My dear father was a commentator on modern times. All the talk about “progress” that was declared at the turn of the century he believed would bring humans to complete ruin. “Many people foolishly believe everything can be made into coin, but that is because they do not ‘see’ the invisible worth of every created thing. Remember, the invisible part that you serve by work cannot be accomplished by machines.” At which point he would laugh at the thought.
“It is essential not to become discouraged, but instead to hold the power of this invisible sight steady in front of you, for we all have real work that is ours, truly so. Since all work must serve, it is essential that you know who it is you are serving with your work. But, like the seasons, this work can and often does change. To live one’s own real life. Ah!”
Putting down the first words and sentences might be hard, but it is good, humbling work, from beginning, Eros and work around to work, Eros, and beginning.
Midstream
By Akiko Busch
It’s common knowledge that the current is faster in the middle of the river than at the edges. The shifting contours of the bank, rocks, the shallow bed all work to slow the water at its edges, so it is in midstream that you come to know the river’s character. But the middle of the Housatonic River near Kent, Connecticut—on an afternoon in late August—is a quiet place, and the water seems to be moving as gently as it does near the banks. The current is barely perceptible.
The river is 50 yards across, maybe 75 in a few places, so there isn’t much to swimming across this river. Instead, my friend Karen and I have just decided to swim up the river as far as we care to, then back down. If it is possible to imagine that a river has a spine, this is the line we’re following, swimming up the fluid back of the river. The air is as quiet as the water; if there is any sense of movement at all, it is in the occasional leaf floating down to the surface of the water, nearly as languidly as the flow of the current itself.
For me, writing and swimming have long been parallel enterprises. In their elusive character, their shared mutability, the ease with which both can go from being transparent to opaque, words and water are natural colleagues. And whether in the middle of a page or midstream in a river, detachment is in the character of the place. Being in the river today affords a certain removal—even the willows, the tulip trees, the sycamores, and oaks seem remote, and the kayaker who paddles by us downstream now seems to occupy a different landscape—waterscape—as he is on the water, not in it. “Are you swimming all the way to Canada?,” he asks. We laugh. Maybe. We swim three-quarters of a mile upstream, then back down—it is the same both ways, no pull or tug at all. The water temperature is in the high 70s, comfortable. A river midstream is always a place of suspension. You are a world away, but you are still right there.
It is easy for a body of water to accommodate our notion of change; transformation and the flow of water seem inevitably linked in the human imagination. Now, that a change in the current can be so imperceptible comes as useful information. We commonly use the expression “sea change” to describe radical transformation, but on this particular afternoon, what I am thinking of instead is a “river change,” a more subtle adjustment of will or of direction or of intent. A soft breeze ripples the current, suggesting what could be the vertebrae of the water, and if I can read the language in the backbone of this river, it has to do with those changes that are hardly noticeable.
It is in the middle of the river that you become intimate with its direction, its flow, its velocity, where it’s going and where it’s taking you. It is the place where you will find the essential information. Often, that information is offered indirectly. Swim in the Hudson River at slack tide and you’ll entertain the illusion that you are swimming in a wide, long lake. A couple of hours later, when the tide is taking you upriver fast, you’ll understand why it is common river lore that it will take a stick thrown into the river in Troy eight months to reach the mouth of the river.
