Hands, Prayer, and Grief

November. Twenty miles outside of the glittery pit that is Vegas there are five red hand prints on sandstone in a quiet crevice of Red Rock Canyon. Tens of thousands of years ago, someone mixed up some paint from berries and mud, and pressed their hands against the rock. The iron oxide made those prints red. A chemical miracle preserved them, day after day, year after year, through blistering heat and cold, sand, water and wind. We're not so different, those hunter-gatherers and those of us standing beyond the fence, gawking at their art. Because we've pressed our own hands into paint and onto paper, onto walls, into wet pavement so many times in our lives. Our prints, unlike these, won't reach through the next ten thousand years because we live in such a disposable world.

A word about Vegas, for example. Vegas is cigarette smoke, six-inch heels, slot machines that only accept credit cards or pieces of paper with bar codes(you don't even pull a handle, anymore), the scent of jasmine filling every crevice of your hotel like cotton. It's beauty and hope and sex and failure all neatly packaged in unimaginable, themed hotels. If you're content in life, and you love where you live, Vegas will help you appreciate that all the more. But away from the plastic and lights and a lot of people trying to forget they're unhappy, minutes into the quiet desert, where the mountains are craggy and solid and unmoving, and the landscape below is flat and scrubby, the Joshua trees are works of art. Regal.

Fast forward to December, and an unimaginable event in Connecticut.
 “Help. Help us walk through this. Help us come through.” Anne Lamott, in her newest book Help, Thanks, Wow: the Three Essential Prayers, calls this “the first great prayer.” It’s what so many of us pray for sick family, for friends whose lives are newly broken, for those who are mending, for lost jobs, for people we don’t even know who have lost children.

 But mostly, right now, for Newtown, Connecticut.

In this season of Advent, when many of us celebrate what we believe is the historical arrival of the most significant child in history, the deaths of so many children in an act of senseless violence is jarring for even the most faith-driven. Lamott says her prayer is sometimes, simply, “What on earth could You be thinking?” God’s answer, she says, can be found in what God told Job: You wouldn’t understand. That answer seems apt now. Lamott says that we will all be expected to “survive unsurvivable losses, and that we will realize with enormous pain how much of our lives we’ve already wasted with obsessive work or pleasing people or dieting.” Maybe that’s one of the things suffering-whether it is our own or the pain or that of someone else-is meant to show us. Don’t waste any more of it. 

 Then you say, Wow, because that’s a prayer, too. I say it when I’m driving to work (just miles from where another fatal shooting captured national attention in 2002 at the Appalachian School of Law.) Every morning, a breathtaking panorama unfolds during my commute as fog fills in the valley below, like a milky white creek, lapping at the tallest hills. I prayed that word on that trip to the Mojave Desert in Nevada, where five ancient Indian hand prints have survived centuries of abrasive weather and human indifference. I walked among the yucca plants and Joshua trees to stand before this rock wall and image of those hands, fingers spread as if they were pressing against a glass pane separating our century and theirs. I wanted to put my own hand against them, to find some similarity with this primitive person who is reaching through thousands of years. I couldn't because the conservancy (and rightfully so) protects it with a tiny rope and sign that say we have to say back. So I simply said, Wow, in the quiet realization that we are both molecular in this universe, yet so significant.

That’s what children teach us.

 In that moment especially, I missed my preschool son, who was back home, sitting on a rug in his elementary school classroom singing his letters. He would have pointed at the dark shadows between these mountains and wondered aloud how many dinosaur bones could be carved from them. He would have touched the sharp needles of the yucca plant with the tiny, delicate pads of his fingers, and explained to me that the needles protect the plant from predators, because he’s just begun to learn about mammals and their predators. He would have seen those hands and asked if someone finger-painted on that canyon wall, musing that they look just like the pictures hanging on our refrigerator at home, the ones he made at school. And I would have looked at him like so many of us do with our children and said,Wow.

When I saw the first reports from Connecticut, my prayer was only Help; we are mute with grief in those first few hours. I have continued to pray it since, because the effects will reverberate throughout those families and those first responders for months and years. Now, in our last week of Advent, many of us will say, Thanks, even for grief, though we may not always feel it, for one child who symbolizes them all, for the hope of moving forward.

 In the midst of the chaos 
When the wind is howling 
 I hear the ancient song
 Of the ones who went before
 And know that peace will come -Susan Stauter

907 Whitehead Street

Just a few blocks from 907 Whitehead Street in Key West, there's a cemetery where blindingly bone-white crypts bake in the sun among scrappy patches of grass. Hemingway isn't buried here but his friends are, like Josie Russell, his fishing buddy and owner of his favorite watering hole at 201 Duval Street. You'll find Joe Russell's grave adorned with mardi gras beads and tequila bottles weighting dollar bills. It's always happy hour there. We weave in and out of narrow streets on bikes. It's quiet, except for an occasional crowing rooster or the wind rustling the palm fronds like pieces of paper. It's not long before we find 907 Whitehead, tucked behind a brick fortress and a tangle of island trees. This Spanish Colonial home is where "Hem" as he was known wrote some of his best works, where he would rise between 5 and 6 a.m. to write in his guest house overlooking the most expensive pool on the island, then go out on his boat--the Pilar--to fish until happy hour at his favorite bar.

The six-toed descendants of his 60-70 cats still wander in and out of rooms here, still sleep on his bed, his chairs, still drink from the converted urinal he salvaged from a bar that was being renovated. His typewriter is still there before an empty chair where he sat, long before he broke his back in a plane crash and had to stand to write. This room is bright, airy, full of sunlight, unlike the house where covered balconies steal the sun, where ceiling fans were replaced by his wife's revered European chandeliers. How he must have loved the quiet and cool of that space, followed by a stretch on the open water, unconfined, the full blast of sea air, the lapping of water around the hull of his boat, the singing of a saltwater reel bowed by a marlin.

How good life must have been when the writing came easily, when the money flowed like the waters of his beloved Gulf Stream, until the critics and his own demons began to turn on him. What is it about an old house--a piece of tile, layers of paint on wanscoting, a rusty lock, cracked concrete, tarnished brass doorknob--that invites recall or conjures images of a time gone by? Maybe the dream of creating a moment so vivid, so exact, that you can find the same magic he found. Recreate the beauty of that 1930's haze in which he lived, hear the lisp in his voice, his thundering footsteps, see the worn lining of his hat, the cracks in a belt worn over the belt loops. And maybe therein you can summon the magic, the "stuff on butterfly wings," he called it, that enabled him to write, to make money and awards flow from his pen. There's something about time, about years gone by that makes him bigger than he probably deserved to be. We walk by the front gate in the gloaming, just after the sun has dipped into the cool waters between Key West and his beloved Cuba, and it could be just another house on Whitehead with its olive green shutters. The windows and doors are still open, lights on inside. Cats lounge on the still-warm patio and if you stare long enough you can imagine him stepping outside, reaching down to scoop one of them up in a rare moment of tenderness that so few of his friends and family--before he alienated them all-saw of him. You can see him whisper something, the cat's giant paws splayed against his collar and scruffy, white beard before he puts it down gently and heads back inside, the screen door groaning behind him.

Living Life 'All the Way Up' Part II

On a seven hour flight to Hawaii, I found myself seated beside an archaeologist. What followed was one of the most interesting conversations I've had with a complete stranger. I listened as he talked about his work, envied his enthusiasm for it and took notes on everything he said, thinking I might write about him someday. And here he is. Denny told me he had spent the first decade and a half of his post-college career working in a meaningless job. And though it took several years to complete, he went back to school in his late 30s to fulfill his dream of becoming an archaeologist. Now, he works for the U.S. government organizing overseas digs for the remains of U.S. service personnel. On that particular flight, he was on his way to Hawaii for a briefing before traveling on to Vietnam.

I peppered him with questions. What was his most interesting dig? Finding Native American remains in the Rockies. What was the greatest aspect of his job? Never knowing what he's going to find or where he's going next. He gave me his card, "in case you should ever want to write a book about me," he said jokingly. "It's you who should write a book," I said. "You're living life all the way up." (Denny would turn up again a couple of years later in Washington D.C. to work on a project with an acquaintance of mine. The world is small that way.) As it turned out, Denny was a Hemingway junkie as well, so the rest of our conversation was set in Spain, particularly the Casa Botin in Madrid where Jake and Lady Brett Ashley share a meal at the end of The Sun Also Rises. It's a nice place to have a glass of sangria and imagine young Hemingway sitting at a table outside, a pencil poised in his hand and a glass of red wine warming in the Spanish sun. On this trip to Key West, however, I'll see him at his writing table in a room over the guest cottage. His beloved boat Pilar would be anchored not ten walking minutes from his front door. The lighthouse, visible from his second story balcony illuminates his way home from his favorite bar, Sloppy Joe's, where he would meet his third wife, journalist Martha Gellhorn. (In all reality, I'll see him everywhere. Hemingway Days will be underway, complete with a lookalike contest, drawing Papas from all over.) The irony is how quickly he peaked as the kind of writer who could live from desk to boat to bar and back again, with a war thrown in here and there. He's attained an immortality that invites imitation (much like Elvis), though we choose to ignore the heavy price he paid for it.

Living Life 'All the Way Up' Part I

What follows is the first of several previously published essays I'll be dusting off, revising and posting here. They come (mostly) from a column I wrote for several years for the Bristol Herald Courier , a weekly newspaper serving the Tri-Cities area in Tennessee and Virginia. I developed a love of creative nonfiction while writing that column, and learned a lot about myself in the process. I wrote this column in preparation for my first trip to Europe--Spain, specifically. Now, I'm resurrecting it as we prepare to go back to Key West, both places that bring a certain writer to mind. This is Part I of II.

Hemingway is all around me lately, probably because my husband Bryan and I are planning a trip back to Key West, where we were married. We had some time before the wedding, so we strolled around town (I in my strapless white wedding dress) with our good friends Troy and Meredith, who stood with us as we took our vows on the beach. We stopped by a floral shop, where some nice ladies put together a fragrant bouquet of stargazer lilies (my new favorite.) Ten minutes at the courthouse for the license and we were soon standing on the edge of brilliant blue water near the shade of a palm tree. We cried, partly because we were in love but also because we were squinting into a hot morning sun so blinding it seemed everything around us was made of chrome. We said our vows on the beach, then made the pilgrimage to Papa's house, where we took some wedding photos and stood in the doorway of his writing room, imagining the clatter of typewriter keys as he stood to write, the zip of paper as he pulled it from the platen and tossed it immediately into the garbage. I was turned onto Hemingway in graduate school but his style didn't excite me as much as his desire to live his life, as he put it, "all the way up." And he didn't wait until retirement to do it. In The Sun Also Rises Jake Barnes and his traveling companion, Robert Cohn, are in a French cafe when Cohn leans forward and says, "I can't stand it to think my life is going so fast and I'm not really living it," to which Jake replies, "Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bullfighters." Maybe that's what Hemingway was trying to do, when he traded his American lifestyle for the European, where he could mingle among other expats, drink freely, and write about the kind of excitement he sought for himself. Cohn says to Jake, "Don't you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you're not taking advantage of it?" This is what Hemingway feared the most, I think, and explains why he was such an adrenaline junkie. His idea of a good time included bullfights, safaris, and fishing for sea life three times his size in places like Key West and his beloved Cuba.

We strolled through Hemingway's home after our little ceremony, buoyed by the thrill of new lives, inspired by the history that surrounded us. Five years later we're coming back with plenty of stories about what we've packed into a short time together. They don't involve big fish or big game, but there's a sense of peace in knowing that in our own way, we're living life "all the way up."

Excerpts on Writing from Success in Hill Country

Excerpts from Success in Hill Country:

Lee Smith, bestselling author of Fair and Tender Ladies, Saving Grace, Family Linen, Oral History, On Agate Hill, among others:

"I don't have a problem staying focused on a goal...I'd rather write than anything. It's a matter of arranging the rest of my life in order to do it...My writing has been a help to me through all times of personal crisis, a sustaining and nourishing thing."

Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of the Big Stone Gap series and most recently The Shoemaker's Wife:

"I get ideas from the smallest things. Sometimes it's the way a brick looks in the streetlight, or the line of a wool coat on a woman walking down the street, or something someone says that catches my ear. It's always small...Meaning comes from surrounding yourself with joy...and that includes the wallpaper."

Why "Banned Books" is an Oxymoron

I love to talk about my criminal behavior as a teenager. Defying authority. Sneaking around. Breaking the rules.

You know, reading.

I was encouraged to read at home. But my parents couldn't keep up with my appetite for books so I got many of them at the library. My mother got me started on Judy Blume sometime around age 13 or 14 and I wanted to ready everything she had written. If you have read her young adult novel Forever, you know why she has been popular with book banners and not so popular with librarians. When I couldn't find it on a library shelf, I was told that it had been "removed" because it wasn't "appropriate reading."

Well, of course, I had to read it, then.

I drove to the nearest public library and found it perched on a shelf like a gleaming jewel, full of salacious promise. I glanced right and left (for what, I couldn't tell you), snatched it down, and sat right there in the floor. I think I read the whole thing right there between the BLs and BRs. I certainly didn't learn anything that would turn me into a trollop but the story deals with topics that all teenagers think about, even if they don't necessarily experience them.

Since then, I've been a fan of the ALA's Top Ten Banned Books List, which I consult as much as the NYTimes Bestsellers.  We writers can only hope to be on that list one day. It's got to be good for sales. Because what book banners haven't figured out is the universal human desire to discover what they don't want us to know.

Put that desire into the hearts of teenagers and you have the perfect storm for a surge in literacy.

Many readers are celebrating the 50th anniversary of To Kill a Mockingbird, now a classic, widely taught, and still on the Banned Books list at #3 for 2011. That is perhaps Harper Lee's greatest achievement with this book, because the work dares to challenge ideologies that still infect our society. Revealed through the innocent perspective of a child, the story exposes some of the ugliest warts in human nature.

Book banners hate that.

I've recently read about Lauren Myracle, whose YA books written in texting language make her, as one reviewer suggested, "American's Most Hated Author.

Myracle's characters do the unthinkable: they use what many think of as "bad grammar." (Ask any linguist; there's no such thing.) They speak in texting language. They have potty mouths. They think about contraception and go to parties. In short, these are not our Laura Ingalls Wilders or Anne of Green Gables. Yet, even though those characters lived in the 18th and early 19th centuries, some people still believe girls should sound and behave that way in fiction. Myracle says if her readers learn valuable lessons from watching her characters make mistakes, then she has accomplished something positive.


She has the coveted #1 spot on the Banned Books List this year, guaranteeing a spike in sales. I'd say she's accomplished something positive.

And then there's The Hunger Games which, frankly, I was surprised to see at # 3. Katniss is a young woman who has to step into her father's role when he is killed in the mines. She learns to hunt and gather, and she is deadly with her bow and arrows, skills that will serve her well when she is forced into the Hunger Games, a fight to the death. Her reality is difficult: her government of Panem is shockingly brutal in its treatment of children but most horrifying of all is how the hunger games are glorified--an Olympic-like tradition that celebrates turning children into gladiators who must fight until only one is left alive.

Maybe its the raw brutality that bothers the book banners. Should children read about children being hungry or dying? Or maybe kids shouldn't read about tyrannical governments and crazy dictators who invent traditions to remind citizens that they shouldn't revolt. Should children read about the exploitation of environmental resources? Because goodness knows you don't see it on the evening news.

Worse, perhaps girls shouldn't read about a girl who can hunt, who is able to best her attackers. It might give us crazy notions, like reading banned books.

Or maybe even writing one.

Why I Wrote Success in Hill Country

Success in Hill Country is an example of what happens when opportunity and something you love to do intersect.

For several years, I wrote a bi-monthly column for the Bristol Herald Courier, mostly about topics related to Appalachia. I  met a lot of people as a result. Don Green, executive director of the Napoleon Hill Foundation,  was one of them. He liked my writing style and offered me the opportunity to publish with NHF, a non-profit organization that publishes millions of books and CDs annually that are based on the principles of global bestselling motivational writer and native Appalachian Napoleon Hill, who was born in Wise County, Virginia. Hill was an influence on most of the people in this book--as he continues to be for people all over the world--because of  his now-famous maxim: "Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve."

I knew I wanted to write something that could inspire young people, particularly those like me from the mountains or otherwise rural places that might be all but forgotten. I remember as a teenager thinking about what I would do in life and feeling convinced that to make something of myself I'd have to leave home, that there was no success to be found here in the hills and hollers, the farthest place imaginable from where Important Things were Happening, places like Los Angeles and New York City. I loved the mountains and everything about our way of life (and still do): the way we talk, our seasonal work like harvesting tobacco and making molasses, the old-timey hymns we sang in church. But I saw nothing resembling our way of life on television or in the magazines that came in the mail. The one television show we could relate to, even though it was set during the Depression, was The Waltons, because it was about a rural family who sounded a little like us and lived in the mountains. (I'm proud to say the creator of that show, Earl Hamner, read this book.)

I was a reader and dreamed of being a writer, and I wish I could see my young, impressionable self with a book like this one in my hands. I like to think it would have rocked my world to read Adriana Trigiani's story about how Big Stone Gap, VA shaped her as a writer, or to read about Lee Smith's love of her Grundy mountains. I like to think that Carroll Dale's story of making it all the way to the NFL from Wise County would have put notions into my head about what a girl from Lee County might do.I like to think that J.B. Hill's (Napoleon Hill's grandson) story about deciding he would fulfill his dream of being a doctor in his forties (after retiring from the military) would have convinced me that I didn't necessarily have to choose one dream. I could have them all.

I still believe that.

Now,  I just want to put this book into the hands of as many young people as I can, particularly those who are graduating. Because it's more than a book about how to be successful. It's time spent with people who can tell you not only what they did to get there but why where you come from is just as important as where you're going.

And that's probably the most important lesson of all.

Postscript: For more about Success in Hill Country, see Jack Lail's blog titled "An Appalachian Stereotype You May Have Missed"

Buck

I think about my great-grandmother, Ethel Russell, just about every day. Most people--even around here, where multiple generations of family live in the same community--can't say they knew or even remember their great-grandparents. But I had her for 31 years, which meant her influence was imprinted on me in a powerful way. I hear her voice most often, it seems, when I'm with my children. I think maybe that's one of the ways God speaks to us. I can't tell you for sure what she says. It's more like a gentle whisper, a nudge, a conviction, a reminder to remember what's important. Those tiny hands wrapped around PlayDough. Imaginations that turn the teeth of a hair clip into those of a T-Rex. The magic of a piece of rainbow on the living room wall. Mashed potatoes morphing into a volcano. And as my children grow, I want them to take pleasure--as I did--in the very simple things of life, those things I cherished on her farm. I want them to love the musty smell of an old barn carpeted in straw, hear rusty voices from sepia pictures, climb a gnarled apple tree and fill their bellies full of June apples, know the bark of a birch tree, smell the aroma of Russian tea boiling on a stove and know that it's Christmas. These are the things they'll carry with them in life...these are the things that will be home to them when no place else can be. She was home to so many of us, just as her daughter and granddaughter are home to us now. But when we are all together, she moves around and through us as if she were still alive And that is what I'm striving to be for my children: home.
I wrote about her last year in the online literary journal, Still, and I'm grateful to Jason Howard, Still's nonfiction editor, for giving me that opportunity. You can find the essay here.