Bubbles in the Wind

“I saw a bubble float past my window, fat and wobbly and ripening towards that dragonfly blue they turn just before they burst. So I looked down at the yard and there you were, you and your mother, blowing bubbles... “

Marilynne Robinson, "Gilead"

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Dear Alex,

Bubbles are truths, becoming more truthful when they burst. Much as writing, words spilling.

Why do you write? More than twice my kid has whined. What is the point to a pointless toss of prose?

The points to be made on me have turned more pointless this passing week. A few days ago I had a recurring onset of knee pain without a verifiable cause I could pinpoint. I limped for two days with self-restrained mobility. This morning I stopped note-taking with a pen because of the sharp pain on my right wrist. Pain makes a point about how pointlessly life has slid by until you stop to stare. Bubbles burst.

On the night I iced and propped up my knee to reduce inflammation, I thought back to my nascent reading of Gilead, Marilynne Robinson’s second novel, a burst of bubbling truths deserving the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. I had read only a few pages until I paused and re-read in backward limps those few passages pointing to nothing more finite than bubbles to burst. As the ice pack chilled my knee joint and nightfall sealed the aches and groans of the day diminishing, I wondered how much fatter my bubble of life could grow in its luxuriant lift before it floats past the horizon ripening to another midnight unknown and unseen in the bloom of blue as dragonfly in stagnant blood.

None of these points mattered last month when my daughter and I fled home to the local park for a random photo shoot. Our heads were light as balloons, limbs and necks in quirky sways for the camera lens on our smart phones. Bubbles and dragonflies, helium and summer floating. The best points of our times together are stripped of purpose and plan. You have no idea where the bubbles may drift to or how soon they will pop. We are bubbles with surface tension stronger than steel, held in tact by grace, our frames more fragile than foam.

Writing hurts, heals and hopes much as truth. I write and I shall always be writing in words and swords to grapple first with myself before I could come out as mother, friend, stranger or dragonfly to the yard and blow bubbles with you.

Yours, Kate

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Dear Kate,

To write like Marilynne Robinson, as simple and as difficult as that, is my goal as a writer.

What is so special about her writing?  She makes grace look as easy and natural as air, as grace should be.  This is a less than roundabout way to acknowledge I am not a graceful, generous writer, which of course has to do with this human being's being human.  I wish I could change overnight, but as it is being graceful involves not only willingness but also ability.  It is an art.  Art takes work.  And sometimes working too hard on art can be a graceless exercise.

I thought about stopping to write, actually rather frequently, and taking some pictures instead to call it a day on calling out beauty.  Yet words insisted and persisted.  Beauty demands unwieldy articulation to speak about how it is notoriously difficult to capture her.  We are captivated by what is free from captivity.

“I found myself reading slowly, then more slowly--this is not a novel to be hurried through, for every sentence is a delight.” This is what Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing said of Robinson's debut masterpiece "Housekeeping."  But therein lies the problem I am bringing on myself: who reads slowly, then more slowly?

There is grace in the air.  Like bubbles.

Yours, Alex