Artistic discipline and athletic discipline
“Artistic discipline and athletic discipline are kissing cousins, they require the same thing, an unspecial practice: tedious and pitch-black invisible, private as guts, but always sacred.”
– from “Practice” in Swimming Studies, by Leanne Shapton
I loved this book. I bought it for my new Kobo, which my two eldest got me for Christmas — their own idea, their own money, their own surprise. I hope to use it to buy more of the books that I might not quite make the leap for in the bookstore. But I’ve now learned that it might inspire me to buy certain books twice, because having read Swimming Studies as an ebook, I long for the actual physical artifact of this particular book, so that I can share it, and so that I can leaf through its pages.
I was sad to reach the end of Swimming Studies. It is a memoir written in a style that I found both affecting and aesthetically serene. Shapton shares a series of moments, linked by their connection to her own life, and to swimming. She resists the impulse to analyze (I admire this, being compulsively analytical myself). She draws scenes that are coloured with very specific detail, that open the possibility of a story the way clues do. It gave me the sensation of looking at old photographs, and wondering about the people captured there. It gave me the sensation of disturbing a private scene, almost, and not fully grasping the significance of everything going on.
I find myself wondering over certain small scenes, like one early on: Why did the women behind the counter at the coffee shop rebuff her mother’s friendliness, in the early dark of morning, and why did her mother keep trying to be friendly? Or even just resonating with a familiar sound I have never paid attention to: the clanging of a frozen rope against a flag pole.
I like that the book seemed to belong to no established genre, nor to care. It didn’t need to fit easily into a category. I did not find myself becoming impatient with some parts that I imagine others might find indulgent: the minute descriptions of pools she remembers swimming in, or her collection of swim suits. I kind of just loved the whole thing.
I can’t imagine growing up with an athletic discipline and routine underpinning my daily life. But I know all about artistic discipline. I find it fascinating to glimpse the mind and experience of someone who has lived both. And I wonder if I could find some lesson, some inspiration here, some ease with the small; the ordinary transformed by attention; the possibility for forward motion within a scene that looks set and still. If ever I were to write a book based on my blog, I think this is where I would begin.
Word of the year, 2013
I’m liking the ten-minute post. 1. It keeps me from rambling. 2. It keeps from obsessively over-editing every precious word. 3. I’m writing a book, and I need to do that more than I need to blog … but I can spend ten minutes blogging without harming my book writing.
Okay, the above took me two whole minutes!
Which leaves me eight to write about my word of the year. Drumroll, please.
Word of The Year, 2013!
Stretch.
No, don’t get up. I’m not giving you advice or suggesting that you do, although perhaps you should. That’s my word. Yes, that’s it. Stretch.
Let me explain. Let me explain first that my best words have come very suddenly, seemingly out of the blue. I found this word during my long run on Saturday afternoon. It has several different meanings, and I intend to explore them throughout the year, but its most basic meaning is where I’ll begin.
Stretching. I need to do more of it, quite literally. If I am to keep doing my long runs and not get injured, I must stretch. I don’t know why it’s so hard to add that simple extra step into my routine, but it is. Therefore, word of the year will remind me to stretch.
On a metaphorical level, I see it like this: There are things that I want to do. Big, exciting, challenging, adventurous things! If I’m to do them, I will need to stretch. I will need to do the simple little things that keep me flexible (metaphorically speaking). My focus tends to go right to the big part of any challenge, the grinding, tough, overtly demanding, adrenalin-fuelled, energy-burning part. And I skip over the milder-seeming, gentler, supportive part that requires stillness and patience. I find my joy in motion.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.
It’s just that if I want to stay in motion, I need to learn to stand still and stretch. Know what I mean? The one supports the ability to do the other. You can’t soar if your wings are stiff. Does that sound like it belongs on a really bad motivational poster, perhaps involving a pastel sunset and bubble letters? Hm. Well, something like that.
And that’s my ten minutes. Plus three. Or four.
I stretched it a little.
Word of the (past) year: work/play
random unrelated photo from our holidays
I’ve got ten minutes to write this post. It’s 5:47 AM and I’m up because a) I’m planning to go to a yoga class and b) I couldn’t sleep because c) my mind was racing with everything that needs to get done today — the first day back to regular routine.
There won’t be time to blog today. So, why not get up early and blog, thought I, and eat an egg on toast, and write a note to a kid’s teacher re mixed up black Bog boots, and send an email to my husband, still sleeping, about tonight’s difficult-to-coordinate after-school soccer/supper/local food pick-up plan. Why not?
So I’m up. Egg eaten, note written, email plan sent, yoga bag packed.
Now to blog. It’s word-of-the-year time. Tonight I am meeting with two friends to talk about our words of last year, and words of the coming year. So I’d like to reflect (oh so briefly!) on my word of this year past. I cheated, slightly, and chose two: work and play. As the year unspooled, it seemed that work was the dominant word. I struggled to figure out where play fit, and I’m still not sure. I played soccer, which was new. And I tried to enjoy my work and find the joy/play in it. But maybe one word would have been enough.
I worked to repair an injury last winter.
I worked to promote The Juliet Stories.
I worked as a freelance writer.
I applied to midwifery school — hoping to do work of a different kind.
Working to repair an injury is not as much fun as working toward completing a triathlon. But it was necessary, and I am repaired, for now, and looking forward to more goals and races this coming year.
Working to promote my book was good. It really was. It was work, without a doubt, and it took energy, but by the end of the season I felt comfortable on stage, and had benefitted from connections made at the different festivals, and I think I was able to see myself as a writer in a tangible and public way. It was a good year for my work as a fiction writer.
Working as a freelance writer was, well, I’ll be frank, it was hard. I don’t have time to elaborate, but suffice it to say, that experiment encouraged me to make the leap to apply to midwifery school, after many years of considering the possibility. (That, and the fact that my youngest child will be in school full-time next fall.)
Writing fiction continues to be both work and play, for me. I am blessed to have found something that brings both elements together. I’m looking forward to working/playing today … after yoga, breakfast, kids off to school, and my quick morning nap. Can’t wait!
Swimming Studies, by Leanne Shapton
Nothing very exciting is happening here. It’s the last day of freedom before school starts (that is my 11-year-old’s take, anyway). Swim practice was cancelled. Soccer is on (one game in Mississaugua, hers; another in Cambridge, mine). Soft wet snow is falling in quantities voluminous enough for the building of snow forts.
I went for my first long run of the year yesterday — 15km, which is pretty short by long run standards. It felt easy, and I went slow, and I enjoyed it a great deal. I spent a few kilometres sorting out structural details for the new book, and I spent the rest of the kilometres kind of thinking about absolutely nothing, except for running itself. The discipline and routine of an athletic pursuit seems to keep me happy, grounded.
I’ve been reading Swimming Studies by Leanne Shapton, utterly fascinated at the glimpse into how a young person can be shaped by the rigour and routine and discipline of participating in competitive sport. This was not part of my growing up experience, although I suspect my personality would have been well-suited to it. It might have made my teenage years easier too — a safe place into which to pour those wild energies and the longing for devotion, purpose, “specialness,” which Shapton writes about. But what happens to the athlete who, despite great discipline and effort, does not achieve her original goals? By the age of nineteen, Shapton knew she would never make Canada’s Olympic team, despite intense devotion to her sport. There are limits that we all have to confront. If you’ve devoted five to six hours a day, six days a week, for most of your teenage years, training for a race you’ll never get to race — what then?
Well, I suppose there could be a sense of aimlessness. Or perhaps, instead, you find ways to transfer your disciplined routine to other aspects of your life. Shapton is a very successful writer, artist, and designer. This is not something that just happened, I am sure of it.
I have more to say on the subject, but will have to leave it here for now. I’m off to a soccer game with a child, aged ten, who seems inclined to pursue competitive sport one way or another, who thrives on disciplined routine, and who can’t wait for school to start tomorrow. I wonder, as I read this book, whether I am reading a story that might in some way be hers, in the years to come. I wonder, as I read this book, how my child will be shaped by her participation in competitve sport, with the demands on her time and energies, and the pressure to perform.
New space, new year
transforming my office
This is my birthday gift from my dad. It’s still a work in progress, as you can see, but already I sense how it will alter and expand my space in this lovely little room.
When I first moved into my office, just over a year ago, I loved the blankness of the space, the empty walls, the echoing newness. I wanted to spend time in the room before building anything permanent into it — to see where the light fell, to see what was really missing or necessary.
I set up my wheelie computer desk, which I’ve been writing on since grad school, c. 1997; my chair; a plastic office organizer with drawers, formerly Kevin’s; my great-aunt Alice’s tiny rocking chair (she was a tiny woman); and a cast-off cupboard with doors, inside which I hid my piles of paper. After we got dogs this summer, the dog beds somehow migrated here too. The dogs love the heated floor and finding retreat from the constant attention of the children. (The children know to knock.)
It didn’t take long, really, for the blankness to be replaced by clutter.
And darned if I could no longer blame the clutter on other people — for the first time since about 1999, I had a space that was all mine. Which meant the mess was all mine too. The room began to seem small. Piles of books teetered atop stacks of paper. Soccer cleats took up residence on a windowsill. Framed artwork was stacked in the corner, facing the wall. Behind the doors of the cast-off cupboard, items became so crowded and sprawled as to be basically unfindable.
I couldn’t afford built-in shelves and desk, but thought maybe I could put my GG finalist earnings ($1000) toward Ikea shelves and a desk. And then my dad got wind of my plan. Before he became a professor of Anabaptist history, he seriously considered apprenticing as a carpenter instead. He used to make our Christmas gifts out of wood when we were kids. Now he’s retired. He’s got a wood-working studio in his garage. So he volunteered to take on the job of Carrie’s office.
I’ve been working in here for the first few days of this new year, still using the old wheelie desk, c. 1997, but with the architecture of the shelves in front of me, giving my eye some relief from the blank wall. I’ve been writing steadily. For my birthday, I bought myself Scrivener — no longer a trial version. This promises to be a big book. I’m not sure how big, but it seems quite big already and it’s not done yet. Oh, and it’s a novel. I’ve also started believing my character is a real historical figure, which is weird. I’m making her up but I feel like she really lived.
I’m imagining a hibernating winter with these shelves warm with books and pictures, the dogs in their beds, the clutter temporarily wrangled and contained. I imagine a filled space, and the comfortable march of words. I’ll be writing.