The Landscape of Elision

I spent this Mother’s Day weekend in Seattle with my lovely daughter, Ceinwen. We flew up to visit my mom and to see a show at the Francine Seders Gallery—a stunning series of drawings by my dear artist friend, Fred Birchman. (Please check out his show at http://www.sedersgallery.com) We also spent some time exploring Seattle.

One of the standards I use to measure an urban landscape by is the amount of public art—to me it says so much about the soul of a city. Seattle has a lot. Especially impressive is SAM’s (Seattle Art Museum’s) Olympic Sculpture Park, an open and living green, nine-acre transformed industrial site on the Seattle waterfront overlooking the Olympic Mountains and the Puget Sound.

It was a gorgeous, warm, sunny afternoon as we wandered through the sculpted space of this urban park. We strolled past Mark di Suvero’s Bunyon’s Chess—wood pilings suspended between steel to interact with the wind.

We peeked over the wall at Claes Oldenburg’s Typewriter Eraser—a humorous piece inspired by an object antiquated to anyone under forty.

We moved through, moved around, undulated between Richard Serra’s Wake, a landscape of steel forms reminiscent of both waves and of ships’ hulls; it’s the viewer’s own movement that gives the mammoth sculpture motion.

We stopped and gazed at Alexander Calder’s The Eagle, 6 tons of painted steel, and talked about how the negative space—the shapes of sky and grass and buildings seen between the limbs of orange steel, are just as important, just as evocative as the sculpture itself and how the positive actually sculpts the negative space around it.

Which got me thinking about negative space. Sculptors, painters, printmakers, draftsmen, (draftspersons?), even dancers, understand the vital importance of negative space. We writers don’t always think of it in those terms, but I think it is essential to remember that what isn’t there can be just as important as what is there. Think about dialogue and how tension is created by what is not said. (It’s a good tool to keep handy in your writer’s tool box!)

But beyond technique, we need to leave space for readers to move through, room for readers to make a story their own. Too many details can take up this space and actually deprive the reader the pleasure of filling in what has meaning for them. Elision in a piece of writing is the shared space between writer and reader, where the reader brings his or her own experience to the page.

Another way to think about it: whether we paint, sculpt, dance, write or sing, the space between the form is where we breathe. So take a deep breath...

Take Good Care,

Sharry

The Landscape of the Bed of Longing

I feel on-my-knees grateful for the people in my life. I don't know how to articulate the depth of that gratitude... I mean, I can barely scratch the surface of the meaning my family, friends and community make of my life. I feel the same way about my home, the landscape around my home, the dogs, cats and chickens in and out of my home. And I most definitely feel the same way about being a writer.

by Thiemo Muller

 But--or maybe And is a more appropriate conjunction--And, at the same time, this sense of longing has taken up residence inside me...somewhere near my heart, lodged against the curve in my ribs. I feel it in my heartbeat, I feel it when I breathe. I know the reasons for it. There are a few. For now, and for here, I will say that some of it is about wanting to sell a book, wanting to work with an editor, wanting to feel that collaboration and build a story in that way, and wanting to finally see my book in print and share it share it share it with the world.

My longing for this experience is intense. So intense that sometimes, for short bursts of time, it blocks my view, and blocks my other sensory capacities, of other details in my life. Do you know what I mean?






I've been contemplating this longing for the last few weeks.  I have noticed that there is a tendency to do one of two things with longing.  One is to try to push it away. And I think the most common way to accomplish that is to transform it...so maybe, let's say, you turn it into jealousy (she got that and I was supposed to get that and I'm probably entitled to that more than she is, damn it...) or into denial (I never wanted that, and even if I did, which I didn't by the way, but even if I did, I certainly don't want it now...) The other is to allow it to consume you (I feel this longing so badly and so deeply that I think I, in fact, AM this longing...where are my hands and feet and heart and mind?...they have been taken over by the body-snatching longing monster...)

But what about just letting it...be?

When my sister, Callie*, was diagnosed with cancer she had, not surprisingly, a deep and loud fear. I remember sitting by her bedside during a few of her chemotherapy sessions and listening to her talk about it. She told me she knew she couldn't push her fear away. She told me she knew, also, that she couldn't let it become her either. And so, she said, she was learning to sit with it...pull up a chair, invite that ole' deep and loud fear to sit, not on her but next to her.

A chair for her fear.

I mentioned this idea to two of my friends** while I was contemplating my longing one morning (and by contemplating it I mean, on this particular day, having a total crying breakdown about it...sigh...what can you do?!) and one of them said, You need a bed for your longing...a place to tuck it in, let it be, while you get on with being you... The other one came over later that day and gave me this:

An actual bed for my longing! Isn't it awesome?  A beautiful purple bed with cozy white feathers to rest upon...

So here's the other part of my contemplations: longing is not a bad thing. It might not be the most comfortable feeling in the world (think a slightly-too-sharp object stuck under your rib), but if it is given a place to call home, longing kind of smooths itself out, and is even kind of sweet-looking as it rests there... Longing is not a bad thing at all.  It lets us know what matters in our lives. It indicates our dreams. It reminds us that we have hearts and minds and that they are beating and buzzing all the time.

The trick, for me, is to let longing hang out while I sit at my computer revising my picture book for the 12th time, or writing a new chapter for my middle-grade novel, or or or...

And now that it has its own happy home, I can do just that.

One more contemplation: It feels good to talk about longing. I have a hunch that if we writers, especially, talked about it more we would feel better.  Pure longing, no more, no less. What a cool topic for an SCBWI conference, perhaps?  Or for a conversation between blogs? My amazing friend Sarah posted this today...so worth the read...

What do you all think?

With gratitude,
Tam



*Callie, by the way, kicked cancer's butt, as she likes to say. I think it's been four years now that she has been cancer free...talk about on-my-knees gratitude...

**Thank you Alice and Stef...

Light as Sculpture

There’s something happening out on the San Francisco Bay—a landscape of mesmerizing, rippling LED lights that cover 300 vertical cables on the western span of the San Francisco Bay Bridge between the Embarcadero and Yerba Buena Island.

I can see it from several vantage points near my house, including my roof and back porch window. Each time I catch a glimpse, I’m thrilled. It’s dazzeling, magical the way it dances across the water.

Designed by renowned artist Leo Villaral as a public arts project, The Bay Lights is a light sculpture inspired by the Bay Bridge’s 75^th anniversary. It opened on March 5^th and will continue for two years (or hopefully longer the funding can be raised) It consists of 25,000 white LED lights each computer programed by Villaral to create a never repeating pattern of light from dusk to dawn. It covers 1.8 miles and leaps up the cables 500 feet. It’s the largest light sculpture in the world.

Light is a wonderful medium. I’m a devotee of another San Francisco based artist, Jim Campbell, and his numerous light sculpture installations. His Exploded Views brought me back to SFMOMA again and again to be enchanted by the chandelier-like sculpture that hung over the front doors with the ever changing shadow figures fleeting across the ethereal matrix, with four different programs; a collaboration with Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet, a flock of birds, the candid movements of San Francisco pedestrians and a choreographed boxing match

Last week, I had the privilege of seeing Miwa Matreyek present a work in progress and then her spell binding Myth And Infrastructure in an outdoor performance at the new gorgeous Exploratorium at Pier 15. (more on that next time!) Miwa uses light, video, animation and performance to create a stunning vision, where the line between what is real and what is fantasy/illusion blurs, creating a world of its own that viewers fall into. The experience is part cinema, part live theater, with light as the medium of magic.

As we left the Exploratorium around 10:30 at night, we were treated to a spectacular lazer light show, projected onto the front of the Pier.  

Light can also be a transportive element in writing—it can play many roles from simple atmosphere to the objective correlative, showing character emotion—how the character perceives his or her surroundings or what the character choses to focus on can speak volumes about their emotional landscape.

It was well over a century ago that Nathaniel Hawthorne said, “Moonlight is sculpture”

And then there’s this: “In the beginning there was nothing.  God said, "Let there be light!"  And there was light.  There was still nothing, but you could see it a whole lot better.”  Thank you, Ellen DeGeneres!

Here are links to videos showing some work by the artists mentioned above:

The Bay Lights: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blgjUb6wg5s

Exploded Views: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-fNalstA2k

Myth And Infrastructure: http://vimeo.com/10278043

Take Good Care,

Sharry

The Landscape of Good-Bye

My running buddy, Cody, is gone. He was Kara's dog and we all ran together, with my dog Winn-Dixie, three times a week. On the river trail. At Mud Pond. In the cornfield at the end of our road. We've done it---consistently, religiously, rhythmically---for the last few years or so.

Kara is always the leader. She sets the pace.
Cody is always second in command. His steady gait focuses me, and on dark, winter mornings the white tip of his tail is like a light.
I take up the rear.
(And Winn-Dixie? He runs here and there, and way over there, and then comes on back and does it all again.)

It is this way.
It was this way.
But Cody died.
And so the landscape of my runs has changed.

Cody was this enormous black and white dog. Part border collie and (if you asked Adam, Kara's husband, he would say:) part holstein cow. Smart and sharp, he would stare into my eyes and I felt like he was telling me things--secret dog things, like how it felt to chase Winn-Dixie at top speed in the field by the river on a windy autumn day (the best feeling in the world!), and I felt like he heard me too. There were plenty of nights I lay on the floor by his side and sought his advice on how to handle life (stay present, love a lot, let the rest go.) He also taught my son to laugh. Luc was not even half a year old when he belly laughed for the first time...that deep in the gut, pure joy kind of laugh...and it was Cody, simply Cody's presence, that caused that reaction. Created that joy. Cody had sleep-overs at our house, and he came to my parents' farm in the summers where he waded in the pond to fish for salamanders. He was kind and tolerant. He was wise and thoughtful. He was full up with love.

My littlest daughter, Tavia, said to me this weekend, "Cody is in the ground but his energy is out in the world."

I said yes.

Then she asked, "Will the energy float down to our house? Onto the field? Into the river? Into a new puppy?"

I said yes again. Yes, yes, yes, and yes.

And I realized that not only had the landscape of my runs changed, but the landscape of my house, the field, the river...the landscape of all of us...had changed.

(And maybe, just maybe, there is a new and tiny black and white puppy out there somewhere too.)

Gratefully yours,
Tam

The Geology of the Urban Landscape

I have been reading Alexandra Horowitz's ON LOOKING, ELEVEN WALKS WITH EXPERT EYES—her account of walking through familiar territory with someone who has the studied ability to see what is usually passed by, unnoticed.

 

In one of the first chapters, she takes a walk in her own Manhattan neighborhood with geologist Sidney Horenstein who spent forty years working for the American Museum of Natural History coordinating environmental outings. What she learns on this walk radically changed the way I've been looking and thinking about my own urban San Francisco neighborhood. Up until recently, I thought of the city, with all of its man-made structures and miles of asphalt, as, well, not exactly natural. But listen to what Horenstein has to say about that—

"…there are only two things on earth: minerals and biomass [plants and animals]. Everything that we have got here has to be natural to begin with—so asphalt is one of those things."

It’s just rocks, sand, and 'sticky stuff,' essentially pure and even recycled.

All right. That's good to know. In fact, it makes me happy knowing that.

The author goes on to talk about how the geology of a place is not just what is under us, but also what surrounds us: how we are actually "inside the geology of the city." That each stone, cement, composite, or brick building is really a big rocky outcropping, each patch of green a grassy plain with scattered trees. She reminds us that each building began with naturally occurring materials-- either forged of stone or hewed from a once living tree—that has been merely recombined into something for our needs and purposes.

I love that concept.

I love the idea that the city is a natural composite of trees and stone—the buildings take in water, are warmed by the sun, are slowly carved away by the steady force of wind, the slough of water and the passing of time. Nature, it seems, sculpts the city just as it does the side of a mountain. In the city, moss covers stone, ivy breaks away brick, sun and rain and snow transforms the color and texture of wood.

My own neighborhood, Russian Hill, is built on a bed of graywackle (a kind of sandstone) and shale with erupted trappean rocks (basalt, greenstone, amygdaloid and dolomite) and serpentine. My house, built out of redwood, sits on a high outcropping of serpentine, which holds it upright when the San Andreas fault slips and the earth shakes.

I have always loved picking up stones as I wander. I often have a pocket full if them, and when asked what someone can bring me from their travels, I always request a stone. To me, somehow, each holds the essence of place. I have a stone from the Egyptian desert, one from a small village in India, some from Chile, Peru, and Bolivia, from a number of beaches in Mexico and California, from the Raging River in Issaquah, Deer Lake in Eastern Washington, Flathead Lake and Glacier Park in Montana. Just to name a few. My house is full of stones—they sit on shelves, keep doors open and grind herbs.

I was in Portland a few years ago visiting colleges with my youngest daughter. I picked up the purse I'd been carrying for a week and complained that it was so heavy, it felt like it was full of rocks. (thinking it was probably just a lot of loose change). When I dug into the bottom to clean out the coins, guess what I found? A half a dozen egg-sized rocks I'd picked up on a walk in Spokane the week before!  I transferred them from my purse to my suitcase and felt much lighter for it. Until I found the perfect stone on the Reed campus...

So what does this have to do with writing? Hmmm…Let’s go back to asphalt—recycled stones, sand and sticky stuff. The essence of place, the passing of time and the sticky stuff of human emotions—that sounds a lot like the basics of a novel to me.

Take Good Care,

Sharry

The Landscape In Between

I am in that straddling place.

That place that is one part rocky and one part sand. One part windy and one part heat. The place that is the water between two islands, that long stretch when you can't see land but you know it is behind you and you know it is in front of you and so you contemplate your options, tread water or swim, baby, swim...

I choose to swim, but I am tired. Man, am I tired.

It's an age old place, and an age old murmur in the brain. I know that the straddling place should have its own name. It shouldn't be nameless, those that are nameless don't turn their heads to familiar voices because no one calls to them, no one can call to them. And so they grow more and more aloof, and protective. They grow vines with thorns.

I also know that, truly, the straddling place does have many names. My friend, Kara, who teaches yoga calls it being in the moment. And my son, Luc, who is a cross country runner, calls it the zone.  There are other names too: the process, patience and faith.  Even I have given it names before. My favorite is it is what it is. Kind of catchy, right? Chameleon-like. When I call it that I feel bold and brave. I feel like an explorer who is in it simply for the rocks and the sand and the wind and the sun.

But that name escapes my brain now, and I can't find my compass or my map, and I forgot to bring enough water and nuts. I'm tired. I'm hungry. And I feel like I'm on uneven ground.

Oh my gosh. Pathetic.  I don't mean to be pathetic. I mean to be honest and I mean to put these three questions out to you all:

What do you call this place? What is its landscape?  And how do you find a sense of home here?

*    *    *    *    *    *

Last night I sat on the couch and finished a book. A great book.  One that inspired me as a person and as a writer. The pellet stove was chugging. The room was warm. I had a glass of seltzer on the window sill behind me with just the right amount of fizz because yesterday was pay-day and I went to the store to finally buy a new CO2 canister. The chickens were tucked into their coop, but my middle daughter, Zory, tread down the stairs, too late for her to be awake.

You should be in bed I said.

I can't sleep she said.  She looked at the book face down on my lap.  What book is that?

A really good one I said. Actually I read it to see if you might like it. And I think you will.

She stretched out her hand. I put the book carefully in it. She read a page. She looked at the cover. Is this Maureen or Debbie?* she asked, pointing to the girl riding over a bridge on her bike.

Debbie I said. You need to go to bed. You have school tomorrow. 

But I can't sleep. Don't you ever feel that way?

For some reason the question brought tears to my eyes. I nodded my head in agreement.

So can I read a little more? she asked. Just until the end of the chapter. Please?  I like the book so far.

I nodded again.

Zory leaned back on the other side of the couch. Her knees were bent and the book rested on her thighs. I looked out the window. It was black outside. I felt the glass on the window. And cold. It was cold out there too. The last remnants of winter skulking around in the night. I looked back at Zory. Her brow was furrowed. Her mouth was slightly open. She was unaware of me in that ten-year-old way that she usually was. When had it happened? When had she become the kind of reader that walked inside a book and sat down with girls like Maureen and Debbie and didn't walk out until she was done?  When had she become the kind of reader that I had dreamed I would give birth to, who would sit on the couch with me, warmed by the stove and warmed by the words?

Twice in one night Zory brought tears to my eyes.

I thought about the Zory of before, I thought about where she was going.  And, last night, I felt like I could sit on that couch forever in that place in between, in that straddling place. In that place I call home.

*    *    *    *    *    *

It is what it is.  The zone.  Being in the moment.  The process, patience and faith.

What do you call this place? What is its landscape?  And how do you find a sense of home here?

Gratefully yours,

Tam

*Can you guess what book Zory was reading??

The Landscape of Transformation

I was in Santa Fe, New Mexico last week taking in the clean, dry air, the warmth of the high desert sun, the scent of pinion smoke, sage brush and scrub pine. We admired the beautiful richly hand-woven rugs with their subtle earth tones and indulged ourselves with the wonderfully spicy taste of chilies.

Besides revisiting many favorite haunts, we also discovered a few new ones. One of the highlights of the trip was a visit to Seton Village and The Academy For The Love Of Learning.

Located outside of Santa Fe on 86 acres of high desert, Seton Village was the home of the late Ernest Thompson Seton, (1860-1946) naturalist, artist, author and pioneer of ecology and environmentalism. My husband keenly recalls receiving a copy of Seton’s Wild Animals I Have Known as a child and finding the naturalist’s stories about wild animals and the underlying activist message of conservation and wildlife preservation life changing.

Ernest Thompson Seton’s own story is one of transformation. Artistically gifted, he studied art in Paris and London in the late 1800’s and became an accomplished wildlife painter before he was 20.

But he originally made his living as a wolf tracker and killer. Until a trip to New Mexico in 1893. He’d come to kill fifteen wolves, but his experience with the landscape, with observing the natural habitat and the animals that inhabited it and his interactions with Blanca and Lobo, two wolves he hunted, changed something deep inside of him. Witnessing the overwhelming grief that Lobo displayed when he discovered the spot where his mate, Blanca, had been killed, transformed Seton, converting him to the conviction that animals are related to humans in a moral sense, making us responsible for their preservation. The popularization of this contemporary belief can be traced back to Seton more than anyone else.

After his experience with Lobo, Seton reinvented himself from hunter to champion of wildlife for the remainder of his life, writing and illustrating over sixty-five books about animals and nature, and starting Woodcrafters—a youth organization that gave young people the opportunity to participate in native American crafts and personally experience the natural landscape. It also greatly influenced Baden-Powell and the formation of The Boy Scouts of America.

It is well fitting that The Academy For The Love Of Learning, founded in 1998 by composer Leonard Bernstein, chose what remained of the once 2500 acres of Seton Village as their home. They felt that Seton’s own transformation proved the human capacity to grow, change and embrace “life-affirming values and justice.” One of their many projects is The Learning Landscape, which “seeks to draw out the natural impulses of this land, just as our transformative learning model draws out people’s inner voices and gifts.” For more information about this inspiring organization, check out their website: www.aloveoflearning.org

To bring this around to my own writing, I have been thinking a lot about character transformation and the kinds of experiences and epiphanies that can bring about this extreme transformation. I believe that Ernest Thompson Seton is a great role model for character development!

I’ll leave you with a short video that shows another transformative project at The Academy For The Love of Learning—their LifeSongs project.

Take Good Care,

Sharry