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.