Notes From The Writing Life

Here at the VCCA, a pattern has evolved. Mornings, when at home, I write; here I read history, memoir, essays. I particularly like the voice of Phillip Lopate in my head before I write whether he's writing about his childhood in Brooklyn or Stendhal. I've also grown fond of the voice of Joachim Fest in his memoir about his father, Not I, Memoirs of a German Childhood. For the sheer detail of the end of that War, I'm reading Year Zero: A History of 1945 by Ian Buruma.  

And so I read. I scribble notes. I take an essay I'm working on, read aloud, telling myself I will read to the end, then mark it. I can't get farther than three pages before I'm revising, thinking, marking. When I can't follow my own script, I go to my computer. And so it goes, the dance of writing which is so much more than writing. I write when I walk, write when I sleep, waking at three in the morning, turning on my light, scribbling thoughts, then falling down into sleep again. Back in my study the next day or days later, when finally, I can force myself to read that essay to the end, I know I have a viable draft.

Twenty-four/ seven, total immersion. 

Notes From The Writing Life

At the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, walking to dinner, talking with my husband on the phone, I listen as he tells me of a visit with his sister and brother in law. A friend called inviting them all over to see her new TV. It's huge, of course, and 3D. "You wear these glasses," my husband says. 

And on the path, passing a gazebo, a flower bed where violets bloom, a stone statue of a cherub, a hedge of fragrant boxwood, I see them all, three overweight, old people with white hair or no hair, slumping on a couch or in chairs, all wearing those ridiculous glasses and watching. 

"Oh, please," I say.

At dinner that evening with artists, writers and composers, our talk turns to our second discipline. If we have one, what would it be? Or if we don't what would we like it to be? For example, if you are a writer, would your second discipline be art or music? Do you tend to be more visual or musical in your prose or your poetry? And what of the artists and musicians? What would they choose?

An artist, a colorist, among us, says she's working with the color red. She wants to find true reds, not purple reds, not orange reds. She wants to open her studio, display her reds and ask everyone who visits to tell her what emotion they experience seeing each version of the color red. She wants her red to evoke feeling. 

I understand. Feeling, connection, empathy, compassion are the road to what is best in each of us, and no matter how idealistic, elusive or foolish that may sound, this what we work toward-- for ourselves and for you. 

Notes From The Writing Life

This afternoon, I visited artist Katherine Kadish in her studio. On a wall, a large painting made of smaller paintings, each one a two foot square-- nine in all. Katherine is known for her use of color, something that has become even more important as her eyesight wains. I love Katherine's references to the natural world, vines, twigs, petals. Katherine explained that each painting worked independently; yet, all nine formed a whole. I couldn't believe what she was telling me, couldn't believe our work was converging like this. I blurted. "That's exactly what I'm doing."

But I couldn't have articulated that until that moment.

Katherine pulled out two chairs. "Tell me, more."

I spoke of my essays, each part travel, part history, part memoir, and each one written to stand alone. Yet, I was understanding that each essay was part of a larger whole. I'd thought in terms of traditional narrative, looking for an arc. But somehow I knew that wasn't right. Now, I knew I wanted a book that would work as Katherine's nine squares worked, individual squares speaking to one another, and at the same time, forming a whole. The essays are related through repetition of characters, time, place and theme. They will flow as Katherine's vines and twigs flow, as the thoughts inside our heads flow, as art and writing flow inside the same stream.

Notes From the Writing Life

My blog resurfaces, here at the the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA). It's taking a new form-- less formal, more like musings. For the month I'm in residence, I will post notes from the writing life. 

I have spent the last two days letting the well fill up. The well. A reference from Virginia Woolf. I suppose she meant letting the subconscious seep into consciousness. For me the well is both internal and external. Yes, the subconscious along with every cell in my body. The well fills as I sit in my studio staring out a window at the red soil, the metal roof of a wooden barn, two horses in a pasture, fills as I read, essays by Phillip Lopate, fills as I read The History of Anti-Semitism, Volume 3 by Léon Poliakov, a French historian who died in 1997. I've been interviewing Germaine, his widow, now 95, and Aline, his step-daughter, a woman about my age. When I arrived here, I thought I was writing a love story about Léon and Germaine. Now, I think I'm writing about Jewish identity. Soon, I hope, the work will let me know. In the meantime, I'm filling the well, thinking, writing notes, words, phrases--and I'm staring out that window letting myself feel the fullness of emptyness. 

Thank You VCCA

End of the year, a good year writing and publishing, “Hiding,” published in Ascent, named a notable essay in Best American Essays of 2013, “Hidden Messages,” published in Stone Voices, “The Groves,” published in Calyx, “Pilgrimage,” published in Ploughshares. And none would have been possible without the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts where I worked on every one of these essays. And my latest body or work, essays about Jews, Vichy France and the Second World War all began at Moulin a Nef, VCCA, France. In 2011 during a residency at Moulin a Nef, I was looking for new work, and I found it in the quiet village of Auvillar and beyond, in Beaulieu Sur Dordogne, in Paris, researching, interviewing, writing.

            So thank you, VCCA for the time, the space, the magic of Mount Saint Angelo, of Moulin a Nef, all made possible by a dedicated staff and the generosity of those who love and support the arts. http://www.vcca.com/main/index.php

Happy New Year.

"Hidden Messages" in Stone Voices

The winter issue of Stone Voices, published by Shanti Arts is available to order both in print and on line. Stone Voices explores the strong connections between art and spirituality. You will find beautiful visual art and fine poetry and prose in these pages. I am so proud to have my essay, “Hidden Messages” in this winter’s issue. “Hidden Messages” is about a nine year old boy who was a courier for the Resistance during the Second World War and about Auvillar, a village in south west France, that still, today, mostly hides its Second World War history. I was particularly drawn to this boy’s story because we share the same family name: Hirsch. And our families both came from the Alsace in France. Were we related? Probably not. Still, I was fascinated. I pursued his story along the story of Jews in Auvillar. And as always, I punctuated my text with my own story, an American Jew growing up in the shadow of what became known as the Holocaust.

Preview the Winter issue here: http://www.stonevoices.co/uploads/files/SV10_WIN13_PREVIEW.html

Purchase here: http://www.stonevoices.co/uploads/files/SV10_WIN13_PURCHASE.html

For digital: http://www.ownzones.com/directory#

Coffee

Atlantic Center for the Arts. New Smyrna Beach, Florida. Rain poured in sheets. The Commons, the stove, my coffee seemed miles away. Outside, wearing a raincoat, flip flops, carrying a purse over my shoulder, holding tightly to the handle of my red umbrella, I sloshed through unavoidable puddles, then along wooden walkways, up a ramp. Inside the Commons, I boiled water, pressed espresso roast coffee through a filter, then walked back to my room, coat damp, hems of my capris soaked. Holding my coffee mug in my right hand, I figured I'd walk through a hurricane for a mug of strong black coffee. Time curved back, and she was, here, matching my stride, my mother dead these last eleven years, talking in that easy way we had with one another, “Do you remember when I did?”

            And I saw her short torso bent at the waist, shoulders thrusting forward, her salt and pepper hair, a wild halo around her head. She'd closed her fist around the black handle of a metal percolator. The pot had a glass ball at the top where coffee would bubble up, then drip through a metal filter. I used to love watching that glass ball, filling with coffee, the color turning from tan to nearly black. That’s when Mom would turn off the gas burner.

Gas burner, that was the problem the day Mom walked out into the eye of the storm. The year was 1947. I was eight. We’d gone to a friend’s house on higher ground for safety, a house with hurricane shutters. Dad had just bought the Lingerlong Hotel in Hollywood, Florida, a two story rectangular building with about thirty rooms. To buy the place, he’d taken out two mortgages. Little did he know that without hurricane insurance, the storm would ruin him. We three, Mom, Dad and I lived in an apartment in the back, two bedrooms, a kitchen and a gas stove. The storm had taken down utility poles and left wires snaking in streets and on lawns. No electricity. That stove was Mom’s ticket to a cup of coffee. She walked out into the eye of the storm, then, triumphantly, hurried back, fronds of palm trees already swaying, rain falling. Inside, she set the coffee pot down onto a hot pad, filling the kitchen with the aroma of fresh brewed coffee.

Take me to a Starbucks once, I’ll find the store for you again. I have a homing instinct for coffee, and Starbucks brews an espresso that meets my taste. You can go on about bitterness, about the way the company has pushed the small vendor aside, and I do have great sympathy for that. When I can, I frequent independent coffee shops and buy books at independent stores. But, let’s face it, I often succumb to convenience, ease and consistency. Consistency. I mulled the word and its synonyms, stability, equilibrium. That was Mom, comforting me after Dad raged and called me, stupid, said I was rotten and no good. Later, Mom would hold me close, tell me my father didn’t mean what he’d said. For years, I couldn’t see her complicity, the way her words, gave Dad permission to keep on raging, keep on yelling, keep on making me feel smaller and smaller. Still, I took comfort in her body, touch healing as my ghostly mother walked beside me in the rain, all these years later, Mom, holding the handle of a metal percolator, me clutching my travel mug.