susanstinson

When I was in Marfa, I also saw mesmerizing sculptures by Donald Judd at the Chinati Foundation. If you follow the link (and I hope you do -- it's is a write up with pictures from a tour guide of the whole morning tour I took), scroll down to get to some beautiful photos of the aluminum boxes in the airplane hangar (especially, I think, the two detail photos of boxes) -- they were unforgettable.

When I'd seen images of Donald Judd's work before, or heard a little bit about it, it had seemed kind of cerebral and cold to me, but the aluminum boxes in the airplane hangar and barracks were unforgettable, and anything but cold. The site is an old military base, and the hangar had been, among other things, a workplace for German POWs during World World II: there were still warnings written in German on the wall. The walls are now windows, and the rows of glimmering, mediative, silvery boxes are in conversation with the grasses blowing outside, the mountains in the distances, concrete Judd sculptures out in the field, the other barracks, and, on the morning I was there, a small herd of pronghorn antelope that came up to graze right at the windows. The boxes stretch in long rows, and they make depths and shapes and angles with the intense west Texas sunlight. The play between light, surface and landscape feels something like a conversation (or maybe at places a dance), but also very much outside the realm of words. As the people in the tour began to move among the boxes, they made faint reflections on the surfaces, and so a subdued image of a pair of legs in jeans, or the full bodies people moving slowly down the rows, looking, became part of the piece, too. There was one short stretch in the second barracks, with a far, flat-topped, blue mountain framed between two boxes, and, then, from one of them, the light pouring through in a low, concentrated triangular shape that seemed like the stuff of haloes in old paintings, or just pure thought, or, more what it was, clear light that had been drawn in in a way that let me look right at it, and and I had been let in to do that. It was like that deep, beautiful, open concentration that sometimes comes in meditation or intense work or extreme feeling or prayer. I could have stood there all day.

Praise for the fat old ladies.
Praise our bristles.
Praise our groaning in the morning
as we negotiate our nightgowns,
appliances and pills.

Praise the unquenchable carnality
of our coughs, full of moist depths,
and the way our mouths hang open
and our faces converge in gatherings
of ineffectual concentration
as we give another round of dominoes
our (impure? because, after all,
competititive and human) best thoughts.

We lose, of course, but play again.
The nightgown tears on the seam above the breast,
but we wear it, still, unmended,
while young women make big curls
in their hair with juice cans,
the results glossy and time-consuming,
as if the war were never over and
victory gardens were all lucky girls might sow.



Lake Buchanan, TX 2006

1) You're a really great writer! How'd you get that way? How do you navigate combining identity politics with fiction writing?
Thank you. I've always been wildly ambitious for very specific things -- to write things that are unbearably beautiful in a nuanced, recognizable way, and to write things that linger and sing and matter to the people who read them. So, I want it, want it, want it. That's one thing.

Also, I have an older brother who is this terrific painter, so there was (and is) someone in my family who was an artist. That helped me see the kind of work it takes and to kind of scrape off some of the romantic glow, although I still romanticize the New York publishing world sometimes. I'm getting more and more over that as times goes on, though. So that has been good for practical information (for instance he told me about a six week artists residency in Banff that I went to when I was 19), and also for someone I know and trust to bounce things off.

I was in a writers' group for many years -- the Valley Lesbian Writers Group. Some of us published each other's chapbooks, we gave readings and produced readings for groups from other towns, raised money together to fund our projects, met every Tuesday night in eight week sessions to critique work. So important to me, so sustaining, to have serious, committed peer relationships, and I still meet every Wednesday with another writer who I met in the group -- think I've been meeting and exchanging work with her for fifteen years.

And then there's poetry in the bathroom -- reading poetry a lot and often and going back to poems, especially old, dense poems. There's nothing like it for keeping me awake to language. And also, just trying to tend towards writing, to make the best choice I can see to support my writing, at any given moment. To push and give up things to have time to work, and then use it as patiently and relentlessly as you can stand.

Identity politics and art -- oh, that's so hard. I mean, I remember a specific moment in the mid-eighties or so when I realized that I wanted to write about fat, about being fat, that that was full of danger and risk and things literally aching to be articulated for me, things that I was terrified of and drawn towards in equal measure -- really simple stuff, like trying to describe my own body, and running up against so many limitations in language about that. And I was meeting politically-aware fat, queer women for the first time -- I had just moved to Boston from Colorado -- so I felt as if there were going to be some folks who would want to read this work if I could do it -- it gave me a sense of urgency. Lots of gifts in those ways -- including, eventually and still, publishers for my novels from the women's press movement. At the same time, I just want to be read, to have these stories be acknowledged as human stories, of real value to a wide range of folks. Having to deal with narrow expectations and endless looping stereotypes about what my work is supposed to be or mean sometimes feels like trying to eat brick -- not sustaining, not easy on the teeth and gums. I have to keep pushing myself to negotiate these tensions with all of the grace and honor I can muster in any given moment, and it's worth it. But hard.

2) You live in Western Mass, right? How'd you end up there? What are the pros and cons of living where you do?
Yeah, I live in Northampton. I ended up here because of the twists and turns of my long, precious, private relationship.

I love it here. The pros are that I can stroll downtown and see the Triplets of Belleville like I did tonight (yay!). There are so many people I love here. There is a cemetery with 18th century graves across the street from me, and the Holyoke range are these stunning hills that stretch out along the horizon in a way that opens my heart. I like the Connecticut River a lot, too -- lots of available beauty. I do okay without car here, and live pretty cheaply (knock on wood.)
I have access to cities like NYC and Boston, and there is so much more happening here all of the time than there was in Littleton, the suburb of Denver where I grew up. When I got fat hate mail because of an article that I'd been invited to write for the Springfield paper, all I did was walk down the street, telling the people who asked me how I was what had just happened, and a few of the folks I ran into on that one walk (plus some of my beloved friends) formed a working committee that organized a speak-out against fat hatred, at a time when I was kind of reeling from it all. My town -- and lots of folks beyond it -- came through for me when I really needed it.

Cons include a kind of New England insularity or stiffness that can get wearing at times. Things can start feeling narrow or smug. I think fat girls are in general less widely appreciated here than we are in the west. I've sometimes envied the Bay area for energy and the seeming ability to generate really productive communities. Folks who move here from big cities often miss a lot of beautiful food or find people here unfriendly, unwelcoming. If I'm annoyed with someone, the odds are pretty good that I'll run into them. I want to swim regularly, and there's not a swimming pool that I have access to and can get to without a car.

3) What's your story of fleeing Texas?
Oh, I didn't flee. I was born in Amarillo, but left with my family when I was six months old. We moved to Wichita, then Denver. My grandparents lived in Texas, and we went to see them every summer. My brothers both spent the whole summer with my grandparents every year, helping work a very small ranch. My parents live there now, so I'm connected to Texas in lots of ways, but not really from there.

4) What do you do to make yourself focus on your work?
It helps me if I can go to a physical space away from other distractions -- no phone, no email. Sometimes I do some stretches, a few other starting rituals -- although those can get too long and be a distraction in itself. Reading something incredible makes me want to write. Reading stuff I had been working on the day before brings me back there -- gets harder as more time goes by. Don't do it so much any more because my arm aches when I type now, but I used to start sometimes with pages of lavish and specific praise for my own work -- it was pure encouragement, and it also helped me see just what I most wanted to do by that which thrilled me the most when I told myself that I was already doing it. Just starting and keeping going -- even if what comes out at first is unsatisfying -- that's a good one.

5) What kind of shoes do you like to wear?
Since I started having arthritis in my ankles and knees, I only wear one kind of shoes: black SAS walking shoes. Lots of padding on the soles, and they fit. I miss sandals. When I was a kid, my mother had two pairs of shoes that I remember with awe: clogs with white leather straps and polished wooden soles that at eight inches high: they made a thunderous noise against a hard floor, and changed the perspective of the wearer. Also, glittery orange stilettoes, with gloves to match.


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