Stagnation & Destruction
Years ago, when Tarfia and I were living together after college, in the working world truly unsupported for the first time, we had this great apartment that looked out over part of the Austin Greenbelt. It was just green green green from our wraparound wooden balcony, and we were at the edge of the city. A lot of it's now been developed, but back then, what nine years ago?, it was all valley leading down to the highway off a distance, and we could sit out there and listen to music or not, drink some white wine, and just enjoy the view.
By that point, really most of my favorite Austin memories were behind me. I stayed because I loved the city and I had a lot of friends there. But as people started to trickle out, my contentment with Austin shifted. The people I loved went to Portland, San Antonio, Alabama, Virginia, San Francisco. One day a friend of my brother's was over at our place, and he was describing the stasis he felt in his current life situation. The words he used were melodramatic and Tarfia and I had a good laugh at them later but they've always stuck with me: "stagnation and destruction."
On Monday, Chad and Melissa and I headed to Mellow Mushroom across the street from Vanderbilt after workshop like we do every week. One of the guys there yelled from the bar "We saved your table, in fact we just took the reserved sign away right before you walked in." (There is no reserved sign.) And one of the other waiters said "Man it's been ages since I've seen you guys!" (Last week someone was at our regular table so we had to sit in another part of the restaurant.) And as I was sitting there with my friends, joking with the waiter, hatching plans with Melissa and Chad to get corporate sponsorship from Full Throttle to write poetry, I realized that the reason I love this place (Nashville, Vanderbilt) isn't really the place—that the place itself is only ever a small part of it. That as soon as the people are gone, the power is diminished. I know that once the group dissipates, it won't much matter that I'm a regular anywhere. The spell will be broken.
And this isn't where I see myself staying. It's something I already know, even though there are things I really love about it. I'd almost rather be starting over in an in-between place than risking stasis somewhere I could accidentally settle. It's like when you get into a relationship with someone and there are all these things about them that you really like, but then there are those other couple things that are dealbreakers, and you find yourself justifying staying in the relationship anyway. "Well maybe once we're together longer he won't do this..." or "Hopefully someday she'll change her mind about ____" or "Actually this is a great person, and if I were trying harder, things would be working better..."
I said in my last post that my thoughts are unjumbling. And really it's true. And in the post before that I noticed the ants. But really it's like I took a weekend for Spring Cleaning and never picked up a broom. I subscribed to Stephen Elliott's Daily Rumpus last week. Somehow, no matter how many times I've visited The Rumpus site, I've never really paid attention to the little window that says you can subscribe to his occasional thoughts. But in my new clarity and while perusing the site, I decided to do just that. But before I ever got a Daily Rumpus I found that he'd put this together: Letters in the Mail. And I thought, how wonderful! To get letters from great writers delivered to my house. So I signed up. And then Stephen Elliott's words started showing up every few days...
From his post about writers who burn out after greatness:
You know that raw infinite feeling that you get at really amazing live shows where it feels like the the music has just inhabited you? Like it's this kindling creature that's surrounded you and become part of you, and the people around you? And suddenly everything is possibility? And other times in your life if you're lucky—when you're with an amazing group of friends, or you've met this person who makes you all dough and sparks? It's that feeling of possibility. I get it when I'm driving with the windows down, too, or when it's storming outside and you can smell the rain about to break.
That's the place where I'm trying to live right now. I just found out yesterday that I didn't get the summer job I'd applied for. They filled the positions with people who'd all worked there before. But I'm actually alright in this liminal place, in the little agitation, in the storm about to break. It reminds me of that line from Sugar:
Let yourself be gutted. Let it open you. Start there.
By that point, really most of my favorite Austin memories were behind me. I stayed because I loved the city and I had a lot of friends there. But as people started to trickle out, my contentment with Austin shifted. The people I loved went to Portland, San Antonio, Alabama, Virginia, San Francisco. One day a friend of my brother's was over at our place, and he was describing the stasis he felt in his current life situation. The words he used were melodramatic and Tarfia and I had a good laugh at them later but they've always stuck with me: "stagnation and destruction."
And this isn't where I see myself staying. It's something I already know, even though there are things I really love about it. I'd almost rather be starting over in an in-between place than risking stasis somewhere I could accidentally settle. It's like when you get into a relationship with someone and there are all these things about them that you really like, but then there are those other couple things that are dealbreakers, and you find yourself justifying staying in the relationship anyway. "Well maybe once we're together longer he won't do this..." or "Hopefully someday she'll change her mind about ____" or "Actually this is a great person, and if I were trying harder, things would be working better..."
I said in my last post that my thoughts are unjumbling. And really it's true. And in the post before that I noticed the ants. But really it's like I took a weekend for Spring Cleaning and never picked up a broom. I subscribed to Stephen Elliott's Daily Rumpus last week. Somehow, no matter how many times I've visited The Rumpus site, I've never really paid attention to the little window that says you can subscribe to his occasional thoughts. But in my new clarity and while perusing the site, I decided to do just that. But before I ever got a Daily Rumpus I found that he'd put this together: Letters in the Mail. And I thought, how wonderful! To get letters from great writers delivered to my house. So I signed up. And then Stephen Elliott's words started showing up every few days...
From his post about writers who burn out after greatness:
The saddest example is probably Seymour Krim, author of For My Brothers and Sisters in the Failure Business, an essay that is so good the Vivian Gornick said this single essay, "Does everything he ever wanted his prose to do and ensures him a permanent place in the history of American essay writing." But that was essentially it. As triumphant and angry and hopeful as this essay is, Krim gave up...
p.s.2. At 51, believe it or not, or believe it and pity me if you are young and swift, I still don't know truly "what I want to be" . . . in that profuse upstairs delicatessen of mine I'm as open to every wild possibility as I was at 13. . . . That's because I come from America, which has to be the classic, ultimate, then-they-broke-the-mold incubator of not knowing who you are until you find out. . . . It is still your work or role that finally gives you your definition in our society, and the thousands upon thousands of people who I believe are like me are those who have never found the professional skin to fit the riot in their souls. . . . I think what I have to say here will speak for some of their secret life and for that other sad America you don't hear too much about. This isn't presumption so much as a voice of scars and stars talking. I've lived it and will probably go on living it until they take away my hotdog. — Seymour KrimI just got this one a little while ago and got really excited. I certainly wasn't expecting to become a part of the letter writing process (although part of Letters in the Mail is that you actually are given an address where you can write the authors back) but I am so excited at the prospect of this:
I have this crazy idea for Letters In The Mail. It's called, Letters To Each Other. And the way it will work is you'll send us a letter to a mailbox we'll set up. The letter can't be longer than one page (double-sided ok) and you'll have to include a SASE. Then we'll make six copies of each letter we receive and we'll send you six letters back. Is that complicated? Basically, you'll send us one letter and we'll send you six letters back in the SASE you provide. I've been listening to Joseph Arthur for the last hour and that's probably affecting my ability to explain this idea.
Anyway, we're not going to charge anything for Letters To Each Other and we'll pay for the photocopying (feel free to include a dollar, not required) but in order to participate you do have to be a subscriber to Letters In The Mail. We'll have a big envelope stuffing party in San Francisco, probably at the end of the month, so let me know if you want to help with that. Envelope stuffing parties are just when we all meet in a bar and stuff envelopes, but it's actually a lot of fun, though it doesn't sound like a lot of fun. Ultimately, how much fun something is has more to do with the people you surround yourself with, than the activity itself. That's why I play fantasy football. Or, put another way, you do what your friends do or you do it alone. Most of my philosophy on life, if I have one, circles around these basic ideas. I go where I'm invited.Letters from strangers. But not just any strangers. Rumpus strangers. I feel like the people who will sign up for this would write good letters. I'm kind of over the moon. I feel like having writing coming into my house on a regular basis is a good way to guard against stasis, to guard against letting myself get complacent with my own writing now that my MFA is essentially done.
You know that raw infinite feeling that you get at really amazing live shows where it feels like the the music has just inhabited you? Like it's this kindling creature that's surrounded you and become part of you, and the people around you? And suddenly everything is possibility? And other times in your life if you're lucky—when you're with an amazing group of friends, or you've met this person who makes you all dough and sparks? It's that feeling of possibility. I get it when I'm driving with the windows down, too, or when it's storming outside and you can smell the rain about to break.
That's the place where I'm trying to live right now. I just found out yesterday that I didn't get the summer job I'd applied for. They filled the positions with people who'd all worked there before. But I'm actually alright in this liminal place, in the little agitation, in the storm about to break. It reminds me of that line from Sugar:
Let yourself be gutted. Let it open you. Start there.