03/09/2010 3:00 am
Culture
Walking the Nights From My Pillow, by Gail Godwin
A bestselling author's imagination and the miles it has traveled.
Gail Godwin © Beth Bliss
Editor’s Note: A three-time National Book Award finalist, Gail Godwin’s 13th novel, Unfinished Desires, was just published by Random House. Volume two of her journals, The Making of a Writer, comes out next year.
London is a city made for walkers, and when I was in my 20s, I walked most of the boroughs of Central London. During workday walking, I wore medium high-heeled pumps, knee-length suits with kick-pleats and gloves. I carried a shiny leather briefcase stashed with enticing color brochures of places like the Grand Canyon and the French Quarter. A government employee of the U.S. Travel Service, I called on travel agencies from Haymarket to Shoreditch, urging their managers to direct their clients to our new offices on Sackville Street, where we would help them plan their trips to the United States free of charge.
| I know how three-quarters of my life has turned out. And so I am freer to assess the materials I have left, that nobody else can use up but me. |
Evenings, I walked in my Chelsea neighborhood in jeans and sweaters and flats, spying in windows and wondering if I would ever live in a house of my own. I strolled along the embankment, watching the river traffic and wondering if I would ever get published and if I would ever find a man I truly loved who loved me just as much. I also thought an awful lot about my old age. I envisioned a person of, oh, 60, in a shapeless cardigan, living with two cats.
Those years in London (1962-1966), I was often anxious and melancholy because I didn’t know how my life was going to turn out. Now, having outlived that girl’s 60-year-old person by at least a decade (no shapeless cardigans yet!), I’m on my second pair of cats, the man in question has been dead for nine years and I’m starting my 14th novel. I still have a tendency to imagine bleak scenarios of my future, but I’ll spare you the latest ones.
The blessed difference between then and now is that, at this point, I do know how three-quarters of my life has turned out. And so I am freer to assess the materials I have left, the stuff of my life that nobody else can use up but me. For a writer, this is a huge gift. To what use will I put my interesting leftovers?
A complete life, Carl Jung once wrote to his friend Father Victor White, "does not consist in a theoretical completeness, but in the fact that one accepts, without reservation, the particular fatal tissue in which one finds oneself embedded, and that one tries to make sense of it or to create a cosmos from the chaotic mess into which one is born." I love that idea of having a "particular fatal tissue." It excites me to think that my main job now is to finish creating a cosmos out of my own chaotic mess.
I wouldn’t tell this to my cardiologist, but I walk more miles lying on my pillow these nights than I do on my feet in daytime. Waldo, Zeb and I arrange ourselves in the king-size bed, whose man-side is now piled with books and papers, and, after some negotiating for space, we set off on our separate night journeys.
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Gail, what a beautiful and moving piece.
Like you, I have had countless strolls down paths, buildings, neighborhoods and hallways that are as solid and real as ever when my eyes are closed tightly, yet evaporate into the ether with a blink of my eyes. Leaving me in that limbo world of desperately attempting to cling onto memories, only to watch as they slip away with the light.
I find great meaning and purpose in looking back. Assessing where I have been, what I have done, who I have met - and the impact each has had on who I am today. It’s important for each of us to take stock in our lives and recognize the importance of where we come from has everything to do with where we are in life.
Ms. Studebaker the 3rd grade teacher, Jim the butcher at the neighborhood grocer, that wooden desk where you carved your initials, that first kiss on the side of the church…..they are all squares in the quilt of our lives.
I envy you your rambling Victorian-hotel-cum-schoolhouse and your many years there. Since we moved every two or three years in my childhood, I lack that depth of attachment to the places we lived. And then I had to go do the same thing in adulthood. If I were a marine organism, I’d be a jellyfish. Or plankton.
A relative liked to quote the adage, "To travel is to have lived twice." I do feel like I have seen quite a lot, but I’d trade some of that for a good solid dose of something like your St. Genevieve-of-the-Pines, and the root that comes with it.
I like that expression, Ms. Godwin, about "material that no-one can use up but me." I too often dream about a childhood place, a lake house, two of them actually, that we called the big house (not very big) and the little house (pretty little). "I was in the big house," I’ll say after waking up, but now that house can be populated in dreams with people who were never there in real life but this is the stage upon which they make their psychological entrance. What is it about this place, I’ll think, above all other places, why are so many nighttime scenarios acted out here? It is the most vivid of homes that I have ever had and I never actually lived there year-round but it was a place from my childhood/adulthood that has intermittently drawn me back all of my life and it is still there in my dreams waiting for me. If I hear a screen door slam anywhere it brings me right back. I am inspired now by Ms. Godwin to maybe write about it but how to put the *feel* of it on paper? It would be a very hard thing to do. How would I describe the smell of freedom or the rhythm of loneliness or the sense that all humanity walked the same, rambling country roads with the same hot sun blazing down upon us and the feeling that all of our dreams were waiting just ahead of us around these dusty corners? How woud one express the heaviness of trudging along as hard as one could and still knowing a day might end with your dream nowhere in sight and only the flickering of fireflies in a dark night to keep you company? And how to explain the indestructible hope that still lodged itself so deep in your breast that even those little insect lights could be a consolation? "I’m here," they’d signal and then those little lights would dim. "No…, here," the light would shine again. "Catch me, if you can."
Dear dear Eileen … Perhaps it was the very moving piece above by our treasured author Gail Godwin … but you have taken off this morning on a piece of your own that is simply beautiful and moving. I find that — too often — too much detailed description does not allow our own minds to wander in whatever direction we care to after reading the words. Every one of us reading your words will flash back of the sound of a screen door of our youth slamming … a sound of another time that brought with it memories of youth, of summers, and yes - of fireflies. I felt myself sigh, look out and faraway at that other world that was and is no longer. We can’t capture it and put it in a bottle as we might a firefly. The light would flash, flash less, and die. I think of it as an essense, feelings that - in looking back - we find still beat within us. Pieces of our lives.
Eileen, you are very deep and very talented - as Gail Godwin is. I feel that, in reading this thread today, it will not leave me for the words and feelings touched us to the core.
The day is already brighter. Joan
You are very, very kind, Joan. Thank you. I know you have your own health issues and I have been off my feet for awhile (foot in a cast) and not writing as much as I had wanted to so here at wowowow is such an outlet for me. I really appreciate everything and everyone here and a lot of what I read does inspire me to think/feel very deeply. And you have reminded me too now about a time when I went to a vacation spot that held a lot of memories for me as a child. I had brought my daughter who was around the same age as I was when I had been there so many years ago. As we drove in to the campground, all of a sudden I had such a wild feeling of *remembering* the excitement that every one of those days held for me that I had to catch my breath. It was the exact *same* feeling I had had as a teen but it was so fleeting a feeling, I could not hold onto it. Yet it absolutely amazed me that it could still be there, deep within the recesses of my memory, as you have said, that that young girl’s heart was still beating inside of me somewhere.
My day is brighter, too. xo
Dear Joan, as I was reading the very interesting and splendid essay by author Gail Godwin I was smugly satisfied and content in assuming, quite rightly, that in reading further down the page, I would arrive at a posting by you. Your impressions of author Godwin’s piece blend in very closely with my feelings. She caused thoughts of times past, and pleasant memories to flow.
Like you Joan, I was also completely fascinated by the beautiful and captivating posting from Eileenalannah. This talented lady is obviously an accomplished writer, though I have the impression she has not worked at it lately. Perhaps I am wrong in guessing this, and maybe she intends to resume her writings. The last paragraph of her enchanting posting fills me with such warmth and nostalgia of supremely meaningful bygone personal thoughts. Her descriptions are completely captivating. She wonders how she might express certain experiences and wonders how she would describe certain situations and remembrances. All the while, doing it so beautifully that she need not worry about the success and fulfillment for the outcome of the situations she wishes to describe. Her writing style is intensely descriptive, complete, and thought provoking. Her Ms. Godwin would be so proud and pleased.
A thread featuring this type of subject always brings out such meaningful responses from so many of the WoW members. It is truly such a rewarding experience to read the many interesting and electrifying impressions and thoughts of fellow members. By this time, I can almost predict which members will respond to such a motivating and thought provoking thread. Strange to read how many very special situations are similar, and so precious to each of us. As you say Joan, "Many of the words and feelings touch us to the core". To me they take me back to very early times when I spent much of my time reading about what was going on in the wonderful world outside of my third floor study. Also, as a somewhat special remembrance for me, I enjoyed being reminded by Barbara1 about the Pagan babies. I had completely forgotten about them. They cost $ 5.00 each at my school and I managed to buy six of them over the length of my stay. I wonder how life has treated them?
Hi LR … we have been slipping by one another somehow. To finally catch up with you is a pleasure and, of course, you are so right that we can almost predict each of the others who would find themselves touched by Gail Godwin’s words. Knowing us, one memory would stack up next to another. Our eyes would slightly glaze and we would easily be back in the past. If we even got together, it would surely be a love fest as we understand each other so well, sharing memories of long ago so easily.
I knew I would find you here!!
Joan - I’m glad to hear from you and that the Gail Godwin’s article came up when it did because as you say, we did seem to pass like the two famous ships in the night. Her story brought us together because of mutual interests. From various postings by others I had the idea you were hors de combat for clinical reasons. I hope this isn’t the case and that we will see you soon and more often. I’m looking forward to more of your coverage on Chile. I haven’t been posting much lately feeling somewhat a persona non grata for a posting I did. Hopefully, as I have been lead to understand, “time heals all heels”. LR.
I grew up about an hour from the Gulf of Mexico. As a child, I walked those beaches with my parents, brothers, aunts/uncles. We enjoyed lavish picnics. We threw bread and Hostess cupcake crumbs to the gulls. There were always treasures in the sand…. a marble, someone’s keys, a sand crab, a baby pacifier.
Later as a teen, my first boyfriend and I would stroll that same beach… making wishes on stars… but not telling each other, of course. A kiss sealed each wish. No interest in the sand treasures at all.
As a new bride, my young husband and I walked that beach. We went crabbing and sailed in the bays. We watched 4th of July fireworks from the shore. We took our Christmas trees there in early January to help shore up the line, as was and still is the custom in that area. When the "reds were running", we joined other early bird fisherman on the piers, with hot thermoses and fresh doughnuts. It is the perfect place to teach a young boy how to fly a kite…. no power lines to get hung up.
I still love to stroll beaches…. especially that one. I usually go alone now and in the off season. It centers me and is a vivid chapter in my story. Like the Grand Canyon, the ocean reminds me what a small dot I really am. Many memories rush back, but now, as I stroll along, I am caught in that moment where I wonder what is still down the road. There is a lot of road still out there. What is there? I am back to searching for treasures in the sand.