Pay Attention to the Weather
On a grubby post it note, clinging grimly to my computer, is a sentence I’ve scrawled from an essay I read in 2019 when we were in the middle of a hideous drought.
Pay attention to the weather, to what breaks your heart, to what lifts your heart. Write it down.
It’s a line from American writer Ellen Meloy and I can’t remember how I came across her. I ordered her book Seasons: Desert Sketches with a foreword written by no less a fan than Annie Proulx. It was a slim volume of essays, transcriptions from audio essays Meloy made with a local Utah radio station in the 1990s. I read it in a single sitting and Meloy took me from this cool southern world straight to her red rock desert country, empty of water and full of highway signs. The fact we were empty of water, becoming a desert, made her words all the more urgent to me.
Ellen Meloy died in 2004, in her sleep, beside her husband. She was 58. That’s too young. Her line is at the heart of my next book. But it’s also at the heart of me.
I keep a journal of what I’m reading and thinking about. It’s fat and messy. When I flick back to find the notes I wrote on Meloy, I notice only a few pages on is a long quote I’ve transcribed by another American writer, the poet Ross Gay. The entry is also about wilderness, but Gay is no Snake River rafter. He’s an urbane man whose poet soul is fed by his love of gardens (his essay on carrying a tomato plant onto a plane is aspirational). His wilderness is that of the soul.
In The Book of Delights Gay challenges himself to write an essayette each day for a year about something that delights him. Honestly people, there could not be a more perfect book for anyone in lockdown now. But the thing that caught my attention was a story he told about one of his students talking about about her teaching philosophy. She said to him “What if we joined our wildernesses together?”
Gay writes: Sit with that a minute. That the body, the life, might carry a wilderness, an unexplored territory, and that yours and mine might somewhere, somehow, meet. Might, even, join.
And what if the wilderness - perhaps the densest wild in there - thickets, bogs, swamps, un-crossable ravines, and rivers (have I made my metaphor clear?) - is our sorrow? …It astonishes me sometimes - no, often- how every person I get to know - everyone, regardless of everything, by which I mean everything - lives with some profound personal sorrow. Brother addicted. Mother murdered. Dad died in surgery. Rejected by their family. Cancer came back. Evicted. Foetus not okay. Everyone, regardless, always, of everything. Not to mention the existential sorrow we all might be afflicted with, which is that we, and what we love, will soon be annihilated. Which sounds more dramatic than it might. Let me just say dead. Is this, sorrow, of which our impending being no more might be the foundation, the great wilderness?
Is sorrow the true wild?
And if it is - and if we join them - your wild to mine - what’s that?
For joining, too, is a kind of annihilation.
What if we joined our sorrow, I’m saying.
I’m saying: What if that is joy?
In my journal I have scrawled “Is joy sorrow shared?”
Do I need to apologise for taking this newsletter so deep? I didn’t mean too, but there are 13 million people in Australia in lockdown right now. I have never felt so privileged.
This last weekend J and I woke up on Saturday morning. We looked at the state of house (woeful). We looked at the state of the garden (terribly woeful). We looked at each other and said -wanna go to the shack? And so we did. We left the corgi hair gently sighing like a high tide on the courtyard floor. We left the roses unpruned. The grass wild and wispy. We have lambing on the horizon. It will soon be intense here. But now, we have a window.
When we arrived at the shack there was no one on the bay save for a lonely egret. He was a Great Egret Ardea alba. The largest of the egrets. He was wearing his very crispest whites. He was surprised to see us. Our dogs piled out. Cocked legs, lifted noses to scent all that had been here. And the bird uttered a croak and took off, the great flap of him, his neck stretched in and out. I watched him. He was in his breeding colours. His golden beak a siren call.
We made a bed. We made a fire. The shack glowed. J watched the football. I put my ear phones on and listened to a concert of Bach played on the cello by a dear friend in her lounge room instead of a concert hall. As she played I picked at the strands of my manuscript. I was searching for the threads to draw the work together that started around Ellen Meloy’s instruction. Pay attention to the weather. To what breaks your heart. To what lifts your heart. Write it down.
In the morning, in the spill of light, I watched the white bird stalk a fish. He raised one dark leg and placed it without a splash in the still water. He tensed, then stabbed his yellow beak. I grew stiff watching him through the telescope. He’s 50 metres away, but, in the scope I can see beads of shining water, like jewels encrusting his feathers.
We disturb his solitude. I look him up. Habits: usually solitary. Often wades in deep water, freezing motionless at intervals while waiting for prey. Well yes, I think, that’s accurate. Then it says he is almost cosmopolitan. An uncommon but regular autumn-winter visitor to Tasmania.
When a bird is described as cosmopolitan it means they can be found anywhere, you know like a human. I love that in Tasmania the Great Egret is only almost cosmopolitan. So it’s not really everywhere. In fact, to watch this bird, on this quiet bay in the north east of Tasmania, is a gift.
I walk to the edge of the bay and bow to the bird. I wish it well. I do not want to draw too long an arrow here, but I think of my brothers in lockdown in Sydney. I think of them in their isolation amongst all the other people in isolation. The bird picks its way across the bay, its beak is yellow, a signal it’s ready to meet another Great Egret and make baby Egrets, but its concentration on the still water of the bay says something louder to me. It says acceptance.
The pacing bird, its feathers white against the dark water, lifts my heart. Ellen Meloy, who died in her sleep, says pay attention. And so I do. I watch the light seep over the bay in the morning. I sweep the floor of the shack. I tamp down the fire. I wipe the benches and pack the car. We drive back down the coast.
When we get home I see the new growth on the unpruned roses. I see the buds swelling on the fruit trees. Inside the laundry is full. The court yard needs sweeping and mopping. But it doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter.
Reading
This essay written by historian Tom Griffiths on the artist Mandy Martin. It’s an amazing obituary, but it’s also so much more. It’s a call to arms on the power of art to find the paths of reconciliation and recognition. Also, she used her ironing board as an easel. Enough said.
This week I’ve been reading Louise Erdrich’s latest novel, The Night Watchman. Erdrich is one of my favourite writers and this novel is just as superior as all her others. She is the goddess of the omniscient narrator. If you haven’t read her, you are in for a treat. Doesn’t matter which one you start with. They are all brilliant, though La Rose will never leave me.
Listening
So there’s this conversation with the poet Ross Gay that sent me on a deep dive into his work.
I listened to an episode of the podcast Heavyweight a couple of weeks ago while I was cleaning the cottage for airbnd guests a week or so ago when we still had ‘mainlanders’ down here. It’s called the Sharing Place and it was a republishing of a story for This American Life on a space set up for children who were in grief. I started listening as I cleaned the shower. The story and the premise of the place took my breath away. I wished there had been such a place I could have taken my kids. I pop this in here with a warning. It’s a full on listen, but it has stayed with me.
Writing
Section 3 of the manuscript that started with Ellen Meloy’s quote is DONE. One more section to rewrite…it’s a biggy. I have a starting point and some words…I’m giving myself 2 weeks. Stay tuned, I think that is light I can see at the end of a very long tunnel.
I’ve got an article out in September Country Style magazine on visitors books. It’s about more than a ‘visitor’s book’. It about how sometimes life doesn’t unfurl the way you expect. It’s about the fact that this is okay.
Issue 3 of the gorgeous magazine Galah is out now too. I’ve got an article in there on the chef Analiese Gregory. This week I’m packing my notebook and heading off to interview an artist for issue 4 of Galah. I’ll keep you posted.
If you’ve enjoyed thus random collection of thoughts, please tell your friends.
This edition is a free for everyone. But shortly I’ll be going dark and posting updates only for those who are willing to cough up a massive 5 bucks a month.
If this is not you, then never fear, you can have less of me. I’ll be with you once a month for anyone who doesn’t have the dollars - and no judgement -I get it.