Foreknowledge
"I don’t believe they happen because I think them, but I’m almost convinced we possess a faculty that knows what’s going to occur..." -John Edgar Wideman
Hello, dear writing buddies,
Today we will write. 500 words, three lines, a scene: whatever it takes to get us to the page.
There are three more weeks of classes here in the spring semester, always one of the busiest times, but I woke very early and tapped a little on the book-in-progress, and I’ll go back to it for twenty minutes after I send this to you.
It’s mostly all good busy stuff around here (and terrible stuff farther from here): MFA students hearing affirming news about PhD programs in Creative Writing, writers popping by to talk about their thesis projects, lively discussions about newly published books (Open Throat seems to be the most universally loved book I’ve assigned in a while) and chatting about stories and essays by students. And at home: soccer and more soccer and basketball and the Girls on the Run program and Wheel-a-thons. Everyone is having a fundraiser for something, which is how I found myself helping my daughter make a video by jogging down the street in a blow-up unicorn costume.
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No good pivot here (basketball joke), except to say I want to discuss something I read last week in Hoop Roots by John Edgar Wideman that is still stirring me. I was reading this book as I considered what literary essays about basketball have been written by women. That search resulted in nothing. (Recs welcome!) I broadened my search to basketball essays by anyone.
I came to Wideman for the basketball stories, but I found with delight a discussion of premonitions, which is the kind of movement I’d hope an essay would take: seemingly about one thing, but also about something beneath. Wideman theorizes that many of us know things before they happen. We get insights, premonitions, or feelings that foretell or hint at what is to come.
Wideman writes:
Sometimes I think about my life, and the things I think happen. I don’t believe they happen because I think them, but I’m almost convinced we possess a faculty that knows what’s going to occur, not just in a general sense but sometimes with the scary specificity of how, where, when, and what will shape us. The possibility of learning too much about the endgame, the certainty of uncontrollable change, of death, stops most people from cultivating such a faculty. Dreams, visions, deja vu, premonitions, prophecy bypass the wall of fear and denial, remind us what we know.
The full page this paragraph occurs on:
Foreknowledge
This paragraph embedded in an essay about basketball gave me a thrilling pause. Have you experienced this kind of foreknowledge, too? Although Wideman describes it as a capacity within the self, for me, it has also existed as a gift of foreknowledge from elsewhere. The night before my daughter was born, unbreathing, almost exactly eleven years ago, I began reading the opening of Lidia Yuvnavitch’s The Chronology of Water. The book was on my reading list for comprehensive exams and was recommended months before by someone for the lyric essay qualities. I was just getting to it. The book opens in the aftermath of Yuknavitch’s child being stillborn. I read it before bed. Set down the book. Summarized the opening for my partner and asked, “Could you imagine?”
Neither of us, we agreed, could imagine it. We never had known it was possible. The next day, we were those parents. A small preparation had been given from somewhere, which perhaps softened nothing, but did leave me with an eerie and consoling feeling.
This week, I asked writers in my class if they had an experience as Wideman describes. Almost everyone did. Have you?
A Writing Invitation
For this week’s writing practice, you might try to write about the time you had a sense of something before it occurred or a way that you were given a warning beforehand.
I wonder how—if we exercise this muscle, or stay open to this source, depending on how you see it—these premonitions, deja vu, or foreknowledge, whatever you call it, might be a source of strength and might be a part of our stories, essays, and poems.
When we discussed this in the grad workshop, I heard such stunning examples not about death, despite my examples. One woman had an image of her adopted daughter ten years before she adopted her. As a young person, when she was adopted, she did not look like the form of the dream but grew into that appearance as an adult. We heard about a person who placed belief in a day when love would materialize, and then it did materialize on that day. Spooky, but in a good way? Has anything like this ever happened to you? Today, I invite you to write about it.
For You
Sending so much love to you today and throughout the week and week to come, for your writing practice and for yourself.
love love love,
TS