I’ve almost written this newsletter many times in the past few weeks. No subject has taken hold, though I started a few on various themes: hunger, being humbled, things I do not recommend (long dental procedures, mostly). But sometimes there are words or ideas that rise again and again over a period of days or months. And lately that is surrender. It’s in my conversations with friends, about the big and small pictures of our personal and artistic lives. It’s in my novel manuscript, thematically, and between characters in a more literal sense. It’s in my house: surrendering to the hectic pace of a day, to what is and what isn’t, to what is beyond our control. Yesterday, both my kids tested positive for covid, after dodging it for nearly 3 years in the city that feels like the center of it in this country. (They are doing ok, thanks to good baseline health and boosters! They are watching the OG Gossip Girl! We deliver them food on a tray! They don’t have to empty the dishwasher, and we don’t have to listen to them fighting over that chore!) So far, my husband and I are in the clear. I’m not sure that will hold. But I feel sure that if it comes, I will actually surrender to it, this thing I’ve been dreading and waiting for at my doorstep for this length of time. Because sometimes it feels great to surrender, doesn’t it? To stop fighting what cannot be fought. To have that anticipation be met, answered, passed through. To not stand at the door, waiting. I have never been very good at waiting on the what if. Honestly, I feel like I will be more upset if it comes but it doesn’t take me down so hard I can’t justify daytime tv watching. But why, I ask all of us, can I not just watch tv in the daylight, as a way of self-surrendering? I suppose this word is on repeat because I am trying to raise my white flag but want instead something to take me down so I don’t really have to surrender.
I was a late swimmer, self-taught at eight or so. I’d had a few traumatic experiences with water when I was small, most notably a near-drowning (and subsequent rescue by a friend of the family) in a local pool at age three-ish. I can still see the sides and bottom of the pool, an image I don’t know if it’s stored or enmeshed with an older me who’d be underwater, eyes open, on purpose. But there’s a sensation of being in trouble of the physical kind, of a ticking clock, of a helplessness, but also, being helped. I also remember being at Jones Beach with my sisters a few years later, before I was really a swimmer—and I’m not, still, a strong one, only passable—and standing at the edge of the waves together. When they’d start to arrive at our knees, I’d panic. Despite my sisters telling me not to, I’d turn and run. I’d end up face down, sand and salt stinging me in places it shouldn’t have been. It wasn’t till I was in college that I had friends more accustomed to the ocean who taught me that the thing to do when waves start coming is not to turn your back onto them but to root in and let them lift you, or dive under them before they overtake you. After that, I could see a way to move with rather than against the water, or more so, I think, myself. That weekend in the Atlantic was an experience I’d never had, of being lifted and set back down, of allowing and trusting even through what had rightly caused terror before. Sometimes I still get sucked under, but after that, too, I also have a bit more faith I’ll surface.
I felt like it was better to write to you all quickly and briefly than to end the year without touching in. My December has been very busy—and it’s been an acknowledgement that my January will be as such too, and the surrendering to that fact with clarity and calm—but still I’ve been thinking a lot about this newsletter and who reads it (hello out there), and what I want to give you when I send it out, and what my limits are, who I feel I have to be to sit down and give you something worth reading. But also knowing I can just show up, as we all should be able to, and say hi, and ask a question—this is the bulk of my coaching and teaching work, the kind that’s effective, anyway, the asking of questions and puzzling through them together, never worrying about the answer per se. It’s never mind to give. So I ask: what are you surrendering to, now? What do you wish would just wash over you like a wave and stick you under for a bit knowing it will bring you back to surface, eventually? Where can you learn to stand still where you once wanted to run?
For some reason, k.d. lang’s Constant Craving has been running through my head as I write this, so much so that I could swear the song title was Surrender, or that the lyrics contained it, but I pulled it up to listen to it and no, not at all. But I surrender to the way that has shown up in my brain and wants to hand it to you. I surrendered to the algorithm and it fed me the songs in this playlist in this order as I wrote this newsletter, and I’m handing it to you now, unedited. Most of these are songs I have not called up on my own queues since the late 90s/early 2000s, but here they are, for us all. The algorithm is really into Natalie Merchant, like really into her, and I respect that. I’m also pleased by how much Jewel it gave us.
My friend, the poet KC Trommer, sent me this episode of Poetry Unbound a short while ago and I think about it a lot. I especially encourage you to listen to it—and the other episodes—if you think you don’t “get” poetry or don’t like it or can’t do either. You can. We believe in you. I imagine listening to a few of these will be like when I learned how to work with the waves, a comprehension that was in me all along, that I had convinced myself wasn’t. It’s right there.
Some quick notes as we move into the new year:
I’m teaching two classes this winter at Catapult:
-My process and practice class, two weeks, about noticing, creating, committing, and protecting one’s own creative process. Lecture-based, but gives you practical tools to take with you into the year. Starts in January.
-Six week generative seminar in fiction. This is a new offering, and should be really fun. No workshop, no homework, just me and your new friends and building new work. Starts in February.
I have a new essay dropping on Don’t Write Alone in early January, should you want to sit by your browser and hit refresh. I’ll link to it next time, and post on Instagram for sure.
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Wishing all of you a happy and healthy new year!
Talk Soon,
Danielle