Windmills and Change

There's no major interstate that connects St. Louis to Minnesota, where we visited my husband's sister for Thanksgiving this year. We set out on Wednesday morning, driving through thick banks of fog on I-70 and then headed north on Highway 61. We passed mile after flat mile of fields on either side of the two-lane highway, the dark earth visible under the short, pale-yellow spikes of leftover crops. In all the years I've lived in this country, it never fails to amaze me how the land looks the same no matter which direction we go.

Every time we take a road trip, my husband asks me to take photos of the windmills we pass on the way. "C'mon, just one really good shot," he says. I comply reluctantly saying, "How many pictures of windmills can a person take?" I complain because they all look the same and my limited gifts of photography make it hard to capture how majestic they are; those tall sentinels of the fields. For example, the first photograph here is in Colorado last year, the second in Iowa this weekend:

As we drove, I pondered the ways in which the unchanging, stoic farmland belies the deep ideological division in my adopted country. I tried to imagine the social media landscape imposed on the physical world: the political cartoons with hundreds of comments full of righteous indignation, anger and even hatred spewing  back and forth in shrill, locked caps. While the windmills circle in silent witness, the internet is a noisy inferno, as we tear each other apart mercilessly for our differing beliefs. When my husband tells me that we're in Iowa, the first word I think of is "caucus" and I Google to find out if it is a "blue" or "red" state.

To my surprise as we were driving home this weekend, I saw on my Facebook feed that artist Shepard Fairey had posted his own patriotic image, called "Power Up Windmill":

     He wrote on his website: "I believe very strongly that green energy is the only way for the United States to achieve energy independence, create valuable technology, and protect the environment. I created this windmill image as a patriotic symbol of the green energy mission."

It was a small coincidence that seemed timely. Questions about how we will resolve the problems in the environment are coming to the forefront.  No matter what our political affiliation, we take our kids to school and go grocery shopping together side by side. We all say that we want the best possible future for our children, but in all this rolling, open land we adults cannot seem to find one square inch of common ground to stand upon. What progress can be made in a country where some people don't believe in the science behind climate change and continue to deny global warming? I take pictures of the world in the fading light, trying to interpret the story of the American landscape through my camera lens, and to find some comfort in the beauty of the sunset:

 

Hemingway's Truest Sentence

Starting again in writing can be so intimidating. Most writing teachers such as Julia Cameron, advise to "start where you are". Well, I am in my living room, sitting on my beige, microfiber couch. I am writing in a nearly-full spiral bound notebook with a sky blue cover, which is propped up against a russet-colored square throw pillow.

I am eating circles of french bread, lightly toasted with soft wedges of creamy baby brie and cucumbers sprinkled with black pepper. I also have a plum tomato, picked fresh and ripe from my own garden, sliced and salted. Writing this reminds me that I love descriptions of food in literature. For example, Ernest Hemingway's work is full of delicious descriptions of the rustic cuisine that was served in the French cafés where he liked to write and socialize in the 1920's, such as this:

"The beer was very cold and wonderful to drink. The pommes  à l'huile were firm and marinated and the olive oil delicious. I ground black pepper over the potatoes and moistened the bread in the olive oil ... When the pommes à l'huile were gone I ordered another serving and a cervelas. This was a sausage like a wide, heavy frankfurter split in two and covered with a special mustard sauce."   

This is where I can begin again, without ever mentioning the yearlong hiatus I've taken from this blog, but it's not too mysterious. I was busy finishing my student teaching and my Master's degree in Education. About a year ago this very month, my friend Claire McAlpine at Word by Word (http://clairemca.wordpress.com) had written a review of "The Paris Wife" by Paula McLain. When I finally had time to read during a brief vacation in June, I was so hungry for literature that I almost ate it. The books had its' flaws but it re-kindled my college passion for literature from 1920's Paris. I began reading Hemingway (and Fitzgerald) for the first time. 

I love "A Moveable Feast" partly because it's set at that romantic time and also because I love memoir, and  truth-telling in literature (although this statement brings up many questions and ironically, Hemingway may have been a mythomaniac in life.) In the book, he describes his daily activities as a writer, and how he rented a private room to write in, where he liked to treat himself to a drink of kirsch at the end of the day. After that, he felt "free then to walk anywhere in Paris". He writes character portraits of well-known people, some flattering, others brutal. About Sylvia Beach (owner of the famous American bookstore 'Shakespeare and Company') he wrote, "No one that I ever knew was nicer to me".  

Without ever stating a desire to help beginning writers, or to leave a legacy, he does exactly that. He scatters clues and advice about the writing life throughout his vibrant prose. He writes about his trademark style, "If I started to write elaborately, I found that I could cut that scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written." 

I still have many questions about Hemingway, his life as a man and his legacy as a writer. As I begin blogging again, I also have many questions about my own life as a writer; how to be true to myself but also relevant. What is truly relevant at this time, in the midst of the divisive and ugly political discourse leading up to the election, not to mention the wider global problems of violence, war and economic failure? In "A Moveable Feast" Hemingway answered my question like this:

 "All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know." 

For me today,  this advice seems relevant and good and true.