When I was little there was a pine tree in the front yard. One day I came out from underneath it, walked to the front steps of our house and rang the doorbell.
My mother answered. I walked in and told her I had just been saved.
I remember only her face.
The smile that said:
Kate, yes.
I wasn’t more than five or six. I knew trees, but I had no idea what saved meant. I knew it was a word that mattered to adults. But I had no way of touching it.
My words had reached her face.
And in this way, her yes became my own.
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Over time, this yes was hard to live.
It was like a dream, one in which I urgently needed to be somewhere. My feet move. But when I look down, I see they won’t touch the ground. I can’t grasp the physics. Something holds me aloft.
Recently I read this, from Helen Keller:
“The few signs I used became less and less adequate, and my failures to make myself understood were invariably followed by outbursts…I felt as if invisible hands were holding me, and I made frantic efforts to free myself. I struggled—not that struggling helped matters…”
A lump forms in my throat.
Effort that doesn’t arrive anywhere.
It only becomes more effort.
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When I started reading Robert Saltzman’s work, I hadn’t been in a church for twenty years. I lived habitually from the structure of one, but I couldn’t see this.
It had become my physics. Experience was a constant pull away from itself. An unquestioned effort to get somewhere else.
One of the first things I noticed about Robert was that he used words differently. I didn’t understand everything he said, but what I could understand had one characteristic. It pointed to things I could find in my experience, here.
Because I was encountering Robert through language, I became curious about my own. I’d go for a walk and notice my thoughts. Sit at the dinner table and find myself listening to what I was saying.
What I eventually saw was language that didn’t move with the moment.
It moved preoccupied by a story about Kate that had been decided long ago. A story that kept telling the same Kate into being.
Once I could hear this, and feel the tension of it in my body, something began to change.
In brief moments, what was now and what was said about it touched.
Dovetailed.
—
I am walking into the store. List running through my head.
I notice a young couple a few steps ahead. She’s in pink shorts and a white tee.
He’s in dirty, orange-brown Carhart overalls.
A beat later, a thought—
They should really ban overalls.
A small tension forms in the chest.
My footsteps quicken.
Then another thought—
Overalls, worn.
Chest opens.
Feet slow.
Sight widens.
People.
Cars.
Husband.
Heat from afternoon sun off blacktop.
A step, and another.
Fingers intertwined.
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Related Reading:
No Other Place — There is no place outside ordinary experience from which life can finally be understood.
The Layer Between — Standing one step removed from life, and noticing that distance fall away.
Where Words Come From — Words appear, then the sense of a separate writer arrives.
On my first read I was surprised to find anger arising. I have a tendency to read quickly in order to get something, a message, then move on to something else. But, this piece didn’t give that automatic mechanism what it wanted.
I read it again and these words felt like a punch in the solar plexus "Effort that doesn’t arrive anywhere. It only becomes more effort. What I eventually saw was language that didn’t move with the moment.”
I realized the anger was a terror of stopping and looking at what is actually happening in the moment instead of being taken over by thought patterns. Why or what is afraid of looking? Or, is that the wrong question?
Beautifully expressed ❤️