Simmering a slow-motion memory
When I was eight years old I married bird song and stillness.
Writing advice & paradox don’t make any sense. Because, of course, “there is nothing so boring as another’s self-improvement plan.”1
Pondering koans like “the sound of one hand clapping” intrigue me, as does slow cooking. For years, I’ve been charmed by a thought of Terry Tempest Williams: “When traveling to Southern Utah for the first time, it is fair to ask if the red rocks were cut, would they bleed?” Not unrelated: When I was about eight years old, I married (without scandal) the music of birds and stillness. I have been relentlessly faithful ever since. Like any marriage, happiness is being able to balance out the ever-changing center of a teeter-totter.
Holding more than one thought at a time can be tricky. Similarly, I’ve found any time I masquerade into such things as perfection, I nose-dive into confusion. Overthinking is excellent until it goes astray. Like any venture into overindulgence, the third or fourth servings quickly become hard pills to swallow.
Opposable thoughts, like opposable thumbs, bring out the human in all of us. I realized a week or so ago that the “other side,” these days, must feel as I do—deeply offended and disrespected amidst all this recent unpleasantness, as my great-grandmother referred to the Civil War. Our nation’s need for everyone to feel “correct” has become an epidemic. My antidote: I emphatically dream of and engage with brightly colored brown trout caught on dry flies I’ve tied myself whilst wading in the Driftless region of this sometimes great notion of a nation. Wading spring water is one of my interpretations of bird songs and stillness.
By now, you’re wondering, what’s my long-ago slow-motion memory? Fair enough.
I wandered outside early one fall morning as a child in Iowa, strolling the empty lot where my group of friends played most everything—football, threw mud balls, heaved apples, hide ‘n seek, eventually rode skateboards, made forts, created smoke bombs, experimented with potential addictions and the like. On this particular morning, I rose before anyone and unknowingly made a wish upon the stars. Innocent and unaware, I didn’t know any better than to trust the sounds the world was making. An Omensetter’s Luck, such as William Gass might phrase it. I listened with sincerity and heard the clatter of one hand clapping. The perfect pitch of paradox. Understood an ending before a beginning. I’d discovered the very roots of common sense.
If a camera had panned over slowly, here’s the scene, clear now as then: On my back on top of a large compost heap, I looked and listened. The land smelt of apple cider, and as Faulkner wrote, “a flavor like brass in the sudden run of saliva” got ahold of me. Compost, soil, and stillness. Right then, nothing else mattered. My spot was comfortably one single degree warmer than cold. Goldilocks came to mind; everything was “just right.”
This morning was nearly the start of my life. I made vows to the natural world right then and there. If my life were ever a movie, it would start as such: resting on a tall pile of warm, cut grass, colorful fall leaves fluttering in the early morning. Puffs of steam out of my mouth and nose, the slow, rich sound of doves cooing—a moment of slow motion where the world both begins and ends. The first twinkle of a story foretold.
Before I became of that age when little boys must be something, I settled in uneasily with what could, should, and might be. I’ve long felt lost for words and always on the lookout for certainty; who hasn’t? Straddling what’s obvious but deceptive. I still tend to imagine there is some version of right and wrong eluding me. What do I mean? This: "Imagine the problem is that we cannot imagine a future where we possess less but are more," Charles Bowden.
Big bangs go off; water is ruined, minds destroyed, soil lost, work denied, greed rampant. Love and time have always seemed, to me, agonizingly unfair. In reaction, we putter along, slow meanderings, fantasizing about never-never-land solutions and why, I suspect, environmental change is rarely discovered at a country club.
Over and over again, there’s a moment when the decision to make a change becomes overwhelming. This is what writing does best—offers attempts at making sense. We can’t expect to clean our water if we can’t even explain how. As William Burroughs said in Naked Lunch, “the frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork.” It’s all there for the taking if we are so lucky. Most don’t engage once the writings are offered. Complaining (and nitpicking) is much easier than what could become effective.
How is this a writing lesson? Listen before you share. Edit each and every word, even every syllable, as best you can. In slow motion. Why rush the words? After all, the easiest way to be done is never to have started.
Write as smoke and fog were paper; sunshine and lake water ink. I think the best writing might be done with one eye closed and the other wide open.
Bird song and stillness are hinges,
for wings and words to fly.
Teeter & totter for balance.
Discover where less becomes more.
I am part of the
. Pick a few of them to subscribe to. I happen to like Swine Republic; posts on issues related to water and on food, dining, and cooking.Jim Harrison, The Dead Food Scrolls
So, the VRBO I’m staying in right now has about four books on the shelf, and one of then is Ernest Hemingway’s collected short stories. I’m reading “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” for the third or fourth time in my life. I thought of it when I read this line in your piece:
“Why rush the words? After all, the easiest way to be done is never to have started.”
As the man in “Snows” lay dying, he laments all he never sat down to write.
Which is to say your writing really resonates today. As always! Thank you.
Chris jones book is absolutely the epitome for me. The Swine Republic allows me to try to mimic Harriet Tubman. In the sense. Do not give up….. I have this fantasy that actually life is this game. and we are team players. And I am on Chris team. When I give someone Chris book and they understand. Our team makes a touchdown. When chris wrote the book. He provided me with the information. If only people knew. This is not all gloom and doom. Hey thanks for publishing the book. All teamwork.