Unimaginable Sorrows

I write about everything.

My friend Jordan Green commented that writing about “everything” isn’t always good for marketing purposes, but good for frames of mind. I appreciate Jordan, he strikes me as a clear eyes, full heart kinda guy. He’s a strong writer, we both used to contribute to a special place called Burnside about a hundred years ago. You can find Jordan’s current work at The Green Room. He knows a thing or two about marketing purposes. He also knows a thing or two about unimaginable sorrows.

You see Jordan’s wife, Mindy, died a little over eight years ago (if my math’s correct). I never met Mindy in person, but I did know her though Jordan’s posting about her and from that I would say she was beautiful. I cannot imagine losing a wife that young, that early in your lives together. Unimaginable sorrow. I don’t know how he’s soldiered on. But he has. It’s what we do, we get along.

You know who else writes about “everything”? Annie Dillard, that’s who. I betcha when it comes to marketing, Annie Dillard is a freakin’ nightmare. I’m convinced most people don’t even know who Annie Dillard is, and the ones of us that do aren’t always 100% certain what she’s talking about. I’ve always felt Annie is best described by the Scots term fey—clairvoyant, wild-eyed, with a direct channel to the supernatural, to everything really. I absolutely adore her.

I posted a quote by Annie Dillard the other day, and my friend Heather Kopp commented that she was re-reading Dillard’s Holy the Firm. Trust me when I say—lotta bang for a little book. I’ve only met Heather once. She and her husband, Dave, and I shared breakfast together at the Hungry Bear in Woodland Park, Colorado years ago. I worked for Dave at the time. I’m convinced I disappointed Dave a lot, mainly because he could sense I was more writer than editor but editing was what I was being paid to do but that didn’t stop me from half-assing things because I was always mooning about writing. Anyway, I like Heather. She’s a top-drawer writer as evidenced by her memoir Sober Mercies. She knows a thing or two about marketing purposes. But she also knows about unimaginable sorrows.

Back in 2015, Heather lost her adult son Noah. Losing a child is a sorrow like no other, but Noah was gunned down by police after he’d gone off his meds and his world unraveled into manic psychosis. Before the police intervened, Noah fatally shot three innocent people in Colorado Springs. Unimaginable sorrows. How do you go on after that? I don’t know. I truly don’t. But she has. It’s what we do, we get along.

I could keep writing, naming names in an almost Hebrews 11 fashion but instead of a roll call of faith it would be a roll call of sorrow, which at the end of the day might just be the same thing. Or if not the same, pretty damn close.

This is the Annie Dillard quote I shared the other day, found in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wandering awed about on a splintered wreck I’ve come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty beats and shines not in its imperfections but over-whelmingly in spite of them, under the wind-rent clouds, upstream and down.

Is this the kind of post a marketer would say is good to kick-off your Substack? Capital N, capital O. But maybe its good for a frame of mind necessary to get along in this world of unimaginable sorrows, a world Jordan and Heather and Annie and I, and many others, have come to care for.