Laura Rink

Writer

Category: Memoir

NOVEMBER, A MONTH TO SWIM IN THE SEA

December 7, 2024 / / 6 Comments

“This is a wonderful day, I have never seen this one before.” – Maya Angelou

 

This month, on November 6th, the citizens of the United States elected their next president. On November 8th, I left the country. I left my country for a planned trip to Central America.

In Central America, in the Caribbean Sea, I float. My heavy heart presses my body downward. Salted swells pitch me up. In a lullaby of lilting waves my body hovers, held in a melody of warm blue while at home a national symphony swells in a minor chord threatening to wreak major havoc. Havoc, what an odd word: n. widespread destruction; great confusion or disorder; v. lay waste to; devastate. Originally used in the phrase “cry havoc”: to give an army the order havoc. The order for plundering.

Can rights be plundered? Can freedom? “First they came for”. . . . by now you’ve read the poem. Reread the poem. Red poem. Heart’s blood. Lifeblood. Right to live, to love, freedom to be one’s own self, freely.

This month I read Crafting the Lyric Essay: Strike a Chord, by Heidi Czerwiec [sir wick]. So it follows I should be able to impart to you what a lyric essay is, what enables an essay to not just contain lyricism, but be labeled lyric. There is “a focus on patterning, and on resonances of sound and silence and image on the level of the language.” (Czerwiec 2024, 2) Patterns obvious, hidden, uncovered. Resonances of rhythm and repetitions. There is less narrative and more watching the author’s thought process unspool on the page, melody in the making. In writing, meaning is completed by the reader with their subjective associations, and this is more true in lyric work.

In the sea, the surge tugs me away from shore. I trust in what will happen next. I relax as the shore recedes. With the incoming wave I cup my hands, spiral my arms, and kick with all my might. I write because writing might be enough of a buoy to hold up my weighted heart.

This month back at home without the warm sea to resist my sinking, the heaviness in my body drops onto the page, sprawls into sentences, sayings, screams, gull cries distant in the spiral of my inner ear. I dream of salted inhales and spouted exhales. I seek the blue in sky smudged with clouds, underlined in fog, accented with snow-topped mountains.

This month I consider the uplift to be gained in advocating for “the love of,” instead of or in addition to, “the fear or hate of.” I consider. Patterns. Routine. Labyrinth. Going into and withdrawing from the page, the day, a song to lull you back, and to sing you out of bed and into the sea swell of your day.

Your day. Our day. This day.

 

P.S. To read is to gain understanding. Three lyric essays mentioned in Czerwiec’s book: Brian Doyle’s “Leap,” Kathy Fish’s “Collective Nouns for Humans in the Wild,” Nicole Walker’s “Fish.” There are book-length lyric essays: Maggie Nelson’s Bluets and Heather Christle’s The Crying Book. Anthologies:A Harp in the Stars: An Anthology of Lyric Essays, edited by Randon Billings Noble and The Lyric Essay as Resistance: Truth from the Margins, edited by Noë Bossiere and Erica Trabold.

 

 

OCTOBER, A MONTH WHEN I DO THINGS FOR MY FUTURE SELF

October 30, 2024 / / 4 Comments

This month I didn’t meet my short-term writing goals of chapter revision which means I won’t reach my long-term goal of having a complete draft of my Armenian family memoir finished before my sixtieth birthday in February. I’ve written before about what is needed to do the writing: time and headspace. This month both of those were in short supply as I prepared for, had, and recovered from a cardiac ablation, a medical procedure to put, hopefully, an end to my atrial fibrillation (AFib) episodes.

What I did do this month, I did for my future self. I gave my future self a shot at a better physical outcome, and I’m moving the goal posts on the timeframe for a complete draft.

Work: After debating last month whether to push forward with my current draft or start over from the beginning with a new draft, I did neither. But I did set up my future self to be able to do either or both of those things. What time and headspace I did have for creative pursuits went into the creative nonfiction workshop that wraps up this week. The structure of the workshop kept me focused. Every Wednesday I submitted a chapter with context and questions, and by Sunday I’d read and given feedback on the other participants’ work. The workshop feedback on my work has given my future self a road map for revisions of the individual chapters and much to consider in the overall structure and story of the book.

Whether it’s health or household related, creative or work related, you can take actions now that make for better outcomes for your future self. What could you do in the present as a gift for your future self?

Wonder: Wonder why we are still changing the clocks? In 2019, the Washington State legislature passed a bill to remain year round on Daylight Savings Time. But to do so requires the approval of the federal government, which hasn’t taken action. The last two years a bipartisan group of  Washington State senators put forth a bill to have the state remain on Standard Time, which doesn’t require the approval of the federal government. But the bill never made it out of committee.

I am team Standard Time. Standard Time is better for school children and doesn’t require the approval of the federal government. Arizona and Hawaii are both already on standard time. In the 1970s, the whole country stayed on daylight savings time and hated it but that fact isn’t brought up in any of the current discussions over which time to stay on. Meanwhile this weekend we’ll return to Standard Time with more light in the mornings making it easier to start our days and with safer commutes for school children and everyone else.

How will your future self feel this weekend when the clocks fall back an hour?

Windows:

SEPTEMBER, A MONTH OF CHANGES

October 5, 2024 / / 4 Comments

While August was a month in which to soak up the warmth and outdoor activity of the summer season, September was a month of seasonal changes, especially as the month drew to a close, including the temperature (dropping, a bit quickly this year it seems), leaves shifting their color palette (a pleasure of this season), and the outside focus (a last camping trip) turning inward (cue the list of indoor projects).

Of course, the autumn weather will often be inviting, there is still the list of outdoor tasks to complete, and that finally final mowing, but the slowing rhythm of the season felt in the later sunrise and earlier sunset draws me inward.

Work: For me, the rhythm of my WIP (work in progress) has shifted from actively working on the second (or twenty-third, depending on how you tally) draft of my Armenian family memoir to participating in a creative nonfiction workshop where I’m receiving feedback on the first seven chapters, one week at a time. The feedback I’m receiving is making me consider returning, once again, to the beginning and starting yet another draft. I’ve known such a revision would be necessary but now, with the feedback, I’m starting to see the potential shape that new draft might take. Another part of me wants to keep pushing forward with the current draft, in my longing to have a whole complete thing, regardless of its merit. And I’m still lacking a structure to write into, at least one I can articulate to myself.

What are the pros and cons of starting over? Is there a value in pushing forward?

Wonder: Have you ever wondered what it is like to have a MRI? I have heard that procedure mentioned over the course of my life mostly in the context of an expensive last-resort or absolutely necessary scan. Recently, I had my first MRI, to check out my heart due to my abnormal heart rhythm, i.e., atrial fibrillation. First, let me say yay for the scientific minds that created this modern medical device that helps so many. But mostly I want to say WTF—a narrow tube? Why couldn’t it be something less confining, less tomb-like? And did I mention I have claustrophobia? In addition, MRI machines are the opposite of quiet. Great bursts of sounds similar to a car horn and grinding gears and a house alarm, so loud you are required to wear ear protection. While I’m grateful to find out that in spite of my atrial fibrillation, my heart is otherwise healthy, I have a new life goal, which isn’t entirely under my control: to never have another MRI.

Have you had an MRI? How did the experience go for you? How did you manage any anxiety you may have had?

Windows: The birds and squirrels know that change is upon us and are busy consuming and collecting food. Our large dogwood tree bloomed spectacularly this spring and the result is now being appreciated by the creatures as they feast upon the seedpods. The squirrels, robins, and flickers are exuberant eaters, scattering the chaff all over the deck and brick walkway.

AUGUST, A MONTH TO TAKE A BREATH?

September 4, 2024 / / 9 Comments

If July was all about travel and community, from my MFA residency in Tacoma, WA to my family reunion in southern Oregon, August is all about staying home and walking in the forest. Even if that is not exactly how the month has gone.

While I did walk in the forest this month—we had a few visits from a Great Horned Owl—the past four weeks contained much more activity than merely idle strolls. The days filled with guests, a mural festival, a brews cruise, concerts, and caring for my mother as she recovers from knee surgery. I also got back to work on my Armenian family manuscript.

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MAY, A MONTH OF FLOWERS

May 29, 2024 / / 13 Comments

April’s bounty, and showers, continue with this month’s collection of blossoms: pink columbine, purple rhododendron, red salvia, sweet woodruff, and the sweet perfume of lilacs and lilies of the valley . . . to name a few.

This month also marks a year since I began blogging again. Writing can be a lonely occupation, so thank you for following along with my writing journey, responding to my assorted wonderings, and gazing out my windows with me at the beauty that resides there. Your comments, suggestions, and questions have made me feel in community with each one of you. I look forward to continuing these conversations. (If you don’t already, please consider subscribing to my blog. Thanks!)

In addition, it’s been a year of tending to my health, including physical therapy and mental health therapy, and discovering I have a heart condition, atrial fibrillation, commonly referred to as AFib. Remember how tired I was in December? Part of being tired was three months of heart problems that I kept attributing to other things: anxiety, panic attacks, sleep deprivation, and dehydration. I have a cardiologist now, and medication, and some ongoing issues we’re still figuring out.

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APRIL, A MONTH WITH TWO ANNIVERSARIES

April 24, 2024 / / 9 Comments

April showers bring May flowers, so the saying goes. In other words, endure April for the reward of May. Yet April offers its own bounty: cherry blossoms, swaths of tulips, and the unfurling of maple leaves, to name a few. April also brings those showers, tree pollen, and temperatures often more like winter than spring. April is an energetic month.

Work: I’m drawn to quotes that reframe the challenges of writing and alter my mindset in an expansive and helpful way. For example, here is a recent newsletter quote from James Clear, author of Atomic Habits:

“If you feel resistance before you begin, it’s usually procrastination and you need to get started.

If you feel resistance after you begin, it’s usually feedback and you need to make adjustments.”

These days I do sit down and get started, because I’m eager to write this book about my Armenian family, to watch the shape emerge, morph, fall flat, and rise again. But it’s taken me a while to implement the second part of the quote. I’ll stare at paragraphs that aren’t working, as if time alone will somehow solve the problem. I’ll make line level edits as if tiny alterations can fix larger issues. (Sometimes they can.) But now I’ve realized a larger adjustment is often what is needed.

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March, A Month To Spring Forward, Still

March 27, 2024 / / 2 Comments

The harbingers of spring continue this month, with azaleas, daffodils, and forsythia in full bloom, and maples, alders, and dogwood trees beginning to bud out. We have a mallard couple visiting our pond and a blush of robins spreads over the front field bobbing for worms.

Work: This month I’m poring over a ship manifest & port of arrival form, carbon copies of one great-aunt’s letters from the 1930s, and research on Battle Creek College, Michigan and the Montefiori Hospital in the Bronx, NYC. All that to help me reconstruct the story of how another great-aunt, Silvia (Sirvart) Haigazn, came to America in 1928, after surviving the Armenian Genocide, and subsequently established a new life for herself here. My struggles with this particular section are threefold.

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JANUARY, A MONTH TOO SHORT AND TOO LONG

January 24, 2024 / / 7 Comments

January bears the burden of high expectations: A New Year! Resolutions! Winter projects! If last month I was tired, this month, the winter holidays behind me now, I felt ready to be productive—I will get so much done this month! And yet this month has flown by—is it really the 24th already?—and I have not gotten so much done. The too-long part of January isn’t an abundance of time for projects, but the endless dark and cold days. In Bellingham, we experienced negative temperatures for the first time in the twenty-six years we have lived here. I’m not a fan. Though comparatively it was interesting to experience twenty-three degrees as a comfortable temperature.

Work: In 2022, I set a goal to have my Armenian family manuscript completed and of publishable quality by my sixtieth birthday in February 2025. That goal felt reasonable and doable then. I set many intermediate goals. I moved those goalposts a few times. I have made progress but not as much as I’d hoped. Hence the high expectations for this January. And now I’m here, with only thirteen months left until I turn sixty. I’m not moving the goalposts this time, but I have altered the goal: a complete draft of decent quality, probably not ready for publication but ready for an editor, a fresh set of discerning eyes. To that end, I hope January, and February, continue to provide the perfect weather—dark, damp, and cold—to stay inside and write.

Do you set short- and long-term goals for your various projects? Any tips for helping to meet those goals? How do you feel about moving the goalposts or altering the goal itself?

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Work, Wonder, and Windows

August 30, 2023 / / 10 Comments

Work: Have you heard the term micro prose? I recently took a class from Darien Hsu Gee, a fellow Rainier Writing Workshop alum, in which she illuminated the benefits of writing micro prose: pieces of 300 words or less. She is passionate about this form, and offered much practical advice and inspiration. The writing process she outlined included writing a first draft in ten minutes and then revising in two ten-minute sessions. The short timeframes makes this a flexible and doable practice. For me, this form will be a way to get difficult material down on the page in short bursts. For more information on micro prose, and free prompts, visit Darien’s website Writer-ish.com.

Tech update: On my website, the “subscribe to blog via email” is now available on mobile devices. After the blog post, scroll past the comment section, and at the very bottom is a place to put in your email and subscribe to my blog. Please let me know if that is not the case. I’m pleased that I figured this out on my own, though not thrilled at the number of hours I spent on it when I just needed to add a widget, which was obvious in hindsight and took mere minutes.

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Work, Wonder, and Windows

June 29, 2023 / / 2 Comments

Welcome to my blog. First time here? Check out May’s blog for info on my intentions for this space.

Work: Last October while reading Judith Kitchen’s The Circus Train, a novella-length essay in fragments about, to name a few, mortality, Samuel Beckett, and memory, I came across this line: “I like the phrase ‘time on your hands’ when you can actively hold it and feel its weight.” In that moment I was transported back thirty years to an experience that altered my perception of time. I grabbed a pen and a notebook, and wrote the first draft of “Twenty Seconds,” an essay out in the current issue of Two Hawks Quarterly.

What does the phrase “time on your hands” make you think about?

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Work, Wonder, and Windows

June 14, 2023 / / 4 Comments

June 2023

Welcome to my blog. First time here? Check out last month’s blog for info on my intentions for this space.

Work: I’ve started on the next draft of my book, my untitled Armenian family memoir. The last draft I refused to begin with page one—I was sick of page one. I was sick of the beginning that might not even be the beginning, in the end. I picked a pivotal section on page 43 and sailed forth from there. Last week I landed on page 191 with new insights for global revisions, my main goal for that draft. I’ve returned to the beginning, and those new insights are helping me see what belongs here and what decidedly does not, and the fate of the rest of the beginning is uncertain at this point. As a person, I prefer the familiar, the known, the certain. As a writer, I’ve found the only way forward, for me, is to make peace with losing sight of the shore and trust that new lands will appear, eventually, on the horizon.

A helpful resource to take along on the drafting journey: Seven Drafts by Allison K Williams.

How do you tackle your drafts? Always from the beginning? Or do you jump around?

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Work, Wonder, and Windows

May 24, 2023 / / 17 Comments

May 2023

One of my motivations to write is connecting with others, and that connection can’t begin until the work goes out into the world. As I am currently writing a book, it’s a long slog before that engagement can begin. So I’ve decided to reboot, revive, and recommit to my blog.

This blog will be loosely organized in three categories: Work, Wonder, and Windows. What I am up to with my writing; wonderings inspired by books, podcasts, articles, essays, anything really; and what I’m seeing out my window on my borrowed piece of the planet between the Salish Sea and the Cascade Mountains.

Work: I’m expanding my MFA creative nonfiction thesis into a book-length work about my relationships with my Armenian grandmother and her two sisters, and the silence surrounding their life in Turkey and how they survived the Armenian Genocide. I’ve published two essays related to this work: “Geraniums” at Complete Sentence and “Tante Silvia’s Flinch Cards” at The Keepthings.

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REMEMBER YOUR TRAINING

September 19, 2019 / / 15 Comments

When, not if, you get tossed out of your boat in a rapid on a river, don’t panic. Hang onto the boat if you can, and with or without the boat, assume the floating lounge chair position: feet up, knees bent, and head back. Ride out the rapid and then, in calmer water, make your way over to the river’s edge.

I know this advice—my extended family has been rafting the Rogue River in inflatable kayaks for almost forty years. I email this advice as a safety reminder every two years in July right before the family gathers at Indian Mary Campground in Southern Oregon for seven days of game-playing, socializing, and floating down the river. I don’t know whether anyone reads my email but my be-prepared mentality compels me to send it.

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I WRITE MEMOIR, PART I

September 3, 2017 / / 12 Comments

In the third grade, I read The Little House in the Big Woods series of books. You could write about your own life—what a revelation! I wanted to do that. But also, a disappointment—my life wasn’t as interesting as Laura Ingalls Wilder’s. Mine was a normal life. Two parents and two sisters, a house on a cul-de-sac, school a half-mile walk away.

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SPEEDY

September 15, 2016 / / 8 Comments

The vet assures me our cat’s ill health is not my fault. Speedy, our thirteen-year-old tiger tabby, has lost over three pounds, has a urinary tract infection, bleeding gums, and failing kidneys. Cats are stoic, the vet continues, by the time you realize they are ill, they are at death’s door. Speedy is dying, and I’m pretty sure it is my fault.

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A CHRISTMAS PAST

December 21, 2015 / / 9 Comments

What sticks in a child’s mind and survives into adulthood? What joy? What fear? What anger?

Forty-five years ago, my mom’s extended family rented a large cabin in Big Bear for Christmas. There must have been at least twenty of us, pretty chaotic. It was the first Christmas in seventeen years that it didn’t snow there, a fact that has nothing to do with this story, but it is noteworthy, it is mentioned every time this story is told, it is part of the family folklore—the year it didn’t snow.

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