Scott Russell Sanders on Love & Lucidity

 

Last month I attended the 2nd Annual River Teeth Nonfiction Conference at Ashland University in Ashland, Ohio. In the coming weeks I'll be sharing my notes from some of the sessions. (River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative is a literary journal I recommend that you check out. And what exactly are "river teeth?" Find out here in this essay by David James Duncan.)

Scott Russell Sanders opened the conference with a keynote address. I first encountered Sanders' writing in his book A Private History of Awe. I read it during graduate school and was so smitten with it that I used it as one of the main examples of my critical thesis, "Spinning a Web of Wonder: Capturing and Conveying Awe on the Page." I admit that I geeked out a tad bit when I had the chance to tell him this in person last month

Sanders read aloud two of his essays, which he wrote a number of years apart (20, perhaps). The first was "Buckeye," which you can read or listen to on Terrain.org. The second was "Useless Beauty: A canticle for the cosmos," available online in Notre Dame Magazine.

He shared these two essays to illustrate the evolution of his writing style (and, I daresay, the consistency of his interests). Both essays start with an object (a buckeye in one and the shell of a chambered nautilus in the other), and both begin with a personal story. But "Buckeye" continues as memoir, with Sanders reflecting on his father's relationship to the land, and Sanders' own subsequent relationship to place. "Useless Beauty," on the other hand, quickly diverges from his personal story and muses on instances of seemingly useless beauty in nature.

During his talk, Sanders explained that despite the different approach in each, both essays are about the same thing: "Taking care of things that we love." In each essay, the personal story is an entree to, or is surrounded by, the larger world. As a younger writer, Sanders' work leaned more toward memoir. Now, later in his career, he still writes about many of the same themes and ideas, but through a less personal lens.

Sanders made several interesting points during his talk, including several on the value of art as well as the need for clarity in writing. To paraphrase him: 

• We need art for our love of places. This country is very thinly storied. The Native peoples had connection to and story with the land, but modern culture has destroyed that. Our places need our stories, especially if we live in places that aren't often written about. Our places need our love. What is love? Love is sustained attention.
• Science gives us knowledge, but it doesn't make us love things. Art lets the artist articulate and convey what she loves. 
• Sanders said that his emphasis on lucidity in his writing style comes from his love of science. There is a distinction between confusion and mystery in writing, he said. All writing should be clear, even if it deals with mystery. Obscurity is easy. It's easy to write incomprehensible work, but as writers we should want readers to spend their energy on the things we don't know (that's the mystery), rather than on the things we already have answers for. (In other words, don't try to confuse readers by being vague, sophisiticated, or just plain tricksy. Good writing often deals with unanswerable questions, but don't raise questions in the work and not answer them if you have answers.)

And finally, because Sanders is a master of fresh comparisons and startling descriptions, a few of my favorite passages from "Useless Beauty," with the most striking phrases in bold below.

The lustrous interior reveals a sequence of chambers resembling crescent moons, 30 in all, which the nautilus fashioned as it grew, beginning with a cranny too small to see without a magnifying glass and increasing, step by step, to the size of a child's grin.

* * *

If you study flowers, for instance, you will find quite a few that seem fancier than they need to be. … Look at iris, with its streaked petals flung out in all directions, like the blurred arms of a whirling dervish.

* * *

What of canyons and crevasses, waterfalls and glaciers, the play of current in rivers, the restless ballet of clouds?

For more examples of lovely, unexpected comparisons, and for some great writing, I highly recommend Sanders' A Private History of Awe.

Meet Me at the Edge of the World

To reach Nowhere Farm, find the slow curve of a backroad, with one hand on the wheel. Drive just shy of forever. Take a left at loneliness. Drive till you remember how it feels. Look for the pre-Civil War brick house still standing tall and straight somehow. Leave your Sunday best behind, out here they've learned to leave the edges wild. If anyone asks, "How did you find me?", tell them, "I can't remember anymore, but I want you to know your kindness through this night has found me. Meet me at the edge of the world. It's the last night on earth again." *

Last month, James and I wound our way to Nowhere Farm, home to Karin Bergquist and Linford Detweiler, the married musical couple also known as Over the Rhine. We gathered with other orphaned believers and skeptical dreamers for a special concert, a fundraiser for their new double album, Meet Me at the Edge of the World. We met under a big white tent billowing in the space between the pre-Civil War brick house and the flat Ohio fields that stretch to the horizon. We were a one ring circus, ready for an open air barn dance or an old-timey religious revival.

My love affair with Over the Rhine started during my college years, back in the mid-1990s. I used to keep track of how many times I'd seen them in concert. Let's see: There were multiple shows on campus in Grove City, including one on my twenty-first birthday (which also happened to be Karin's thirty-first). The roadtrip my bestfriend and I took to Cincinnati for the holiday show during Christmas break, when we were invited to stay at the apartment of one of the band's managers, but then fled to a Hampton Inn when her (the manager's) brother showed up alone to let us in. There was that seedy bar in Ohio where I embarrassed myself by telling someone that listening to Karin sing was better than having sex. (Caveat: I hadn't yet had sex. But, really, her voice is amazing.) There were the shows at Rosebud in Pittsburgh how many times over the years? Once by myself in London when they opened for Cowboy Junkies. (Was it really at Royal Albert Hall?) A second trip to Cincinnati for another holiday show, this time with the boyfriend who would become the husband. Once at tiny little Moondogs in Blawnox. Other venues of which I've forgotten the names. Club Café in recent years.

I've lost count.

Do I sound fanatical? It's true, I'm a fan. But that doesn't really get to the heart of how their music has wound its way through my life, like morning glory vines that take over a garden in the most beautiful way.

What I'm trying to say is that in a very real way, I've grown up on their music, the way you grow up-and-in to your self from the age of 18. I've been listening to Over the Rhine for half of my life. (Oh my.)

So you can see that attending a concert at Nowhere Farm would have me pretty excited. It was a lovely experience, and I keep looking for a narrative thread to tell you all about it, but I haven't yet organized the snapshots of moments into a story.

But what I want to tell you is this....

The sky was blue and the weather was fine.

Little bits of magic shone all around.

Before the concert, James and I picnicked in the grass. We ate brie and raspberries under the shade trees, dappled by sunlight. Later, as the birds sang counterpoint to Linford playing "Little Genius" on the piano, I leaned in to James and whispered, "This is the song I walked down the aisle to." I could see in his face that he didn't need to be reminded.

Even the cookies came with stories that night. 

 

During the second half of the concert, we stood a short distance from the tent, waiting in line for a paper cup of cappuccino, handcrafted right there under the trees, by Chip from La Terza Artisan Coffee Roasterie (who roasts a special Over the Rhine blend). As we waited, the band played "Favorite Time of Light" just as the day was, indeed, bending low. I swayed under the evening sky, and as if on cue to the song lyrics, I saw the redwing blackbirds fly.

The resident canines made guest appearances. 

Good dog.

Four hundred of us gathered together that evening, all of us superfans in our way, sitting under the big top to be part of something we love.

At the end of the night I signed the guestbook set up in the writing shed....

...and what was there to say but, thank you for the beauty?

Evening turned to night. The full moon played shy. The chairs came down, and soon so would the tent. We took one final look at the lights festooning the trees, and then we said goodnight.  

(final photo by James)

** ** ** 

*The italicized phrases in this post are lyrics or titles of the following Over the Rhine songs and albums: "Go Down Easy," "Called Home," "Highland County," Meet Me At the Edge of the World, "Last Night on Earth Again," "All My Favorite People," "Hush Now (Stella's Tarantella)," and Good Dog Bad Dog. (I did take a few liberties with pronouns in the opening paragraph.)

You're Invited: Soul Sisters Gathering!

I'm so very happy to invite you to join me for the Soul Sisters Conference, a weekend gathering of women who are committed to creating a life of beauty, kindness, and genuine connection.

I'll be hosting a "storytelling carnival" on the theme of "Surprise! Stories of Unexpected Choices."

And these wonderful women will be leading these amazing sessions:

• Kelly Rae Roberts (Wisdom Jam Session)
• Molly Mahar (Personifying Your Inner Guide - How to Trust Yourself)
• Liz Lamoreux (Poem It Out - A New Kind of Selfcare)
• Bridget Pilloud (Chakra Love)
• Vivienne McMaster (Invite Yourself into the Visual Story of Your Life)
• Rachel Cole (Becoming a Well-Fed Woman: Finding & Feasting on Your Truest Hungers)
• Kate Swoboda (of Your Courageous Life)
• Rachelle Mee-Chapman (Where Soulcare and Worldcare Meet)

When Soul Sister founder Rachelle Mee-Chapman (a.k.a Magpie Girl) asked me to be one of the co-conspirators for this event, I said yes immediately -- even before I knew exactly what I'd be doing there! That's how much I love and trust Rachelle's vision to bring together soulful, creative women who want to learn and laugh together.  

Gathering with kindred spirits, creating, learning, and laughing…well, there's not much in this world that I love more, unless it's sharing stories. And guess what? There's going to be storytelling! To have all of these elements come together within the beautiful tent of a Soul Sisters gathering has me all a-tingle!

Why a Storytelling Carinval?

Stories connect us, illuminate us, and help us to make sense of the world around (and within) us. Watch the power of stories-in-action and hear some true stories told live without a net. Then learn how to find, catch, and shape your own stories.

Why the theme "Surprise! Stories of Unexpected Choices"?

So many of us in this online community of artists, writers, makers, and dreamers regulalry make -- or want to make -- decisions that are a bit (or a lot!) outside the norm. We strive to live fully and authentically, to be true to our unique visions of what the good life means to us. Hearing and sharing stories of unexpected choices helps us in three big ways: 

• to understand the importance of making those choices;
• to see that we are skilled enough and powerful enough to determine our own unique way in this world; and
• to be inspired to see new ways of living, even when it means we have to do something outside of the norm.

One of my most unexpected choices in life was starting to play roller derby at the age of 36, after a lifetime of being sedentary and being supremely uncomfortable with sweating. (No guarantees just yet, but I'm pretty sure I'll be sharing a story or two about this crazy-fun choice and how it's taught me so much about the way I want to live, love, and create.)

The Details & Registraton

• Soul Sisters Conference ~ October 25-27, 2013 ~ McMennamin's Edgefield, just outside of Portland, Oregon (As you may know, the Pacific Northwest, especially the greater Portland area, is one of my very favorite corners of the world. Oh, and there's an onsite glass blower and potter, and -- get this -- a salt water soaking pool. People! This locale alone is a little slice of delight.)
• To register, please use this affiliate link. (This link is how I am paid for speaking at the event. Thank you in advance for supporting my work.)
• You can visit the Soul Sisters Conference website to get more event details. (If you end up clicking through to register from the event website, please consider listing my name as the Soul Sister Speaker who referred you. Thank you!) 

I would love to meet you this October and hear your stories. Let me know below if you'll be joining us!

Hello, Ohio (an everyday essay)

Hello, Ohio, the back roads

("Ohio," Over the Rhine)

Somewhere west of the Pennsylvania border but east of Columbus, the tree-dense slopes on either side of the highway started to ease themselves down to the ground. It was subtle enough that I don't notice it at first, but eventually the mountains shrunk to hills shrunk to fields, the way icebergs of plowed snow in parking lots melt and melt in the spring, until one day there's nothing but a puddle where once stood a dirty white mound. Out on the highway, maybe an hour from Columbus, the treetop vistas and the cradling valleys gave way to farmland flat as paper.

Last month I drove to and from Ohio twice in eleven days, and each time that I hit the edge of the heartland, an unexpected unease set in. The same thing happened a few years ago when I drove from Pennsylvania to Indiana for the first time. Somewhere around Sandusky the landscape changed, and I understood why Ohio is part of the Midwest. In all three cases, when the foothills of the Appalachians melted away into that plains carved by ancient glaciers, my internal compass went haywire. I felt twitchy. Overexposed. As though I were suspended in a perpetual state of waiting.

** ** **

In a grocery store parking lot in Ashland, Ohio, I saw an Amish family: Mother in her bonnet. Father in his beard and suspenders. Son in his little-man hat. They climbed into their black horse-drawn buggy and drove away. I was eating baby carrots and hummus inside my blue RAV-4, having a quick snack before I started the 190-mile trip home. With one or two rest stops along the way, I'd be back in my driveway in three and a half hours. The same trip in an Amish carriage would take nearly 24 hours. That's without stops and going full-tilt at a buggy's top average speed of eight miles an hour. If the horse is slow, you're looking at a full day, a full night, and a half day on the road.

** ** **

My second recent Ohio trip took me six hours west and south to Cincinnati, and then two minutes over the river into Kentucky. At that point things begin to tilt Southern, and the terrain picks up some more hills.

When I was a kid, six hours in the car invariably meant heading east to our family's annual New Jersey beach vacation.

Six hours on a plane can take me west to Seattle or east to London.

Six hours in a carriage with a fast horse would get me almost from my house to Pittsburgh International Airport fifty miles away.

** ** **

An old, lone tree stands in the middle of a field. You see it all the time in farmland if you look for it: a giant maple or oak keeping vigil on an island of grass, smack dab in the middle of tilled brown earth. A shady oasis for farmers, some say; a holdover from the old days before motorized equipment could take you quickly from the far end of the wide field to the barn. Or shade for livestock, should the field be used for grazing. Or a landmark by which to keep track of your location in all those featureless acres, others say. Or the result of intact land where large boulders made clearing it impossible. Or an invitation of hospitality to birds who eat the fieldmice. Or, as the Irish might say, a portal to the fairy world. Or a simple matter of aesthetics and sanity, something beautiful to rest the eyes from the terror of all that open space. A single tree in the perpetual act of waiting.

** ** **
** ** **

Hi. So....I've been in Ohio lately, and when I sat down to tell you about it, what I'd intended as a blog post turned into the beginning of an essay, so I decided to share part of that beginning with you. I've had a terrible time trying to write essays lately, and now I think I've discovered the cure: Pretend to write a little blog post--nothing of import, a trifle, really--and then let it sprawl and unspool until you have several pages, a solid start to something more. Basically, I'm tricking myself into writing.

I'll be back soon with more scenes from Ohio, including some thoughts from the River Teeth Creative Nonfiction Conference and moments of beauty from a special Over the Rhine concert at Nowhere Farm.

** ** **
** ** **

About Everyday Essays: At least a few times a week I jot down notes about something -- usually a small moment, detail, or thought -- that I want to write about. Most of those ideas stay frozen as notes and never bloom into essays. Everyday Essays is my writing practice to allow some of those notes to move beyond infancy. I've decided to share some of them with you here, even if they're still half-naked or half-baked. The word "essay" (as is almost always noted when the form is discussed) comes from the French verb essayer, which means to try. The essay is a reckoning, a rambling, an exploration, an attempt. Think of these Everyday Essays as freewriting exercises, rough drafts, or the jumbled, interconnected contents of my mind, which may or may not take root and grow into longer (deeper) essays.

Loquacious: "Yinzer" by Stephanie Brea

Loquacious: full of excessive talk : wordy (www.m-w.com)

Loquacious is a "wordy" series that revels in language. Read more essays in the series here.

Once upon a time, I lived in a place where I knew no writers, no artists, no creative types. Then one day last April I received an email from a stranger who said she'd been reading my blog off and on for years. She had stumbled upon it again (via Liz, one of my best friends, who lives far away in Seattle) and noticed that I'd written for a Pittsburgh publication. This stranger, who lives about an hour outside the city assumed that I lived and worked in the city (instead of an hour outside of it in this quiet little town). But then she noticed a photo this old blog post. "And I squeaked a little at my desk," she wrote. "I know that artist. Heck, I know that mural. Cue serendipitous music here. I spent many a Saturday evening across the street from it hosting poetry readings. And then I realized you were not knee deep in the richness of city culture, penning your work from a brillobox barstool or supporting yourself with a plethora of city clients, you were right here in Westmoreland County."

This stranger turned out to be Stephanie Brea, a writer and poet living just 15 minutes from me. I'm grateful to Stephanie for reaching out to me with her delightful "stalker-ish" email (her words), for introducing me to local creative opportunities and other local writers (including another recent Loquacious guest), and for becoming an in-real-life friend and creative cohort. It's fitting that her guest essay focuses on a word that is a local peculiarity. Stephanie's essay, like her personality, is a great blend of humor and thoughtfulness. I think yinz will enjoy it.

Yinz(er)

By Stephanie Brea

If you aren't from Western Pennsylvania, or know someone who is, you probably have no idea what this means. A word used among those who "identify themselves with the city of Pittsburgh and its traditions," yinz stems from the second-person plural of you 'uns and means you or you all. Of course, it has none of the beautiful lilting of the y'alls associated with those south of the Mason-Dixon line. Yinz is all hard ys and zs fumbling around in your mouth, fighting to get out. To use it in a sentence: Yinz wanna come over and watch the Steelers and drink some beers?

Growing up, I always wanted to be somewhere else. I was in a hurry to leave my hometown, to leave Western PA. Like those hard ys and zs, I was trying to get out. I was going to end up someplace different, I was going to be someone different. Yinz was a word my grandmother used, along with other Western PA favorites such as slippy for slippery and worsh for wash. She also ate things like fried, chipped ham sandwiches and called bologna "jumbo," which she fried for sandwiches, as well. No, I was not a Yinzer.

My junior year of high school I was an exchange student in Finland. As I spoke to my classmates (in English, because who is conversant in Finnish?), they sometimes remarked on the way I said things. "It's not an accent, like you are southern, or from Brooklyn," they said. "You have no accent at all. Everything is flat and easy for us to understand, except for certain words." Those words were the ones that I tried so hard to avoid pronouncing incorrectly, those Yinzer words of my grandmother, my father, the guy selling Steelers t-shirts in the Strip District.

Being an exchange student made me reevaluate my relationship with home. I analyzed who I was and where I came from. I began to miss everything about my suburban Pittsburgh hometown. When I finally arrived at the Pittsburgh International Airport, after a trans-Atlantic flight and a 6-hour layover (spent clutching my purse to my chest and trying not to fall asleep and get robbed at JFK in New York City), I cried when we crossed the Fort Pitt Bridge and the city sparkled in front of me like a million rhinestones.

But after only a year back home, the wanderlust started. There had to be more for me, because I was no Yinzer. I was cultured, well travelled. I had seen the Mona Lisa (it is smaller than you think), learned to ski on the Swiss Alps. I had sauna-ed and seen the northern lights in Finland, took psilocybin mushrooms and ate apricots under the Eiffel Tower. I had been to Italy!

Like my father before me, I headed west, to Arizona. I was thousands of miles away from home, thousands of miles away from becoming a Yinzer—until my very first night there, when my father decided we should go out to dinner. The place was called Harold's Cave Creek Corral. As we drove up, a huge banner announced, "You're in Steelers Country." This tiny desert town had no traffic lights, but it had a Steelers bar. It seemed that Harold hailed from Monessen, one of the small steel towns littering the circumference of Pittsburgh. Harold was a true blue Yinzer and unapologetic about it: If he was starting a bar and restaurant in the middle of nowhere, it was gonna be a Steelers bar, and there was gonna be pierogies and he would import Iron City beer and make sure all Steelers games were televised. And my father, another Yinzer transplant, was damn well going to patronize his fine establishment.

After Arizona, I migrated north to Spokane, WA, which I consider the Pittsburgh of the Pacific Northwest. Spokane is no Seattle. Spokane is no Portland. It felt familiar, yet different enough to keep me interested, like a good first date or the idea of bacon and BBQ sauce on a burger. This didn’t stop me from insisting on someone buying me a Rolling Rock to toast my 21st birthday, even though it was considered an import, even though I wouldn’t allow Rolling Rock to touch my lips at home because it tasted like piss water. I'd driven by the brewery in the town adjacent to mine plenty of times. I'd seen the "springs" advertised on the bottle, which looked more like a large, dirty stream. But, once again, more than 2,000 miles from home, the Yinzer was infiltrating, burying itself deep beneath my skin, tattooing itself on my heart. I was homesick, and I needed that familiar green glass bottle to stand in for my friends and family.

Fast forward again a few years, and I am finishing college in New York City after another stint back home. When I come back to Pennsylvania for visits, I leave with two cases of Iron City beer, one for me and one for my high school friend Brian, who lives down the street from me in Astoria, Queens. Eight million people and five boroughs in NYC, but I had to rent near the ones I knew, as if I had never left home.

This is when I realized that it was time to come home for good, to accept the fact that years of travel had only strengthened my bond with Western PA. Like the strength of steel forged by Pittsburgh's industrial past, this bond couldn’t be broken. Maybe being a Yinzer was something to be proud of. After all, this was the region that produced Nellie Bly, Annie Dillard, Mister Rogers, Andrew Carnegie, Andy Warhol, the first banana split, and Heinz Ketchup. We pioneered French fries and coleslaw on sandwiches and the Big Mac.

Richard Price, the novelist and screenwriter, once said that where you're from is "the zip code of your heart," and I believe it. Southwestern PA, 15601: Yinzer for life.

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Stephanie Brea lives in a farmhouse outside of Pittsburgh, PA. By day, she is a kick-ass administrative director for a museum exhibit fabrication company that specializes in dinosaurs—meaning she can spell archaeopteryx without the need for spell check. But, she considers her "true" work the creative writing workshops and events she facilitates for local schools and non-profit organizations. Her work has been published in The Legendary, Nerve Cowboy, and the Pittsburgh City Paper.  She will always go with you for an Iron City and a Primanti's sandwich, but only if you're buying. Visit her online at Word Farm Workshops.