Conversations with Writers
I was thinking how, in a certain way, I have very few conversations with writers. In person ones, anyway. Some ongoing ones, ones that have gone on for decades with writers who don’t live in the same city as I do. And that’s the thing about living in Edmonton in particular, and probably Canada (heck okay anywhere) in general. We’re all sprawled out, so to speak. Even those writers I know who live in my city, ones I consider to be excellent friends and stellar human beings, we see each other ridiculously infrequently. I do feel that we’re cheering each other on, though. I’m sending the good vibes out to them, and sincerely wishing them beautiful things and good writing and time. Time, time and more time.
Very often I feel bad when I’m connected with someone on social media who is an author and I haven’t read their book. But the thing is we can’t read all the books. And I think it’s still meaningful to wish them good things, and to support that author in whatever way we can. Which I guess is a bit of an aside. I recently read The Word Pretty by Elisa Gabbart and I love it. I feel as though her thinking, her book, is in conversation with both my book Asking and The Flower Can Always Be Changing. Neither of these books got any major press, but the reviews (mainly on blogs) were incredibly bolstering.
Anyway, I took my book Asking off the shelf and leafed through it which I haven’t done in a couple of years probably. And I thought to myself, hey, that’s not so bad. The first section of it is titled, Conversations, where I end up having a lot of conversations with myself, but also with a lot of writers, thinkers, books, in short, with unmet friends. And even though I don’t know Elisa Gabbert and she’s not likely ever read my work, the book is in conversation with her book. Which is lovely, isn’t it? All these thoughts in the air, all of us reading and referencing books we love, and sometimes they’re the same. In short, though, I highly recommend The Word Pretty, and if you liked my two, I’m sure you’ll like hers. If you read it, let me know what you think, okay? Thanks.
I’m feeling a real fondness for the writing community, those I’m connected to, however peripherally. Because man we’re going through some times, aren’t we? And as writers, it’s less easy to tune it out, partly because it seems ethically wrong to do so completely, and because we’re, stereotypically anyway, uber-sensitive souls and it seems the news of the day will find us and crush us regardless. Also, if you’re trying to write of and in our time, we have to let it in, to know it, feel it, think about it.
In my book Asking, there is a piece titled “Bewilderments,” which has an epigraph that I circle back to and honestly it’s often in the back of my mind when I’m working at the library. (Wrote about that even, here). But we can all of us apply it to each other, we writers, we humans. Here it is, from The Republic:
“Anyone who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind’s eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye; and he who remembers this when he sees any one whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh; he will first ask whether that soul of man has come out of the brighter life, and is unable to see because unaccustomed to the dark, or having turned from darkness to the day is dazzled by excess of light.”
Are you coming from the dark, into a brighter place? Or maybe going from a bright one, to a darker space? If you wait and stand for just a little time, your eyes will adjust, but you will carry the place, the light, or dark, from where you were along with you. You will go back and forth, from light places to dark places. Let’s talk about that.
