Let the Great World Spin

I have finally finished our May book, Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann. I am sorry that I didn't finish it in time to discuss it, because I really enjoyed this book. An entertaining collection of perspectives, the various lives being lived in their ordinary times, each experiencing their watershed moments as the world spins on and their stories keep unfolding. We are a culture that prides itself on autonomy and independence, and yet this novel reminds us that we are not really capable of being unaffecting to the rest of the world. Even nature herself is speaking to us, changing us, drawing us to one another as we walk forth, balancing on our own tightropes.

I am challenged by a paragraph in the Reader's Guide in the back of the book:

But stories are there to be told, and each story changes with the telling. Time changes them. Logic changes them. Grammar changes them. History changes them. Each story is shifted sideways by each day that unfolds. Nothing ends. The only thing that matters, as Faulkner once put it, is the human heart in conflict with itself. At the heart of all this is the possibility, or desire to create a piece of art that talks to the human instinct for recovery and joy.

Boy howdy have I got a story of recovery and joy, driven largely by the instinct for it (and partly by mere white-knuckling faith), but have struggled to find the words to tell it. It's like I'm still working out the changes, the sideways shifting and I'm still learning what my story is. The story is still unfolding, the instinct drives me onward, but how do I break it up into impart-able vignettes? Although times of quiet reflection and writing are near impossible to come by in this season of my life, I intend to embrace the conflict in my heart, storing it all up and letting the art ooze out in any way that it will. I may not end up with an award-winning memoir or a masterpiece watercolor painting, but I hope that in the end I will have a collection of art that speaks to that instinct for recovery and joy. And that my life itself will reflect that. And may I die with a smile on my face, like Gloria.