I knew what it was. The bulky tan mailer on the table, the last of the unopened mail. My book proposal, returned. I’d waited 30 days. I pulled it out and flipped to the cover page, “… Your writing captured the feeling of being on the Bay, I entered into your imagery ... very good writing ... ” The second paragraph, “Having said all this ... editing, marketing, uneconomical ... ” I suck in my breath, having hoped against hope, wanting this one proposal to wiggle through the narrow gate and gain acceptance.
By Bill Coolidge
Published: January, 2003
I knew what it was. The bulky tan mailer on the table, the last of the unopened mail. My book proposal, returned. I’d waited 30 days. I pulled it out and flipped to the cover page, “… Your writing captured the feeling of being on the Bay, I entered into your imagery ... very good writing ... ”
The second paragraph, “Having said all this ... editing, marketing, uneconomical ... ” I suck in my breath, having hoped against hope, wanting this one proposal to wiggle through the narrow gate and gain acceptance. It didn’t. I stand in the living room, eyes gazing at the faraway flag of Fort Macon, bristling steady with the wind. Not sure, should I put the proposal down, turn away and allow the tears to blur my vision? Or what?
I have a rule. Wait twenty-four hours before making new plans or slip into a pout of rejection. I piddle about the apartment, wash some dishes, bike to the library. Finally it’s 9:30 p.m. Time to go to bed and read.
Outside a storm is brewing. The blinds rattle and wake me up. I can hear the waves crash on the beach of Carrot Island. The amber street light casts a fawn spell on the live oak branches leaning northward, bracing themselves against the blustery southern wind. Two birds chirp back and forth. Is it time to get up? I turn on the light. It’s only 4:00 a.m.
Two years ago, I mailed a different book proposal to three literary agents. And waited. Each responded favorably and wanted more. I wrote and edited and finished the book. After more than twelve months each, in turn, declined, “ … good writing and sense of story ... but the market is too small, not economical.”
The winds are gusting over 30 miles per hour and shifting, south to southeast to southwest. The moon is veiled by a cloud bank. I hear an anchor chain being pulled in the harbor, a sailboat is departing. It’s 6:00 a.m.
From my window, I see the mast of my little sailboat bob back and forth. A long Army Corps of Engineer dredge passes by. For a safe passage, she is taking the creek and North River to Harkers Island.
I sit up in bed and imagine Marvin, his long beard, crooked smile, gray hair and tell myself, “After all, he is the marketing expert about the Bay. But on the other hand, I’ve had plenty of essays published. Someone is reading what I write.” The book proposal lies on the table.
The cowbirds are restless. They fly from branch to branch. None light on the telephone lines which are waving in the wind like jump ropes. Whitecaps roll down the creek, sheets of wind turn the blue water black. A bigger storm is on the way. The sailboats point south. The wind is stronger than the outgoing tide. Ominous.
I planned to have the book printed on 100 percent recycled paper. I’d do book readings in out-of-the way places like the Sierra Club bookstore, marinas, parks along the bay, libraries and schools. I’d go where there was concern for the Least Tern, the Brown Pelican, and the simplicity of living on the water. I’d written about the dolphin’s dorsal fin, the color of the pelican’s neck, the winter home of the Goldeneye, the sing song of the tern courting his beloved with a minnow in his mouth.
This would be a book for commuters speeding along 880 and 550, riding the BART trains, or taking the ferries to the city. This was a book for those who wanted to slow down but didn’t know how. I wanted them to pause, read, imagine the life around the margins of the Bay and become more than commuters.
A Least Tern is battling her way up the channel, using the wind to stop her in mid-flight for a quick dive. I see no mate. A white sailboat with a red Canadian flag has just pulled anchor and is heading back out the channel toward the inland waterway, north. No going “outside” today for a quicker but stormlashed trip up the coast. A red TOW USA boat is bringing in an old wooden cabin crusier and helping the crew to anchor her in front of the Mariners Museum. It’s 8:00 a.m. and I’m nibbling on some granola, drinking some coffee, trying to make sense of a day that is rattling me. I’m getting grumpy. Not enough sleep, too much thinking and analyzing.
Once I fell from a horse, at a gallop. The horse made a right-hand turn in the forest and I didn’t. I crashed onto a bed of pine needles and hard-caked Michigan dirt. My guide turned around shouting, “Get back on the horse!” No sympathy, no checking my bruises. I put my left foot in the stirrup and hauled myself back up and we trotted to the stable. I was ten years old.
It’s 10:00 a.m. and the birds are back, chirping, scuttling from my roof to the power line to cedar and live oak and then on to the top of dock pilings. How do they know the rain is stopping, the wind slowing? A blackbird sits on the top of my mast. It’s getting brighter in the southwest. Even my pen makes a shadow on the yellow legal pad. In front of me , a chickadee is riding the power line, facing me. The doves fly out of the creek, turn and careen back with the wind. A new version of “crack the whip.” The ocean is a dirty blue. No boats are venturing out into the ocean. Can there be a constancy in change, bringing my errant restlessness to a pause, a calm stilled?
Marvin’s letter sits on the table next to me. A dream dashed. I’m learning, slowly, how life continues along the Atlantic coast and her tributaries. It’s noon and I’m sitting here in this green wicker chair with an orange cushion. Pausing, sitting back, watching, picking up my binoculars, setting them down. Writing.
The poet T.S. Eliot wrote “ ... waiting without hope.” My life as a writer has just started. I am at the beginning. Right now I’d like to stand up and hand Marvin’s letter to the candle and stomp out of the room. Go for a sail into the rough wind, then come back and look at the help wanted ads. Anything to move past this in-between time and get on with a life that I can better define. Hours worked, paycheck received, job accomplishd. I remain a writer who falls somewhere between success and failure.
It’s 2:00 p.m. and the tide has turned, aligning herself with the wind. Well, I climbed back on the horse and trotted to the shady comfort of the barn. Ron, my guide, complimented me on this, not how I had leaned into other turns nor how I had timed my riding with the galloping horse. “Nice job, getting on the horse and riding her ... ”
What I am is this: a steady, compassionate observer of the endless change and interaction on a small island at the edge of the world. A small piece of land, a broader swath of water, and the inhabitants who do their living at my front door. What I am learning is how to live in the empty space.
Receiving Marvin’s letter was like entering into the opening of a sleeve, first the free fall, a throttled heart, and fisted hand. Now it’s time to release my frustration and disappointment. Through the night and into the morning I entered a threshold, a reckoning of who I am and what I am do when faced with news that questions me as a person with a vocation of writing.
I knew I had to pick up the black pen this morning. I knew I had to sit and go nowhere else. I knew that what matters most is recording the life around me even though I am often not sure that it matters to anyone but me. It matters that I remounted the horse and rode her home. It matters that I picked up the pen and began writing this essay. It matters that I had the courage to mail a dream to Marvin. Now it matters that I wait for future instructions without certainty of what to do next. It matters that I write this and you read it. It’s 3:00 p.m. and it matters that on this day, without knowing why, that I write the final word “hope,” without hope.
