There’s been a strange visitor to my old beach this week. If you stand by the fence of the sailing club, beside the dock, and look closely at the grey-brown sand, you’ll see them, if you’re lucky: tail extended, yellow eye flashing, legs propelling them faster than seems possible. We stopped by the beach on our way home from the ferry to see if we could catch a glimpse. I thought it wasn’t there, at first, that it was sheltering under the sailboats from the rain. But there, in the corner of my eye, I saw a previously inert log suddenly change shape. There it is, I called, there it is! The sage thrasher!
The sage thrasher lives in the desert. It really doesn’t have any reason to be here right now. Every few years, though, someone will find one around during migration, gone off course en route to their breeding habitat. Standing on the curved sliver of the beach, the tide pulling back gently, revealing the bed of rich green over the rocks — and out in the ocean, the shine of a sea lion’s flipper waving, the dark, sharp shape of a loon, the low sound of voices from the dock where people gathered to collect their crab traps — I felt like I understood why it came here, why it’s stayed. This small, still, grey-brown place was absolutely bursting with life. You could keep staring at the same spot for hours and still not see everything that was alive in it.
This is all a strange way of leading into the topic of my novel, which officially launched this week, and that I am finding hard to talk about. The fact is that I loved writing it, I loved working on it, I feel incredibly lucky and blessed to have had the experience I did with it, and my life and myself were totally changed by its creation; the fact is that I find myself now, when it is finally supposed to be real (like, really real, real in a way that other people will recognize), feeling like it was all some strange dream that I’ve been awoken from. Writing a novel was a constant sense of discovery, a feeling of endless possibility. The book being out means that it’s over. It’s no longer something I’m discovering; it’s something I’m trying to sell. I am good, I think, at staring at the same spot for a very long time, quiet, observing. I am not particularly good at selling.
I realized last year, when I was burnt out and hopeless about writing, that I’ve never lost the sense of shame about writing that I developed as a kid. I believed, and still believe in some deep way, that it’s a selfish, wasteful thing for me to spend my time on, good for nothing but exposing the most hateable parts of my brain to everyone. There are still people in my life I haven’t told that I even wrote a book, let alone that it’s been published. It’s weird to be in a position where I’m now supposed to justify its existence to the reading public, and that, to some extent, my ability to do so will determine whether I can continue to write books. There’s not really a way out of this, which is why I’m writing about it — that’s always been my way out, even when it turns to lead back to the same place.
I came back to the beach a few hours later to see if I could take a look at the thrasher in better light. It was mid-afternoon by then, and there were a lot more people around, including some with telephoto lenses who were obviously fellow thrasher-seekers. The thrasher was nowhere to be seen. It’s well-known to be a skittish bird, and it made sense that it wouldn’t want to be around a crowd. I didn’t feel like leaving, though, even when it was obvious the thrasher wasn’t going to make another appearance. I wandered around to the other side of the sailing club and looked out at the water, now coming in, and at the still, silent sand. It was peaceful, and I was glad I’d come back, even if the thrasher was gone.
And then the sand moved — the quick sprint, the gleaming yellow eye. It took me a second to process. Hey, I called to the camera people. Are you looking for the thrasher? It’s over here.
We stood together, keeping our distance. The sage thrasher, notoriously shy, ran almost right up to us. It stopped, here and there, looking around, grabbing a weird bug in its beak. It knew we were watching. Then it went up and over the boat launch and out of sight.
Thank you for reading, as always. I am so grateful.
Book links:
And here’s me reading at the launch with my wonderful friend Sofia Osborne:
Just got my copy in the mail! I promise not to inundate you with my thoughts on every single detail, but after reading the first two paragraphs I have to say this somewhere: I TAKE MY PILLS THAT WAY TOO!!!! hope you’re well <3
So grateful that you keep writing your way out, even if it leads back around. I hope it does as much good for you as it does for me. Can't wait to read the novel once my copy shows up :)