Re-found Love

Years ago Laurie and I bought rings with Hopi symbols etched in silver.  Laurie, the skier, chose storm clouds.  Me, I chose water.  Swimming, after all, was what I loved best.  As a kid, I’d spent long summer days in backyard pools, in lessons at the park, in the waves at the beach.  On the high school team, we practiced outdoors after dark.  In college, I’d wake at dawn to swim laps before classes.  An hour in the pool, I found, followed by a large coffee, made even the most boring lecture fascinating.

But the truth was, even before we bought the rings, my swimming days were mostly over.  We lived in a place with no pool and a lake too cold to loiter in, and there was an injury to boot.  One day on trail crew I’d tossed a long limb off a switchback and heard my shoulder snap.  That ruled out swimming for years, long enough that I figured it’d be forever.

Until this spring when I decided to join some of the Whidbey MFA students in a triathlon right before our ten-day summer residency.  A half mile swim?   A cinch.   I mean, it was a cinch twenty years ago, so it should be a cinch now.  Right?  Right?  Maybe?

I started training.

I swam alone in the Pacific in the early morning fog before the Jesus people arrived to set up day-camp-on-the-beach and sing too loudly.  (“I’ve got the joy joy joy down in my heart …”  No no no, not again.) 

I swam in New Jersey in a tree-ringed lake where my young nieces compete on a team with lane lines on the surface and sun fish and snapping turtles below.  Watching them approach the starting block, strong shoulders held high … well, if that’s not inspiration, nothing is.

I swam a few times in the outdoor pool in the nearby faux-Bavarian tourist town, a half-hour workout wedged between the ferry and the city.  Pure bliss.

I swam in Lake Chelan on the downlake end one morning, and because it was warmer than the end uplake, wore no wetsuit.  Shivered until noon. 

I swam uplake one evening and breathing one direction watched the pink sunset glow on still snowy mountains and breathing the other way watched the black sky of a fast approaching storm.  Got home just before the deluge.

I never once swam indoors.

The race went fine.  My favorite memory is all of us writer-triathletes, my tribe if ever there was one, treading water awaiting the start.

The next week I swam in Puget Sound on graduation morning with my first-ever thesis advisee.  Cold even in my wetsuit, or afraid of being cold, I made it only a short distance from her rental house to the dock at Captain Whidbey Inn where dual red flags waved, the only color in the universe. 

Here’s the thing.  You buy rings when you’re twenty-five and wear them because of love until the silver wears thin and brittle, never imagining that someday – this November? Right? Right? – they’ll count for real.  Meanwhile, there are other things, lesser things, that you give up despite love.  So, what a delight, in your mid-forties, to find yourself, like I did today, swimming through the green water glow of a windless day, watching your shadow on sand.  Just you and your thoughts.   It’s like re-found love.

I’m not the only one.  Diana Nyad was a long-distance champion in her youth, but she gave it up for thirty years – thirty! – before she decided to get in the water again.  Today, right this minute, at age 62, she’s making her third attempt to be the first human to swim from Cuba to Florida.   She’s not superhuman, but she’s super-committed.  And she’s probably going to make it. 

http://www.diananyad.com/

If that’s not inspiration, nothing is.

Teaching, Writing, Publishing

So the three are supposed to be in eternal conflict, I realize. How much time do I spending writing (duh - as much as I can), trying to publish (crucial, right?), and teaching (my passion/my paycheck)? Last semester the three dovetailed nicely and I have my nonfiction workshop at Whidbey Writers Workshop to thank. Sort of. I was afraid, as all writing teachers are secretly afraid, that teaching would sap all my energy. I was simultaneously afraid that I had demanded too much of the students - a complete draft or revision every week of the semester. So I decided I had to keep up. I had to submit a complete draft or revision of an essay to myself and/or to an editor every single week. The rule worked well because it kept me writing, and also because it kept me from fretting over creating a masterpiece every time I sat down to write. The results: 8 essays in 16 weeks. Seven of which have been published or accepted for publication. Here's one from the current issue of Mountain Gazette:

http://www.mountaingazette.com/mountain-notebook/re-entry/

Test Ride on the PNBA 2011 Book Awards Short List

Just before Laurie and I left on a sprawling Thanksgiving trek that has temporarily landed us at Whiskeytown National Recreation Area in Northern California for Laurie to prune a few fine old trees, I heard via the grapevine that Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus was shortlisted for the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association 2011 Book Awards. I didn't quite believe it, but it was true. Big news in my little world. In part because some of the other authors on the list were literary heroes of mine when I first started writing - Rick Bass, Ivan Doig - and all of them are authors I admire.

http://www.pnba.org/awardsshortlist2011.html


Additional kudos - and thanks - to Whidbey Writers Workshop MFA student Janet Buttenwieser. The PNBA folks chose to link to the interview she did with me outside Elliott Bay Books in May as introduction to the book.

http://whidbeystudents.com/nonfiction/

Books, books, books

For the past few weeks, as I've been planning ahead for the courses I get to teach in the Whidbey Writers Workshop MFA program next Spring, I've felt the same anxiety I've felt since I was a kid whenever someone gave me a gift certificate to a book or record store, my favorite gift bar none. I obsess over the options and worry that I will make a poor choice. I wring my hands. I wander the aisles or keep updating my cart online. Finally I click to buy and hope for the best.


So now I get to choose not one or two books, but several. Not just for myself but for my students. Two courses: Craft of Nonfiction and Directed Readings in Contemporary Memoir. It's like the ultimate gift certificate. Should I choose forty books or eighty? The lists beside my desk on scrap paper kept accumulating. I emailed friends for advice, and then promptly ignored it. I honed the list over and over until it occurred to me, yesterday, that I had other work that probably needed doing, most notably firewood splitting and putting the garden to bed, but also teaching my current classes.

Anyway here's the final list for The Contemporary Memoir. Now that it's finalized, please let me know what you think so that I can start the inevitable regretting.

Two craft books for reference:

The Art of Time in Memoir: Then, Again by Sven Birkerts
Fearless Confessions by Sue William Silverman

Ten fine books:

Brother I’m Dying Edwidge Danticat
Another Bullshit Night in Suck City Nick Flynn
Lit Mary Karr
Autobiography of a Face Lucy Grealy
Somehow Form a Family Tony Earley
Boyhood J.M Coetzee
The Tender Land Kathleen Finneran
I’ve Heard the Vultures Singing Lucia Perillo
Jarhead Anthony Swofford
Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood Melissa Hart

With apologies to the many also-rans: Mark Doty, Alexandra Fuller, Judith Barrington, Michael Ondaatje, Danielle Trussoni, Frank McCourt, Maxine Hong Kingston, Thomas Merton. I don't suspect it bothers them to have missed the cut. But good lord does it bother me. Next time. Next time.

PS - For my most recent CD purchase, in spring, I was stuck between Clem Snide and Fruit Bats, nearly paralyzed for weeks. Finally, I bought both. Big splurge. No regrets. I'll take this as an omen.