In the Company of Writers

The house overlooks the sea. An unrestricted view. As if there were no other place than this, nothing else but the sea and sky. The gulls cry as they circle the water. Occasionally, one dives—a plummeting streak of white—and disappears into the grey, into the blue only to bob up one breathless moment later. Whether successful or not (for bird or for fish), I never know. Children dot the summer beach like giant grains of sand. A morning mist glides by.

“I feel a lot of pressure,” my host says as we walk down the stone steps toward the blue door and then into the house where we’ll spend the next three days on a writing retreat. “I hope you like it.”

I know what she means. It’s how I’d felt when my family came to visit. I’d been trying to sell my mom on a vacation for years, and then she’d finally gone for it. And then all my promises of the virtues and joys of travel, of exploration, of adventure seemed unreasonable and unfulfillable.  Would it be worth the money to them? Would they have fun? All the Woulds in my world had hung in the balance. Even though I’d known I couldn’t control the outcome, I had wanted to. To have this perfect thing to give. To have this perfect thing to share.

Today, stepping into this house, home of the well-known [except to me who seems to know no one at all. Where have I lived all my life, under a rock?] and late Irish novelist and playwright Molly Keane, I feel like the new kid in class. Will they like me? Will I write anything good? Will I like them?

The entry way has a small table with scones, butter, and jams. A vase of bright, fresh flowers. The walls pose with their pictures; a commanding painting of a woman as well dressed as Queen Victoria, photographs of a couple at a picnic, the couple with three horses, a small painting of a colorful cow who looks as if it is surprised to be taken notice of. We go down the wooden stairs and into a large room with windows that look past the garden to the sea. The shelves are thick with books. A large mirror sits at the top of one shelf like an averted gaze, reflecting only the edge of a curtain.  

I get a cup of coffee and find a seat at the large table. Two lit candles bookend two small vases of fresh, garden flowers in the center. A thin, soft-rose-pink blanket overlaps another soft-rose-pink blanket to make a tablecloth big enough to cover the entire square. I take a seat that has a view of the sea.

Some of the writers are already seated, and soon enough all fourteen of us are.

The retreat facilitator, Lani, welcomes us and says, “Let’s take a moment to come into this time. Close your eyes if you feel comfortable doing so.” For a space of calming time, she settles us in. “With your feet on the floor. Take a moment to breathe. What do your thoughts look like?”

I see my thoughts as a school of tiny, fast fish which dart through the water of a rock bottomed, silver-brown river. They’re very busy, very fast my thought fish.

“Now put your thoughts into a pink cloud,” Lani says. “And let them float away.”

My fish rise, floating up from the water and into the pink cloud. Still busy. Still fast. Then they’re enclosed and I can’t see them anymore. I smile. A pink cloud is amusing. All my thought fish in the pink cloud is delightful.

They float away.

When we’ve observed how our bodies feel and what emotions are present for us on this morning, we open our eyes. Here we all are. Outside, the real clouds, not pink, have made the sea blue-gray. Lani reads us William Carlos Williams’ The Red Wheelbarrow. It’s a short poem. It’s perfect in its imagery and succinctness. I know it. As do all the other writers here. Many of whom are poets themselves. We make low murmurs when the last word is read. Then there is a light mist of silence. Will our words ever do the same to others?

“There’s power within objects,” Lani says, or some words that mean the same thing. She talks about how an object can convey feeling, thought, the weight of the world, a question. Reaching for the seven-metal singing bowl she’s brought with her, she holds it up. “I want you to write about an object. This object. Six or eight lines describing it. We’ll take about five minutes or so to do it.” We pass the bowl from hand to hand, some of us sound it with the wooden clapper, the notes resonant and deep. Some of us feel the weight of it in our palms, some of us pass it quickly on. Then we put our heads down and write. When the allotted time is done we go around the room and share one line—making a poem of collective descriptions. Which changes the meaning of what I’d written. Changes the meaning of what each of us have written. There’s a sorrow and a power in that. I’m surprised by my feeling of selfishness that wants to keep my line in its place, in a place on the page of my notebook that exclaims, mine, mine, mine. “Now,” Lani says, “I want you to focus on an object. Maybe an object that was important to you as a child.”

Those are our only instructions as we wander out of the group room to go and find the nooks and crannies in which to tuck ourselves in to write. The house is full of them, as is the garden. As is the charming, seaside village which is only a short walk away.  

I go and sit in a little sunroom surrounded by ancient and fresh spider webs. I sit and write about a mirror, about two sisters, about childhood games.

The hours disappear, the days go too quickly by.

With the sea to watch, with the garden to explore, with lunch set for us every afternoon at half one, with writers all around, I settle in to the work. In my day to day life, on my own, I do put in the work, I do put in the hours, I do write. But I’ve missed this. In my nomadic and transient way of living, I’ve missed the community and the accountability of face-to-face contact. I’ve missed the exchange of ideas and the hearing of new words put together in ways which they’ve never been put together before. I’ve missed out on the poetry. On the hilarious, heartbreaking, subtle, metaphysical, succinct, fearful, brave stories that come out in so many lines, in so few lines from people as much like me and as different from me as I can imagine.

I’ve missed the sharing of titles and authors.

Here, these thirteen other people speak the names of Irish poets and writers; James Joyce, Danielle McLaughlin, Kevin Barry, Mary Costello, Claire Keegan, John Banville like a litany, like a poem of its own. As if Ireland is the world. And it is. And I wonder where I’ve been to not know so much. How can I not know so much? Have I been living under a rock? As if these are the only writers. And they are. But they’re not. We are here too. We are also writers. With names and words, memories and ideas.

As the days vanish like the mist, as the hours pass by like the clouds, I write, I listen, I read, I think.

We write of a first love using an object to describe the experience rather than expressive words like heart, pulse, soft, desire, moon, moonlight or any of the long list of other words that usually evoke passion or even the innocence of love. I find a ping pong table and an old tool shed as objects. How strange. How strange those objects are.

We write of making a cup of tea using all the senses; sight, smell, taste, touch, sound. I write of the slow, lingering drip of a faucet, the open mouth of a kettle, of the fear of not fitting in.

We write our reflections on the day. And I’ve written so much already, pulled out so many unexpected objects from my memory and from my childhood that I’m almost empty of words. “The sea is a powerful influence,” I write and that almost sums it up.

On the last day, the sun comes out and the sea turns blue and bright. The gulls circle and cry. A group of people, children and not children jump off the pier into the water. A swimmer returns to shore.

On the final day, we write about what it was like to read our work aloud to each other. And I write that reading to this group of writers, of new friends was like reading to trees.

Trees listen.

Trees always listen.

Trees listen

Swaying

Creaking.

On the final day, as my host and I head up the stone steps for the last time, I look down at the house. I look past it to the sea. I think of what I’ve discovered for myself over these days and what I’ve learned. I think of other objects which I could use to tell stories.

Thanks to these days, I can think of objects in a new way now. For, as Lani said, objects do have power. They can speak in a way that fast fish thoughts can’t—even fast fish thoughts floating away in pink clouds.

Objects.

A house on the sea. A notebook and a pen. A mirror on a top shelf. Even a ping pong table. Even an ancient cobweb in the corner of a window in a small sunroom. Even a tree. As I get into the car and put on my seatbelt, I find that for me, even childhood itself is an object. A precious object of joyful pain and inexpressible, sorrowful, precious, innocent beauty.