by China Martens
It’s never a question of ‘critical mass.’ It’s always about critical connections.
—Grace Lee Boggs
Saw this ripped off meme/Tik-Tok stitch on my daughter’s Facebook page, referencing what you would like people to know about your ADHD: “That decisions do not happen inside my head. They happen in conversation. So I just need people to hear me out, so I can hear myself out, and make a decision.”
This is a brilliant insight, I thought, in general as well, on the art of conversation. How it can be so much more—so much bigger than yourself, your brain connected to a force and memory bank that’s collective, electric, and receptive. What’s worked out in conversation. And what’s often not worked out but stopped, cut off, spoken over, cut over and superimposed, fed back loops and expected, superimposed projected outcomes, without a true back and forth.
But then having to keep working it out, in your head, online, and with others, over time. When you’re cut off. When you come from a family that’s all arguments, talking over each other, and cutting each other off. Leaping to conclusions. How little we get to really talk—back and forth—and work things out. And how good that feels. Not just for knowing what you think. But also for finding out about new things, and reaching new conclusions, personally, and as a group.
I think I’m aware of it so much now because the pandemic reduced my small amount of socializing to something even smaller, so I’m hyper aware, sometimes of basic things: What it’s like to talk around others. The art of conversation. Like fungi roots, a world wide memory bank.
The example: sitting in the kitchen at the Mutual Aid Society, it’s a small table, and more suited (or I am more suited) to the smaller group that’s been left when not everyone is there; when we have already spent time together; and there’s just a random trust without expectation. The morning talk moves to bird talk, everyone sharing a different bird fact, and it feels very very deep. What this song means. And special. Sharing, talking and listening.
Versus my family celebration gathering, my daughter recalled how flustering it was when others wouldn’t let my father finish his sentence, to my daughter’s question, when they were trying to converse. But my aunt (and truthfully my mother and I) kept talking over my father, over and over again.
The computers of conversation. The ways of understanding. The gathering together and the reciprocal sharing. This group of writers was very talented, I thought. I’m not used to gathering that much anymore, sometimes to just come into a group is too much for me right now, I try to find a semi permeable way to enter, I am not skilled with small talk, everywhere I go I do see people’s insecurities and projections, at first, how hard it is to break through those. But the bird song comes.
The wisdom comes. The conversations comes. The back and forth comes. Another autonomous zone has been created, just for this purpose.
A house with a library. A code of ethics. Instructions for guests. A barn to gather in. And most wonderful, a pond. A shiny big pond, right out the back, I can leave and walk to; and see . . . a turtle. The best part of my visit was seeing that turtle, swimming at the surface—when the sun was at its warmest—before diving back down. It was a special sight for me somehow.
And a desk to sit outside, to write with turtles.
And a pier to peer over, and a view of salamanders. The salamanders were wonderful. Yes, the pond was my favorite part.
Not at night however.
When I stayed one more day, gratefully (arriving late, it was great to have another day, and leave the long day driving back down to Baltimore.) I thought Kristin, our cook and host, was going to be there that night. But she was not, and I had not seen her email and didn’t get a text or anything, so I was surprised, when after dark, I had started barricading myself in the country house alone, to get the message on instagram, to check on the chickens.
I did not remember where they roosted. And I, unlike everyone else it seemed, didn’t really like the chickens. But here I was, a city person, alone in the farmhouse, after dark. And there had been an attack on the chickens before. I would have to do this.
The sounds at night were spooky, swamp thing, bottomless pond no longer friendly, now potentially evil or anything could lurk, me on the moon, alone like in a horror movie. I spoke out: “I am just helping the chickens—Don’t Kill me!’ And was grateful to find their roost, see them together in it, innocent eyes looking up at me now . . . and I latched the door. I kept them safe.
I went back to the house. I found the cats. Well, one of them. By morning I had pet them both. And let them back out. And thought about the chickens, I should let them out too, before I go.
Suddenly aware. Suddenly in communication, conversation. A feeling of responsibility. I remember reading “treat this space as a commons”—this space, this search for utopia, and stories from the children of utopias, or cults, or not great situations, telling stories outside of books, more to the story, the complicated search for better, in theory and practice, narrative weaving, consciousness raising, searching for one’s own voice.
But yes. It felt different to be in a place, set up, and entrusted to you, as a commons.
I thought of my grandmother how she had loved the Girl Scouts. It was not something for me, but it meant something different for her, and in her time, and became a family motto too: to leave a place better than you find it. After all, we are probably unaware of the harm we do. Best put in extra care just to break even, in hosting something together.
Yes, it felt different to be in a country commons. The Mutual Aid Society. The real life home of author Adrian Shirk, but not the author here, of the book I had read, and enjoyed, and watched her dancing, getting ready to promote the book Heaven is a Place on Earth: Searching for an American Utopia. The dance of writing and reading. And homes. Multiple homes. And hosts.
Thank you, Ariel, for always, it seems, taking us with you, and showing how to pass the hat, how to get along, as a writer, on the road, and in the retreat.
The real challenge now it seems for me is what to and how to when I get home.
A place without sunshine where I am all alone.
There is one new utopian place at the end of the alley, where it turns around. Apparently no one owns that property and it’s a community garden now. A white wicker sofa is left out where a bonfire pit has been built too and it feels very very magical. I place Ariel’s quilt on it to take the final photos when done, the week before giving it to her.
That’s my new utopia. But it’s not necessarily a good place for writing. I’m confused on my own. Dissipated. Lost. Agoraphobic. A single hand. An endless journey of stickiness and backlog and back issues and burden. I have a plan. But I’m not doing it. How to do the plan. How to go forward. When you get “back” from whence you came.
But in this treasure hunt I’ve invested wisely toward, a piece remains, reading my chapter—too, the last morning of camp when we were all still at The Mututal Aid Society. And what that’s like to read for others. To publish the book. We are all working on our books and reading for each other. It was quite good to gather. Special. And now what? And how more. And so forth. And onwards.
Pray pray for me, stuck in the tombs of my mausoleum. Ready to burst out or wilt, like buds picked and moved inside. A prolonged ancient endnote. Or never blooming at all. Feeling really crazy these days, and not in conversation, in silence, in pockets, at the end of the world. Here. Now. Honestly, honestly, that’s how I feel. Is it a fantasy, this “other” me that I could be “productive”? Let’s see. Will this year change anything, how all the years keep piling up, and not. And yet. Alive. Still I have potential. And Fear. And being stuck. Not knowing actually, where to have this conversation, where I can move, how I can change. If I fight the tides and that is just what living actually is. Or if it’s a bigger thing, the stories we tell to make sense of it all keep changing; we keep searching, rearranging, being told and echoed and cemented and broken and searched for and found and lost. It’s a frustrating time to be alive. Very hard to be on your own. But hard, perhaps, no matter what.
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One last story from the last morning alone at Wayward Writer Spring Camp in the Catskills:
What the heck! The creaks in this old farm house are out of control! The light is rising. Will I have the guts to take a quick shower at some point? It is scary to be alone although it’s also peaceful and beautiful here on this road where NO CAR EVER DRIVES BY.
The sound of frogs at night is wonderful. I’m starting to hear a little bird song. A bird song tells you you are safe. I learned that from my bunkmate, Jessica.
Texts and messages from fellow wayward writers after I got the chickens in for the night
Alyssa “You are a farmer now!”
Ayun: “You can do anything now.”
I’d like to remember that version of myself. I know there are people out there who want to support me. I just need to connect.
China Martens is a 58-year-old single parent of a 36-year-old, author of three books, quilter, and dreamer of three more novels to come. For more info: https://blog.pmpress.org/authors-artists-comrades/china-martens/
