Downwelling Waters

On life lately, in five parts

I

I travelled to the west coast a few weeks ago, spending a few days in Portland for a work conference and then a day each on the Oregon coast and in North Bend, WA. As I left the city going west on Highway 26 I kept pulling the car over to gawk at the trees. I know this sounds like a Dale Cooper joke, I said to Nathan, but I can’t get over the trees here. They actually are magnificent. The size of them; the breadth, the smell.

I liked what I saw of Portland quite a bit, but for whatever reason it felt tough to sustain being in a city alone; the conference I was attending was somewhat strange to me, and full of a bunch of panels meant to sell AI software, and I kept to myself¹. I felt a better kind of aloneness when I left the city heading west, and began to wind my way up and down fir-covered mountains. It was cool outside and perfectly autumnal; the deciduous trees flamed orange along the ridge among the firs like candles on a Christmas tree. The Pacific was broad and wild, with foamy breakers and long sneaker waves.

As I wrote about in my last newsletter, I’ve had a hard time lately being alone with my thoughts; luckily, something about being in a new landscape helped abate that for a while, and even if I didn’t solve the world in my head or reach any great epiphanies, I was able to focus on the texture of redwood bark or the path of a Dungeness crab across Cannon Beach without feeling fully stuck in the same anxiety spirals, like something finally came along and jogged the busted stereo’s stylus out of its groove. I read a fair amount over cold cocktails and warm soup (it was, of course, very wet and rainy), some Ursula K. Le Guin poetry from a book I would ultimately leave behind in a Seattle hotel room.

     To the Rain, by Ursula K. Le Guin

     Mother rain, manifold, measureless,
     falling on fallow, on field and forest,
     on house-roof, low hovel, high tower,
     downwelling waters all-washing, wider
     than cities, softer than sisterhood, vaster
     than countrysides, calming, recalling:
     return to us, teaching our troubled
     souls in your ceaseless descent
     to fall, to be fellow, to feel to the root,
     to sink in, to heal, to sweeten the sea.

II

A non-exhaustive list of non-sensical things that have made me cry over the last month: the episode of The Simpsons “The Summer of 4 ft 2”, a news story about college kids waiting three hours in line to vote; a cat with one eye named ‘Winky;’ a family trick-or-treating with the parents dressed as the Hatter and the Cheshire Cat and a tiny, sleeping baby Alice; a waiter forgetting me in a ramen restaurant; signage at Snoqualmie Falls that told me the land had been bought back by the Snoqualmie and Muckleshoot Tribes in 2018; the 2020 proshot Hamilton²; my favorite pen leaking all over my work pants; a nice older couple at the beach that accepted my offer to take their photo after seeing them struggle to get a selfie and then said it was the nicest photo of them they ever had; a guy in a truck that blocked the box and fucked up two full light cycles on my way to work on 11/6; looking up at Mount Si and Little Si in North Bend; the last time Carrie Fisher says May the Force Be With You on film.

III

A little while ago, when I really couldn’t write, I pulled out a crochet blanket project I had been working on before our move to Baltimore (so, more than a year ago). I worked on it assiduously, churning through episodes of The X-Files while fending off a cat that loves nothing more than chasing some yarn, no matter how many times I tell him that he’s being a little cliche. Last week, I reached the halfway point, and spread the blanket out on my bed to make sure the pattern was lining up, and to count out the skeins and rows I had remaining. To my horror, I either I had lost the last bag of yarn somewhere in the intervening time, or had bought the wrong amount/started the pattern in the wrong size to begin with; there was no way I was going to get close to finishing if I continued on as I was. I spent a day brainstorming— could I switch to another yarn, how hard would it be to find something in the same fiber & weight, would it look stupid half in another color (yes), would it still work if it was short on one end (no)— and a day sulking before I accepted what had to be done: there was no way to move forward without frogging the whole thing, feet of worsted wool in a small stitch down to the original chain. Had I started a doomed project to begin with, because I fumbled the details? Had I lost something vital along the way? Either is plausible and there’s no way of knowing, not now. I’ve started over.

IV

I heard Eileen Myles at a local reading series. It was not a good event (through no fault of Myles³) so I couldn’t listen as well as I would’ve liked, but a few lines struck me that (badly paraphrased) amounted to, I count out and measure my pleasures because I am waiting for them to end, rationed like a bar of chocolate⁴. I was spooked at how familiar the sentiment felt: when was the last time I enjoyed something without simultaneously preparing for the enjoyment to end? And not just pleasures that are supposed to be ephemeral, but all of them; part of me even waits for the so-called permanent to end, to fail. I grieve in advance and anticipate the memory of things that are happening presently, treat my life like souvenir shopping. This will be nice to remember, later. I better get this or take this photo, so I have something left when this is done. In that poem, I was essentially undone by a sentiment that boiled down to “I should live in the moment more.” Easier to type than do.

V

The day after election day, after work, I took a couple benadryl and put on The Sound of Music. It’s a movie that’s been one of my favorites for longer than I can remember, one of those films where every gesture and punchline and rolling dolly shot is almost physically familiar to me, like the layout of my childhood home. The movie doesn’t usually make me cry— it’s too inside of me for that— but sometimes, when I need it to, it can’t be helped. “Edelweiss” in the musical is an Austrian folk song, a simple tune learned as children that all Austrians know⁵. The first time the song appears is in a happy scene, where the Captain sings for the first time since his wife’s death and reconnects with his children. It returns at the end of the movie, when the von Trapps are attempting to leave the country. The Anschluss has just happened; Austria has come under German control, Nazis are marching in the streets, and the Captain has received a notice of conscription to the Nazi navy; he must join, be imprisoned, or flee. In the final act the Captain and his family are stalling for time, cornered at a singing contest, while more Nazis keep watch from the rafters. In a quiet moment, Christopher Plummer takes the stage alone with his guitar, and sings “Edelweiss” in farewell to the homeland; a love song, he calls it. I start to cry when his voice chokes and he lowers the guitar, unable to continue until his family and finally the audience sing with him, Bless our homeland forever.

The von Trapps are good Austrian citizens, white and blue-eyed and sometimes blond and Catholic and rich as hell. The Captain is a war hero. They would be fine, relatively, probably, under Hitler; the Captain simply needs to take the job being handed to him and his family will be protected, safe in their country palace. They don’t want to leave their home; they decide they must leave rather than compromise their beliefs. They do so with love in their hearts despite the knowledge that their own friends sold them out: people who claim to love Austria, to love them, and yet have happily fallen into goose-step.

Until next time,

Courtney

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What else I’ve been reading/watching/consuming lately:

• This upcoming Sunday (11/24), Marissa is hosting a free reading in Ridgewood, Queens to celebrate the 100th (!) issue of her newsletter, constellations. Marissa will be reading herself in addition to some very cool guests, so if you’re near NYC or really anywhere in the northeast that Amtrak cares about more than Baltimore, I highly recommend checking it out! Info here.

• My local bookstore, Greedy Reads, is donating 10% of all sales (including online orders and prepaid special orders) through Sunday, 11/24 to Baltimore Safe Haven in honor of Trans Day of Remembrance this week.

• I picked up Chelsea Bieker’s latest novel Madwoman in Portland; I happened to get in town just in time to attend her reading and a small generative workshop at Up Up Books, which was so cool. I saved the book for the long plane trip home which was perfect because it made the time fly by. It’s a fun but also very moving and clear-eyed novel about both sides of motherhood, “wellness,” domestic violence, and how we build our identities/what we build them from.

• James Baldwin’s ‘The Art of Fiction’ interview, from The Paris Review in 1984. We have a Baldwin exhibit up at my library right now, with several quotes from him blown up on the walls; it’s a good thing to be surrounded by.

• Lots of good doughnuts (and coffee) in the PNW. Baltimore does lots of things well but as far as I’ve found so far (please prove me wrong) a simple yeasted doughnut is not one of them.

• Paul Mescal saying that meeting King Charles was “not a priority.”

• “Privilege,” by Jim Shepard, in Ploughshares (and Best American Short Stories 2024). The Johnstown flood is something you hear about growing up in PA as this huge disaster, but I didn’t know much about it and assumed it was just generally an act of God. I had no idea about the sporting club and their stupid dam (true details included in the short story).

• I saw Conclave, which despite looking so serious was really, quietly fun, a bunch of Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci looking grave and shuffling dossiers with a splash of Isabella Rosselini. We also saw Anora finally this week, which I started out really enjoying but kind of fell off; I think it was a bit too long and maybe didn’t quite know where its ending was (relatable). Also, I really liked that they used Blondie’s “Dreaming” for the trailer and I wish it had made it to the film⁶. Overall still def enjoyed!

• I streamed The Straight Story, finally, the last David Lynch film on my watchlist. Nothing was keeping me from it other than associating that period of Disney live-action with really boring movies; The Straight Story is so beautiful, and (mainly⁷) very quiet, and not especially strange, and not at all boring. It’s rated G and has a score by Badalamenti and I’m really glad I watched it.

• Alexandra Alter in The New York Times on the Japanese “healing fiction” (such as Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Before the Coffee Gets Cold series) boom that is sweeping east Asia and gaining steam over here. As much as I like cats this genre isn’t really my cup of tea, but I think the yearning for a particular feeling of comfort in your entertainment is interesting, and a potential shift from rewatching or rereading things as “comfort watches” (a bunch of people getting into Friends during the pandemic, me falling asleep to The Office most nights) to more generally “cozy” stories more like the “cozy mystery” surge in the 90’s is interesting.

• Sarah Thankam Mathews’s post-election essay, “every day is all there is”.

  I think a lot of people imagine that they will be heroic saviors to strangers during The Times Of Great Crisis and Breakdown. This is 98% pure fantasy. Protecting and caring for those known to us, and both deepening and expanding our relational circles in ways that push against our morbidly stratified society (online and IRL) seem more worthwhile and practicable to me. Put otherwise: if you don’t already, I personally think it’s good to find some way to be in relationship with people different than you, especially in terms of class and race.

• “The College RA Crisis,” by Rainesford Stauffer, in Esquire, about the move to unionize resident assistants at some colleges. In retrospect, I had it easy as an RA, partly because 2011 was a different time and partly because I didn’t handle any real emergencies, but it’s a tough job full of emotional labor and interrupted sleep (personally, I will starve before I take an on-call job again) and I hope the system can be improved.

• Bless his heart. I still own, somewhere, the I <3 Jim mug bought at the NBC store when I was like seventeen, and even I think that this is somewhat of a hilarious misfire.

1. In fairness to the conference folks, it was also the last week before the election; it would have been unlikely for me to be in, like, a great mood.

2. This is the detail that made me consider paywalling this newsletter; don’t make me regret this

3. It was extremely overcrowded, and (maybe to no one’s surprise) it was a bunch of men that kept bumping up against me and squeezed in an hour late, pushing me back in the crowd with nowhere to go. I admit I’m oversensitive when it comes to crowds— I don’t like being touched by strangers, I don’t go to shows where I think there could be pushing (god forbid, moshing)— and it was two days after the election so I was a raw nerve to begin with, but it was pretty uncomfortable.

4. I thought they were reading from A Working Life at that point but I read through the book and couldn’t find it, so please feel free to let me know if I fully hallucinated this or misremembered it!! Every apology to Myles.

5. It’s also known as the last song Rogers & Hammerstein wrote together before Hammerstein’s death of cancer in 1960. Pre-internet there were some rumors about Edelweiss being an actual Austrian song, or based on one, but it was purely invention for the musical (and received some criticism in Austria, along with the musical as a whole, for being sentimental. Indeed!).

6. For fun: an all-time Blondie moment in a different movie about sex workers.

7. There’s a woman with a deer problem I found very relatable.