ON HAVING A COLLECTION

MOMA, 2016

I recently found Walton Goggins reading a sleep story on the meditation app on my phone. I hadn’t used the app for a while. I thought I’d found my way without it. But when I had a hard time falling asleep the first night my husband was away, I reached for it.

When I’m sleepy and alone my mind can race and whirl with plans, problems, and worst of all, regrets. This night I was thinking about my dad, who passed away almost a year ago. So many unanswered questions.

At first, getting back into the app and finding a story was more of a hassle than a comfort. It was late. I didn’t want to navigate an “improved” app interface. I didn’t want to make any decisions. I just wanted to sleep.

I have found the voice reading a sleep story is what makes or breaks it. I used to listen to a Matthew McConaughey sleep story, but I didn’t want to go back to him. I was too tired to pinpoint why.

Anyway, I stumbled upon Walton reading about a yard sale. His voice was perfect. It had a certain calming vulnerability. My dad couldn’t pass up a yard sale. I knew this was the story for me.

The yard sale was quiet and Walton moved slowly. The story worked. You know a sleep story works when you fall asleep before it ends.

After that first night, I’d start getting ready for bed and thinking, I’ll just fall asleep on my own tonight, I can do it. But then I’d change my mind, press play, and slide my phone under the pillow next to mine and listen to Walton talk about his yard sale.

Returning to sleep stories, as well as books, movies, songs, art, poems, and even places I love has brought me comfort. I don’t like feeling dependent, but having a collection of ways to make yourself feel better when you’re down seems a wise idea. Such collections are very subjective.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate something new—visiting the otherworldly landscape of Joshua Tree, tasting carrot-ginger tea, unexpectedly finding a reading in a bookstore with a new-to-me author. Many new experiences have brought me joy during darker times. But with new experiences you never know what you’re going to get. Sometimes things don’t go so well.

Knowing I can count on the calming outcomes of the things in the collection I’ve built over the years is reassuring. When life feels overwhelming and/or out of alignment in some way I long for these things. They soothe when soothing is required.

The albums Come Away With Me and Feels Like Home by Nora Jones have been quick fixes for me when I’ve had a tough day. I’ve counted on them for many years.

If time allows, and I need a more immersive experience, Ragnar Kjartansson’s video installation The Visitors at SFMOMA has been there for me, and will continue to be until September 28th. Sometimes I’ll find Henri Rousseau’s Sleeping Gypsy online and think back, years back, to how it felt to stand right in front of it at MOMA, looking into the lion’s eye.

There was a time I returned to a movie theater, alone, too many times, to watch Tracks, a film based on the memoir by Robyn Davidson. I don’t recall exactly what was going on in my life at the time, but this movie seemed to offer something I needed. Adam Driver was charming. Mia Wasikowska was captivating.

Returning to books like Tove Jansson’s Fair Play and Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family have lightened the mood when life has gotten too serious. Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse has slowed everything down and brought me to another place and time when the modern world feels like it’s moving too fast.

The poem “Oranges and the Ocean” by Ada Limón, and the film All the Light in the Sky, starring Jane Adams, are perfect when insecurity strikes. They both remind me to appreciate being myself.

Walking in the fresh air is another go-to. There’s a park here in San Francisco that I visit often. It’s high up on a hill, and if you find the right bench you can sit down and look out at the bay. Being there helps me put things in perspective. When I lived in Chicago I always headed straight to the lakefront for solace. Lake Michigan is so large it feels like an ocean. I’m happy to have been born beside it and will always carry it with me.

The book Cold Enough For Snow by Jessica Au and the film Perfect Days by Wim Wenders are newer additions. They are gentle and quiet.

There is more. And I haven’t even mentioned food. Or animals. Another time.

I don’t know if I’m ready to add Walton’s reading of Allie Kokesh’s “The Yard Sale” to my collection yet, but it did work those few nights I needed it. I’ll think about it.

I hope you have a collection of things that comfort you. They’re also nice to dip into when things are going well, which I hope they are.

SPARROW

It was a cold day, hours of sunlight were few, and a sense of melancholy settled over the landscape like fog.

Winter.

I hopped to the edge of a nearby puddle, looked down at my reflection, and saw my slumped wings and hanging head. My mind felt deflated.

Things had been heading this way for some time. I didn’t want to ask myself questions because I didn’t want to deal with the answers, and deep down I already knew what was wrong.

I’d been telling myself and others that I’d arranged my life around song writing, but the truth was that I’d let unimportant things occupy too much of my time. The shame of my unfinished songs was following me around.

Is there a point to any of this? Why am I writing these songs anyway? Who are they for? Will anyone even want to listen to them?

Then I thought back to the time the world grew quiet, when it seemed everyone was filled with fear. We adapted, eventually. We realized we no longer had to strain to be heard. The silence allowed our songs to soften, travel further, and become more complex. We found our relationships actually improved. Scientists documented our progress. We stayed safe.

That same year there was the day with the eerie orange sky, so much wildfire smoke in the air the sun never broke through. It appeared to remain some strange version of night the entire day, leaving us all wondering if the sun would ever return. It did. But none of us knows how long it will stay.

I paused…

Well, I have today. It’s cold, but the sun is shining. I listen to my songs. I like them. No, I love them. They make me who I am.

I remembered Hardy’s darkling thrush as I stood up straight, thrust out my chest, and belted out one of my unfinished songs. It was exhilarating!

The winter sunshine warmed my feathers, and my heart. Promise hung in the air. The next part of my song began to reveal itself to me. I hopped back to the edge of the puddle, looked down into the dirty water, and saw my upright posture, my bright eyes—tiny sparkles of sunlight dancing all around me.

I WANT TO BE A WILDFLOWER

I was reading an introduction to a book about wildflowers. (I almost always read introductions last, not wanting my experience of a book guided in any way.) Susan Barba, the author of this introduction, was talking about the term “wildflower” falling out of favor, often being replaced by the term “native plant.”

“Still, the old term retains its significance, partly because we don’t want to be told what we can and can’t love, and partly because in any transition the past is present until it isn’t anymore.”

Yes, and yes, I thought. I certainly do not want to be told what I can and cannot love. And the past is present until it isn’t anymore.

After I wrote these things down I wondered, Am I wasting my time? Is any of this relevant to the book I’m writing, have been writing for a good long while? If so, when will it stop—all of my scribbling excerpts from books into my notebook, jotting down bits of dialog, outlining scenes, documenting landscape and weather, noting memories, researching all of the things I want to clearly understand?

I think my true answer is that I hope it never stops, but I’d like to pause long enough to allow this story to find its way, settle, and fully become itself.

Part of my process for the book I’m writing now (working title: Stinson), as well as After the Sour Lemon Moon, has involved getting glimpses into scenes of what feels like a parallel life taking place beside the ocean, on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge—a region I’ve come to know well over the last twenty-some years. It’s like I’m observing fragments of a film. The scenes sometimes appear to me while I’m making oatmeal, folding laundry, or taking a shower, but also while I’m in the middle of a conversation with another person, at the gym, or sitting on a park bench. There are days I make notes in the moment, and days I believe I’ll be able to write it all down later. Sometimes the waiting works, sometimes it doesn’t.

When I will actually corral all I’ve seen and written down, finally shape it into this next book, is not completely clear. Part of me feels very close to completion, yet another part of me wonders if it will ever happen. Writing a book is kind of a crazy endeavor, at least it is for me, yet here I am, again, firmly attached to this pursuit.

Along with Leanne Shapton’s beautiful watercolors, Barba pulls together poems, essays, and letters in American Wildflowers: A Literary Field Guide. She says her “main criterion for inclusion is that the writing represents an encounter with flowers more wild than cultivated, more self-determined than domesticated.”

This type of flower she describes is the type of writer I want to be, the type of person I want to be (or perhaps already am), so I guess anything resembling corralling isn’t likely to happen—it’s too abrupt—but something will happen, eventually, something self-determined, something wild. I hope you’re there for it.

Thank you for your patience.