30 January 2011

more perspective

Exactly 444 years before the day of my birth, Hernando Cortes set fire to the Aztec aviaries of the besieged city of Tenochtitlan. I did the math years ago when I first read "Crossing Open Ground" by Barry Lopez, struck by the horror of the event and by my birth date there on the page. I was instantly connected. Tied at an emotional level to something occurring almost half a century before my first breath.

No other animals seem to connect the dots the way humans do. For good or bad, we seek them out, find the links or make them up. They become the building blocks of our personal history, family stories, myth. Culture. Religion. Tradition. Philosophy. It's what makes us feel like we are a part of something. Gives us meaning, or in some cases, purpose.

How did that happen? What makes us seek validation of our own existence beyond this moment of breath and blood and heartbeat? What are we looking for? Would we even know if we found it?

One of my early college professors told me the wisest man would finish reading every book ever written and, if he learned anything, dismiss them all.

Perspective is a tricky thing. Turning everything up on its head when least expected. Calling into question old assumptions. Opening a surprise feeling from the words of a story.

But isn't that exactly what we're looking for?

Sherri



"Don't miss the conversation."
 - Pam Houston, given as advice to new MFA students at orientation

22 January 2011

a mark in the snow

In the night, snow fell on the beach. I'd never seen snow on the beach before—the sand covered white, the ocean washing up dark against the edge of it.

A sidewalk stretched in both directions behind a low cement wall. I walked to the gap that opened to the beach and sat down on my feet. The sound of the waves was like the inside of a shell, and a little breeze made my ears burn with cold.

I pressed my hand into the thin layer of snow. The sand underneath was cold as metal. The snow melted and left the print of my hand. At once, I wanted to take it back, fearful for a moment of the way the shape of my hand and outstretched fingers marked the snow that spread all the way to the water, stuck through here and there with yellow grass and rocks perfectly placed it seemed. I hoped no one would walk on it, leave footprints. Except birds. A flock of thin-legged sanderlings ran choreographed at the water's edge, in and out with the curl of sea-foam.

I was halfway through the first residency of my MFA program, and my life would be changed forever because of it. But when is it not? So often it's the smallest moments that touch us, remind us of those dreams we've hoped and longed for, what's important, if only to us, those moments that change our perspective again and again.

Before he died, my friend Craig Shell used to tell me that's all there is—perspective. He used to say that all the time. "One minute, you see one thing. The next minute, it's a whole different story."

A different story. Like snow on the beach.

Sherri

"The joke of the world is less like a banana peel than a rake, the old rake in the grass, the one you step on, foot to forehead. It all comes together. In a twinkling. You have to admire the gag for its symmetry, accomplishing all with one right angle, the same right angle which accomplishes all philosophy. One step on the rake, and it's mind under matter once again. You wake up with a piece of tree in your head."
Holy the Firm, by Annie Dillard

29 December 2010

just before

Remember that can't-sleep anticipation of something really good coming? A childhood Christmas morning? Or the night before the first day of seventh grade? Or the entire day before the State track meet - such a big event that it was held at Ricks College?

I've not been disappointed.

Christmas morning, 1973, Fairchild AFB, Spokane, WA. Santa must have enjoyed the cookies because he left the Barbie Airplane made by Mattel United Airlines for yours truly. What more could an 8-year old girl want?!

Seventh grade began at Bountiful Junior H.S. with the only class I really wanted to take: Art. In a real art-classroom completely dedicated to making and learning art. I was in heaven. It almost made up for the completely lame excuse of a home-economics class later that same day in which I was instructed how to make a grilled cheese sandwich and a "milk-shake" made without a single scoop of ice-cream - a clear abomination in the household where I grew up. My father signed my class-withdrawal slip himself, and I believe I got to take shop instead. Total win-win.

And that track meet in Rexburg, ID. Spring 1981. I ran my best time in the qualifying heat of the 440-yard (no such thing as the 400m in the U.S. schools back in those days). My cousin Christine came over to the race and we got something to eat afterward, but I can't quite recall anything more - except for the feeling of pure elation that stuck with me for a long time. What put wings on my feet that day? Could have been the sunshine that broke through the rain clouds on that cold spring afternoon, or the way the air moved over the track. Or maybe just plain luck. I would never run a better race again.

 Now smack in the middle of the holidays, it's one week from the start of my first residency in the MFA program at Pacific University, and I am all kinds of excited. Christmas-Barbie-airplane-7th-grade-state-track-meet excited.

Of course, it takes a leap of sorts. The push-off the block at the starting shot. The release of a held breath. A step through an arch to a new freedom.

It could be big.

Feels like a good thing.

Sherri



"As he swung through the air, trembling, he saw the blackness give way below, like a parting of clouds, to a deep patch of stars on the ground. It was the pond, he hoped, the hole in the woods reflecting the sky. He judged the instant and let go; he flung himself loose into the stars." - The Living, Annie Dillard