Elizabeth Ellen on finality, violence, and the call of the wild. <em>In conversation with Sara Byrnes, on Ellen’s story “Saunterathon.”</em>

Read “Saunterathon” here.

Sara

So much of this piece is about promises. The promises people make, the promises they break. And so much of it is about the natural world. The call of the wild. The weight it holds, what it offers. To you, what is the promise of the natural world? 

Elizabeth

Interesting you say, “call of the wild.” I only read the novel (Jack London) last summer. Loved it, of course.

I think for me, the natural world has always been romanticized, adored, desired—by me—as a purer world. Maybe it’s just that I learned young not to trust humans. Not that you can trust animals. Or nature. But it feels far less personal when nature or animals cause us harm or destruction. I think, too, when one is in nature, there is a timelessness (part of the romance) about it, … and a simplicity, a serenity, peacefulness, even amongst the violence, murder, carnage… 

I spent a lot of time walking with my dog alone in the woods of the Midwest, Ohio, specifically, as a child. Maybe, too, interestingly enough, coming from a writer: I enjoy the lack of language required in nature. One can use one’s other senses more: look, listen, touch. A lot of observation. Less about self. More about blending, observing, being part of something large and vast and beautiful in its impersonalization. 

I like, too, the uncontrollability of nature. No one, no matter how rich or powerful, can control nature. Nature destroys ego. Or renders it meaningless. Pointless. 

Sara

The character in this story spends so much of their time sauntering. In a way the whole story almost reads like a saunter. How does walking, or even larger the natural world, influence your creativity and your creative process? 

Elizabeth

Well, I walk all the time. I have a dog, and at my last house, there was no fence, so I had to walk her four times a day minimum. Now there is a fence, so I don’t necessarily have to walk her all the time, but I really love to walk. So as long as it’s not pouring rain or absolutely freezing, we walk about an hour, hour and a half a day. We have to walk half an hour, now, to get to woods, river, lake. But most days we do. And because I no longer live mere steps from the woods, as I did the year prior, I often begin weeping the minute we step foot down the trail into the woods. Usually this is at night. So it’s dark. But the woods smell like woods: earthy, green, alive. I miss it so much. I also walk without anything in my ears: no earbuds. No music or podcasts. Just the thoughts in my head. So walking, showering, driving are when I seem to think the most creatively. I’m not sure how others manage to be creative without much solitude. Maybe they are much more efficient and don’t require as much alone time. 

Sara

I’ve always believed in the quote, “My revenge will be artistic, not personal.” This story meditates for a long time on the violence in the natural world, the violence humans commit against other humans, the violence of love, and the motivations for violence (revenge or otherwise). As I read, I was captivated by the concept that isn’t named but shown, of violence as the first primal instinct of protection. Do you think that writing is, in a way, an inherently violent act? A revenge of sorts? Or maybe a response to the violence that we endure? 

Elizabeth

What is that quote? I guess I could google, but I don’t want to. It’s interesting. I would think art is personal, too, tho. So revenge, in that context, could be artistic and personal. 

Hmmmm. Revenge…violence… I don’t think I’ve ever been asked about either! Wow! Feels somewhat empowering just to be asked, … I would think my mother and maybe a couple others might say my writing is a form of revenge. Violence? I’ve never liked the naming of writing as violence or violent. As though it can do the harm of a fist or object hurled at you. 

I think writing is probably one way to process pain, hurt—caused by violence or other means. Catharsis. Empowerment. 

Sara

The level of vulnerability achieved throughout this story makes me think of a quote from Annie Ernaux. In her book Simple Possession, she begins by saying “I have always wanted to write as if I would be gone when the book was published.” This gives her a degree of freedom to explore whatever she wants in her work. It’s a noble idea, even if it’s an illusion. Is this a mindset you use in your creative process?

Elizabeth

Interesting. I had not heard that quote (or even of Ernaux until a year ago; I know. I know.), but I like it and relate to it. I tell writers all the time, you have one life, and it could end any minute, and even if it ends in thirty years, think about it: thirty more Christmases. That is not much time at all. So, I don’t think it’s an illusion. I think it’s dead on. In the grand scheme of things, any human lifetime is a blip. So nothing. There is no point in being an artist (of any kind) and fearful. Honestly, there is no point in being alive and fearful. As far as what others think of you. 

I also see zero nobility in that quote. Just realism. And the awareness that the point of art or writing is self-expression. If you’re going to censor yourself, I don’t understand why you are here. 

Sara

One of my favorite aspects of this story is how it comments on memory. I love the idea of what the brain has us misremember. The narrator in the story talks about keeping a journal as a teen and confronting the fact that in those years she’d harbored different feelings toward her mother’s boyfriend than she remembered. Do you think there’s something important to be said about keeping a journal? Do you journal? Can we really trust our journals as the truth or are they merely reflections of our perspectives at the time before we had more lived experiences to bump our thoughts up against?   

Elizabeth

Well, to answer the latter question first, we can trust our journals (and emails and letters) much more than our memories. This I can tell you with full confidence based on experience. Unless you are or were lying in your journal. “Reflections of our perspectives at the time” is OUR TRUTH! What else is there? 

I do journal. I journaled as a teenager (that part of the story, and much else in the story, is based on my life), and then I didn’t journal again until the pandemic, until 2020. But I have journaled almost daily since then, and I’m so glad I do, for a number of reasons. One, I was gaslit in an abusive relationship the last five years, and if I hadn’t had my journal notes to return to and consult and back up my memories, I would have been even more gaslit and mentally unwell. Secondly, it keeps me from gaslighting myself (unintentionally, so I suppose that is not gaslighting)! 

I think emails can serve a similar purpose. I’ve been combing back through emails in my mac account, which goes back to 2007, as research for a memoir I’m currently writing. And again, as with my teen journal, I am finding evidence my memory is just wrong about much of the past, often wrong by omission. 

Recently I was confronted—in reading an almost twenty-year-old email—with evidence I had treated someone I cared about in an unloyal, awful manner. 

If I wrote the memoir without looking back at journals and emails, I would be writing a completely different book, and, to be honest (haha), not a very truthful one. 

I would come out looking a lot better (morally, ethically), but also less complex, simpler, and more of a victim. 

And it is only in seeing my own capacity for cruelty, that I can better understand a person who has, in my opinion, acted in a cruel manner toward me. 

Before I read that 2007 email the other day, I was able to be very self-righteous and dehumanizing of the person who had hurt me. Once I saw I had acted in a similar manner (and the email reminded me of more of the same behavior, a pattern of such behavior on my behalf then) toward someone else, I had to more rationally and compassionately face the humanness that is within all of us, the parts that are loving and kind and the parts that can be cruel, selfish, disloyal in our own pursuits. 

Sara

This story too is one of survival, of endurance, and like I mentioned earlier: motivation. What is your motivation in writing? Do survival and endurance play a part in that?  

Elizabeth

100%. Even survival by way of fantasy, by way of creating one’s own world one wants to (part time) live in. Escapism. Both my therapist and my 12-step sponsor independently suggested to me recently that reading and writing may have served as coping mechanisms, means of escape. 

Survival, endurance, resilience… writing is a one person sport. (At least until you get to the editing stage.) It’s you vs everybody. 

It’s also a bit of bullying: In your writing you can make people do and say what you want. The same people you can’t control at all in “real life.” 

Sara

Throughout the story, the concept of morals and ethics are called into question. “Does a dog that kills a bird feel anything?” “Does a hamster mother who devours her infant rather than care for it feel anything in the way of moral guilt?” Do you concern yourself with morals? Who do morals benefit? 

Elizabeth

I view morals the same way I view the person who rejects biblical stories, values, commandments based on the contradictions within the bible and also any one particular reader of The Bible sort of “picking and choosing” the parts they want to focus on or reflect on because they best fit their lifestyle, are easier than others to adhere to….

Meaning: “morality,” broadly speaking, whether we want to admit it or not, is mostly not for or about my behavior, but about yours. A means of societal and familial control, for security, safety, and reduction of chaos/drama. It is human nature to see, pretty consistently and constantly, how others have wronged us, and also human nature to avoid reflecting on our own behavior as it affects others. 

I concern myself, sometimes, with not trying to hurt others or myself. Other times, I guess, I ignore this instinct. 

It all, in the end, goes back to last stone cast. We are all “immoral” if any one of us is immoral. We are all human, mammal, sinners, blah blah blah. We forgive animals so easily. Much more easily than we forgive ourselves and each other, the crimes of being mammalian. 

Sara

This story brings up an interesting conversation on marriage as another form of pet ownership that limits freedom and self-reliance. I’ve always believed that our relationships, romantic or otherwise, are our tethers to existence. But that tether can get twisted when we fall into a pattern of wanting to tame the wild in someone else, or wanting something that’s bad for us. I’m thinking now of the men centered in Pam Houston’s collection Cowboys Are My Weakness which the unnamed man in “Saunterathon” reminded me of. Is there something to be said of narrators (or people) that are addicted to a kind of broken love? Who are we if we have nothing? 

Elizabeth

What do you mean by “have nothing”? Do you mean, “not in a relationship”? Certainly, you don’t believe that a person not in a romantic relationship “has nothing.” 

Gosh, I have so many thoughts regarding this question or series of questions. Thoughts on marriage, a more modern concept, but also, perhaps, an increasingly antiquated one, or one that less serves the times (living longer, the constant distractions of the world on phones/laptops/the internet)… I’ve been married three times, both my grandmothers and my mother were married three times. One could deduce, then, that marriage is no longer a once in a lifetime event, so then, why even bother? We are probably, most of us, serial monogamists. Well, women, at any rate. I think men are probably, biologically speaking, polygamists. And I consider masturbating with porn or online web-camming women to be part of a polygamist lifestyle. Anything that reduces intimacy—physical or emotional—with the primary partner would be part of polygamous instincts and behaviors, in my opinion. Women are increasingly the ones stating they wish they had more physical intimacy in their marriages and committed relationships. That’s a first! 

Wait, what were the questions? 

“Tame the wild in someone else”… hmmm. Yes. We do tend to want to do that, don’t we? We are attracted to someone, sometimes, because of their wildness, their independent spirit, their multiple lovers, … we know this about them (speaking from personal experience here, obviously, on both sides this conundrum), … we are attracted to it, yet at the same time, we try to control them, to only want them to interact with us, to be our good boy or girl, … why do we do this??? Try to change or control that which attracted us about the person? 

One could attribute “brokeness” in love to all sorts of less obvious relationships. Ones in which two people are married fifty years, live together, but no longer speak, exist in separate rooms of a house. One in which one person consciously ignores the betrayals of the other and stays… 

It is almost, though not quite, impossible to have the sort of marital loyalty of, say, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s parents… What if Pa Ingalls, out in the fields all day, had had a phone in his hand, other women to look at, talk to…. how would that have affected his relationship with Caroline (ma)? What if he had been masturbating out in that woods and fields to photos of other women and not wanted to have physical intimacy with his wife at night? Physical intimacy tied to emotional intimacy… 

Then again, what mammals are monogamous? Almost none. Maybe none. 

So perhaps it was always almost an impossibility, asking fidelity of anyone. And true love is about awareness that no one belongs to us, nor do we belong to anyone. 

But we never have nothing. We always have everything. All of the universe. Within each of us and surrounding each of us. to explore!

Sara

The thread of finality weaves throughout this entire story. The concept of death as finality, of romance as finality, of escaping to the wilderness or wandering off the trail as finality. Do you think the concept of finality is our human response to trying to organize the chaos of existence? Is finality a response to a desire for certainty? What is the promise of certainty? 

Elizabeth

Finality is what is always awaiting us.

Thank you, Sara, so much, for taking your time and care with this story, in the editing process. And for inspiring me to write this story in the first place with your solicitation of my work. And for being one of the few persons to brave the cover and read my story collection, Her Lesser Work, and write me about the story, "Signs," which is one of my favorite stories in that collection.