Category: Writing

Well done, Writer, well done

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Ian McEwen wrote an astonishing book called Atonement. We find out that he has created an author who needs to make atonement for a sin early in her life. It’s one of those ‘stories within a story’. But the kind where, when you realize it, you have to put the book down and close your eyes for a second because your world just changed. Like after All The Light We Cannot See or Me Before You or Behind Her Eyes or Bel Canto (all books that I have had to put down because they completely changed my reality).

The MOVIE gets straight to the point of the shattering betrayal by younger sister Briony (pronounced BRY-uhny) (could we BE any more English? I love it). Briony sees the servant boy, Robbie, apparently impose himself on Briony’s older sister Cecilia, first at the fountain outside where the vase gets broken, then in the library where she sees them joined in sexual congress. She has little idea what sex is, of course, because she is young, and protected, and aristocratic, and these sorts of families don’t talk about those sorts of things.

The BOOK takes a certain amount of patience and focused time to see what McEwen would like to unpack for the reader first. He is brilliant at setting the scene, providing context, introducing smaller characters (who have a huge impact), exposing variables and tendencies. Because they all matter, in the end, to the characters he creates. No one is made hero or scapegoat in a vacuum, at least not in a McEwen novel.

We find out, later, that Cecilia and Robbie are indeed in love and burn with a pure passion that both brings them together and ruins them (mostly because aristocratic lips curl at the thought of a servant boy and a woman of class being together).

The deepest and irrevocable betrayal comes when Briony sees someone assault a different house guest – Lola. Lola can’t tell who is trying to rape her, and Briony only sees a retreating male form. Briony makes the connection with Robbie, from earlier, to this attempted rape and says it was Robbie also – she is sure of it.

He gets sent to prison, then the war starts, then he gets to join the army as a conscript (his other choice was to stay in prison forever). Cecilia ends up as a trained nurse, as does Briony.

The betrayal is this: Briony loved Robbie for herself and did NOT know it was Robbie who tried to rape Lola. In fact, Briony later remembers it is a different guy who does the raping (a perfectly foppish, yet sinister Benedict Cumberbatch)(who, near the end, marries Lola). Since Briony couldn’t have Robbie, no one could have Robbie.

She (played masterfully by Vanessa Redgrave as the older writer Briony) writes the book to give them the life and happiness they deserved.

“I like to think that it isn’t a weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness, a stand against oblivion and despair, to let my lovers live and to untie them at the end. I gave them happiness, but I was not so self-serving as to let them forgive me.”

What really happened is that Robbie died the day before the evacuation at Dunkirk, and Cecilia died from a German bomb on her subway station/bomb shelter. And then I remember that these characters have been made real in my mind because of the excellence of the writer. It didn’t really happen. But how could they NOT have existed – it turned all so real in my head. Well done, writer, well done.

All these tears, mostly mine, over a made-up story about the rich English. Isn’t that the essence of storytelling?

Shattered By This Story

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Do you count the blessing of every day?  I thought I did, until I came across this story as I casually perused the local violin shop’s website.  In considering selling my viola, I looked up the shop’s website, McHugh’s Violins.  He has a sterling reputation and did some excellent repair work for me a few years ago in preparation for my return to the concert stage (my return was not nearly as dramatic as it sounds).

As I blithely wend my way through my retirement and into my second career as a writer, I consider passing on my wonderful musical instrument, the viola that my parents had gifted me upon graduation from high school.

I spent my years at University of Northern Colorado playing for hours – in chamber groups, in a practice room, in at least 3 different symphonies.  I loved those days.  The gift of serenity through classical music came to me as a 4th grader, playing “Barcarolle”, and continued through all the years I played.  Even though my practice hours were on the low side of the spectrum of music majors at UNC, I did still spend hours in Fraser Hall on that campus.  My wife and I fell in love in those hallways and practice rooms and rehearsals and concert halls.

I recently tried a revival of my career in the viola section, but, due to a series of realizations, the largest of which was I didn’t want to practice the hours I needed in order to excel again, I now count myself as a listener rather than a player.

I have different ambitions and dreams now yet no less hopeful that when I wanted to be an actual viola player in a professional, full-time orchestra.  I am creating a different kind of art but I love that I write best when I run endless classical music through my Bose headphones.

Back to the violin shop.  I got no further than the first sentence on his website (“My sweet wife Susie passed away peacefully on October 18th, 2016”) when I clicked on this link, “Our Journey”, and read his faithful, loving, heartbreaking, shattering account of their loving battle with her cancer.  I can’t imagine.  His and her story stopped time for me as I read from the beginning entry to the final one.  Please, take a few minutes and read.

Another friend of ours has blogged her entire journey through cancer.  The short answer is, in her words, “cancer sucks”, but that friends and family deeply matter.  You can read her journey right here in Michelle’s Blog.

 

I realize that today’s the day.  Make your move; make your memories; make your love known.

Brothel Tokens and Cartography

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The Delano District of Wichita, KS, used to be for cowboys.  Did you know that cowboys weren’t “cowboys” until they crossed into Oklahoma?  They were “drovers” because the men in question didn’t like to be called “boys”.

Cowboys could drive their cattle all the way into Wichita, which meant across the Arkansas River and to the stockyards, but they had to go back to Delano for whoring and drinking.  Cowboys were NOT ALLOWED TO STAY in Wichita because they would cause too much trouble looking for drink and women.  Plus Delano was a separate place.  Now it is merely a historic district of Wichita.

Have a look at the gold coin in the pictures.  That is a”brothel token”.  A real thing that cowboys or drovers used to get upon completion of a cattle drive.  “Good for one dollar in trade in girls, whiskey, or food” is what it says on the front.

In a little under 65 minutes yesterday, I learned an astounding amount of Kansas cattle history at Westlink Library, in Wichita, KS (Wichita Public Library).  Westlink staff had invited Tom Averill from Washburn University and Mary Lou Rivers from the Chisholm Trail 150th Anniversary Celebration (Chisholm Trail 150th) to come speak to a select few readers who had an hour (plus 5 minutes) to spare.

We had all agreed to read this book.  I happened to see it in a stack by the librarian’s elbow a few weeks ago and asked if I could attend the book talk.  As is their wont, the library happily said yes and set me up as an attendee.  Free.  No charge to come hear living history.

The book centers around an ‘eastern’ Kansan, Leo, who goes out west (near Hays) to teach and both get away from bad decisions back east and start over in the west.  He meets up with a cowboy/rancher and another, older cowboy who have always worked cattle and the land.  The ‘executive summary’ of the book is (and there will NOT be a test) that Leo learns enough to be a cowboy and help drive cattle all the way into Kansas City to the Stockyards back in the 1970’s.  Nice little story, right?

It was only after the expert treatment and discussion from the Washburn professor that I realized how deep the comparisons to life’s complexities the story ran.  As we discussed characters, archetypes, foreboding, and allegory I realized how many books carried similar themes in them.   I thought of Cold Mountain, Lord of the Flies, Lonesome Dove, and the movies City Slickers and The Graduate.  Those of you who teach will already know this.  Those of you who read will have already seen this.  Even though I read quite a bit, the profound truths that we polished took me by surprise during those 65 minutes.  I left the library grateful for the discovery of a vital geographical landmark in my personal map of understanding.

I’ll explain.

As I write, read, interact, absorb, understand, and share with my world (that is, the people I come in contact with), I see myself standing on a particular spot of earth.  Sometimes it is a ridge, sometimes a valley, sometimes a shore, sometimes a cave.  My clearest understanding places are the ridges and peaks of the map – I have a fairly good understanding and can explain lucidly what the situation is.  Air Traffic Control is one of those – I mostly “get it”, and can talk a person through the basic systems.  20th century fiction is another; I’m conversant in a lot of what has been written in the last 70 years.  The valleys, shores, caves are topics in which I have little understanding or data of background to help me out.  The whole refugee situation, for instance, feels like a shore for me.  I know there is a huge problem, but I have little empirical, experienced data to make super decisions with, other than to say ‘we ought to be helping find a solution’.  Clear as mud? OK, on we go.

The joy of adding landmarks to my personal cartography made that book session a gift.  I simply grinned at each person who added a story yesterday.  One of the ladies had a relative (he was a ‘several greats’ relative) who actually remembered how the cattle drive went and how much the pay was – passed down so she knew it.  Another expert marveled at how many people said the Chisholm Trail passed across their land.  She described how the trail moved around a lot – the dry seasons it had to follow water more closely; the wet seasons it had to stay higher to avoid soggy ground.  One point of discussion was how NYC people thought the entire state of Kansas was full of hicks and cowboys, but to cowboys you didn’t have to go farther than Kansas City to find city people (and yes, several of us DID say ‘everything’s up to date in Kansas City’).

Angie and I stopped in The Monarch, which is in Delano (where the cowboys could go, remember?), the other evening to cap off the work week.  The corner signpost, out the window, had a sign that said “The Chisholm Trail”.  We sat in the literal place where the cowboys came to recover from the long drives they’d just finished.

Discovery.  We are built for it.  We often stumble on it.  I certainly do…  it’s like opening the ‘junk drawer’ and realizing it is full of priceless memories.

I’ve got no real idea where we are headed, and I have precious few answers about what is going on today, but it sure is nice to look back over the ground we’ve covered.

Get to the ridge, set your load down, take a deep breath, and look around a little.  Let us know what you see.

On Becoming A Writer

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“A beach comber has no idea what to look for the first day he steps onto the sand.”

“No one believes a comet is limning the heavens before ink is splashed.”

“The ponies have been let free to run.”

“A muscle exercised must first depart from atrophy.”

“If you can avoid writing to do something else, then do that.  If you can’t stop yourself from writing, then be a writer.”

All of these images sift through my mind as I think about what it means to “Become A Writer”.  So many books on the craft, all faithfully read and underlined.  Pages dog-eared, notes scribbled into my Moleskine journal.  So many master authors read, re-read, considered.  Thoughts about how many writers actually wear a cravat, or a beret, or talismanic jewelry, when they are at their folio.  Producing work.

Never have I had the luxury of this bemused pursuit of a craft.  I love my career’s history and the provision we enjoyed as a result.  (Read about my first career here and here) Now, though, I am able to, gently and persistently, remind myself that I am a ‘creative’ and that my day spent in writing and reading is, indeed, ‘mission-worthy’.  This free feeling is what I dreamed of and hoped for.  I recently spent an entire day at a conference of writers – the opening speaker referred to us as “an amazing group of creatives”.  My first anointing as such.

I’ve gotten to open an entire new set of maps to my world.  A fresh update to the topographical charts of a new mountain range.  Like when you say, ‘we should go there sometime’.  About the Grand Canyon, or either of the coastal Disney’s (how do you choose between a LAND and a WORLD?), or even those glaciers that are inaccessible on a casual drive-by but are an indelible set of images and memories once you finally get there.  From what I hear, we should get to those glaciers sooner rather than later.  So, too, these new vistas I glimpse on the skirt of my horizon.

Each day now, starting this November (the 2nd, because the 1st was a day of substitute teaching, bill-paying, and conversation with a warrior friend of mine), I have sat at one of my keyboards (ok, there are only two, but one of them is mobile – which means I can go sit in a field and imagine the journey across the Great Plains) and taken the time to write for several hours each day.  In part encouraged by the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing in a Month – or something like that), it has been a joy to get out this new muscle of mine.  I don’t promise anything better than drivel, but it feels GOOD.  It feels satisfying to clack away and have a new story to show for the day.

Have you ever had to prime a pump or start a gravity fed hose?  Our backyard water feature (too small to call a pond, too large to be a bucket) has a pump that occasionally gets clogged with leaves.  I have never had to suck on the outflow end to re-start the pump, but I have had to clonk the pump against the side or on a stone to get it to start moving water.  Hemingway’s best work produced in a rummy haze? Perhaps that was the liquid needed to prime the pump.

This very writing of mine is much like that pump.  It (I) have finally started moving water (ideas) and it looks like the mucky leaves, dead bugs, and seeds are starting to clear.

What runs now is fresh, clear water.  Excuse me while I go sample it.

The Language of Ravens

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This essay stems from an earlier trip to Ghost Ranch, New Mexico; a place I have long loved and enjoyed.  Feel free to visit them – www.ghostranch.org.

I heard from the earth – it said this:

“What are you doing for me?”

I am in New Mexico, at my favorite spot I’ve ever known – Ghost Ranch.  My muse resides here.  God pulls me here so I can hear that muse.  The connection to the Spirit is strong and clear, like I feel nowhere else.

Here is what I mean by a clear connection.  Did you ever live in a place where shortwave radio was the only option for listening?  We spent two years in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, and we greatly enjoyed the Voice of America broadcasts every morning.  Imagine spinning the dial on an analog shortwave radio band.  Our shortwave had 6 bands to select from.  It had a dial that slowly spun through frequencies, and a switch that selected the range of frequencies.  Imagine you have spun the dial through 5 bands.  Only a few times did you hear a muted, static-filled voice chattering away in a staccato foreign language.  Upon trying to fine tune that channel, the signal faded or maybe only the hissing got louder.

On the last band, already  midway through and despairing of contact, you reach a crystal-clear, loud, english-speaking voice that is talking about exactly what is on your heart at that moment.  The topic is not important; the coincidence of FINDING a voice saying what you NEED is the important part.  When I set foot on the Ranch, after the details of camper setup, dinner arrangements, and logistics are all completed, that connection (like a radio station) tunes in.  I really don’t have to do anything other than walk, sit, listen, look around.  It may sound far too dramatic, but I say to you that the Ranch is a thin place in the fabric between God and the world.  I am not the first to say this:

  • Belden C. Lane, in writing about the Protestant Reformers, says, “Nature’s untamed beauty awakens in my own Reformed heart an atavistic need to praise, to shout back glory.  I sense this in… the desert terrain of Ghost Ranch, in New Mexico, where Georgia O’Keeffe touched a primeval mystery in the land…  These are thin places, where dread and wonder converge in an apprehension of the holy.”
  • Mindie Burgoyne, who leads tours to Ireland’s mystical sites, defines a “thin place” as “where the veil between this world and the eternal world is thin.”
  • “Truth abides in thin places; naked, raw, hard to face truth.  Yet the comfort, safety, and strength to face that truth also abides there.  Thin places captivate our imagination, yet diminish our existence.  We become very small, yet we gain connection and become part of something larger than we can perceive.  They human spirit is awakened and will grow if the mind and body will allow it”  Mindie Burgoyne.

The elusive Muse who inspires me to write, who clears my mind of chaff so I can SEE what to write, and who grants me the authority to BE the storyteller, resides there.  Our reunion is a thing of joy.  I feel a calming in me (I DO have things to say still… I DO have more to share) when my travels take me there.  Once I walked along the sandstone cliffs and heard (even, perhaps, understood) the ravens calling – ‘do you remember? do you remember where we came from?’  Their “we” meant all of us.  It reminded me of the thrush in “The Hobbit” when they got close to the back door of Smaug’s lair.  It communicated with the dwarves and Bilbo, trying to tell them the secret to opening the door.  OUR way of speaking had moved on, but they remember the days when we all spoke together.  

I have come to understand that the times that God speaks to a person may be few and far between.  It behooves me (you, too?) to hear Him well, heed His words, and burn my calories in consonance with that message.  I remember a time on a youth retreat where God found us.  We stood with 15 or 20 youth in a cold moonlight.  Simply praying and feeling His spirit.  Tristyn shouted, “I love you God!”  We all felt a little warmer after that (and I believe a deep connection remains between all who stood there that night).  Of course, God never “finds” us; it is US who must shut up long enough to rediscover Him.  I know that.

The writing seminar I attended at Ghost Ranch taught me things about how to form stories and how to tell stories.  The most important thing it taught me was that I was allowed to claim my space in the center of the room as the storyteller.  To a boy from a small town in Nebraska (which, in my head, I will always be), that sounds awfully egotistical.  The truth is that each of us gets a chance to tell our story, and only I (and you, too?) can tell my (your) story the way it needs to be told.  Movies, novels, biographies, histories – all told by the ‘teller of tales’, the ‘raconteur’, the ‘court jester’.  And during the good ones we hang on every word.

My answer to the earth is this: “I am trying.  That is all I can do.  Every day I get up and try again.  I do not know what the finished product is, will be, or looks like, but I am trying.”

Find for yourself, then, that thin place.  Hear what there is to hear.  And try.

After all, when we sit together, as at a campfire, in a place of safety yet surrounded by wild, we are comforted by friendship.  Tell your story; we’ve got plenty of time.

A jeweler’s hammer

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“One line of a poem, the poet said – only one line, but thank God for that one line – drops from the ceiling.  Thornton Wilder cited this unnamed writer of sonnets: one line of a sonnet falls from the ceiling, and you tap in the others around it with a jeweller’s hammer.”

This from Annie Dillard, in her essay, “The Writing Life”.

I puzzle at how to start, or, more accurately, RE-start my writing life.  I realize, after listening to her speak to me in her essay, that MY inspiring phrases may indeed be like the poet that moved Thornton Wilder who in turn moved Annie Dillard.  Who am I to question the pedigree of this bounty?

Many years ago, in another phase of my life, I filled several pages of a journal with snapshots, vignettes, thoughts, glimpses of stories that I needed to flesh out with words.  I know that book is around here somewhere, but it’s surely dusty.  I’ll bet the spine will creak when I open it to find my store of treasures.

I’ll go take a look.