Month: May 2009

Alpha and Omega

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I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

Today is for the beginning and the end.

I wasn’t able to post earlier today and maybe that was meant. My sojourn with Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird coincided with the search for our friend and wonderful poet, Craig Arnold.

The news has come in that he’s gone. I’ll let the letter from his partner, Rebecca, stand for any words I might add.

Our dear friends and family,

Though Craig himself has not been recovered, the amazing expert trackers of 1SRG have been able to make themselves and us certain of what has become of Craig. His trail indicates that after sustaining a leg injury, Craig fell from a very high and very dangerous cliff and there is virtually no possibility that Craig could have survived that fall. Chris will pursue what he can about getting specialists to go down into the place we know Craig is so we can bring him home, but it is very, very dangerous and we are not yet completely certain what that will require. The only relief in this news is that we do know exactly what befell Craig, and we can be fairly certain that it was very quick, and that he did not wait or wonder or suffer.

I cannot express again the profound gratitude I feel to everyone who has loved and honored Craig with their goodwill, their immense efforts and energy, and their overwhelming generosity. I believe that where he is, Craig knows.

There will be further occasion to celebrate Craig, and when I know more I will post it.

For my part, I love Craig beyond the telling of it and will always love him as immeasurably, as enduringly, as steadfastly and as unconditionally as I do now and have done these past six years. In leaving our family, Craig, in a manner absolutely characteristic of his own vast generosity and capacity to inspire, brought us all closer together than we perhaps have ever been. I feel his presence, loving and understanding and funny and deeply feeling, at all times. I hope you do, too.

With love,R.

A River of Garbage

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A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

I recall this one particularly annoyed one of my classmates, long ago back in AP English at Overland High, lo these many years ago.

I wanted to ask him how many wedding ceremonies he hadn’t sat through, not to hear this kind of claptrap before. Leave the parents and cleave unto each other. Like the joint candle and blow out your own. I’ve always imagined Wallace Stevens sticking his tongue in his cheek for this one. If a man and a woman can be one, no reason you can’t throw a blackbird into the mix as well. Not unlike Steve Martin’s classic scene in The Jerk, leaving and taking the only thing he needs, gradually adding more and more useless items. After the initial assumption, it doesn’t really matter what else you add in.

Don’t change what all you’re piling on top; change the initial assumption.

There’s an idea out there that things don’t and can’t change. When people talk about efforts to address environmental issues and global climate change, there’s a thread running through the arguments that this is how things have always been. That change is impossible. What we don’t always have a good perspective on is how much things have already changed.

David sent me the letters below. The Game & Fish crew found these letters from 1932 when they cleaned out some old files. Hopefully you can read them — I made them as big as I could. You might have to use your screen zoom.


It’s shocking, isn’t it, that they’re arguing about dumping garbage in the Columbia? After all, they’re very careful to dump it from the bridge in the best spot, with the swiftest current. You laugh to read it.

And that’s a mark of change.

It’s something to think about, amidst the shouting, wailing and gnashing of teeth that things can’t change. Someday, someone like yourself might look back on the debates of today and be amused that there was ever a question.

Corporate Dodgeball

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He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

Never mind that one almost never gets to use “equipage” in a sentence anymore. What gets me is that people would loook at you funny for using the word equipage and then turn around and talk about leveraging something.

Can you tell I was on a conference call yesterday for my day job?

We were discussing a new area of work and several of the company graybeards were on the call. Not that any of these guys (or gals) actually has a gray beard, but you get my meaning. One of them made a wise observation on the state of the field and paused significantly after, to allow his meaning to sink in. And I thought: I knew that. Everyone on this call knows that. But he has the gray beard. I’m just someone who wonders why we never hear the word “equipage” anymore.

It’s a funny thing, being both a writer and a worker-bee. Not just a worker-bee, I suppose, but upwardly mobile, career-track, middle-management. I like my job. I love the people I work with. I appreciate that they show their appreciation of me by paying me well and giving me good benefits. But I can’t talk about leveraging something with a straight face.

Fortunately I don’t have to, since I’m on the phone and can roll my eyes as often as I want to.

In the end though, I feel like I’m still playing dodgeball. The gym is filled with kids, some loving it, some hating it, some pretending to love it, so the loving-it-kids will like them. The aggressive boys do best — hurling balls with vicious speed at any target. Exulting in taking someone out. Only when the timid kid, who spends all her time ducking, is left all alone to represent her team, do they notice her. The aggressive boys turn their attention to her. They are sidelined, but if she catches one ball, just one, they’ll sweep in and take over the field, returning the team to glory. They shout, encourage, exhort. They want the win. She wants the game to be over, so she can read more of her book before the next class.

I’m an asset to my company. I’m not the timid girl who’d rather be hiding in the bathroom, chosen for the team from the default pool of last picks. But sometimes I think the game will always go to the ones who thrive on the hard and fast throw, who love the flash of pain in an opponent’s eye, who relish the shuffling walk of the target to the sideline.

A friend of mine says life is a team sport. And I believe the sports players see it that way. I wonder if they ever see how the quiet members of their teams are dreaming of other worlds, seeing glass coaches and watching to see if the blackbirds are shadowing us.

Hope Is a Thing With Feathers

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The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

It’s been officially a week now that Craig has been missing.

I only know this because I’ve been keeping track. Really nothing substantial in my life has changed. In many ways we feel odd, his friends, continuing with our lives. Finishing out the semester for his colleagues. Planning and publicizing our own book celebrations. The robins and crows continue their spring dance. The river swells with snowmelt. Craig wasn’t expected to be here anyway, so nothing has changed.

There’s really nothing TO do at this point, once we’ve let everyone know, applied the political pressure, donated to the search fund. I check the updates on the search, but it’s not like that changes anything. It doesn’t help find Craig.

Today’s update:

5/5 9:18am EST: Thanks to the money raised through The Fund to Find Craig Arnold, we have been able to engage the help of an independent search and rescue team (1SRG) who arrived at Kuchino-erabu yesterday afternoon. The local authorities brought the team up to speed, and they immediately began searching; they believe they have picked up Craig’s trail. They will be on the island until the 9th, looking, though obviously we all hope Craig will be found before then. However, the official search for Craig has been called off by the Japanese authorities. We need everyone’s help contacting their local congressional delegation and asking their assistance in encouraging the Fukuoka consulate to engage local US military/DOD assets on the ground in Japan. They have been thinking about it and we need them to move forward with that as quickly as possible.

I picture them there, like a scene from some Pacific theater WWII movie. The jungle vegetation, the Japanese villagers. Teams of searchers stand under canopies, studying maps laid across folding tables. But I am only an audience for this drama, despite my stake in the hero’s survival. I am not part of it.

One of the most disconcerting aspects of death and loss is how little changes, outside of our hearts. It seems that all the world should stop. Nothing does. You must eat, feed your cats, show up for your job, even enjoy the birds and the joy of writing. You forget for stretches of time that your friend is missing and that people on the other side of the world are finding his trail, exhausting themselves to find him.

So, I check the updates several times a day. As if this makes a difference.

I hope, thinking maybe it will.

3, 2, 1…

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Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

I’m starting the sequel to my novel today.

Okay, I started it once before, but it was a desultory false start. This time I just finished a full polish and revision of Obsidian and I’m hopeful it will sell soon. So I’ve gotten a running start and have all of the threads in my hands to continue weaving the story.

I feel hopeful, holding the seed in my hands.

Obsidian also began at this time of year, grown from the nugget of a dream. Actually, I’m still writing to that nugget since the storyline of Obsidian never made it to the scene I dreamed. At least, not the particular dream that got me started on that story.

I wish sometimes I knew more where I was going.

The romanceys make a big deal of asking whether you’re a “plotter” or a “pantster” — meaning do you plot out ahead of time or fly by the seat of your pants. Though I don’t like the term, I fall more into the pantster category. It doesn’t feel like flying, though, winging from one landing point to the next. Sometimes I suspect a plotter invented that term to describe the “other” kind of writer. It’s a term that conveys what they see as the precarious and dangerous undertaking of writing without a plan.

F. Scott Fitzgerald said that “All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.” That’s how it feels to me. I have an idea of where I’m going, which lake, what the water will be like, but I have to write the story to get to the other side. Sometimes I’m surprised where I end up. Sometimes I never make it to the other side, like happened with Obsidian.

In many ways it’s an act of trust. The cause is indecipherable. It can be frightening. And also glorious.

Holding my breath…

Home Is Where They Have to Take You In — If They Notice You’re There

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When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

Reaching a goal, realizing a dream is like marking the edge of a circle. When you reach that moment where you check off the goal, it takes you back to the moment when you first conceived of it.

Yesterday I read and signed at Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver. And it took me back. Back to visiting the Tattered Cover when it was one room at the bottom of the stairs in Cherry Creek. I went as a young girl with my mother. She loved it because she could describe a book without knowing the exact author or title and they could figure out which one she meant. I gazed around at the forest green carpets, wooden shelves and all the radiant books. Framed and signed photographs on the walls showed the authors who had visited. I wanted to be one of them.

As a college student visiting home, I bought a copy of Tao Te Ching there, a copy I still have. When they moved into the Neusteters building, the bookstore replaced the racks of dresses where I’d picked out my prom dress and my mom and aunt had shopped for most of their lives. Now Tattered Cover filled three stories, plus a bargain basement and a fourth floor restaurant. No trip to Denver was completed without a visit and I frequently left with armloads of books. Now the green carpets circled up the stairs and the author photos trailed alongside.

When my first book came out, what I wanted most was an event at Tattered Cover. But no one would ever answer me or my events coordinator. I even sent a list of 200 people who were likely to come to my hometown gig. But no. Wordsworth Books in Boston hosted me; Elliot Bay Books in Seattle offered me a gig. The bookstore of my youth did not. I knew them, but they did not know me.

Now the Cherry Creek location, too, is gone, and our reading yesterday was at one of the newer locations, in Lo Do (lower downtown). They have a great event space and the green carpets and wood railings on the stairs look the same. Our event for Going Green was sponsored by the Rocky Mountain Land Library, who runs a monthly reading event at the store. Jeff Lee, the director of the library, was a gracious and charming host. Laura Pritchett, the editor, was lively and a terrific master of ceremonies. My co-contributors were fascinating and good company.
It was a fun afternoon.
But, aside from asking the harried woman at the counter — who first informed me her register was closed — where I should go for the reading, I never talked to anyone from the store. I’d brought a few copies of my book, so I could ask if they carried it, wanted stock signed, needed my copies. I never got the chance. Okay, I didn’t try any harder than that.
I suppose the circle is closed now. I gave that little girl I was something of what she wanted. Never mind that the bookstore never knew it.

So Many Snobs, So Little Sense

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Okay, so here’s the latest from the world of literary snobbery on the Kindle: only lovers of literature have them, not lowly genre readers.

This is a direct quote from Sara Nelson, author of “So Many Books, So Little Time.” (Which I have on my bookshelf and mostly read, until I got really bored.) She says: “It’s really expensive. If you’re going to pay that, you’re giving a statement to the world that you like to read — and you’re probably not using it to read a mass market paperback.”

Okay then.

Clearly Sara lives under a rock, or perhaps just under a stack of books. The first person I knew to own a Kindle, and that was the original Kindle, is my long time friend and sorority sister, Karen Weesner. Who gobbles up lots of books every week, many of them trashy mass market paperbacks. Once of the first things she told me she loved about it was that no one knew what she was reading. No slutty covers to elicit questions from the kids. No raised eyebrows from her husband, wondering why she was reading that one yet again.

Not everyone wants the world to know what they’re reading and not everyone who loves to read invests only in highbrow stuff.

Apparently Sara doesn’t know the latest statistics. Romance fiction sold $1.375 billion in estimated revenue for 2007 compared to $466 million for classic literary fiction. Umm…something makes me think these readers might have money to invest in a Kindle.

This makes me think of those articles where they ask famous people what they’re reading right now. Even as a pre-teen, I wondered when I saw one of those articles, how everyone could be reading “A Tale of Two Cities,” or “Les Miserables” in the original French. Where were the readers of Anne McCaffrey? As my life went on, I would scan these sorts of lists, hoping someone would fess up to the new Nora Roberts in her purse.

No one ever has.

Me? Right now I’m reading Veronica by Mary Gaitskill and Wicked Game by Jeri Smith-Ready. On the Kindle I just finished Nalini Singh’s Angel’s Blood and I’ve got JR Ward’s Lover Avenged queued up.

I love ’em all.

Spread Your Tiny Wings and Fly Away

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The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

My friend is missing.

As in there are search parties looking for him, with dogs and helicopters.

You may have heard about it already, since his friends and family have been working hard to spread the news. The object of the publicity is to keep the Japanese government searching, something they planned to suspend after three days. Yes, he’s on a volcanic island, Kuchino-erabu-shima, in Japan. He’s been visiting volcanoes and writing poetry about them — what can I say? That’s part of what makes him an interesting guy.

His last Facebook post was on Sunday, when he said “Craig Arnold is at long last leaving Princess-Mononoke-Land.” That status remains. I’m really hoping it won’t become an ironic elegy.

There’s a Facebook page for him: Find Craig Arnold.

On that group are people’s letter templates for writing to representatives. They call Craig a national treasure. Someone sure to become US Poet Laureate someday. All steps must be taken to find him because of his exceptional talents. They mention his Yale education, his poetry fellowship to Rome, his many awards.

All of this is true. And it’s great to use that kind of pressure, for political reasons.

But it should be enough that we want him found because he’s a wonderful friend to so many. One of those guys who manage to be vital, funny and sensitive. When he coordinated the visiting writers program at UW, he made sure to invite me, a local writer not affiliated with the MFA program. He invited me to lunches with authors he knew I’d like to meet. When I’d show up for readings, he’d flash me a smile. Craig had a knack for making people feel special, that he was genuinely delighted to see you. Every time.

In one of his last Facebook exchanges, one of Craig’s friends asked if they really had 111 friends in common. He responded, “the question is, can I really have 111 friends, period?”

Yes, Craig, you can. You have thousands wanting you to come home.