Table of Contents
To my husband
The maps no good without the territory. We always said we wanted adventure.... I love you.
To my father,
John Chester Munson (1918-2004)
Heres your blue Duesenberg. Though I dont suppose you need a car wherever you are, namely in my heart. Thank you for believing in me.
Ive decided to make up my mind about nothing, to assume the water mask, to finish my life disguised as a creek, an eddy, joining at night the full, sweet flow, to absorb the sky, to swallow the heat and cold, the moon and the stars, to swallow myself in ceaseless flow.
Jim Harrison, Cabin Poem
Are You There, Clarence? Its Me, George Baileys Wife
5:00 a.m. Summer. Montana.
At this moment in my life, I am strangely serene. In fact, I may have never felt more calm. Or more freed. Or more certain that these things owe themselves to a simple choice: to accept life as it is. Even and especially when it really fucking sucks. Even and especially if my husband left last night to go to the dump after announcing that he isnt sure he loves me anymore... and nine hours later, still hasnt come back.
You might think all this would find me in a place of intense pain. Panic, even. State of emergency. But Im choosing something else. I am choosing not to suffer.
How is this possible? you might ask.
Let me introduce you to my bedside table (see page 338), which at present holds a perversely vertical half-cracked and sometimes devoured stack of books telling me all about it: inner peace, harmony, love, non-suffering, freedom... from the Buddha to Jesus to the Sufis to the Christian mystics to Dr. Seuss and beyond. (Ive always been a seeker of wisdom. Im not picky where it comes from.) And they all hint at, or even proclaim, this simple truth: the end of suffering happens with the end of wanting. The end of wanting.
Ive read this hundreds of times, in different word arrangements, ever since I had my first metaphysical thought a long time ago. But up until just this blink of a moment (thats how it happens, finallyin a blink), I have bashed myself bloody. Because with all this arsenal of wisdom, I have never been able to understand how not to want.
How, for instance, am I not to want my husband to walk through the door and tell me some drop-dead beautiful story about how he sat all night at the dump and was spoken to by heavenly hosts and sung to by an angelic choir and experienced an epiphany that resulted in him realizing what Ive just learned? That we both have been psychically touched by the same odd angel who has let us into the secrets of the universe:
Suffering sucks. Dont do it. Go home and love your wife. Go home and love yourself. Go home and base your happiness on one thing and one thing only: freedom. Choose freedom, not suffering. Create a life of freedom, not wanting. Have some really good coffee and listen to the red-winged blackbirds in the marsh. Ignore the mosquitoes.
But my husband doesnt come home. He doesnt call. He doesnt answer his cell phone. And I get to practice this ridiculous bliss.
Probably the wisest words that were ever uttered to me came from a therapist. I was sitting in her office, crying my eyes out over my then unsuccessful writing career and my husbands challenges at work, and she said, So let me get this straight. You base your personal happiness on things entirely outside of your control.
Yeah. I guess. If you put it that way, I agreed. Im not writing novels not to see them published. Fourteen of them to be exactspanning over half my life! Im not raising kidstwo of thema girl, twelve, and a boy, eightpouring my entire heart into every fiber of their beings not to make sure theyre healthy and happy and have the right size shoes and find a life that they love. Im not marriedto the same man, whom Ive adored since my senior year in collegeto live in loneliness. And I cant control any of those results. But I want them to be good ones. Id be lying if I told you I didnt believe those positive results would make me happy.
Thats insanity, she said. Just so you know.
Fine. It might be insanity. But its human nature to want. I cant deny myself my human nature. Its impossible.
Really, she said, and she did that lift-of-the-eyebrow thing she does.
I know to pay attention when she does that. That theres more coming and its gonna be good.
Theres a big difference between wanting and creating, she said. Do you want to stop feeling anxious and depressed and scared and angry?
Of course. Thats why Im here in this office. But Im not allowed to want, remember?
Fair enough. Do you believe you can create a life in which you are happy?
Absolutely. But doesnt it take two to tango?
Does it? she said, her eyebrow raising. Then she saw my pain and filled it in for me. I love her for this quality. Its when you stop wanting things outside of your control that youll be happy.
Easy for her to say. Sitting there on her mauve couch with her manicure and her neat scarf and her presumably more-miserable-than-she clientele.
How can a person not want? You are bornyou want to live. You get marriedyou want to build a life with your spouse. You have kidsyou want them to live even though it seems at first like theyre doing their best to try to off themselvesand later, you want them to be happy, and you want them to live even longerlong enough to provide you grandchildren. And you want them to live, too. In fact, you worry about them not living before theyre even born. Because what would that do to your child, outliving their child? You want everybody to live, and you want to live until you are one hundred, still driving, mind intact, cheekbones and legs still not too bad, and then you want to die in your sleep. You want to be Katharine Hepburn. And in the meantime, you want a calling. You want to work hard at that callingyou want talent and you want success. How is it possible to live in this human body in this human world and not want?
Easy, too, for my fabulously famous, spiritually evolved novelist friend to say when I asked him in a letter: How do you spend your life writing without wanting to be published?
He responded with a phone call; thats when I know its important news and that I should widen my third eye. The only difference between being published and not being published, he said, is being published.
Fine, Mr. I-hang-out-with-modern-day-prophet-sorts-and-get-scads-of-adoring-fan-mail-and-speak-at-sold-out-venues. Im not sitting on my ass all day in a dark room, year after year, page after page, spilling my guts, martyring myself, my abs, my glutes, to the gruesome art of channeling the human condition for a whole lot of nothin! Not wanting a direct line from this dark office to the bedside tables of people everywhere. Well, excuse my lack of spiritual enlightenment, but to me thats one thing: a colossal cop-out.
Or so I thought, until just this moment in my life.
Back to the novelist friend.
I retorted with, The thing is, Im good! Ive been working at this craft for years and years, and I can honestly say with confidence... that Im good! And its not just me. Editors at major publishing houses love my work. My agents never seen such positive rejection letters. But I dont have a platform, they call it. Im a no-name from Montana.
