#7 ARCHITECTURE OF THE INVISIBLE

ARCHITECTURE OF THE INVISIBLE

By Mary Rakow, Ph.D. 

For some years I dated an extraordinary individual, a world-ranked mathematician whose entire life has been, since early childhood, consumed with the pursuit of the invisible.  His field is logic, the least applied field in mathematics.  But to him and the elite group of colleagues at his level in this field, this invisible world is the most real of all.

            Together, they abide in an architecture which they inherited, they add to, with great and sustained effort, and they maintain.  The architecture which they build itself, is also invisible.  They gather.  They listen deeply to the progress of each other, they sit and think, they offer a question, they take the pointing out of a weakness as necessary to reaching the truth they hunger for, and so see this as a collaboration. They disperse, go back to their families, lovers, teaching.  They meet again.  Like brothers and sisters around a table whose work is very known to the others.

            Unlike other partners and spouses, I wanted to attend and was welcomed by them. It was fantastic. I didn’t understand any of it. That didn’t matter.  What I loved was witnessing their bond in a world that would be forever invisible, while also, to each person, compellingly real. Totally real and objective and known, yet totally invisible, forever.  I think watching them partly led me back to my faith practice, weird as that may sound.  The combination of real and invisible. Their shared devotion to the particular location of that combination.  It was stunning. Often I felt I was listening to Archimedes. Like Ancient Greece was alive here and now.

            As writers the quicker we know the invisible that most deeply draws us, the sooner we will begin to produce real literary art.  We will sense to not go down certain conventional alleys.  We will stick on the beam of our own devotion to that invisible which we perceive and have, perhaps, our entire life.

            Short story, memoir, fantasy, self-help, we have to detect the pull of the larger thing.

            My friend noticed, when in his stroller, the numbers tagging items on the lowest shelf in a grocery store.  That was his first sense of exhilaration.  No words for it. When his brother brought home his high school calculus book, the family knew my friend was different because he understood it with no help. He was in elementary school. An architecture was evolving, being fashioned, and without terms for it, and he knew this profoundly.

            As an editor I’m particularly listening for the invisible toward which this certain writer whose pages are before me, is moving, seems to be moving. If I can locate that, the rest falls into place, is discarded or something new springs up.  I’m looking at every word choice, every paragraph break, those line edits and developmental things, but this other is the most valuable thing I do. Because as writers when we see this invisible and name it we find our liberty.  About 90% of my clients don’t know. Nor did  when I started each writing project.  It’s mostly an unconscious process.  But the invisible is behind all of it.  The trick is locating it. When we do, we find our road to the work that we will feel proud 20 years later, whether it’s a short story or a three-volume novel.

            We aren’t all geniuses. But we notice, then we start to build. We start where we are. In a stroller or a housewife and mother of three teenagers.  It doesn’t matter.  It is inside our own distinct wrestling with that larger invisible that our noble work will come. Our serious work.  Our profound work.  Our joyful work.

            For some of us, the architecture we build may be different for each writing project. That has been my history as a writer and as a person. E.g., the Invisible I’m now pursuing has changed.

            With my first book when I got up nerve to enroll in Jack Grapes’ poetry workshop, when I heard a poem by another poet and had the nerve to attend her workshop at UCLA, when I had to write an essay for admission into her private workshop, when I hoped her $1,000 entry fee plus ongoing fee would work with our family budget, when I stopped gardening and dedicated four hours a day to writing, when I told our kids not to speak to me until 1 pm each day, not even eye contact, when I applied to Skidmore and was able to study with Marilynn Robinson, and Frank Bidart, on and on, I was building an architecture to serve one.

            And I knew with desperation and clarity what that one thing was. I just wanted to put outside myself, so that I could see it with my eyes and hear it with my ears the painful but healing story I carried inside that was nowhere in the world for me to see. My constant metric, in building the architecture for that project, , balancing kids, money, time, etc., was congruence. I only wanted a flawless congruence between what was inside me and what would be outside.  I wanted to be faithful to that experience.  My Invisible was Fidelity.

            Our Invisible changes. So we have to stay alert to that in ourselves.

            In my second book, I was working out my argument with an Invisible I also deeply loved.

            Now the Invisible for me has changed again.  It’s not, for now, even a writing project; but it’s this eremitic form of life.  The first time I shared this shift to a new invisible is briefly recorded here.

            https://www.maryrakow.com/videos/

            “The Noah Chapter” at 1:06:00

            There is always the invisible. We have to get used to that four-syllable world.  We have to not be afraid that “invisible” is some creepy, superstitious word owned by religious fanatics.  It’s the opposite. It’s so familiar, we don’t even speak of it. We turn on a light switch and don’t see the invisible motion that causes the bulb to go on. With tools we can see neurological activity in the brain, but we don’t see thought itself.  We can’t even see the stars in daytime.

            So there’s a spectrum: the invisible, the soon to be visible, the things visible with tools, etc. And all of it changing.  AI now, etc.

            But as writers we have to have the courage to enter the invisible more deeply.  That invisible part of our nature and experience.  We don’t see time. We don’t see love.  We don’t see justice.  We see the effects of these things and have created the language. We write about the effects of these things.  Of memories being healed.  Of an endangered species being restored.  And when we name the Invisible behind the effect, we have our compass. And we have courage to break convention.

            Here are two videos I like. Useful because each shows an individual thinking very much outside the box.  Each listening very deeply to the invisible to which they want to devote their lives. And we see the two different processes close up. We don’t need to go to the Alps or to Wales.  Or to live as a solitary.  But we can get inspired by this visible architecture devoted to the invisible.  We can stretch our imagination, bolster our courage.  Enjoy!

            To live off the grid in the Alps, building many micro-climates.  Elegant and religious.   24 min.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=MF1jJy1F-8I

            To live close to nature in the Welsh Woods.  Granular and secular 17 mins.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-7O-fIYSsY

                                                Exercises

Reflection:  A) To what invisible am I devoting my life right now?

1. B) Within my current writing project, what invisible is drawing me?

Writing: Imagine the moment a newlywed realizes they’ve betrayed the invisible to which they’d devoted their life. What are the feelings? Write the scene.

                                                In Closing

            100 thank you’s for your comments, posted and private. And for sending clients my way. It’s a great help!

            Until next time,

            Mary

Mary Rakow, Ph.D. novelist and freelance editor in the Bay Area, works with local and global clients who seek to publish traditionally, self- or hybrid.  She blogs monthly for SFWC about inspiration in the writing process and works in the Free 8-Minute Editing room at the Conference in February.

A Mentor for PEN USA/West’s Emerging Voices program, Instructor for UCLA Extension Writers Program, and presenter in workshops for Harvard Club of San Francisco, Rakow is rigorous and encouraging, insightful and kind.

A theologian with graduate degrees from Harvard Divinity School and Boston College, Rakow’s debut novel, THE MEMORY ROOM was shortlisted for the Stanford University International Saroyan Prize in Literature, a PEN USA/West Finalist in Fiction and was listed among the Best Books of the West by The Los Angeles Times. She was awarded a $75,000 Lannan Fellowship and given two month long Lannan Residencies in Marfa, TX.

Mary writes with deep feeling and a questioning faith. Her second novel, THIS IS WHY I CAME earned excellent reviews in The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Commonweal, Christian Century, O Magazine, Ploughshares. It appeared on reading lists for courses at Princeton and Yale.

Interested in the visual arts, Rakow received two residencies at Whale & Star in the studio artist Enrique Martinez Celaya where she was commissioned to write the first book-length treatment of the artist’s work, MARTINEZ CELAYA, WORKING METHODS.

Mary is a beloved editor and writing coach.  Always on the look-out for serious writers, she enjoys working with those just starting out and those with publications and accolades.

For inquiries please visit maryrakow.com

© Mary Rakow, 2023

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