A while back, I spent a month at a
writer's retreat in South Carolina. I was working on my book, A
Big New Free Happy Unusual Life, and living in a room with a view
of a lake that sparkled in the afternoon sun. Since I was writing my
book in first person narrative I experimented with writing a journal
in third person. Here's an entry I'm fond of:
 She
should have been writing but she could not; she instead had been dancing.
Since she is writing about dancing, she considered the time well spent.
Even if the word count did not grow, her understanding of what she
was writing about took a bit of a leap, like a frog hopping from lily
pad to lake, traversing only a short distance but the movement from
land to water not insignificant, a movement from one element to another,
a defining movement, a different universe, a different way of breathing.
Dancing, she understood that she could climb inside of the dance with
her feelings and once inside, any movement (if she could remain inside
the movement) was true and in that moment of feeling as if her cells
were known, she was happy and happy, she let the arm that had been
raised fall slowly with the slightest shiver of her fingers back to
her side and felt at least she could keep the word in the title of
the book, the word happy.
She should have been writing,
but she could not; instead she went for a bicycle ride to the spot
on the road between oak trees to view the eagle nest. She drove past
it, not realizing she had gone past it until she reached the second
oak tree, at which point, puzzled, she turned around and parked her
bike in the middle of the dirt road and standing, gazed into the distance,
focusing on the tall trees, their branches partly hidden by the foliage
in front, and yes, there it was, the huge dark nest in the high canopy
of the long leaf pine. If she were patient, she would stand here for
a long time, binoculars ready, and the eagle would appear. But she
is not feeling patient. She holds the binoculars, which are not light,
in her hands, the thin leather strap wrapped around her wrist like
her grandfather's tefillim, and waits. And yes, there is the eagle,
soaring like an eagle, and she finds the bird against the sky through
her binoculars. She learned the technique while she was in the Amazon;
the guide had taught her, smirking at her inability. You fix your
gaze on the target and then, without moving your head, you lift the
instrument to your eyes and if you are lucky, your gaze hasn't shifted
during the moment of blindness when the black piece of metal and glass
crosses the line of your vision, and you spot the target amplified
and hone in on the details of feather and beak and eye ring . She
finds the bird soaring and matches the movement of her arms to the
trajectory of the bird through the sky, now seen, now behind branches,
but she anticipates the next appearance, and there he is, seen again
and in the moment of seeing him aloft, his white head catching sunlight,
she knows he is an eagle because he looks like an eagle, he looks
just like an eagle, and she knows just what an eagle looks like but
she can't remember how she knows and doesn't remember having seen
an eagle before except at the post office perhaps on a stamp or stamped
on an envelope or perhaps in a commercial but she isn't thinking about
post offices or commercials she is caught in a gasp of recognition,
of seeing the eagle look exactly like an eagle and her knowing that,
knowing eagle, and then he is gone. If she were patient, she would
stay and the eagle would return, but she is not patient, and she rides
down the dirt road, the way marked by a white arrow, and pedals, the
movement rhythmic and steady, the road flat, the binoculars swung
around her shoulder, bouncing slightly against her back.
© Nina Wise
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