The Chronology of Water - Lidia Yuknavitch [1]
Acknowledgements
IF YOU HAVE EVER FUCKED UP IN YOUR LIFE, OR IF THE great river of sadness that runs through us all has touched you, then this book is for you. So thank you for the collective energy it takes to write in the face of culture. I can feel you.
Energy never dies. It just changes forms. My beloved friends and mentors Ken Kesey and Kathy Acker are in the space dust and DNA and words.
Thank you Rhonda Hughes, editrix extrodinaire, as well as all the people at Hawthorne Books for believing in my writing. Bold Swimmers.
Thanks to Lance and Andy Olsen, my artheart heroes. And to Ryan Smith and Virginia Paterson, through the miles.
To Diana Abu Jaber, thank you for saying to me twenty years ago about a single story, “I think this might be a book.” It just took me a really long time to get it.
Thank you to the less than Merry Pranksters, particularly Bennett Huffman: rest peacefully, Bennett, you were the best among us, chaotic, beautiful stardust.
A great waterfall of thanks to Michael Connors for, well, everything, and to Dean Hart, for making the everything possible. Thank you for mercifully loving all the me’s I have brought to your doorstep.
Thank you to the greatest writing group in the history of ever: Chelsea Cain, Monica Drake, Cheryl Strayed, Mary Wysong, Diana Jordan, Erin Leonard, Suzy Vitello, and Chuck Palahniuk. And Jim Frost.
Special thanks to Chelsea for writing the introduction, and to Chuck for inviting me in, and to Chuck and Chelsea for reading early versions of this manuscript and helping me to not lose my marbles. Well at least sometimes.
I would not be around to write this book had it not been for my sister going ahead of me. To Brigid who was Claudia: how to thank you for the lifeline of your enduring love. You have carried me well. Sister. Friend. Other mother. Poet of most tender thunder.
And though words suddenly seem remarkably puny, my pounding heart belongs to Andy and Miles -you make me able to be. Write. This love. Life. I didn’t know.
Introduction
Chelsea Cain
LIDIA AND I ARE IN THERAPY TOGETHER.
That’s what she calls it. Technically it is more of a writing workshop, at least that’s what the rest of us would like to think. It works like this. We meet once a week. Some of us bring work. We all critique it. Then someone goes into the bathroom and cries.
Lidia joined two years ago.
Chuck Palahniuk brought up the idea of inviting her. “She writes this literary prose,” he told us. “But she’s this big-breasted blond from Texas, and she used to be a stripper and she’s done heroin.” Needless to say, we were impressed.
I already wanted her to sit by me.
There was more. Chuck told us that some really famous edgy writer-I didn’t recognize her name, but I pretended that I did-had given a talk at a conference about the State of Sex Scenes in Literature and she’d said that all sex scenes were shit, except for the sex written by Lidia Yuknavitch. Maybe Chuck didn’t tell us that. But someone in the group did. I don’t remember. I think I was still thinking about the stripper thing. Areal-life ex-stripper in our writing group! So glamorous.
Yes, we said, invite her. Please.
She showed up a few weeks later, wearing a long black coat. I couldn’t see her breasts. She was quiet. She didn’t make eye contact. She did not sound like she was from Texas.
Frankly, I was a little disappointed.
Where was the big hair, the Lucite platform heels? The track marks?
Had Chuck made the whole thing up? (He does that sometimes.)
How was he describing me to people?
Lidia had pages. That first night she came. She shared work. If you are a writer, or really a human at all, you will recognize how terrifying this is. You show up and sit down with a group of strangers and share your art, having no idea how they will respond, these assholes marking up your pages with their pens, judging you, leering at your tits.
She read us the first chapter of her novel The Small Backs of Children (due out with Hawthorne Books next year), while we all followed along with the copies she