On Sustaining

life like a musical note, held by a fermata

Facing upward, toward the white ceiling with a large and indelicate crack that looks somewhat like a dinosaur with a very long head, is an anemone in a vase in my office. It’s already dying, the petals withering in apology. I’m sorry I couldn’t stay forever. I’m sorry you have to watch me fall apart. I’m doing my best to keep it together, but I can only sustain it for so long.

I concluded that the recurring theme in my fiction is this: people who love fiercely, do their best, and fail spectacularly regardless. I’m fascinated by the way humans try and fail, and what happens when that trying is poisonous or wrong-headed or simply not enough. It’s in The Border of Paradise (aff), and a forthcoming short story (update later!), and the novel I’m currently editing that will hopefully come out before the end times.

I’ve been reading Iris Murdoch’s The Bell (aff) because I’m heading to Minneapolis on Monday to attend a weeklong generative class that Garth Greenwell is teaching, “Writing with the Mystics.” The students were chosen via application; we don’t have to pay tuition, and we have lodging, meals, and some travel paid gratis. In reading The Bell, I find myself stopping to read assorted sentences from the book to C, because the book is unexpectedly hilarious. Murdoch enjoys describing how characters look (something that I find curiously absent in most contemporary literary fiction). So far, we’ve met someone with “long and large eyes,” which I can only picture as a person with a head like a flounder. Sincerely, though—what do long and large eyes look like? Another person has a “large round head,” which I imagine as a large circle with features stamped near the bottom. I anticipate more descriptions of people’s looks as the novel progresses.

Novel-reading takes up a sliver of my day. Right now, the days are chaotic; C has had to go to the ER twice this week because of obnoxious and painful feeding tube issues, and I make phone calls and attend medical appointments when C asks me to come with. Our home is also chaotic. We’ve meant to organize and sort out our cozy little domicile for years, but other things have always been in the way. He finally initiated the project (he’s on summer break, as he teaches at a high school), and it means things are both starting to look amazing, and the rest is a mess. It’s in an in-between place, and the in-between place is the messiness.

But here’s the wonderful thing: this week C and I rearranged things in my office so that my new cabriole desk could fit in the sunny corner, with windows on both sides. It’s already changing my work-life. The desk is so spacious that I can include all of the beautiful, useful things I need to get to work. I need to get to work. Did you know that I covered the decal I put on the wall that says BE PRODUCTIVE with a Miffy clock? I did. Eyes up; let’s go.

P.S. I’d really love it if you’d consider subscribing to REASONS FOR LIVING. It’s a space where I put the sparkling coal rattling around in my head; the paid subscribers get additional articles, occasional Fireside Chats via Zoom, and a whole library of workbooks, desktop wallpapers, and many other things I made for you. See you soon.