The Chronology of Water - Lidia Yuknavitch [98]
Earlier you mentioned the metaphor of collecting rocks. One of my favorite chapters, “Metaphor,” describes this as follows: “The rocks. They carry the chronology of water. All things simultaneously living and dead in your hands.” Here also is your title. What does the chronology of water mean to you?
Yes, this title came to me long ago-when I was 26! Wait, was I ever 26? Man that seems like epochs ago. I was in a creative writing workshop with the wonderful Diana Abu-Jaber. My daughter had just died, and I was a mess-raging, grieving, self-destructing. But I did manage to make it into that creative writing classroom. I wrote a crazy short story made from seemingly random fragments. Diana looked at the rush of fragments and said Lidia, they all have something in common. Because I was a knownothing, I said, what? Water, she said. She also said, I think this is a book. I think it’s the story of your life, maybe.
But at that time I was busy. Busy raging, grieving, fucking up.
Later I pulled the story back out and looked at it. You know what? She was right. And I thought, if this is the story of my life, no wonder it’s in fragments. It’s got a messed up chronology because that’s how I feel about life-it’s not linear. It moves in fits and starts, doubles back, repeats or extends an image. I thought if my life has a chronology, it’s the chronology of water - the way water carved the earth, the way water carries us into the world, the way we are made of water, the way water retreats or comes. I had, in other words, with her help, found my central metaphor.
That story was eventually published in The Northwest Review, and as you know, all these years later, has become the spine and bones of this book.
In my house there are many rocks. What I love about rocks that you find in rivers or at the ocean’s shore is that they are the sediment of all life on the planet continuously destroyed and remade. When you hold a rock in your hand you are holding everything in existence, even space dust, and it’s traveled oceans to get to you. So fragile and yet solid - made from pieces of things - like we are.
Writing restored your personal narrative that was not allowed in your father’s house while you were growing up. “My voice, she was coming. Something about my father’s house. Something about alone and water.” Does writing provide the same essential to Lidia the adult? Are the reasons you wrote then and now different?
Many people will know what I mean when I say that I can’t seem to live without the process of making art. I mean I literally fall apart or go to shit when I’m not making something, I can’t find the balance in my life or the center, I’m simply less of a person. Lost. Or worse. It feels like writing is the only thing I am any good at, but that probably isn’t entirely true. What I mean when I say that writing is the only thing I am good at is that it is the place where I feel most present, most worth a crap, most able to give something useful.
But there is another thing about writing that may or may not be something I should tell people-ha. I do know that when I’m inside writing I don’t want to be anywhere else. It’s like being inside a song or a painting. Wouldn’t it be something to be able to inhabit art? It’s a little frightening though - to think about staying there - not coming out. Perhaps that is a psychosis edge. I have a painter friend who talks this way about wanting to stay inside the painting - trusting images and color and composition more than people - I definitely