llbwritesto.me

You can say that now. Because I felt like writing to you. And you decided you felt like reading.

Listening

On Silence, Burnout, and Writing (Anything at All)

By

Dear      ,

Not long ago, I wrote at Jane’s place, and told people I’ve been burned out. I wish I could say it’s completely gone. It’s not. Like I said at Jane’s, “I still haven’t worked out all the details.”

As a high-capacity person, I find it particularly perplexing to feel so “low capacity.” The upside is that it makes me more compassionate in all kinds of interesting ways. The downside is, of course, that I keep hitting the edge of my capacity far sooner than seems logical. Then I feel sad. Then that makes me feel even more burned out. Not a very fun cycle, as you can imagine.

In my notebook, now, is a word map. It’s my possible path. It’s a wager. And definitely an exploration. I don’t recall if the word silence is in one of the little circles (I put all my words in circles, unlike some mappers), but it should be.

In another circle is the word voices. And I’ve been keenly listening to the ones around me. Today, I listened to a 9-month-old boy fussing to his mama in the grocery store. I stopped to chat with him for a moment and got the cutest smile in return. His mom looked happily proud and a little grateful. I was glad to have been privileged to listen to their voices.

So when I say that silence should go into one of my circles, I’m not talking about the absence of sound (though that has its virtues too). I’m talking about the observation of poet Michael Longley, who noted in an interview with Krista Tippett that he’d gone without writing poems for ten years. He thought he might never write another poem. To his surprise, he eventually did. “Silence is part of the enterprise,” he concluded.

When I write to you, it asks of me not to be silent. Some of you help support my writing (for which I’m grateful), and I wonder if it seems odd to you when I am silent, as if that’s not part of writer-me. But it is. For, in silence, I find myself again. I find you. I find the little boy fussing to his mama. Today, I even found a poem.

In another circle on my word map is green spaces and blue spaces. I got the idea from Laura Brown’s upcoming workshop. Every day I am trying to give one of those kinds of spaces as a gift to myself. Sometimes it’s a walk by the river. Sometimes it’s just a walk in the rain. The back porch has beckoned, and amidst its simple setup (folding chair, portable coolers that have convenient cup holders, cement floor), I can watch the greening of my tiny, tiny yard.

I’m not sure if the blue and green spaces will ultimately soothe my burnout, but today the little herb garden, with its sage and oregano beneath the weeping forsythia, brought my heart a small gift of words.

With thanks to Michael Longley,
quoted within

“Silence is part
of the enterprise,”
he says.

It is true.

Here, you know
that the new sage
tastes like earth—
not just any earth, but
yours at the edge
of the little herb garden.

Here, the pine
is in conversation
with the maples,
while the wood-winged bushes
come alive. Here

the “forgeries”
fall away, the fruited
green tea feels like silk
—liquid and full—
that touches every part
of your open lip.

And you write
your first word
in what feels like

forever.

Today, Dear——, I wish for you silence, if that’s what you need. After all, it’s part of the enterprise of being a writer. And, if you’re not a writer, I suspect it’s part of the enterprise of being almost anything that takes a good deal of heart and soul, so I wish it for you. Tip it to the lip of your heart, and soul.

As always,
L.L.

Ailing Bees, Energy, and Missing The New Yorker

By

Dear      ,

I’m wondering. Do you know what a skep is? I did not know until Alexander Langlands told me.

He wanted to make one for the bees.

I wanted to go hear Rachel Aviv yesterday and tell you about it here and maybe in an exclusive on Patreon. Rachel has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2013. I have never been a staff writer at The New Yorker, and I had questions for her.

I did not have questions about skeps or bees, but this is the beauty of reading—it expands. And I know you know this about reading, but I just wanted to say it, because it’s sort of like something else I know you know—listening can expand your world in ways you hadn’t expected. This is why, when Alexander Langlands was talking about bees and skeps, though I didn’t have questions about either of these things, I thought maybe I’d take the time to listen.

Okay, technically, reading is not listening, and I promise I have also been listening in the ordinary way. So last night I went to Rachel’s house—not Rachel Aviv, mind you, but a dear friend who’s been letting me park in her driveway so I can stop getting $30 parking tickets (due to the car disaster, I vowed not to park the remaining car in the driveway until the wayward maple could be trimmed, and The Town has refused to listen to my pleas for a street parking exception due to extenuating circumstances, and it feels very sad not to be listened to and to feel alone and uncared for by The Town, but Rachel graciously let me park in her driveway, and so last night we had tea, and I listened.)

The skep, first made as early as the 8th century (mid medieval times) is fashioned of willow or hazel, or from straw that’s been twisted and bound by cane. It looks like a 60’s up-do you might expect to see on one of the B52s. Just add bees, and you’ve got honey.

If you listen to Rachel, you’ve got honey, too. Maybe if you listen to anyone at all, you’ve got it. There is something strangely magical (or, at least surreal) about concentrating on the voice of someone and listening with every part of your being, not just to the words, but to the sounds, to the person, and the way they are moving and the look on their face.

Rachel Aviv looks kind of intense, while at the same time looking almost medieval (not that the two need be mutually exclusive). Maybe it was the particular photograph and the way her hair and the neckline of her blouse reminded me of watching the show Merlin. She looked like Gwendolyn, but with fair skin and fair locks and maybe blue eyes, though it can be hard to tell eye-color in a black-and-white photo.

It was snowing in the morning yesterday; regardless, I still thought I’d go see Aviv. The day unfolded with more snow and more snow, and then the sun made a late appearance, the roads cleared, and all seemed well with the world. I could have gone.

Alexander Langlands, when I listened to him, told me something I hadn’t known about bee-keeping. Many of the big keepers kind of forget about the “keeping” part. They feed the bees sugar water, which is a sub-par form of energy. It makes the bees sick over time (I’ve been meaning to say, Dear———, sugar will make you sick over time, too), but it means the keepers can take all the honey they want and push the bees to keep working.

I’ve been working really hard lately. Well, I work hard all the time. But lately I’ve been working even harder, to meet some increased demands in my personal and business life. So, after Monday, I was still tired yesterday. My car was at Rachel’s. I did not have energy to go hear Aviv and ask my questions under the gaze of her intense eyes. I am sure I would have enjoyed listening to her, because I’m learning that there’s honey to be found in the act of creating an extra-special keeping-space for someone else’s words.

But.

There is a way in which we can run our lives that is like living on sugar water. And I thought of Langland’s last statement regarding skeps, and keeping, and bees… “The craeft in beekeeping is not in the meddling of the bee’s affairs but in the preparation of their home.”

In my home, there is actually not even one copy of The New Yorker, though I think it is such a cool magazine because it’s been around for a very long time and even Dr. Seuss had a friend there, once upon a time. I thought about this. I thought about the skep I needed, in order to keep writing to you. It did not include going to see Rachel Aviv—at least not yesterday.

What do I wish for you, then? A skep of your own. With the heartiness of a honeyed life. No sugar water. Because I want you to be healthy for as long as you call the 21st century your home.

As Always,

L.L.

A Year of Listening

By

Dear       ,

I have a lot of things on my mind, always. Last night I was awake for about three hours in the middle of the night, because I was dreaming of writing to you.

What I wanted to tell you is that I’m going to embark on a journey of listening. I don’t have a sense of where this will go—only that in our society where it seems that listening is a lost art, I’d like to be a person who listens, and I’d like to see where it takes me (and maybe, by extension, you).

I’m not entirely sure where this idea started—maybe in the car, where I spend quite a few hours per week with nothing to do, and I’d started listening to YA stories and then to Neil Gaiman, thanks to Megan Willome.

It is really something to listen to stories delivered by the human voice. I noticed how some stories were made more interesting, based on the voice of the reader, and some (like a Pulitzer prize winner I’d hoped to “read” by listening) were made absolutely uninteresting. Voice matters. The embodiment of a story matters. It’s the difference between speaking at someone, I think, and just being the story through your voice. This is probably true for writers, too.

Anyway, listening to stories aloud may have led me to the idea of listening to podcasts. (If you have any to recommend, let me know.) Listening to podcasts led me to Joshua Spodek. Listening to Joshua led me to consider listening more intently. So, starting with his material, I’m going to listen consistently to at least one podcaster a month, for a year.

While I lay awake last night, alternately thinking about the ruin of my car by nature’s ways and the potential development of a new friendship-themed effort through Tweetspeak, this listening thing was on my mind.

Wherever you are today, I wish you a lovely listening moment.

As Always,
L.L.