Drew Myron's Blog, page 17

Distractions & Attractions

Oh, the restless mind! For months my focus has darted and dived — yours too? — but I recently stumbled across these excellent distractions and attractions. As usual, books and film lift & move me.

BOOKS:

The Hare by Melanie Finn
A taut and intoxicating tale of bad decisions and precarious moments that make a life, with a claustrophobic Joyce Carol Oates-esque feel.

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger
A slow and gentle novel with poignant beauty. (Starts slow — stick with it!) 

Just Us: An American Conversation by Claudia Rankine
This dense and stirring collection of conversational essays, fragments, poems and images (along with a running litany of fact-checked notes and comments) is a deep dive into the racism, privilege, and prejudice that beats beneath every surface. 

See also: Citizen: An American Lyric and Don't Let Me Be Lonely.

MOVIES / TELEVISION:

Lupin
A French mystery mind-twister, with sharp writing and quick action. The first season, available on Netflix, consists of 10 episodes. A second season is in the works.

Call My Agent!
In this rompy French series (I’ve listed two great French show, by pure coincidence), Parisian talent agents struggle to keep their famous clients happy and their business afloat. Now in its fourth and final season, this drama-comedy is fun relief.  

Imposters
A mad-dash addictive series with millenial humor, mystery & twists. Originally on Bravo, now on Netflix. 

Books, films, poems, art — what’s moving you?

 

 

You Haven't Aged A Bit

Thirteen, photo by drew myron

A baker's dozen.

Friday the 13th.

Glasses, pimples, puberty.

Nancy Drew Mystery Series 13: The Mystery of the Ivory Charm.

Thirteen is Bonne Bell Lip Smackers, Brooke Shields, and a swipe of blush. 

Thirteen is shag carpet in a wood-paneled basement, casting nervous glances while playing spin-the-bottle.

Don't you sometimes — in your deepest hidden self — still feel the queasy roil of thirteen?   

Established in 2008, this blog is now 13. Happy birthday! Oh, the agony and joy of turning a teen.

“And so, let’s go,” I wrote in my first post so many years ago, “not with the thunder of the self-absorbed, but in the same way a single word, spoken softly, carries great weight.” 

Still holds true. The more things change, the more they don’t.

Thanks for aging with me. 

I'm happy you're here.

Types of Clarity

Types of Clarity

 1.

Winter nights, deep and still 

a well of darkness opaque 

as every unanswered call

 

2. 
Unexpected sun in mid winter 

freeze, I turn against cold, 

against wind, face to sun: 

                                                      fill me

 

3. From winter's grim march

this blazing blue sky is a

grace I want to deserve

— Drew Myron

Hello Reader,

A sort of numb getting-through has taken over. One step, another step, press on, press on . . .

You too?

At this point, it seems we’re all hunkered down, pulling the weight of every individual and collective worry. The days are beyond heavy.

A friend is sick, a parent dies, a job lost, storms rage, depression grows. Even if covid has not touched your life directly — and I hope that’s true for you but know it’s not the case for many — the virus has intensified the grief, depriving us of the tiny things, like holding hands and gathering together, that help process pain.

How to keep on?

I had to pull off of the road and cry, a friend says, and in the telling I feel her sobs, exhaustion at the core of caring.

You have to search for beauty, says Austin Kleon.

Keep walking, says Annabel Abbs in this beautiful essay, The Body On Grief

Yesterday, a blue sky opened vivid and true. I turned to the sun and for a moment I finally felt a calm. And then wrote a few lines. It’s not a great photo, not a great poem. But it doesn’t matter. I’m making. Writing it out and getting through, one line at a time, this is how I’m keeping on.

How about you?

Hitting the Wall

As Winter Wears On 

As winter wears on

what fate deals you 

is a window of noticing 

fogged by the familiar 

 

like a storm of worry that 

becomes its own weather, this

season is a betrayal that stays. 

 

So much is hard to know for sure: 

how to have a conversation 

how to listen for the cloud lifting

how to wake and walk and keep on.

 

Let us be faithful, you say. 

Don't draw the shade. Instead

live hungry for hope's dim glow.

 

I say, let us measure our wounds,

the shape of this ruthless subtraction.

We want a reason to trust in better days.

 

Maybe there’s power in refusal

or reckoning and release, in counting 

questions that never deliver the 

who what or how long

 

Maybe what fate deals you  

is a life of winters in a single day 

and the biggest decision is 

to trust or turn, or to simply 

 

and most painfully, 

most importantly

put on a coat and 

watch it go.  

 

— Drew Myron

 

 1. 
“a window  . . “ line is borrowed from Tom Vanderbilt, author of Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning, who wrote "a window of noticing fogged by familiarity” published in The Art of Noticing Newsletter.

2.
“ruthless subtraction” is a phrase borrowed from astrologer Holiday Mathis’ Pisces horoscope for January 15, 2021.

3.
I have “hit the pandemic wall,” described in The Washington Post as a “sudden feeling of spiritual and emotional exhaustion with life during covid times.”

“The pandemic wall pops up at different times for different people, but for a vast group of people, the wall has smacked them in the face within the past three weeks. . . . ‘This fear of being around one another — that that fear is not going to go away in eight months,’ he says. The realization made him pull over and start to cry. ‘Those people who I was trying to console and keep upbeat — now it’s official, I’m one of those people.’ ”

 

 

Bookish: Art In An Emergency

When the going gets tough, we need more art — and books, and books about art.

Funny Weather: Art In An Emergency is a essay collection by art critic & culture writer Olivia Laing. Art is a source of clarity, resistance, and repair, she says, then offers sweeping examples for our salvation. She offers profiles of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Georgia O'Keeffe, explores Maggie Nelson, Sally Rooney, David Bowie, Freddie Mercury, and explores loneliness, technology, women, alcohol, sex and more.

In evocative language that sweeps across decades, Funny Weather shines a light on the lives of artists in insightful nuggets like this:

“Elegance shares a border with crankiness, independence with selfishness, and O’Keeffe was by no means a saint.”

And this:

“Here’s another kind of art I like: the anonymous, the cobbled together, the hand-me-down, the postscript; collaborations between strangers that marry jubilantly, that don’t quite fit.”

Art doesn't just happen to us, she says.

“It's work. What art does is provide material with which to think: new registers; new spaces. After that, friend, it's up to you.”

Go here to read a great INTERVIEW with Olivia Laing.

Bookish is an occasional feature to share books that hold my attention and my heart.

Practice, not precious

Way back when the pandemic began, I joined a writing group. Every week by email the host would send a prompt to an assortment of writers, of whom I knew just one. A few days later, we’d share our work like offerings, then follow up with private notes of encouragement: I like this line or good job.

The responses were simple, easy and kind. I needed this nudge to write, and more than I’d like to admit, I needed the accolade. It felt good.

It felt needy to need but, if I’m out loud and honest, it mostly felt good.

* * *

Most of my friends have a writing group they lean on for encouragement and support. But I’ve always been a loner, not a joiner. I often lead and this was the first group I had no obligation to run or guide. Less pressure, more play.

Thanks to this somewhat anonymous and pressure-less routine, last year I wrote more than I have in years. The more I wrote the more I had to write. It was a faucet I didn’t want to turn off.

But as the summer wore on the world turned more and more grim, and we shared less and less. We were worn down with life. Weary, we took the break we all needed.

* * *

But like a run you skip just one day, and then another, I wrote less and less. I got rusty. I resented my blank pages, my dull mind, this idling blog. I grew mad at myself: what’s wrong with you? can’t you do anything? you’re so lazy!

This is normal. Writers go fallow. We need rest and restoration. But each time I hit a dry spell, my creative life feels terminal: I will never write again, I say, falling to the couch in a dramatic heap.

Of course, I always rally, I write. Life takes on a brighter hue.

* * *

Today, our writing group resumed. And I’m happy to have a structure that urges me to the page again.

But more importantly, I’m remembering — for the zillionth time, it seems — that writing is practice, not precious. My best work, and my most creative and happy self, is found through trying and messing and feeling through, without expectation or plan.

I gotta stay in the play, not in the product.

* * *

Writer-artist Austin Kleon, who modernized the erasure form with his black out poetry, blogs daily, not because he has so much to say but because “blogging is about discovering what I have to say.”

“I had no idea,” he writes, “how badly my writing muscles had atrophied. After a couple of weeks, I could feel the sentences coming easier. . . . Something small every day leads to something big.”

* * *

I’ve had seasons of daily pages, and seasons of not writing at all.

But I am reminded now of my favorite season, when I write with fever and share with abandon, when everything feels alive and abundant. I want to go back — or, rather, forward — with a loose grip.

Write more, write better, write now.

I want to bumble and flub, to kick off the rust and oil the gears. I want to write the odd phrase, the awkward break, share the almost-there line, the not-quite poem. Not to preen and gleam but to build muscle, to let go of the precious line and sacred space so that I can return again to the power and flow of making.

Years ago my first and favorite teacher, Judyth Hill, told me: Writing needs air!

Yes, yes! It needs to crackle and spit, to fire and flash. Let us not hold our poems too close, our words too dear, but instead share wildly and with great cheer.

Are you with me? Let’s go!

(Trying To) Pay Attention

Shifted, an erasure poem by Drew Myron

Dear Reader,
Not a letter, or poem, not even email. I have not written.

Not because there is nothing to say but because there is too much. 

I’m still here. And you?

1.
Silence is not the absence of something but the presence of everything, says Gordon Hempton. 

2.
I'm trying to pay attention. But the world is too much and my mind too heavy. This constant darting, this fatigue. You feel it too? 

I want to know know know but when I know it's not enough. I crave more details, more nuance, more information. Feed me, more more more. It's addictive, corrosive, wearing. 

3.
Full sentences are too much. The mind files only nuggets, lines, bits. I sift for words and meaning, for sense. I stand at watch, seeing chaos and rubble, seeing nothing, nothing, everything. 

4.
Teach us to care and not to care.
Teach us to sit still. 

— Ash Wednesday by T.S. Eliot

5.
Phrases we never want to hear again:

Now, more than ever. . .

In this challenging time . . .

Unprecedented.

6.
This is not sadness. Not depression. Aren’t we all just so full?

Not sated. Not glowing with plentitude. The other full: flooded.

7.
The moment of change is the only poem, wrote Adrienne Rich.

The poem is in us, in action and rest, rising, forming, in this very moment, in our every now. What is your poem?

8.
How to get through?

Keep reading, writing, walking, thinking, reaching.

Keep awake.

Keep trying.

Keep going.

You, yes you, keep on.

 

On Seeing

Her hair is rumpled, shirt stained, and still she is grateful when I take her picture.  

You have a beautiful smile, I say, and her eyes flutter and cheeks flush.

She looks down and back again, into my camera. The moment turns shy and empowered in equal measure, and I feel like I'm seeing a new sort of truth.

It’s an easy thing, a tossed moment, a simple photo. She is painting, something that happens routinely here in the nursing home, just another craft activity. It's nothing much, really, a blink of time. 

______

Sometimes I take a picture and later, when editing, I see a beauty I had missed: bright eyes, slight smile, a shy pride. But then I wonder, do I see the beauty in this image because I see the beauty of a moment? Will you see beauty in these ravaged faces and messy hair, in the marks and spots and displays of decay?

______

If you look at a window, you see fly-specks, dust, the crack where Junior's Frisbie hit it. If you look through a window, you see the world beyond. 

 — Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking

______

Scrolling through social media I often see photos of "old" people, a friend's parent, say, or some inspirational vision of age, and I pass by without emotion or second glance.

But at work, in each photo I snap, I see details that a camera can never catch: the flash of a smile, an unexpected laugh that is full and fast but too quick for capture.

Or the light of the room, how when he moved near the window, a cloud opened, a bird sang.

Or the quick smile followed by slow conversation, how the clock seems to stop because I must slow up, slow down, let my breath catch my mind. 

There is always much to do: meetings, deadlines, phone calls, photos. I keep moving, moving, moving. Even when I want to stay longer, talk more, I am conflicted with the desire to both absorb and wipe away. To lean in and to leave. 

______

When Doris fusses with her hair, I am fretting on my own appearance.

When Herman cannot be calmed, I feel a buzz of bees too.

When Pearl tells me about life on the farm — Momma had hundreds of birds and they sang every morning— I am her, dazzled by every small and simple thing.  

______

What looks bare is usually a different kind of abundance. 

— Sarah Cook, This Place is Beautiful, This Place is Gross

______

Time slows to stillness here, when I pay attention, when I slow myself. And so this exchange, of easy banter and click, click, click, is nothing much. And yet, when trust is established, time feels precious.

As I leave, her eyes are soft and pleading when she says thank you.

Each click says I see you. 

* Names and identifiers have been changed to protect privacy.

** Photo from Istockphoto.com

Good Books of 2020

All year I moaned about my lack of attention for reading. I’m too distracted, I said, with everything (insert hand sweep here to indicate: pandemic, racial injustice, election chaos, economic crisis, and crushing fatigue).

But as I look back now, I realize I enjoyed a lot of really good books, and feel encouraged to know when all else fails books can (still) change my heart, mind & mood.

Here are the Good Books I read in 2020:

FICTION

Take Me Apart by Sara Sligar
Art, writing, mystery — all in one engaging story. I could not put this book down; read it in one riveted day.

My Life as A Rat by Joyce Carol Oates
Whew, what a disturbing, haunting, page-turner! Written in second person "you," Joyce Carol Oates is a master of claustrophic hunger that revolts and mesmerizes all at once.

The Nix by Nathan Hill
A funny and touching debut novel about a son, the mother who left him as a child, and how his search to uncover the secrets of her life leads him to reclaim his own. This story is chocked with great lines, like this: “Seeing ourselves clearly is the project of a lifetime.” 

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
With an unusual story set up — twin sisters are raised in a small town founded by and for light-skinned black people — this engaging novel stirs ideas on race, identity and home. 

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
Dark, disturbing, compelling. Extremely well-written.

The View from Penthouse B by Elinor Lipman
Easy but not insipid. The perfect read for full and distracted minds (like mine).

POETRY

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
This novel is both long poem and full sigh. Beautiful and unusual. Vivid and sensory, rich and haunted. The writing is, well, gorgeous, line after beautiful line.

Hotel Almighty by Sarah J Sloat
These visual poems are stunning one-of-a-kind mixed-media collage, with each served on a miniature canvas. So visually evocative my only wish is that it were a larger format so I could absorb its beauty even more.

Gravity & Spectacle by Shawnte Orion and Jia Oak Baker
Inventive, innovative, inspired! This unusual combo of photos and poems is a powerful art project that is silly, serious, fun, sad, and strong.

If the House by Molly Spencer
Layered, textured, rich and deep. A stunning debut. After years of quiet, thoughtful, diligent work, Molly Spencer is finally seeing well-deserved acclaim. Read also: Hinge, just published. 

HOW-TO 

The Art of Noticing For Writers by Rob Walker
This Kindle ‘short’ is a fun and valuable nugget of inspiration for all kinds of writers. Read also: The Art of Noticing:131 Ways to Spark Creativity, Find Inspiration, and Discover Joy in the Everyday. 

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb
An unexpected gem! Great writing, pacing, and character development in a self-help ‘story’ penned by an insightful doctor-writer. 

MEMOIR

 Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir by Ruth Reichl 
Another great Ruth Reichl memoir! She's penned several and this is now among my top picks, right up there with her first (and still my favorite), Tender at the Bone.

___

Dear Readers & Writers,
In the new year, may your heart & mind make room for reading.
The world is full of good writing, read on!

With love,

Drew

On Sunday: Allow