Whenever I have a bout with asthma, as I did this weekend then into yesterday, I think of Elizabeth Bishop, and whenever I think of Elizabeth Bishop, I think of “One Art“: Everytime I read this poem, I re-experience the shock of my first reading, the eery devastation that builds as Bishop describes an accumulation of loss: lost car keys, heirlooms, homes, lovers. With each trauma, Bishop redefines “disaster”: what seemed crippling turns into nothing special, another heartache to be checked off by a soul long accustomed to grieving. Bishop, of course, suffered from both asthma and eczema, two ailments that often coexist and are (some believe) triggered by psychological trauma. Critics have often argued that Bishop’s characteristic understatement–the poetic discipline that equates watching a suicidal lover die in ones arms with the misplacing of one’s car keys–derives from her life-long health problems: these are the poems of a soul who has stared Death straight in the face and lived to describe its precise arch of eyebrow. Folks with asthma learn to perfect the art of losing: even losing one’s breath, that fragile grip on life, isn’t hard to master, for in the slimmest second it is gone. When I was an adolescent, I had eczema so bad the bottoms of my feet were raw like meat with seeping sores; for a long time, though, I ignored this, considering it “not disaster.” In high school, there were times I could barely walk, my feet worn skinless, the crusting lesions spreading across my ass and up my spine and neck, threatening to peek out of pulled-up shirt collars. I feared friends would notice and recoil, but no one did: again, not disaster. In college, my eczema abated, no longer fueled by the hormonal turbulence of adolescence, but occasionaly even today, my hands (particularly my non-writing one) will erupt with small, barely visible but extremely itchy pustules: this, too, isn’t disaster. I had my first full-blown asthma attack when we lived in the Cambridge Zen Center. One night, my lungs spasmodic from a reaction to sawdust and paint fumes, I lay abed struggling to breathe, every speck of attention devoted to the exhausting labor of inhalation, exhalation. I couldn’t breathe at all when I reclined; I could barely breathe when I sat propped with pillows. My entire torso ached with the labor of breathing, and I remember resting my head back into pillows, desperate for sleep, thinking that death would be a welcome respite for at least the dead don’t breathe. With the next paroxysm of coughing, Chris rushed me to the car, off to an Emergency Medical Center located on the Fenway. I remember riding down dark, abandoned streets, and I remember thinking as we passed Fenway Park, “This too wouldn’t be a bad place to die.” Even the art of dying isn’t hard to master. But this isn’t an essay about asthma, or eczema, or death. It’s an essay about oceans. Herman Melville wrote that “meditation and water are wedded for ever,” noting at the beginning of Moby-Dick that solitary walkers in seaside cities inevitably wander toward the shore, pulled there by an invisible force: “Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land….They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling in.” Ishmael himself, feeling a “damp, drizzly November in [his] soul,” went to sea as a alternative to suicide, a “substitute for pistol and ball.” This gravitation toward the ocean, Melville suggests, is part and parcel of the human condition: like Narcissus, it is our own reflection that “we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans,” the “ungraspable phantom of life” that “is the key to it all.” This past summer, at patience’s end after toiling for years on a dead-end dissertation, I ran away to San Francisco. It was as far from New Hampshire as I could get without a passport: an entire continent away. And just north of San Francisco, in the Marin Highlands in the shadows of Mount Tamalpais, I knew there is good walking, the same seaside strolls and mountain climbs described by some of the writers — Jack Kerouac, John Muir, Gary Snyder — that I and my pen had been so long wrestling with. I spent an entire week in San Francisco, alone. I stayed at the San Francisco Zen Center but set foot in their zendo only once. Every morning I’d rise before practice, dress, then sneak out of the Zen Center, walking down hilly streets to my rented car. Everyday I planned to stay in the city to take in the sights and enjoy its fervent energy, but every morning my car steered itself north, across the Golden Gate Bridge, and into Marin. One morning after discovering the heaven-on-earth that is Point Reyes National Seashore, I went there before sunrise to walk nearly five miles out to Tomales Bluff, the northernmost tip of Point Reyes. The day was foggy, so there was no hope of a scenic sunrise, and my camera was broken, the victim of wind-blown sand at Santa Maria Beach. Mine was the only car in the parking lot as I set out into the fog; many times I wondered why I was walking nearly five miles one way to a mist-veiled, invisible destination. The walk was flat and easy, my feet light in my sandals. A single marsh hawk (or perhaps several, singly) continued to flirt with me the entire way, silently vanishing into the fog only to soar back fifteen minutes later, twenty, thirty… Always a surprise, he’d zoom right above my head, his back and belly gray like fog. And on either side of the trail, looming like trees, the antlers of Tule elk came and went, their owners tame with surprise that a human would be walking silent and alone in the morning fog. The males, I understood later, were primed for the rut but not yet bugling; the females were clustered in loose flocks, looking at me with brown-eyed bemusement. By the time I reached Tomales Bluff, the fog had cleared, revealing a panoramic view of Bodega Bay. It was lunchtime, and I’d packed well, so I climbed and clambered onto a rock jutting over the crashing waters below. As I ate, I watched flocks of prehistoric cormorants and brown pelicans flying below me. And when I was done, I paused, feeling strong the pull of the ocean… It was the same pull that drew Kate Chopin’s Edna Pontellier to cast off her clothes and walk into the Atlantic in search of the ultimate awakening…the same force that billowed Virginia Woolf’s skirts when she set foot in the Ouse. The waves, the waves: it is the hypnotic pull of the waves that allures, beckoning with the promise of a gently floating rest. Freud termed “oceanic” the spiritual impulse toward the infinite and boundless; it was an impulse he decried. And yet the mystics of the world have aways admitted that in dying to self we are born unto Self, the mystic’s swooning into ecstasy being a miniature version of death itself. So sitting on a rock above the ocean some five miles from any other human, a single rented car in a lot where no one would initially think to look, I considered it. The art of losing isn’t hard to master: it would have been easy to roll off a rock, down into the sea, surrendering to the ultimate suffocation of those crashing and pounding waves. None of this, necessarily, would have been disaster. And yet having considered it, I relented. Grabbing a rock, I tossed it off the edge and listened as it ricocheted down, down, down: that sound returned me to my senses. Whether I returned to finish my degree or not, I didn’t care: I no longer wanted it. But I would return home to other writing: I would return again and again to life and its myriad crashings up and down, its assorted traumas that are each not-quite-disasters. The ocean I sought, of course, was no different from my mundane life with its incessant ebb and flow, a rise and fall that is unique every moment while still hypnotic in its monotony. The oceanic feeling is not distant, not a continent away as I sit typing in New Hampshire; I needn’t have walked five miles or even a single step to find it. No, this ocean is within, right at hand, lurking with its tidal gravitation at every turn: can’t you feel the pull? All it takes is that initial surrender, that ever-so-simple decision to let go, go, go… The art of losing isn’t hard to master. Every moment, with every exhalation, just let your small tired self surrender itself into the mystery of unseen inspiration.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.This is my much belated contribution to the Ecotone topic of Ocean and Sea.
Mar 9, 2004
Mar 9, 2004 at 9:33 am
Amazing post.
I simply cannot live far from the ocean.
The pull is real. A few blocks from here there is a spot on the waterfront where steps lead down to the beach during very low tides. Usually, though, the bottom five or so are covered by swifting moving waves that crest well onto the platform above, giving the impression of much greater depth, and an enticing element of threat. I can’t go near them. The desire to take off my shoes and walk down the steps is too strong. I doubt, of course, that anything dreadful, aside from a mild case of hypothermia and a serious affliction of public shame, would happen if I did. But the temptation is constant.
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Mar 9, 2004 at 9:44 am
Lorianne: what a splendid piece. I really was wondering where you were going with all this.
There’s a beautiful echo, here, the piece itself as oceanic water and the dissertation, now almost done, from which you could escape to write these lines….
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Mar 9, 2004 at 9:46 am
So well said, Lorianne.
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Mar 9, 2004 at 9:59 am
I’m a mountain gal myself — which is why I moved to Montana from the Bay Area — but I’m also wondering about the relationship between sickness and academic work. I had my only true breakdown, like you Lorainne, about a year before finishing my degree — I got really sick, my mouth broke out in herpes-like sores (which turned out not to be the Herp after all) — and I cured myself by walking. Well, acupuncture, Chinese medicine and walking. Two, three days a week I’d find myself in the car, heading out of Salt Lake for the high Uintas — I took up mushrooming. It was absorbing and involved hours and hours of very slow, very attentive walking — and the reward (aside from getting well in both my head and my body) was pounds and pounds of chanterelles and porcini. It really saved me.
All of my women friends had significant health breakdowns while finishing their PhDs — and none of the men really seemed to have the same kind of health problems. I wonder what it is about the process that it shakes down like that?
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Mar 9, 2004 at 2:41 pm
My PhD study is not yet making me sick. Knock on wood.
Of the ocean, Dave (Via Negativa) says that it is the sound of todo and nada, everything and nothing, with the todo of the waves crashing to shore, and the sighing nada of their pulling away again.
I seem to remember Pablo Neruda having a similarly declarative ocean, “no and no and no again” and then maybe a yes, or something like that.
As for me, I came of age in a crumbling city by the shores of a vast ocean. We avoided the water, and the water likewise ignored us, content to pool in gloomy lagoons, as if we did not have a shared history.
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Mar 9, 2004 at 3:09 pm
From Stephen R. Donaldson, a poem:
Stone and Sea are deep in life
two unalterable symbols of the world
permanence at rest, and permanence in motion
participants in the Power that remains
Hapjang,
Kevin
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Mar 9, 2004 at 3:38 pm
Wonderful, evocative post.
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Mar 9, 2004 at 8:57 pm
This is an amzing piece of writing. Very beautiful and poetic.
When I was in law school, I developed tiny warts all over parts of my face. I went to an s&m dermatologist, dubbed “Dr. Pain”, who zotted each one with a painful laser. I think I should have listened to my skin and found another career.
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Mar 10, 2004 at 3:16 am
Hey, there, everyone…
Tonio, I can totally relate to the urge to walk down those steps. I always got a similar urge to jump in front of the subway when it approached the stations in Boston: not that I WANTED to do it, of course, but there was always this weird hypnotic pull. But then again, I’m a raving freak, so maybe it’s not the same as what you’re talking about…
(BTW, the timing of your comment was kind of creepy because I was over at your blog while you were here commenting on mine. I hadn’t realized you were my age! Somehow, I’d somehow pegged you as being simultaneously wiser (i.e. older) and hipper (i.e. younger) than me. So maybe it makes sense that you’re an average of the two assumptions?)
Pica, I was wondering where I was going with it, too! 🙂 I always seem to make these wild intuitive leaps, so the challenge is to state everything so that *readers* see the crazy connections that seem so “natural” to me. Glad to hear that you “got it.”
Kurt, so succinctly said! Thank you.
Charlotte, your comment reminds me of the writer Mary Austin: are you familiar with her? Although she didn’t complete a PhD, she did have a breakdown while in college, and the doctors said the usual “it’s because she’s a woman & can’t stand the intellectual strain” crap. Her story “The Walking Woman” is about a woman who suffers some sort of sickness (either mental or physical–it’s not specified) and then finds wholeness by walking in the California desert. The story is online: go to my website (click on my picture in the blog sidebar), click on “Reading,” then click the link for ENG 240/Lit of the Open Road.
(I’m not sure why women PhDs freak out more than men. All the women PhDs I’ve known have had to juggle housework, childrearing, etc. more than the guy PhDs I’ve known have. So maybe this has something to do with it: even women PhDs need wives to take care of us???)
Commonbeauty, once again you awe me with your poetry. Don’t worry about the PhD making you sick: as a Dao Daddy, you have nothing to worry about. It’s all about BALANCE, you see! 😉
Kevin, great poem. I talk about both Stone & Sea in my diss, so I guess there’s no escaping them! I’ve never heard of Stephen R. Donaldson, though: is his stuff good?
Ivy, thanks for the kind words. “Evocative” is the highest praise I bestow on books/poems I like, so it sounds especially sweet.
Loretta, although I’m generally terrible about taking my own advice, I do believe that the body always knows what’s best. “Listen to your body” is gradually becoming my personal mantra!
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Mar 10, 2004 at 4:19 am
Lorianne,
I have a post that deals with major religious tropes in Donaldson’s work here (cf. “LOTR vs. Thomas Covenant” on my sidebar, near the bottom), but the post assumes some knowledge of his stories.
So to answer your question more directly: yes, I think Donaldson’s written some great books. He was huge from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s with his two fantasy trilogies: the First and Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. He’s also done smaller fantasy series, science fiction, and short story collections.
The First and Second Chronicles have been derided by Tolkien stalwarts as total Tolkien ripoffs. The above-linked post deals in some measure with how true that claim is.
Ultimately, I think all post-Tolkien fantasy writers owe uncle JRR a huge debt, but Donaldson’s main virtue lies in how he subverts Tolkien’s motifs and creates a completely different story thereby– one with familiar external traits (a ringbearer, a godlike enemy, etc.) and totally unfamiliar internal traits (e.g., the hero is an angry leper who begins his adventure by raping someone).
Donaldson’s writing a Third Chronicles; the first book of this series (a tetralogy this time, not a trilogy) comes out either late this year or early in 2005.
Hapjang,
Kevin
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Mar 10, 2004 at 4:22 am
Nuts… looks like your comments window doesn’t accept HTML. My bad– should’ve checked it out in “preview” mode. The word “here” in the first sentence of the previous post should have linked to my blog.
Ach du liebe Gott…
Kevin
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Mar 10, 2004 at 11:07 am
Lorianne, I’m very behind and struggling with my own project-induced problems, as you can see from this belated comment. But I wanted to say how beautifully written it is, and how fine. What struck me the most was the desire that got you into the plane and off to San Francisco in the first place, and your comment about how women tend to have physical reactions to dissertations, for example, and men don’t. Both rang true for me. I think perhaps we are conditioned to give and give, and allow our bodies to bear the stress of it, and then one day we just have to escape and find that place where we can let go.It would be good if we could do it before breaking out in hives, or finding ourselves unable to breathe.
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Mar 11, 2004 at 12:14 pm
Kevin, now it all rings a bell: you’ve mentioned Donaldson in a previous email. I’ve been such a space-case with the dissertation & all, I’ve delegated all fun & interesting books I’ve not read to a mental file cabinet: “Do not open until diss-completion!”
Beth, Freud said that depression is anger turned inward. It’s always struck me that men have ways of OUTWARDLY dealing with stress whereas women tend to bottle their problems in order to deal with everyone else’s. Getting on that plane to SF was a no-brainer, in one sense: it was a choice of either running away or going totally nuts. (Take a trip or take a leap, in a sense. And SF’s too great a city to refuse…)
Good luck with your own deadline, bottled-stresses, etc. Maybe your own version of a SF-getaway is in order…?
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