I Had a Moment: A Few Thoughts on Readings & Endings

Poster from Denis Johnson’s reading at the University of Rochester. October 9, 2015.

I learned last week from a friend’s Facebook post that Denis Johnson had died. I don’t know Johnson’s writing well, but I am thankful to have heard him read a couple of years ago at the University of Rochester. I know he read at UMass Amherst while I was in graduate school there, but it was during a time when I didn’t make it out to a lot of events.

The more readings I attend, the more I appreciate the good ones. His was a good one, a terrific one—memorable—in a sea of not-great ones where I’ve fallen asleep (really). Johnson was well-prepared, funny, read short pieces, talked in between. I went with my friend Angus (originally from Rochester), who was visiting from out of town over fall break. He’s a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. It was a good Q&A and I wrote down several phrases from Johnson’s reading. I recently found the notebook where I jotted these notes down.

And I forgot for a while (about a  year and a half) about the Denis Johnson quotes, because most of the middle of the notebook is grocery lists, and even those languished in a corner for a while, while we looked for other notebooks in which to write lists. I just started using the notebook again for grocery lists and so had seen my notes from the reading—mostly lines from stories. Individual sentences of his stay in your head.

Denis Johnson       10.9.15   UR

“I decide to call ____. They’re in my phone. Odd expression.”

From “Silences,” a story:

“He said the worst silent thing he’d ever heard was the land mine that took off his leg in Afghanistan.”

“How often can you witness a woman kissing a prosthesis?”

“Yes, they’re husband and wife. You and I know what goes on.”

From “Accomplices”:

“People in our neighborhood stroll around in bathrobes, but not usually without a pet.”

@end of story, looking at reflection in glass, sky and celery, ski and cycling [?]. “I headed home.”

First sentence of a different story:

“I was having lunch with my friend Tom Ellis one day, just catching up.”

Other sentences:

“His opinion about the afterlife. Mason was for it.”

“Then, more often than you might think in a San Diego café, we were interrupted by a woman selling roses.”

“New York and I didn’t quite fit. I knew it all the time.”

“I presided over all the litter, the people in restaurants in small tables.”

“Our public toilets are just that—too public. We can see each other—black shoes and cuffs. The walls don’t go down all the way to the ground.”

“By staring down at my feet and hunching over I attempted to disappear (to make myself disappear).”

“I had a moment. I have them sometimes…bereft…and not even a physical gesture seemed possible painless.”

***

He signed my copy of Jesus’ Son. I bought another book of Johnson’s (Train Dreams, on a friend’s recommendation) that I still haven’t read. I will now. I want to read so much, so many things, before I die. And my shelves are full of books I’ve bought in the last two years and haven’t finished reading. That’s a goal for this summer. To read more.

Johnson was funny. He read well. He’d timed himself. The short pieces worked. I just remember, as others said about him on Facebook and Instagram, he was present. Even in that reading. I felt present, and I felt him as being present.

I’m sure I got some of the sentences wrong, they’re partial, they’re misquoted. I don’t want to go back and correct them. I don’t want to look them up. I will read his work. I wanted to write this down. That’s all. I was inspired enough, I remember his cadences—and how stories started and how they ended. That I wrote notes. And that in itself signals something to me. I felt alive as a writer, reader, listener.

Last week, I was talking to my friend Ravi about the reading. (He had been there, too.) Ravi said, “And you asked that question about his endings.” I was glad he remembered, because that was the kind of thing I would ask about, but I didn’t remember that I had asked it. I had however written something in the notebook, and I didn’t know what it meant, but it must have been his response (or my interpretation or thoughts on his response). I think I asked how he knew or decided where to end a story.

Usually, when I get that ending feeling / feel

Endings are end—ending—complete or [something] about to be said or about to be said

I remember thinking it was a good answer; it was a satisfying exchange.

***

That day was good…it was one of those good days. After Johnson’s reading, Angus and I went to the Owl House for dinner and I had tea with Irene earlier in the day. And then we also stopped by The Bug Jar. Angus was at his best—someone you could take anywhere. He talked about his mom, whom I’d never met, and the school she’d helped found, which had recently closed. I’m not sure he’d been back to Rochester since she died.

But there we were, across from the park, and we walked through Highland Park, where we had met 20 years earlier, through mutual friends. And who were we then? Twenty years ago, Angus was just leaving his PhD program in creative writing and moving to Brooklyn. Later, I moved to Brooklyn, and even later, I became a professor, too. And then I left that profession, and became who I am now. A writer.

That October, we were just two people, old friends and writers, listening to Denis Johnson. Then we walked out into the rest of the day, still thinking about his sentences.

One Year Ago Today

Last year this time: a row of wheelchairs outside my grandmother’s room.

Facebook has this function called “One year ago today,” which revives, dredges, or resuscitates (any of these verbs apply depending on the subject matter) a post from your past year—something that happened on that particular day. But there are some dates we don’t need reminders for.

This time last year was the time following my grandmother’s stroke. I remember very little of this week last year except the snow, my relatives here from California, and our going back and forth to the hospital and Jewish Home in shifts, so that someone from the family, someone who spoke Gujarati and loves my grandmother (Ba), would always be there to interpret, to press the call button (difficult if you have had a stroke), to smooth her hair, to give her spoonfuls of thickened water, to help her to the bathroom.

I don’t look back at this time last year with any fondness. However, I realized this week that it is also the anniversary of the time I also spent a few days of my winter break writing, at the invitation of my friend Mary Jane Curry, a professor at University of Rochester, at the Warner School of Education’s Winter Writing Camp. I met MJ through a yoga class (yoga always brings good people to my life), and we had talked before and after class for a couple of years.

At the retreat, which I just attended again this year, we (professors and grad students and me, a former professor and current writer) met in small groups to talk about our writing projects (I was working on my first book review, on Amarnath Ravva’s hybrid memoir, American Canyon). We wrote for 45 minutes on, with a 15 minute break (if you wanted to break) and then another 45 minutes on, etc. The Warner School professors organized the schedule, lunch sign up (this year, we had boxed lunches from Panera), and made sure that we kept on task.

I talked again this year with Marium, who this time last year was writing her dissertation. She finished it last year, and credited the momentum she gained and a few techniques she learned in the winter writing retreat with helping that happen. (She was also very disciplined, blocked out large amounts of time, wrote a lot, and socialized not at all, except for seeing her husband and daughter.  I asked her what it took to get the diss done.)

My grandmother was released from stroke rehab at the Jewish Home in February of last year. Next week is her 93rd birthday. She is living with my parents and aunt 10 minutes away from me. I finished that book review. Not a dissertation, but managing to complete it between teaching 9th graders, planning a wedding, and time spent every day with my grandmother at the Jewish Home, was an accomplishment for me.

I had forgotten the camaraderie of writing together, of writing groups, and of yoga. I remembered that even in the midst of that stressful time, I felt happy about meeting other writers at UR and offered to lead them in some stretching and meditation breaks, which is what I had been doing with my ninth graders. Whatever grade we’re in, we can use yoga and meditation, and we can use community. We can stand to stretch. (I don’t want to count what grade I’m in now.  Life Grade. Middle-Aged Grade.)

I took a long walk with R during that time last year, and was struck by the pond that had developed in front of this house–giving us the mirror image, the house under the house, the world under this world. That was the world into which we’d stumbled.

Facebook also offers you a look at “2 years ago today.” Here is a quote I posted two years ago via the website Tiny Buddha: “When you become comfortable with uncertainty, infinite possibilities open up in your life.” (~Eckhart Tolle).  That sounds right to me.