Stories from the Deep

In the introductory note to Paintings from the Cave, his collection of three novellas, distinguished author Gary Paulsen writes: “I was one of the kids who slipped through the cracks. I had what is euphemistically referred to as a troubled childhood.”  

By “troubled childhood,” Paulsen is referring to growing up with parents who were drunk most of the time and who left him to raise himself at home. He was an outsider at school. He had nothing, he admits, and he was going nowhere. If it wasn’t for art and dogs, he says, he’d have been lost.

“First reading, then writing. First friend-pets, then sled dogs. They gave me hope that I wouldn’t always be stuck in the horror of my childhood, made me believe that there could be more to my life.”

Art and dogs—the life preservers that saved Paulsen—turn out to be the life preservers that save the kids without hope who inhabit the three novellas in this collection. The stories are based on the lives of Jake, Jo, and Jamie who, like Paulsen in his youth, have “nothing and no one to protect and raise them.”

The first story, “Man of the Iron Heads,” opens like this: 

Sometimes you move right, sometimes left, in the dark, out of the light, always moving.

You stop moving, you’re done. 

It’s the story of eleven- or twelve-year-old Jake (he lost track of birthdays long ago).  J, as he is known in the inner city projects, knows that he has to keep moving or else he’ll find himself sliding into drugs and gang wars and the poverty that is all around him.

He inhabits a world of hopelessness and despair, with only the tiniest glimmers of love and kindness, and the reader wants to believe that somehow he’ll find a way out, an escape hatch, a way to survive, even if the odds are stacked against him.

Paulsen doesn’t sugar-coat this world or the problems that J has to confront. But in telling J’s story, Paulsen does offer a momentary respite to the unrelenting darkness of J’s life.

He offers J (and the reader) a glimpse into the apartment of a sculptor living only a few feet across the alley that separates the crime-ridden projects from the city’s sparkling new development.

And when the young sculptor invites J into his apartment, J finds relief in the art of shaping clay: 

“Time stops. I don’t know how to say it another way. I stop thinking of when, only thinking of what. No more whens or ifs…”

“I don’t think of where I am when I’m working. Everything else goes away, this room, the neighborhood, the building on the other side of the block, Blade and Petey, I even forget Bill is there, listening, watching.” 

This momentary relief from the hard edges of his life seeps into J’s consciousness and memory. It keeps him warm on cold nights, keeps hope alive on days when it seems he may never get out of the projects alive.

The other two stories are equally challenging, but in them Paulsen offers readers a bit more hope that the main characters can survive the difficult lives that they have to endure.

In "Jo-Jo the Dog-faced Girl," Jo finds in the dogs that she rescues the love that she never received from her drunken parents, and the dogs repay her kindness by saving her. 

“Her true family was the dogs. Her only friends were the dogs.” 

The dogs protect her from everything that hurts, writes Paulsen, and in the end it’s the dogs that teach her about compassion and the power of friendship.

In the third novella, "Erik’s Rules," Jamie and his older brother, Erik, are homeless and broke, and only a combination of the kindness of strangers, a growing interest in art and drawing, and a love of dogs rescue Jamie from despair. 

“As I stroke her fur and murmur soft words, she gradually settles down, her legs stop thrashing and her breathing quiets. Her eyes close, and other than the frantic pounding of her heart, which I can feel through the side of her chest, I can tell she’s getting calm.

“I keep petting her and talking to her, nonsense about what a good dog she is and how pretty her coat is and what a beautiful line there is to her head and how much I want to draw her when she feels better.” 

What you’ll find in these three stories is as realistic a portrait of childhood, dogs, and the making of art as you’ll find anywhere. 

Paulsen refuses to hold anything back but, rather, shares the kind of details that inspire admiration for his craftsmanship as a storyteller and for the unflinching honesty that he uses to tell these stories.

For more information about Paintings from the Cave, visit:

http://www.storysnoops.com/detail.php?id=1263

http://www.amazon.com/Paintings-Cave-Novellas-Gary-Paulsen/dp/0385746849

Surviving Riptides

Anyone who has spent time writing has had to confront the inevitable emotional riptides that stem from rejection, failure, and loneliness.

Unless a writer can find a way to survive these strong currents in order to keep swimming, he may find himself swept out to sea... never to swim again.

When my arms are so tired that I can't swim another stroke and I feel the current dragging me under, I know it's time to pull myself out of the water.

That's when I swim off the page... walk away from the beach... and head to the local animal shelter.

No matter how hard a day I've had writing, the dogs offer balm to the failure of finding just the right word, or the rejection that comes after months of work on a story, or the loneliness that often accompanies this business of putting words on paper day after day.

Each dog serves as a life-preserver, of sorts, a muse encouraging me to get back into the water and keep writing.

Tess, a matronly five year-old English Springer Spaniel/Chow Chow-mix, doesn't judge how many pages I produced or how far I swam that morning; she just wants me to take her out of her cage so she can find a place to pee.

Ellie, a sleek and leggy 11-month-old American Foxhound-mix, isn't interested in whether my characters sound shallow or undeveloped, or if my plot unravels in the fifth chapter. Nor does she reprimand me if I haven't written more than three words that day. She's more interested in chasing tennis balls.

And Beth, a gentle 2-year-0ld German Shepherd, doesn't care how many rejection letters may have crossed my desk in a week or a month. Rather than warn me of the risk inherent in writing, she prefers to trot along the shelter's fenced-in perimeter checking for squirrels.

When I look into each dog's eyes, I see a tenderness--and a kind of sympathetic understanding--for what each of us goes through in this life.

The number of dogs housed in the shelter varies from week to week. Ten dogs occupy the kennel cages on some weeks. This week there are twenty-eight dogs, including six puppies, most of them mixed breeds.

After a day of writing, I'll drive to the shelter and spend an hour there, enough time to walk four or five dogs before the shelter closes for the day.

Their tails wag enthusiastically as soon as I appear. Standing on hind legs to get a better view, each one pushes the door open as soon as I unlock it. Sometimes I can barely throw a leash over their heads before they dash out.

Once we're in the fenced-in play area, I remove the leash so the dogs can stretch their legs and explore with the kind of freedom they don't have in their cages.

While the dogs sniff the ground, do their business, or come over to lick my hand, I sit in a folding chair in the shade of a cottonwood tree and gaze at them, amazed by their ability to immerse themselves in the moment-to-moment joy of life.

Ten or fifteen minutes later, after they've had a chance to smell the grass, sniff the air, and bask in the sun, I put the leash back on, and we trot inside again. The dogs know the routine--where to go, when to pee or poop, how to exit the pen, the route back to their cages--better than me.

If only writing was so predictable.

Maybe that's what the dogs offer each time I visit: a predictability that I don't find on the page where so much seems out of my control.

But, no, it's more than that. When I'm with the dogs, I don't have to judge my worth based on what I write or don't write.

Somehow, without words, each dog teaches me how to accept the moment-to-moment flow of life...without judging myself.

After spending time with the dogs, I always feel lighter, as if I'm no longer sinking but buoyant, re-charged, ready to return to the water and begin swimming again.

How do you re-charge yourself after a long day's swim? How do you survive riptides and push through difficult currents to keep swimming day after day?

When you get a moment, why not let other Wordswimmers know about your experiences? We'd love to hear from you.

Listen Deeply

In Stephanie S. Tolan's new novel, Listen!, a wild dog--like a mysterious healing spirit--helps Charley, a 12-year-old girl mourning for her mother, recover from grief and a leg injury that she suffered in a car accident.

It's a slow, frustrating process for Charley, a process that demands that she listen to the world again, a world that she shut out after her mother's death in a plane crash while on assignment for a magazine as a nature photographer.

Tolan develops a reader's sympathy for Charley almost immediately by showing the reader exactly what Charley has lost.

The biggest loss, of course, is the death of her mother, which strikes the core of Charley's being, the root of her spirit.

Then Tolan introduces another loss... a physical injury almost as challenging to Charley as the loss of her mother because this loss steals away her physical foundation. Her injured leg makes life even more wobbly, forcing Charley to rely on others.

But who can Charley rely on? Her friend, Amy, walked away from the accident without a scratch...and then went to tennis camp over the summer, leaving Charley alone with her father and their housekeeper.

Ever since her mother's death, however, her father's been aloof, distant. He works all the time, no longer smiles, no longer has time to play with Charley.

And the housekeeper, Sarita, is somewhat aloof, too, harboring her own grief and memories of a son killed in a motorcycle accident.

So, Tolan opens the story with Charley struggling to return to "normal," even though normal can no longer be, well, normal for her.

And into this world of loss and struggle comes a wild, beautiful dog.

When Charley first sees the dog, she feels "a kind of tremor, as if an electric shock has passed from the dog to her and back again."

Something about this dog--perhaps the dog's independence or the simple fact that he is a survivor--awakens Charley and helps her begin the process of accepting that, despite tragedy, beauty can exist in the world.

As the story progresses, Charley's longing to befriend this dog intensifies, but the dog only becomes harder and harder to tame, resisting all her treats and gifts of food.

Her deep longing for a companion, though, draws Charley into the woods to pursue the dog. And her immersion in the silent woods, a kind of sanctuary where she used to go with her mother, revives memories of their time together and enables Charley to face her loss, as well as the new, painful solitude surrounding her, so she can move beyond the pain.

Tolan is masterful at tracing the subtle changes of grief in this young girl. Not only does Tolan show us Charley healing over time, she lets us see Charley gradually recognize traces of her mother's artistic abilities and vision in herself, as in this passage, when Coyote disappears and Charley worries that she might not find him again:

Charley stops as if she has run into a wall. What if Coyote doesn't come back? What if the image of the road, the cars, was real, and there is nothing left of him now but a body among the weeds, a reason for the vultures that circle overhead to tilt their wings and drop down to the pavement? She never thought, in all these sixty-seven days, to take a picture of him. How could she--Charley Morgan, daughter of Colleen Morgan, nature photographer--not once think to go to her mother's studio, dig through the boxes, find a camera, and take a picture? If he is gone, there will be nothing to show that Coyote ever lived. Nothing--nothing at all--to show for day after day of the effort to tame him, day after day of their growing connection.

This is a story about making connections with the mysterious source of life that runs through every living creature and remains part of the world even after we're gone.

It's about becoming aware of gifts around us, gifts that may be hidden from view, if only because we haven't listened deeply or searched hard enough for them.

In the end, Listen! is about a girl and her dog, each finding a way to overcome solitude and loneliness and share in life's joys together.

As writers, we need to listen like Charley to voices spoken so softly that sometimes we wonder if we're imagining them.

Listen! reminds us to do this: listen more closely to the sound of leaves rustling, waves slapping the shore, our breath moving in and out, a dog's barking.

If we listen closely enough, perhaps we'll hear the sound of a spirit rushing through us, drawing each of us together, carrying us deeper into the mystery of life.

For more information about Stephanie S. Tolan and her work, visit her website at
http://www.stephanietolan.com.

Dog Paddling

Dogs swim without words, churning their paws in the water, paddling toward us in an effort to communicate, to link their lives with ours.

Some dogs leap fearlessly into the water. Retrievers, for whom swimming is second-nature, hold their heads high above the water-line and fix their eyes on some point in the distance that only they can see.

Others dogs shy away from the water. They may dance at the edge of the waves and lick the curling froth, tails wagging, but then they'll scamper away before their paws get wet.

Rarely are canines self-conscious about their bodies in the same way that humans worry about extra pounds or a bulging waist-line.

Exuberant and brimming with joy, dogs dash through the surf after frisbees or plastic bones with an energy and playfulness that few humans can match.

Watching dogs play in or near the water is one of life's delights. It's like watching pure joy in motion, arabesques of movement, arcs of water swirling in air.

If you don’t happen to have a dog at the moment, the surest way to fill your life with dog-joy is by reading stories about people and their dogs. (Plus, you don’t have to worry about getting soaked when the dog emerges from the water and shakes herself dry at your feet.)

There are heart-wrenching, soul-stopping classics like Sounder by William Armstrong, Old Yeller by Fred Gipson, and The Incredible Journey by Sheila Burnford.

Then there's Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, and Because of Wynn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo, and A Dog’s Life: The Autobiography of a Stray by Ann Martin.

And Sable by Karen Hesse, The Come-Back Dog by Jane Resh Thomas, and, of course, White Fang and Call of the Wild by Jack London.

Recently, I came across The Canine Connection, another remarkable book involving our mysterious relationship with dogs. It's a deeply thoughtful, well-crafted collection of short stories by Betsy Hearne, the author of Seven Brave Women, Listening for Leroy, and Wishes, Kisses and Pigs.

In a dozen stories, Hearne captures the beauty and profound mystery of our relationship with dogs, writing about dogs and humans in ways that reveal just how tightly we are intertwined with each other, two different species emotionally and physically bound together as if an invisible dog had wrapped its leash around our legs.

The ending of "Room 313" is a perfect example of Hearne’s artistry, her ability to weave together a dog's spirit and a human's heart, showing us a character in a hospital room after she’s returned with her service dog, Snowy, only to find the boy who she visited the day before gone and to learn from a nurse that he had died after her last visit:

A kind of white space opens up in front of Anne. Wherever she turns there is nothing but air, and yet she can hardly breathe. How is it possible to be so chesty and so breathless? Her lungs feel full of earth instead of air. It’s her head that’s full of air, air heaped on air, white space swirling around and around. Maybe she will faint. She has never fainted before. Anne feels Snowy lean against her and feels herself leaning back against him, thankful suddenly for the anchor of both their solid bodies.

And in "Bones," as an aging Newfoundland approaches the end of his life, the boy (who the dog saved from the sea years earlier) remembers nearly drowning and the moments of despair before the dog came to his rescue:

Salt-choked, he lunged with all his might, scrabbling at the slick rocks, felt them sharp against his arm, around his arm--teeth, he was being pulled by teeth. For an instant he saw himself towed away in the grip of sharks’ teeth, in payment for all those he’d taken from the sea. Then a wall rose between him and the open ocean, something sodden and strong swam beside him, not a shark. He clung to it, churning his other arm as hard as he could, pushing forward, gaining way. Water pulled slowly lower at his body from neck to chest to hips to thighs to knees to ankles and he was free, throwing himself forward on the sand in a shaken, aching heap with a giant black dog sluicing off sheets of water beside him.

Hearne writes in an afterward: “If there is a theme to the collection, it is one that I did not recognize till afterwards--that animals and young humans share a heart-wrenching vulnerability which makes them empathetic metaphors for one another.”

And she shares this insight into the process of writing the stories: “These bits and pieces of personal experience become part of the puzzle that fits together with purely imagined chunks of character, plot, setting, and image for a complete story. Once I have the emotional core, the story seems to write itself, with details appearing unexpected on the page as I write. This creative process requires steady practice and great faith in subconscious connection.”

Steady practice and great faith are habits that dogs teach us daily.

But there’s a much deeper link between dogs and humans. It’s that subconscious connection... that mysterious way that dogs seem to find us... and how we find them.

It's a process that in many ways resembles the subconscious connection that a writer makes with his or her material.

One day we’re standing in a stream, or at the edge of the surf, and, suddenly, from a distance away, we hear barking and splashing, and before we know it we’re engulfed in a playful hug with a dog who we’ve never seen before... and who enters our life...and changes us in ways that we never dreamed possible.

That’s how our stories surprise us, too... sneaking up on us, coming out of nowhere, and inviting us to step into a shallow pool or a deep pond that we’d never even known was there. Suddenly, we find ourselves swimming where we hadn't known there was water.

Writing, each of us does our own version of the dog-paddle.

We churn the water with our pens, always in search of words.

And we try to communicate something of the mystery of our lives to whoever we may happen to find standing at the edge of the water, waiting for us to emerge.

For more information about Betsy Hearne and her work, take a look at her website: http://people.lis.uiuc.edu/~hearne/index.html