“Sublimity,” Hauptmann says, panting, “you know what that is, Pfennig?” He is tipsy, animated, almost prattling. Never has Werner seen him like this. “It’s the instant when one thing is about to become something else. Day to night, caterpillar to butterfly. Fawn to doe. Experiment to result. Boy to man.” 
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See


Sublime:
1- to cause to pass directly from the solid to the vapor state and condense back to solid form 
2[French sublimer, from Latin sublimare]
a (1)  :  to elevate or exalt especially in dignity or honor (2)  :  to render finer (as in purity or excellence) 
b  :  to convert (something inferior) into something of higher worth 

For me, writing is as much a study of words as anything. English, in many ways, is a limited language, and so you see how far you can stretch the words. And you wrap your characters in their stories with words, symbols, metaphors. You reach out to try to touch what is sublime.
 
Steve Jobs had a deep understanding of sublimity, of how to make an inanimate object, a computer screen sublime. His story is one of deep and dark contrasts, but certainly one of sublimity. He was always striving for it, though often at the expense of love. I think that is what is fascinating about him to people is his complex story, such a study of contrasts.

Water is sublimely beautiful because it is always in this process of sublimity, of becoming something else. When you are near it, you can literally hear it happening, in the lapping, the trickling, the rushing, etc... I went running by the river today, stopping to stretch and watch the water flow past every obstacle with grace and a quiet humility.

"Nothing in the world is more flexible and yielding than water. Yet when it attacks the firm and the strong, none can withstand it, because they have no way to change it. So the flexible overcome the adamant, the yielding overcome the forceful. Everyone knows this, but no one can do it."

 Lao Tzu 
 
"Don't you realize that the sea is the home of water? All water is off on a journey unless it's in the sea, and it's homesick, and bound to make its way home someday"

 Zora Neale Hurston

 To touch and behold that which is sublime... to me that is so much of the journey. 

A thing is mighty big when time and distance cannot shrink it.
-Zora Neale Hurston

There are these classic books that really stand the test of time. Our local bookstore has a whole shelf of them on display, unchanging. They were often books that were once banned or controversial. Zora Neale Hurston was one of those writers. Time and distance cannot shrink work of that depth. 

Sweat, sweat, sweat! Work and sweat, cry and sweat, pray and sweat!
-Zora Neale Hurston

I remember where this idea of "can't do human" came from.  I am pretty sure it came in the form of an Amy Schumer comedy monologue, though I may be mistaken because I haven't been able to find it. Those words do really resonate with me. The writing process only highlights that aspect even more, spending days and days writing about a world that exists only in my head and my thoughts. I was talking with a painter yesterday and she was talking about this lonely aspect of being an artist, the work is your companion. It is your journey alone. Being an artist places you outside of something looking in. But I think most artists have always felt that way anyway.

I was talking with another friend of mine about anxiety. She talked about the symptom of de-realization, where you feel that reality is this thin veneer, this paper thin illusion, which reminds me of Macbeth's, "Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, life is but a walking shadow, a poor player who struts and frets his our upon the stage..." I memorized the monologue in 8th grade and it has stuck with me. It is too depressing for me to finish writing out though. I memorized one other Shakespearean monologue at that time, one that is interesting for other reasons and I will talk about some other day. I think I've always lived in a state of de-realization. My life reformulated so many times in bizarre ways when I was young that I never really counted on a static reality. I think that is part of what I love about water; it's soft malleability. It just arrives where it is with no expectation. It can permeate any obstacle. I think all artists live in the state of de-realization to some extent. David Foster Wallace certainly talks about it. The artist yesterday spoke of it. Gabriel Garcia Marquez is very open about it. Yoga, meditation and writing all push me further in that direction. And it can make this "doing human" thing very hard. 

Art can be such a force that time and distance cannot shrink it. So can literature and music, so can love. When I say "doing human", I am not talking about these things. I am talking about the things that make up the thin veneer of life that surrounds. Love, literature, music, art, etc..., these are things that ask sweat and tear and prayer of us. These things permeate. The "doing human" things are rigid and cannot permeate, they bruise. 

I was going through my computer bag today and found a crumpled up sheet of paper. It had a column called "evocative words" of some of my favorite words- zig zag, mosaic, teaspoon, barb wire. There are like twenty of them altogether. It's not their meaning, it's really just that I like how the words sound coming off the tongue. I must like the S sounds because a lot of them are S words. Not sure where I was or when I wrote it. Sometime in the last three years, I suppose. 

On the other half of the paper was a quote, "learning how to do human" it said.
I'm sure who said it or why, but it struck me so I wrote it down along with notes about the Odyssey's Lotus Eaters. It still strikes me. I think because I don't think I am very good at it. Most days recently I'm not sure if I'm cut out for it at all. I can fake it, but others seem to be so much better really dancing the dance. It comes so easily. That is what I love about interviews with David Foster Wallace. He articulates this dilemma so beautifully. Like him, I am a sensitive observer and this is also my curse. "Learning how to do human" is exhausting. In a radio interview I listened to recently, I was like, 'yes, yes" when I heard his words. Your gift is your curse, and day to day, it is exhausting.

Nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it.
-Lao Tzu

In some ways I can't believe it has taken this long for me to make this intellectual jump. Why could I not see it before? While I was so sick, though, something clicked. I have always understood the Tao as described as similar to water. Like water, it is uniform, endlessly cyclical, self-restorative, soft but powerful, and abundant, selflessly giving, quiet, etc... As humans we seem to tend to be so goal-oriented, even obsessive. The Tao seems to embody the opposite, a selfless, sustaining flow, like love.  

What clicked in part was that my dear friend directed me to this podcast from NPR's Ted radio hour called 'Everything is Connected'. It was a beautiful story about how more connected nature is than we ever even can expect or understand. The story is about how in restoring the wolves to Yellowstone, a term called re-wilding, it restored the river's ability to undulate as it is supposed to, the birds came back and the hardwoods began to regrow. There was this whole chain of effects that happened as a result of restoring this predator to its natural habitat. The orator tells the story beautifully and it speaks to this natural unobstructed flow, the Tao, though he doesn't call it that. Once the flow becomes obstructed, the habitat quickly broke down. But once it is restored, things flow beautifully and naturally. One of the things I love about Taoism is that it acknowledges (like Einstein and Newton) that nature is, indeed, the best teacher. In many ways, it holds a metaphor for everything we need to know. And for me, water is the greatest teacher of all.

That is what I have missed most about these last two and a half weeks of illness- running outside. All of my favorite routes go along a stream, river, creek or lake. 2 miles today was all I could do. Still pretty knocked down. But it was by a creek, so that made it good.

I remember doing this 8 hour race about ten years ago. It involved navigating through the woods with a team. About halfway through the race, I started weeping. I felt this overwhelming sense of vibrancy and rhythm and I said to my friends, you know we are so lucky to be able use our bodies like this. Not everyone can do this. It was something very obvious to say and know, but it was so true in that moment on top of that hill with a view, laughing and running full stride, that we all started crying. We all laugh about it now, but it was a sweet moment of being in full view of something beautiful and much larger than ourselves. 

All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.
-Toni Morrison

There's a part of the book where the main character joins a troupe of traveling misfits/performers. They all bare physical deformities, except for Penelope, and she becomes intoxicated with the freedom of their lifestyle and the sense of home she feels with them. It has been fascinating to research the stories of transient people, gypsies, circus performers, etc... To extend the water metaphor of the book, people who are in constant flow and never pool anywhere. They are bound by love of people more than any geographic sense of belonging. Some of the stories reflect this heroic sense of loyalty and love and it is within that human to human connection that they find a sense of belonging. 

“The love between humans is the thing that nails us to this earth.” 
― Ann Patchett

I have always felt most at home by water and in many ways the book is my journey into trying to understand that aspect of myself. This Toni Morrison quote resonates with me so deeply. What is the connection between love and water? I think they are both this matrix that is buoyant and can hold you. But there is more. I think they move through the world in similar ways. They are abundant, buoyant, all enveloping, playful, nourishing. Water and love have a lot in common and if I can find a way to articulate that through the story of my book, I hope I will feel more at home, less like hiding.

Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.
-Zora Neale Hurston


I think the Tao Te Ching might help articulate my thoughts about love and water and flow. Perhaps I need to look there for some clarity. I'm surprised it has taken so long for this to occur to me:/ It's been too long.

“Love

Embracing Tao, you become embraced.
Supple, breathing gently, you become reborn.
Clearing your vision, you become clear.
Nurturing your beloved, you become impartial.
Opening your heart, you become accepted.
Accepting the World, you embrace Tao.
Bearing and nurturing,
Creating but not owning,
Giving without demanding,
Controlling without authority,
This is love.” 
― Lao Tzu, The Teachings of Lao-Tzu: The Tao-Te Ching 

Moksha is derived from the root mu(n)c (Sanskrit: मुच्), which means free, liberate.[12][13] - such as of a horse from its harness. 

I still have not settled on a title for my book. I keep expecting it to dawn on me one day. I have known for a long time that it will involve the word Revival, but Stephen King already took that name for a scary book, so I have to think more broadly. I have had a lot of time for contemplation these last two weeks, and a word came to mind. My friend was talking about her friend Mischa, and for some reason it brought to mind the word Moksha. I couldn't remember what it was but it kept reverberating in my head while I was resting and so I looked it up. Rebirth or even liberation from the cycle of birth and rebirth.

Like so many Sanskrit words, it has many more layers than I can address here now. But for me, right now, I am focussed on the rebirth aspect of it. It got me thinking about the different between revival and rebirth. 
Revival denotes an aspect of restoration. Rebirth evokes a birth again, a reincarnation of sorts. So that takes me to the etymology, one of my favorite scavenger hunts- re- vivre- to live again; re- birth- to birth again. It's an important distinction. Moksha seems to be a hybrid of these two closely linked words, whose ultimate goal is freedom. Our language can be so limited, anemic at times. While I haven't really fully formulated my thoughts about it, I think this word is a clue along the way to finding the title to my book and also something to meditate on. Penelope is certainly on this journey in the book. And my goal for her is that she lands there in the end, from a place of erosion and loss to a place of love, a sense of buoyancy and of home. Moksha, there's no real word for it in English. Revival ??. Still haven't figured it out but feel a step closer today. 

“Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard.” 
― Anne Sexton

“This evening I begin a notebook. If anyone reads this, I trust they will forgive my overuse of "I". I can't stop it. I'm writing this.” 
― Jonathan Franzen

This quote made me laugh. That's in many ways captures how I feel about this blog. 

The article Jonathan Franzen wrote about traveling to a remote island off of Chile has stuck with me. First of all it was so well-articulated and poignant. You were there with him. It also reminded me of a childhood experience I had with my family. We had traveled to Norway on a 'family trip' which was really code for my father wanted to go fly fishing. I was about 8 or 9, I believe. He also wanted to go see this rare puffin off of the coast of Norway on this island called Roast. So after the fishing, we went to Roast. Trust me, almost no one has ever been there. It is very similar to Franzen's experience on his island. It is remote and rugged and far far away from everything known. Often our family trips growing up were focussed around my father's desire to see something rare and hardly seen, mostly animals though sometimes historical things. In Norway, we hopped a helicopter to an island that was long and flat, like a spit of sand in the Atlantic. I couldn't believe people lived there but they did. My brother and I were the sherpas of the family so we dragged our bags all the way to the end of the island to catch a boat. I remember us being strung out like a line of beads along this eternal road from "airstrip" to "dock". It was all pretty rustic. We got on the small fishing boat and headed for the high seas. But it was before GPS, and it was the thickest fog I've ever seen so we became lost in the Atlantic for about 5-7 hours. What should have taken 1 hour, became epic and more than a little scary. It's never good when the captain starts looking worried and soothing himself with shot after shot of whiskey. My dad and mom started to partake as well if I remember. We finally got to the little island beside Roast where we would spend the night. It should have been called Cat Island because there were cats everywhere. I remember there being a pool table somewhere on the island but we couldn't play because there were so many cats jumping all over the place inside and outside. We waited several days for the weather to clear and then headed with a crew of professional birders to the island. It was rugged and intense. I was wearing the equivalent of bermuda shorts and a tank top, my sister wore a dress with flats, the real birders had on full all-weather expedition gear. I'm not even sure we had water bottles. I remember thinking that this seems like a really, really bad idea when I looked up at the sheer rock cliffs.

What reminded me of this story was when Franzen is dropped off alone on this island wholly unprepared for how extreme the elements were. His neurotically funny recounting of the story was reminiscent of those moments of awkward laughter where you think to yourself, this could kill me. He sets up his tent, it is almost immediately crushed by the wind. He goes in search of the bird and almost dies, then gets lost on the way back because the fog is so dense. 

He realized maybe he'd gone a little far with it all, he wishes he could be back at home, and then the clouds break and he throws his dear friend's ashes to the wind.

“Readers and writers are united in their need for solitude, in their pursuit of substance in a time of ever-increasing evanescence: in their reach inward, via print, for a way out of loneliness.” 
― Jonathan Franzen, How to Be Alone: Essays

Roast was the most remote place I'd ever been at that time. Everything about it felt remote and a little bit out of control. It was an amazing feeling and I sought it out many times after that day in various ways through travel and climbing. I have been so housebound these last two weeks, I am grateful for this story and the places it takes me. Stories about people's lives make good company. 

Love is about bottomless empathy, born out of the heart’s revelation that another person is every bit as real as you are. And this is why love, as I understand it, is always specific. Trying to love all of humanity may be a worthy endeavor, but, in a funny way, it keeps the focus on the self, on the self’s own moral or spiritual well-being. Whereas, to love a specific person, and to identify with his or her struggles and joys as if they were your own, you have to surrender some of your self.” 
― Jonathan Franzen, Farther Away


Farther Away - The New Yorker : http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/04/18/farther-away-jonathan-franzenMy dearest friend's birthday was yesterday and so I decided I must see her. I choked down some advil and we went for a walk. It felt good to be in the sunshine and to be with her on her birthday. One of the unique things we share is that we both grew up with severely depressed mothers... so birthdays are weird because they never really happened in any real traditional sense. I could talk about this more (because it is also the reality and one of the defining features of the main character of my book) but I will discuss that another day. So, understanding this about my dear friend perhaps more deeply than anyone in her life, I like to make a really big deal about her birthday. She loves books as much as I do and so we talked much of the time about David Foster Wallace. We are so kindred that, not unexpectedly, she told me that seeing the movie about him this weekend, The End of the Tour, was her birthday present to herself. She cautioned me about seeing it, saying that she had wept quite hard at the end. He was a severely depressed man who did not survive, taking his own great life. Knowing that I have watched several loved ones in my life walk that delicate tightrope made her caution me about seeing it. 

She sent me this article by one of his good friends and a fellow author Jonathan Franzen. It is a very long and raw article, but I loved it for its honest portrayal of his raw and desperate anger at his friend. He took a pilgrimage to a remote island off of Chile to find a rare bird, to disperse some of his ashes, and to come to terms with his feelings. This quote is from that article. Surrender. Vulnerability. I would go further with what Franzen said... Love is about bottomless empathy and bottomless surrender. What having a depressed mother taught me was that there are no guarantees on what is returned to you, but maybe that's the pain and the point. Offering love is the one experience that makes life real. Franzen clearly felt that kind of love for Wallace and that's why two years after his death, he found himself on a remote island over a cliff, spreading ashes and crying and screaming out to the wind.  

"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.