Small Stones

Underwater stones, Lake Champlain, Vermont

Today it's my pleasure to welcome Fiona Robyn, who is traveling the internet in July on a virtual blog tour for her new book, Small Stones: A Year of Moments. I've come to know Fiona and enjoy her writing both through her daily blog and at qarrtsiluni, where she has been a frequently-published contributor and a guest editor (of the Jan/Feb 2007 issue "Come Outside.")

I'm delighted to have this chance to share our recent conversation with you, and perhaps introduce some new readers to Fiona's precious, often surprising "small stones."

---

Fiona, I've really enjoyed your book. Your practice of attentiveness and writing about at least one particular, memorable thing in your day has, of course, a lot of resonance here at The Cassandra Pages! To begin, I wondered if you could say a few words about your dedication to Shunryu Suzuki, because his teaching was also very important to me.

Thank you. A friend recommended 'Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind' a few years ago when I told them I was getting interested in Zen thought, and I don't know about you, Beth, but I didn't understand much of it on my first read through!  Something about the spirit of the writing stuck with me, though, and several years later I read it again and went on to read his autobiography, 'Crooked Cucumber', which somehow moved me profoundly. I love the simplicity of Suzuki's message - 'just sit', 'nothing extra', 'when the bell rings, get up', but most of all I felt like I'd 'spent time with him' by the end of the book, and that it had been a great honour and learning opportunity.  What do you get from his writing?

My experience was almost the same - on the first reading I just didn't connect with the book, but about ten years later, it was a totally different experience, and each time I've  picked it up since, I've gotten more out of it. "When the student is ready, the teacher appears." I think what appealed to me especially was the gentleness of his teaching and writing. He's firm but kind, and the sort of perseverance and attention he speaks about made sense to me and have helped and changed me over time. But his prose also touched me deeply and particular passages, like the one about why we should polish the tile, or clever students having the most trouble, or Nirvana and the waterfall, made a huge difference to me. I'm profoundly grateful to him.

One thing I noticed and liked in particular about your "small stones" is that they're not all pleasant or beautiful. Could you say something about that, in light of what we've been talking about here?

I think praise as a practice is much neglected, and I much admire the work of bloggers like Clare Grant at Three Beautiful Things who help us to remember how much we have to be thankful for.  But as a writer I am interested in the whole truth, 'things as it is (sic)' as Suzuki might say!  Rather than looking away from road-kill or homeless people, I've found it more helpful to look more closely.  These things are a part of our everyday reality.  We all contain these dark places, and only we can start to acknowledge them, struggle with them, start bringing them out into the daylight.  I think Pema Chodron speaks well about these messy parts of us.  It's also an ongoing dilemma for me as a writer - will people keep reading if I describe the innards of this dead animal?  How much darkness (how much of my darkness) can people take?  I wonder if this is something that ever crosses your mind, Beth, when you are writing about your father-in-law?

Oh, definitely. And blogs are different from books, they aren't one-off; people visit a place regularly because they like what they find there. I know some readers come to the Cassandra Pages because they receive a feeling of solace and calm, and I worry sometimes about scaring them off!  But I'm totally with you, Fiona, in being more interested in truth than beauty, in its usual sense. We can learn to find the beauty in everything, even decay and death, even struggle and suffering. For a long time I thought the Buddhist idea about duality was that we couldn't see one side of the coin clearly unless we also saw the other: "for the moon there is the cloud," -- so suffering exists to make us appreciate non-suffering. But I've come to see that's not really it: the point is to face and even welcome difficulty, ugliness, pain because they have a great deal to teach us, and avoidance doesn't work: misfortune comes to all of us eventually so we're better off to learn how to deal with it. I like it that your small stones acknowledge reality. It made your book much more meaningful -- and beautiful -- to me!

On the other hand, I thought some of the most lyrical moments in the book came in your writings about the moon:

"the moon is so transparent you could slip a thumb-nail under the edge and peel it from the sky"

or

"(eclipse) the pale moon turns illm slips under a sheet of shadow"

or

"the translucent moon pinned on egg-shell blue, above the pink and billowing skirts of sky."

Like the Chinese poets, you've managed to come up with creative, original ways to speak about the most ordinary things we see everyday, things which are easy to ignore or often get written about it a hackneyed way. But they're still beautiful; they've spoken to human beings forever. It's a challenge, isn't it?

Thank you.  And yes - it is a challenge - and that reminds me of the process of editing the book.  I had three years worth of 'stones' to choose from, and a lot of them just didn't do it for me on re-reading.  It's as if I hadn't quite managed to translate the feeling of 'ooh!' or 'look at that!' into words.  Or maybe it was a combination of a failure of SEEING freshly enough with not being able to find the right fresh words.  I'm thinking of Suzuki again as I use the word 'fresh'...

"Even though you read much Zen literature, you must read each sentence with a fresh mind."

Even thought we often see the moon, you must look at the moon each time with a fresh mind!  Or try to, at least...  I'm glad the suffering made the book more meaningful to you, Beth - it feels heartening to me - that at least you are willing to hear about the poor fox on the roadside, or the troubled boy in the coffee shop.  I suppose, going back to Zen again, we also contain the fox and the boy, and so it is also as if you are able to hear about those dark places in me.  Having said that, light and fluffy is also good sometimes!

That's so true! And I want to stress that this isn't a "dark" book at all; I get the sense that you're a lot like me in trying to see the beauty in everyday life, and that as we practice this kind of noticing, it starts to color our whole life - and become something that we want to share with other people.
Fiona, I'm so glad we had this chance to talk, and I hope some of the readers of this blog will order your book and enjoy it themselves or give it as a gift. I feel so strongly about the merits of independent publishing that I've made a personal commitment to buy most of my book-gifts this way, and to try to support the many writer-friends I've found online.

I also want to tell you that I admire the calm, determined, professional way you're promoting Small Stones -- you're an example to all of us who are exploring this new world of publishing. Congratulations, and I wish you the best of luck with it!

That's very kind, Beth - it's been so heartening to receive support from my colleagues, especially blogging colleagues.  And I agree - I've gained such a lot over the years from 'pay-more-attention' practice that I'd love to spread the word!  It's been a pleasure to have this 'conversation' with you - not quite as good as coffee and cake in a local cafe but it'll have to do for now.  I'd be very happy to hear from any of your readers who have any comments/questions, and thank you for having me.

Comments

[marja-leena]

What a thoughtful and rich conversation between two writers, connected by this wonderful medium of blogging. Thanks for this, Beth.

[Dave]

Good conversation, and a terrific way to promote a book! Thanks to both of you.

[fiona robyn]

Glad you enjoyed it, Marja-Leena. And you're next Dave!

[Jean]

Just reading your conversation made me feel more calm and spacious on a frantic, frazzled day, and I know that reading Fiona's book will do the same. No time to get it before my holiday now, but I'll be buying a copy when I get back.

[ruth]

lovely dear beth,

your interview made me laugh because just tonight i went to a street party where we used to live and there he was: THE ENEMY; the guy who put nails in our tyres, dogshit on our doorstep, the lot. (hated me playing bach) so there he was, triumphant in his role of directing the traffic away from the street party. A man who crept out in the middle of the night to paint out the parking lines in front of his house abd kept passionate and angry vigil outside his man-made space....anyway what i saw tonight was a bit of me, an ugly bit of me that, if i didn't control it, would become him, and finally i felt empathy. how long did it take? six years and a good few kilometres!

[Lucy]

Great, and for one reason and another very much what I needed now. I've been meaning to check Fiona and her Small Stones out for a while, and now I will. Thank you.

[fiona robyn]

Hi Lucy - I was just looking at all the familiar names on your blogroll - it seems like a small world in blogland sometimes! And Ruth - great story - it can be overwhelmingly tempting to put ugliness like that 'out there' rather than acknowledging the potential corresponding parts of ourselves...