Category: Writing

Brief Impressions from the Back Patio

~ plainswriter ~ Leave a comment

4.8.16

It is a Friday night, at the end of a week that felt as though there were two more work days packed in.

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It is 71. The the time of year prevent bugs from bothering me. I’m wearing shorts and a T-shirt, my favorite attire. I’m still amazed to live somewhere that I can dress like this for half the year, or more.

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2 Northern Cardinals, male and female, are perched on the red feeder swaying 3 feet from the grass. They scoot their way around the rim. He trails her, and then she scoots toward him. They face each other. Did they kiss? If not, it was a good imitation.

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I’m writing this on a new table handmade by a man down the street. The blue plastic chair is too low for the table, but I make it work. The night is too gorgeous to complain about my seating.

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The breeze from the southeast (forecasting rain) happily chills me. I go inside to grab my neon green hoodie. I resume my place.

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On the table beside my open notebook, my phone plays an album of Chopin piano etudes.

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Every few minutes I spot a truck or car driving on South Pea Ridge Road, the vehicle working from right to left across the gradually darkening sky.

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Filling the notebook with jottings and observations is easy, is refreshing, is rewarding. The pen feels like an extension of my hand, of my mind.

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The hour that I’m outside I hear more Cardinals than I actually see. And yet I know they’re there.

On the Tiring Fun of AWP

~ plainswriter ~ 1 Comment

I’m preparing to depart for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs’ Annual Conference, which will be held in Los Angeles. It’s an event I look forward to each year I’m able to attend, and each year the conference is larger and more overwhelming than the previous one.

I view AWP similar to the various races I’ve run. Baltimore (’03), Vancouver, BC (’05), Denver (’10), Washington, D.C. (’11), Boston (’13), Seattle (’14), & Minneapolis (’15). Rather than racing medals, however, there are the canvas bags, but unlike with my handful of racing medals, I have not kept all of my bags.

This will be my 4th year bringing Windhover: A Journal of Christian Literature to the bookfair, and overall, my conversations with people have been pleasant and meaningful. Because of those bookfair duties, I’m able to attend only a few panels during my time, but I’m okay with that.

I enjoy meeting current and past contributors, putting a face with the name. I enjoy meeting folks who are excited to discover the journal. I enjoy the challenge of explaining what we’re about and what we’re not about.

I enjoy walking around the bookfair before it opens, conversing with fellow editors, discovering new journals. At my first AWP, I went wild grabbing free back issues of journals or buying copies for $1 or $2. I returned with over 30 journals. (That was one heavy suitcase.)

Perhaps the best thing about AWP is not the journals or the books themselves, but the people. There are familiar faces: my grad-school and undergrad profs. People who were in my MFA or PhD program. Fellow writers and editors, many of whom I see once a year at this event.

I’ve met so many other people through attending the conference, as much as the conference overwhelms my introverted self. I’ve developed (and am developing) meaningful friendships with these fellow writers and editors, friendships that (through the wonder of social media and email) I am able to sustain between each conference. But for the 3-4 days that I’m there, I laugh more than in any other timespan of the year.

I return home exhausted, but inspired. New ideas to pursue, new journals to read, new people to maintain contact with. And then I’m already plotting for next year.

Confronting the Darkness

~ plainswriter ~ 3 Comments

Night-Driving-Synchroblog

My writing in this space over these 6 years has focused mainly on writing, reading, and place. Occasionally I’ve ventured beyond those core topics (such as with music or running or teaching), and today is another venture, one that is long overdue.

I just finished reading Addie Zierman’s Night Driving, her second memoir, released on Tuesday. It is a thoughtful, honest book that doesn’t flinch in the face of darkness, silence, or ambiguity. Moreover, it has urged me to begin my own memoir, one that will deal largely with my own darkness. But first, I have to acknowledge that her first book, When We Were on Fire, helped me realize I had my own unacknowledged darkness. More bluntly, through rereading and teaching the book last summer I was finally able to admit something: I have an eating disorder.

These words after the colon are not necessarily “easy” words to write, but in so doing, I am speaking truth to the lie that I am who I am because of how/when/what I eat (and/or don’t eat). And I know that I am surely not the only middle-aged man who has confronted such an issue, but one wouldn’t necessarily know that from the ways eating disorders are frequently discussed.

So I am in therapy, yes, and I have made substantial progress since July, but I also know that I have further to go and that I have to guard against relapses, against the return to prior destructive patterns of behavior. There is a sense that therapy has, for me, cast its own searching beam through the hallways and rooms of my past, illuminating choices and situations that contributed to the disorder I now fight. At the same time, this detective work, as uncomfortable as it has been at times, has provided more freedom and joy than I thought possible.

I have learned that my disorder doesn’t define who I am. No, my definition, my identity, my worth stems from this truth: Imago Dei. So I press on, watching the landscape around me gradually lighten, sometimes barely perceptibly, but enough for me to keep on towards my destination.

(You can read this piece where I first confronted this issue here: http://www.altarwork.com/the-night-it-culminates/)