On Baby John McCain, the prospect of shit writing over ghosting, and getting out of your own head
September 9, 2021
Dear Eva,
Building on your sentiment last week about the different way we feel time these days, I feel truly surprised to recall that it was only one week that I was sitting alone on Friday night looking ahead to a weekend of solitude. It feels like ages ago! After I finished my letter that night, I fired up the glorious documentary Crip Camp and shared extra buttery popcorn with my dog; I slept for 9 hours; I spent all of Saturday in my pajamas finishing a full draft(!) of my project for my niece; I relished a salty margarita while eating mediocre food with a friend; I stayed up late reading and marking up the aforementioned draft in full; I spent Sunday morning reading a New Yorker fiction (yes, fiction! I am turning over a new leaf!) story and then thinking and writing about something I have been meaning to ponder for months. And then, to top it all off, I felt the joy of having two little boys sprint up and fling their arms around me yelling “Mommy!” when I returned from the grocery store on Sunday. It ended up being a pretty perfect scenario—after about 36 hours on my own, the family returned and we still had about 36 more hours of weekend together. A Labor Day weekend for the books.
In other news, I am trying to make sense of your dramatic 180 turn about the future of the letters. I have wondered if perhaps I imagined or misinterpreted what you said about winding them down, but I do not think so. I specifically remember you confirming you were seeking your escape! Was it just a mood? I am poking and prodding because I want to ensure you are not changing your mind simply as a reaction to my grief. There is nothing cruel about mentioning the end of something, and there is no action required in response to a feeling of loss. I am game to continue forever as you say, but I am tempted to tug at the thread. I don’t believe the letters will necessarily signal to us when it was time for them to draw to a close, so tell me more about what your little heart desires instead!
Finishing up a full draft of the project for my niece has me thinking again about the narcissism of perfectionism. Put differently: the fact that I can finish this writing project for my niece even while I endure that stage of creation where “the thing takes shape and it looks meager in comparison to what was in your mind’s eye” tells me something. It tells me something about what stops finishing in that stage, and I think that something is vanity. Lynda Barry would tell me it isn’t my business whether my art (writing) is good, and it is a lot easier for me to accept that premise when I am creating something intended for a specific human or humans in my life. I imagine that is one of the reasons this letter project has stuck for me, even on weeks when I felt I had nothing particularly valuable to share—you were there counting on me to have something to send off by the time the clock struck 11:59 PM each Friday, and I would rather send some shit writing than just ghost on my weekly commitment. As we think about what the next project we take on together might be, we should draw on this dynamic once again to spur us (me) along.
I am starting to think about my next project now that I can see the end of this project for C in sight. Regardless of what we decide right away about the letters, would you be interested in brushing off one of our ideas from long ago around a children’s book for grown-ups? (To state what I hope is the obvious, it is okay to say no if inspiration doesn’t strike!)
I am currently hurtling down the highway on the way to Wisconsin for a quick little getaway to meet friends from Chicago. I am very much looking forward to it, but I do find I have that familiar ache that comes nearly every time I leave the kids. Good practice for when we send off J for two weeks of sleepaway camp next summer, I suppose! (It is hard to imagine that one right now, so I will take solace in the fact that I have many months to get ready.)
I hope you have a good, relaxing weekend in your very near future, maybe it is even getting started as I write these words. Give M my best, and send me your eggplant parmesan recipe when you get the chance. I have been craving it ever since I read your letter last week!
Look forward to talking to you next week!
Yours,
Sarah
Friday September 10 2021
Dear Sarah,
This week I have felt increasingly efficacious, am getting things done, am feeling like I can get things done; I found myself agreeing with your statement of last week (with which I do not think I was in agreement when I first read it): Lately, perhaps in spite of myself, I am realizing how many days I feel energized while I work. This feeling is frankly confusing; I thought I was racing to retirement? Some weeks I feel like I can’t push on any further in the race; other days it feels like I am successfully pacing myself for the long haul and enjoying the exercise. This morning I even had an actual run that felt like this; some runs feel like I am dragging myself through butter (not in a smooth way, but in a sloppy, disgusting way) and other runs feel like my legs were, in fact, made to move and to propel my body forward.
I had a lovely long and relaxing Labor Day Weekend; I’d had a particularly busy week beforehand and then felt like I’d really earned my long weekend, which is silly because I earn it every week, but after a busy week you really know you’ve earned it. (And the weekend doesn’t even need to be earned!) Then, this short work week was good, too: I was alert, I got things done. I wore a sweater on Wednesday, at the first sign that the day wouldn’t get much over 70 degrees. The September light is cutting across the days in the way I like best: crisp, bright light at a lower angle, still warm but not as hot as the high summer sun. I’m still a little bit surprised that September is here but I’m warming up to it as the weather cools. How did your solo time and your expansive days unfold last week? I hope they felt light and open the whole way through!
I signed up for a short class on collage at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and yesterday I went to the first of two three-hour sessions. You might think collage is not the kind of thing that needs a class; at least, when I saw the class, I wasn’t sure it needed to be a class, but it was called Chaos and Composure: Ideation with Collage which sounded right up my alley, and the class description led with the phrase This workshop is designed to get yourself out of your own head. It was a siren call to me, and it did get me out of my head! The teacher offered instruction to help us move quickly and break out of what, for me, would have been a long and laborious process of first reviewing all my materials, cutting out all possible images, then looking at everything I’d arrayed; instead, we made quick collages based on prompts (“cut out two shapes and put them together on a card!”) and I ended up making more than 15 collaged cards, some of which are not good by my estimation (probably anyone’s estimation) and a few that I really like. One of the collages I like happens to feature a cut-out of Baby John McCain. This is funny to me because it could just be a picture of any baby; it is a black-and-white photo of a rather old-timey-looking baby, the kind of photo that is familiar since we’ve all been babies and seen photos of everyone who’s been a baby, and all of our pre-digital photos look old-timey as time goes on. I didn’t label the baby as Baby John McCain but I know where I got that photo — from an old Rolling Stone magazine article — and in the decontextualized collage he is just a squinty little baby in black and white.
The teacher of the class described how he often needs to create something simple, get something down on the page, just to have something to react to. The process of making unfolds in the response, as opposed to having a clear picture in one’s head about exactly what one is going to create. I understand and enact this concept every day in my writing process, more so with professional writing because I have to do it day after day and thus have honed those muscles over time; even though the process remains the same, it’s harder to carry it over and act on it in my own creative practice. The collage class is also helping me to think about how to make it through my stacks of hoarded materials; I tend to see something in a magazine that is interesting to me, and I leave it there, saving the whole magazine intact; now, I’m going to make an effort to simply tear or cut out the thing on the spot and put it into a project or tuck it away in its slimmed-down whittled-away state. Right now I am looking at three of my favorite collages, tucked into the edge of my large computer monitor that I have lately not been using because a few weeks ago it felt less intimidating to work in front of just my laptop screen, instead of in front of two screens displaying all my to-dos big and bold and brightly lit in front of me. For now, my computer monitor will act as an on-desk frame for my handmade work, instead of another digital repository for infinite digital in-progress pages!
It’s 6:30PM, and a margarita and the makings for a deep-dish pizza await M and I this evening! Looking forward to catching up next week and I hope you have a glorious weekend!
Until soon!
Yours,
Eva