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Looking for Mr. Nu
- University of Georgia Press
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LOOK/MG FOIL MlL. (\fu When I conducted awriting workshop in Port Angeles, Washington, someone asked, "How do you write an essay?"That was our topic, and I was the visiting expert hired to know.But somehow the question stalled me.I couldn't explain. Wewent around the table and told something of ourselves (the introductions becoming longer and more interesting stories aswewent).Then that question again, "How do you write an essay?" All I could do was to say something about working from a sense of abundance. "Abundant what?" they asked. Well, that's what we don't know yet. Once we know, each of us, then we can begin writing essays. My guess is that the process of writing essays may be less a matter of physicallywriting—scrabbling with paper and ink—and more a matter of living toward some kind of dense mystery. You get the abundance by living, and find the coherence bywriting. We spent the daywriting short fragments from various tendrils of our experience, reaching forward from the stories by which we had introduced ourselves, toward secrets we were ready to tell. In the midst of it all, as I watched them work, their questions about the essay made me realize I think of myself as more capable of listening than of saying, at first—listening to the muttering of my own mind, and also to neighbors at the cafe counter, fellow travelers at the bus station, dreams, memories,words in the air allaround us allthe time. When do notes become essays? As the words in the air intensify to the level of barrage, something comes together. But the knit of thought comes seldom fast, rarely soon, almost never in fully recognizable form in the space of a workshop day.You have to go forth and ponder. At the writing workshop, though, everyone around the table had something lucky: one with nine children, another with no children and a vagabond life of yearning. One with a knowledge of biology and a hunger for something else. One with family stories that no one tells outside the family. Confusion is a rich source, I said. You can write from that, if you pay close attention, coax a speaking voice out from the snarl of it. Reallygood sorrow has served me well sometimes , I said.They looked at me. We allwanted the writing to be possible: Climb into a canoe, and set out. But what was the canoe, and how could we load it with our joys and sorrows? Our experience was so big, it would not fit to the small passage of word by word. We wrote together, searching for stories from our lives.Wetalked, searched, took some hints to heart, and then the workshop came to an end. Driving south for home that night, I puzzled it through. How do you write an essay? The world should answer that, not the teacher. Iknew, as I traveled, for me the floating bridge waspart of it, strung out light by light across the strait. And the water was part of it, a restless shoreline allalong Puget Sound. I stopped to sort through the driftwood above the sand: a whole forest whittled into pieces and strewn there bywaves.I picked up a few sticks to take along, tied one to the top of my car. South from Quilcene, I stood by the trees to chillmyself awake, the whole trees standing on the mountain with me. Time Looking for Mr. Nu \ 53 [54.166.170.195] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 02:36 GMT) had not yet taken them apart. I wanted to inhale the long line of their shadows, the pelt of their darkness.Then on. Somewhere south of Shelton, I had to doze. Pulled off on a dirt road where the power lines ran, rolled out mybag in the back of the car, and slept. Once in the night I woke to the bright beam of a state trooper's light shining in on me. "I conked out drivinghome from Port Angeles," I said through the open window. "And what's this long stick tied to your car?" "I don't know,"I said, "I just found it and thought I could useit to get kites out of trees." He studied my face a few moments in the beam. "Okay," he said, "sorry to wake you." He snapped off his light, trudged back to his car, and sped away. I drifted off to sleep, but woke often to...