Holding open this book, sentences, the book of my dear friend, Johannah Rodgers, the book slips. I do not want to press down too hard on the spine in order to be able to see the words I am quoting, typing. So to quote from the book, I stop typing, peer under its cover, taking one phrase at a time, memorizing, carefully, then return for another look.
I have given myself forty-five minutes to write this because I want to respond decisively, in the now—into this pressurized space, the book’s fifty-five pages, I write. This summer I moved away from Johannah who is in Brooklyn and I am in Chicago. So I write across to her through her book—better than a phone call because I think right now the distance in a phone conversation would leave me sad. A conversation in forty-five minutes. I remember another project of Johannah's: Writing is a Conversation.
“You must write with desire.” She encourages me. I have not known what or how to write lately.
“Writing as marking, marking time, where we are. This is important.” Also good advice. What are my marks at present? My notebook is filled with a line, then many empty lines, and another line eventually. I am writing to get to the end of something—yet there is no point—or I am writing a new sense of space. My red notebook now: there is more between than text.
“I don’t think that stories need to be progressive and it is my desire to get away from this aspect of story telling that has lead me to experiment with different ways of putting stories together.” This is good advice for how to lead a life. And patterning: patterns tell a story. Recently, Johannah told me, “I am interested in patterns.” Last night in my dream I wore a blouse adorned with tiny cross stitches all over. Johannah has made a drawing entitled “Embroidery.” It is a grid; boxes repeat. I think her drawing is a story, a life.
Today I read these sentences from my friend on a day when I wrote these instructions to myself: “It is time to start the change, drastic realignment—it is time to make the vessels you crave. You can put the books inside, the coil will be built around them—or you might slice the vessels open before firing so as to insert each book which has left you so painfully disappointed—it is time to put them away—a sequence of vessels—engraved on the insides—can you fire a vessel with a book inside or will it explode?”
I have only ten minutes remaining. I turn back to my friend’s book and her handwriting.
The handwritten writing/drawing sequences are what drew me toward sentences today—toward the spot on the shelf where this book sits. A gift: this book, helping me to remember the beauty of the mark, the hand, the skin of touch, the sound of the part of the hand that moves along the field of paper as it goes, a soft shuffle. A gift from a friend who is my writer friend.
How to write about friendship? I don’t know—except to say that maybe no matter what gets written, it should be written by hand.
What do Johannah’s writing/drawings say? I catch the following in my net of vision:
“one—small—step—can—change—
your—life—”
I push away from the desk, but too soon—I still have more time! Inside these pages, time is slowing. And I crave more, so I go back into the book, deciphering:
“winter—
how—to—preserve—
a—lemon—”
These drawings are transcribed on the verso side of the page, but I shun the translations, and sit with each line, her marks, one unit, one word, and then another: a word can’t help but continue on and grab another one to hold onto.
Johannah Rodgers writes fiction. But of the type that allows the reader to notice the mark of the author. For example, she takes historical texts whose rhetorical register is quite high and important, and lays them out in blocks that float on the page to be read as scenes, mixed in with other blocks of text—mundane narrative musings about money, the seasons, whatever. For example: “A man and woman meet and fall in love” is blandly entitled “story” with a lowercase “s.” This, next to a passage that begins, “Equinotical storms on Lake Michigan can be violent. . .” I read this juxtaposition with a chuckle; I am happily taking the Johannah Rodgers tour of the region in which I now live. I live one kilometer from this lake; I live inside writing.
Time is drawing to a close and to fulfill my duty to her as a person responding to her book, I go to the beginning of sentences—its starting place. From the first story in this book, “Woman,” here is its last sentence:
“In certain situations she felt like a bird, there to be admired but incapable of speaking.”
But because I am certain that this book is not resigned to sadness, any kind of moody or oppressed silence, but rather to the ebb and flow of language, to endless grids of choice and possibility, writing as pattern, I travel the loop of this book and turn to the last writing/drawing in order to read an invitation into breath and movement, a bounty, a continuance—
“here—life—
comes—
getting—it—getting—”
