[gentle music]
A small note before we begin. This is a
personal podcast. I tell these stories as
I remember and understand them, from my
own life and perspective.
When other people wander into them, I
protect what belongs to them. Some details
are changed or left out for that reason.
These are my words. My memories.
And tonight, a phone call, and a fish.
All right. Come in. It is already warm.
A dear friend called me today. We had
barely spoken in almost two years. And
within thirty seconds we were talking as
though we had spoken yesterday.
No ceremony. No accounting. No careful
walk through the missing months. No, so
where do we even begin.
We simply began. Or continued. I am not
sure which. That distinction has been
sitting with me all afternoon.
Because there are people with whom silence
feels like damage. And then there are
people with whom silence is simply
silence.
Time passes. Lives get busy. People move
into other rooms. The phone does not ring.
Then one day it does. You answer.
And somehow the conversation has been
sitting there the entire time. Not waiting
dramatically. Not hurt. Not accusing you
of abandonment. Just there. The cup still
warm enough to pick up.
I like people like that. More and more, I
think those are my people.
[a low hum]
I used to believe loyalty required
evidence. Regularity. Presence. Proof. You
call, I call. You show up, I show up.
We keep the relationship alive by
continually touching it, like something
mechanical that might stop if neither of
us winds it. Maybe some relationships are
like that. Others, apparently, have better
engineering.
You can leave them alone for two years and
turn the key and the whole thing starts.
Same voice. Same laugh. Same shorthand.
Same strange little understanding of who
the other person is beneath whatever has
happened since.
I do not find that sad. I find it
extraordinary. And more than okay by me.
That phone call happened on the same day a
man brought me a fish. So it has been a
very specific kind of Tuesday.
[fire crackling]
I was cleaning the kitchen this morning.
Nothing literary was happening. This is
important. There was no beautiful music
playing while I contemplated the meaning
of my life. I was cleaning.
Someone came in and told me a man was
looking for me. Looking for you. Those
words always make me curious. I wiped my
hands and went to see who it was.
There was a man standing in the dining
room. Very handsome. Again, not important
to the larger philosophical structure, but
I am committed to accuracy.
And he had brought me a piece of flounder.
I did not know him well. His parents had
stayed a few weeks earlier. He is new to
town and had joined them for breakfast
every morning while they were here. I
remembered him.
His parents had bought three copies of my
book.
And now here he was, without them, holding
fish. He had come looking for me. He
offered friendship. And I gave him this
enormous smile.
It surprised me. That is the detail I keep
returning to. Not the flounder. Not even
the handsome man. My own face.
Because I did not prepare the smile. It
got there before I did.
There are smiles we use because another
person deserves one. There are smiles that
belong to work. There are smiles that
smooth a room. I know all of them. This
was not one of those.
This one happened to me. Before I could
decide what the moment meant, I was
delighted. That is rarer than it should
be.
I am a person who can make meaning very
quickly. Give me a doorway and I can build
a house around it before you finish
knocking. It is useful if you write
novels. Slightly more complicated
everywhere else.
But lately I have been trying to allow
things to arrive before I turn them into
stories. A letter. A phone call. A piece
of fish. A smile.
There. That happened. Let it be itself for
a minute.
[a low hum]
I think Still, by Design. began with this
exact instinct, though I did not
understand it when I wrote it. The book
pays attention to what happens in the
minute before meaning arrives.
A cup is poured. A room changes with the
light. Someone returns. A letter appears.
Music comes through another room. A person
stands by a window. Then, much later, the
character catches up.
I used to think that was simply the way I
liked to write. I think now it may be the
way I live. The world happens first. Avery
understands it later. Sometimes much
later. Occasionally there is a novel
involved.
Tonight there are three things on my mind.
The man with the fish. The friend on the
telephone. And a letter I received from a
listener. My first one.
Three people entering my life from three
completely different directions. One new.
One old. One I have never met.
And every one of them saying, in a
different way: I found you.
That sentence would have frightened an
earlier version of me. Being found sounds
romantic until you have spent enough of
your life learning how to disappear
correctly.
I have always known how to enter another
person's world. Learn the room. Learn the
rhythm. Remember the details. Become
useful. There is a particular safety in
being the person who notices first.
You get to remain slightly ahead of the
intimacy. You already know how they take
their coffee. They are still learning your
last name.
You know something is wrong before they
have decided whether to tell you.
You can be extraordinarily close to
somebody and still maintain this tiny
observational distance. One step behind.
Watching.
Good Little Innkeeper knows that man very
well. Still, by Design. knew something
else. It knew the rooms could answer. It
knew somebody might take the second cup.
It knew that the thing you prepare for
another person can eventually become the
thing that keeps you company.
I think I am finally living somewhere
between those books. I still notice. God,
do I notice. I probably always will. But
people are beginning to surprise me. I
like that.
I did not know this man was coming. I did
not know my old friend would call. I did
not know a listener would write.
None of those things were on a schedule I
could improve. They happened without my
help. What an inconvenience. And what a
relief.
[fire crackling softly]
I think I have spent much of my life
confusing loyalty with maintenance. If I
loved something, I tended it. Naturally.
That is what love did around me.
It cooked. It showed up. It remembered. It
called. It worried. It brought something.
It did not sit quietly in the corner
announcing itself as love. It had work
clothes.
I understand love that way. Still do. If I
care about you, there will probably be
food eventually. This is not metaphor.
But my friend today reminded me that some
loyalty does not need constant
maintenance. It can survive absence. Not
neglect. There is a difference. Absence.
Two people live. Things happen.
There are other people, other cities,
other work. Whole seasons no one reports
to the other.
Then the phone rings. Hello. And the years
fold. Not disappear. Fold.
The time still happened. We are not
pretending otherwise. But the relationship
has some deeper geography than the
calendar. You know where to find each
other.
Maybe that is what loyalty is for me. Not
constant proximity. Knowing the road back.
There are people in my life who could call
after ten years and I would know the voice
before they finished my name.
I do not need to speak to them every
Tuesday to know that. I am beginning to
trust it. That is new.
[a low hum]
I used to want proof. I kept emotional
receipts. Not intentionally. I am simply
built like a records department with
excellent lighting.
I know who showed up. I know who did not.
I know the sentence. I know what month. I
know what song was playing. I know what I
gave. I know what they gave.
And for years, somewhere beneath all that
remembering, I thought the ledger might
eventually explain the relationship. It
never did. Human accounting is terrible.
The numbers refuse to cooperate.
Someone can give you very little and
change your entire life. Someone can give
you years and leave almost nothing behind.
A friend can disappear for two years and
still know exactly where the conversation
was left.
A stranger can hand you a fish and somehow
give you something much larger.
A person you have never met can write a
letter and suddenly there is a new object
in your private world that you know you
will keep. Try putting that in a
spreadsheet.
This is why I write instead. Writing lets
contradictory accounts remain on the same
page.
I learned very young that people have
versions. I found a little black notebook
when I was maybe ten. It belonged to an
adult in my life.
Inside was a version of someone I loved
that I barely recognized.
Page after page of grievances, suspicions,
remembered injuries, things arranged into
a person I knew from an entirely different
room. I remember being horrified. Not only
by what was written. By the fact that
somebody believed it.
That rearranged something in me. There
will always be another version. Of the
person you love. Of your friend. Of you.
Of what happened. Of why it happened.
For years I thought the answer was
accuracy. Get the story right. Correct the
misunderstanding. Explain enough. Surely
if everybody had all the facts, we would
eventually meet in the same room. We will
not. I know that now.
And strangely, knowing it has made me less
defensive and more loyal. Because I no
longer need my version of someone to
become the official one.
My dear friend who called today belongs to
people I will never meet. They have
versions. I have mine.
The man with the fish already had a
version of me before he walked into the
room.
His parents had talked. He had sat at
breakfast. He had seen me. He had seen the
books. Somewhere in all of that, an Avery
formed. Then he came looking for him. And
met me.
I find that beautiful. Not because his
version will be accurate. It will not. No
one's is. Mine included. But connection
does not require total accuracy. Thank
God.
If it did, nobody would ever love anybody.
You get pieces. The way they laugh. The
sentence they use too often. How they
behave when tired. What happens to their
face when they receive something they did
not expect.
You collect enough pieces and call it a
person. Then the person surprises you.
If you are lucky, you allow the surprise.
[fire crackling]
I think that is one of the great mistakes
we make in long relationships. We stop
permitting revision. We decide who
somebody is and then become irritated when
they continue being alive.
The person changes. Or we do. And suddenly
our beautiful private edition of them is
out of date.
I do not want to do that anymore. I want
loyalty without fossilization. I want to
be able to say: I knew you then. I know
you now.
Those do not have to be the same
knowledge.
Maybe that is why the call today felt so
lovely. We did not spend an hour trying to
restore the old versions. We simply
talked. The friendship was not preserved
in amber. It was alive.
That is what I want this podcast to
become. Alive.
[a low hum]
I wrote Still, by Design. as a novel, but
I think some part of me was building a
room I could eventually step into myself.
The book is full of mornings. Light.
Coffee.
Music low enough to become part of the
room instead of occupying it.
Letters. People arriving. People
returning. People sitting together without
needing to solve the entire history before
finishing the cup.
I understand that differently now. Maybe
connection is not the absence of distance.
Maybe it is what remains available across
it.
A friend calls. The conversation is still
there. A family leaves. Their son comes
back. A listener finishes an episode. Days
later a letter appears.
This is the living version. Not a
character looking through a window. Me.
Tonight. My phone on the desk. The letter
nearby.
A piece of flounder now occupying an
unexpectedly important place in the day's
emotional inventory.
Music playing. Frisco outside. Galena
House around me, though I do not mean a
building when I say that. I mean the room
I have been building inside my own life.
A place where everything I have carried
can finally sit down.
[river running]
The books live here. The people live here
too, in pieces. My grandmother in a
recipe. Georgia in the table. Montana in
distance. Germany in water. Colorado in
light.
Old friends in phrases I have forgotten I
borrowed. People who disappointed me in
things they still taught me.
People I no longer speak to in gestures I
will probably make for the rest of my
life.
This does not make me trapped in memory. I
used to worry about that. It makes me
assembled.
We are all assembled. That is what a self
is. Parts arrived from everywhere. Someone
taught you to hold the knife like that.
Someone showed you that song.
Someone broke your heart and accidentally
improved your taste in books.
Someone loved you at nineteen and gave you
a word you still use. Someone who does not
know you anymore is responsible for the
way you make eggs.
There is comedy in this if you look
closely. We walk around believing
ourselves to be individuals while carrying
a small town's worth of other people's
habits.
I love that. I want to carry people. I
just no longer think carrying means
dragging.
That distinction matters. I can carry the
beautiful thing someone gave me without
carrying the entire relationship forever.
I can keep the memory without keeping the
access.
I can love somebody across two years of
silence without feeling betrayed by the
silence.
I can pick up the phone when they call.
Hello. There you are. Where were we.
[fire crackling softly]
There is a generosity in that kind of
friendship. No punishment. No invoice. No
performance of injury to prove the
relationship mattered. We mattered. The
time passed. Both true. Let's talk.
I want more relationships like that. And
perhaps, if I am honest, I want to become
more like that. A person people can return
to without fear of being charged interest
on the absence.
That does not mean allowing everyone back.
No. I have finally learned the lock works
too. There are doors I will not reopen.
There are people I can love in memory and
not in practice. There are versions of me
that belonged to certain relationships and
can remain there.
But there are others where the thread was
never cut. It just went slack. Today
someone picked it up. I felt it
immediately.
That is loyalty. Not ownership.
Recognition. I know you. You know me. We
can begin here.
The same thing happened this morning in a
smaller, newer way. The man standing in
the dining room did not know me deeply.
Maybe he will. Maybe he will not.
I am resisting the urge to write chapter
two before chapter one has finished
cleaning the kitchen.
Progress.
But there was recognition. He had been
there. He remembered. He returned. He
brought something. I received it. I
smiled. That is enough for the page.
[a low hum]
I think Still, by Design. understood
enough long before I did. It keeps
returning to small things. A cup. A note.
A song. Someone coming through a doorway.
A hand on a railing.
A room changing as the day moves across
it. The book's emotional life is rarely in
the declaration. It is in the evidence
that somebody was paying attention.
That is my language. Attention. I know how
to say I love you with attention. I know
how to say I missed you with memory.
I know how to say I am glad you are here
with food.
Apparently other people know this language
too. One of them speaks flounder. Who
knew.
I think this is what has shifted in my
life lately. For years I was transmitting.
Giving. Making. Anticipating.
Trying to put enough warmth into the world
that perhaps some of it would reflect
back.
Now things are arriving. The listener's
letter. The phone call. The fish. People
finding the books. People finding the
podcast. People finding me.
I am still learning how to stand still for
that. Receiving asks something different
from me. There is no task. No problem to
solve. Somebody says, I thought of you.
And there is nowhere to hide.
Thank you. That's it. I have historically
preferred a more complicated assignment.
But maybe this is the next part. Stillness
was never merely being quiet. I know that
now. Stillness is not immediately turning
the moment into labor.
Not making the friendship earn its return.
Not asking the gift what it means. Not
asking the letter where it is leading. Not
asking a smile to become a promise. Let it
arrive. Let yourself be pleased. Then keep
living.
[fire crackling]
That may be Still, by Design. now. Not
Elias. Avery. Not the perfectly arranged
room. The lived-in one.
Computer open. Music half-finished. An old
friend back on the phone. A new friend
perhaps beginning. A listener's
handwriting on the desk. Dinner still
undecided, although there is a strong
flounder candidate.
And me in the middle of it. Not waiting to
become someone. Not leaving. Not trying to
prove the place saved me. Here. I like
here.
That is perhaps the simplest thing I can
tell you tonight. I like my life. I have
worked very hard to be able to say that
without immediately qualifying it. I like
my life.
It is strange. It is busy. It occasionally
produces fish. There are disappointments
in it. There are people missing from it.
There are people returning to it. There
are people just entering.
There is still too much I want to make.
There are still things I get wrong.
But increasingly, when something beautiful
happens, I am there when it happens. That
may be the greatest change. I do not
always experience my life from one step
behind anymore. Sometimes I am inside it.
A man surprises me and I smile before I
can observe the smile. My phone rings and
my friend's voice is suddenly there, and
two years becomes yesterday without either
of us asking permission.
I read a letter and let myself understand
that someone heard me.
These sound like small things. They are
small things. That is exactly why I trust
them.
I have had enough grand gestures. Grand
gestures are talented actors. They know
where the light is.
I trust the friend who simply calls. The
person who remembers. The man with the
fish. The listener who buys a stamp.
The person who returns and does not
announce the return as a moral event. They
just walk back into the room.
Those are my people. I think they always
have been.
[a low hum]
Perhaps the whole book was about that. Not
healing. Not even stillness. Recognition.
The second cup exists because someone
might come. The light is left on because
somebody knows the road back. The room is
cared for because care itself is
meaningful, even before anyone arrives.
And when they do arrive, you do not have
to ask the moment to become forever. You
can simply say: There you are. I am glad
you came.
Tonight the music is low. The day is
nearly over. My friend's call is still
somewhere in me, warm in the way an old
song is warm after you hear the first few
notes.
The letter is here. The flounder is real.
I checked.
And the strangest thing is that none of
these connections requires me to chase it.
That word matters. I have chased places.
People. Versions of myself. Belonging.
Recognition. The next thing.
I am tired of chasing what knows my
address.
Maybe loyalty is trusting that the real
things know how to return. Maybe
friendship is not measured by the silence
between calls but by what happens when one
of you finally makes one.
Maybe connection is less fragile than I
gave it credit for. Maybe I am too.
I do not know. This is Tuesday evening. We
are allowed to leave a few things
unanswered.
But I know this. A friend called me today
after almost two years. We laughed like it
had been yesterday. A man came looking for
me this morning and brought a piece of
fish.
Somewhere there is a person who wrote me a
letter because something I said reached
them.
And tonight I am sitting inside a life I
once would have been too busy arranging to
notice. I notice it. That is enough.
The conversation was still there. So was
I.
I think that is what I mean when I say
still, by design. Not untouched. Not
unmoved. Not alone. Still here. And
increasingly, wonderfully, not by myself.
[fire crackling]
Now. The fish. There is a recipe this
week, and for once nobody had to write it
down first. A man brought it to the door.
Flounder does not want much. A hot pan.
Butter, and then a little more butter than
you meant. Salt.
Three minutes on one side, two on the
other, and it tells you when by letting go
of the pan. Lemon at the end, off the
heat, so it stays bright.
Nine thousand feet changes nothing about a
fish. It changes the cook. Do not walk
away from it. Do not turn it twice. It is
not bread. Nothing tonight is bread.
It is on the site as the house flounder,
though it is not the house's. It is his.
Somebody is in it, the way somebody is in
all of them.
Tonight that somebody walked in while I
was cleaning the kitchen.
I am Avery Lane Maxwell. This is Galena
House Audio. Good Little Innkeeper is
finished, and out looking for its
publisher. Still, by Design. is where the
stillness lives.
Keep the beautiful pieces. Leave the room
ready. Someone is coming. Sometimes they
bring dinner.
[silence]
Thanks for listening. This was made at
Galena House, in Frisco, Colorado.
[music swells softly]