Of Stunts and House Finches
I have a great weakness for stunt journalism. From Nellie Bly to Bill Buford to Gretchen Rubin — I’ll read it all.
Nellie Bly — Photo from Wikipedia
I have a great weakness for stunt journalism. From Nellie Bly to Bill Buford to Gretchen Rubin — I’ll read it all. I’m entranced by the stories of people choosing to go without seemingly essential things for a year or more, or attempting to read all of the Encyclopedia Britannica or the complete works of James Joyce, or electing to abandon their workaday lives to buy a failing/abandoned/ancient chateau/hostelry/dairy farm in Maine/Tuscany/Provence.
The fun of it is the vicarious experience, the insider’s view. Every time I finish something from the genre, I wish I could think up my own stunt, write about it, and get it published. But I haven’t come up with anything original yet — at least not anything my family would put up with. (The closest I’ve come to stunt journalism is The Great Cinnamon Roll Project.)
Now, I’m sure there are some who would consider my daily life to be as foreign and as challenging as some more spectacular stunts. After all, it’s not every day you meet an actively publishing writer who also teaches five days a week and is the primary caregiver to three children — with three children already in college or recently graduated.
Of course, none of that seems remarkable to me, because I live it — and I didn’t take any of it on for the sole purpose of spinning a good yarn about it later. It’s just my life (and, unlike stunts in some books, there’s no end in sight).
I’ve recently jumped into a couple of rather stunt-like new activities, however. First, I’m learning how to swim — not just stay afloat, which I’ve known how to do since I was little — but how to execute all four competitive strokes properly and efficiently.
Second, I’m learning Mandarin Chinese, with an eye toward conversational fluency within the next year. Many people regard Mandarin as one of the most difficult languages to learn. As someone who has studied French for many years, I agree.
So, why take on more hard things, if my life is already so complicated? And why, specifically, these two? In both cases, it’s partly environment — I’m embracing life in Southern California after living many years in New York. And as catalysts go, swimming and learning Mandarin are more reasonable stunts than sailing around the world or buying a B&B in Fiji.
But with both goals, I’m also interested in the grit factor. Writing consistently and with focus can be tough, and I’m always looking for an extra edge in keeping good habits going. In her excellent book Grit, Angela Duckworth discusses how developing perseverance in one area of life can be a catalyst for improvements in other areas.
Catalysts fascinate me; it’s one of the reasons I love stunt journalism. What’s the touchstone that allows people to make wholesale changes in their lives; whence cometh the paradigm shift? Can it be pinpointed? Can it be engineered, or does it need to drop from the sky?
Can people really redefine who they are through a series of choices? Can they make the changes stick? I hope so; I choose to believe so. I’ve read about many others for whom swimming has been a catalyst — for healing, for renewed energy and perspective, for lifelong fitness. And studies show that learning a foreign language is potentially a huge catalyst for improved cognitive function. But have the benefits started to spill over into my writing?
Writing-wise, clarity is slowly coming. Change is coming, too: new attitudes, recommitment. I have renewed faith that I need to keep working at it: keep writing, keep submitting, keep writing some more.
As I write this post, house finches are building a nest under the eaves of my balcony, a mere six feet away from where I sit. The French doors are open, and the cool March air wafts around me. The finches — one ruby-headed, one brown, both lovely — show up with a piece of dried grass or hair or dryer lint and disappear behind the beam where their project nestles. They reappear and search for something else — just the right piece of material. I’ve seen them pick up and drop the same thing several times, fluttering around to consider it in between. They warble to each other as they go. Will it work? Can we make it fit? Is there something better?
The finches remind me of myself as I draft and edit. Cutting, pasting, reworking, starting from scratch when the whole thing falls apart.
Or floundering through a new language, making mistakes, staying open and positive.
Or in swimming, struggling to find my balance, my breath, a new level of strength and grace.
Piece by piece, moment by moment, choice by choice, building a new reality.
Because as energizing as the vicarious thrill of reading stunt journalism is, real life is ideally at least as satisfying. And if it’s not, perhaps the reading inspires us to make changes necessary to bring our real lives into line with our hopes and dreams. Or to change our hopes and dreams to fit the awesome life we’re already living — if we choose to see it that way.
When it comes right down to it, the finches and I don’t do what we’re doing as a stunt; our work and our choices are who we’re becoming.