Review of The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit

I love this book!  Here's a link to my review in the Plain Dealer.

http://www.cleveland.com/books/index.ssf/2013/06/rebecca_solnits_lush_essays_in.html

manipulation to see it new again

Words

At times, I have to leave writing alone for a while, play with other things.  Be other places besides in my head with all those words and plots and characters.  So, that's where I am right now, playing with photography, and that's what I'm going to put on this blog for a few weeks.  Simple images I'm collecting, holding them in place by sharing them. Let me know what they say to you.

The Molt

The Molt

A drift of deer

appear in the morning fog,

tufts of winter fur

snagging,

on bushes, shrubs,

as if leaving behind

a favorite shirt, faded

to pale,

a sliver necklace,

you once gave me.

Then they’re gone.

For Ron

No moon, just catch your breath

dark. What we wanted:

The light

of a billion stars.

This storm passes too slow

for the movement of us, caught

in the box-step, ready to rumba

and roar.

Killing your darlings means taking out what doesn't work from a story, even if you love it.

This one landed here for a final breath.

As the day's heat lessens, birds cry out calls of ownership, love and need, all mingling together into a clamor of I’m here!  Right here!  Stay away!  Hello!  Hello!  Find me.  Love me!  We’re starving!  Feed us!  Hurry!  Mom!  Mine!  Hello!  Stay away!  Hurry!  Hello!  Hello!”

Indigo Buntings scissor the air with high pitched song.  Blue Jays arrow from branch to branch, announcing their flight, more important than anyone else.  Crows gang up on bigger birds.  Want to fight?  Come on, come on, want to fight?  Sparrows, the white trash of the bird kingdom, serenade more sweetly than expected.  Mourning Doves pretend to be owls in the distance.  Chipmunks (not birds, but want to be their friends even though they are often ignored because they are like the boy who cried wolf) make an annoying sound like a nail being hammered into tin, over and over and over again.  Cardinals only speak to each, so much in-love that they must stay in constant contact.  Hawks, high above, whistle like a tea kettle in the heavens.  And robins sunbathe, waiting for a moment of silence before bursting into full fledged song, putting the rest to shame. 

Then by nine or so, they begin to quiet, and the world belongs to louder voices coming from inside houses built too near each other, the narrow alleys encasing the echoes, holding on to them until morning when they finally drift upwards with the fog, leaving pressure on eyes, aches in throats, and dreams in tender hearts of a sweeter song, somewhere, sometime, long ago.  

Another poem for poetry month

Sister

After deaths

shared, breaths

held, words

measured, false gods,

now we don’t speak.

Remember the tall hay,

gooseberries? I dared you

to climb that tree.

It’s time

to cobble us together again,

no one left but us

to die.

  

Any suggestions for a title?

Untitled

I pebble poems,

nuggets dense

as dry hearts.

Only I know

what shape

they braved

before I carved them

from the vein. 

Another part of the story

At the age of twelve, I’m at school in the cafeteria when our neighbor approaches the table.  I turn to my friend and say, “My father’s dead.  I got to go.  See you tomorrow.”
     I will put this scene into many of the stories I will write, over and over again, until I am only a character.

                                                                       #   

My mother remarries three years later, we move, and I’m furious.  I’m also flunking everything.  (It will turn out I’m dyslexic, undiagnosed back then, even though I spell words with the last letter first, and vowels are only strange little shapes that make no sense at all.)  One day a teacher gives me an F on a paper and asks me to come to his office.  His office is dark and small and he sits behind the desk as I stand.  “Do you know why I gave you an F?” he asks.  I shrug.  I’m good at shrugging.  “I take off a full grade for every three misspelled words.”

     I haven’t a chance then and merely nod.  But on an impulse I ask, “What did you think about what I wrote?  Is it okay, otherwise?”  It’s about the Civil War.  I did a lot of research.  I’m beginning to get interested in the Civil War.

     “I won’t discuss that until you fix the spelling,” he says.  I look at him.  He’s serious.  I walk out of the office, out of the school.  I go to a public phone and call my mother.  It’s cold out, November, snowing hard.

     “I’m never going back,” I tell her as we drive home.  There’s silence for a while.  She thinks before she speaks, not like me.

     “Fine,” she says.  “It’s your life, but what do you want to do?”

     Oddly, I still want to know more about the Civil War, science, what’s in books, poetry.

     I find a place called Friends Free School.

The school is in a gold dome Temple, three bus rides across town, an hour away.  Tim, my English teacher, is indistinguishable from the students who all wear torn blue-jeans, tie-dyed shirts and long hair.  One day he asks me to read one of my poems.  I do, blushing, trembling, head hung down.  I have been here less than a week and want nothing more than to impress everyone because they are all so cool, even though some don’t show up at school often.  I do.  I come every day. 

This is the poem. 

Untitled

Laugh at me

      and I will laugh along

for then we’ll all look gay

     to someone passing by

Thirty-three years later Tim–who has moved away and hasn't seen me since that year at Friends–will come back to town, find me, and take me to lunch.  He will have this poem in his wallet.

This is why I write.  It’s how I talk.  It’s how I make friends.  

Once, a long time ago

Once, a long time ago, I thought I'd write a memoir.  Here is a piece of that experiment.

August 27^th, 1966

1)

My brother and I sleep on green canvas cots in the barn. My sister, who is only six, sleeps in the house. In the early morning I awaken to a trembling on my chest: it's a chipmunk! I scream, and it scurries off. My brother throws a cow bone at me for waking him, but he’s sleepy and it clashes against the slats of the barn wall. He has a collection of cow bones from the neighbor’s pasture. He’s trying to make a whole cow, but he will grow up and drill gas wells, leaving the pieces behind.  

2)

My brother and I eat Special K for breakfast. My sister eats only white toast. No one forces her to eat vegetables or fruit, get some iron in her blood. There is, at this moment, a freedom at home, an agreement to let some things slide.

3)

My father has hung a long rope from a high branch of the sturdy maple in our front yard. At the bottom of the rope is a dowel from a broken chair, tied to the rope with knots I will never learn. I sit on this swing, an Olympic contender. There are specific feats I must perform, exactly right. I pull back, push off, lean back, pump, point my toes, hold one arm out, fingers cupped together. On the back-swing I must switch hands. I do this very well. The trees applaud.

4)

Inside, my mother cooks cabbage soup, my father’s favorite, although he won’t eat today. The house and her clothes will smell bitter for days. My mother stands over the soup and stirs, and only now that I am a mother do I know that she wept into that broth no matter what she made us believe.

5)

In the woods, I tie my sister to a mast. My brother makes me walk the plank. The trees oblige: there are so many masts, so many planks, so many places to hide. My brother dares me to eat currants that grow along the back field, and I do, even though I know how bad they taste. My sister eats only one, but doesn’t spit it out, and we tell her how good she is. She doesn’t understand much yet, but she will.

6)

We keep our voices low at dinner. Upstairs, my father coughs. My mother excuses herself, and doesn’t come back down for a long time. We do the dishes. Afterwards we sit in front of the black and white TV. We watch the pictures of our planet, sent down from the lunar orbiter. We see the ball of our earth, the tattered cover of clouds, the shadowy shapes of continents. My mother comes downstairs and sits between us on the couch, laying an arm over my brother’s shoulder. Later we go outside and look up, but can’t find the moon. From outside we hear that cough, and I count the repetitions like the seconds after lightening.

7)

My brother and I sleep in the barn. A branch scrapes against the roof, prying at the shingles. We pretend we’re in a cabin in Alaska, wolves pawing across the roof. We play at being alone. In time, we’ll be perfect at this. We’ll be fine.