"The blind Frenchman Jacques Lusseyran describes how fear was the only thing that truly prevented him seeing,: 'Still, there were times when the light faded, almost to the point of disappearing. It happened every time I was afraid. if, instead of letting myself be carried along by confidence and throw myself into things, I hesitated, calculated, thought about the wall, the half-open door, the key in the lock; if i said to myself that all these things were hostile and about to strike or scratch, then without exception I hit or wounded myself. The only easy way to move around the house, the garden or the beach was by not thinking about it at all, or thinking as little as possible. Then I moved between obstacles the way they say bats do. Otherwise what the loss of my eyes had not accomplished was brought about by fear. It made me blind.'" 

This quote really struck me last night. In part because of the story of the blind girl in All the Light We Cannot See and in part because of the beautiful truth it speaks so eloquently. As all of the known parts of her life fall away from her piece by piece from the war, she garners her strength and senses and is able to see what is essential. There are these beautiful passages too where her uncle takes her on these journeys of the imagination, through the jungles of the amazon, deep into the sea, etc... He takes her there through music as well. That is where the song Claire de Lune comes into play, because it is so evocative for her. As I have already said about the book, she is very clearly the least blind of all of the characters of the book, though she is the only one who lacks vision. That is also true for my character Ordelia, she can only see shadows because she is albino. But in the book she says, "The shadows illuminate everything." In not seeing fully, she can see what's really important, what others cannot see as clearly. For me, this process Lusseyran speaks about so eloquently is a constant work in progress, to not be blind in this life. 

“what I want to write about today is the sea. It contains so many colors. Silver at dawn, green at noon, dark blue in the evening. Sometimes it looks almost red. Or it will turn the color of old coins. Right now the shadows of clouds are dragging across it, and patches of sunlight are touching down everywhere. White strings of gulls drag over it like beads.

It is my favorite thing, I think, that I have ever seen. Sometimes I catch myself staring at it and forget my duties. It seems big enough to contain everything anyone could ever feel.” 
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

Still feeling quite rough, so I have to make this brief. Was flipping back through All the Light We Cannot See and found this beautiful quote. 

And this one- “What do we call visible light? We call it color. But the electromagnetic spectrum runs to zero in one direction and infinity in the other, so really, children, mathematically, all of light is invisible.” 
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See


The book is really about all the things that are invisible to us that surround us. 


Thankfully, we can see some things. Our eyes can perceive the way light plays on water. I can't think of a more soothing thing to reflect upon. At midnight hole, the light and water create an emerald pool, in Maine, the tiny flecks of star light reflect perfectly off of the water at night creating this dizzying feeling of smallness in the face of something infinite. I have a hundred more examples but feel too rough to keep my eyes open any longer. 

“So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?” 
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

This is my favorite quote from the book.
I realized in the middle of the night last night what was right in front me. All the Light We Cannot See is saying the same thing as the "this is water" story. I have more to say about that but am not feeling well enough to write much. 

Instead, I am going to research more about the part of the story I am stuck on, the part where she joins this band of traveling performers/misfits. There are so many stories like that to learn about, real stories from the Depression Era. Amazing people who were outcasts with physical oddities who performed and traveled. Penelope feels at home with them because there is no judgment there, only love and play. It is the first time in the book she uses the word 'home'. Such a powerful word. That's her journey really (and in my mind a large part of the human journey), to find a sense of home and loving and belonging, a place to rest and give and receive love.

That quote keeps resonating in my mind. He wrote it in a commencement speech. He was cautioning the students to use the tools they learned in college to not forget that 'this is water'. There is a you tube video of the speech- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL-ydFMI

It's a good mantra. 
 
Hopefully it is a good central theme for a book too. 

Feeling too under the weather today to write much today, but many thanks to Wallace and Leon Bridges for helping me find inspiration.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q-QJN2sTe8

“There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?".....
It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:

"This is water."

"This is water.” 
― David Foster Wallace, This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

Been cold all morning, so I put on my jacket and there it was. One of my dear friend's kids picked out a rock from the Pigeon River last weekend and gave it to me to keep in my pocket. I like having a rock in my pocket to rub. I've kept a small rock in the pocket of my jacket for almost as long as I can remember. This one is pretty perfect too. It is white and just the right size and very, very smooth, perfect for rubbing with my thumb. I love that it is from the Pigeon. 

“Fiction is one of the few experiences where loneliness can be both confronted and relieved. Drugs, movies where stuff blows up, loud parties — all these chase away loneliness by making me forget my name’s Dave and I live in a one-by-one box of bone no other party can penetrate or know. Fiction, poetry, music, really deep serious love, and, in various ways, religion — these are the places (for me) where loneliness is countenanced, stared down, transfigured, treated.”

-David Foster Wallace

I listened to a Fresh Air interview with David Foster Wallace yesterday. I first came to know him through his novel Infinite Jest. And then later through collections of essays he had written. The interview confirmed the kindredness I felt with him when I read his work. Infinite Jest starts off with a character neck deep in the world of competitive tennis. The character is neurotic, the culture of the sport equally so. Wallace committed suicide in 2008, but at that time I didn't have the heart to find out what had happened, so after I heard the interview last night I pursued it. 
It seemed it was his inability to gain freedom from his thoughts and loneliness that drove him there. He spoke about it candidly at times, his struggle with depression, his constant, brutal self-critical dialogue. He was brilliant and his brilliance made him really suffer. He was held in such high regard and couldn't accept or see his own beautiful soul. He talked a lot about being a writer too and how writing, while it was all he felt called to do, was tortuous for him. It brought the darkness to the light and somehow also turned the volume up loudly on his inner critic, the lonely unknown parts of himself. I have to agree. To write a book, he said, you have to be willing to half die. I have to say that I agree. You're vanishing, my friend Tabatha told me as she held my wrist. I told her that as the book is growing bigger, I am growing smaller. There are other factors. 
Mostly, fiction is a salve where the loneliness can be confronted and relieved. Wallace and I both seem to share the belief that its ultimate goal is to convey truth and love and goodness through fiction. 
I was reading Harry Potter to my son last night. It was a particularly passionate part of the text where Dumbledore is trying to make Harry understand that he should not be afraid because he is more powerful than the evil wizard Voldemort. He is more powerful because he lives in love and not fear. Harry doesn't understand and so the conversation escalates. Voldemort cannot love and you can, it makes all the difference... people who are tyrants cultivate fear and control through fear. Harry chose to love instead and that makes him more powerful. I am not doing it justice but it was inspiring and conveyed truth and love and goodness, so I thought about it long after my son had fallen asleep. Ordelia says that too, that it is always a choice between love and fear. 
What a loss. David Foster Wallace. There is a movie coming out about him that I am sure I would love to see. He is so articulate about this nagging loneliness that erodes him that maybe I should not, but I probably will anyway because people's stories fascinate me, particularly someone as vulnerable, honest and rawly human as Wallace.

I had this amazing revelation yesterday while writing. I have been struggling with my character's birth story. There is a point where it is recounted and I just was stuck with it, for like four months. Then, this summer when I was visiting in Maine with my college friends, my friend Tabatha told me that her  now 6 month old son had been born with the birth sack intact. My friend Emmanuelle chimed in that those births are rare and have special meaning. The subject moved on before I could ask any questions and the trip was so busy that I sort of forgot. Until yesterday. To be born en caul, is to be born encased in a translucent bubble. There is no danger in it but it is thought to be the most serene way to be born and that people born that way are bound for greatness and great serenity. In a bubble in a creek. I knew she was born in a creek but hadn't yet put together the bubble part. That's what I was trying to say the other day. There is no rhyme or reason, but you just have to wait for these parts of the story to give way and reveal themselves. And then thank your lucky stars for such insights and hope for an abundance of more. 

My daughter told me the other day that she wished she was still inside my tummy. I told her I was glad that she was out so that I could snuggle her but I did see her point. The warm, snug simplicity of that space. Irretrievable. I think true love can feel that way, peaceful, safe, a place where you can finally rest. That is also one of the beauties of floating or submerging in a pool of water. You can be held for a moment and the noise and stimulation of the world is muffled for just a moment.

School began today for my children. It is the first time I have had all summer to write, to really write. Since I couldn't write consistently, I tried to stay current on this blog and I did a lot of reading, finding little gems of truth and beauty in the stories. This last book was particularly inspiring in that the prose was really beautiful and the story was so compelling, that is until the end. I've never read 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea' but it is quoted throughout the book. This quote in particular is one that I may include in the beginning of my book. It summarizes so much of what I am trying to accomplish. "The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the globe...The sea is only a receptacle for all the prodigious, supernatural things that exist inside it. It is only movement and love; it is the living infinite."

I have an aunt and uncle who live out on an island all summer in Maine. They are sailors and they have a series of cabins on the island. The island is several miles long and wide. Every year, we go out and visit them for at least a day. My cousins are all there with their children, so I get to see them and hike and play. What always strikes me when I go there is how the tidal pools on the island are just teeming with life. There is abundance everywhere. The kids love to crouch down and pluck the hermit crabs from the bottoms of the pools and peak inside their shells. sea urchins. clams. Gulls drop mollusks from up high and crack them open on the rocks. There is algae, seaweed, a thousand little shrimpy things. The water is clear and the environment so harsh that the colors are very vibrant and contrasting. Life is in full swing. The ocean is brimming. I know I go on and on about water, largely because it is one of the major themes of the book I am writing. But it truly is miraculous to me, both overwhelming and reassuring somehow. My character goes on a journey from creek to river to ocean in search of a sense of home and belonging. Ultimately, she reaches the metaphorical ocean and finds peace and buoyancy there. It is lonely and yet buoyant and sustaining. To me, it is the greatest example of the interconnectedness of all things. The waves and tides and abundant life all collaborating somehow in this complex web. Plus, there are these magical creatures there, the stuff of science fiction books. They glow, they have whiskers, their bodies are transparent. It is all fantastical. Things we couldn't think up ourselves. I could go on but it is time to tuck back into the book...

Midnight Hole. It is the perfect swimming hole to me for many reasons. First of all, there is the color of the water. It is emerald at the base of the falls, white bubbles boiling up all around. The water is perfectly clear and so so cold. It takes your breath and makes you feel alive. The jump is high enough to be exciting, to makes you pause a second to think it over. I always get a little queasy before I jump because of the overwhelming coldness of the water. The whole place is surrounded by the tangle of rhododendron that is so characteristic of the south and very nostalgic for me. We left too quickly this time. It calms my heart there, and I wanted to stay until it got dark, but we had to get back. It was clear and I thought the stars would be out. 

In Maine at night, the best place is to go down to the dock. In the new moon, I saw the entire Milky Way swept across the sky haphazardly as smoke. There is no light pollution so the brightness of the stars is almost overwhelming. I find myself shrinking down a little in my own skin because of the vast weight of it. Too many stars to count, no trees to obstruct the view. At night, the wind calms down and the lake stills into a mirror and reflects them all. There are several loons on the lake and they call out at night. I like to wait on the dock until the loons chime in. It's a noise I identify with very strongly, there is a certain beautiful, depth and loneliness to it. It sort of calls out and builds like that song Claire de Lune, singular notes trilling upward in the same way. They make me feel the same stirring, the song and the bird call.

I think the thing that was hard for me about the book All the Light We Can See is that the German soldier was never quite redeemed. His life was of appeasement and lies, then he became that and then he died. It was about a beautiful soul lost. He realized his mistake in the end but was never redeemed. In my version, he would have been redeemed, the shattered pieces of him gathered and put back together by the love of this blind woman. More poignant and resonant for me, this idea of revival and redemption. 

When I started up the trail to the swimming hole, there they were again, the little blue butterflies. My friend even commented on them. At the falls, they were everywhere, fluttering around haphazardly. The kids kept holding out their fingers and they would land, delicate able blue wings. We would examine them. The wispy blue butterflies have been a memorable feature of the summer. There were even some in Maine. I was surprised to see them there. One or two even managed to find their way inside the tent. They highlight something now missing in my life. I can't really find the word for it, or maybe there is no word for it. 

I finished All the Light We Cannot See last night. The story captivated me until the last fifty pages, then it lost the tightly stitched narrative that drove it, and the story lost me a little. As a writer, I feel like I understand what happened. It took him ten years to write it, and, in the final fifty pages, it felt forced. I get like that sometimes, where I want to force the story forward before it is ready to give. It is this strange dance within the creative process. It's the ebb and flow. The story is in the driver's seat, not you or not some deadline. It has to unfold in its own time. Every time I try to resist that, I end up deleting a large chunk of what I wrote and resting my head on the table defeated. That is true for me with yoga too. There are parts of my body that are not ready to give, my hamstrings. They may never budge an inch. But I have learned to wait at the edge, patiently for the unfolding. When I force and push, I injure myself. Running is the same. That place where you are vulnerable and open and teetering at the edge, looking over the edge of the beautiful canyon, not falling. It's a fine balance. The more yoga and running and writing I do, the more I understand what it feels like to inhabit that space. There is a silent humming in my heart when I get there.

Doerr won the Pulitzer Prize, so obviously it was still a magnificent book but it didn't seem to end the way it was supposed to end. I felt it in my bones. Half of the story was about a blind girl coming of age in the disarray of war. She is brilliantly portrayed, her innocence, without vision, she is guided by other, often more important things. You experience the saturation of sound, texture and smell with her. There is a parallel story about a german orphan who is brilliant and gets drafted for his intellect into the war. He knows what he is doing is wrong but he feels like he has no other choices. But he is complicit with the war in indirect ways and his choices that he knows are wrong change him and unravel him. The characters are so vivid and complex. He falls in love with Marie-Laure. There is this blind girls who has no vision or light in her vision and sees everything. And then there is this german boy who sees everything but the light that is all around him and within reach.

The song Claire de Lune, the one my son is teaching me on the piano, is a thread throughout the book. It is a catalyst for the climax of the book. It's funny how things can weave together like that.