In Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, Janisse Ray tells not only her story, but stories of her ancestors as well. She intertwines all of these stories with stories of the land her people lived on for generations. Ray’s book is much more a memoir than Gift’s or Abbey’s, and it charts a coherent narrative moving from childhood to adulthood, even reaching back before she was born. Gift includes some stories of her childhood as well, but her book is firmly grounded in the present and her collection of stories couldn’t be described as a memoir. Much of Ray’s book is written from a childlike perspective, and much is an imagined retelling of events or phenomena she didn’t personally witness. Abbey’s and Gift’s books are very much in adult voices, expressing adult thoughts and emotional states. Although Ray spends a good deal of time meditating on the landscape, it is not nearly to the extent that Abbey does. So much of Abbey’s book is lyrical description of his land and surroundings, and like Gift he is rooted in the present. All of the authors share an extensive vocabulary for species that surround them, and an informed knowledge of the landscape. The authors also share a sense of activism, advocating for their beliefs about human impact on the land and how it might be lessened or transformed.
Ray connects her own narrative to that of the land in so many ways. One of her strategies is to recount memories from childhood that show her out in the landscape, whether facing into the wind in her favorite pine tree or floating in the pond or digging for earthworms. She introduces us to the landscape she loves through the wondering eyes of a child, and in so doing advocates for the land in a way that an adult’s polemic can’t. She alternates chapters between those recounting her personal history and those recounting the history of the land, and she imagines it all from a first-hand perspective, as if she inhabited the singing pine forests hundreds of years ago or roamed the woods with Grandpa Charlie. Her strategies for talking about the land and her family echo each other, and both narratives become tied together as part of Ray’s mythical history.
This book challenged my preconceptions about how writers can engage with the natural world, and with their own history, in a work of nonfiction. I never would have thought to describe the evolution of the pine forest through voicing the longleaf pines and the lightning in the way that she did. And I would have hesitated to tell unseen stories from my family’s past, fearing readers would find it hard to trust my voice. I still think these methods should be undertaken with thought and care, but Ray makes it work within the context of her book. This book also challenged my ideas about junkyards. Popular culture perpetuates an image of a junkyard owner as a person who shoots rats for sport, and it’s not that I believed that, it’s just that I didn’t have an alternative to it. If I’m being honest with myself I hadn’t really thought about that image or evaluated it. I’ve never been to a junkyard but now I understand its utility, and it makes sense to me that the owner of a junkyard would be a person who loves to salvage and repair things. (Not to say that all junkyard owners are necessarily like Ray’s father.) I now understand that junkyards, at least in theory, are more like Construction Junction than a garbage dump.
If I were writing about my childhood in relationship to nature, my approach might differ from Ray’s in the sense that I don’t think I would tie my own personal narrative to ideas about conservation. If my depiction of my childhood evoked in the reader an enhanced appreciation of nature, or a contemplation of their own personal connection to nature, then that would make me happy. But it wouldn’t be my explicit intent.
I’ve been a city girl almost all my life, but so many of my childhood memories are attached to the natural world. I could write a whole essay or perhaps more about the magnolia tree in the front yard at my parent’s house: climbing it with my little brother and hanging upside-down from its branches; pink petals over everything announcing the arrival of spring; the mystery of its bark and the sticky strangeness of its red seeds; the time in middle school when a boy I liked cruelly tore down one of its larger branches; the terrible feeling inside as he laid it broken on his shoulder and dragged it down the street, its lovely crown of leaves trailing behind him on the pavement. We took it down to the hill at the end of the street and tossed it in with some weeds and undergrowth. Not even a proper burial. My brother cried disbelieving tears when I told him and if he blamed me he was right to. I should have been able to stop it. The image that stays with me most is the leaves dragging against the street, their papery sound, the way the sun and wind played in them as if nothing had changed.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Response 3: Desert Solitaire
My favorite of the essays is The Serpents of Paradise, which contains perhaps the most enthralling depiction of snakes I have ever read. Each of the three snake stories in this essay reflects a different aspect of how humans relate to animals: the dangerous rattler invading domestic space; the harmless gopher snake, tamed and kept as a pet; and snakes in their own world, secretly observed. Snakes are one of my biggest fears, as I think they are for many people, and so reading anything about them brings an irresistible horror-fascination. But this essay, especially the final story, also evoked beauty and mystery and a primal sense of relationship between humankind and the animals in our environment. In my mind’s eye I can see the intertwining snakes with perfect clarity; I feel the jolt of the eye-contact; I see them shooting straight towards me. There is something complex and impossible to articulate about the story of the intertwining snakes, something that can’t be reduced to anything other than the story itself, and that is what makes is a good story.
Something I’d like to steal from Abbey (in addition to his meticulous attention to sensory impression) is his way of establishing an intimate connection with the reader; of making readers feel they can trust him, even if they don’t always agree with him. Part of how he does this is through his tone, which can be casual, familiar, even folksy. He talks directly to his readers at times, acknowledging he is writing to us and knows we are reading. On page 40 he writes, “Insofar as I follow a schedule it goes about like this:” and then he recounts his weekly schedule to his imagined reader. Another technique that creates a more familiar relationship with the reader is his frequent use of parenthetical statements, often funny or light in tone. Also on page 40: “In the afternoon I watch the clouds drift past the bald peak of Mount Tukuhnikivats. (Someone has to do it.)” Especially in an essay entitled Polemic: Industrial Tourism and the National Parks, this strategy softens the hard-line edge of the message and makes it easier to swallow, I think, for those who might resist.
I think Abbey’s directness and frank approach helped to mitigate some aspects of his writing which otherwise might have bothered me more. For instance, he calls himself out repeatedly about his tendency to anthropomorphize, and so I found myself more willing to let it go when I saw it. Sometimes it did bug me a little though, like when he refers to a doe and her fawn as “madonna and child” (32). For some reason that just took me out of the moment he was describing. He also seemed to be rather objectifying of women, like “the chocolate-colored mistress I’ll have to rub my back” (42). And I pretty much hated him when he killed the rabbit with the rock. But overall, I find myself accepting him and valuing what he has to say. His meditations on the natural world are like nothing else I’ve ever read, and this book has shown me possibilities for nature writing that I didn’t know existed. This book has a clear message but at the same time it is an incredibly sensitive and lyrical rendering of a landscape, of a world. These two aspects of the book are inseparable, and, for me, that inseparability makes both aspects more compelling.
Something I’d like to steal from Abbey (in addition to his meticulous attention to sensory impression) is his way of establishing an intimate connection with the reader; of making readers feel they can trust him, even if they don’t always agree with him. Part of how he does this is through his tone, which can be casual, familiar, even folksy. He talks directly to his readers at times, acknowledging he is writing to us and knows we are reading. On page 40 he writes, “Insofar as I follow a schedule it goes about like this:” and then he recounts his weekly schedule to his imagined reader. Another technique that creates a more familiar relationship with the reader is his frequent use of parenthetical statements, often funny or light in tone. Also on page 40: “In the afternoon I watch the clouds drift past the bald peak of Mount Tukuhnikivats. (Someone has to do it.)” Especially in an essay entitled Polemic: Industrial Tourism and the National Parks, this strategy softens the hard-line edge of the message and makes it easier to swallow, I think, for those who might resist.
I think Abbey’s directness and frank approach helped to mitigate some aspects of his writing which otherwise might have bothered me more. For instance, he calls himself out repeatedly about his tendency to anthropomorphize, and so I found myself more willing to let it go when I saw it. Sometimes it did bug me a little though, like when he refers to a doe and her fawn as “madonna and child” (32). For some reason that just took me out of the moment he was describing. He also seemed to be rather objectifying of women, like “the chocolate-colored mistress I’ll have to rub my back” (42). And I pretty much hated him when he killed the rabbit with the rock. But overall, I find myself accepting him and valuing what he has to say. His meditations on the natural world are like nothing else I’ve ever read, and this book has shown me possibilities for nature writing that I didn’t know existed. This book has a clear message but at the same time it is an incredibly sensitive and lyrical rendering of a landscape, of a world. These two aspects of the book are inseparable, and, for me, that inseparability makes both aspects more compelling.
Place 3: Building my Vocabulary
Tuesday September 22, 2009 3:34 pm
After an intermittent drizzling rain for most of the day I was expecting the clearing to be different this week though I wasn’t sure how. But the most striking changes that greeted me when I entered the cemetery weren’t caused by the rain. The leaves have started to fall and the change seems so sudden, almost sad. Silly of me to think I’d come to know the place so well I could anticipate its changes. Maple leaves line the edges of the empty asphalt paths; some newly-fallen: three chartreuse veins against a mottled flame background; some damp and curled, uniform brown like a resilient paper bag. The air is wet and heavy and moisture rises from the grass like invisible steam, my body slicing shapes through it as I walk. Soggy grass clippings cover the hillsides and I breathe in the strong sweet smell of freshly cut grass.
The colors in the clearing are more varied and vibrant against the overcast background, the paper-white sky. A quintessential Pittsburgh sky that I’ve always appreciated for its effect on the colors. Rocks and pebbles lining the ground of the clearing are impossible lilac, coral, cobalt, turquoise, amber, sage. The leaves of the trees and vines and grasses are a million shades of green and yellow and orange and red. I take pictures but they don’t do anything justice.
There’s only so much a camera can do: record, reproduce, in a limited way. It cannot describe. Reading Ed Abbey’s book reminded me to just sit and describe, to meditate on the landscape – a continuation of last week’s task but with a different approach. In Landscape and Nature Lopez advises focusing on the landscape, rendering it authentically, and that will become the story; that is the story.
Through attempting to render this place in words, I have realized the necessity of having a vocabulary in the natural world in order to describe it, in order to communicate it to other people – and that I lack that vocabulary. Becoming acquainted with the plants and animals and rocks that live here, not only their names but their histories and associations, with help to reveal the story of this clearing.
A great sprawling elm tree delineates one boundary of the clearing, reaching its long downward-curving branches out across the marble slab logs. According to Norse mythology, the first man was an ash tree and the first woman an elm. Looking at this elm tree – graceful, slender-limbed, welcoming, slightly sad – that thought resonates. The great elm is losing its leaves, and they decorate the ground beneath it, blazing gold against purple.
Three crisp, smooth trees stand in a slightly curving arc between the elm and the entrance gate, with maybe ten feet between each tree and the next. I think they are ailanthus trees although they don’t seem to give off the unpleasant odor I’ve read about them having. The canopies of these trees are interwoven with a tenacious vine of some kind with roughly heart-shaped leaves, perhaps an ivy.
Looking around this clearing at all of the trees, vines, grasses, stones, soil, flowers, the largely unseen birds and invisible insects, the task of identifying it all, describing it all, seems overwhelming, consuming. For the first time since I started coming here, I haven’t thought about why I chose to come to a cemetery – I didn’t even remember I was in a cemetery until it came time to leave my clearing.
After an intermittent drizzling rain for most of the day I was expecting the clearing to be different this week though I wasn’t sure how. But the most striking changes that greeted me when I entered the cemetery weren’t caused by the rain. The leaves have started to fall and the change seems so sudden, almost sad. Silly of me to think I’d come to know the place so well I could anticipate its changes. Maple leaves line the edges of the empty asphalt paths; some newly-fallen: three chartreuse veins against a mottled flame background; some damp and curled, uniform brown like a resilient paper bag. The air is wet and heavy and moisture rises from the grass like invisible steam, my body slicing shapes through it as I walk. Soggy grass clippings cover the hillsides and I breathe in the strong sweet smell of freshly cut grass.
The colors in the clearing are more varied and vibrant against the overcast background, the paper-white sky. A quintessential Pittsburgh sky that I’ve always appreciated for its effect on the colors. Rocks and pebbles lining the ground of the clearing are impossible lilac, coral, cobalt, turquoise, amber, sage. The leaves of the trees and vines and grasses are a million shades of green and yellow and orange and red. I take pictures but they don’t do anything justice.
There’s only so much a camera can do: record, reproduce, in a limited way. It cannot describe. Reading Ed Abbey’s book reminded me to just sit and describe, to meditate on the landscape – a continuation of last week’s task but with a different approach. In Landscape and Nature Lopez advises focusing on the landscape, rendering it authentically, and that will become the story; that is the story.Through attempting to render this place in words, I have realized the necessity of having a vocabulary in the natural world in order to describe it, in order to communicate it to other people – and that I lack that vocabulary. Becoming acquainted with the plants and animals and rocks that live here, not only their names but their histories and associations, with help to reveal the story of this clearing.
A great sprawling elm tree delineates one boundary of the clearing, reaching its long downward-curving branches out across the marble slab logs. According to Norse mythology, the first man was an ash tree and the first woman an elm. Looking at this elm tree – graceful, slender-limbed, welcoming, slightly sad – that thought resonates. The great elm is losing its leaves, and they decorate the ground beneath it, blazing gold against purple.Three crisp, smooth trees stand in a slightly curving arc between the elm and the entrance gate, with maybe ten feet between each tree and the next. I think they are ailanthus trees although they don’t seem to give off the unpleasant odor I’ve read about them having. The canopies of these trees are interwoven with a tenacious vine of some kind with roughly heart-shaped leaves, perhaps an ivy.
Looking around this clearing at all of the trees, vines, grasses, stones, soil, flowers, the largely unseen birds and invisible insects, the task of identifying it all, describing it all, seems overwhelming, consuming. For the first time since I started coming here, I haven’t thought about why I chose to come to a cemetery – I didn’t even remember I was in a cemetery until it came time to leave my clearing.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Response 2: A Weed by Any Other Definition
My favorite thing about A Weed by Any Other Name was its underlying spirit and its message, which urges people to reexamine the role and utility of weeds and reconsider their treatment of them, with emphasis on avoiding herbicide. I liked how Nancy Gift used stories from her own experience to bring the character of each weed to life and I feel that I gained a good deal of familiarity with many of the weeds. It may have been nice to have a stronger visual component in the book - since we're learning about uses and possible benefits of weeds we may as well learn to recognize them. This book piqued my curiosity about weeds and plants in my environment in general. If getting me interested in weeds was its mission then this book succeeded.
I think I was expecting this book to have more of a narrative, more like the nature writing I've read in the past, but this wasn’t the case. Within most chapters there were multiple movements in time and space with no overarching narrative thrust to tie everything together other than the topic of weeds and the parameters of the book's project. But it was a pleasant meditation on weeds and gardening and humans’ desire to control their environment. And I did get a sense of Gift's life, background and place of residence. Overall, this book was an interesting hybrid of several different genres: part nature journal, part cookbook, part weed-identification guide and even part environmental treatise. I may have enjoyed it more if one or more of these aspects had been chosen as the focus and developed further.
I've often questioned why certain plants are assigned the status of "weeds" and the answer I always came up with is that it's due to their superior strength, their ability to outgrow and outcompete other plants. Isn’t a critical aspect of the definition of a weed its tendency to overtake other plants within a given landscape? In her introduction, Gift writes, “The technical definition of a weed is a ‘plant out of place.’” This definition points to the fact that humans define the "proper place" for plants in the world, and weeds are whatever doesn't fit into that scheme. I kept thinking about this definition because it seems to leave out the idea that weeds are generally hardier and more aggressive than non-weeds; it seems to suggest that there is no intrinsic difference between weeds and non-weeds. Is this the case? I’m still not sure what I think about this issue.
Several years ago, I lived in a townhouse with a small square of soil out front that had room for a garden. I'd never had a garden before and set to work pulling out some incredibly tenacious weeds that were living there, the kind with interminable, deep roots, impossibly laced below the surface. It became somewhat of an obsession and I labored at it in my free time over the course of several weeks. Neighbors would inquire about my progress as they passed; friends would try to help when they visited; my mom brought over a cache of garden tools. At last the work was completed and I planted my garden, a butterfly bush and a few annuals. When I saw the weeds trying to come back I pulled them right out. In winter snow covered the little garden for weeks. And when it melted I saw that the weeds had returned, seemingly stronger than before. This time I let them stay, but I won't say I particularly liked them.
One weed that I love is the morning glory. Right now it's the only thing blooming in my seriously overgrown backyard. In my online research on the topic, I found that morning glories are a popular topic for haiku and here I will include two of my favorites.
From Shukyo, a death poem:
Above the fence
a morning glory stretches
still unsatisfied.
And from Basho:
The morning glory also
turns out
not to be my friend.
I think I was expecting this book to have more of a narrative, more like the nature writing I've read in the past, but this wasn’t the case. Within most chapters there were multiple movements in time and space with no overarching narrative thrust to tie everything together other than the topic of weeds and the parameters of the book's project. But it was a pleasant meditation on weeds and gardening and humans’ desire to control their environment. And I did get a sense of Gift's life, background and place of residence. Overall, this book was an interesting hybrid of several different genres: part nature journal, part cookbook, part weed-identification guide and even part environmental treatise. I may have enjoyed it more if one or more of these aspects had been chosen as the focus and developed further.
I've often questioned why certain plants are assigned the status of "weeds" and the answer I always came up with is that it's due to their superior strength, their ability to outgrow and outcompete other plants. Isn’t a critical aspect of the definition of a weed its tendency to overtake other plants within a given landscape? In her introduction, Gift writes, “The technical definition of a weed is a ‘plant out of place.’” This definition points to the fact that humans define the "proper place" for plants in the world, and weeds are whatever doesn't fit into that scheme. I kept thinking about this definition because it seems to leave out the idea that weeds are generally hardier and more aggressive than non-weeds; it seems to suggest that there is no intrinsic difference between weeds and non-weeds. Is this the case? I’m still not sure what I think about this issue.
Several years ago, I lived in a townhouse with a small square of soil out front that had room for a garden. I'd never had a garden before and set to work pulling out some incredibly tenacious weeds that were living there, the kind with interminable, deep roots, impossibly laced below the surface. It became somewhat of an obsession and I labored at it in my free time over the course of several weeks. Neighbors would inquire about my progress as they passed; friends would try to help when they visited; my mom brought over a cache of garden tools. At last the work was completed and I planted my garden, a butterfly bush and a few annuals. When I saw the weeds trying to come back I pulled them right out. In winter snow covered the little garden for weeks. And when it melted I saw that the weeds had returned, seemingly stronger than before. This time I let them stay, but I won't say I particularly liked them.
One weed that I love is the morning glory. Right now it's the only thing blooming in my seriously overgrown backyard. In my online research on the topic, I found that morning glories are a popular topic for haiku and here I will include two of my favorites.
From Shukyo, a death poem:
Above the fence
a morning glory stretches
still unsatisfied.
And from Basho:
The morning glory also
turns out
not to be my friend.
Place 2: Problematic Meditation
Tuesday September 15, 2009 11:35 am
As I walked into the cemetery today a funeral procession was leaving, the last cars straggling out. The clock struck eleven while I watched. The line of slow-driving cars provided a strange reminder of the cemetery's purpose - its active, continuing purpose. It's not that I didn't know people were still being buried here, it's just that somehow seeing a funeral hadn't entered my mind as a possibility when I planned this outing.
The walk to the clearing was shorter than I remembered and my first impression when I got here was that the dirt pile seemed to have moved, grown and possibly given rise to several new dirt piles. I'm not sure if this is true but I'll compare my pictures to some from last week. I'm wondering what kind of work takes place here. The piles of dirt seem to be divided into different colors.
One of my favorite plants here is a wild fuzzy grass growing around the periphery of the clearing. I think it's a kind of foxtail. It's soft to touch and calming to watch as it bobs up and down in the breeze.
A possible crow is calling "Caw! Caw!" again, but seems farther away this time. In general the birds are less noisy than before, their calls less frequent. Last time I was here near dusk, an active time for birds. I'm recording sounds of the clearing to upload to the blog and to aid in identification of birds and insects. I will also use the recordings to track changes in bird and insect sounds from week to week.
As I look for a place to sit down on the ground, I notice a large, flat rock, rusty-iridescent, right in the middle of the clearing. It's about the same size and shape as a meditation cushion and a foxtail is growing right next to it. I sit down.
I just got startled and jumped, felt like someone was peeking over my shoulder, but it’s just the fuzzy grass stalk, right behind me, tickling and casting a shadow. Its shadow bobs on the ground next to the shadow of my head. Hot out here, I feel my skin sweating, a thin film, and sun baking my hair. Sirens in the background.
I like looking around at ground level, there's a whole miniature landscape down here. I remember from Japan that this is part of what's behind zen gardens: the idea of scale.
It’s comfortable here on the ground with my meditation cushion, legs crossed in front of me. I’ve been studying Buddhist meditation for a while, but I'm a terrible meditator. The problem is I don’t do it, not on my own. Even in my weekly meditation group I struggle. I think about my shopping list and do all the other things that the Tibetan monk who leads us jokingly tells us not to do. And I laugh along with everyone else when he tells us that, as if it doesn’t apply to me.
Now the birds are noisier than when I came. I hear geese – the one sound I recognize. A car drives up, right into the clearing from the other side, the side that isn't fenced-off. It stops, turns around, and drives away. I feel uncomfortably exposed sitting on my rock and leave immediately.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Response 1: Honesty in Nature Writing
To an extent I begin this course like Joyce Carol Oates in Against Nature, with some skepticism about nature writing as a genre, as well as doubts about how I'll be able to write within it. I’ve read beautiful, moving works of nature writing, but, like Oates, I tend to get annoyed when what I read seems too reverent or idealized or contrived. I find it interesting that she refers to Thoreau’s work as fiction two times within her short essay. She calls Walden, “that most artfully composed of prose fictions,” and writes about her “resistance to ‘Nature-writing’ as a genre, except when it is brilliantly fictionalized in the service of a writer’s individual vision – Thoreau’s books and Journal, of course…”
The idea of Thoreau’s nonfiction nature writing as fiction, of his journal as fiction, leads me to consider the issue of honesty in nature writing, and several of this week’s readings address this point. I am particularly interested in the relationship between honesty and journaling - or in this case blogging, which is like a public journal, and contains all of the paradoxes inherent in that idea.
In The Journal, Murray writes, “Readers instinctively trust writers who are honest, as we see in the journal excerpts from both Hawthorne and Ehrlich.” But aren’t readers likely to perceive a journal excerpt as somehow inherently “honest”? Later Murray draws a contrast between Byrd’s “private journals” and his “more formal journals” that became a book. Especially in the case of writers’ journals, I often wonder how “private” they actually are – well-known writers must know their “private” journals run the risk of being published someday. But I suppose a better question is: Is a private journal inherently more honest than a public one? Perhaps the whole endeavor of writing for an audience has to assume that honesty is as possible in public forms of discourse as it is in private. In this class, I hope to explore ways to achieve deeper honesty in my writing, while at the same time respecting the parts of myself and my life which I am currently not comfortable with sharing. Up until now that has been the greatest challenge nonfiction – actually all writing, even my own private journal – has given me.
I like the way that Barry Lopez addresses honesty and truth in Landscape and Narrative. He notes, “In the aboriginal literature I am familiar with, the first distinction made among narratives is to separate the authentic from the inauthentic.” And he defines lying in this way: “For a storyteller to insist on relationships that do not exist is to lie. Lying is the opposite of story.” According to Lopez, to lie is to shape the landscape around us to suit our storytelling needs - and this is what Oates accuses Thoreau of doing. The way to achieve authenticity, Lopez writes, is to allow the landscape to tell its own story in our writing: “Because of the intricate, complex nature of the land, it is not always possible for a storyteller to grasp what is contained in a story. The intent of the storyteller, then, must be to evoke, honestly, some single aspect of all that the land contains.” As I write for this class, I will attempt to allow that principle to guide me.
Against Nature gave me some ideas as to how I might personally approach and connect with the natural world – by which I mean non-concrete outdoor spaces, I must define my terms carefully after reading Pattiann Rogers – in my own writing. The essay opened with Oates in a moment of acute awareness of her mortality – an attack of tachycardia. The relationship between fear (especially fear of death) and nature resonates with me, and I hope to explore it further. That is part of why I chose a writing place inside a cemetery where death can't be ignored – though neither can the abundance of life that inhabits it. On the way to and from “my” clearing the other day I saw deer and groundhogs and geese and turkeys and innumerable birds and plants I can’t yet name. I want to write against that backdrop of life and death, and I hope that if I can evoke an aspect of it honestly, like Lopez suggests, the result will be an authentic story.
The idea of Thoreau’s nonfiction nature writing as fiction, of his journal as fiction, leads me to consider the issue of honesty in nature writing, and several of this week’s readings address this point. I am particularly interested in the relationship between honesty and journaling - or in this case blogging, which is like a public journal, and contains all of the paradoxes inherent in that idea.
In The Journal, Murray writes, “Readers instinctively trust writers who are honest, as we see in the journal excerpts from both Hawthorne and Ehrlich.” But aren’t readers likely to perceive a journal excerpt as somehow inherently “honest”? Later Murray draws a contrast between Byrd’s “private journals” and his “more formal journals” that became a book. Especially in the case of writers’ journals, I often wonder how “private” they actually are – well-known writers must know their “private” journals run the risk of being published someday. But I suppose a better question is: Is a private journal inherently more honest than a public one? Perhaps the whole endeavor of writing for an audience has to assume that honesty is as possible in public forms of discourse as it is in private. In this class, I hope to explore ways to achieve deeper honesty in my writing, while at the same time respecting the parts of myself and my life which I am currently not comfortable with sharing. Up until now that has been the greatest challenge nonfiction – actually all writing, even my own private journal – has given me.
I like the way that Barry Lopez addresses honesty and truth in Landscape and Narrative. He notes, “In the aboriginal literature I am familiar with, the first distinction made among narratives is to separate the authentic from the inauthentic.” And he defines lying in this way: “For a storyteller to insist on relationships that do not exist is to lie. Lying is the opposite of story.” According to Lopez, to lie is to shape the landscape around us to suit our storytelling needs - and this is what Oates accuses Thoreau of doing. The way to achieve authenticity, Lopez writes, is to allow the landscape to tell its own story in our writing: “Because of the intricate, complex nature of the land, it is not always possible for a storyteller to grasp what is contained in a story. The intent of the storyteller, then, must be to evoke, honestly, some single aspect of all that the land contains.” As I write for this class, I will attempt to allow that principle to guide me.
Against Nature gave me some ideas as to how I might personally approach and connect with the natural world – by which I mean non-concrete outdoor spaces, I must define my terms carefully after reading Pattiann Rogers – in my own writing. The essay opened with Oates in a moment of acute awareness of her mortality – an attack of tachycardia. The relationship between fear (especially fear of death) and nature resonates with me, and I hope to explore it further. That is part of why I chose a writing place inside a cemetery where death can't be ignored – though neither can the abundance of life that inhabits it. On the way to and from “my” clearing the other day I saw deer and groundhogs and geese and turkeys and innumerable birds and plants I can’t yet name. I want to write against that backdrop of life and death, and I hope that if I can evoke an aspect of it honestly, like Lopez suggests, the result will be an authentic story.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Place 1: Not-logs and Underbrush
Sunday September 6, 2009 6:15pm
I’ve chosen a place inside the Allegheny Cemetery in Bloomfield: a clearing beyond a gate meant to keep out cars. A “No Dumping” sign stands next to the gate. Some of Pittsburgh's most prominent families are buried in this cemetery, and directions to the no-dumping ground read like directions to get around the city: hang a right at Negley, keep going a few minutes past Hobart. But here Negley is General James Scott Negley, dignified in mute relief carving, and Hobart is a stark white cube near a thicket.
This clearing drew me in because in all my visits to this cemetery I never noticed it - and because it seemed off-limits. The grass has been cleared away and the ground consists of light brown dirt and stones and pebbles of various sizes. There isn’t anywhere terribly comfortable to sit down, no bench or soft grass, so I sit in the dirt, in the middle of the clearing. Fuzzy grasses grow around the edges, and so many trees. I arrive to find three wild turkeys grazing. As I enter the clearing they slowly pick their way away from me, over chopped logs and through foliage, delicately disappearing, as if by accident, as if to pretend that their exit is merely coincidence.
I hear a bird call overhead, perhaps a crow. I want to learn the different bird calls and insect hums. The turkeys rustle the leaves. They are hidden behind me and I can hear but not see them. A big heap of dirt is piled on one side of the clearing.
I hear the faint whoosh of traffic in the background, church bells, bird calls, the traffic almost indistinguishable from the sound of wind through trees, the perpetual urban generators melding with the song of crickets and birds.
Plane trails streak the sky, ramshackle crisscrosses, the far ends of the trails tapering and compact, the near ends expanding into loose linear fuzz. Strange how our mark is even on the skies: wordless skywriting. The sky is pale blue with a hazy thin layer of clouds. The sun has begun to sink in the western sky.
I stand up from the dusty pebbled ground and walk the perimeter of the clearing. Now part of the mystery of this place reveals itself – the pile that I thought from a distance was squared-off logs, chopped neatly and stacked like firewood, is actually a pile of pinked marble, maybe discards from gravesites… or stone for markers to be cut from. It must be stone for future markers. It’s a morbid surprise that the logs are gravestones waiting for their dead. I don’t like that thought and feel nearly tearful as I approach the rectangular stacks, pick over them with my eyes the way the turkeys did with their beaks.
I’ve chosen a place inside the Allegheny Cemetery in Bloomfield: a clearing beyond a gate meant to keep out cars. A “No Dumping” sign stands next to the gate. Some of Pittsburgh's most prominent families are buried in this cemetery, and directions to the no-dumping ground read like directions to get around the city: hang a right at Negley, keep going a few minutes past Hobart. But here Negley is General James Scott Negley, dignified in mute relief carving, and Hobart is a stark white cube near a thicket.
This clearing drew me in because in all my visits to this cemetery I never noticed it - and because it seemed off-limits. The grass has been cleared away and the ground consists of light brown dirt and stones and pebbles of various sizes. There isn’t anywhere terribly comfortable to sit down, no bench or soft grass, so I sit in the dirt, in the middle of the clearing. Fuzzy grasses grow around the edges, and so many trees. I arrive to find three wild turkeys grazing. As I enter the clearing they slowly pick their way away from me, over chopped logs and through foliage, delicately disappearing, as if by accident, as if to pretend that their exit is merely coincidence.
I hear a bird call overhead, perhaps a crow. I want to learn the different bird calls and insect hums. The turkeys rustle the leaves. They are hidden behind me and I can hear but not see them. A big heap of dirt is piled on one side of the clearing.
I hear the faint whoosh of traffic in the background, church bells, bird calls, the traffic almost indistinguishable from the sound of wind through trees, the perpetual urban generators melding with the song of crickets and birds.Plane trails streak the sky, ramshackle crisscrosses, the far ends of the trails tapering and compact, the near ends expanding into loose linear fuzz. Strange how our mark is even on the skies: wordless skywriting. The sky is pale blue with a hazy thin layer of clouds. The sun has begun to sink in the western sky.
I stand up from the dusty pebbled ground and walk the perimeter of the clearing. Now part of the mystery of this place reveals itself – the pile that I thought from a distance was squared-off logs, chopped neatly and stacked like firewood, is actually a pile of pinked marble, maybe discards from gravesites… or stone for markers to be cut from. It must be stone for future markers. It’s a morbid surprise that the logs are gravestones waiting for their dead. I don’t like that thought and feel nearly tearful as I approach the rectangular stacks, pick over them with my eyes the way the turkeys did with their beaks.
I turn back to the clearing and the large heap of dirt. Is this dirt for filling graves? Is this dirt taken out of the graves to make room for what goes in? Behind the dirt heap, a precipice leads down a ragged graveless hillside, so dark at the bottom.
I sneeze, and for a moment the bird cries, which had become constant, stop. Now only the layered buzz of twilight insects. Without the birds it seems empty and too quiet. Past the piles of marble slabs, leafy vines have grown over the ragged underbrush creating a green-roofed dwelling dark with a thousand eyes.
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