Narrative...Briefly

I have been reading through the last couple of issues of dwell magazine -- a modern design magazine focusing on homes and furniture -- and the notion of a space creating a narrative has come up in both issues by two different authors.  First a designer talking about filling a space with furniture that creates a narrative of a room, second a writer exploring the narrative of design.  But I have to wonder if that is the right use of the word?  If space does create a narrative or if the narrative is assigned by the inhabitants.


Narrative is  "A spoken or written account of connected events; a story," but as a culture we have assigned narrative to most scenarios under which we live.  Our designed space becomes a narrative.  Our activities of choice -- biking, hiking, sports, reading, writing -- becomes a narrative.  Our relationships become a narrative.  The conflict between how a person makes a living (occupation) and what that person is meant to do/be (vocation) becomes a narrative.  A few years ago there was this notion of meta narrative, a collected experience that is the over arching story of human experience.


I believe that our lives create a narrative.  We leave behind a human experience, recorded or not, that tells the story of who we are.  And, as a Christian, I believe my life fits into the greater narrative of the story begun by the living God.  But I have a hard time with assigning narrative to a room.  A painting.  A song.  A bike ride.  A hunting trip.  A baseball game.  These events may be an experience and have story of their own but they fit into the individual stories of the participants and creators.  A room, in itself, is a reflection of the narrative of the designer and if it is designed by a person besides the inhabitant, it would seem that the inhabitant is living in the story of someone else, by guidelines set outside their experience.


Our individual experience is important.  We are born, we grow, we live and learn and step out into the world to make our own ways to choose to marry or not, to start a family or not.  To work, to play, to spend, to save.  But our narrative is our own and how we define events in our life is contingent on our experience, our history, our narrative.


We can set about trying to make it something its not, I think we begin to assign narrative to things like rooms and sports and arts (though with art the lines do become blurry because art typically sets out to tell a story) in an effort to fill the empty feeling that our own narrative is not enough.

Reflections on the Move: Week 1

It is a different view than I am  used to.  The thick forests of fir and cedar trees sweeping down to sandstone cliffs and the gnarled madronna trees perched on the ledges, taking on the wind and the rain and the surf spray and watching over the ragged coast of Bellingham Bay has given way to rolling hills of grain.

The thick wheat fields are scattered with old farmhouses and grain elevator stand like lighthouses standing sentry.  Tractors are parked in seemingly random fashion, left where the days work ends so tomorrow can pick up where it left off.  Some are new, some are old, some are parked in machine boneyards and left to rust under the heavy sun and long summer days that will, in time, become the long season of short winter days and they will alternately be covered with rain and ice and sometimes snow but never snow for very long.

The cackling of eagles and the cry of seagulls has been replaced by the harsh caw of unseen pheasants from the weeds and the edges of the wheat fields and the delicate coo of mourning doves is a near constant sound, wether I am near the fields of sitting in the shade of the ancient maple tree in the back yard.

Right now the wheat fields are highlighted with green giving way, day by day, to the harvest ready gold color.  In a matter of weeks the combines will cut across the fields and mow down the wheat, chaffing the grain from the heavy heads as they go, filling their hoppers with grain and dumping it into trucks or trailers pulled by tractors and they will run in a constant pattern of cutting and emptying without stopping.  But for now, it is peaceful with only the birds and the wind to keep me company in the quiet moments of the morning before I fire up the air compressor and enter into work.

As my thoughts look back to Bellingham, it is with a sorrowful heart at the community -- friends, places, memories -- we left behind but Bellingham no longer has "home" attached to my memory tag, but I can't say that Pendleton does either.  Home, I am learning, has as much to do with where my wife and children are as much as it does with a physical place.

I have the sense of returning but not of having arrived.  Pendleton, I do not think (but I have been wrong before), is not our final destination, I feel that through and through.  But we are in the right place at the right time and I am quite certain we are on the right track.

Reflections on Bellingham: The Move

It was raining the morning we left Bellingham, WA, it was raining the afternoon we arrived in Pendleton, OR.  If there is a way for me to highlight this parallel it is to say that rain in both places, separated by a distance of 370 plus miles, is a stark lesson in irony.  I expect rain in Bellingham, had become accustomed to the areas insistent dampness and humidity and had battled my way through long bouts of seasonal depression -- a condition that should not be understated -- but crossing the cascades and dropping out of the mountains into the long stretch of sand and sage brush and sliding smoothly into sees of rolling wheat fields, in June no less, should have been a long journey into sunshine not more rain.  But we made the eight hour trek (made longer by my truck overheating) into rain.

Raining it was, but we followed a rainbow, the final stretch, to the end, our destination, Pendleton, OR.  This little town made famous by its whiskey, indian blankets, and faltering rodeo is the town in which I grew up and to where we have made numerous trips over the years, each trip a little, dry, oasis out of Bellingham but never with the thought of settling here, for a time.

It is funny how life deals the cards but try as we might we have to play the hand we are dealt to the best of our talent and skill.  For us, our hand brought us out of the city and community and setting we loved into a unknown future, a changing environment, and a period of wandering in the wilderness.  All I can think of, sitting here slapping away at the keyboard, is that I wish I knew what was coming!

I have a dream of a quiet life in pursuit of literature and writing and raising my boys in a place where they are free to roam and explore and in a way that is comfortable for my wife and I to live in work and leisure in a way that is challenging and fulfilling and in line with our hopes and dreams.  But experience has shown me that this dream is a dream of the far future and that life is, predictably, toilsome.  In the novel Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtrey, a character on his death bed sums it up thus:  "This is a fine world though rich in hardship at times."  I find this quote to be insightful and honest and as I live and work I often feel similarly.

My family and I, as I have been writing for the past couple of weeks, are in a period of transition and searching.  We are wandering in the wilderness as tentatively as the nation of Israel searching for the promised land, and we are doing so, literally, in the desert.  I have faith that God has an intention for us here, in Pendleton, and that his intention is to lead us somewhere different soon.  But how soon and where is uncertain.

Tomorrow, as has happened so often in the past three years, I will start work with a new contractor on a new project in a new place.  Carpentry is carpentry and slotting in with this crew or that on come-what-may is all the same to me.  Just another day at the office.  The difference is, that starting a new job with a new company in a new place will also be the beginning of seeking out community and belonging, rebuilding all that we left in Bellingham.

We made a choice to wander, we feel called to something new.  But change is hard, ir-regardless of calling, and we are in the throws of suffering under the pressure of change and wilderness.  But this is a fine world, though rich in hardships at times.

Reflections on Bellingham: Galbraith Mountain

I have tried, in the past, to write about mountain biking.  But it tends to fall flat, becoming either over sentimental and cliche or hopelessly lost in vague-ry and  stereotypes.  However it would be unfair to downplay the importance biking has had on my experience in Bellingham -- ultimately mountain biking brought me to a healthier place (spiritually and emotionally) and led me into a relationship with my, next to my wife, the closest friend I have had since high school.

A few years ago, after the birth of our first son, in the throws of post part em depression (which triggered a host of other things)  my wife entered a journey of intense spiritual healing and counseling.  After initial skepticism, which I wholeheartedly regret, I threw my full support behind her and walked faithfully with her on her journey.  A lot of what was revealed to her in the process was too much to bear alone and I have done my best to bear it with her.  Through the grace of God, we have walked faithfully on this journey together.  But I could not have done this without an external outlet into which I could pour my angst and sorrow and the horrifying range of emotions that I found myself struggling with.

At about the same time, maybe just after, I was, through a mutual friend, introduced to a local cabinet/furniture builder who was also a pretty devoted mountain biker.  It so happened that we mutually needed a friend, initially to ride with.  Me as I had been out of the sport for some time and before we had met had not really even thought of riding as a realistic outlet, he because the guys he rode with were generally much older and coming from a radically different place in life.  We started riding together.

My friend and I rode together frequently, sharing our life experience on the long climbs up and gradually becoming very close.  Without his friendship life in Bellingham would have been a much harder life to bear.  With out biking into which I could dump my emotional refuse life would have been much harder to bear.

Galbraith mountain became, gradually, my sanctuary and escape and has taken on a reverent place in my life.  My bike (a transition covert, the latest in my biking journey) is a money pit which I alternately neglect and spend too much time with is the medium upon which I have connected closest to Bellingham and my closest friend.

There will be riding in our new location -- where ever there are hills there will be those of us on two wheels building trails and pushing the boundaries -- but it will not be Galbraith Mountain which has become so much more than a system of trails.

Reflections on Bellingham: Out of Isolation

Yesterday dawned on the beginning of our last week in Bellingham -- literally -- we will be loading the trailer and driving out on Saturday.  It has been a tumultuous 11 years in Bellingham in which I have run the gamut of human emotion.  From the desperate isolation of the new guy in town to the euphoria of getting married and watching my children come into the world and all those experiences and feelings that come between that make up the rhythm of our lives.  Today, while mountain biking on Galbraith Mountain, I was reflecting on Western Washington University (WWU), the reason I moved here in the first place.

My wife is wanting to take a walk, with our boys, across the campus, go back the beginning, as it were, and I am sure that spurred on this reflection.  I drive here in a '93 v.w. golf, 4 door, with a yakima rack for my skiis and my bike, trunk full of cloths and climbing gear and camping gear and a head full of energy and fear.  The majority of my gear stayed packed in boxes as I found I was a very small fish in a very small pond and everyone around me had the shape and speed of a predator.

I withdrew into a desperate search for a job (I had to pay the rent and I ended up with two) and a place to live, both happening at the same time.  I moved into a little room in a big house and promptly became best friends, then romantically entangled with, the woman who would become my wife.  I struggled with work and school and besides my bride to be I made few friends and when she applied for an Americorps position on the east coast I went to Australia.  We re-united in Bellingham, got married, had kids, and have struggled to build a life here, watching friends move away and building our way out of isolation and into community one day at a time.  But it has been a slow, long slog out of darkness and desperation for us as we have struggled to identify who we are, build on our dreams, on our marriage, and raise our children.  Just now, at the end, can I look around me and identify a tangible community of friends and neighborhood, at the end, as we prepare to leave.

A couple of months ago I was working on small custom home with a local general contractor.  I was nailing together sky light boxes -- that would then be fastened to the roof, flashed, and covered with a sky light -- with my framing nail gun, which "bump fires" (when trigger is pulled, the nose of the gun needs to be pressed against the work piece for a nail to shoot) and I double shot a nail which went past my sky light and into the pointer finger of my left hand which was holding things steady.  The nail went through the big knuckle, out the other side and pierced the skin of my middle finger an inch away.  I looked at my hand, saw the nail going through my glove and pulled it out.  This entire sequence took less than 10 seconds.  I wrapped my finger in tissue from the porta-john and duct tape, creating a splint of sorts, and went on to finish the day in near constant pain, though I had full mobility (two months later my finger still hurts to high heaven if it gets bumped or have done a lot of heavy lifting or a lot of breaking on my bike).

This incident was a microcosm of my life in Bellingham, taking on injury and pain in isolation and bearing it as best I can, finding inner strength and carrying on with the day as it comes.  I have chosen to bear the burdens of my family, be the provider and to sacrifice, not always cheerfully but certainly willingly, to lift them up and carry them through the darkness. 

I would like to dodge a bullet here and say that the strength I rely on comes from me, it is all buried within my innate human nature to summon reserves of strength and determination.  But I am a weak person and I can only stand as determined and capable man by the strength of God.  No matter how I fail to live in his image, no matter how I resist engaging the living God in relationship and worship, He always gives me the strength to be the man I have to be --  not for myself but for my wife and my children.

As I look back on WWU, looking forward to a walk across its ever evolving campus, I look back at the begining of a journey with God, one in which he carried me through isolation, depression, and darkness, and delivered me into my family, into community, and into a place from which I can confidently lead my family into the future.

I Am Convinced that Fear is a the Root of Most Bad Writing

"I am convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing." (Stephen King, On Writing)  I am certain that fear is the reason my writing suffers.  In the past I have made excuses for my writing, or lack thereof, chief among them being that I don't have time to write but when the time presents itself I lack the discipline to enter into a process of writing, afraid of starting a project that will languish unexplored but a non-committal writer.

For a long time I have believed that being a writer meant I got paid to write and the key of becoming a paid writer was pursuing a graduate degree in writing.  That somehow a MFA is a silver bullet that will slay my fears and lack of discipline and rocket me into a life of writing and literature.  While I am sure that it would give me a leg up in the field, it is not the silver bullet I once believed.  I believe there are two things that constitute a writer being a writer.  A person must write and have a readership, or strive for a readership.

There was a time that writers struggled  a solitary existence working at all manners of poetry and prose, sharing their work with a couple of select readers and submitting it to various publications who would then, for a long time, reject their work.  The writers in question would continue a disciplined life of writing until they were no longer rejected or they would give up.  With the endless availability of blogs, a readership is a mouse click away.  It is so easy for a writer to share work with the world at large and full fill the two requirements necessary (in my opinion) to be a writer:  writing and readers.

I have always dreamed of living a literary life, the principles involved have always come fairly easily to me.  I read voraciously and write with competence.  But I am hindered by fear, fear of the work involved, fear of rejection, fear of exposing a vulnerable heart, fear of failing to live up to the work I hold in such high esteem.  I will never overcome my fear if I do not write.  To pursue that which I feel a calling I can find time and muster the energy, of course I can.  The question then:  "will I?"  I hope to God yes.

I can not leave my occupation, work as a carpenter, to pursue writing full time -- I am responsible and called to provide for my family.  I can, however, pursue my vocation, writing, as time time allows and with a disciplined mind.

We Are Moving

A couple of months ago I alluded to an extended time of impending change.  That time is upon my family.  Around Christmas we started talking about what it would look like to move away from Bellingham and relocate to the east side of the cascades.  As we talked and wrestled with the idea the reality of it began to set in and gradually we realized that it was, indeed, time for us to move. 

That realization came as a major blow to our family.  We had, really, just been creating community in Bellingham, so it seemed, though where we are is the culmination of 10 years living in one place -- finishing college, getting married, bringing two boys into the world and finally settling in a church and neighborhood at which we feel connected and have a support network.  Along the way has been immense spiritual growth and healing for my wife, several places to live, and, for my part, an uncertain construction industry that has seen me bounce through employers like a pinball.

I have found it incredibly hard to articulate why we are moving as the mitigating factors are complicated and twisted and don't flow in linear thought but at the end of the day the sense that we are making the right decision is unmistakably clear even through the lenses of the sorrow of leaving a place we have come to love and the anxiety of starting somewhere new.  

And so we have started to pack and tie up the countless loose strings that ultimately tie a family to a place and we have entered a time of sustained chaos as we sort our belongings and pack them away for the long trek somewhere new.  But it is the goodbyes that are the hardest.  Leaving behind the watering wholes and coffee shops and restaurants we love and Galbraith Mt. (mountain bike trails, the importance of which I will not understate, there have been times that my forays out on my bike were the difference between complete emotional collapse and the energy to make it through the week).  But hardest is letting go of the community it was so hard to create in the first place. 

Yet there is a still small voice in the midst of the chaos and sorrow calling us forward, out of Bellingham, and into something new and when I take a moment to listen I can hear clearly the voice of God and I know that our decision is a faithful decision and when we act in faith we are blessed.  That is not to say it will be easy -- in any way -- at first. 

So we look ahead at the next two weeks with anxiety, stress, and continued sorrow as we grieve all that we will leave behind.  But we are fortified by the presence of Christ and will take the challenges that lie ahead head on, with confidence and faith.