"Write like a Motherfucker"

"Write like a motherfucker." - Cheryl Strayed as "Sugar" for The Rumpus

Call this cheating, but this week, I really just want to share a link to this post. I just learned about The Rumpus last week at AWP, and I wonder where on earth I've been my whole life that such awesome things can exist & I had no idea. Well, now I know, and I want you to know too.

Read it. 

This quote is what's been keeping me motivated to write (thought not quite writing as much as I'd like to), especially since I now own a mug with the sentence. That mug sits on my desk filled with wine when there's a pen in my hand: write like a motherfucker. 

Word count: very few

when silence becomes words

‘I am learning to see loneliness as a seed that, when planted deep enough, can grow into writing that goes back out into the world.” –Kathleen Norris, from Dakota

Let’s be honest: I don’t feel like writing right now. I just spent the past hour scrolling through my photos from the past five years. I thought I hadn’t gone anywhere or done anything, but I see that I was wrong. I thought I wanted to write about place because place has such an intense impact. Instead, the photos only reminded me of all the people I miss—the friends whom I never see or some even speak to or simply never heard back.

It’s true, I think, that we feel the loneliest when we are surrounded by people who love us. I feel very loved at this time in my life. I recognize that I could use both hands to count the number of people (non-related) who genuinely care about me. I’m not sure I could say that before. Even so, loneliness comes.

There’s nothing to be done about it. The people I want to be with are the exact ones with whom I cannot be. So I sit here and look at photos and wonder where they are now or if they ever think of me.

Who can say? But Kathleen Norris has it right—even in the deepest loneliness, the only thing to do is keep writing.

Word Count: 241

country vs. town

“When I am in the country,” he replied, “I never wish to leave it; and when I am in town it is pretty much the same. They have each their advantages, and I can be equally happy in either.” –Mr. Bingley in Pride & Prejudice, Jane Austen

I must begin with a confession: never in my life have I read Pride & Prejudice. I don’t even know the plot. After spending Valentine’s night bawling over Becoming Jane, I decided it was time. Though I actually do own a copy of the book, I’ve refused to read it because it was printed in 1960 and would definitely fall apart if I tried. I’m weird about collecting books that have no value at all. So I got up & trekked to a shop where I had seen a Penguins Classic version with a beautiful yellow hardcover. The version is as close to the first printing as the editors could get, which I find charming (much more appealing than the movie edition of the book, which I immediately tossed upon my first attempt to read the book in high school).

I am now engrossed and can hardly put it down. I read Volume I in one sitting and plan to finish the rest by the end of the weekend.

However, there is a quote at-hand. As a country girl (not the boots & hat & Nashville classic kind), I never imagined I would live in the city, any city, or even near a city. Upon graduating college, I soon realized that to get a job that wasn’t in retail or food, I would need to migrate. Of course, I somehow landed in Seattle. Sometimes I can’t even get the details straight as to how I got here; it actually feels long ago, and I find myself shocked to find that I’ve been here over a year-and-a-half.

Regardless, it is a city, not just a city, but my new home. Just like Mr. Bingley, when I am here, I love it & don’t want to leave, but when I go out into the mountains or the woods or visit the place I grew up, I feel an equal pull to stay.

I wonder if everyone experiences this. Maybe it’s just an emotion for those who grew up in the country. My city dwelling friends (those who’ve grown up in the city—a concept which blows my mind: that people actually spend their childhood & adolescence living in downtown places) find great ease at living downtown and find long stays in the country drab. I find it peaceful & soul-revealing. The country is where you find God. Not in the come-to-Jesus kind of way, but in the You’ve-been-right-here-all-long kind of way.

Word count: 459

permanence be damned

“So much working, reading, thinking, living to do. A lifetime is not long enough. Nor youth to old age long enough. Immortality and permanence be damned.” –Sylvia Plath

Today marks fifty-one years since Sylvia Plath died. In commemoration, I thought it best to use a quote by her today. She is definitely one of my writing idols. Of Virginia Woolf, Plath says, “I feel my life linked to her”. In the same way, I feel linked to Plath. Her unabridged journals (where these two quotes are from) are one of the deepest reads in the mind of a young woman, particularly a woman artist.

This “so much working, reading, thinking, living to do” is a common tension. I feel it nearly everyday, especially since being at a real, full-time job. There’s just not enough time to read everything that I want to or have all of those discussions or paint or sketch or hike or whatever. A lifetime really isn’t enough.

I’ve lately taken to believing in seasons. I am praying that it is a truth and that I could bring that tense personality within me to chill out while I focus on one season at a time. For example, I want to be a potter; I also want to be a poet and a painter and someday a wife and mother. But right now, I am a Consultant, a dog-owner, and a musician, while trying to write here and there. How does this factor in? I want to create; I want to soak in all that there is in terms of literature and art, but there just isn’t enough time.

So that’s it—I am these things right now, but God-willing in the future I will be the others on my list, accomplish those things. I think a part of me has accepted defeat in that I will never read every book on my list or my shelves.

I think acceptance is the most difficult emotion to feel, and I think that was one of Sylvia Plath’s (and my) greatest struggles. How do we accept that things won’t be the way we want them to? How do we accept love from others? How do we accept the changes and curves that come along the path?

Word Count: 378

science.spirituality.literature /part 3

“Science, spirituality, and literature—we need all three to get through the day, the life, the universe.” –j.w.schlack

Literature

When I started this series, the first author that came to mind was Annie Dillard.  She does well to fully capture all three of these elements in at least most of her writing, as she explores her own way through the life.

In her essay “Intricacy” from Pilgrim At Tinker Creek, she spends pages describing a goldfish. It’s the most beautiful goldfish I’ve ever heard of, not just because she uses adjectives, but because she uses a basis of science and spirituality to bring her literature to a greater interpretation of the universe. She describes the sight of red blood cells then moves on to a plant in the bowl, discussing chloroplasts and all of those life-processes we forgot from 9^th grade Biology. The knowledge is faint for us, but she completes the textbook by bringing it to story.

Further, she uses this essay to tell a story, not just of science but of God. “You are God,” she writes, “You want to make a forest, something to hold the soil, lock up solar energy, and give off oxygen. Wouldn’t it be simpler just to rough in a slab of chemicals, a green acre of goo?” This contemplation of what it is like to be God, to create, to evolve, to display all of these details that create our surroundings.

The success of such literature is not in what prizes it won or how many people have read it, but the impact that it has on the readers. I first came across the essay in a Philosophy course in college, and not only have I never been able to look at a goldfish the same way, but I’ve acquired a new sense of awe in the created and hope in what we, as artists & writers can create.

Word count: 319

science.spirituality.literature/ part 2

“Science, spirituality, and literature—we need all three to get through the day, the life, the universe.” –j.w.schlack

Spirituality.

Maybe God doesn’t “fit” into how we “view” the universe. Isn’t it funny how those little quotes make us question what’s really being said? Maybe God doesn’t have to fit at all because maybe the way we view the universe isn’t simply based on our intellect distorted by senses. This is tricky because in thinking about it too hard, I start to get away from myself—if I’m all atoms, then how do they spark into thoughts, words, language? Isn’t that simply the beauty of it? Science.

In the previous post, I mentioned how the world seems as if it were made for us. Don’t expect me to quote the Bible or anything—I believe there is more to spirituality, especially when translating into the modern day when we “know” so much.

I think we base all knowledge after the preconception that we don’t know much of anything, at least not for certain.

In Travelling Mercies, Anne Lamott writes a response to Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling (nothing like literature leading into more and more literature):

…And since this side of the grave you could never know for sure if there was a God, you had to make a leap of faith, if you could, leaping across the abyss of doubt with fear and trembling…

She references this in the middle of telling the story of Abraham as he is preparing to sacrifice his only son. Why risk losing what is most precious for something entirely unguaranteed? Faith: this is a big gap in science, yet a cornerstone in knowledge. Even botanists have faith—faith that plant cells will continue to reproduce and grow, allowing a whole process to breath out oxygen for us to subsist, and without that simple act – reproducing cells – life would be thrown entirely off-balance.

“And since this side of the grave…”  If we only believed what we thought we knew from experience, what would that leave for death? For God? I do believe in God, and well, undeniably, experience forces me to believe in death, but what happens then, when this uncapturable element leaves in an exhale, and our bodies are lifeless?

Faith. Faith happens. Faith that the abyss isn’t quite as empty as it seems. Faith that the leap will take you into something greater than you’ve “known”. Faith happens.

Now what? Science, spirituality…literature? How does literature impact either of those or those impact it?

Word count: 421