Lidia Yuknavitch

Um, Lidia, I understand, I, I recently learned that you're ambidextrous.

I am.

I, I got my hand thwacked by nuns early on when I was young in Catholic school, so I learned to, like most things in my life, I learned to kind of hide something that I was told was wrong with me.

But as a person who's sixty-two, I can do whatever I want with my hands, so I do.

Were they whacking you because you were using your left hand and forcing you to use your right?

Yes.

Yes.

Oh, interesting.

So conceivably, you really are a lefty, but you're also-- Do you write with the same ease, or do you depend on one hand more than another?

It really was trained out of me, so I just sort of tucked my left hand under for years and years and years, and so I, I guess my right hand is my dominant hand.

But it's interesting, when I'm painting or drawing, I switch more often.

And with writing, in terms of typing, you're using both hands all the time anyway, so it's less of an issue, but I'm bringing my left hand back to life.

I love that.

I love that.

I have to say, it's one of the things I'm proudest of about myself, even though I had really no control over which hand was going to be my dominant hand, but I, I love being a lefty.

I love it about you.

[laughs] You've written that you don't see your life in order, that it comes in retinal flashes.

When you reach for your earliest memory, what flashes first?

Ordinarily sensory things like colors and sounds.

If I had to name one single thing, it would be water [chuckles] which would surprise no one at this point.

But I had some kind of strange pull or attraction to or obsession with water.

So the color blue and silver and the sound water makes and, and just this entity that's water that pulls you, those are my earliest memories.

So they're not of, you know, a family or friends or doing something that a kid would do.

They're, they're located around senses.

senses.As I was preparing for our interview, I watched your film a second time and reread The Chronology of Water, which I had read many years ago and felt that my usual organization of inquiry was not... didn't feel right and so I tried to structure this interview almost as retinal flashes as well.