Writing on Spectacle Island
"Therefore I would ask you to write all kinds of books, hesitating at no subject however trivial or however vast. By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream."
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own
The water rushes underneath us. As I hang over the railing and try to follow the small waves with my eyes, I feel a familiar rush, a feeling of vertigo that almost draws me into the green-gray mass. Behind me, the Boston Harbor slowly becomes smaller and smaller. It is a quiet Monday morning at the end of August, and the ferry is almost deserted. I wander around on the upper deck, trying to catch a few snapshots of the sunlight on the Custom House Tower and the boats in the harbor.
I'm not a photographer, and as I fumble with my camera in my bag, I'm glad my fingers brush against the spine of Isabel Allende's Paula, and against the pen that peeks out of my notebook. These are my true armor, the tools that draw me in and push me onwards. They make me. I am a reader and, lately, I've been wondering whether I could also be a writer.
About four months ago, Tjeerd (yes, you'll be hard-pressed to find a more Dutch name than my husband's) and I moved to Boston from Utrecht, the Netherlands. He found a job in Cambridge, and I, as these things tend to go, had to settle for a few months of unemployment, waiting for my work permit to come through.
Worry
And so, naturally, I spend a lot of my time worrying. This is something I am unfortunately very good at - worrying about my career (whatever that entails), about our future together, about my place in this world.
But worry is not good company. It demands all your attention and drains your energy. Worry is like a nagging child who doesn't understand why you won't come play with her. And I've been trying to ward her off for weeks now.
Sometimes I manage to get rid of her for a little while, sometimes I don't. Our adventures in and around Boston have helped a lot. Worry fades into the background when you're down on your knees trying to put together your new Ikea dresser, or when you're discussing this month's book at your new book club, when you're lounging at the pool with a beer in your hand or when you're exploring the Boston Harbor Islands on a gloriously sunny day…
But if there is one thing I know for certain, it is that after good moments and good days, there will always be bad ones (luckily, it also works the other way around – but that's not the point here). Worry always returns to me, because she knows I'm an easy conquest. And I can't say I haven't been warned, I knew this would happen.
When we first told friends and family we were leaving for Boston, they all wanted to know four things:
- "When are you leaving?!"
- "Have you already found a place to live?"
- "What are you going to do with your book collection/PlayStation/board games?" (The subject of this question obviously differed, depending on who was asking it at the time.)
- "What are you ('you' being me, Daniëlle) going to do in Boston?"
To that last question, my answer has always been - and still is: "I don't know yet, but I'll figure it out. Boston seems to be quite a literary city, so I'm sure I'll be fine." But in my head, alarm bells were going off, and I was already wondering whether my attitude could be construed as 'failing'. After all, it seemed I was brushing off at least three unproductive months, three precious months not working on my 'career'. Worry, worry, worry.
Seriously, Relax!
In order to escape worry's call, I decided to take advantage of one of our last official summer days and take the boat to Spectacle Island. As the ferry slowly approaches the end of the Boston Main Channel, I hug my knitted sweater closer to me. Despite the promise of a beautiful day, the wind still feels pretty cold. Still, most people on the ferry are outside, like me, enjoying the views. There are a few kids running around on the middle deck, their mom following them around while sipping her morning coffee. One of the older girls, she must be around 10 years old, spots a plane approaching Logan Airport, and yells excitedly to her brother and sisters. The plane needs to fly over the Channel in order to land at Logan Airport on our left. As it draws closer, first slowly and then faster and faster, the kids jump up and down, stretching out their arms as high as they can. Their enthusiasm is contagious, and I look up. The plane does look deceptively close, almost close enough to touch. With a deafening roar, it passes over our heads and disappears behind the buildings of the airport.
The smallest girl has hid herself behind her mother's legs, a little bit scared by the noise. But her sisters and brother are already scanning the sky for the next plane approaching the airport. I hear them bragging to each other, the boy claiming he almost touched the wheels, one of the girls sure she saw people behind the windows. Climbing up the stairs to the upper deck, they discuss what to do when the next plane flies over. The boy is convinced he knows what to do:
"We need to wave, we need to wave longer. Remember when we got that train to blast its horn at us when the driver saw us wave? When the pilot sees us waving, maybe he'll fly lower for us!"
Thoroughly entertained, I wonder at the conviction with which they approach their excitement. I guess when you're a kid, having fun is serious business, right? But then again, why shouldn't it be? I think of a conversation I had with my colleague Janine during my last few weeks working in the Netherlands. Janine – who, like a modern-day Yoda, has a lot more life experience than anyone else at the company and is able to reach levels of badassery I can only dream of – kept telling me I should treasure my first few months in Boston. Whenever she heard me give my stock answer about how I'll figure something out, she'd interrupt me, point her index finger at me, and say,
"But first, you are going to enjoy yourself!"
It is the seriousness with which she said it that made an impression on me. She made it very clear that relaxation is not optional, but that it is my due, something I owe to myself. And at the time, I agreed with her, theoretically. Of course, I had earned me some time to relax, after all, I'd had an incredibly busy year. In a space of four months alone we managed to sell our apartment, find a new home in Boston, get married, say goodbye to everyone we love, pack everything up and cross that same Atlantic Ocean I was now experiencing up close on the ferry.
But in reality, it is very hard to be present in an extended moment of time and not try to be productive, to stop chasing after something that will result in credits to your name. I'd been given the gift of time, and although I wasn’t bored or at a loss what to do with it, I still felt… guilty?
We all know life is short and that we should not waste it on things we do not love. But to me, this seems to be one of those amazingly simple, commonsensical truths we need to live through in order for it to sink in and become engraved on our hearts. I knew it to be true, and yet I didn’t know it in my heart. Instead, there has only been one thing that has always been my not-so-safe haven against guilt, or fear, or any other negative emotion: worry.
When I left behind friends, family, hobbies, and work, I was afraid worry would take their place. Now that I think about it, I was worried I would worry too much…
Courage
And so, I tried to come up with a way of dealing with her. Getting a library subscription and read books like my life depends on it has been one way of doing so – in fact, it is the one way I have always been able to count on. But I knew reading books would not be enough this time. Reading allows me to escape, but I needed something that would help me come back to reality, face this new territory I found myself in, and make something out of it. And for the first time in my life, I started writing.
I didn't know what to expect. Just like everything else here in Boston, it is new, and thus exciting and scary at the same time. I still feel like a fish out of water, but one who is enjoying having to learn new skills in order to survive.
When I started to work on my first short story, the writing process was merely something to do, something to pass the time with. But before I knew it, it became my armor against both worry and guilt. Writing allows me to create something, and although I often get stuck or frustrated, I'm also having fun. I am enjoying the crafting of words into sentences, of seeing my thoughts unfurl on the page, of opening up to new ideas, people, experiences, of daring to follow my own fancy.
This requires courage, "courage to write exactly what we think" (Woolf, A Room of One's Own). Not only is it scary to find out what you really think and communicate this to others, I might also discover my writing to… well, suck. In fact, I'm taking baby steps here, and writing equals falling down and getting up again. Writing is failing. Learning how to do this well is big for a perfectionist like me. And so, writing gives me courage. The alternative? A lifetime spend with worry. No, thank you.
Instead, I am on my way to Spectacle Island: I am going to warm my skin in the sunshine, listen to chirping crickets and buzzing bees, and write.