“We are all a sun-lit moment come from a long darkness, what moves us always comes from what’s hidden, what seems to be said so suddenly has lived in the body for a long, long time.” — David White
(Listen to Olafer Arnalds album Some Kind of Peace while reading)
Writing my first book is like this, an unspooling of stories lived in the body for a long, long time.
The sun rose over Greenwood Park this morning and I had this thought while it broke and flared beyond burnt maples, I won’t apologize for my peace, for my stillness.
I woke earlier than usual to have a long distance phone chat with a friend, something I started doing during the pandemic—my attempt to make time for people I love from a distance. At this junction in our lives, she has two kids and lives in NS, I am writing a book and live in Ontario. We experience different demands daily but we make time for each other, her voice and inflections a familiar steadiness. We listen to each other’s sorrows and joys.
When I went away on my solitary retreat to a beach house in September, it reminded me of something I forget sometimes—I like my own company, I can take care of myself quite well, I’m allowed to go gently at my own pace. No matter where I am or who I spend time with, I won’t forget myself. I did too much forgetting for too many years. Solitude helps me remember.
A childhood refrain was, “slow down, Jessica.” I would move so quickly sometimes that I’d fall going up the stairs, tripping over my feet trying to get to the next place. Writing was like this for a while, so many words, so fast and all at once, tripping over sentences.
Now I go at a snail pace, practice slow reading, study syntax and diction, take in the prosody. Not as in a hurry with the work. Staying with a thought for longer until it shows me more. Writing a scene and then looking at it for a long while until I see it from another angle. Asking questions some of us spend our whole lives avoiding, then waiting for the answer. Time. This takes the time it takes.
Patient stamina is what’s needed to separate the value of my work from the external praise of approval. The attention seeking mindset, a result of the attention driven business model of big SM companies. Of course I want encouragement and crave validation, but that’s never what makes me feel as good as knowing I’ve given my time to my creative process. I am not ready to start querying, soon but not yet, and have known this since I began. My manuscript is in progress in the truest sense and writers, no matter their success or publication history need to try to separate their work from the gaze of others. All artists do. This kind of stamina requires cultivation of solitude. Taking care of an arts practice is taking care of one’s interests.
To become a memoirist is to sustain a long gaze into the soul of oneself. To look inwards without looking away when something lurks in the shadows. It’s not easy and it’s not pretty. There is horror then beauty when the light cracks.
As I attempt to make meaning and find clarity out of what is incomprehensible to me, I find myself in need of steadiness. The same thing over and over, like morning coffee, or sun salutations. Routine is what writing this book is becoming. I used to think poetry came on the wind, a message from the outer world and I was responsible for pinning it down if it came to me. This is still true sometimes; we are guided by a force larger than individual will yet it is also true that using our will to tend to what’s given is the only way something is ever made.
This fall my work consisted mainly of revisions and re-structuring scenes. To do this I set a goal of showing up for book specific writing and revision an hour a day with a weekend off. My weekend could be an actual Sat/Sun or it could happen two random days mid week. I treat the manuscript as if it’s my job, a job I wake up for everyday. I’ve been telling myself if I can do this for other people, for another person’s creative vision, a boss or a prof’s deadline, than I can do this for my own deadlines. This work is quiet, a gentle stretch. The revisions consist of choices like “A or The” and ridding sentences of excess. Sometimes entire sections are thrown into the dump bin, goodbye precious darlings.
I trick my mind. I say to myself “just write for one hour and then you can run an errand to the pharmacy, boil those potatoes, hop on zoom or water the plants.” Then I find myself working longer, an hour turns into two and then four or eight and suddenly I’ve given my manuscript a full day’s work.
Because this is my debut book, I need dedication. Being in the middle now, I feel myself wanting to put off the difficult decisions needed to shape stories into cohesive work. There’s an entire section I thought I could gloss over. Give two or three paragraphs to and then I met with my writing mentor, and she asked me to expand a section later in the narrative. This was our exchange:
Me: “I don’t want to give that person room on the page.”
Wanda: “By not writing about it you’re giving room to them in your life still, worrying about them and what they think. Write your story.”
I left our conversation knowing what I had to do. Tell the truth. The truth always wants to be told. Then make it literary, not the other way around.
Yesterday was my day-off. We went to the last farmer’s market of the season. After, I brought the balcony plants indoors; swept and prepared my outdoor spaces for the cold months. Our home is all green now—scented geraniums, marigolds, begonias, rosemary, savoury, patchouli, Aztec herb, parsley and purple flowering oregano.
I will not apologize for my peace, my stillness
In a writing workshop with Lisa Moore last month she alluded to pretentiousness before giving me commentary on the short scene I’d written. Was she judging my appearance? This rubbed me the wrong way. I love Moore’s work, but she doesn’t know fuck about me, I thought. The prompt was: 2 characters who are in conflict about something that neither of them state outright, we only have access to their internal thoughts. Both of them flashback five years and you must change POV 3 times. All this within 15 minutes. Part of the scene took place when I was 19, my friend T reminded me of this time of life while out for dinner with her and H.
We were at the Comrade sharing warm olives, grilled bread, manchego with honeycomb, deviled eggs and tuna tartar. I was sipping a naked and famous, T recalled the first time she visited my basement apartment the year we met, 2005. The apartment with the cold tile floors, no art on the walls, muted light from two small windows, a rickety futon in the living room, a half-filled bookshelf, a desk from Ikea and clothing to fill two suitcases. T said, “I was looking inside your bathroom cupboards and thinking she buys her own tampons, has her own space, god she’s so independent.”
I was then; hyper independent, trying to find my way in the world, working split shifts at a chain restaurant while completing my undergrad. I’d study in the morning before doing a fourteen-hour shift, wolf down a meal that was comped by my boss because I hit all the sales targets for the night. I did this because I didn’t know how to cook and groceries were expensive. I referred to myself in self-deprecating ways, “I have a black thumb. Only nuts and beer in the fridge.” What T found out later was I was yes independent and fucking lonely. Sad and lonely, hating myself day and night, exhausted from betraying myself over and over in relationships, not one ounce of self-respect, but trying to survive, trying and learning.
Loneliness is not solitude. Solitude is spacious, loneliness is empty. I cultivate solitude in my life now to befriend loneliness, the empty, to ask, “What do you need from me?”
There’s been a lot of thrashing about in order to arrive in this home, back in the city where I was born. The woman in the basement apartment is almost unrecognizable to me now, yet she brought me here. She’s gorgeous and tired and so very lost, that past self. I wake up now looking at the way the light fills this home, skylights face sky blue, sun beaming down on the walls and banister. Plants and green everywhere, art and pottery fill the rooms. Full bookshelves, so many books piled on the floor. A window faces east, morning sun and west, sunset. I eat biscotti from the farmer’s market and drink my morning coffee and read. Then write.
I take my partner’s Robert Frank photography book, The Americas, and open it to a black and white portrait of a woman in Hollywood I like. It sits on the desk in our entrance. I keep my Georgia O’Keefe book open on the wood chest we use for storage. Flipping through her oil paint scenes, cliffs and hills, flowers and rivers. I leave my laundry basket in the hall with unfolded towels until folding them isn’t a distraction. I attend a writer’s group every week, well almost. My front yard has beach stones in it, a path for my feet. My neighbours know my name and I know theirs.
I am lucky. Beloved. Grateful. Dare I say, blessed?
I will not apologize for my peace, my stillness.
All images taken on my Nikon FM2, Ilford 400, from my time at The Timberlost Beach House, space created by Lauren Wilson.
“We are all a sun-lit moment come from a long darkness, what moves us always comes from what’s hidden, what seems to be said so suddenly has lived in the body for a long, long time.” — David White