Flame on a wick
When people come to speak to me, whatever they say, I am struck by a kind of incandescence in them, the “I” whose predicate can be “love” or “fear” or “want,” and whose object can be “something” or “nothing” and it won’t really matter, because the loveliness is just in the presence, shaped around “I” like a flame on a wick, emanating itself in grief and guilt and joy and whatever else.
- Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
I enjoy writing, or attempting to, or really just thinking I do, but I’m not much of a story-teller. I wonder if my dreams give me insight into why I have no stories to tell. Dreams are like the stories we tell ourselves. Mine are vivid, and vivifying, almost every night. But they are strange and sometimes terrible, in the “old sense” of the word as I recently read it described (also in Gilead). And sometimes in the new sense of the word too. For all they are, there are no plots to follow and no relatable stories to be told. Messy and impressionistic. But those impressions I do like to tell about. I feel them to be universal, generalizable, and to have some additional value when shared that they lack when held secret. I feel you share some of my impressions if you so much as read words, and that in sharing we validate each other. We see each other and nod. “I’ve felt just such a thing too.” Or if not, I could do. In that case we might be in league for a little while, and the world might be made more familiar; that little bit less strange and terrible.
I wish I had good stories too and maybe one day I will. In the meanwhile I hope a succession of impressions, like lilly pads or paving stones, might form its own dotted path that connects to create a sort of story-like arc. If not, I hope they will do as little islands unto themselves, self-defined and justified, even lacking a greater coherence.
May the price of reading these words be a few of your own. Sneakily I put this plea at the end, after you are already staked and didn’t know it. Share something won’t you? I imagine few will find their way here, and not that often, so it’ll be that much more magical for us when we do, to encounter other human sign.
Feedback? Notes? Improprieties? By all means…
Please also enjoy my cat in a tree.
Lastly, smash:
I was caught too, by that "old sense" of terrible. Like maybe that Psalm "I am fearfully and wonderfully made" could just be "I am terribly made" like a crashing wave, or a lightening struck tree. We are terribly made, so beautiful it hurts, and so terminal that it's beautiful.
I hold on to your words. I always have. Your Evolution Traverse trip report, the piece about changing the oil on the Ranger and if you could centrifuge the microns of metal out that they could tell a story of all the places you'd been. Or the piece in the guide book, Gravity Wants You. I liked how different narrative perspectives took turns, intimate and omniscient. I like how you are scared of pretense. I like when you share your words.
Speaking of which, think this response is a too intimate for substack? Well I'm trying to be more courageous. Maybe I'll take it down later..
I see you and nod. And even if not exactly, I may understand soon.
Do you get this thing, even with people you love, demotivated and inspired too? Well I get that reading Marilynne Robinson, and I get that reading you. But recently, I see a seed of it in me too. I recognize a root of common greatness in each off us.
That's what makes the writing so good, what makes it stop us in our tracks with awe. It makes us recognize greatness in us all. Terribly and greatly "I" and "us".