Contents May Have Shifted

"I am up front, next to the pilot, Halifax William behind me, a woman from Juneau next to him, our three packs taking up every inch of space in the tail. The pilot turns the plane in a tight circle, we accelerate and lift off, and before he has even pulled in the flaps the first glacier is in front of us, huge and dirty and violent with stretch marks, plunging out of the cloud cover and into the shimmering sun.

Instantly I feel that old surge come back, that seizing of my own life on my own terms. It is such a physical thing, like the time I had my forearm shattered and the nurse came in every four hours on the dot to give me a shot of morphine - that's how physical - and I look down at the glacier and the ice-ridged peaks that go on forever behind it and say, Remember this remember this remember this the next time you think it's over, because some man, or some hope, or some life takes away instead of gives. Remember this and get on an airplane, a small one if possible, because it always works."

- Pam Houston, Contents May Have Shifted

A few months ago I was at my mom's house, watching TV and absentmindedly looking up writer's workshops, to see if there were any to which I might apply. I happened upon one in California in October that would be taught by Cheryl Strayed, an author I'm obsessed with.

I realized I already had a piece, clean and good enough, that I could apply with. I realized I'd used their submission website before, and that applying would take just three clicks, a few thoughtless seconds. So I did it. Then I went to bed and honestly forgot this had happened.

Two days later, on a Sunday afternoon at an outlet mall parking lot deep in Pennsylvania, I got an email saying I'd been accepted. It took a minute to remember to what. But then I did remember and was delighted, but there was a catch. Cheryl Strayed's workshop was full. But I could have a spot in Pam Houston's. Did I want it?

I didn't know who that was. I wanted Cheryl and Cheryl only. This workshop would be on the pricey side, and I didn't want to compromise, so I didn't put down a deposit. Then I forgot about it. Again.

A month ago, I got an email from Pam Houston's private email address, following up. Did I intend to join? No, I didn't. Who the heck was she, anyway?

The other day, I read an interview with Pam Houston on The Rumpus, a lit website I follow. It was about the fusion of memoir and fiction, about how restlessness is bred into the souls of some people and cannot be stamped out, about how there are those among us who can only think when they are moving, walking, running, traveling. It was gorgeous. It was perfect. The next day I went out and finally bought her book. It's also gorgeous. It's also perfect. That sickening "I'm such an asshole" feeling crept into me.

I emailed her personal address, on a whim, to see if I could still get in. She wrote back in minutes, from her iPhone. No space, she said, but I could definitely go on the waitlist. A lot can happen between now and October, she offered up. She asked me where I lived. Rattled off a list of where she's teaching next, and when. Said she hopes to meet me somewhere along the path.

And now I sit in my bed, her book next to me, her email in my inbox, thinking about the fact that you can spend your whole life feeling a little bit weird, a little bit alone, and then one day you realize there is a whole tribe of people out there just like you, who feel too much, who want too much, who think and hurt and process too much, too hard. They're called writers. They're artists. And they were out there all along waiting for you to figure it the fuck out.

I hope I get to meet her someday. I love knowing she's a famous, successful author who answered an email from a nobody like me on the spot, from her phone, as she went about her day. Taking the time to wish me well.

I don't really care if I ever succeed at writing in a commercial way. That desire to be known, or famous, is absolutely not a part of who I am. But I do promise that if I ever am known, in that way, to be similarly kind, and to always, always reach a hand towards those still stuck at the bottom of the mountain. To haul them right up.

The Tender Bar

"How did she do it? With no education, no money, no prospects, how did my mother manage to look so fierce? She'd just survived my father clamping a pillow over her face until she couldn't breathe, and lunging at her with a razor, and though she must have been relieved to escape him, she must also have been aware of what lay ahead - loneliness, money worries, the Shit House. But you wouldn't know it to look at her. She was an inspired liar, a brilliant liar, and she was also lying to herself, which made me perceive her lies in a whole new light. I saw that we must lie to ourselves now and then, tell ourselves that we're capable and strong, that life is good and hard work will be rewarded, and then we must try to make our lies come true. This is our work, our salvation, and this link between lying and trying was one of my mother's many gifts to me, the truth that always lay just beneath her lies."

-J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar

(This book is fucking fantastic.)

Blue Nights

"In certain latitudes there comes a span of time approaching and following the summer solstice, some weeks in all, when the twilights turn long and blue. This period of the blue nights does not occur in subtropical California, where I lived for much of the time I will be talking about here and where the end of daylight is fast and lost in the blazing of the dropping sun, but it does occur in New York, where I now live. You notice it first as April ends and May begins, a change in the season, not exactly a warming - in fact not at all a warming - yet suddenly summer seems near, a possibility, even a promise. You pass a window, you walk to Central Park, you find yourself swimming in the color blue: the actual light is blue, and over the course of an hour or so this blue deepens, becomes more intense even as it darkens and fades, approximates finally the blue of the glass on a clear day at Chartres, or that of the Cerenkov radiation thrown off by the fuel rods in the pools of nuclear reactors.

The French call this time of day "l'heure bleue." To the English it was "the gloaming." The very word "gloaming" reverberates, echoes - the gloaming, the glimmer, the glitter, the glisten, the glamour - carrying in its consonants the images of houses shuttering, gardens darkening, grass-lined rivers slipping through the shadows. During the blue nights you think the end of day will never come. As the blue nights draw to a close (and they will, and they do) you experience an actual chill, an apprehension of illness, at the moment you first notice: the blue light is going, the days are already shortening, the summer is gone.

This book is called "Blue Nights" because at the time I began it I found my mind wandering increasingly to illness, to the end of promise, the dwindling of the days, the inevitability of the fading, the dying of the brightness. Blue nights are the opposite of the dying of the brightness, but they are also its warning."

- Joan Didion, Blue Nights