Going to Seed: On Losing and Finding Voice in the Age of COVID

By Gayle Brandeis

“Your lungs are quiet,” my doctor said, concern in her voice.

I shivered, her stethoscope cold on my back, my shirt lifted in the parking lot behind our small mountain town hospital, skin exposed to the brisk April air. Her words hit home; it wasn’t just my lungs—my whole inner world had gone quiet of late.

I had been sick for over a month, diagnosed with presumed COVID-19 over the phone by this doctor, and over video by a Telemed doctor on a weekend when I had taken a turn for the worse, but this was the first time a triage nurse had finally cleared me to be seen at the drive up respiratory clinic. I was happy to find my own doctor there (once she told me it was her beneath the face shield and mask and hair covering, and I was able to recognize her familiar eyes). My absence of breath sounds was a sign of pneumonia, she said; she prescribed antibiotics for that and a painful ear infection, sending me on my way with kindness.

The antibiotics helped my ear, but there were still quite a few nights when I feared I would die in my sleep, nights when I'd wake at 3 am gasping for breath, nights when I couldn’t fall asleep at all because lying down exacerbated my breathing difficulties. I felt an urgency to write letters to my family to let them know how much I love and appreciate them, little gifts for them to open after my death, but I found I couldn’t translate my heart onto the page. I found I couldn’t write at all.

Several years ago, I taught a seminar called “One Year to Live,” in which I encouraged writers to use awareness of our mortality as fuel to write our most meaningful and necessary work. We don’t know how much time we have on this earth, I reminded them; let’s make the most of each moment. I was sure I would write like the wind if I knew I was nearing the end of my life, sure I would write like fire, write, as they say in Hamilton, like I was running out of time. I could picture myself in a frenzy to get all the books knocking around inside me out onto the page, writing and writing until my final breath.

This spring, when I truly thought I was dying, the words wouldn't come. I was in a daze—from the brain fog of the illness, from the lack of good sleep, from the new pandemic reality my nervous system was struggling to comprehend. Not only could I not write—I couldn't read, either, at least not in the deep, sustained way I’ve read for as long as I can remember. I could read out loud to my son at bed time, my mind barely comprehending the words that came out of my mouth, I could read and painstakingly respond to student and freelance editing client’s work, the text enlarged on my laptop to help it pierce my thick skull, but the books I wanted to read for my own pleasure or knowledge felt impenetrable. The physical page of text would become a jumble, a blur.

I felt the most alive, the most awake, when I walked my little dog Pepper in the narrow stretch of woods by our house. Pepper seemed to understand I needed to walk slowly, and she took her time sniffing around fallen logs and pine cone scraps left by feasting squirrels so I could catch my breath. I sniffed around in my own way, using my eyes, since I could barely smell, and I started to notice things. I noticed that what I had thought were ruffly, multi-lobed blossoms on the Sierra currant bushes were actually clusters of tiny individual flowers. I noticed the stunning complexity of grasses I had long considered “boring,” amazed at how their tassels were woven like intricate basketwork. I noticed that if you looked at anything closely, it was never boring. My camera helped me look at things all the more intimately, zooming in to see the velvety little hairs at the base of the mountain dandelion, the bits of pink in what had seemed like a dull white buckwheat flower, the elaborate plumed antennae of a common brown moth. I had joked that in quarantine, I felt like I was living in a humanely run zoo, my world confined to the indoor habitat of my house and the outdoor habitat of this little stretch of woods, but when I took the time to discover something new about this habitat every day, I didn’t feel caged at all.

I often tell my students the most important part of being a writer is staying open—keeping our hearts open, our minds open, our senses open, so we can stay open to inspiration, which can strike from unexpected places. I realized this advice doesn’t just apply to writers. It applies to all artists. And, really, it applies to all humans who want to stay awake and aware. I may not have been able to find many words, but my eyes were hungry to take in the world, to find images that begged to be captured. Some of these images offered a clear look at the wonder of things as they were, the plush red alien egg of a snow plant, the intense blue of a Stellar Jay’s feather; others were more metaphorical—trees that looked like dinosaurs; monster mouths inside a pine cone. I also found lessons around me—the way the gentle touch of a reed in the water left deep ripples in the creek, the way a butterfly reminded me to try to embody the pollinator's mix of beauty and purposefulness in my own art. Sometimes I felt moved to bring myself into a picture, my hand or arm or part of my face not central to the shot, just part of the landscape. And some words bubbled up along with this picture-taking, captions for the photos that were sometimes silly and punny, that helped share my own way of seeing, my own weirdidity, to use a word my dad coined to describe one’s inherent weirdness.

Toward the end of his life, my dad told me he wished he had become a photographer because he saw things differently than other people, and he wished he had recorded that; I wish he had recorded that, too—what a gift it would have been to see the world through his eyes. I sometimes feel like I’m channeling him as I walk these woods, phone camera at the ready, like I'm living out this dream for him in my own simple, untrained way. But of course the experience is mostly for me—it’s been keeping me grounded, keeping me going, through my illness and its long recovery. I’m still dealing with lingering symptoms, still don’t feel like I’ve returned to my full physical or intellectual capacities; I’m not sure I ever will. I’m grateful I have this camera; grateful I have these woods, woods once walked by the Washoe people, people I think of often as I step where they have stepped. Even as I say “I have these woods,” I know these woods aren't mine; in fact, they’re owned by the federal government, the very body that stole this land from its rightful caretakers. I want to stay aware of this, want to use my phone’s camera to bear witness to and honor this land and all it holds, including its painful history.

When I had been posting these photos for a while, some friends sweetly suggested I may have a book on my hands, but I found myself resisting that idea. I wanted this new process to be what it was—a meditation, a lifeline. I thought about my mom who came to painting late in life, who, after an intense 40 days of inspired art-making, thought her self-taught work belonged in the Museum of Contemporary Art. She wanted to be the new Grandma Moses. She wasn’t able to allow that transformative, creative whirlwind, a stretch of time during which she felt guided by dead relatives, be enough in itself; she wanted a more external glory. I didn't want to be like that, didn't want to expect anything more than what the process was already giving me. When my insides had hushed, that silence swept any last shred of ambition from my body. I realized that I would be okay, that I would still be me, still be whole, even if I never write or publish another book in my lifetime, something I never could have imagined myself thinking before this strange year. It was—it’s still—a relief to feel creative without caring about the process becoming a product, without worrying about bad reviews, or disappointing sales, or the introvert exhaustion of public events (as much as I do love connecting with readers and the literary community). It was—it’s still—a relief to just play, to know I still can play even when I’m feeling crummy and quiet inside.

I don’t know if I was truly close to death this spring, but it sure felt that way. It felt that way so much, in fact, that some deep part of me seems to think I did die, as if I’m living some bizarro world, second coming of my own life now, or perhaps I’m a ghost still hanging around. I happened upon a photo of Lake Michigan recently on social media, and thought “That’s where my ashes are scattered,” as if I’d already been burned down to dust, been tossed into the beloved waters of my childhood. It took me a couple of moments to realize what a weird thought that had been, to realize that no, that hasn’t happened, not yet. I’ve been noticing lots of scatterings in the woods of late, thistles and salsify and prairie goldenrod going to seed, their colorful blossoms turned to pale puff balls, those puff balls taking to the wind. I’ve been thinking about how the phrase “going to seed” has been used in such a negative way, akin to "letting oneself go”—why is it so bad to go to seed, when that's such an act of generosity and hope, sending the stuff of life out so future generations can flourish? Why is it so bad to let one's self go? Don’t we sometimes hold on to our selves too tightly, not allowing them to change or grow or evolve or show the impact of time? This stretch of pandemic time has impacted me greatly—I can see it in my hair, in my skin, in the tiredness of my eyes. I can feel it in the way words are still tricky to put together, in the way I’m reaching toward image instead. I’m letting my self go and seeing what’s left behind. I’ve snapped a few photos of flowers after all their seeds had taken to the air, and their centers are still there, the integrity of their structures still strong. I've come to appreciate the spare, elegant beauty of what remains after a flower's expected beauty has fallen away, after it’s given all it can to the world.

I don’t think I'm there quite yet, though. I know—at least I hope!—I still have some life kicking around in me, that I still have some time, still have much to give, even from an inner landscape that still feels hushed. I trust the words will continue to trickle and maybe someday flow again, trust I’ll continue to find joy and discovery and inspiration in keeping my senses and mind and heart open for as long as I can muster. I no longer imagine I’d write in a frenzy if I learn I have a year (or less) to live, though. That thought no longer even appeals to me. The world doesn't *need* more of my voice, more of my books, but perhaps it does need me to empower other voices, to create space for voices that have been too often marginalized, to amplify voices that call for justice. As much as writing has meant to me my whole life, as much as it’s helped me bear witness and make sense of the world within and around me (and as much as I trust it will continue to do so), I wouldn't want to spend the bulk of my dwindling days looking down at a piece of paper or ahead at a screen; I’d want to spend more time being in the world, being with the people I love. I want them to know how much I love them even if I’m never able to write those letters for them to open after I’m gone.

I recently took a photo of a salsify plant that had flowers in two different stages of being, one of which had already released all its seeds, its center stripped bare, the other still in a tight green bud, yet to open. I resonated with that salsify, one foot firmly in this world, one on its way out, one part of me spent, another part eager for what’s to come. My walks in the woods remind me about cycles, how lupines burst into brilliant color, then fade, how birds build nests and nestlings hatch and fly off to build their own nests, how bare branches turn to leaf turn to blossom turn to berry, how berry disappears into the mouth of bird or bear, how they drop the seeds elsewhere, how those seeds take root. How we're part of all of it—all this budding, all this flowering; all this generous falling away.

Gayle Brandeis is the author, most recently, of the memoir The Art of Misdiagnosis (Beacon Press) and the novel in poems, Many Restless Concerns (Black Lawrence Press.) Earlier books include the poetry collection The Selfless Bliss of the Body (Finishing Line Press), the craft book Fruitflesh: Seeds of Inspiration for Women Who Write (HarperOne), and the novels The Book of Dead Birds (HarperCollins), which won the Bellwether Prize for Fiction of Social Engagement judged by Barbara Kingsolver, Toni Morrison, and Maxine Hong Kingston; Self Storage (Ballantine); Delta Girls (Ballantine); and My Life with the Lincolns (Henry Holt BYR), which was chosen as a state-wide read in Wisconsin. Her poetry, essays, and short fiction have been widely published in places such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, O (The Oprah Magazine), The Rumpus, Salon, Longreads, and more. Brandeis has received numerous honors, including a Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Award, Notable Essays in Best American Essays 2016 and 2019, the QPB/Story Magazine Short Story Award, and the 2018 Multi Genre Maverick Writer Award. She served as Inlandia Literary Laureate from 2012-2014 and currently teaches at Sierra Nevada University and Antioch University Los Angeles.

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Kathleen KuoOctober 5, 2020CComment