Prow of a Viking Ship, Norway
THE NOTEBOOK
by Mary Oliver
"Six a.m. -
the small, pond turtle
lifts its head
into the air
like a green toe.
What it sees
is the whole world
swirling back from darkness:
a red sun
rising over the water,
over the pines,
and the wind lifting,
and the water-striders heading out,
and the white lilies
opening their happy bodies.
The turtle
doesn't have a word for any of it -
the silky water
or the enormous blue morning,
or the curious affair of his own body.
On the shore
I'm so busy
scribbling and crossing out
I almost miss seeing him
paddle away
through the wet, black forest.
More and more the moments come to me:
how much can the right word do?
Now a few of the lilies
are a faint flamingo inside
their white hearts,
and there is still time
to let the last roses of the sunrise
float down
into my uplifted eyes."
I have been looking through old journals lately. On a mission to muck out my files, sort through my book shelves. Determined to pluck out unwanted books and notes, scribbles of ideas that never sparked any real writing... A surprising thing struck me in rereading a period of journals from around 1998-2001 - the mixture of notes, fragments of creative idea, the pen and pencil sketches. I was taken aback by the staleness of writing out of its own present context. The implacable boundaries time places on meaning. As Mary Oliver writes, "how much can the right word do?"
Instead I was drawn to the sketches I had made in the margins of my journals. Drawings of strangers in coffee shops, interesting hands, a peculiar face in a workshop. Some drawings were profiles, for example there were several of my daughter's cello teacher, and his centuries-old cello; all of them dashed off in ink on college-rule paper during a lesson. These sketches triggered a kind of memory muscle for me. Looking at a cello sketch, I remember sitting uncomfortably on the low sofa, the confines of the tiny practice room, the dim light from the drawn venetian blinds, the rustle of sheet music on the music stand, even the curious plastic wrap this old Jewish Russian refugee, who had once played in Leningrad with Rostropovich, had layered around the neck of his beautiful instrument to protect the wood from the sweat of his hands and forearms.
There was no "right word" I had used in my notebook to describe these scenes or events; instead I had made a drawing imbued with shape, mood, unusual detail. I was seeing the thing or person before me, and seeing completely; translating everything imperfectly but somehow accurate to its essence. All too often as writers we glance, and then look away to think. Looking for le mot juste, the perfect word; and in doing so, step away from the experience, and perhaps abandon our own innate presence in the moment.
Mary Oliver's turtle sees the morning rise around him, registers the universe with simple awareness. The poet knows her thoughts about this exchange are somehow stealing her from her own experience. She notes this distance, this distraction, and returns her thoughts to observing, to awareness without translation. A meditation on essence not story.
As I work my way through these old writings, I find myself keeping the pages with sketches and half-lines of poems; the penciled scenes from travels with my husband and children. All of us were keepers of travel notebooks then. We stayed in place; taking all the generous, unhurried time required to sketch something of what we saw. I was reminded of this pleasure on a recent trip to Scandinavia. There was a gentleman with our group, a painting conservator from a major museum, who did not dash off frenzied smartphone shots of ancient ruins and excavated pottery. He stepped aside as we hiked, opened his sketch book and freehanded a perspective, employing a few strong lines and shading to capture the heart of the object, the mood of the light. And then he moved on. His notebook of sketches a sensual, visual encounter with objects of mystery: the passage of time expressed in fallen stones, abandoned boats on the sand, whalebone, a rune obscured by moss. Looking over his shoulder I remembered my own experience of each of these places and objects. Our careless camera pictures offered neatly neutral two-dimensional replicas; these thoughtful sketches were experiences.
My first husband Ken, who was a black and white photographer, used to say that the reason a photographer lifts a camera is not in order to preserve what he sees, or to interpret the object his lens is focused on. The photographer photographs to see. The photographer does not step outside the experience to think through how to describe it; he steps into it and lets it speak for itself. The photographer encounters the material world as it is, shaped only by his own aesthetic, the light, and perhaps the accidental intrusion of the equipment or the development environment. There are zero expectations, only unexpressed truths. Through the lens, camera steady in his hand, the photographer addresses those elements he knows to be frank, honest. Only later in the darkroom, in its chemical bath, does the image knit itself whole. And so I think it is that these sketch notebooks carry more meaning for me than just my written notes. I am not stepping away from the experience to more meaningfully capture it in sentences and story; I am stepping into it to imprint what is there on paper, as it is.
But like our poet, who has made a poem of her observations on the failures of observation and still managed to convey what essence is lost in translation, the notebooks I will keep will most definitely offer stories. Creative writing may be impressionist, subjective, symbolic, abstract - all these things. Narratives knotted together by insight and imagination. But first comes simply being present.
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by Mary Oliver
"Six a.m. -
the small, pond turtle
lifts its head
into the air
like a green toe.
What it sees
is the whole world
swirling back from darkness:
a red sun
rising over the water,
over the pines,
and the wind lifting,
and the water-striders heading out,
and the white lilies
opening their happy bodies.
The turtle
doesn't have a word for any of it -
the silky water
or the enormous blue morning,
or the curious affair of his own body.
On the shore
I'm so busy
scribbling and crossing out
I almost miss seeing him
paddle away
through the wet, black forest.
More and more the moments come to me:
how much can the right word do?
Now a few of the lilies
are a faint flamingo inside
their white hearts,
and there is still time
to let the last roses of the sunrise
float down
into my uplifted eyes."
I have been looking through old journals lately. On a mission to muck out my files, sort through my book shelves. Determined to pluck out unwanted books and notes, scribbles of ideas that never sparked any real writing... A surprising thing struck me in rereading a period of journals from around 1998-2001 - the mixture of notes, fragments of creative idea, the pen and pencil sketches. I was taken aback by the staleness of writing out of its own present context. The implacable boundaries time places on meaning. As Mary Oliver writes, "how much can the right word do?"
Instead I was drawn to the sketches I had made in the margins of my journals. Drawings of strangers in coffee shops, interesting hands, a peculiar face in a workshop. Some drawings were profiles, for example there were several of my daughter's cello teacher, and his centuries-old cello; all of them dashed off in ink on college-rule paper during a lesson. These sketches triggered a kind of memory muscle for me. Looking at a cello sketch, I remember sitting uncomfortably on the low sofa, the confines of the tiny practice room, the dim light from the drawn venetian blinds, the rustle of sheet music on the music stand, even the curious plastic wrap this old Jewish Russian refugee, who had once played in Leningrad with Rostropovich, had layered around the neck of his beautiful instrument to protect the wood from the sweat of his hands and forearms.
There was no "right word" I had used in my notebook to describe these scenes or events; instead I had made a drawing imbued with shape, mood, unusual detail. I was seeing the thing or person before me, and seeing completely; translating everything imperfectly but somehow accurate to its essence. All too often as writers we glance, and then look away to think. Looking for le mot juste, the perfect word; and in doing so, step away from the experience, and perhaps abandon our own innate presence in the moment.
Mary Oliver's turtle sees the morning rise around him, registers the universe with simple awareness. The poet knows her thoughts about this exchange are somehow stealing her from her own experience. She notes this distance, this distraction, and returns her thoughts to observing, to awareness without translation. A meditation on essence not story.
As I work my way through these old writings, I find myself keeping the pages with sketches and half-lines of poems; the penciled scenes from travels with my husband and children. All of us were keepers of travel notebooks then. We stayed in place; taking all the generous, unhurried time required to sketch something of what we saw. I was reminded of this pleasure on a recent trip to Scandinavia. There was a gentleman with our group, a painting conservator from a major museum, who did not dash off frenzied smartphone shots of ancient ruins and excavated pottery. He stepped aside as we hiked, opened his sketch book and freehanded a perspective, employing a few strong lines and shading to capture the heart of the object, the mood of the light. And then he moved on. His notebook of sketches a sensual, visual encounter with objects of mystery: the passage of time expressed in fallen stones, abandoned boats on the sand, whalebone, a rune obscured by moss. Looking over his shoulder I remembered my own experience of each of these places and objects. Our careless camera pictures offered neatly neutral two-dimensional replicas; these thoughtful sketches were experiences.
My first husband Ken, who was a black and white photographer, used to say that the reason a photographer lifts a camera is not in order to preserve what he sees, or to interpret the object his lens is focused on. The photographer photographs to see. The photographer does not step outside the experience to think through how to describe it; he steps into it and lets it speak for itself. The photographer encounters the material world as it is, shaped only by his own aesthetic, the light, and perhaps the accidental intrusion of the equipment or the development environment. There are zero expectations, only unexpressed truths. Through the lens, camera steady in his hand, the photographer addresses those elements he knows to be frank, honest. Only later in the darkroom, in its chemical bath, does the image knit itself whole. And so I think it is that these sketch notebooks carry more meaning for me than just my written notes. I am not stepping away from the experience to more meaningfully capture it in sentences and story; I am stepping into it to imprint what is there on paper, as it is.
But like our poet, who has made a poem of her observations on the failures of observation and still managed to convey what essence is lost in translation, the notebooks I will keep will most definitely offer stories. Creative writing may be impressionist, subjective, symbolic, abstract - all these things. Narratives knotted together by insight and imagination. But first comes simply being present.
Read More
