ON OPENING NEW IDEA-ROOMS, HEARING FAMILIAR VOICES, AND MOURNING A LEGEND
Friday September 18 2020
Dear Sarah,
Last week you commented about my long luscious letters of late — I can’t tell yet if this will be a long-y or a shorty, we’ll see where the spirit takes me! At this moment it is Friday afternoon and I don’t have too much else to do before I call it a day. The weather is crisp, an early fall feeling, even though we should still have a few warm days before it turns into Real Fall (although Real Fall is, I suppose, next Tuesday, so we’re close!) Yesterday morning I walked past my favorite bush-tree on the block (identified by my mother-in-law as a euonymus alatus, a burning bush) and it was still fully green; at the end of the day I passed it again and it had one single red leaf. My favorite things about the bush are its well-proportioned and horizontal shape, and the beautiful iridescent way it changes color at this time of year, so that single red leaf was really calling to me! I’m looking forward to observing the bush all the way through the fall until its leaves drop and we hunker down for the long winter.
I liked your thoughts last week about the different dynamics of our interactions when we were spending time with M and Bill all together. I wonder if I got less chatty because I felt that I would be inclined to be more chatty? I feel like it can squash a group mood to watch two people have an extended conversation so I wouldn’t have wanted it to turn into the Eva and Sarah show! But it was also a pleasure to sit back in our shared presence and let other people take the conversational reins, whereas when you and I chat one-on-one we are the voices we hear! Context-shifting really does change everything.
Your description of the aboutness of our letters (addressed, in your letter, to the dermatologist who probably stopped thinking about the letters moments after they asked what the letters are about) is spot-on! It is, as you say, one frame among an infinite array, and yet I say you’ve done a good job. The frame you’ve given the letters is large and comfortable with just the right touch of specificity!
I have been trying to recall an artwork I read about once, a work of conceptual photography in which a body was photographed in perhaps four or five different ways — the same body in the same identical pose, unmoving in the moment; I think it was a body lying on a beach — and the differences in the photographs involved changing the frame to encompass more of the scene that was above the body, below the body, to the left of the body, or to the right of the body, so that each picture told a different story about what was going on with the body, what had happened to the body, by virtue of what else was included in the frame. I have been searching on the internet to try to pin this down, have put out a text message to a dear friend with a PhD in art history and a speciality in photography, and I’ve ordered online the book in which I first saw this work of art (a book that has been lingering in my Amazon “save for later” shopping cart for probably five years). In any case — what is inside the frame and what is outside the frame is of paramount importance. You said the act of framing something is an act of calling a thing a thing, marking its edges. I wonder what we would say is outside of the frame of our letters… just about everything and everyone! Our frames are our own perspectives, even when we try to see through others’ eyes; our frames are our own lives, even when we travel and spend time with other people, in other places and cultures. I think we would consider discussing most things inside the frames of our letters, and yet each week they are limited to the time we’ve allotted ourselves to write them, limited to the mental space we’ve similarly reserved to think about X, limited in some ways to a certain number of words (I should check in on my longest letter, but I don’t think I usually go much beyond two pages if I make it there).
I am in agreement about the captivating nature of taking the words of others and extracting the essence. I have in the past had work to do that involved interviewing people, transcribing our interviews, and then figuring out how to turn our conversation and their story into a shorter story, a story full of punchy little meaningful nuggets that added up to something with a particular focus and intention. It was marketing, but I intended for the stories to remain the words of the people who’d said them even as I compressed or distilled their tales to meet a word count or fill a particular area of space. I feel that here I should again reference John McPhee, who says in Draft No. 4: Plenty of people who are willing to talk are not at the same time sensing what the effect of the eventual piece will be. … It is true that some people I have written about...are so cognizant of the piece of writing taking shape that they all but supply the commas. …[T]he writer has responsibility to be fair to the subject, who trustingly and perhaps unwittingly delivers words and story into the writer’s control. Some people are so balanced, self-possessed, and confident that they couldn’t care less what some ragmaker says about them, but they are in a minority among people who put their lives in your hands. Citing this mainly to say a writer has much power in taking others’ words and putting them together into a new form!
The space between and around words is full, even when we do not see it, you said, and this reminds me of a thought that crossed my mind yesterday, about a person in my life with whom I rarely get into very deep conversations; I thought perhaps they didn’t quite know what questions to ask me, or I didn’t know what questions to ask them, that would open the door on new conversations, like a secret hallway with new and unknown rooms filing off in every direction. Every conversation is an opportunity to open doors and explore new idea-rooms instead of just treading the familiar, worn paths we’ve all walked before.
My letter has wandered a bit this week as I try to follow my thoughts on their twisty-turny tracks. I’m looking forward to reading your words! I hope your bike ride this late afternoon in the late-summer sun is delightful, and I’m going to tuck this in your inbox for when you return!
Until soon,
Yours,
Eva
P.S. I have said RogShinch out loud, and it is fun for the mouth to pronounce!
September 18, 2020
Dear Eva,
I am just back from a divine 20 mile bike ride with Bill and Anne, marked with a beer and nachos stop in the middle, as is our Friday ritual these days. The ride out is a gradual incline through woods, fields, and golf courses, which means the ride home, which is just retreading our same path, feels ten times easier as we glide slightly downhill nearly the entire return trip. This time, for whatever reason, I led the way home, and I was riding along at a pretty quick pace, just close enough to the two of them that I could hear their voices, but just far enough to not be able to make out much of their conversation. With the wind in my face and the familiar voices of two of the people I love most in the world in my ears, I found myself having that rare, unmistakable feeling of knowing and acknowledging my joy. Who knew a Friday happy hour bike ride could be so replenishing? I imagine it is especially so during this time when being in the company of loved ones outside of our homes is so few and far between. I hope I can hang on to my appreciation for these types of moments and experiences long after we eventually return to normal life, whatever normal life lies ahead.
You wrote last week about how intriguing it is that we do not often talk about the letters when we are together. I wonder if that is true? I definitely agree that we do not often speak of them when we are together with other people, but to me that seems right. The letters are our semi-public private conversation, so it seems like it would be almost rude to discuss them around others. Bill’s explanation of the dynamic after we saw you was that there was an asymmetry; you and I have so much more knowledge of one another, while he and M have a long history but not the shared experiences. (I actually think his comment about this was in response to me noting that we did not talk about the letters and perhaps told some stories that we have already told each other in the letters over time.)
In our calls and conversations alone, I feel like the letters make their way into our conversations just like any other memory of a past conversation might appear. Rather than being a separate something, they are just another strain of a larger friendship. But even so, I love your description of the letters being like a talk in the dark. There is very much something to that—I have to imagine there are things we can say on the page that we may not veer into on the phone or in person. And it’s not so much about it being more private (these are posted online, after all!), but about it being a different kind of space, where each of us can riff and explore before tossing the thought across the way to each other. Like a talk in the dark or a walk and talk, the letters leave us space or silence to continue to ponder before we reply. (The letters must be bored and embarrassed by how much we bestow them with compliments, but here I am again, singing their praises!)
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This letter will now take a sharp turn. While we munched greedily on hot pizza tonight, I got a text from a friend with the news that Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died. I said it aloud to Bill, and then, as Jonah began peppering us with questions about who she was and what it meant, Bill and I both mentally disappeared from the room. I still haven’t yet returned to my body. I am writing you now on my phone from the couch while Mulan runs on the television for movie night, trying to figure out how to process her death. Of course it is no surprise that an 87 year old woman with pancreatic cancer has succumbed to it. But I am filled with sadness at the loss. And it adds to the growing feeling of the world closing in on us. Wildfires, pandemic, imminent loss of fundamental rights. How long can our little family cocoon of love and light hold against the darkness? And more importantly, what kind of world will my children inherit? Faced with this despair, I am going back to my familiar instinct—I must do. Make calls to senators, knock on doors for Democrats up and down the ballot, research my local races so I know every name on the ballot in November. I have come to recognize that this kind of small-scale civic action is just as much about me than it is about anything I can actually accomplish. Maybe whether we look out behind our own yards forms part of who we are. For those of us who don’t have the power or platforms to effect much change in the world, this might be the best we can do—show love, not just for those we know and love, but for humankind.
Tonight, as I mourn, this love will carry me.
I am wishing you a lovely weekend, my dear friend. Please raise a glass for the one and only RBG.
Yours,
Sarah