Joanna Wiebe

Mayan Numeral, by Joanna Wiebe, an illustration from Wild and Precious Life

I am almost done copy-editing my book, Wild and Precious Life.  I’ve been doing this task for about half a year. It is amazing how much time it takes to copy-edit 60,000 words.  Of course, as I edit, I keep re-writing parts, too, and that doesn’t make it go any faster. Not that there is any rush, except for my desire to be done with the project and move onto another book.

For I have decided to write a detective story! When we were on holiday in Jamaica this past September, the blonde Brooklynite and I were reading detective stories poolside at the Negril, Jamaica Rockhouse Hotel.  I was poring over the activities of Mma Precious Ramotswe, the first female private investigator in Botswana.   The blonde Brooklynite was reading classic detective fiction.  I had lots of time on my hands, there in that poolside deck chair, between reading bits about Precious from Alexander McCall Smith’s The Full Cupboard of Life, and waiting for Richie the bartender to bring me more lime slushies.  In that plethora of free time I began mentally playing with my theory that almost anyone is capable of crime, given the right circumstances.  Later, I realized that one of my friends would make the perfect model for an interesting and unusual detective. I announced my interest to the blonde Brooklynite who then proceeded to give me for Christmas an array of classic detective fiction in paperback, as well as a nice hard-backed copy of The Classic Era of Crime Fiction, all from her own library. The die was cast.

All moons, all years, all winds,

reach their fullness, and pass.

Blood flows to its silent thrones of power and authority.

The radiant gods

measure out our hours of celebration;

our days under the benevolent sun,

our nights under the stars.

And until time ends,

in vigilance,

these gods we have trapped within the stars,

look down us, our suns, and all our structures.

from the Chilam Balam de Chumayel, translated from Spanish versions, by Joanna Wiebe

Today on the train on the way to work I addressed the issue of this translation again, and came up with the version shown above. This is the poem which I intend to appear at the beginning of my book, wild and precious life, as a dedication.

I am much happier with this version than anything I have done previously. It’s shorter, for one thing, and flows a little better. Most of all, I think I have done a better job of capturing the thought in the last sentence.  Here are these batch of gods, supreme beings, all powerful and authoritative, whom we have drawn to us by our neediness. So they are attached to us and our stars, trapped in a way, by their ceaseless caring for us, but at the same time, they are above and beyond us, our suns, and our every concept of every thing.

My mom wrote to say that Rhoda Janzen’s father Edmund Janzen and my mother’s mother (Anna Janzen Funk) were first cousins. So Rhoda and I are…what? third cousins? I am not surprised. As I have mentioned before, Mennonites all seem to be related in some way or another.

Mom also sent me a link to a Mennonite Weekly Review review of Rhoda’s book, mennonite in a little black dress, and my friend Ruth gave me a link to the review in the New York Times.

It gives me pause to read the reviews. When my memoir, wild and precious life is published, how am I going to handle the comments about me and my life, my mother, my Mennonite Brethren childhood, my writing, my friends, my choices? I have written my truth with as much integrity as I can muster. Very early in this process, when the idea of speaking the truth about my life seemed overwhelmingly scary, my friend and doctor Paul Epstein gave me this sentence from Thomas Paine, which I still have in my kitchen:  “But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing.” But then what?

The other day I went into Waldenbooks and stood for a long time in front of the rack of best-selling books, imagining what it would be like to have MY book on the shelf along with The Lost Symbol and Going Rogue. I felt kind of panicky, to tell the truth.

Nonetheless, I am looking for an agent.