F(eel)ings
F(eel)ings. We’ve all had them. August has been a month of them.
When I came home from Hewnoaks Artist Residency, I felt I had undergone a transformation of mind and body. Part of keeping that transformation alive was running. I signed up for a half marathon and began a training program. I felt very alive and also had very annoying and self-important logistical announcements about how many miles I needed to run on any particular day.
The other part of keeping the transformation alive was working doggedly on a feature story—my first magazine feature story, and more significantly, perhaps, my first published piece on elvers/eels, after having been fascinated by them for years. I was planning to turn the story in the day before we left for a trip to visit family in Rhode Island. I thought I would be turning the story in a day before the deadline, the thought of which made me feel quite chuffed.
A few days before we left for the trip, my kind editor wrote to ask how it was going with the story. “Really well!” I responded. A little back and forth revealed that while I thought the piece was due on 8/15, in actuality, it had been due on 8/5.1 I was mortified but thankfully, this exchange happened in the middle of these two dates and just far enough away from the drop-dead date that we could make it work, as long as we both committed to hustling.2
I turned in a draft and we went to Rhode Island, where said kind and patient editor and I continued through several rounds of revisions. I went on a training run one morning before breakfast and returned to the house thinking I’d just stared at the sun but I was actually having an ocular migraine – the second I’d ever had in my life.3 I slathered a piece of bread with butter, downed a giant glass of water, and got in bed to watch the rainbow prism looming over my left field of vision. Later that day, in a good-faith effort to prove I was indeed with my family on this family vacation and not in Rhode Island working on a story, I went with them to the beach. It turned out the ocean was also having feelings.
My back was to the sea when a wave pulled me under. My kid, who was a little more than an arm’s reach away can’t swim. I knew he’d be next, though I didn’t know what that meant. I tried to escape the grasp of the wave by grinding my toes against the sea floor, spiraling them against grains of sand. I was knocked on my knees, a supplicant. The wave passed and I burst out of the water. I couldn’t see my kid. Then he popped up, too, soaked but fine. I pulled him to the shore with me where we sat together and stared at the minuscule threads of blood coming from my knee while I came to terms with how brittle I felt in that moment, and at large.4
Both while I was at Hewnoaks and for a month or so after, I’d had trouble sleeping. I’d wake up at all hours of the night thinking about people I wanted to interview, questions I wanted to ask, and statistics I needed to track down. “You’re in a flow state,” said, which I think he meant as a compliment but I don’t know that what I was experiencing counts as “flow”—rather, one might say that I’d been “consumed.”5
Derek has been incredibly patient with me as I process my excitement about new information, participants/sources, and eel facts in real-time, while also narrating my anxieties about holes in data, where the story falls short, my feelings about the limitations of straight journalism vs. the expansiveness of longform creative/literary/narrative nonfiction, my hopes for a creative future with eels, my hopes for intact relationships with the participants in the stories I write after they’re published, even as I recall journalist mentors reminding me that we don’t write stories for the sources, we write stories for the truth. I’m into the eel stuff, don’t get me wrong—it’s the incessant chatter of the eel highway in my brain I could do without, as well as my anxiety surrounding transforming from living life as a person interested in eels into living life as a person who has the audacity to publish stories about eels and the people around them.
Running was supposed to increase my self-discipline, make me feel strong, and keep the eel highway/anxiety chatter at bay. Since twisting my foot, I haven’t run. I know it won’t hurt forever—the pain I’m experiencing now is significant only in that it’s preventing me from keeping up with the training program and that is only hard in that it was a way of placing myself within a predictable and satisfying narrative arc. I dunno, maybe I’ll be able to get back into training when the pain ceases. I could also run a race at another time. It will be okay.
A few nights ago (after the story/October issue had been shipped to the printer and I could no longer keep fussing over sentences), I went to see Colin Stetson6 play in Montreal.7 Between The Six and When We Were That What Wept for the Sea, Stetson told a story about going fishing with his dad. After having been silent in the boat for a few hours, he asked his dad, “What are you thinking about?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” his dad said. “What do you mean, what am I thinking about?”
“Exactly what I said, what are you thinking about?” Stetson said.
“Nothing,” said his dad. “I’m staring at the water looking for fish.”
“Natural meditator, that guy,” said Stetson, who then launched into another round of circular breathing through reed instruments that left us all quite enraptured.
Upon returning from Montreal, in an effort to move my body (without messing with my foot) and not think about anything, I went canoeing, paddling down to where Marsh Stream meets the Penobscot River. The tide was coming in yet the current was pulling me toward the Penobscot. The wind spun me around in circles—thrice—as I tried to return. This made me laugh and consider paddling ashore, tying up, and finding a companion to make the trip back with me another time but “I persevere across the seven seas,” my youngest sang yesterday morning while attempting to get his sandals on. The river taught me some new paddling maneuvers and I made it home in time to pick up the kids from camp.
The point is not to talk about why it’s hard to be a good, present parent while being a good, present partner, an adequate worker, and the intoxication of a story or creative project or even following a f*ing half-marathon training program. The point is not to discuss if annoying or neurotic people/assholes make good artists (so boring). The point is not to burn a hole in my navel from gazing at it for so long while the world burns. The point, one point, is to try to figure out how to embody the values I believe in through my language/art, relationships, and presence while minimizing harm/injuries along the way.
New Work in the World
The other day, one of my kids said, “Mama, when you die, I’ll honor you. I’ll bury your eel story with you.” The older kid said, “Yeah, but not the whole magazine. Just tear out the pages her story is in and bury those.”
Subscribe to Down East Magazine and you’ll get a copy of my eel story (in the October issue). You’ll also be able to read it online at some point in October (for free). There’s a lot of story behind this story—I’ll write all about it in an upcoming newsletter (and in the book proposal I’m working on).
Housekeeping
In addition to having f(eel)ings, I’ve also spent some time writing for Maine Sea Grant. I’ll be working with Out in the Open at their upcoming rural LGBTQ+ audio retreat (applications for this stipended retreat opportunity are open through September 16).
I’m honored to continue working with StoryCorps’ One Small Step program through WERU Community Radio. This year, we’re hoping to connect youth and elders for these conversations, and as has been the case, we’re especially looking for participants who tend to lean “conservative” (to balance out the “liberals” of which we have many in our database).
Currents
Love Me JeJe - Tems
(Thank you Francesca Chabrier for this recommendation.)
Teeth Agape - Tanya Tagaq
Shell Game
I roll my eyes at most conversations around AI but I really enjoyed this podcast. Host Evan Ratliff makes an AI clone of his voice and sends it out into the world to see what happens.
Torchlight Happenings
Aug. 28 A/V Club joins with Waterfall Arts Artists After Hours for a Headshot Party
Aug. 30 Photography Workshop with Waterfall Arts
Sept. 6 Song Clinic with Sara Trunzo and Tiffany Williams
Thank you for reading this missive all the way to the end. I’m grateful for you.
xo Michele
Arms Embargo Now
Demand an Immediate Ceasefire
Maine Coalition for Palestine
Maine Voices for Palestinian Rights
I take full responsibility for this mistake. I was so excited when my pitch got accepted that I must have blinked when looking at the due date. I wrote 8/15 on my calendar months ago—I’d been wrong since the beginning. (I hope) this will never happen again. ↩
I was not starting from scratch. ↩
The first occurred upon starting a new job with a six-week-old baby in tow. ↩
Family bystanders report this event lasted all of two seconds. And yet, time stands still. ↩
“I know I’m not afraid.
I’m consumed.
And another thing
I’m still bruised.”-Austra, The Future (a perfect song, imho) ↩
From Stetson’s website, “Since the early years of the 21st Century, Stetson has gained a well-deserved reputation as an exceptional musician, his devotion to his craft consummate, his commitment to innovation indisputable. Known for assertive, powerhouse performances on the saxophone – chiefly bass and alto, but also soprano, tenor and baritone – for many years he was a wrestler, a sport whose “insane physical extremes” he credits with his style…” ↩
Making a big deal of this doesn’t serve this piece, but going to Montreal was a big deal—it was our first time away from the kids together as well as my first visit to Canada. ↩
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