Dear Reader,
How are you? How’s your summer going? I think it has been a month since last writing.
One thing I have noticed when checking out who might be subscribing to, or reading, Errant Daisy is that, like my interests and connections and wanderings through life, it’s a wide range of people. More so if including the ones I catch when posting the newsletter to social media. Like many writers I started thinking about “audience” and how to write to reach this eclectic bunch. Yet, I realize the whole point of starting these letters was to push back at what might please others and just write to write.
What’s helped in shaping the ideas that bubble to the surface, finding a place in my writing journal and then a word doc and eventually to the Substack draft and publication is finding a hook, a theme, a cohesive topic. With this spirit in mind, the next few letters will center around the theme of Wonder. It is three parts right now– taking a look at various ways to define Wonder, using a bit of research, digging back to anecdote and weaving in some present-day adventure. It is bringing me some reprieve and hope in a time of high-stress, angst and uncertainty in our communities, country and world.
A few weeks back I picked up a book that has been out for a year now, but which I see references to repeatedly. It’s called the The Power of Wonder by Monica Parker.
It is a great nonfiction summer read because it encourages reflection. And sometimes, at least here in Middle America amid the heavy humidity and a headful of family scheduling of practices, camps and gatherings, reflections come during driving around town or in a small window of time “waiting for the next thing.” It also seems like a good subject to explore as I catch moments of middle-aged surrender like when Elvis Costello’s Everyday I Write the Book plays overhead while I grocery shop (Sigh. One of the coolest songs on a mixed tape I made for when I ran St. Louis’ Forest Park in the 1990s.)
Parker offers scientific evidence in neuroscience research and other data, along with interviews with people, to tell us how we can find wonder in the everyday world and how keep our curiosity fresh. Logistically it is easier to read than most nonfiction book as the chapters are short and she uses clear language to explain the idea of cultivating wonder.
It reminded me of a podcast I listened to on a walk last year that included the topic of awe. The podcast explored information in the book Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life. Where as wonder is something lighter on the surface, awe is perhaps a deeper, more reverent feeling.
One passage where Power of Wonder hit home was regarding nostalgia.
“Nostalgia and other mixed or dually valanced emotions like existential longing, curiosity, awe and wonder, all contribute to greater resiliency, stemming potentially form the role of the vagus nerve in calming stress and reactive systems.” She goes on to say that nostalgia plus existential longing can make us more prone to seeking out wonder.
During Covid’s lockdown days I started a longer fiction project and have begun revisiting it. Part of the process included free-writing about Midwestern summers. Nobody does summer like Midwesterners. My memories are mostly Midwestern country in variety.
Cold, metallic sips from a sun-baked garden hose
Fiery nostrils and pain-laced drainage down the throat after a somersault in the pool without holding the nose
Sugar-laden sweet tea from solar brewing in a jar on a patio
Dewy grass speckling feet in the morning turned to burning soles tap dancing on afternoon patio stone
Scorching metal door handle or jolt in touching a dark plastic steering wheel after sitting in the sun
Frozen custard for dinner. Frozen custard for breakfast
Shivery entrance when sweat-soaked meets Central Air
Lighting-bug show, cicada chorus, egg-and-cracker-battered okra in an iron skillet
Porch swings, porch drinks
Warm wind through window on rolling asphalt backroads - distant manure mixing with old-car vinyl
Foggy cloud of gravel trailing pickup
Juicy, lopsided garden tomatoes sitting in the window sill, dirt circling its spot
Squishy wetness of the point of a waxy snow cone with only a few drops of syrup left at the bottom - purchased at ballpark concession stand - of course, you get rainbow-flavored
Warbling voice projection as you loudly speak “ahhhh…..” into the blowing box fan, sometimes put into the window as makeshift AC unit
Thank you for reading. I wish you moments, days and weeks of wonder.
And, readers and writers, I am not sure I have posted a shout-out directly here to Jacqui Banaszynski and her commentaries and wisdom that go along with a weekly roundup of storytelling and journalism at Nieman Storyboard newsletter, put please consider this a nudge to sign up.
The newsletters will catch you up on important news topics, narrative writing and her roundup is sprinkled with wisdom, humor and the creative, brilliant writing of someone who, when she isn’t overseas training international journalists, is connecting with storytellers and writers at workshops and remotely from her Seattle home or mountain cabin. I still wonder how lucky I was to be offered the Knight Fellowship at Mizzou years ago to find a humble place learning from Jacqui. No matter where my main source of income is coming from I will always consider myself a writer and journalist, Jacqui is the best in so many ways.
Until the next letter.
Affectionately,
Traci