Greg, please forgive me for answering you on this blog. I just had time to read your e-mail all the way through today when BYU-I flipped off the server until Monday. And I want to write you now. No one ever reads the front page anyway except me. They read comments.
What's in Didion's Collection that we haven't already read? And what else for Ron Carlson? (I'm buying books this weekend.)
I empathize with you, my friend. I agree wholeheartedly with your decisions. I know also of this empty place where there are no words. Your landscape is probably different, but the grayness is the same, though I have such meager advice to give from my own visits to this cave. And you are only "visiting"; I promise. I've only found a couple ways to keep breathing when the air burns my lungs: I have to say prayers for insight (and courage), then I turn around and dive into the pit and look around. I force myself to name exactly what I see. Once I do that (never a fun time),I realize what I see is not going to kill me. But until I actually look carefully at the whole mess, it FEELS like it's going to kill me. I carry the grayness everywhere I go. I've also learned not to mess with the cave's reality. And, really, I don't know of another way to cut it out and leave it behind except to dive--plus, I force myself back there as often as it takes until I see light again. And I write about it....I write about exactly where I am, and I don't care if it brings people down; I don't consider audience in the least degree. I write about nothing, or I write stuff about the cave exactly as I see it at this minute--not next week when it'll be easier to walk, not next year when it'll be easier to smile--but NOW. I don't try to hide behind characters or form. At that point, I'm not writing to share, to give, to impress--I'm writing to save my own life. And sometimes I laugh at what I see has made me afraid, and sometimes, it's so horrible that I don't know if I can ever laugh again. I don't know, but I think this process will go on, every now and then, until I feel "safe"--damn.
Often, I have dreamed of someday meeting someone whom I could truly trust, who would help me feel "safe." (Jim did that for awhile, and whatever we went through may have been worth feeling even that false kind of "safety"--or, it may have made my life worse?) This is what I know about my empty, wordless places: I understand that when I was supposed to feel safe (as a child,as a twin, as a new wife, as a mother married to a high priest), I didn't. The ground beneath my feet has always felt like it will shift or give way at any moment. I don't even know what "safe" would look like, feel like, but I imagine it as a warm glowing place(with no snakes),where I can let go and be precisely who I am, without expecting blood and bruises. I have realized also that this "trust" won't ever be a gift from another person; it will grow within me (so sorry for how cliched this sounds), as I decide to feed it and stuff it full of faith, because the bombs never stop falling. But, you know? I want to meet the enemy head on, in the bright daylight. I don't want any more night time sweats when I'm looking back at something I can't see, something I can't finish or tie up in a neat little package. And (dare I go here?) . . . at times finding the faith to fill the holes has taken even greater faith because I saw God as the most loathsome creature who ever crawled through the universe. I knew of his Power; I'd seen it, and to know that He didn't step in when I couldn't get up, when my children were screaming as they drown in front of my face made me cringe from any sunlight.
Then I saw that He couldn't step in (I can never decide which is the worst idea out of those two) because of others' "free agency," and worse still that we had agreed to this contract. I have to admit to relating with the end of Conrad's Heart of Darkness, when Kurtz is dying and says, "Oh, the horror; the horror." And, I wonder, how did we--you and I--have the confidence we needed then, at the very beginning, to step down into this gray abyss? How were we ever that strong? But we were. And, Greg,I have looked around and seen green and ducks, and rushing rivers, Patch, my three sons, my beautiful Megan--and Beau, and I love them.
And I realize that if I can love--even the smallest leaf--God must be good; plus, where we're going must be great, or He would not--could not allow this. I want His vision in the worst way. I want to walk toward this grand place. And I can't--until I cut out any cancer that holds me back.
This probably doesn't make any sense and probably paints such a gray picture that you'll see how dumb it was to ever ask my advice. I wish I could give you more, but you need to go to wiser people, to happy people, and ask. All I can say is write about "now" or about spider webs and mailing bills. Use this blog. It's a sweet place full of good people. Write this: "I loved the Writing Center because . . . Do not say no.
And I love you, my good friend, my little brother. S.