As many of you know, I’m working almost full-time these days on a novel.  Part of my fiction-writing learning curve this year has been to introduce myself to the genre of short story.  For beginning fiction-writers, short stories are a good place to develop an eye and ear for what works and what doesn’t in the rhythms of story-telling.

But here’s my problem:  learning to write good short stories, like learning to write novels or anything else, requires that I do a lot of reading in that genre.  And…I have yet to find published short stories that I like.  (I feel like I should whisper that, and hope past and present writing teachers don’t hear.)  Is it me, or does anyone else feel frustrated by them?

My frustration is partly to do with feeling like they’re too short to not leave me hanging by the end, but partly to do with the fact that the majority of the ones I’ve read leave me feeling dark and heavy by the end, as though the movement in the people’s complicated lives is minuscule at best, and often not at all.  I’m the last one to want to sugarcoat life’s yuck.  Seriously.  But I guess I’m looking, in fiction, to be given a little light in the midst of that yuck.  Doesn’t have to be glorious or accompanied by crashing symbols or anything.  Just a quiet little light is fine.

Anyhow, all of this to say:  if anyone has short story recommendations to send my way – maybe collections that have more of the flavor I seem to be looking for – I would be oh so grateful to receive them.

This morning I saw my husband off at the train station, wishing him well on his travels to a conference halfway across the country.  I’ll miss him a lot while he’s gone.

Last week we enjoyed an evening meal to the sounds of Van Morrison’s Philosopher’s Stone, an album, among many of his, that holds sacred space for us.  Through one of the most difficult seasons of our lives and marriage, Van Morrison was our companion, calming and soothing us by putting the sadness and confusion and frustration and disillusionment we were feeling into poignant, gently hopeful verse and song.

“Wonderful Remark” came on while we were eating last week, and we reminisced about dancing to it, years ago.  It was a night like many others that year, maybe right at the apex of the challenges we were facing.  Tectonic plates were shifting everywhere – in our individual identities, in the power balance of our marriage, in the foundations of our religious worldviews and vocational pursuits.  It was a painful and disorienting season, filled with so much difficult conversation that we found ourselves speechless, sometimes, clear at the end of any sense for what to say.

That’s where we were that years-ago night:  speechless, eating in heavy silence.  And “Wonderful Remark” came on.

To this day, I’m not sure what the song exactly means.  And I guess I don’t care.  All I know is it lifted us from our seats, and drew us into the living room where we began one of the most beautiful expressions of the tenacity and survival of the human spirit I’ve known.  With all that awfulness swirling around us, all that pain that made words turn meaningless and us hardly know how to laugh or cry, we danced.  We danced and danced and danced, our spirits, almost in spite of ourselves, refusing to be snuffed out. If there had been bad guys celebrating victory over us before that point, our dance would have shooshed them dejectedly away.  “We will live,” our dancing said.  “We will love.  We will dance on despair until hope can revive.”

I can’t help but believe that was a turning point for both us, one of those cosmic events that plays quietly out in the everyday.  One of those moments that cleanses and heals and changes everything, despite issues remaining, and pieces of us needing still to be put back together.

We survived, my love.  And well.  There’s no one else I’d rather do life with than you.

The spiritual crisis I flailed through a few years ago upturned any clarity I thought I had about my future, a future that had long been set on some sort of Christian vocation.  My future still looks fuzzy, and I’m still trying to put the pieces together of a life that remains orbited around soulful things, but that, as of yet, does not fit comfortably into any one tradition. 

So this is a season of waiting for me.  I’m waiting for the Life that I know is in me to get shaped and formed into something I can actually recognize, and hold, and do things with – vocationally, and otherwise.  I have so many convictions inside, so many observations about life and the holy, so much love I want to share with people, healing and relationships in which I want to participate…

But it all – no, I should rather say a lot of it – feels not quite ripe for happening.  So I wait.  I write my book, and pour into its characters pieces of what I want so much to pour into non-fiction life, once the ripening happens.

At times I feel content.  But at others I’m filled with such a restless longing, such a restless yearning to fly with all I am, fly with all the potentials that are in me for…for what?  This is the question.  This is the baby I’m waiting for.  The thing or things that need to form in me, and can’t be known or predicted quite yet…at least with any accuracy.

“I want to fly,” I told a friend recently.  “I’m tired of flopping around on the ground.”

Jazz pianist Billy Taylor wrote a song years ago that, though surely written for a different context, from a different set of longings and life experiences, speaks well to this yearning I carry around in me, this restlessness I feel to finally fly freely.

I wish I knew how it would feel to be free

I wish I knew how it would feel to be free

I wish I could break all these chains holding me

I wish I could say all the things I should say

Say ‘em loud, say ‘em clear, for the whole world to hear

I wish I could share all the love in my heart

Remove all the bars that still keep us apart

I wish you could know what it means to be me

Then you’d see and agree every man should be free

I wish I could give all I’m longing to give

I wish I could live all I’m longing to live

I wish I could do all the things I can do

Though I’m way overdue I’d be starting anew

I wish I could be like a bird in the sky

How sweet it would be if I found I could fly

I’d soar to the sun and look down at the seas

Then I’d sing cause I’d know how it feels to be free

I’m coming to love the associations I have with deserts.  They’re so vast and silent and dangerous and barren, and yet paradoxically filled with so much possibility, so much life where you least expect it.  Some of the periods of my life that I associate with deserts are:

-     periods when old frameworks for understanding life/God/people haven’t worked anymore, and reality has become increasingly difficult to interpret or make sense of.

-     periods of vast unknowns

-     periods that, at least on the surfaces, have lacked the kind of community or “shelter” or security I’ve wished for

-     periods of going more deeply inward, trying to (re)connect with my soul and with a sense of the Holy.

I came across a passage in a book last night that made such a strong impression on me, I spent some time this morning meditating on it, contemplating it as an allegory of the path I’m currently on – not deep in a desert, but moving along the edges of one.  I think I’ll write the passage out fully, here, and then share a bit of what it sparked in me:

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I’ve just finished reading Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist.  Wow.  What a book.  The whole way through I had that sparkly feeling I get sometimes when I’m reading something or having a conversation or thinking a thought or noticing what’s around me and sense that whatever I’m doing/thinking/noticing/talking about is somehow deeply significant for me.  Like that conversation with my Gypsy friend, and the talk by Rachel Remen that followed it.  The feeling says, "Pay attention to this, Kristin.  Pay close attention."  It doesn’t usually tell me why.  But it perks me up, and gets me taking note.

The story is a fable about a young man in pursuit of his Personal Legend.  Here’s a taste of the story that also describes a little bit about what a Personal Legend is.  Just before this scene the young man (a shepherd) meets an old man (a stranger) on a park bench who turns out to be a kind of guide, sent by the universe to help the young man find his truest way:

"I’m the King of Salem," the old man had said.

"Why would a king be talking with a shepherd?" the boy asked, awed and embarrassed.

"For several reasons.  But let’s say that the most important is that you have succeeded in discovering your Personal Legend."

The boy didn’t know what a person’s "Personal Legend" was.

"It’s what you have always wanted to accomplish.  Everyone, when they are young, knows what their Personal Legend is.

"At that point in their lives, everything is clear and everything is possible.  They are not afraid to dream, and to yearn for everything they would like to see happen to them in their lives.  But, as time passes, a mysterious force begins to convince them that it will be impossible for them to realize their Personal Legend."

None of what the old man was saying made much sense to the boy.  But he wanted to know what the "mysterious force" was; the merchant’s daughter [a woman the boy had a crush on, and whom the boy hoped to soon be seeing] would be impressed when he told her about that!

"It’s a force that appears to be negative, but actually shows you how to realize your Personal Legend.  It prepares your spirit and your will, because there is one great truth on this planet:  whoever you are, or whatever it is you do, when you really want something, it’s because that desire originated in the soul of the universe.  It’s your mission on earth."

"Even when all you want to do is travel?  Or marry the daughter of a textile merchant?"

"Yes, or even search for treasure.  The Soul of the World is nourished by people’s happiness.  And also by unhappiness, envy, and jealousy.  To realize one’s Personal Legend is a person’s only real obligation.  All things are one.

"And when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it."

They were both silent for a time, observing the plaza and townspeople.  It was the old man who spoke first.

"Why do you tend a flock of sheep?"

"Because I like to travel."

The old man pointed to a baker standing in his shop window at one corner of the plaza.  "When he was a child, that man wanted to travel, too.  But he decided first to buy his bakery and put some money aside.  When he’s an old man, he’s going to spend a month in Africa.  He never realized that people are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of."

"He should have decided to become a shepherd," the boy said.

"Well, he thought about that," the old man said.  "But bakers are more important people than shepherds.  Bakers have homes, while shepherds sleep out in the open.  Parents would rather see their children marry bakers than shepherds."

The boy felt a pang in his heart, thinking about the merchant’s daughter.  There was surely a baker in her town.

The old man continued, "In the long run, what people think about shepherds and bakers becomes more important for them than their own Personal Legends."

*  *  *

So there’s a little taste of the story.  I imagine it speaks most strongly to those of us whose Personal Legends may not look like anything anyone’s ever heard of (including ourselves!), and we need a little boost (or numerous big ones) to help us pursue it anyway…despite our fears that we might not succeed, or that we’ll look a little foolish trying.

Then again, the book may actually speak to anyone who’s even just a little in touch with the desire to live into who they are in a deeper, more meaningful way, however conventional or unconventional that might turn out looking.

I’d love to talk about it with anyone who has (or chooses to) read it.

Yesterday sparkled. Though it had a rough start.

For the last couple of years I’ve been pursuing the writing life.  Six months ago I finally shifted completely away from paid work (an editing job that sucked away my energy) to focus full-time on writing a novel.  But like any new (or seasoned…) writer, I’ve had my share of doubts that I can actually do this, fears that in a year or two (or six or ten) of telling people I’m writing a novel, I still won’t have a thing to show for it.  When I finally admitted to myself last week that the plotline I’ve been going with needs major alterations, my fears amped up a hefty notch.

So yesterday afternoon I was asking a lot of questions.  Like WHAT DO I THINK I’M DOING TRYING TO WRITE A NOVEL? and Why exactly was it that I thought I had something to say?  I began to feel in relation to all those hip, successful (published) young writers like a child trying to claim she’s an astronaut.  “Sorry honey.  Your credentials need a little work.”

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I take a day trip through California’s Coastal Range:
rolling hills golden with dry grass
scattered with crumbling rocks and gnarled trees.
It’s late afternoon and everything
bronze in the lowering sun.

I love these hills –
the softness of their curves,
the vastness of their open spaces,
the constancy of their presence,
holding me, enfolding me,
enfolding all of us in our little metal boxes,
winding our way through them.

Looking up and out, my instinct is a surge
of gratitude.
“Thank you. Thank you,” I say inside,
not knowing to whom.
A stripe of pain streaks through
the wonder in my soul
as I think on this.
Is God a conscious being
as I was taught?
Or an impersonal force?
A construction of human minds and yearnings?
Every option is riddled with
things I want
and don’t want to be true.

“I’m here,” I hear, my gaze on golden hills transfixed.
“We’re here.”
What can I make of this singular? This plural?
Mysterious reassurances.

Ahead the gentle curves are
penetrated by an enormous chunk of
earth from deep below,
its horizontal layers turned
vertical in their thrust toward air
and light.
Something far more ancient,
yet here, also new,
confronts the weathered hills’ monotony.

A picture of the movement
in my soul?

Windmills spinning where hills meet sky
speak more to me of movement
in the otherwise stillness
of the landscape.
Around a bend a power plant
converts their wind to that which
lights and warms and energizes:
the blood of cities,
pulsing through miles of wire veins
that start here:
in the golden wasteland
of silent, stolid hills.

Barrenness –
suffering, yearning,
wounds, confusion, losses,
the silence of a Holy
I’ve wished more deeply than life itself
would speak –
this barrenness, the windmills whisper, can be a spring,
life-sustaining blood at pulse from its center,
its heart.

I assent, but not gladly.

The hills in my rearview mirror are pink now
in the setting sun
as the freeway lanes multiply
and all around are overpasses
skyscrapers
airplanes crisscrossing the darkening sky.

In a sea of crawling taillights I feel strangely held.
You hem me in, behind and before
instinctually rises.
Golden hills now only inner rollings,
soul enfolding,
I inch my way toward Home.

I’ve just spent time this evening reading more of Pirsig’s sequel to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, called Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals, and came across a couple of passages that trigger many of my recent religion-related thoughts.

In one of these passages Pirsig is reflecting on the ways any society collectively works to uphold its ways of understanding reality. A collective worldview becomes a standard that trumps any individual’s experiences that challenge that worldview. Pirsig describes what has happened when a “student of scientific objectivity,” for example, has come across data that challenges the scientific assumptions he’s been making: “Wherever the chart disagreed with his observations he rejected the observation and followed the chart. Because of what his mind thought it knew, it had built up a static filter, an immune system, that was shutting out all information that did not fit. Seeing is not believing. Believing is seeing.”

Pirsig continues: “If this were just an individual phenomenon it would not be so serious. But it is a huge cultural phenomenon too and it is very serious. We build up whole cultural intellectual patterns based on past ‘facts’ which are extremely selective. When a new fact comes in that does not fit the pattern, we don’t throw out the pattern. We throw out the fact. A contradictory fact has to keep hammering and hammering, sometimes for centuries, before maybe one or two people will see it. And then these one or two have to start hammering on others for a long time before they see it too."

Here’s his most pithy next line:

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I’ve just returned home from a lecture given by Cornel West, a sociologist/philosopher/professor/writer/activist/(I’m sure there are a few other roles I’ve missed) currently at Princeton (though the lecture was over here at Stanford). And my heart is on fire.

The title of the lecture was “Democracy Matters,” and West spent the hour painting a simultaneously dark and hopeful portrait of democracy in America. To the same extent that incisive, provocative, self-critical, dominant-line-critical questioning (symbolized by Socrates) and prophetic compassion (symbolized by the Jewish line of prophets) are pushed to the margins of American life, democracy dies, he said. To the extent that these are jointly nurtured, democracy lives on.

I wish I could convey even sparks from the fire Cornel burned tonight. I want to download the whole lecture and just say, “Here; go listen to this. Seriously – you’ll love it.” Instead I’ll try and settle for three of the points I connected most with:
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Last month I read a short story in The New Yorker (August 23) and a line from it has haunted me ever since. “Truth is a dark stain,” a character says, “and the words of any language are like leaves: one more way to hide ourselves from one another.”

I don’t like the darkness of the line. Yet I must admit it’s an assumption by which I often operate. At least in part. True, I use words to reach out and connect with those around me – both on this blog, and otherwise. But I simultaneously use my words to hold people at a safe distance. To hide and protect the parts of me I don’t want you to hurt, or trump, or…see. “Truth is a stain,” the woman in the story says.

So here’s my resolution on this September night – one of which I may feel far less sure come morning: I want to try to live a different line. I want to try to live a line that sounds more like this than the one above: The truth of me – my real, authentic self – is a stained glass window, and my words can be lights to illuminate the beauty.

I want to see what kind of difference this can make in what I do with words.