government is wrong.  It also explores why some women moved towards feminism while some didn't.

When I first read it in 1987, I wondered how it would hold up through the years.  I've read it several times since then, and it's always held up well.  Even the domestic terrorism theme continued to work, which I wondered about with the terrorist events of Oklahoma City and September 11.

I've long had a plot in my head, which I may never develop into the novel that it could be, that would have a right wing terrorist and a left wing terrorist hook up.  I had this vision of a feminist woman in the North Carolina mountains and a wounded man who shows up talking about his work against the government.  She assumes he's a lefty, but later finds out that he's been bombing abortion clinics.

Maybe I should see how it works as a short story.  Hmm.

I've also been thinking about this article by Andrea Chalupa which explores Orwell's fight to get Animal Farm published and to get it into the hands of Soviet dissidents in Ukrainian translation in displaced persons camps, an angle of this book's history I knew nothing about.  I'm used to thinking of this novel as a classic; I sometimes forget that classics have a bumpy road to acceptance.

But what fascinates me more is the depiction of art as both comfort and agent of social change and resistance.  And then there's the question of whether or not art is required to forge new ground, whether it be political or social.

In this review of Englander's collection, Parul Sehgal says, "Even if it revisits terrain exhaustively explored by other American Jewish writers, Englander unwittingly makes us wonder: If a writer takes Jewishness as his subject, is he obligated to tell us something new about Jewishness? Or is he only obligated to describe Jewish characters in the most precise language he can, putting them in the most psychologically revealing situations he can imagine? Such questions — irresolvable, hairsplitting, Talmudic — prove more satisfying than the answers posed by a more perfect book."


For those of you who don't like these kind of philosophical questions, here's a great interview with Englander where he talks about his writing process.  It makes me want to get back to writing more fiction.

Here are some Nathan Englander quotes for your Saturday inspiration:

"I promise you that there is no end to the pulling-out-handfuls-of-hair, woe-is-me, there-is-no-hope structural challenges that I can find myself wrestling with when writing a story. But you’re asking if it was liberating to work with very limited elements, and the answer is: Wildly so. Everything is so much clearer once a world is framed. Maybe it sounds crazy, but with writing it’s infinity that is limiting, and the limited that allows for the truly infinite. Once all those elements are in place in a story, the brain is truly freed up to imagine without end."

"But, in a case like this, what interests me when I’m writing is being able to crawl into a character’s head and speak from his or her mouth. It’s not pulling the strings on a marionette, it’s not playing ventriloquist, and it’s not mimicry. It’s about inhabiting a character, and, at the same time, being totally unaware of what you’ve become."

Happy Birthday, John Irving (and Garp and Owen Meany)

Today is John Irving's 70th birthday--70th!!!  I remember when John Irving was seen as a young, up-and-coming writer.  It's startling to me to realize how long he's been writing.

I picked up The World According to Garp at a used bookstore in Knoxville, Tennessee when I was in high school.  I remember reading it and being somewhat shocked at the unhappiness of the suburban parents in the novel.  I remember being somewhat shocked by the sex in the novel, but I can't remember what was shocking.  I'd been reading bodice ripper romance novels for years by the time I picked up my first John Irving novel, and so, graphic depictions of lust and sex had lost their capacity to shock just by their graphic nature alone.

I also remember being shocked by some of the strange twists the novel took.  As I continued to read Irving novels, I came to expect a shocking twist, and part of the thrill of reading an Irving novel was in predicting which characters would die a freakish death or be maimed.

I used to read Irving novels the minute they came out--or as soon as I could get them from my public library during my impoverished grad school years.  These days, I have a stack of his recent books awaiting the mythical time in the future that I'll have time to read a big novel.

My favorite John Irving novel--and it's high on the list of my all-time favorite novels--is A Prayer for Owen Meany.  What an amazing book.  My spouse read it first, and then I read it, and then we loaned it to anyone who would take it.  We were Owen Meany evangelists.

I use that word with purpose because each time I've read the book, I've noticed that Owen Meany functions neatly as a Christ figure.  You might say, "Sure.  You're an English major.  You see sex and Christ figures in every work of literature or pop culture."  You'd be right, but Owen Meany works as a Christ figure more neatly than some characters in other works.

Maybe some day I'll write the academic paper that I once sketched out that made the argument.  Maybe some day I'll write a novel that has a main character who functions as a Christ figure.

I remember being struck by the main character, the non-Owen Meany character, and his trajectory through spiritual landscapes.  I remember being struck by the fact that Irving could write about this journey, and I remained interested instead of turned off.  I was similarly being struck by that ability in Gail Godwin.  It's not easy to write a book about characters who go to church and to make that book appealing to believers and non-believers alike.

It may be time to reread A Prayer for Owen Meany again.  I used to reread it on a regular basis.  I used to reread lots of books on a regular basis.  Ah, youth, when I had time to read and less to distract me from it.

I used to read Father Melancholy's Daughter by Gail Godwin regularly as a Holy Week book.  Maybe this year, I'll return to A Prayer for Owen Meany.  Maybe in the same week I'll reread A Wrinkle in Time, the novel by Madeleine L'Engle that moved me as a 5th grader when I first read it, and continued to affect me deeply when I'd reread it throughout adolescence.  I've been wanting to reread it for months now, and this year marks the 50th anniversary of its publication.   Reading the two in close proximity might lead to interesting insights.  I'll let you know.

Older and Out There

My sociologist friend had a colleague at a different institution ask her if she would review his paper which he warned her was "a little out there."

She immediately prepared herself.  She expected a sociological exploration of some sort of strange sexual practice, maybe several.  She thought she might get some sort of immodest proposal.  She was not prepared for mysticism. 

I use the term mysticism loosely, mainly because that's the term she used--and she used that term because he uses it.  Her colleague is really exploring ESP, astral projection, chakras, and he's claiming scientific credibility for them.  His use of the word "scientific" might be different from yours.

My stodgy Lutheran self objects to the way he slings the term "mystic" around.  My stodgy Lutheran self is comfortable with the Thomas Merton brand of mysticism, less so with the Teresa of Avila type.  My stodgy Lutheran self does not want to hear about the night when you astrally projected yourself to Cleveland.  My stodgy Lutheran self will not be cleansing her chakras, although she likes color theory as much as the next person.

My observational writer self is having a good laugh over all of this.  My sociologist friend is as devout an atheist as anyone I've ever met and devoted to the scientific method the way the Western world has been practicing it for centuries.  She would have known how to handle kinky stuff of all sorts--except religious kinks.  And then there's me, a lifelong Lutheran who is appalled despite the fact that I have flirted with New Agey and paranormal stuff.  I spent many years of early adolescence longing to have ESP.  When the phone would ring, I'd try to know who was calling.  I was always wrong.  I tried to bend spoons with the power of my mind.  Happily, the silverware was always safe with my paranormal powers.

Before I was the apocalypse gal, I wanted to be a witch.  I wanted to find a book of spells in the attic, but we lived in suburban houses that had no attic. 

So why am I so impatient with people who want to claim legitimacy for paranormal experience?  Is it because I see it as an adolescent urge?

And yes, I realize that plenty of people would dismiss my belief in a God that cares about creation as an adolescent yearning too.

It fascinates me to consider the human experiences that we consider "out there" and how that changes as we age. 

I have a different friend who has known for some time that a younger person was likely to come out at some point as homosexual.  When we were younger, that admission might have been considered "out there."  But we're older now and enlightened and now we see happy people all along the sexual spectrum on television. 

She was prepared to be supportive.  She was not prepared for the younger person to come out as being wrongly gendered and working toward sexual reassignment surgery. 

I think of myself at the age of 46 as being the last of the pre-plastic surgery generation.  When I was young, if you felt your body was wrong, you didn't have many options.  You could try diet and exercise if the part of your body that was wrong could be influenced that way.  But when I was younger, plastic surgery was prohibitively expensive.

Now some parents give their children plastic surgery as a graduation present.  To me, that's "out there." 

Yes, my stodgy Lutheran self would like us all to be comfortable in our physical bodies just the way that they are, the way that God made them.  When I figure out how to do that, I'll let you know.

My stodgy Lutheran self is amused to remember that for many people of my generation, the idea that God made our bodies as already perfect would be an "out there" concept.

Leap Day Gratitudes

I feel the same way about leap day as I feel about the extra hour we get in the Fall if we live in places where we change the clocks.  I feel a mix of optimism and guilt.

Here's a whole extra day, not just an extra hour!  And I shall likely do what I do on any other day:  spend most of it at work.

But even with work to do, there will be spots of time that are more free than others.  I need to look at my submission notebook and get back on track there.  I can do that in the office.

I have some writing projects that pay actual money that are due soon.  I can start thinking about those today.

I want to write a poem tomorrow.  I'll start thinking about what I plan to write--that way, I'll have a better chance at actually writing tomorrow.

I tend not to write poetry or fiction in the office.  I tend to write only e-mails, reports, those kinds of things.  I used to gnash my teeth at the ways that my writing talents were wasted when I wrote e-mails and reports, but now I try to see those writing tasks as opportunities too.  Writing lyrical assessment reports--yes, that's me!

I don't have any special leap day traditions, no special foods, no music that I only listen to every 4 years, no traditions.  But continuing to make oases in my day where writing can sprout--that's a good way to celebrate not just leap day but every day.

As I write this post, I'm listening to Monday's episode of the Diane Rehm Show, an interview with Timothy Snyder.  He helped the historian and scholar Tony Judt write his last book Thinking the Twentieth Century.  Judt recently died of ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease.  When the disease took away Judt's ability to write, Timothy offered a remarkable gift:  he would help Judt write a book.  They had a series of conversations and arguments, and then Snyder wrote.  He says it's a book in an Eastern Europe intellectual tradition, a culture which values rhetoric more than we do, and he cites some authors who have co-written books in just this way.

It's an interesting interview on all sorts of levels.  The writing process fascinates me in so many ways.  My brain thinks differently when I'm talking than when I'm writing--or does it?  The idea of fleshing out ideas verbally before writing is one that intrigues me.  The revision process also intrigues me:  the editing by e-mail, the reading of the chapters out loud.

I'm also fascinated by the friendship between the two men.  What an amazing gift, to do this writing for a friend who couldn't write anymore.

And the interview makes me feel gratitude on all sorts of levels.  I'm grateful that people are still doing this kind of intellectual work and that it's still being published.  I'm grateful that there are radio interviews that let me know about this work, so that even if I can't find time to tackle the work soon, my intellect feels alive in ways that it wouldn't if I didn't have these kind of interviews.

And I'm grateful for my own good health.  I may have many obstacles, but thankfully, none as serious as a disease like ALS.  And it's a cautionary tale, too.  We don't know how long we have.  Writers are luckier than some artists, like ballerinas, in that we're likely to be able to practice our art for many decades.  But eventually, our bodies will give out. 

So, yes, on this gift of an extra day, I'll think about my own writing, about what I hope that people will value when I'm gone.  I'll think about the work I would lose if I could no longer write.  I'll make some space to do the work.  I'll try to keep this infusion of gratitude glowing in me throughout the day.

Tuesday Tips and Other Thoughts on Travel

--Lots of you are headed for the AWP convention in Chicago today; unlike yesterday, you're likely to have better travelling weather.  Here are some things I noted at the end of the convention last year, some tips for your travel and planning:
     --Bring energy bars or nuts, snacks with fiber that will kill your hunger and fill you up; look for the  kinds with high fiber and high protein.  Buy these before you leave and pack them in your luggage.
     --You'll likely be around a lot of sources of free water:  water pitchers in the back of meeting rooms, coolers, water fountains.  You may need an empty bottle or cup, so  you might want to pack one.
     --Caucuses are a great way to make connections.
     --You'll need cash or check at the book fair; many tables won't take cash.  In the last hours of the book fair, you'll get many a deal.  Of course, if you have to ship the books or pay extra because of airline regulations and the weight of your suitcase, the great deals may be not so great.
     --Bring business cards or something of similar weight and shape that has your contact information on it.

As I look at that list, I'm struck by how it's good information all the way around.  Always have a snack, always have a water bottle, always look for ways to make connections, and you can't always count on being allowed to use a credit card.

I will not be going to the AWP convention.  I waited too long and the convention hotel filled up.  And there's the matter of money.  And my fear of Chicago winters and Chicago airports.  But I do plan to go to Boston next year.  I haven't been to Boston, and so I'd love a tax-deductible way to go.  Here's hoping that it all works out.

I do have a fairly full travel schedule for spring, even without AWP.  In fact, we made a quick trip to the North Carolina mountains just this past week-end.  The daffodils and cherry trees are in full bloom months before schedule because it's been such a warm winter.  Very strange.

Yes, I am aware that the mountains are 12 driving hours away, and not exactly the right distance for a week-end trip.  I like to think it keeps us young, like our gang of friends in college who would show up at Saturday breakfast or Friday dinner and say, "Hey, it's only 14 hours to Cincinatti, and we've never been.  Let's go on a quest for chili!"  And off they'd go, in a car you wouldn't trust to get you to the county line.

I didn't go.  I was a sensible girl, with papers to write and her eye on grad school.

One of our spring trips will take us close to Andersonville, and we will stop.  What does it say about me that I feel this pressing need to visit the site of one of the worst POW camps of the Civil War?  The National Historic Site now also has a museum about all POWs in U.S. history. 

I spent part of the 1970's with a POW bracelet on my wrist.  What was a POW bracelet?  It was a silver metal cuff with information about a single POW engraved on it.  The idea was that we'd wear them until our prisoners were released.  Did lots of people have this experience or was it just because of being part of a military community?

So, I come by my obsession with POWs honestly, perhaps.

If you're off to the AWP Convention, I hope you'll take good notes for the rest of us.  I'm looking through the notes I took last year, and once again, I'm amazed at the quantity of great information at this conference.  I'm particularly interested in whether or not the fear of the impending student loan crisis/bubble pop is worrying anyone else as much as it worries me.  I've said it before but it bears repeating:  in terms of my career, I feel like I'm a Detroit autoworker and it's 1978--or that I'm a journalist for a mid-size newspaper, and it's 2001.  In other words, I can feel my industry shifting right out from under me.  I suspect I'm not alone.  People used to accuse me of paranoia or apocalyptic fantasies, and now they ask me how much longer I think our jobs in higher ed will last.

My advice?  Don't take on new debt if you can avoid it.  That's hardly a back-up plan, I know.  I'm still working on that.

Safe travels, if you're travelling this week.  I wish for solid creation time and rest for those of us who are staying put!