The Unfamiliar Howl

It's always there, behind the walls, behind the windows, behind your eyes. All my childhood life it had been the soundtrack, but only in revisiting do I hear it.

The wind...

...is constant in the middle of Illinois where my parents live, where I grew up.

"It's really windy today," I say, looking out the window on the first day of my visit.

"This is normal," my mom says.

I'm writing this from my home in Georgia, where I've gotten used to the still air, the slight breezes—a blessing in winter, bane in summer. When it's windy, we know a big storm is coming, or it's already upon us.

In my hometown it's as if the land has been scoured flat and mostly treeless by the wind, a constant force like running water, a constant sound like the whirring of a great fan. Or is it the other way around? Is it the topography that allows the wind to ride roughshod?

What is too familiar becomes unnoticed, forgotten:
Howl becomes the sound of silence
love becomes coexistence
faith becomes duty
feelings become facts
prejudice becomes certainty
sacrifice becomes expected

Now I notice the stillness outside my window as much as I noticed the wind. I think this is what being constantly present must be like. Presta atención, lend attention, look and see, listen and hear. Know by experience rather than by assumption. Act by intention rather than habit. Go against your own grain sometimes.

And may you never get used to the howl of the wind.

The River Guide

Last Saturday, Andrew and I went on a four hour kayak trip down a stretch of the Etowah River in north Georgia. First time kayaking for both of us. The sun never came out; the wind stung our cheeks much of the way and made us paddle hard just to go downstream; the work made my arm and shoulder muscles knot up and pinch; I ripped open a cuticle because my knuckles kept scraping the kayak whenever I dug the paddle into the water. I had to make an emergency stop and climb up a bank to pee in the woods. More than once, navigating over and between boulders in the shallow water, our kayaks wedged to a stop and nearly overturned.

But we're already planning our next kayaking trip. 

Because we didn't take our phones or camera, I have no pictures of my own from the day, but you can see some more gorgeous pics from other trips on the tour company's website.

Whenever I look down at my arms I see new muscles and think of how after a while the counter-intuitive nature of steering and paddling became normal. I think of how the water felt surprisingly warm compared to the air. How I saw blue heron and, for the first time, a kingfisher and a bald eagle. How the giant sycamore leaves stuck to my paddle and black walnuts as big as tennis balls bobbed beside our kayaks. How a woman in a lawn chair facing the river waved at us and called, "You're the first paddlers I've seen! I just moved here two weeks ago!" I think of how I learned to detect boulders by the way the light curved off the surface of the water above them.

How it felt to be carried along by currents who knew the way through the riffles and were a helpful guide if I kept pointed in the right direction.

sending love and poetry after hurricane sandy

Walt Whitman knew it; we'd be wise to remember it. We're all in this fragile world together. From "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry":

AP Photo/Mark Lennihan

"It avails not, time nor place—distance avails not,

I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence,

Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,

Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd"

Read the rest at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174738

Much love to all affected by the storm. 

Cloudy days...

...are far more interesting than sunny ones.

These are from my drive to work yesterday.

I wish I could capture how underwater I felt driving beneath these clouds with inexplicable waves and undulations. Ripple effects.

The odd thing is in Illinois, these would be rain clouds. But in Georgia, they're just for show. Georgia gets some of the coolest clouds passing over, billowing, flowing, randomly wisping in an otherwise clear sky. And these. I was so giddy by the time I got to work--I really am happier when it's cloudy.

Backyard Spring

I put my leftover calzone in the oven to reheat and stepped outside with my camera. I know how ephemeral this springtime vibrancy is. I made myself quit because I knew I needed to take my calzone out of the oven. It was a little crispy.

Can you see the spider in this tiny pine sapling?

To see more, visit my online album.

the art of getting out of the way

Every year the company my husband works for takes all their employees and spouses on an annual conference. So I get to go along, help behind the scenes, and attend sessions where well-known leaders, researchers, and entrepreneurs from all over the world teach on their area of business expertise. I don't usually expect to get much out of the sessions. I'm not a business person, and most of the time business jargon irritates me.

This year, though, at the last session on the last day, they managed to inspire me.

We came back from a break to see the local philharmonic orchestra arranged on the stage in the center of the conference room. The conductor, with a nice fluffy head of gray hair, stepped to the podium and led the orchestra in the first movement of a piece. Then he stopped and addressed the audience. He drew parallels between leading an organization and leading an orchestra. He showed examples of bad conducting--bad leadership--where the orchestra played out-of-sync, or played without luster, or played too stiffly.

The message: get out of your own way.

It's not a perfect analogy, but a good conductor, a good leader, a good artist, gets out of his or her own way. Out of the way of the musicians, employees, characters, images. Let them make mistakes. Let them be cumbersome at times. Let them rise through autonomy to their own glory.

I can't impose my ideas on my stories, or I will stifle them. A conductor can't dictate every mood and phrase of the orchestra sections, or the musicians will lose the life they bring to the piece. A manager can't have her finger in every pot or she'll exhaust herself and keep her employees from becoming self-motivated. I need to let my characters teach me who they are, I need to let the images come to mean what they mean rather than what I think they should mean. A good conductor trusts his musicians, treats them as professionals, and works in a symbiotic way with them. Get the ego out of the way and let the process become collaborative.

At the end, the conductor picked a man from the audience and invited this admittedly non-musical businessman to the podium. The man took the baton, and, guided by the conductor's own hand, led the orchestra through the contemplative, sweet second movement--conducting the right way. Whenever the camera projected the man's face on the big screens, a collection of nervous giggles rose from the audience. Because right there in plain sight was the stricken awe of someone experiencing something beautiful. His face--eyes half-closed, lips parted, head slightly tilted--displayed the flickerings of tenderness, humility, transcendence, joy, that many of us only allow ourselves to feel privately when listening to music or watching the sunrise or standing at the edge of a canyon. As soon as he heard the murmurs, he straightened his face into a more professional composition. But before long, he lost himself in the music until the camera cut to him again.

When they finished the movement, the conductor gave the man the mic and asked him to describe the experience. I forget exactly what he said, but he was clearly trying hard to come up with the right words for such an inexpressible moment, probably unprecedented in his life. He finally said something about the connection he felt with the musicians, the sense of creating something together that was greater than the sum of them. He used the word "poetic."

It seems the business world is waking up to the fact that there's an artist inside us all. And the best thing to do is get out of the way, trust the process, and let the music rise.

writer's block--

You try to write every day--you take off work so you can really focus on writing, and the most you get all day is one new paragraph. 


You've written for a month-and-a-half and produced six drafts, some a page, some five or six pages, none of which feels right. 


You realize you have no idea what you're doing. 


Some people call this writer's block, but there's got to be a better term for it. 

From my own experience (see above), writer's block is synonymous with self-condemnation, a crisis of confidence. And it doesn't apply only to writers... Artists. Musicians. Parents. Designers. Entrepreneurs. Teachers. Plumbers. Mentors. Someone going through a "mid-life" crisis. We look at what we've done and see that it doesn't amount to what we want from ourselves. So we try again, and when that doesn't work we begin to doubt who we are or what we do.

I don't have the be-all, end-all remedy, but I can tell you what helped me. I stopped striving and had faith. I took Ira Glass' words to heart.

“What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me . . . is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, and it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. . . .

But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. . . . 

It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile.”

Listen to yourself: do you really care about making what you do matter? Do you care about making it great? Then you've got what it takes. Every person on this earth has the spark of a creator within them, somewhere between their heart and mind. Whatever it is you do. You are an artist, or have the capacity to be.

One thing that fosters artistry is child-like curiosity. Wonder. Coming at a project from every angle. What gets in the way of artistry? Striving--trying, grudging, contending. Instead of letting the inner spark ignite and swinging the doors wide open to let the winds of imagination fan it into flame. Which takes repeated, regular practice.

Once I got through those six drafts that weren't going anywhere, I tried a seventh. I don't think I could have gotten to the seventh without the first six dead-end drafts. But I stopped trying to write the story I thought would be good to write. I allowed my imagination to illuminate a path I couldn't have conjured and the road kept opening up before me. A little at a time, just a couple of footsteps ahead, but the flame was living, it was breathing, and I was following.

copyright Sarah Shaffer 2011

Swimming Lessons

When I was about four, my parents enrolled me in swimming lessons at Sholem Pool, one of the local park district's swimming holes. I liked learning how to hold my face underwater and blow bubbles (talking to the fish), then turn my face sideways to breathe (listening to the fish). I enjoyed paddling out and back on the foam boards. I watched with longing as the more experienced kids on the other end of the pool dove off the high board.

Finally we got to swim in the deep end. And you could jump off the diving board if you wanted to. I watched classmates go off the low board. They didn't even spring off, they just stepped out and into the water a few feet below. That didn't look fun at all. 

When it was my turn I asked if I could go off the high board. With two instructors waiting in the water below and one accompanying me up the ladder, I felt more than ready. When I got to the edge of the platform and looked down, though, something in me said, "Maybe the low board isn't such a bad idea." 

I wish I could remember what I said to the instructor and what he told me, but my parents still have a picture of little four-year-old me being dangled over the edge of the high diving platform by the armpits, ready to fall for what felt like minutes before I hit the water. 

It was totally worth it.

I have always watched someone do something daring and thought "I want to try!" Then when I get the chance and I see what they saw, I want to back out. But if a tender coach walks me through the first part, I lose my fear and take off on my own. "What was I so afraid of?"

I should remember that more often, when given the chance to take risks, to live a little more life, to dance in front of strangers: "Later I will ask myself, 'what was I so afraid of?' so just do it, Sarah."

Poetry Month

In honor of National Poetry Month--every April, all April:

Poets do not necessarily all make a practice of writing in lines on a page, though I love those who do.

What makes a poet?

irish sea / construction wall / old man / pup

Poets can hold both sides of the coin to be true. Poets, plumbing their unique pains, reach universal insights into life on earth. Poets create meaning in the very act of wrestling with meaninglessness. Poets know that the shortest distance between two points isn't always a straight line. They'll ride an old bike when a car would be efficient.

The world needs more poets--people who know things without having an explanation for them. People who know that often Truth doesn't arrive to us in data, nor even words, but around and in between words.

Wall Street needs more poets,

Washington needs more poets,

Churches needs more poets (albeit Jesus was a poet),

School boards need more poets,

Banks need more poets,

Every family needs a poet,

Every person needs a poet in their life.


Go find a poet today and be their friend! Or better yet, go practice being a poet today!

Outdoors

I don't remember how old I was, probably various ages between eight and thirteen. Sometimes, when I needed to get away by myself, I walked to the southwest corner of our 4.5 acre Illinois property, where our field of clover and alfalfa met two adjacent cornfields. Between the cornfields, a ridge of earth and long grasses marked the boundary.

By July, I could disappear between the fields, hidden by cornstalks, and walk what seemed like a mile to another confluence of hedgerows--a small patch of meadowy-soft tall grasses, and an old oak or hickory shading part of it. Seems like on at least one occasion, I found the grass beneath that tree matted neatly down--a deer's bed. I sat in my own spot of grass beneath the tree with a sandwich, a book, and a journal, and let time simply pass.

I don't think I fully appreciated that place, or I would have gone more often. I remember noting from season to season, the hedgerow seemed to get narrower, a few more inches here and there plowed under by the farmers on either side. I became afraid of foxes, coyotes, or worse, ticks. At some point all my experience with nature became clouded with the knowledge and worry of things out to get me--the knowledge of good and evil, and I let it chase me out of the garden.

And now I wish I could go back--that probably goes without saying. I regret not living there more, not inhabiting that nook in the fields more frequently. I lived in the house there for ten years before going to college. I lived there two more summers during. But I didn't live in the land enough, while it was available to me. Nothing that private is available to me anymore. But it doesn't have to stay that way.

Kindesalter

Lately in my free time I've gotten a kick out of looking through all the old family photos I happen to have and scanning them into the computer. I'm a little obsessed with looking at myself and my family back in the 80s and early 90s. Some pictures are hilarious and I have to wonder what's going through my mind. Some pictures recall sweet memories.

This one I have no memory of, but I love our hats and I love the way my dad is looking at me as I am clearly enjoying that candy cane. This was Christmas of '85, at my aunt's house. I didn't get candy very often. I still have that hat in my closet. Dad looks like an early incarnation of a hipster.

Next up is a little number I like to call "Why the --- did you get rid of that guitar? I would have gotten better eventually." I remember improvising my own songs. I was a child hippie.

Last but not least, puppy love. Or puppy and kitten love. Whatever. First pets. Happy dog and Pippi Longstockings. Happy existed before I was born, and Pippi came into my life around the summer after second grade.

Happy

Pippi--I had always wanted to do this when I got a cat

Oh, childhood.

I love everything Madeleine L'Engle writes, but this is particularly apropos:

The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been. ... I am still every age that I have been. Because I was once a child, I am always a child. Because I was once a searching adolescent, given to moods and ecstasies, these are still part of me, and always will be. ... This does not mean that I ought to be trapped or enclosed in any of these ages...the delayed adolescent, the childish adult, but that they are in me to be drawn on; to forget is a form of suicide. ... Far too many people misunderstand what "putting away childish things" means, and think that forgetting what it is like to think and feel and touch and smell and taste and see and hear like a three-year-old or a thirteen-year-old or a twenty-three-year-old means being grownup. When I'm with these people I, like the kids, feel that if this is what it means to be a grown-up, then I don't ever want to be one. Instead of which, if I can retain a child's awareness and joy, and "be" fifty-one, then I will really learn what it means to be grownup.

Eine kleine Nachtmusik:* 
Our next door neighbors have a girl, about age 4, who tags around after her brother all the time. Today he and some friends tossed wiffle balls off the side of their house, just outside our kitchen window. We were fixing dinner and laughed to hear them playing. "Do you think every generation of kids thinks they're the first to come up with that idea?" I asked Andrew. He had been one of those kids, too. We usually keep the kitchen blinds slanted closed but pulled up enough for the cats to sit in the windowsill and watch "kitty cable." Sally, our new foster cat, sneaked over to check out the ruckus, and the little girl saw her. She plopped down next to the window and smashed her nose right up against the screen. "Hi kitty cat," she said. She didn't see Andrew and I, even though we stood less than ten feet away frozen and silent, watching her talk to Sally. The girl pressed her whole mouth against the screen, "Hello, kitty cat." Soon Sally wandered off (ADD kitten) and Molly came to investigate. As soon as the little girl saw Molly (3x bigger than Sally), she jumped back, clambered up and ran off, apparently startled by the huge hairy beast that had appeared in place of the kitten. Too cute.

Sally

Molly--fluffy, not fat

*Apologies to Mozart. In fact, to all of you. Any German on this page has been figured out via Google Translator-bot.

Justice Like Jewelweed

Impatiens capensis, in North America, grows in roadside ditches, or near stream beds, and the internet claims you can use Orange Jewelweed as a remedy for poison ivy. Why this plant is really cool: the seed pods burst when you touch them--this is known as "explosive dehiscence," or in common vernacular "spreading its wild oats."

I know just enough plant biology to be dangerous. Andrew knows I often stop along our walks to examine an unusual plant up close. One early fall day in college, we walked along a quiet Indiana road nearby. I had just learned about jewelweed in class, and I stopped to show him the delicate orange flowers. He leaned in close to look, just as I lightly squeezed one of the seed pods. The plant jettisoned its seeds several feet at the slightest touch. 

The Germans call the plant Springkraut. We also call it "touch-me-not," although, I don't know why you wouldn't want to.

It's nature's bubble wrap!

This plant's existence refreshes my soul. I wouldn't want to tame it or bring it inside or plant it in a garden. Impatiens capensis belongs where hikers can come along and find themselves lost for a little while enjoying the tiny flowers' orchid-like beauty, and in helping the next generation of Orange Jewelweed get its start.

Door-to-Door

The doorbell rings and I freak out because it's 10am and I'm still in my pajamas, sleep crusties in my eyes (I'm sure), and hair all askew. I know this sounds horribly antisocial of me, but I don't usually answer the doorbell when it rings. This time, though, I assume it's a friend I'm half expecting to come pick up something. But he was supposed to text me first. I run around the house, getting the envelope I'm supposed to give him, checking the mirror again to be sure I don't look like a troll, and peek the door open.

There stands a woman, wearing a floral skirt and fuchsia blazer, pleasantly perfumed, apologetic for intruding. "Hi, I know you weren't expecting us," she begins with a light Latina accent--and she's the only person I can see. And while I stand there with the door open ten inches and blocking it with my legs so none of the cats run out, she presents me with a glossy bi-folded pamphlet describing that Jesus takes away the sins of the world and if I visit her church on the anniversary of his death, April 17, after sundown, they will answer why, for whom, and what it means for me, and she invites me to visit, finishing with "we don't take any collections, ever."

As I have listened to her voice and watched her hold the pamphlet open and point to the date and address, I know I won't remember exactly what she's saying, but I have a strange affection for her. I study her calf-length a-line skirt and her light brown hair and big brown eyes, her short unpolished fingernails, and I think she could have a couple kids nearing middle school, probably would make a good mom. I know she is doing her duty as a church member, and yet I sense that she wants to make this strange and intimate visit as painless as possible for her hostess. When she hands me the pamphlet and wishes me a good day, I smile and reply likewise, hoping she catches my sincerity.

I probably won't be showing up at her church, but she keeps returning to my thoughts. The idea occurs to me that I wish I could get to know her a little better--maybe I could have even invited her in for tea or coffee. As long as she could spend a few more minutes before knocking on the next door.

Camping

Andrew and I hadn't been camping in about 6 years. We love camping. We have no excuse. 

At the end of summer 2010, we started hiking more. We joined the Georgia State Parks Friends of the Parks, we joined the Canyon Climbers Club, and the geocaching community. When it got cold again, we resolved to spend more time next summer outdoors, enjoying nature.

A couple weeks ago it started getting warm again in GA, and we started itching to hike some more and finally camp. We've had a tent and air mattress, sleeping bags, flashlights, and some other gear, since we got married, and we've used it once. So we made lists, shopped for more gear like a propane burner to cook on, tin plates and cookware to dedicate to camping, lanterns, head lamps, etc. Andrew made a detailed list, planner that he is, and organized a "camping box" full of supplies. A week ago, we set up the tent in our backyard to make sure all the parts were accounted for. Last Saturday night, we filled the cooler, the box, and our backpacks with clothes and all the supplies we would need for an overnight trip and several short hikes over two days.

We left Sunday morning and hiked for geocaches at two state parks on our way down to the park we would camp at. Around dinner time, we arrived at Seminole State Park, pulled into our camp spot, and sat in the car as I finished reading Andrew a Wendell Berry short story. Suddenly he sat up. "We forgot the air mattress!" I assured him it was okay. That we could clear the ground below the tent and be comfortable enough with our thick sleeping bags. Then he said, "We forgot the tent."

Though he'd made a detailed list, I am also the designated last-pass-double-checker. We had rushed out the door, getting a later start than we'd hoped for, and each counting on the other to think of everything. The tent and the air mattress sit in the garage on the side of the car I got in on. Yet I didn't see them, and Andrew took for granted that he'd packed them. In our rush and excitement, we forgot the tent.

So we slept in the car last night. Just a different kind of roughing it, I said. Spent the rest of today hiking out the kinks. This won't be our last attempt at camping, but it almost doesn't seem like a first attempt since we didn't even sleep in a tent.

Still, we picked out a beautiful spot next to a wetlands area. In the video you can hear the chorus of frogs, birds, crickets, and whatever else was out there. Doesn't matter what you sleep in, any night is great if you can fall asleep and wake up to this.

Backyards

The first eight years of my life I claimed two back yards. The one behind our house and the one behind the vacant house next to ours. I don't know how big they were exactly--I grew up in a big-college small-town in Illinois, so maybe combined between a half acre to an acre. Our garage and a section of fence separated the yards only about half of the way, creating labyrinthine subsections. To my little self, the whole thing made up a huge world that could be anything I wanted it to be.

I realize lots of kids don't get the traditional "back yard" experience. But kids will make what they want out of just about any environment, I believe. Where their imagination plays out shapes them even as they shape their surroundings with the overlay of their inner world.

In the summer, I made my yards prairies and forests; in the winter, tundras and glaciers. More often than not, I was a covered-wagon pioneer. Blazing west, "Oregon or Bust," building [imaginary] shelters from wood and sod. I didn't grow up with siblings my age, so I often created elaborate storylines in which every detail worked exactly as I wanted it to because I was in complete control. Maybe that's why I'm a writer. Or maybe I was already a writer back then.

What were your backyard, or equivalent, worlds like? If you didn't have the traditional back yard, how did your imagination play out?

Altitude

"I wish I had been born a bird instead," he said. "I wish we had all been born birds instead." -Kurt Vonnegut (Hocus Pocus)

Zion National Park. On the edge. The landscape swallowing me whole in an eternity's moment. I lost perception of I and another. Then I heard Andrew's voice calling, asking me to face him for a second picture.

I had to remind myself of my feet on the limestone rock. My mind had to reenter my body. I had to leave the heights where I hung suspended and anchor myself again to the mountain, turn my back on the valley that environed me. Slowly and with almost telekinetic effort, I made my feet move--shuffle--step--backwards first before turning around. Wedge a few more inches between myself and the valley's lure.