A Walker in the Suburbs

It was Super Bowl Sunday 2010, which means very little to me but which anchors this blog’s beginnings in my memory. We were going out later to watch the game, something we usually don’t do but which good friends and neighbors had invited us for earlier in the weekend. Outside was two feet of snow; inside, the smell of yeast. I’d been baking rolls, big yeasty rolls, and we were taking them to our neighbors. There would be no work or school the next day; in fact, there would be no work or school the rest of the week. But I didn’t know that then.

What I did know was that I’d wanted to start a blog and now I was doing it. Tom helped me with the technology part and the words flowed onto the screen. (For the first post, click here: http://walkerinthesuburbs.blogspot.com/2010/02/walker-begins.html.)

Had I known then that a year later I would have 315 posts under my belt I would have been surprised and pleased. Not so much by the daily writing — that was already a habit — but by the fact that I could eke out something I felt comfortable sharing with others. And also by the photography part — snapping pictures for the blog has been a fringe benefit I didn’t foresee.

What gladdens me the most is how the blog has rejuvenated my writing life. In the last few years many essay markets have dried up, and freelance writing, while never an easy path, has become a darned near impossible one. As any suburban walker knows, when one road is blocked you must find another. This blog has helped me find my voice again.

As A Walker ambles forward I want to notice more, question myself less and never be afraid to explore the winding, circuitous path — the detour. Because often it’s the road I should have taken all along. Thanks for visiting this blog. Happy Reading!

“Our literature is filled with young people like myself who came from the provinces to the Big Cave [New York City], seeking involvement in what one always thought from the outside was a world of incomparable wonder, hoping for some vague kind of literary ‘fulfillment,'” writes Willie Morris in his memoir North Toward Home.

I’ve meant to read this book for years, and now that I’ve almost finished it, I’m itching to read his sequel, New York Days. Morris grew up in Yazoo City, Mississippi, and his description of driving home from Texas through Natchez, Port Gibson and Vicksburg is some of the loveliest writing I’ve ever read about returning to one’s hometown:

“I had the most overwhelming sense of coming home, to some place that belonged to me; I was not merely stunned by its beauty, for this was not new to me; I was surprised to feel so settled inside, as if nothing, no matter how cruel or despairing, could destroy my belonging. It was the last time I felt so strongly about a place.”

Morris became the editor of Harper’s magazine, its youngest ever, and set about chronicling a tumultuous time (the 1960s) in its pages. He edited and befriended many writers, wrote numerous books, was writer-in-residence at Ole Miss and died of a heart attack at age 64 in 1999.

As someone who also came to New York City in my youth, I find the words Morris wrote about the big city absolutely on the mark: “Coming to New York for the first time, the sensitive outlander might soon find himself in a subtle interior struggle with himself, over the most fundamental sense and meaning of his own origins. It was this struggle, if fully comprehended, which finally could give New York its own peculiar and wonderful value as a place, for it tested who you are, in the deepest and most contorted way.”

December 31 usually finds me taking stock of the old year and making resolutions for the new. This year is no exception. But there is a big difference. This year I actually kept one of my resolutions — I started a blog.

I’d thought about blogging for years, but last New Year’s was the first time I resolved to start one — and without the back-to-back blizzards we had in February, A Walker in the Suburbs might be just another “worry less” or “exercise more” — one of those good intentions I carry quietly into the next year.

But it wasn’t. And it has given me more than I could have hoped. After a career of writing for editors — and being an editor — this blog is blissfully editor-free. Well, almost. There’s still the little devil who sits on my shoulder and whispers in my ear: “Do you want to reveal so much?” or “How could you leave that out?” But even that bothersome editor, self doubt, is less intrusive than she used to be.

I started A Walker in the Suburbs not knowing where it would lead or even how often I would post. And it has surprised and encouraged me. Thanks to all of you who stop by this little corner of the blogosphere. May your resolutions come true, too.

In her book The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron says that one way to stimulate creativity is the “artist’s date” — taking yourself out to a place you don’t usually go. While I haven’t read this book in many years, there are two ideas from it I try to practice whenever I’m feeling stale. One is writing three “morning pages” in my journal; the other is the artist’s date.

The point of the latter is not some long and elaborate excursion, Cameron says. Simply trying a new route home from work will do the trick. Last Friday I drove to the oldest part of Reston to take a walk. And once there I went straight instead of turning right where I usually do. And the world opened up to me. I thought about what a different, tidy life we would have if we lived in one of those townhouse clusters. A life built around walking and the water. It’s not a life I would want right now, but it’s fun to contemplate.

Once back at our untidy house, one built around driving the car, I felt immediately at home. But a curtain was raised. I was shaken from my normal routine. And that’s what the artist’s date is all about.

At work I interview the new dean, then transcribe the tape and edit the conversation for a magazine Q&A. At home I interview people for a freelance article, transcribe their tapes, then tell their stories. I’ve listened to a lot of tape lately, my fingers flying on the keyboard, sometimes getting all tangled up with each other trying to keep up with the voices. I marvel at all the pitches, the inflections, the pacing. Most of all, I marvel at the stories: a man grows up in Africa, learning how to bake at his mother’s side; a young woman receives a kidney from a high school classmate, which makes it possible for her to become an medal-winning cyclist and a mother.

A lot has changed about this business I’m in. But one thing that hasn’t are the stories. And whenever I’m feeling flat, stunned, gasping for air, I try to remember them.

Apparently Socrates thought the written word was a step down from the oral tradition, which requires memorization, thought, the careful consideration of ideas. People who read, he says, “will seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant.” The written word offers “the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom.”

I can’t say that I completely agree with the philosopher on this one. But I do know how easy it is to read a book and a few weeks later have absolutely no idea what it said. And I do appreciate the power of the remembered phrase, of learning a poem or a verse “by heart.” Because the more you savor a particular combination of words, the more you love it. And because memorization liberates. Once we know the words, we carry their wisdom around with us; we are freed from the printed page. Being able to recite a few lines of poetry or prose, if only silently, lets us savor the rich thoughts of great writers and thinkers any time, any place. I wrote an essay about this a long time ago. To read it, follow this link: http://www.csmonitor.com/1990/1009/umem.html

“I’d say that it is good to have a quiet place to work, and it is also good not to work there, but somewhere else — whether at one end of the dining room table, or sitting in an armchair by the fireplace or even away from all the usual writing spots entirely.”

I just finished reading Reeve Lindbergh’s memoir Forward From Here, in which she writes about writing places — and many other things. Reeve can look out her back door and see her mother’s writing house, moved from Connecticut after Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s death in 2001. But Reeve doesn’t usually write in her mother’s writing house.

I know what she means. For years I wrote in an office. We always had a dedicated room in our house where I could work. First it was an upstairs bedroom, and then, when the girls got older and each had their own room, it was a converted dining room downstairs. Now that I have a laptop I wander all over the house and yard. In fact, I do some of my best writing on Metro (provided I have a conductor who knows how to operate the brakes — not always a given with that outfit).

It helps to have a writing spot (because you’re telling yourself that your writing is important enough to make space for it), but if writing is like breathing, then it figures you should be able to do it most anywhere.

I’ve been a journalist for most of my adult life, but I’ve been a journal-keeper even longer — since a student teacher in Mrs. Ahren’s eleventh grade English class assigned us to write one for 12 weeks. I’d kept diaries before, I’d scribbled stories and poems — but this was different. I wish I could remember the student teacher’s name or the words he used, but the message I took from this assignment was to go out into the world and observe it, ponder it, make it my own. Suddenly a pen and a notebook were the keys to the kingdom.
I started carrying a small spiral notebook around in my purse, recording thoughts, observations, favorite quotations. When the 12 weeks were over, I couldn’t imagine life without some notebook or other by my side.