Small Things and Simple Stories

"We are indeed quite bad."

- principal bassoonist Alexander McCall Smith, referring to the Really Terrible Orchestra

"...live life in the pursuit of joy."

- author Martha Beck, Expecting Adam

I've had an enriching couple of weeks because of simple stories and books about small things. Not life-changing, perhaps, but they made me feel happy and hopeful. By contrast, while Big Writing allows for the expression of Big Thoughts, it can also cause me to feel a little antagonistic. When an author promises to be More-Sensitive-And-Insightful-And-Quirkier-Than-Thou, I find myself almost, unreasonably, wanting to challenge them to a battle of word wits.

For example, I just started reading a best-selling memoir that is enjoying major buzz. (I would name the book, but if you are planning to read it, I don't want to harsh your mellow.) The back of the dust jacket spins that it's a "wonderful book", "rich in spiritual insight" and "filled with sorrow." My time spent lost in its pages promises to be a "pilgrimage" suffused with "humor, insight and charm." That's some hyperbolic zazz and I'm suspicious that the author may be trying to seduce me with style instead of substance.

I'm not very far into the book, so I may have to eat my words when I reach the end and discover that it has changed my life. But my initial response is, "You're kidding, right?"

I have already learned that the author has just suffered through a lengthy, painful divorce which she chased with a complicated, painful romance. This wretched state of affairs caused her to embark on the sort of "adventures that can transpire when a woman stops trying to live in imitation of society's ideals."

In these particular times, I may find it difficult to work up too much sympathy for a woman who just couldn't bear one more minute of living in either her beautiful country home, or her New York City pied-á-terre with her successful husband. Following, there is all the heartbreak with the intriguing, handsome actor/lover leaving her hardly a moment to focus on her blossoming writing career. The author, then, takes a courageous leap of faith and runs away to Italy where she is lonely and depressed. Ah, yes. Life can be cruel.

I may be prematurely critical, but struggling through divorce, crushing depression, panic, grief and confusion is just another day on the planet for a lot of people. For many of us, having ONLY divorce, depression, panic, grief and confusion to contend with would constitute a really GOOD day. But I appreciate that when life is handing you only pure contentment, you aren't as motivated to exhaust yourself looking for profound meaning. The author can hardly start an inspirational memoir by saying, "Things were really going well. I was very, very happy. So, I decided to trash the whole damn thing and go look for something else."

I mean, a writer has to build up a little anguish and some dark nights of the soul for her readers if she's going to get any legitimacy for her struggle. This author is a good descriptive writer and I'm willing to trot along on her journey of self-discovery for the entertainment value. Nevertheless, so far, I'm not persuaded that her stated goal "to somehow build a life of equilibrium between worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence" is going to be a revelation to me. I'm just that cynical.

As my author friend, Herb, pointed out to me, writers are situational junkies. We (if I may be so bold as to include myself for only this paragraph) are obsessed with juicing a narrative out of the most trivial of events and observations. No emotion, no matter how commonplace, must go unmassaged or unexpressed. Nothing delights us more than to provide a moving chronicle of our experiences so that we might share with others what we found as we clawed our way back to the light.

I suppose this impulse arises out of some ego-driven belief that the entire span of human history has been waiting, trembling, even, for one philosopher/writer/teacher/guru/therapist to come forward and divulge the Answer. Then we can finally have a collective "aha" moment and never have to ask any questions again. Many inspirational writers are a bit smug in this and produce book after book, year after year, in case you missed the essential wisdom in their first dozen books and require an annual refresher. And this is what I don't like about Big Writing.

So, given that orientation, when simple stories come around and move me by their uncontrived sweetness, their ability to make me reflect on the enduring value of small things without making a huge production out of it, I rejoice. Which brings me back to my last couple of weeks.

Two of my closest friends gave me wonderful gifts. One provided tickets to hear Alexander McCall Smith (author of the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency, and the 44 Scotland Street series, among others) speak. The other friend gave me a good book.

The McCall Smith event was held in a classic restored downtown theatre - it's looking a bit shabby twenty or so years after its last renovation, but it's a good place. The sort of theatre that still has ushers bearing torches, real plush velvet seats and gilded opera boxes. There are no cup holders. There are no cups.

Before I attended the presentation, I prayed that McCall Smith would wear a kilt. I have a weakness for men in kilts and if I am ever in a position of absolute power, I will decree that all men must wear kilts at all times except for the brief moment when they are putting one kilt in the wash and changing into another kilt. My prayers were answered.

After a brief introduction, McCall Smith stepped on stage, empty but for a podium, and began to tell stories. Beyond pleasing me with his kilt, McCall Smith exuded so much kindness and decency that I felt like I was in the presence of an enlightened spiritual master. Nothing remarkable happened, really. No light show or red carpet or equipment. No limos or idol worship or spontaneous healings. He just talked about "the very small things in life" in a way that made me grateful for all the small things I have in my own life.

He told small stories about Botswana, his life in Edinburgh and his travels across the world. Wonderful stories about playing only part of the bassoon (he leaves out the challenging bits) in the Really Terrible Orchestra, whose members are called "the cream of Edinburgh's musically disadvantaged."

McCall Smith and his friends started the R.T.O. so that they would have musical companions with whom to play badly, and he suggested that every community form such an orchestra. He said that the only real requirement for its success was to engage a professional conductor. McCall Smith said that conductors are often people who need to perform some sort of community service as part of their restitution, so it shouldn't be too hard to pick one up for cheap.

The Really Terrible Orchestra has been booking many engagements as of late. This has led to persistent practice achieved through repeated performances alone. McCall Smith feared that if this trend continued, the orchestra might become less bad than it used to be, which would be a terrible disappointment for the audience.

McCall Smith has the gift of telling a simple story and letting its essence shine through until you forget there is a storyteller at all. His readers become so invested in his characters that they often try to emulate aspects of their fictional lives. He recounted attending a reception in his honor in Santa Barbara when he was approached by, as he put it, two female "Santa Barbarians." They were very complimentary and told McCall Smith that reading his books had changed their lives.

McCall Smith was pleased, thinking perhaps that they had traveled to Botswana or gained some sort of meaningful philosophical insight from reading his books. But, no. Taking their cue from Smith's character Precious Ramotswe - who travels far and wide down dusty African roads in her temperamental little white van - the women had each gone out and bought little white vans for themselves to tear up the highways and byways of coastal California.

What I found so touching about McCall Smith's talk was his advocating for simplicity. He said his stories weren't about grand things, because he believed that what gave comfort and meaning in people's lives was the reassurance of the simple things - our families, and our communities; the store where we buy our groceries and the café where we stop for coffee. While we are often seduced by glitter and status, it's the small story, the first yellow daffodil, the dog that falls off the boat and miraculously manages to paddle to shore, the line of poetry that leaves us momentarily grateful and breathless to be alive at all.

My next present was Martha Beck's memoir Expecting Adam, a book that redefines the phrase "going through a rough patch." Beck recounts her journey as a Harvard graduate student and mother of a two-year-old who is facing a surprise pregnancy. Her young husband is under intense pressure to finish his dissertation at the Harvard Business School, while commuting between Boston and Singapore for work and research.

At the time, Beck had an undiagnosed autoimmune disorder that had made her first pregnancy an epic nightmare of violent nausea when her body, apparently, was determined to expel the baby intruder from her body. This condition is amplified during Beck's second pregnancy and if the stress from academia, teaching, caring for a toddler and illness isn't enough, the parents learn that the son Beck is carrying has Down syndrome.

It's hard to explain how Beck turns this into a delightful and even humorous story of what is surely one of the most painful events anyone can imagine. Finally, she reaches a point of such intense emotional and physical suffering that she just stops trying to make sense of a life that has gone completely out of her control. As an academic, she had long left the religion of her childhood and embraced a world view that requires external proof. When her reality starts shifting decidedly to the supernatural she begins to regard her growing baby as a sort of mystical portal to another way of experiencing life...she comes to take the reverse view...that everything is true until proven false.

This is not to say that Beck romanticizes the harsh reality of what it means to bring a severely disabled child into a world that worships competition and achievement.

Beck is rebuffed by her colleagues and receives no support from her doctor for her decision to continue the pregnancy. Her friends and family mean well and offer some encouragement, but are limited by their own prejudices. Nor can she, even, rationalize her feelings to herself or her husband. The odds are so heavily stacked against the baby's chances for happiness or even survival that she can't even tell herself, with certainty, that her choice is a compassionate one. Beck is reduced to the most primal of states - that of sustaining life. Both her own and her baby's.

But over and over, Beck is guided by some Being outside of her normal awareness. Despite the exhaustion, the fear and the censure from just about everyone with whom she comes into contact, Adam is moving her beyond her known limitations. Anyone who has ever struggled with a painful decision knows there is some dark transitional moment when we find ourselves in a free fall. If we're wise enough to pay attention and not give in to defeat, it's also a moment when we're most open to revelation.

As Adam grows, he displays his own unique genius - not the sort that would get him a scholarship through Harvard, but the kind that coaxes his hitherto driven family into a new way of seeing and being that makes their lives far more conscious than they could have achieved as merely successful rats in the race. Adam taught his mother to "live life in the pursuit of joy", not because he's capable of grand things, but because he's the master of small things.

I'll keep reading the best seller written by the woman with transcendent aspirations. I know better than to discount anyone's story as holding no meaning for me until I reach the very end. That book was also a gift given by a very insightful friend, and she must have had some reason to think there was a message in there for me, too.

But, still, I like the small things and the simple stories the best.

NOTE: If you are an admirer of Alexander McCall Smith, he is writing a newspaper series called "Corduroy Mansions" that is being published in the London Telegraph. The story is available both on-line and in audio at www.telegraph.co.uk.

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Ingrid lives on San Juan Island.

While Ingrid is spiritually promiscuous, she credits her guru, Jimmy Buffet, for her mantra..."If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane." Besides a passion for Tiki Studies, Ingrid is borderline biblio-obsessive. She is an old-school Libran - i.e., she won't be leading the Revolution, but she'll work to make it an attractive affair and hire the musicians and caterers."

Her column appears every other Thursday in San Juan Islander. To contact Ingrid, send emails to ingrid@sanjuanislander.com

editor@sanjuanislander.com

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