Part of why you haven’t heard from us in a while is that I was on vacation the last couple weeks, visiting family in California. After spending much of the last couple years in lake after lake after lake, we dipped ourselves in rivers and pools and hot tubs and oceans. Well, one ocean: the Pacific. And while I love a good lake beach, the ocean beach is something else entirely. One morning while at Cayucos Beach, my dad and I were trying to talk, but the ocean kept drowning out our voices. He pointed to the waves and said, “BIG VOICE!”
When I shared this moment with Hannah Emerson, she got it right away, waves of typing flowing from her finger and pooling into a poem:
I have thought long and hard, with great pleasure, about Hannah’s use of repetition. But it wasn’t until now that I felt the way it allows for meaning to sink in. Hannah often writes about “grownding” as a process of simultaneously rooting and reaching, the way trees do, but this was the first time I felt the grownding that can occur when you allow your feet to sink into the sand, to sink into the repetition of reality reality reality, the waves of it passing through you, leaving bits of the real sticking to your ankles with every wash. To deepen is also to grow.
Trying Trying Trying,
Chris
I've been thinking about "big voice" for weeks. Love this :)