Agnes, Maria Campbell, and the light inside

Who is Agnes, protagonist of Seeking the Center? Where did she come from? The short answer is, I don't know. 

She's not autobiographical. I have never been as tough, as brave, or as smart-assed as she is. (I only wish I was!)

I've mentioned that she began, partly, as a question about being female in the overwhelmingly male world of ice hockey. And that's certainly true.

Ultimately, though, a lot of things entered into the mix that became Agnes's character. And while I will never uncover all of them, I can say that one major inspiration is the life of Maria Campbell, a Métis woman who persevered through extreme difficulties to become a writer, a teacher, a much-respected elder, and an advocate for Métis and women's rights.

I found Campbell's Halfbreed by chance, browsing the stacks at Powell's Books in Portland, Oregon, and I owe an eternal debt of gratitude to whomever it was that sold their used copy to Powell's! The autobiography is riveting and a must-read for everyone.

Campbell was born in 1940 in Park Valley, SK, a poor Road Allowance community. (Unlike other Aboriginal groups, the Métis were not granted rights to land under treaties with the Canadian government, so many were forced to squat on "road allowances" - Crown lands set aside for future roadways.) At age 33 she wrote Halfbreed, an autobiography documenting her life up until that time. In Halfbreed, Campbell never shies away from the poverty, alcoholism, violence, addiction, racism, and sexism that she faced, but she nevertheless manages to portray some of the beauty of her Métis culture and the love that existed within her family, troubled though it may have been.

While devastating at times, Halfbreed remains a testament to the dignity and spirit that people can possess, nurture, and share in defiance of even the direst circumstances and the most heartless enemies. Campbell has this light within herself, and she also has the ability to find it, and to inspire it, in others. In spite of people who fail her, and circumstances that drag her down, she retains the ability to love and to trust others, and to parlay that love into something that can sustain and nourish.

Agnes doesn't experience the hardship and desperation that Campbell did, but she has the same light inside her. And in Seeking the Center, she learns to find it and use it, for her own good and for the good of others.

Some notes on ‘Chief’ as a (hockey) nickname

In Seeking the Center, there’s a scene where Claude is referred to as “Chief” by an opponent:

Good thing you got ol' Chief there to look out for you, eh MacKenzie?

It's not meant as a compliment, either for MacKenzie, who, it is implied, is not man enough to stand up for himself, or for Claude, whom the opponent tries to belittle by referring to him by the racial stereotype “Chief.”

Hockey nicknames are known for their unimaginative-ness, and while researching Seeking, I quickly learned that “Chief” is, or was at one time, the go-to for First Nations/Native American/Métis players of hockey - and other sports as well. According to Don Marks, author of They Call Me Chief: Warriors on Ice, “almost every Indian who played in the NHL or anywhere else has been called ‘Chief' at one time or another.”

Jim Neilson, who played in the NHL in the 1960s and 1970s, told Marks,

I’ve been called Chief all my life, everywhere else I go. In hockey, you know that your teammates were calling you Chief in a friendly, natural sort of way. But then you would play guys from other teams and you knew it wasn’t so friendly. Most of it was just during the heat of the battle and they were trying to throw you off your game and you just ignore it.

Stan Jonathan, Mohawk/Tuscarora NHL forward from 1976-1983, said, also to Don Marks,

They called me Little Chief and I didn’t mind that. It was when they called me ‘wahoo’ or ‘F#$%’n little Indian’ that I didn’t like [it]...

Judging from Neilson’s and Jonathan’s comments, the context of the name-calling could influence players' feelings about it. But also, as Jonathan indicates, the term “Chief,” while intended to isolate, belittle, and ridicule a person on the basis of race, might have been different, in some sense, than other slurs.

Year in Nam is Leroy TeCube's memoir of the year he served as a G.I. in Vietnam. (I also wrote about it in an earlier post.) Like Jim Neilson and Stan Jonathan, TeCube, a Jicarilla Apache man, was given the nickname “Chief” by his "teammates," i.e. the soldiers in his platoon.

When I joined the platoon it consisted mostly of white GIs, followed by blacks and Hispanics. I was the only American Indian. Someone asked, ‘What race are you? You look like an Indian.'

TeCube describes how he discussed his tribal affiliation with the guys, until finally one of them says, “In that case we’ll call you ‘Chief.’” TeCube answers him, “In my traditional way the title of chief is earned and shown respect.” He then recalls: 

Most of the guys would call me Chief from then on, although a handful of individuals called me by my real name. Up until that moment throughout my training no one even suggested calling me Chief. I wondered why that was so. Perhaps because as trainees we were used to being treated as animals and were addressed by our last names. Now here in Vietnam everyone had an identity. 

Regardless of how the name was intended, TeCube chooses how he will take it - he re-appropriates it - and throughout his service in Vietnam he works hard to live up to the name “chief” and what it means to him and his traditional beliefs. He writes:

I also thought of my new responsibility from my Jicarilla Apache way...the short translation of Nahn Tahn is leader. A more indepth translation, however, describes it as someone who is also an orator. He tells his people what happened in battle or what is about to happen to them next...being Nahn Tahn was something to be feared. Only the very strong took on the responsibility. One had to set a good example and ensure that the needs of everyone in his group were met before he thought of himself. He must never be corrupted or gain wealth from his position. The main criteria were that he never retreat in battle and he show a lot of courage. He had to be the first one into a conflict, and if need be, he would fight single-handedly with an enemy leader…

Towards the end of his time in Vietnam, TeCube recalls “meeting a fellow soldier who was Navajo...as we talked I realized he was also a leader within his platoon and was also called Chief. This gave me a good feeling, knowing that another individual lived up to the name.”

Finally, TeCube is awarded sergeant’s stripes. He writes: 

That day I felt a great sense of pride and accomplishment. I never expected to be a sergeant when I entered the army. Now I had orders in my hand stating just that. I also knew that I had earned the rank….It took a little time before I got used to being called sergeant or sarge. Some called me Sergeant TeCube. Most of the time I still went by Chief or Sergeant Chief. This had more meaning. According to my traditional beliefs, I had now earned the right to be called Chief.

TeCube - along with all of his platoon-mates - quickly recognizes the futility of the Vietnam War, but, having no choice in the matter, he takes it as an obstacle to overcome, just as he takes the moniker given to him, "Chief," as a personal challenge. And while I didn't know about TeCube and hadn't read his story when I was writing Seeking, I like the way that, without knowing it, the player who calls Claude "Chief" unwittingly points to certain facets of Claude's character and aspirations, facets that don't come to light until later in the story. Claude feels that he has little choice but to play what he thinks of as "this white man's game," and while, like TeCube, he is certainly aware of racism and the obstacles it places in his path, he soldiers on, keeping his identity, self-respect, and dignity intact.

Update: I’ve written another post about Claude and the idea/ideal of the Chief.

Guys playing sports: an early passage from Seeking the Center

I wrote this little piece several years ago, when I was just starting to work on Seeking the Center. It's about young guys playing sports.

By the end of the lazy summer I'm glad to get back to town. To the cool of the rink, the smells of moldering, wet wool and sharp sweat, the sling-shot jocks, the jostling of us guys packed together in our stalls, buzzing and slamming like too many molecules, loud with joking and laughing and trash-talking. Where else would we go? What other place is left for us? The big, slick ice, the dark tunnel, the dank, crowded dressing room: they’ve made those places for us.

Outside, they’ve taken down the goals. Like a fish out of water, my form seems unsuited, my strength, outsize. It’s like when I was a kid and my mamma would say, what am I ever going to do with you? I was too fast, too heavy, too hard, too strong, too loud, too coarse, and too excitable to have in the house. It couldn’t hold me. I didn’t stop when she said stop. My words grated on the ears; my shirttail fluttered. Not fit for civilized society. That’s what she’d say. She was only joking, but I think it might be true.

I’ve heard that in the old days, they set the goals a town apart, fields apart, forests apart. That would’ve suited me great. Back then the earth was our playing field. One goal was just over the hill, far side of the schoolhouse; the other, across the stream and through the muskeg. We’d run through the brush, our feet on fire, our battles real.

But somehow it got too small for us out there, and so they’ve put us inside. Kind of funny, eh? Maybe it’s for the best; maybe it’s for our own good. Now we’re a show, a museum piece, and people pay to see us. They don’t have to have us in the house, or in town, or terrorizing the schoolmarms, or trampling the fields or trudging through the muskeg, getting mud on our shoes. Now we’re contained. It’s cleaner this way. 

How long does it take to write a novel?

So, how long did it take you to write Seeking the Center? I get that question regularly. I wish I had kept track of the hours, but of course I didn't. For the first two to four years I didn't even know that I was writing it! But, here's my best (although rather long and rambling) answer to the question:

The first glimmers started in 2008-2009. My notes - the ones I can find - date back to 2010. My characters started to come into existence during summer vacation 2010, and the earliest passages that I wrote date to 2010 or 2011. The year 2012 was kind of a lost year, for various reasons, but during the spring and summer of 2013 I did a ton of research, and I wrote the bulk of the story during the academic year 2013-2014. In the fall of 2014 I found an editor who wanted to work with me on it (sheer luck!) and we worked on and off (she had other projects going) from early 2015 until mid 2016 - outlining and re-outlining, adding and deleting sections, revising, editing, proofreading, etc. - until the book was ready for publication in the fall of 2016.

Louis Riel Day and Métis nationhood

After reading Seeking the Center a friend of mine became curious about the description Métis that appears on the back cover of the book. She looked it up and asked me about it. "It means mixed race, right?" she asked. "Like mestizo."

Well, no. There's confusion about the designation Métis. On the one hand, yes, the French word métis, with a lower-case m, literally means mixed, often used to describe people of "mixed blood" - i.e., people who are bi- or multi-racial. But Métis, with a capital M, does not.

The Métis, as a people, have their roots in the North American fur trade, going back as far as the 17th century, when European fur traders and Indigenous people began forming alliances, often cemented by, or taking the form of, marriages between fur traders and indigenous women. The children of these marriages often intermarried among themselves, and over generations developed their own language (Michif) and culture. They became a large and influential group in the Canadian and American west, working not only as hunters, fur processors, pemmican manufacturers, and voyageurs, but as guides, translators, traders, merchants, and so on. Today they are recognized by the Canadian government as one of three Aboriginal groups - i.e., cultural groups that existed originally, before Canada itself: First Nations, Inuit, and Métis. The United States has never recognized the Métis as a distinct cultural group, although their northern plains homeland extends across the U.S.-Canada border.

The Métis are also, in the same sense as, say, the Ojibwe or the Cree, a nation, and one whose origin predates the arrival of the Canadian and U.S. governments to their homeland. Their sense of nationhood developed over the course of generations, and was solidified during the 19th century through a series of political/military events including the Battle of Seven Oaks (1816), the trial of Guillaume Sayer (1849), and the Métis resistances at Red River, Manitoba (1870) and in Saskatchewan (1885).

The Métis leader in the latter two confrontations was Louis Riel, a charismatic, spiritually inclined, and enigmatic man who envisioned a Native nation in North America. His forces were crushed both at Red River and at Batoche, Saskatchewan, by the Canadian government, then in its infancy. He himself was captured, tried, and hung for treason by Canadian authorities after the defeat at Batoche in 1885. 

Since 2008, the third Monday in February has been designated Louis Riel Day in the Canadian province of Manitoba. In other parts of Canada, Louis Riel, as well as Métis culture in general, are celebrated on November 16, the anniversary of Riel's execution. 

Here are some titles for further reading - by no means an exclusive list! - in order of publication date: 

• Strange Empire: A Narrative of the Northwest by Joseph Kinsey Howard (1952)
• Many Tender Ties: Women in Fur-Trade Society, 1670-1870 by Sylvia Van Kirk (1980)
• Strangers in Blood: Fur Trade Company Families in Indian Country by Jennifer S. H. Brown (1980)
• The People Who Own Themselves: Aboriginal Ethnogenesis in a Canadian Family, 1660-1900 by Heather Devine (2004)
• One of the Family: Metis Culture in Nineteenth-Century Northwestern Saskatchewan by Brenda Macdougall (2010)
• "Métis": Race, Recognition, and the Struggle for Indigenous Peoplehood by Chris Andersen (2014)

La belle Françoise: the evolution of a traditional song

"La belle Françoise" is a song that appears in Seeking the Center and on my Seeking the Center playlist. I think its background is interesting, and I want to share it with you. 

When I was writing Achille's main scene in Seeking, I looked for a song that could play a certain role in it. (I won't elaborate on that role, because I don't want to spoil the story.) I wanted a traditional voyageur song, because that is a major part of Achille's background and identity. (The voyageurs were the French Canadian paddlers of the birchbark canoes that carried trade goods north and west into the interior of North America, and brought back loads of furs to the companies in Montreal. They used traditional songs to synchronize their paddling. Most of these songs pre-dated France's first settlements in Quebec, so they date back to the 17th century or earlier.)

"La belle Françoise" appears in sources including Grace Lee Nute's The Voyageur and Thomas R. Draughon's Canot d'Écorce: Chansons de Voyageurs. Though it isn't the song most associated with the voyageurs, I chose it because of its minor key, which gives it a melancholy mood, and because of its lyrics, which dramatize the impending separation of two lovers.

In the song, Françoise weeps because her man must go to war, but he assures her that, if she waits for him, he will return and marry her. Their plight echoes the situations of some of my characters. Although it is not actual war that they are going to, they are facing unknown and sometimes hostile situations, away from their homeplaces.

You can listen to different versions of the song on YouTube. I chose Garolou's live version for my Seeking the Center playlist mainly because it makes an exciting finale. But it also represents a further evolution of the song that, although it doesn't pertain to Seeking, is interesting in its own right. 

Garolou was a French-Canadian group active in the 1970s that often took traditional French and French-Canadian chansons (songs) and gave them modern, rock settings. "La belle Françoise" was an early hit for them (mid 1970s). You can hear how they've contemporized it with a Vietnam-era anti-war message by inserting an intense version of "La Marseillaise." The Seeking the Center playlist version is from Garolou's 1997 live Réunion album.

Association of Writers and Writing Programs

I'm excited to be attending the Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference in Washington, DC, on Saturday. The conference, billed as "an essential annual destination for writers, teachers, students, editors, and publishers," begins on Wednesday and ends on Saturday, with a full slate of presenters that you can check out here and a packed schedule.

My official signing is from 1-2 pm on Saturday, but I'm planning to arrive early and stay late, as the book exhibit hall will be full of interesting offerings! I'll be at the Cuidono table in the Walter Washington Convention Center, Halls D & E, Table 702-T. We will have books for sale, and I will be happy to sign books for you, or to just chat.

Looking forward to seeing you!

Photos from a weekend of Badger hockey

A men's hockey game at the Kohl Center.

Pep band plays before the start of men's hockey game.

UW players on the bench.

Break out.

Screening the goalie.

View across the arena.

A couple of weekends ago I visited Madison, Wisconsin. I had hoped for a winter wonderland - snowshoeing in the woods, skating on an outside rink or even on a lake - but the weather didn't cooperate. However, I did get to see three (3!!!) hockey games at the University of Wisconsin. Watching live hockey is fascinating - you can see the plays unfold and check out the behind-the-play mayhem. When you watch a televised game, you can only see what the cameras show you.

On Friday evening the men's hockey team ("Badgers" is UW's nickname) suffered an overtime loss at the hands (paws?) of the Golden Gophers of the University of Minnesota - an epic duel of rodents. The men play in an arena about the same size as those used by professional NHL teams, with various food options, a pep band, and a large, very active student section.

On Saturday and Sunday I saw the women play. UW is the top ranked college team in the country and they didn't disappoint, beating the University of North Dakota Fighting Hawks both afternoons. The games were close, hard fought, and a ton of fun. The Badger women play in a new arena that seats close to 2300 extremely enthusiastic, emotionally invested fans. Attendance was good - even on Sunday, when the game overlapped with the Green Bay Packers' do-or-die playoff football game. I came away extremely inspired by these young women, on both teams, who battled it out with at least the ferocity that the men displayed. I wish that everyone could see them play!

The Kohl Center concourse features display cases related to athletics at the University.

This display portrays Brianna Decker, a UW alumna who, in 2012, won the Patty Kazmaier award for best female NCAA Division 1 hockey player. She currently plays for the Boston Pride in the NWHL. She is also on the U.S. national team. 

Introductions.

Going back the other way.

Some sports writing by Jack Kerouac

I haven't had much time for blogging lately, but with the Super Bowl approaching, I thought I'd share a piece of my favorite writing about football - a passage from Jack Kerouac's 1950 novel The Town and the City. What I've quoted below is part of a much longer scene describing a high school game between fierce rivals on a blustery, autumn New England day. 

They saw the Lawton team across the field in a huddle of great captains, standing in the wind in their dark uniforms, helmeted fantastically, all grotesque, wild, and ominous; they saw the officials in white placing the new yellow football on the kickoff line; they saw the whole mob-swarmed terrific stadium in a gray windswept blaze of vision. Whistles were piping in the air, silence was falling over the multitudes, the game was ready to begin.

And then when Peter saw the ball up in the air, wobbling and windswept, and saw it bouncing down before him, he was mortified with fear. Then he lunged for it, picked it up, snarled and ran straight downfield with all his headlong might, crashing and stamping through a confusion of hard bodies and falling finally on the icy midfield beneath ten others, and the game was on....

Down on the field the teams lined up, the linemen digging in low and glaring at each other, the backs crouching, the quarterback calling out numbers with his whole body jerking behind each shout, the officials waiting expectantly nearby, and all of it windswept on the dark field to which all eyes were fastened excitedly. The lines collided, biffed, scattered, long rangy youths sprawled, someone ran and ducked into a pileup of bodies, and it was no gain...

The crowd suddenly roared as someone ran wide around end, around reaching hands, arching his back and waving one arm, cutting back suddenly on dancing feet, wavering, darting aside, plunging on a few yards and pulling along to a stop under a pile of bodies. The crowd's roar surged away into droning chattering sounds, cowbells and drums rang in the sharp air...

And now suddenly the crowd rose to its feet with one roaring cry of surprise, explosive and vast, as a Galloway player swept wide around the end, leaped into the air, twisted, and shot the ball several yards over dark helmeted heads, as another Galloway player paused, twisted, reached out for the ball, barely grasped it in his fingers, turned and went plummeting downfield along the sidelines. The roaring of the crowd surged and grew thunderous, the Martin mother jumped up on her seat to see, and she saw a figure racing down the sidelines, shaking off tacklers with a squirming motion, plunging through others with a striding determination, tripping, stumbling, staggering on half fallen and half running, straightening out once more, plodding, faking, yet suddenly approaching the goal line in a drunken weary run, staggered aside by another lunging figure, momentarily stopping, then carrying on again, striding to the line falling, with a dark figure smashing into it, now wavering on bent knees, now finally diving over and rolling in the end zone triumphantly.

A momentous race, at home and in 'Nam

A few summers ago, while researching for Seeking the Center, I read a number of books about sport in Native American/First Nations cultures. (If you're a member of Goodreads, you can follow me there and see what's on my bookshelf.) American Indian Sports Heritage by Joseph B. Oxendine, in particular, stresses the centrality of sport to Native life and belief, as does Tom Vennum in his American Indian Lacrosse: Little Brother of War, which I wrote about here. 

I'm reading Year in Nam, now, Leroy TeCube's memoir of his experiences serving as an infantryman in Vietnam in 1968 and 1969. TeCube is Jicarilla Apache, and in his book he often reflects on the role his heritage played in his actions and ultimate survival. In light of my earlier research, I found the following passage especially interesting. It weaves together TeCube's memory of a traditional tribal relay race with a life-or-death race to cross a bridge under enemy fire in Vietnam.

Published by University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London. Winner of the 1996 North American Indian Prose Award.

As I ran across the narrow bridge I had a flashback to my youth. On September 15 of every year my tribe has a traditional relay race between our two clans. The outcome of the race determines the type of year ahead. Depending on which clan won, there would be more wild game or crops. This race gives my people an idea of how to plan their activities for the year to come.

The relay race is on a racetrack three hundred yards long and about ten yards wide. Head runners are determined at a preliminary race the day before. Before the race starts, elderly men paint the runners in an aspen kiva, conduct prayers for them, and run down the track blessing it. When they finish the race starts with the head runners running at a full sprint down the track. When they reach the end of the track another set of runners runs back. This goes back and forth until a clan gets ahead by a full length of the track. When that happens the clan in the lead wins the race. If the runners from each clan are evenly matched the race could take several hours.

I had participated in the race several times. It could be very deceptive, especially going in an easterly direction. That is because in that direction about three-fourths of the way down is a slight rise that looks like the finish line. If you are not aware of the illusion your energy is expended when you reach this point, and you have to continue on with heavy legs. Elderly men holding aspen branches give you words of encouragement and whip you on the legs with the branches for added strength. It works. You find the burst of energy needed to take you to the finish line

I was now about three-fourths of the way across the narrow bridge. My legs were heavy from carrying my pack. I thought of the elderly men in our traditional race. In an instant, just that thought gave me the encouragement to continue. I ran off the bridge on the other side and took cover next to the trail. After catching my breath I fired toward the wood line. Out of the corner of my right eye I could see the others running the same race. Eventually, we all made it across without a casualty.

As TeCube describes, the ritual relay race has spiritual and practical dimensions, but also serves as a way to build and inspire courage and determination. It would be interesting to know whether, traditionally, the race was in any way considered to be, like American Indian lacrosse, a "little brother of war," or if it just worked out that way for TeCube in this instance. In any case, it was a treat to, unexpectedly, come across this intriguing recollection.

Romance, girl power and the Women's March

Romance novels sometimes get a bum rap - denigrated for taking on "trivial" subjects such as love and relationships. And, let's be real: the fact that the majority of their audience is female also earns them a fair amount of disrespect.

I've had enough of this. These so-called "women's issues"  - the issues that concern the creation of families, reproduction, and nurturing - are indisputably central to human life. Let's not allow them to be marginalized.

But I digress (slightly).

Not every novel has to be serious. A thriller in which a secret agent saves the world from an evil overlord can be flighty and fun, and that's fine. By the same token, romance per se is not trivial. It can be quite weighty.

Early on in Seeking the Center, Agnes identifies the force against which she will struggle during the course of the novel. She muses: 

Dad didn't want her to move to Wapahaska. He was afraid that she would never come back. From Wapahaska she would be lured to Thompson, or some other big city, a place that had mutated, like the cannibal Windigo of the old stories, into a silent, howling flash-freeze, parched and ravenous. But instead of feasting on her flesh, it would feast on her spirit.

Agnes was well aware of the dangers, though, and they didn't lurk in any particular geographical location. Being young, female, and brown-skinned meant that she was expendable, and set her up for the worst anyone anywhere cared to dish out. Huddling in fear at home in St. Cyp was no guarantee of safety, much less of vanquishing Windigo and feeding her own spirit.

Traditionally, Windigo is the cannibal spirit of the Algonquin tribes of sub-Arctic Canada, a place where, during the long, cold winters, starvation often threatened. In that difficult environment, in what must rank as one of the cruelest reversals imaginable, Windigo could possess a person so that, instead of feeding their family, that person would eat their family. Notice that the primary issue wasn't that Windigo could cause death, but rather that it could unravel our most important relationships and interdependencies. It could undermine the very foundation of society itself, and threaten the survival of humankind. 

During the centuries since Europeans first came to North America, Windigo has come to represent the greed of capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism which, in the words of scholar Grace Dillon, "makes sense because imperialism is cannibalism: the consumption of one people by another." (In my mind, at least, this links up with the longstanding, tragic issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women: these women have simply been consumed.) In Agnes's mind - and in her father's - Windigo is a force that threatens to swallow her up, either physically, spiritually or both.

What I didn't know when I first wrote Seeking the Center was the degree to which, in the traditional Windigo stories, the spirit targets women - often young women - by disrupting their potential marriages and their reproductive and nurturing roles. Windigo was no dummy - it struck at the very heart of the family and therefore of society. But what I also didn't know was that, in those same stories, women are the people most able to defeat Windigo, using tools and attributes associated with their traditional roles: i.e., pots, pans, knives, bodily fluids, and that extra-special something they possess when menstruating.

I bring all this up to say that these northern people put young women and their relationships front and center in the battle for the preservation of society. In Seeking, as in romance in general, the characters are looking to create relationships and, the implication often is, become a family unit, thus perpetuating society and humankind. Male as well as female - people of any gender - these romance characters win their personal battles to the extent that they engage their nurturing impulses, their capacity for love.

As Claude the hockey enforcer says in Seeking, "There's fighting on the outside, but the inside battle is what it's about. You know, taking care of each other." 

Which brings us to today, January 21, 2017, the start of a new era. Windigo threatens. Let's get out our pots and pans, and whatever we've got, and march, and fight. Our families and our society are depending on us.

Rink air vs. outside air: an early passage from Seeking the Center

I wrote this passage, I think, in 2010. Or maybe 2009. It was some of the first writing I did related to Seeking the Center (although it is not in the published book). At the time, I was thinking about the cyclical nature of a hockey life - a nomadic sort of existence where you move from place to place with the seasons. You earn money playing during the winter, and then return to farm or factory to earn your keep during the summer. I was thinking about these two modes of existence, equal parts of your livelihood - and your personhood. How are they different from one another? 

During practice the sounds pinball: the digging and scraping of steel blades into the ice, the rattling fright of the puck against the boards, the clattering of sticks, the whoops and calls of the boys. But as soon as we turn to go, and our skate blades sink mutely into the rubber-mat path that leads to the dressing room, the sounds cease their ricocheting and hang quiet like bats in a cave. Because the hard rink air is as empty as an icicle. There's nothing in it but itself.

    When the season is over I go home. There the air is full. It holds the scents of grasses and flowers and animals and dirt; it holds bird songs and wind rustlings and ghost rustlings. Yes, ghosts - in the air and even on the ground. Because there, every mark ever made, every footfall, every poop leaves its trace. Not like in the rink, where every hour or two a machine comes to clean up and scrape away. In there - it's like Coach says - let yesterday's game go, play today's game. But outside the rink there's no machine to scrape it all away. Outside, every trace remains.

    It’s slow-going at home. Instead of the slick, easy surface of the ice there are stones and tall tangled weeds and gopher holes. But there is solace in the slowness: there is space to slip away, time to remember. My legs swish through the hayfield and the grasshoppers make way. In the afternoon I retreat to the thick shade that lines the river and I cool off in the murky water, a big, naked muskrat with a trailing, sliver wake. I add my heavy step to the scurried histories of my brethren, impressed on the mudflat. From my fleshy prints they know me, and take me as their own.

Seeking the Center playlist

Some of the songs that were there for me as I was writing Seeking the Center:

1. Whatta Man - Salt-N-Pepa
2. Silver River - Shingoose (poetry by Duke Redbird)
3. You Really Got Me - The Kinks
4. When a Man Loves a Woman - Percy Sledge
5. Look How the Stars Shine for You - Randy Wood
6. Wild Horses - The Rolling Stones
7. How You Like Me Now - The Heavy
8. A Case of You - Joni Mitchell
9. Heart of Stone - The Rolling Stones
10. Road to Batoche - Jimmie LaRocque, Gerry McIvor, Kim Chartrand
11. I'll Be There - The Jackson 5
12. Never Never Blues - John Trudell
13. La belle Françoise - Garolou

Here's a link to the Spotify playlist.

UPDATE: I can't believe I forgot about "What's Love Got To Do With It?" (Tina Turner) - a song that actually appears in Seeking the Center. Just like "Heart of Stone," it should have made it onto the playlist for sure. Remember? Jamie sings it while dancing into in the dressing room just before he meets Deuce for the first time. Anyhow, I snuck it in between The Jackson 5 and John Trudell on the Spotify playlist. Sorry about that!

Goodreads giveaway!

If you're on Goodreads, you can sign up to win a signed copy of Seeking the Center! The giveaway runs through Valentine's Day.

Who's my favorite character?

Someone just asked me to name my favorite character in Seeking the Center. This is tough. I love all my characters. But, while I reserve the right to change my mind without notice, at this moment I'd have to say that Claude (a.k.a Deuce) is my favorite. Why? Well, what's not to like?

As Achille says, "he's big, he's strong, he's--". And then the poor guy starts coughing and can't finish his sentence. But you can fill in the blank.

As Agnes notes, "Wow."

And as far as Owen is concerned, "even though he liked old Deuce, and respected him, it pained him to remember the Wolves' dressing room, and being up close and personal with the big guy and his goddamn perfect muscles and his huge, fighter's hands and his golden skin and all the rest of it."

But, beyond the admirable physical specimen that he is, what I love most about Claude is his courageous, straight-ahead nature. He doesn't let concerns about consequences stop him from doing what he needs to do. He's not afraid to drop the gloves, but he doesn't hesitate to offer his hand to a person in need, either. He's not too good to yank your chain when the occasion calls for it, but he's not above laughing at himself, either.

Above all, he doesn't blame other people for his problems. And while he's a player in what he thinks of as "this white man's game," he is his own person. In his own quiet but deliberate way, he makes things happen. (Except on the one occasion when he needs a little push. But you'll have to read about that for yourself.)

And that's why I love Claude.

Winning

Last weekend my favorite hockey team won two games. The first was a strong offensive showing with a final score of 6-2, and the second was a nail-biter, in which they hung on to win 2-1.

Everyone loves to see their team score a lot of goals, of course, and it's much less taxing to watch a game in which your team has the lead throughout, especially a sizable one which, at a certain point, makes a comeback by the opponent virtually impossible. But I think it's actually more thrilling to win those close games.

When a team is down by one goal, it will, during the last two minutes or so of the game, "pull its goalie." That is, the coach will call the goalie to the bench and replace her with an extra skater. This gives that team six skaters against the leading team's five - a definite advantage.

There's a risk involved: with its net empty, the trailing team is more vulnerable to being scored on, which, when it happens, will likely put the game out of reach. But if its players can maintain control of the puck, keep a cycle going in the offensive zone, batter the goalie with shots and generally create mayhem, they can significantly tire their opponents, take advantage of their own greater numbers, and quite possibly tie the game up.

When your team is the leading team, and is able to hold off this onslaught until the final horn sounds, it is extremely satisfying. If your team has played solid defense, heroically blocked shots, and if your goalie has repeatedly thwarted the opponent's best scoring chances, then your team has not only taken the standings points, but it has frustrated the opposing team. Maybe even crushed their spirit!

That's what you wish on the other team. That's what makes winning so much fun.

Loud buildings

So, here's something interesting.  Today I've been reading an article titled "Acoustics and ritual in the British Neolithic" by Aaron Watson.* His idea is that Neolithic structures were built not only as tombs, or as a type of "calendar" in which, for example, at Newgrange, the structure is aligned so that at the winter solstice the rising sun shines down the passage into the central chamber - but that these structures might also have been deliberately constructed to achieve certain acoustic aims.

I read about sound and ritual back when I was doing research on Scandinavian religion in the Viking age (which is, of course, considerably more recent than the Neolithic). During that time, they used sound - for example chanting or the beating of swords on shields - to create environments conducive to various rituals. And speaking of beating swords on shields, the noise of battle, at least poetically, was also part of its identification as a distinctive environment to which spirits such as the valkyries are drawn and during which supernatural events may take place. 

Now, Viking battles always remind me of hockey (that's just the way my mind works), but where was the connection to Watson's ideas about ritual in Neolithic megastructures? There was nothing obviously hockey-like there. Until I came across this:

Neolithic communities were constructing places within which the propagation of sound was artificially bounded and controlled to a greater extent than had ever been possible before. Schafer has even proposed that most ancient buildings were constructed not so much to enclose space as to enshrine sound.

As soon as I read that, the phrase a loud building popped into my head.

Hockey players and coaches will sometimes describe an "enemy" arena as being especially loud, i.e., the fans are very vocal in support of their team, and they fill every seat. This loudness is, in theory, anyhow, supposed to carry the home team a good distance toward victory. Especially during the playoffs, there can be competitive boasting about whose building is the loudest. It's a big deal.

I'm not sure that the arenas themselves are built to maximize volume, but they are equipped with monumentally loud sound systems and jumbotrons that, at key points in the game, urge fans themselves to get loud!

Am I going way out of my way to link Neolithic structures with hockey arenas? Quite possibly I am. But the role of sound in creating a certain environment, conducive to certain activities, hopeful of summoning the spirits of victory...it just reminds me of hockey arenas. I'm sorry, but that's just the way my mind works.

*Watson's article is part of The Archaeology of Shamanism, edited by Neil Price.

Some questions the game reveals

In researching Seeking the Center, I listened to a lot of post-game interviews with hockey players. I became interested in the very scripted language that they use to describe what happens in the games - including a whole category of phrases emphasizing their deep engagement - and uneasy relationship - with luck and fate.

When a player is able to score or make a good play, she might say, "I got a good bounce." This might be nothing more than the typical hockey-player modesty. On the other hand, it might be a kind of superstitious acknowledgement of fate's role in her success.  Because above all, we want to stay on fate's good side.

If a player had some chances to score but just fell short of getting that puck into the net, he might shrug it off, rather fatalistically, by saying, "They just weren't going in for me today." Because we wouldn't want to tempt fate to make it even harder for us the next time, would we?

There's also the commonly expressed notion that "we have to make our own luck" - which points to an interesting relationship with that important but elusive commodity. It would seem to be a paradox: Isn't it in the very definition of luck that it's something outside of our control? Hmm.  Making one's own luck seems related to the oft-repeated sentiment, usually shared in the case of a less-skilled, grinder-type player who scores what is, for her, a rare goal: "She works so hard, it's good to see her get rewarded." I.e., she works so hard that fate itself was ultimately forced to yield to her determination. When you really think about it, that's some serious shit!

Fate and luck are central to our concerns as humans. We confront them constantly, but in everyday life the stakes tend to be higher, our roles less certain and causation more difficult to determine. I wonder whether playing a game like hockey allows us to engage with fate in a way that is easier to grasp, that might seem to be less bafflingly random, where the illusion of some measure of control is stronger, and where, therefore, the experience is more gratifying, more ennobling to us lowly, insignificant humans.

Just as hockey is a "game of inches," so is life, in a way, a series of situations in which, if only something had happened slightly differently, at a slightly different time, the outcome would have been vastly different. And it's comforting to think that things will even out over time. For example, remember that goal that Williams scored - the one that was waved off because the puck slipped over the line a split second after the clock hit 0:00? He got it back when Vrana's shot glanced off him and into the net. Right?

Cosmic payback? Making his own luck? Or the law of averages? These are some of the questions the game reveals.

Tuning in to my characters

I often feel that my characters are already there, even before I begin writing. My job is to tune in to them, as if I'm fiddling with a radio dial to get a clear signal. Like a radio,  I become a conduit through which my characters' voices travel from there to here.

Occasionally a scene seems to be just waiting for me to catch it. It coalesces when I first wake up in the morning, or maybe in the middle of the night, and I scramble to comprehend it and scribble it down before it vanishes. Then, as time goes on, I have to figure out where it belongs in the story. Sometimes that's a puzzle.

When I was writing Seeking the Center, one of the last scenes in the story came to me very early on, and I thought I had the ending all figured out. But as I continued writing, I began to realize that I was wrong, and things ended up very differently than I had initially thought they would.

The scene itself remained, though, as it still does in the final version - the core of it almost exactly as I first wrote it down. What no longer made sense for one character, made perfect sense for another. 

I have wondered what happened in the interim. Did my characters purposefully defy my expectations? Was I - perhaps subconsciously - trying to use them to further some hidden agenda of my own, and they rebelled? Or did I just not know them as well as I thought I did?

Maybe it was just a faulty radio.

Jack Falla and "A Death in Montreal"

One of my favorite writers on hockey is Jack Falla, a Massachusetts native who covered the NHL for Sports Illustrated in the 1980s and taught sports journalism at Boston University. Sadly, he passed away in 2008 at the all-too-young age of 64, but I almost feel that I've had the the opportunity to know him through his essay collections Home Ice: Reflections on Backyard Rinks and Frozen Ponds and Open Ice: Reflections and Confessions of a Hockey Lifer.

Falla's short essays make the sport personal. They describe the many ways that hockey enriched, inspired and even, in certain ways, created him as a person.

"A Death in Montreal," the first essay in Open Ice, is a good example of this. Here, the death of hockey great Maurice "Rocket" Richard in 2000 unexpectedly connects Falla to a lost part of his childhood, allowing him to grieve, finally, for his mother, who had died forty-five years earlier, when Falla was eleven years old.

It's a beautifully constructed essay that somehow draws together, in twenty-seven simply but elegantly written pages, many seemingly disparate worlds. There's the world of Falla's childhood in 1950s Massachusetts: "I don't know why I wasn't told the truth [about my mother's ovarian cancer]. Maybe I wasn't supposed to know about ovaries." There's Maurice Richard: "more than a seething and driven scoring machine. He was the fleur-de-lis made flesh, a human flag for the simmering resentments of French Canadians." And then there's Falla's maternal grandmother schooling his Boston-bred, hockey-fan father: "It's Mohr-riss Ri-sharr, Nana said. I know. I'm French."

In the end, Falla's subtle prose links his belated tears of mourning on a Vermont interstate to Nana's exploding bottles of root beer some forty years earlier, illuminating the layered and entwined webs of meaning that our minds create out of elements widely scattered in time, place and context.