Zen practitioner and elite ultrarunner Katie Arnold chats with Zibby about BRIEF FLASHINGS IN THE PHENOMENAL WORLD, a wise, contemplative memoir of destruction and healing written about her struggle to overcome a life-shattering injury. Katie starts by describing her harrowing whitewater rafting accident—the event that opens the novel and unearthed deeper issues in her life and marriage. She then delves into the Zen philosophy that helped her, her deep connection to nature, and the power of finding beauty in everyday experiences. She ends with invaluable advice for aspiring writers.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Katie. Thanks so much for coming back on Mom's Don't Have Time To Read Books, as you just reminded me. It was five years ago. My gosh, where is the time? And this summer is Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World, Zen, and the Art of Running Free.

Congratulations. 

Thanks, Zibby. It's great 

Katie: to be back. 

Zibby: Okay, so we met first to talk about running home. 

Katie: Mm hmm. 

Zibby: Why don't you give, like, the two to three line synopsis of that so people know, and we get all caught up, and then you can delve into this one. 

Katie: Sure. So running home is a 

Zibby: Tell me your life story and just. 

Katie: Yeah.

Yeah. Just no. 

Zibby: Biggie. 

Katie: Yeah. Uh, running home was about, um, the death of my father and he passed away in 2010 and I had a newborn daughter and I had this crazy, intense grief response where I thought I was dying too. And so I started running very long distances in the wilderness as a way to heal myself. I should say that I wasn't going from zero to 60.

I've always been an outdoor athlete and I've always had a running practice. But it was like running, I had to be in nature and I had to go out for extended periods of time because nature was the only thing that gave me solace in the face of this intense anxiety. And, um, so running home is really the story about, it's the story about my relationship with my father and kind of the healing path that brought me to long distance mountain running.

And really, which is one of the places I feel most myself and most at home. 

Zibby: And so, and that was beautiful. 

Love that book. 

Katie: Thank you. Thank you. 

Zibby: So then we come to this book where you start off with a bang with this whitewater acting like disaster. I mean, there's nothing like opening up a book and like two minutes later, I'm like gripping the side of my chair.

Do you know what I mean? 

Katie: Well, that's so funny because I've heard from so many readers that they're like, I can't put it down. It's got me by the throat. And I think, you know, you know, as a writer, you spend enough time with the story that you sort of lose the forest for the trees, and yeah, it is an intense story like and it does open with this very traumatic wilderness accident and that's kind of the low point right if we're if we're talking like fake cinematic terms which this book does not follow them all like I come out right at the beginning By saying like this book is not like others you need to read this book with your body not just with your thinking brain because it's trying to do this thing thing of closing the gap between the experience itself and the story of it.

So it's trying to be as immediate and visceral as possible. And so in the intro bit where I write sort of instructions for the reader. Like I'm, I'm saying it's not following the normal like three acts in an epiphany, right? It's more like these it's we're in the flow of a river, right? It moves like a river time sort of spans forward and back And I mean just in your opening when we're like, where did the time go?

Like we had a pandemic. That's what this book is trying to convey that both time is so fast and moving at hyperspeed and yet in the Zen tradition, which I've come to sort of see not as a religion, like I'm certainly not a religious person, but Zen to me is more like a way of being and a way of living.

And in Zen, the idea is that all moments are included in this very moment. So like all past moments and all moments that have yet to happen exist right now. And so in the fullness of this moment, and so I tried to convey that like all past and future had to play a role in this book and in the story I was telling.

And so it was tricky because, you know, Just by writing about it, we create this little layer, this little separation between us and it. But I was trying in the opening and I, and judging from what readers have said, that it is so gripping that I just brought you right into it. Like the, like you're on the river and the water's hitting your face and it's cold and like you're holding on to the edge of the boat.

Zibby: Yes. Well, I would, I would venture a guess that most readers like me have not been in that exact situation. Like I've done very, very tame whitewater rafting. 

Katie: Yes. 

Zibby: Very. And even that, I was terrified beyond belief. But this experience, this is like a life or death moment of, you know, how, what is going to happen and how is she going to be okay and is she going to be, and then the only consolation being that the book continues.

Katie: Yes. Yeah, right. 

Zibby: Like, she must have written the book. Like, we know she's, but even still when you're reading, you're like, but I don't, you know, you just don't know. 

Katie: Well, and I was, I was writing, running home when this accident happened. And so I was like living inside two books at once, which as writers is not uncommon.

Like our stories are always overlapping and there's no neat beginning or end to anything, right? It's all a continuum. But I, I needed to kind of. Lit like I remember when I got home from the river and I had to finish my book and I called my my agent and or my editor and we were talking about running home and I was like, but you know, I had this terrible accident.

I don't know if I can write right now. And she's like, and I told her the story of it. And she's like that. That's a really good story. And I was like, uh, you know, and the writer in me already knew. I was like, I know. I just wish it weren't my story. Like a billion percent. There was no part of me that wanted to be living that story just to have then a story to write.

And so somehow, and I think it's because I keep notebooks and journals and I write about that in, in brief flashings, all of that river. Those river logs, I call them, were in my notebooks and the experience was still fresh after a few years. And so I was able, you know, once I finished running home, I was like, okay, this is, this is the book I'm writing now.

And, um, yeah, it was. 

Zibby: Can you share a little more about the story or do you want to leave readers? 

Katie: Yeah, I can share. 

Yeah. 

Do you have specific questions or? Yeah. 

Zibby: Okay. So you're in the boat. And your husband is, is, gets you into dire straits here. 

Katie: Yes. 

Zibby: And you have to survive. 

Katie: Yes. Okay. So I'll just tell you a little bit of background.

We had been invited to go on a, um, rafting trip with friends on the Middle Fork of the Salmon, which is like a premier wilderness river, probably only second to the Colorado through the Grand Canyon in terms of like beauty and remoteness bucket list, you know, to use that term. And friends of ours had gotten a permit because you have to enter a lottery and we were invited to go with them.

And so it's a private trip, so there's no guides. And my husband, Steve, and I have always been on rivers together. And it's, it's just a favorite place for us to spend time. And rivers are such a great teacher of like, you have to just move with the current. Right, you cannot push the river upstream and so we have had a lot of experience on rivers and we went up so we agreed, you know, this is a trip of a lifetime and we would drive up to Idaho and we left our children at home who were younger because the water was much too big.

And as I write about in the early chapters right away, it's a six day trip. And we're not even two miles downstream. And, and the section in the middle fork of the salmon is a hundred mile section of river. And there's a hundred rapids and a hundred miles and a hundred named rapids. So those are a hundred major rapids.

And the rapid we flipped on was not even named and that was big. So that just goes to show you like what was coming up down river. And so as soon as that happens, I know I'm really badly injured as soon as I hit the water, or as I'm in the water, and I, I, we make it, I make it to shore, you know, our group, we regroup, I'm, it's clear I'm injured, and then we have to make a decision.

Do we stay on the river, or do we get off the river? And, you know, being two miles, so two miles into a hundred mile trip, you'd think like, well, let's just get out, but this is not, like, there's no road along the river, there's no path, you know, You're downstream, so like you can't go back upstream. I mean, it's, it's so metaphorical.

And so yeah, we decided as a group, because you, you know, when you're in the wilderness, you have to make decisions as a team that we would stay on the river. And there's so many reasons why, but, and I, and I shared this and I'll share this now because it sort of alludes to kind of what will come as like opening up this crack in my marriage with Steve.

Was that I didn't want to leave Steve on the river, you know, I really and I didn't want to go out alone like because there are a couple of places we could have had an emergency bush plane come in and land, but. I was so deeply loyal and connected to Steve. At the same time, I was in, you know, we were in this traumatic state after the accident where I'm so angry at what has happened.

And I, you know, it's an accident, but that anger, you can't decide, oh, okay, I'm not gonna be angry, right? It kind of just came up and the fracture, you know, just, you know, You know, that I experienced in my body was also a fracture in our marriage, and it exposed kind of all that stuff underneath in a marriage that might be going on for a while, much of which you're unaware of, and a lot of which is not our own, but it's sort of like.

Like cultural overlay, generational overlay. And, um, my husband and I, like, I fell in love with him at first sight. And I write about this in the book. And so I knew I would always be with him from the moment I saw him, but that did not stop this accident from being a real, like seismic shift for us. And we always knew we were going to be unconventional together.

We were the only ones in our family, both of our families who, you know, we were both raised on the East Coast. We moved out West, right? We're the youngest, each of us are the youngest, and we didn't want a normal marriage. But, you know, 10 years in and a couple kids in, you wake up and you're like, Oh my God, I have someone else's marriage.

And so the accident was like a crack. It was like that, you know, rift in the land, you know, like in Superman, the movie, when like that crack opens up, you're like, Oh my God, what's inside. And so the healing that has to happen in the aftermath of the accident is not just to my body nor to my spirit of, of, you know, because I'm told I should never run again.

You know, and running is not just a sport for me. It's also as it's my creative practice. It's how I write. So it's been a lifelong love and practice for me. And so, but when you hear that news from a doctor who's like, Oh, you should never run again. So easy to believe that, isn't it? 

Zibby: Yes. 

Katie: They have that authority.

It's like, they're in the white coat, you're in the room alone. And, you know, if this were that sort of fake movie, you know, like the, the, the, the river accident is the drama and then this is that like clanging like doomsday symbols in the middle where he's like you should never run again again again you know it's like the the villain's voice and so i have to heal my body my my spirit and now my marriage And the book really tells the story of how, how that happens.

Zibby: Amazing. I mean, I don't know how people can listen to that and not want to read the book. Right? Yeah. And, and you write beautifully. Let me read like a passage. Wait, what did I tell you here? I mean, this is sort of what you were saying about Zen already, but I really, Liked this? When you, you said it didn't matter if it was skydiving or capoeira, riding, running, or zen.

When you understand, quote, one thing through and through, you understand everything. The accident had upended everything and made me a beginner all over again. It was unclear if my body or my marriage would come through intact or if I would ever run again. If I did, I would never run the same as I once had, just as I would never be the same.

Even then, part of me understood that this was a good thing maybe the very best thing. So good. So good. 

Katie: Thank you. We don't want to go through those moments, right? And I, I really don't want to underplay like the, the despair and that sort of like just trauma in the aftermath that, because I don't want to just put a happy face and be like, well, you know, everything's an opportunity.

You have to suffer first, and you, and in Zen, in which I, I really discovered in the aftermath of the accident, again, not as this religious doctrine, but as, like, a way of being, you just have to meet what is, right? So, Zen, at its most basic, is just seeing the truth of the way things really are. And so the truth of the way things really were in the aftermath of the accident was that I was pissed as hell at my, at my husband.

I was so mad. I was in total despair that I would never run again. And, and Zen says, like, just be in that. It's, it's like, if you feel Push it away. It gets, we know that it gets worse, right? Or if you put that Pollyanna ish thing, like, well, it's, you know, lemonade, you know, the lemonade will come, right? And, and that's sort of where I write a lot in, in the aftermath of the accident about really training my mind to, I won't say to like be radically positive, but to see the possibilities.

Do you know what I mean? Like, I, I, I don't believe in just like, fake it till you make it, like you have to believe it. And so I just had to get radically open to possibilities, right? Which one of the possibilities was that my doctor was completely wrong and not only would I run again, but I would run better than I ever had.

And no one was saying Like I had to pull that out of like the depths of my brokenness and like see that that might be a story because it's all, you know, we go through this in injury illness, someone tells us something like makes a pronouncement and they have this air of authority and God, we just like.

We just go for it. We believe it. And that's nothing like that's not a comment on us and we're like somehow weak or limited in our imagination. It's just, it's like this paradigm. And I think part of you know, what, what makes this book so meaningful to me and I'm hearing from readers is that it's showing that we can actually rewrite the narrative.

And not by being fake or pushing away our pain, but by like going deep into it. 

Zibby: I mean, people, like, I aspire to live like you. Like, this is such a healthy attitude. 

Katie: Yeah. I know, it's hard. 

Zibby: Hard one, hard one, but so healthy. 

Katie: I really love to be a beginner, and that's one of the big mindsets with, that I learned from Zen in the wake of the accident.

So I'll just tell you quickly, a really dear friend of mine, like, a few months after my My injury, when I wasn't even sure I was running again, brought me a book and the book was called Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, which is a classic Zen text and it was written, it's a compiled series of Dharma talks that this late Zen monk gave in the late 60s.

And my friend Natalie gave it to me and she's like, you know, you're probably not going to understand it. And she did not mean that dismissively or like as a comment on my intellect more that like Zen can be very enigmatic and hard to understand. And so I started reading it and as soon as I started reading it, I understood it like completely and I understood it because I understood running and Zen and running and Zen and cooking and Zen and you know, like anything are the same thing.

It's like a showing up for a practice, letting go of it, needing to be a certain way. And coming at it fresh every day with what is called beginner's mind. And so beginner's mind, like, is such freedom and that's where the, the subtitle comes in. Like, if we can be in that state of beginner's mind, which is like, Oh my God, I've been running for 12 years or you've been doing your podcast for X long.

But you sit down at your desk and you're like, I'm a beginner today, like anything can happen and that means also anything, you know, transcendent can happen. Like you may have some epiphany or some big leap in your, in your podcast practice. Do you know what I mean? And I think we resist beginner's mind because we, it makes us look like, We don't know things.

And in our culture, we're supposed to know everything. Where in Zen, not knowing is actually a form of like, enlightened state. You know, it's a, it's an awakened state to be in that position of like, I don't know. Because when you don't know, so much more is possible. Right? Like, thank goodness we can't imagine all the possibilities in the world.

Like, our imaginations are far too limited, and that's a good thing. 

Zibby: Yeah. I mean, without enough inputs, you can't, like, take them in, rearrange them, make meaning, and have any sort of output of any value. 

Katie: Right. And so just going into each day being like, okay, show me. What? Like, I'm a beginner. Which isn't to say, like, you're, It's false modesty or you're not honoring your experience or your past, but it's carrying those with you and then being like, Whoa, what's show me today?

Like, what am I supposed to learn? And it's a really fresh way of being. And then some days our ego gets in the way. A lot of days, you know, like I need to be the expert or, you know, like, who do they think, you know, don't they know who I am or whatever. But if we can keep trying to come back to that beginner's mindset, we're capable of it.

Yeah. So much more than we thought ever possible. 

Zibby: And so how is your body feeling now? And what is your relationship to running like now? 

Katie: Yeah. I mean, my body's feeling good. It's like, it's older. It's a few years older, but I'm running still a lot and I'm out every day. Like really. For me, it's about having a relationship with my body and my mind, because you can really see your imagination when you're out moving, and with the natural world.

And so I'm out every day. I live in Santa Fe, New Mexico, so we have trails and mountains right out the door, but we also have just, you know, town sidewalks. And it's lilac season in Santa Fe, which, you know, Like, I just keep saying to my daughters, I'm like, when my time comes, bury me under a lilac. Like, no better thing exists for me.

Because, you know, so you can have that relationship. You don't need big mountains or wilderness, or, or like this epic river canyon. You know, you can find it out your door. And so, one of my favorite things right now is just to take my two dogs for a walk in the evening. And literally, we stop and smell every lilac.

Zibby: Aw. Aw. Again, it's all just so visual. Yeah. Everything, the way you talk, the way you write, it's like you just, you know, this transportative quality. Is that even a word? Trans something? Anyway. 

Katie: Transportive, maybe? 

Zibby: Transportive. 

Katie: Yeah, it's like, and I think that's kind of the message is like, we're alive right now in our bodies, in this world, in this moment.

And Like let's live in it, you know, let's go out in the world and and it gets increasingly hard for all of us because we live like in a digital world, too. Mm hmm. And, but, and, and this speaks to the title of the book, these brief flashings in the phenomenal world are always happening. They're like little sparks going off that you're like, oh my god, I'm connected, you know, I'm part of everything, like, I'm alive.

It can be as simple as that. And it could just be like, the lilac, you know, tree in bloom, or, you know, the way the light's coming in through a window. It can be a peak experience, too, but it oftentimes, these flashings are just beautiful, ordinary moments that we are too busy to miss. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh, I love it.

Katie: Okay, parting advice for aspiring authors? Uh, let's see. I have so many. I have many, but I would say keep notebooks. Just keep a notebook. I know people like to write on tablets now and computers, but there's something you were talking about the physicality, and this book is a very physical book, and it even says on the back, read this book with your body, like.

Bring your body to it, not just your thinking brain. Writing by hand in a notebook, not only does it not require batteries, a plug in, Wi Fi, or anything, but it's a physical act. Like, it's your hand moving on the paper. You can take your notebook, cram it in your back pocket, or whatever, and go out for a walk, and like sit somewhere pretty for five minutes, and put your notebook on your lap.

That's my advice. And just write down what you see and also like put zero pressure on yourself to put anything of value in the notebook because when you release that pressure to write great things, you just write what's real and that is the greatest thing. 

Zibby: Amazing. Okay, I'm going to take your advice.

I'm gonna get out there. 

Katie: Get out there. Look, there's so many kinds. You can have fancy mole skins. These, I even sent you one. Take that out. 

Zibby: You're right. You did. Yeah. 

Katie: Right. And it says for brief flashing. Yeah. And you can just keep a little notebook and write down your brief flashings because they're always all around us and they don't have to be, you know, epic or monumental.

Zibby: Okay. I'll do it. 

Katie, thank you so much. I'm so glad you're okay. 

Katie: I'm okay. Okay. Thanks Zippy. Bye.