Hi. We went to Pittsburgh for the kids’ spring break, and even though I never thought of the trip—of taking a red eye with the whole family, of visiting both Matt’s parents and my parents, one of whom is temporarily residing in a nursing home—as a “break” that is what it ended up being. I didn’t grocery shop. I didn’t clean. I didn’t have to pause whatever I was doing (cooking) to check math homework!
But most fun of all, maybe, is that I lost myself in a project. I’ve been so focused on revising my manuscript that I wasn’t letting myself work on anything else. But I guess because I didn’t expect to write anything while we were away, one afternoon while the kids were at my mom’s house and I was at my in-law’s, I let myself open up a new Word document and jot down some of my thoughts about why this interview bothered me so much.
What happened next was akin to a favorite scene of mine from that 90s documentary about Isaac Mizrahi, Unzipped. Mizrahi is busy putting his collection together when he passes by a crossword puzzle someone left on the table. He’s in the middle of saying something but he interrupts himself. “Who’s doing the crossword puzzle?” he asks, hovering over the piece of newspaper. He tries to finish his sentence, to move on from the distraction but can’t do it. “Incur,” he says and then writes the word down. (Skip ahead to 1:32 in the below clip for the scene I’m talking about.)
That was me with this Word document I’d opened up. For the rest of the trip, I felt magnetically drawn to it. I had so many thoughts and arguments that felt crucial to write down. At the same time, I didn’t know if I could fit them altogether in the same essay. But instead of being frustrated by this, I felt up for the challenge. I kept trying. And by the end of the week, I had a draft. It felt so good. Better than finishing a Sunday crossword puzzle without cheating.
I wanted to post the essay here right away, but Matt convinced me to at least try and place it elsewhere. So, that’s what I’m currently doing: trying to find a publication that will take it and even pay me for it(!). Of course, if I can’t find a place for it, you’ll end up seeing it here I’m sure. Stay tuned!
What else can I tell you? I brought two paperback books with me on our trip. One was Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, a book I’d already read but had been craving to reread. If you haven’t read this book because you think it’s about a virus wiping out 99.9% of the world’s population, I get it. But truly, it’s about so much more. It’s apocalyptic but in a good way. Ha. And I happily read it during an otherwise very uncomfortable late-night flight back to Los Angeles.
The other book I brought with me was Julie Phillips’ The Baby on the Fire Escape: Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Baby Problem, which makes me think that maybe I always was hoping to write that essay I ended up writing while on break. Because this book really came in handy while trying to make some of the arguments I make in my piece. I haven’t finished the book yet (but will!). Ironically maybe, as I read it I kept thinking of another book about an artist-mother that I hadn’t finished: Anne Truitt’s Daybook: The Journal of an Artist.
And once we were back home, I picked that up from where I’d left it on my bedside-table stack. And oh man, I’m so glad I did. Truitt is a sculptor and the book is basically her journal. It starts in 1974 when she is fifty-three; she writes about motherhood, art, and the problem of financial insecurity. Re: the latter: “So I came then to the decision to ride out the jeopardy of art with as much courage and faith as I could.” 💓
Especially as I go into the fourth month of this rewrite, both convinced that I’m writing a better book and also medium-panicking that it’s taking me so long, reading Truitt’s journal has been so helpful.
In one section, she writes about having to move to Japan in 1964 because of her husband’s job, and how the culture shock knocked her out of the structures she’d had in place in order to “endure the emotional intensity of [her] work.” She writes:
Without this security, I became frightened. Though I continued to live from day to day as intelligently as I could, the vital force from which my work had been steadily emerging since 1961 simply stopped.
Truitt keeps working while she’s there, but when it comes time for a retrospective of her work a decade later, she ends up destroying all the sculptures she made in Japan! Her verdict: “It was simply intelligent work, lifeless.” Oof!
Incidentally, when I first read this line months ago, I underlined it and sent it to my friend, Kara. She and I had been discussing certain writers whose work can come off as very smart and yet, very dead. Maybe you can think of a few now?
Anyway! Truitt, in the end, is grateful for this experience, of having her worldview shattered. She says:
I was forced to grant grace to natural process, myself naked in it, and my life began to present itself in its own rhythm. At first tentatively and then with more confidence, I began to find delight in acquiescence, and finally even a kind of joy in acceptance.
I love that line / idea, of being “forced to grant grace to natural process.” It makes me think of pregnancy and birth. It makes me think of aging. It makes me think of the garden I just planted last week and then how I called a company called Gopher Patrol (or something like that) because last year, a gopher (family?) ate my ENTIRE garden before I’d been able to harvest as much as a single cherry tomato. (I don’t know how much this gopher service is gonna cost—they’re coming next week to give me a “free inspection” but like: I really, really don’t want to grant grace to natural process in this ONE realm of my life.)
Okay, so I’m on page 179 of my rewrite. I really like the changes I’ve made, but now the question is: Can I land this plane? We shall see.
Thank you for being here!
Dark text message! For different reasons, I can relate to destroying works of art (that I made) soooooo much. I love this thinking about natural processes and the bigger stories telling *us.* I am v. curious about this gopher patrol!! Can’t wait for a critter update, even if it’s the management of them. I have all the confidence in the world you will land this plane 🤸 (Here, have some of my confidence 😆) 💞