On Friday, before I headed over to register for the conference, I had to dash over to Old Capitol Center to buy all the contact lens solutions I didn't have time to buy before I left. I had the strange sensation of nothing having changed in twenty years. Same smells, same black and yellow on the sports fans, same points of interest: The Brown Bottle, Givanni's, Technographics, Active Endeavors, Hawkeye Barbers, Prairie Lights, Iowa Book and Supply. Of course there are surface changes: The fancy hotel next door, the fancy food market on its first floor with sushi and fresh-squeezed juice and expensive wine and expensive cheese. But it's still the Iowa City of memory, and it took me a little while to ease into it. I felt the inexplicably silly I get when I'm nervous. I thought my friend Katrina should have been here with me, and we should have been walking up the sidewalks arm in arm, laughing over stupid things, obsessing about Jorie Graham, looking for people to talk to.
The panel went well yesterday. The room was too big and wide--imagine 30 or so audience members scattered over as many tables--but we made the best of that vastness, and Barrie Jean Borich (our moderator), Rigoberto Gonzales, Ira Sukrungruang, and I talked around the theme of wildness for a good hour. (I also got to be Cheryl Strayed, or at least I got to read her remarks, as Cheryl and Lidia Yuknavitch couldn't make it due to not feeling well.) I read a brand new piece, "The Wolf That Lives in Lindsey," finished forty minutes before our scheduled time, a piece that owes a thing or two to Stephen Elliott and Cheryl herself. A little wilder me, maybe closer in spirit to parts of Lawnboy than to the world of Famous Builder, but it was good to revisit that part of me again.
Good, too, to see my classmate and old friend, Chris Offutt. I went to a reading of his on the top floor of the Englert Theater. He'd been reading for ten minutes. He looked up, stopped, and said, Paul? And I said, Hi Chris. And then he read some more. Afterward, we went over to the Mill. We were both a little nervous about going to the Mill, as that was the site of gossip post-Workshop. A lot happened in that bar, a lot of history, though it seems self-important to say that. Still the same cedar-paneled walls, still the same booths, but much, much smaller than it was in memory. I hung out with some current people in the Workshop. I drank a shot of something they'd offered, and in a little while I remembered that simultaneous sense of belief and a terrible, terrible wanting, as if you didn't get that fellowship or if you didn't get that agent you were Failure incarnate. I felt like I was them, and the person I'd wanted to be back then, and walking back to the Sheraton, I welled up, mostly happy, mostly with emotions too difficult to parcel out.
10 comments:
that is it: "a terrible, terrible wanting." i still have it every so often, but i pretty much know what to do with it. teaching is what i do. and teaching students who struggle does remind me to be grateful for whatever facility i have with language, despite whatever publication credits i don't yet have. still, that be-grateful-for-what-you-have isn't a cure-all.
I know what you mean. That wanting does exhaust, but at the same time it makes us feel alive. The old conundrum.
Oh Ouch, Oh Wow, Oh Help, Oh the the greased slide of memory: I remember at the end of the street there in your photo, one cold evening, hood up tight so no one could see, standing waiting for the bus awash in tears after a particular bad dose of the "failures."
Then again, if you turned your camera to the right (I think) you might see the top of Mercy Hospital, where my daughter was born....
Bill, what indelible memories. Actually the sleek Hotel Vetro would block the view of the hospital if I turned the camera to the right.
Three things I didn't mention in the post:
--The flood of recent years
--The tornado of recent years, which ended up flattening the Dairy Queen on S. Riverside Dr.
--Some new proposition, voted in last week, which will prohibit 19 year olds from hanging out in bars. My cab driver insisted it was going to change everything. In other words, the rich kids from the Chicago suburbs would stop coming to a school five hours west of home.
One of my many jobs in I.C. was working in the book storage room in the basement of the main lib, right by the river. These were books not significant enough for special collections, up on the third floor, but not ready for the dumpster either. I spent many an hour combing thru dusty volumes from late 19th early 20th century with stunning color plates. I remember in particular a volume on stained glass from about 1905 with a color plate of a window of a mother and child receding down a lush garden path, their backs to us. The woman with her face just slightly turned so you can catch just a hint of profile. It was all lost during the big flood long after I left (the first big flood in the 90s I think) There was a big effort to "freeze dry" many of the damaged materials, but I believe many things were simply tossed out.
The DQ now resides in OZ? Architecturally it would fit right in-- although the Lollipop Guild might consider it unfair competition
I'd forgotten there was another big flood after the most recent big flood. I wish the library were up on a hill somewhere--I'm sure the librarians wish that too. The new town library is something, right in the center of things.
I'm sure there's been a replacement DQ, but I like the notion of the old one intact, somewhere high in sky.
Hi Paul, I really enjoyed your piece at the conference, the way you wove the Joni Mitchell's song (anybody who mentions her is after my heart) with the image of your father staring down the hole where once was a toilet with the scene of the two men in the room... The wilderness for me was encapsulated by that dark hole, it tied it all together. Do take a little stroll down my blog if time ever allows.
Amalia (the two-headed Italian)
Amalia! It was good to meet you Saturday, and thanks so much for your kind words about the piece, which mean a lot to me. Yes, that hole in the floor does end up being the center of things. I hope you had a fast and painless trip back home. I'll definitely check out your blog.
Paul, please do keep sharing your "wider view." Especially to your students, who pound shots of hope wherever they are poured.
Thanks for the kind words, Jamie. And the memorable metaphor!
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