Tiny Resolutions January 6th: Find the strength in your brokenness

Hope you enjoyed your Monday breather, because we are upping the game precipitously for Tuesday. I know, it's a little early in the month for such heady philosophical pondering.  I trust you.

 
I just finished reading a brilliantly written and painful 21 page article in the New Yorker about the history of Armenian genocides in Turkey.  Turning to Facebook for a little comic relief, I looked to see what was on the mind of Gavin Fritton, a Kansas City pundit whose sound bytes include lines like "Call me old fashioned, but I just don't think a general practitioner should refer to himself as "The Prostate Whisperer".  Tonight his post was uncharacteristically tender: this quote from Ernest Hemingway.


"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are stronger at the broken places."

Reading it, I instantly envisioned three small pots I saw at a museum last year.  Very old,  softly blue-green and each veined in places with branches of gold, these were Kintsugi-- broken vessels repaired with gold-mixed resins.  The result of the defects and their subsequent healing were objects of more value and beauty than possible in their former perfect state.

There's a late line in Cheryl Strayed's book and movie "Wild" where she talks about all her terrible choices.  What if I had never, she asks.  And she answers herself:  what if if was ok, not only ok, but what if it was what brought me where I needed to end up?  "What if I was never redeemed?  What if I already was?"

Here's the challenge, and ok, it's not so tiny.  Can you find one thing, one almost unforgivable thing, that you have done or that has happened to you, and find the gold in that crack?  

Strayed to Houston and Happy to Be There

L: Pam Houston   R:  Cheryl Strayed

After a few months on the fringes, if not off the radar, I have crawled out to see the populated world more and more.  And oh what treasures there are to be uncovered in out tiny hamlet!

Tonight, Cheryl Strayed introduced us to her new missive, an adventure story about her walking impulsively and ill prepared the Pacific Coast Trail at age 26.  She knows how to suck a reader in by the first paragraph:  we watch in horror her boot tumble down a mountain, catapulted by Monster, her initially evil then beloved backpack companion.  38 days out; the remaining  boot is a orphan and a burden now, just like she is, and gets an unceremonious (or perhaps pissy is a better descriptor) toss off the same mountain.

pam houston charms the buyers

Cheryl read about finding herself by getting lost, dirty, blistered and tried and tired..  I bet you can guess which side of the whale she emerged from.  She's a delightful speaker, full of smiles and Good Story and tips on doing what scares you.  Get her book at your local independent seller.

She was joined by Pam Houston, who earned my literal loyalty years ago with her collection of short stories "Cowboys Have Always Been my Weakness."  It hold well with time.  Now Pam's got a new collection of vignettes--a gross of prose--titled "Contents May Have Shifted", an allusion to the slipperiness of reality as filtered though time, memory, and a language that won't stand politely still.  It works, and it's worth the ride.  In lecture, she is relaxed, accessible, full of wisdom on the process, and also funny as hell.

Corvallis is becoming the diminutive Prague of the left bank.  There were several art openings this week, and last week Joyce Carol Oates flirted her way through a very informative Q and A about her prolific oeuvre to a big crowd at OSU. 

Writing is a path to personal truth, a way to process the complicated and persevere the ephemeral.  Our stories are so important.  And if we think we can't write well we can find authors like Strayed and Houston who approach our truths in such as way as to get us access. Maker's Space at the Majestic is a place to watch for upcoming writing workshops.  Check bulletin boards, ArtSpace newsletter, the library and other gathering spots to see who's coming up to encourage your story out of the body and onto the paper.