Drift
Living in the desert, I miss two places the most. Or I should say I miss the sensation of standing in those places.
The first is the prairie, where I passed from the edge of childhood through adolescence into a tumultous early adulthood. If you have ever stood on the border of a field with the vista of nothing before you but grass or better yet waist-high wheat, each stalk crowned by a clump of grain, a sky clear and vacant or ominous with blue-black clouds, then you know the sensation I mean. The wind blows not by you or over you but through you, renders you air-permeable, the blustery sound of it filling your ears, the power of it rubbing its forearm over the surface of the earth, completely unconcerned by you. It will blow for days like this, jerking and snapping (sometimes ragged) the laundry on the line. Gusts rumble and rattle the windows at night; wind chimes ring like a city telephone. The steady pressure and sound of it lean into the house, and the house talks back, especially in the dark, in groans.
More than a thousand miles away, standing on the edge of the Carolina coast, I have experienced the same sense of submission. In the face of this blue-gray-green (depending on the sky and the angles of light) creature moment by moment rising up to bite at the land I stand on, I can only stare. Water moves incessantly, thumps at the sand, then hisses its way back. I've never understood the need to build amusement parks or shopping centers or spas or, god help me, pools at the oceanside. I never felt the need to *do* anything in the face of the ocean. All I really want to do at the shore is look, just be still. I sink into the sleep and then the tingling of the pulse, of being invaded and sometimes even overwhelmed by the force of all that unsteady restless water. It used to consume me, sometimes even terrify me standing on the beach at night with the sea and sky melding into unison in the darkness. It was like standing on the edge of a roaring emptiness that I knew was more than emptiness. It made me wonder how prehistoric people--before they had boats to journey far on it--ever made sense of the sea.
These two experiences come to mind now as I have been struggling with my writing lately. I feel myself confronted by forces I can't see--or that my eye can't completely encompass. I feel the energy there, and in a way I feel myself rendered insignificant by it and that frightens me. It's as though I were in that field or at the ocean side and had closed my eyes and plugged my ears, intimidated by where I stood. The impulse moves through me just the same. It scares me because I want to shape it and turn it and switch it off and on when I want to, but it carries me. I'm like driftwood; I have no business trying to steer or paddle. The current knows far more than I do, and my job is to learn to listen. I suppose my struggle *with* writing is really always more of a struggle *against* it. It will have its way or I will stay in that place with closed eyes, covered ears, and a hum straining inside of me.
The first is the prairie, where I passed from the edge of childhood through adolescence into a tumultous early adulthood. If you have ever stood on the border of a field with the vista of nothing before you but grass or better yet waist-high wheat, each stalk crowned by a clump of grain, a sky clear and vacant or ominous with blue-black clouds, then you know the sensation I mean. The wind blows not by you or over you but through you, renders you air-permeable, the blustery sound of it filling your ears, the power of it rubbing its forearm over the surface of the earth, completely unconcerned by you. It will blow for days like this, jerking and snapping (sometimes ragged) the laundry on the line. Gusts rumble and rattle the windows at night; wind chimes ring like a city telephone. The steady pressure and sound of it lean into the house, and the house talks back, especially in the dark, in groans.
More than a thousand miles away, standing on the edge of the Carolina coast, I have experienced the same sense of submission. In the face of this blue-gray-green (depending on the sky and the angles of light) creature moment by moment rising up to bite at the land I stand on, I can only stare. Water moves incessantly, thumps at the sand, then hisses its way back. I've never understood the need to build amusement parks or shopping centers or spas or, god help me, pools at the oceanside. I never felt the need to *do* anything in the face of the ocean. All I really want to do at the shore is look, just be still. I sink into the sleep and then the tingling of the pulse, of being invaded and sometimes even overwhelmed by the force of all that unsteady restless water. It used to consume me, sometimes even terrify me standing on the beach at night with the sea and sky melding into unison in the darkness. It was like standing on the edge of a roaring emptiness that I knew was more than emptiness. It made me wonder how prehistoric people--before they had boats to journey far on it--ever made sense of the sea.
These two experiences come to mind now as I have been struggling with my writing lately. I feel myself confronted by forces I can't see--or that my eye can't completely encompass. I feel the energy there, and in a way I feel myself rendered insignificant by it and that frightens me. It's as though I were in that field or at the ocean side and had closed my eyes and plugged my ears, intimidated by where I stood. The impulse moves through me just the same. It scares me because I want to shape it and turn it and switch it off and on when I want to, but it carries me. I'm like driftwood; I have no business trying to steer or paddle. The current knows far more than I do, and my job is to learn to listen. I suppose my struggle *with* writing is really always more of a struggle *against* it. It will have its way or I will stay in that place with closed eyes, covered ears, and a hum straining inside of me.
posted by A Pilgrim at 5:56 AM
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