♥ Promise to Write ♥

Holidays

2011-11-27T15:29:00.001-05:00

A happy Thanksgiving.

Soon Christmas will be here.

2011-11-11T12:53:00.001-05:00

Oh the colors of fall. I have to admit my dreams have turned to turkey and mashed potatoes.

This year I've come to truly love three things that I used to hate: sweet potatoes, tomatoes, and sushi. I didn't understand why one would choose the sweet potatoes when one could have the regular potatoes, tomatoes only excited my gag reflex, and sushi I was too closed-minded to even try.

But things have changed!

Sweet potatoes diced up with a little olive oil, salt and pepper, and oregano is my new go-to.

And roasted tomatoes basically taste like fresh ketchup. Fancy!

Here's a tasty recipe to put them in. And while we're at it, a perfect crisp-fall-day soup recipe from the same blog.

(As for sushi, I leave that to the pros, but who knows, once Thanksgiving is over and those dreams have come true, my new dream might be sushi chef!)

But my favorite fall concoction is the Apple Yogurt cake. It's best as a coffee cake, a morning cake, the thing you eat while you're still shivering from the cold night.

And it has these craters in it--these beautiful sparkling brown craters of cinnamon and brown sugar, and a tiny bit of butter. Those craters make life okay again.

So in this the season when things fall apart so they can rest awhile and then get bountifully back together again, strike a match to a candle and heat up the oven for a little light, a little warmth.

Scrabble!

2011-10-24T15:11:00.002-04:00

Still fun.

Scenes

2011-10-20T12:47:00.005-04:00

This is our first full autumn in Colorado, and I have to say it has made my love for this magical state grow deeper. After living in Virginia where fall doesn't come till November 15th, I've really enjoyed the wild and unpredictable temperature swings here (snow one Saturday, 80s the next), and the leaves that while not as wildly colorful as back East, are striking in the brilliant and constant Colorado sunshine.

I know people really go on and on about the beauty and majesty of Colorado, but it's really true...as my mom says, there's something about the mountains and the vistas and the peaks that reminds you of how truly tiny you are in the scheme of things.

This past week loved ones from the northeast came to visit and we traveled all around seeing beautiful scenes in every direction.

We also partook of the unbelievably tasty beers of Colorado (the Napa of beer!).

Echo Lake, snow & 46 degrees:

{Odell Brewing and Equinox Brewing in favorite city Fort Collins}

favorite at Odell's--Isolation Ale

{Equinox}

favorite, Autumnal Alt

{Great Divide in Denver}
favorite, Hibernation Ale

It feels like it's really fall (not just me pushing the seasons), so I give you permission to make this apple yogurt cake (I did last night) and buy a Yankee candle that smells like your mom's pumpkin pie (I did that too).

Under the October twilight the water mirrors a still sky...*

Hope you have a little time to take notice.

*Yeats

Can't beat the harvest

2011-10-05T16:45:00.002-04:00

I may have jumped the gun on the fallishness, as the last week or so in Colorado has been kind of warm...actually really warm. But I can ignore it. I can still wear a sweater when it's 87...mmm no. But this weekend is supposed to be cooler and I just turned on my pilot light in the fireplace--exciting moments in life! And we've been doing fallish things anyway....

First of all. The Buffalo Bills. Corey's favorite team on Earth roared in with three wins right off the bat and despite the loss last week, we still have hope (dangerous but essential for Bills' fans).

We think that hanging the jersey on the mantel helps their performance immeasurably. (Don't worry, I take it down during the week.)

I also made tomato soup from scratch for the first time. Grilled cheese/tomato soup is one of our favorite fall combinations but the cans and boxes always leave me wanting--a party in my mouth, but a party of extremely boring uptight people who don't eat chocolate or listen to music. So I turned to honey and jam's recipe and things were much better in there.

Shallots also go in the soup. My favorite foodie Anthony Bourdain says that shallots elevate the home kitchen to a restaurant kitchen! So when I burn toast I go find a shallot and wave it around in the kitchen to destroy the evil spirits.

I've also been making my dad's famous "Junk Salad." This is when you take all the leftover vegetables (celery, red and green pepper, onion, tomato) in your refrigerator, chop them up, sprinkle them with dried herbs, some Parmesan cheese, and douse them in balsamic vinaigrette and it makes your day seem not so bad anymore because you're eating your veggies and they're oh so good.

And the best part of fall so far is my mom sent me Pryde's coffee, just to tide me over...

Pretty nice.

2011-09-20T19:12:00.001-04:00

Fall candles are outta the box...

2011-09-13T01:09:00.001-04:00

What I'd tell you?

It's here.

So far there's been casserole making and baking...

And fresh feta and honey on bread in the mornings...

Fall is fun.

2011-09-07T16:15:00.001-04:00

Labor Day weekend found us at an Oktoberfest in the mountains and let's just say the promise of thick fall beers and crisp air made me not really that sad that this marks the end of summer.

And so we say goodbye to a pear in the afternoon to cool off, a Scotch whisky for Corey while he grills me amazing foods, flowers to beat the band, and the other million easy breezy little moments that make up a summer.

Next time you see me there may be pumpkins.

2011-07-31T15:08:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I go hiking to remember that the world is vast, the movements of the universe are strange and unpredictable, cruel and beautiful, and that when it comes down to it we're just like the butterfly on the log--dreamlike, always moving, even if it's just our beating heart.

2011-07-05T12:44:00.000-04:00

This Fourth of July weekend we went to Crazy Mountain Brewery, a little hole in the wall that I thought for sure wouldn't be that good...

...but we didn't try a beer we didn't like and they had the most beautiful big-headed pup running around their little establishment as the taps flowed and people ran in and out for more and more of their tasty concoctions.

I took many photos this weekend thinking I'd do a montage, but this one just said it all for me for some reason. Fourth of July is one of those holidays that I think is so much better when you're a kid--the fireworks still amaze, the heat isn't that big of a problem, you're happy at some festival getting your face painted with American flags and eating hot dogs with the ketchup dripping...

So I could relate to the wistful gaze of this animal, like he was remembering something.

Hope it was a happy weekend in the sun for all of you!

Saturday

2011-06-25T17:19:00.000-04:00

Mountain Saturdays are the very best...except now I have this problem where every time I go to a Farmer's Market I want to change my life and become a farmer, selling my goods each weekend. Seems like it would be a simple way to live.

Alas, societal norms beckon so I have to live out that particular life in my daydreams.

{ blooms }

{ if you aren't eating radishes, you're nuts! }

{ breakfast }

{ market }

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience. --R.W. Emerson

That's just the way it is

2011-06-23T15:33:00.000-04:00

Since we live in Colorado now, it's no big thing to make margaritas and Mexican food on a Wednesday night while staring at a mountain. It's just the culture we exist within now, we have no control over it.

Graduation weekend 2011

2011-05-11T15:00:00.000-04:00

On Sunday afternoon the man becomes...well, the man just continues to be a man in a bad job market, but anyway, we've decided to ignore those earthly worries for one weekend only and celebrate the end of law school!!!

It's been grand Williamsburg, Virginia--I'll carry the colonial spirit, or at the very least, the reenactment of that spirit, wherever I go. It was this time of year three years ago when Corey and I (then just engaged) traveled here to see if William & Mary Law was the one. The weather was perfect (as it is today), the town was peaceful (we didn't go into the Colonial Foundation section), the dean at the law school talked about the Buffalo Bills with Corey, and the rest is history.

This Sunday around 2 we'll be gathered by the lake cheering as Corey walks across the stage. From tortured writer who went to peace rallies in Boston, MA, to small town newspaper reporter, and now to esquire, cute husband has come a long way.

To say I'm proud is an understatement--I've been the one true witness to everything he's had to do these last three years, and I can tell you it's not for the faint of heart. And despite the fact that legal work is hard to come by these days, I remind myself as often as I can that it's not just about getting a job, it's about doing good work, helping the world in some meaningful way, no matter how small, and I have not a single doubt that Corey will be doing that soon, and in spades.

To relax a little as we wind down here and prepare for loved ones to arrive for the big weekend ahead, I've been setting up photo shoots in my dining room where the light is good around 3pm...and today it was lemons.

Thanks for reading about our journey thus far, and I hope you'll come along with me to the next thing.

Supermoon over Williamsburg + other weekender scenes

2011-03-20T01:50:00.001-04:00

Of course Williamsburg's temps are in the 80s so everyone is happily grilling, sunbathing, and jogging long distances in short shorts. Holy moly I don't belong here!

Hope the weekend is happy for you so far.

2011-03-17T10:31:00.000-04:00

In lieu of wearing green, I ate out of a green bowl this morning.

Please do not pinch me.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

2011-03-16T02:37:00.001-04:00

I've been away from the blog for a little while, mostly for lack of inspiration...sometimes in the post-Christmas winter months I get the major blues. So here's what I've been doing in snapshots.

Drinking coffee in the morning, as always.

Packing for trips, trips, trips.... Blacksburg, Virginia, Washington D.C., the wilds of Colorado.

It's amazing how monuments can make you swoon.

Watching my father cook Persian food...and trying so very desperately to learn how to do it myself.

Drinking Chocolate Ale with my little brother. Brewed at our favorite local Kansas City brewery, Boulevard, and made with chocolate from our famous local Chocolatier, Christopher Elbow, this special ale was sold out in Kansas City within minutes, but smart little Alex had a hunch it was available at a certain liquor store in Colorado, so he drove there, and bought out their supply.

I don't drink martinis, but I love the way the olives look on the camera. So I've been taking a lot of shots of martinis.

Singing songs...with Corey on guitar.

The days pass, so many moments to capture, so many tiny little things I want to remind myself not to forget.

Hello from deep within a Saturday

2011-01-29T15:50:00.004-05:00

Oh the plight of a law school wife.

Sometimes you lose out to the work at hand. You try makeup + drying your hair for once, 2 varieties of baked goods within the same 24-hour period, and the piece d'resistance, sweetly offering up a Lord of the Rings marathon night, to no avail. Like today, a perfectly beautiful January Saturday in Virginia and cute husband has taken off for Washington D.C. to learn about election law...
But, the man IS published, so can I really complain?

Oh you know you just want to read it so bad!

Okay, yes, I've been trying to find a way to brag about this for about 3 weeks now, so sue me....(But remember my husband will be a lawyer in 8 months, so double-check that subpoena!)

More real than the plight of a law school wife is the plight of an army wife, and I just read an excellent collection of short stories that floored me. It's called You Know When the Men Are Gone by Siobhan Fallon and I can't recommend it highly enough. It's well-written and meaty--a bit more realistic than the Lifetime show Army Wives, which makes life on a military base seem vaguely glamorous--and I read it in about 2 days, you could probably read it faster.

And now I will return to watching The Office on DVD and drinking coffee. Saturday chores can wait till, let's say, Wednesday. Life is hard.

Stay warm

2011-01-13T23:24:00.003-05:00

T.S. Eliot said April was the cruelest month, and I trust his literary genius, but holy moly January should be considered a close and terrible second. Those 31 days just kind of stretch out like the Iditarod, don't they?

This is the bleak midwinter, but we can't even play the beautiful Christmas song by the same name because the most wonderful season has left us, and left us in tatters...

I don't know what to say about the events in Arizona, as it has been greatly on my mind--when there's tragedy you feel like everything's been said, there's nothing to add, other than your thoughts and your prayers, and those always seem woefully inadequate. Over the years I've come to imagine that in dark days like these there's a big pile of thoughts and prayers somewhere that keeps getting bigger still and stronger and more solid, until it's an everlasting entity all its own that can really make things better in a way. So each day of worry and anxiety I feel about the whole thing I take a moment to add one more ounce of thought to the pile.

~

I have fallen in love with my Kindle! This definitely detracts from my literary street cred, but I don't care! It's just so cool!

But of course I am still an avid collector of the paper book and that will never change. Here's my stack...

And so Christmas fades away...

...but it is still just January, so we can keep lighting candles.

Cheerier post soon.

2010-12-31T19:28:00.002-05:00

All that's left of this year is the peel...

Happy New Year!!!!!!

2010-12-29T16:14:00.001-05:00

I think this mug I got in New York at the best little store near where my cute in-laws live is supposed to imply just a simple, "Hey, have your morning coffee, look out the window, relax a bit." But I'm taking it to a whole new level--the mug speaks to me during these hectic holiday times, he says, "Take a breath. It's okay. Take a coffee break. Take some photos. Read a book (on your new Kindle!). Plop those worries down and don't pick them up till next week."

Big snow came to the mountains today. My brother has been monitoring the storm system on his computer quite obsessively.

Oh winter!

Darling, the snow is falling...falling like forgiveness from the sky. --Over the Rhine

2010-12-24T20:29:00.000-05:00

Christmas is my favorite day of the year. We all agree to hope for peace and we go nuts (sometimes to a fault) trying to make one another happy.

If only we could freeze the moment.

Merry Christmas to all.

Love,

Alison

2010-12-03T21:19:00.003-05:00

Cold outside, warm inside, candles burning, Christmas tree bright. Life can seem like a tragic novel, but certain nights are from a storybook...

Hope you've got the same feeling wherever you are.

It's the holiday season!

2010-11-29T12:50:00.004-05:00

And I think you know how I feel about that...ecstatic! ebullient! jaunty and jolly! I can hardly concentrate on the details of daily life, knowing that Christmas music, Christmas movies, Christmas shopping, and Christmas baking are now socially acceptable!

Thanksgiving with cute husband turned out to be a very happy day--we cooked a whole meal by ourselves and I have to say we had a real sense of triumph at the end of the day knowing we could pull it off in such a tiny kitchen and with such meager major-meal-making experience.

But. The very best part of Thanksgiving? Thanksgiving morning when I awoke and what to my wondering eyes should appear as I walked oh so nervously into my kitchen dreading the drudgery ahead...

That's our elf Rufus. He brought me 2 varieties of sea salt dark chocolate and a copy of Disney's A Christmas Carol.

And now the season is in full swing...

Worms

2010-11-17T16:48:00.001-05:00

I took out the ironing board two days ago and now I'm never putting it back. Sometimes you just have to let go and allow yourself a free-standing junk shelf smack dab in the middle of your living room. And if other people have a problem with that, they can just leave. (People who stay without raising objection to either the junk shelf itself or the junk resting upon it get unlimited mugs of peppermint hot chocolate.)

This Thanksgiving it's just going to be cute husband and me. As I was reading the Bon Appetit article about how to cook a perfect Thanksgiving turkey I realized, hey! that's never going to happen! And so I read books instead and drank a sixth cup of coffee.

Sometimes life can seem a total unpredictable mess--that is, I have a post-graduate degree and I work in a bookstore, cute husband is searching like a mad man for a job that has something (anything!) to do with the legal profession--and it's very easy to let it all upset you. Sometimes when I get home at night I tell cute husband that I want to crawl in a hole and eat worms. It's my favorite saying left over from childhood. Thing is, cute husband's response is always: "I'm not letting you do that! There's no way! If you insist on doing it, I'm coming down there with you, and we're both eating worms! Do you want me eating worms?"

And then you realize, life ain't really so bad. At all.

Fallish favorites

2010-10-24T17:01:00.006-04:00

Fall is just a brilliant season--seriously, a genius move on the part of whoever thought up this little universe of ours.
The leaves, the spices and flavors, the slight change in the weather, it's all a perfect lead-up to my most favorite season, that being winter.

Now a few seasonal loves...

Cute husband calls the combination of Old Chubb and Scotch the perfect concoction for autumnal liquid courage. Sad but true.

Now, on to liquid strength...

I have been searching for a tasty creme brulee whole bean coffee since my mom told me such a thing existed, and, well, as I should have known from the very start of my search nearly 3 years ago, Harry & David delivered. Snowflake coffee mugs from IKEA also help the flavor for a winter-wisher like me.

And, well, how do I put this...ah yes, the greatness and glory of fall has now been bottled. Get yours today, morning will be less painful.

Happy Halloween indeed. For me the commercials are true, the absolute scariest part is having to give away all of my Reese's.

Memories of a strange childhood

2010-09-23T16:00:00.004-04:00

I think that one of life's great gifts is being able to joke (as an adult) with your parents about events in your childhood. It's always interesting (and usually humorous) to learn what your parents were thinking when punishing you for doing crazy stuff--for instance, though he maintained a gruff exterior when removing my television from my bedroom after my third C in a row on an Algebra test, my father later told me that he felt terrible about it for weeks, and that the actual removal of the tv from my room as I watched sadly about broke him for good.

Or when they admit that certain things they absolutely insisted that you do, in truth, seemed pretty ridiculous to them too. Like when my parents decided it would be a good idea to have my brother and I dress up after school one day a week and sit in the dining room with my mom where we would all sip tea and nibble scones. As though we were British people.

You can imagine how well this went over with a six-year-old and a twelve-year-old. I distinctly remember Alex and I staring at one another across the dining room table, a look of total confusion on our faces, "Is this real?" we wondered. "Are we really being made to do this?"

Well it didn't last long...in truth I only remember doing it once. And just a few months ago Alex and I brought this up to my parents. My father had completely wiped it from his memory, which my mom found funny because she said it had been his idea. And she admitted that she thought it was absolutely nuts at the time and it took everything she had to not burst out laughing that afternoon. My parents always went to great lengths to maintain a united front, which as a kid annoyed me to no end, but in retrospect I find it kind of sweet.

Nonetheless, the scone event did not traumatize me enough that I don't eat scones. I adore scones. And since I had a little time today, I made my first batch ever entirely from scratch. I usually use a mix. And there's no shame in that!

These are so absolutely marvelous. No chalky texture, not hard as rocks. Delicious amazing goodness in wedge form.

So I wanted to share the recipe with you, because what better way to say I love you than a sweet from my home to yours.

From Simply Scones by Leslie Weiner and Barbara Albright
Chocolate Chip Orange Scones

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, chilled (yes, that's a whole stick, live a little!)
2 large eggs
1/4 cup orange juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon grated orange peel
3/4 cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips (I used regular size; chocolate is one thing that should never, under any circumstances, be consumed in miniature)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Butter a 9-inch-diameter circle in the center of a baking sheet (I used a non-stick mini-scone pan, which lessens cooking time by about 7 minutes and shapes the wedges uniformly).
In a large bowl, stir together flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Cut the butter into 1/2 inch cubes and distribute them over the flour mixture. With a pastry blender or two knives used scissors fashion, cut in the butter until the mixture resembles course crumbs. In a small bowl, stir together the eggs, orange juice, vanilla, and orange peel. Add the egg mixture to the flour mixture and stir to combine. The dough will be sticky. With lightly floured hands, knead in the chocolate chips until they are evenly distributed.
With lightly floured hands, pat the dough into an 8-inch-diameter circle in the center of the prepared baking sheet. With a serrated knife, cut into 8 wedges. (Or just press the dough evenly into a scone pan.) Bake for 20 to 25 minutes (or 12 to 15 with the scone pan), or until a cake tester or toothpick inserted into the center of a scone comes out clean. Remove the baking sheet to a wire rack and cool for 10 minutes. With a spatula, transfer the scones to a wire rack and cool for 10 minutes. Recut into wedges, if necessary. Serve warm, or cool completely and store in an airtight container. These scones freeze well.

Have a happy evening.

2010-09-15T00:23:00.002-04:00

Believe it or not, I'm still here, waiting for fall, hoping for a little order to life.

As summer quiets itself, I find myself overwhelmed by the possibilities of life--at times so hopeful, and at other times so filled with worry about all the ways things can go wrong (How do I panic? Let me count the ways...).

So I take solace in books, and in tea. I am reading the new Jonathan Franzen.

And we've been watching football...

'Tis a simple life that I would not change a bit.

See you very soon. I promise to be a better blogger in coming weeks.

**Please, no comments about the hopelessness of both of our teams. Thank you.

Down to earth

2010-08-16T23:40:00.000-04:00

It's like we've been in space all summer and we're now in the pressure chamber getting used to gravity again.

I wonder, do they give the astronauts beer in cute pint glasses?

Because it's all that seems to be working for us.

Retrospective

2010-08-07T23:57:00.001-04:00

Time to get back on the road. The asphalt road, and the road of life. Tomorrow we begin our journey back to Williamsburg.

Oh what a summer.

Like a band of gypsies we go down the highway
We're the best of friends
Insisting that the world keep turning our way

--Willie Nelson, "On the Road Again"

I haven't the foggiest

2010-07-30T12:08:00.000-04:00

Foggy mountain, foggy brain.

And my mum informs me that it's actually not fog, but clouds, because we're so darn close to them up here.

I know there's a metaphor for life there, but I just don't quite know what it is.

Happy weekend wonderful people.

I think I've done the impossible

2010-07-28T19:12:00.001-04:00

I try to come up with at least one really good playlist per season. This is my summer list that I've been perfecting over the last several weeks. I've been telling myself that once I got it perfect, I could then begin playing it while I wrote. But I had to get it perfect first. Don't I take the art of procrastination to a whole new level? Yes I think so.

Anyway, in case you need a few new tunes in your life, here's what I've been listening to on repeat.

(Click to zoom in and get a better view.)

Certain scenes from an uncertain life

2010-07-24T17:55:00.001-04:00

One more rainbow...

(Photo by cute husband, since he had shoes on, and I tend to run around shoeless.)

I could actually make out the entire color spectrum (Roy G. Biv) on this one. Breathtaking!

Think we might need to change the name of the blog to Rainbow Blog.

And a sunset to beat the band:

These little gifts keep my motor running during uncertain times.

For the love of beer

2010-07-21T02:17:00.008-04:00

In a world of self-proclaimed wine aficionados, sometimes us beer lovers are unfairly judged as, shall we say, low brow. We're supposed to listen to country music and smash empty cans against our heads (not that there's anything wrong with that), while producing a hearty burp of satisfaction with our Bud Light.

It stinks to be stereotyped. Cute husband, who held my hand and showed me the way down Good Beer Lane, calls light American mass-produced beers, ahem, weasel piss. He quotes one H. Allen Smith, who, upon tasting his first American beer, said, "Put it back in the horse!" See, beer drinkers are snobs too.

Don't get me wrong I love wine (see previous long-winded posts about the heavenly glory of Louis Jadot Chardonnay), and I love tasting new wines, and can taste the difference. Seems like wine lovers and beer lovers in this country have stepped to either side of yet another dividing line. The wine lovers say, "I hate beer! Ha! Crap only has one flavor." And the beer lovers say, "Wine! Ha! Bunch of stuck up fools."

(Hmmm, it's just occurring to me now that maybe I'm just an alcohol lover.)

But anyway, I've been lucky enough to have beer lovers in my life who are the real deal. My mom taught me to love Moosehead; cute husband's parents took me to Rohrbachs in Rochester, New York for a brat and a brew when I was 22 and I've never looked back; cute husband is practically a professional beer taster, and (not so) little brother Alex has discovered so many tasty new beers, which he brings home, slaps down on the kitchen table, and says, "You've gotta try this one with me."

And the truth is, the really great brewers out there take just as much time and pride in creating their flavors as do those grape-crushers in California, Chile, and France. And it's time they got a little more respect.

Tonight we supped on my new favorite beer, called St. Lupulin, an extra pale ale. Aside from its complex (but refreshing!) flavor, it was the description on the side of the bottle that really had me at hello:

It reads: A mystical legend echoes in our brewhouse-- that of St. Lupulin (loop-you-lin) the archetypal hophead. He devoted endless summers to endless rows of hops, tending to the flowers and the beloved resin within--lupulin.

Extraordinary oils in this yellow resin provide this dry-hopped extra pale ale with an undeniably pleasing floral aroma and clean, crisp finish. One sip of this seasonal summer ale and you, too, will believe.

Odell Brewing also has a winter seasonal brew called Isolation Ale, that I can't wait to try come that time of year. Here's its description, via the website: Ever been in a warm, cozy cabin and had a secret desire to get snowed in?

(Me: Why yes Odells, all the time! Even in summer! How did you know?!)

To celebrate the winter season, we offer our Isolation Ale--a traditional winter brew made with premium malts imported from England. It's just one of the reasons Isolation Ale stands alone.

(I love any company that dares to pun.)

So wise up world, enjoy a pint with your loved ones. Preferably as the sun goes down on another day, and all that awaits for the rest of the night is renewed hope for tomorrow.

Rainbows, cinammon rolls, and The Quickening

2010-07-19T14:51:00.006-04:00

While a certain web video has corrupted my rainbow photography forever, I still thought this one was worth posting.

I don't know about you, but I'm ready for changing leaves, sweaters, and pumpkin-flavored foods. This heat has got to stop. And I love Colorado, but oh what I wouldn't give for a Trader Joe's run, so that I could make these. When we drive back in a few weeks, I think I'm going to make cute husband stop in and buy the pizza dough before we even get home.

And I wanted to share with you this book:

(image taken from the author's website)

Please go find it--it's so wonderful. It's about two Iowa farm wives spanning from the early 1900s through the Great Depression, and the chapters alternate in their voices as their shared story is revealed. It absolutely brought to life for me the hardships of farming in the midwest during those desperate times, and the story itself is riveting.

I visited the author's blog where she wrote that it had taken her nearly fifteen years to get this novel published. She finished it when when she was twenty-three, and she's now thirty-eight. She described the excruciating and long revision process: "I cut five characters, two narrators, forty years in my timeline, and at least two hundred pages. I had about thirty pages left. I re-envisioned my plot, created another narrator, two more characters, and finally started in."

Sheesh.

In her acknowledgments, she thanks her literary agent, Esmond Harmsworth, who believed in her so long ago when her novel was but a dream. Well guess what? I interned for him at his agency in Boston, right after college. I sat in a back corner of the office and read the slush pile all day. Glamorous it was not.

Weekend photographs

2010-07-10T19:32:00.002-04:00

A few things I've seen lately.

Mountain storm rolling in...

The clouds just start to eat the light.

But it always clears away to reveal a familiar view, even more beautiful than before.

I call this one, "Take a peak."

Think like a moth

2010-07-07T19:02:00.007-04:00

Perhaps he doesn't understand the concept of a window. Or perhaps he just keeps on believing, against all odds, that he can make it through to what he just knows awaits on the other side.

Maybe there's no difference between the two.
I've got to respect any living thing that's always choosing the light.

The Fourth (the fifth, the minor fall, the major lift)

2010-07-06T01:48:00.002-04:00

Only a country I truly love could be capable of making me so completely crazy sometimes.
So I saluted with the rest of em...

But mostly it was just an excuse to sit out here and giggle with people I love most in the world.

Oh and we cooked from the Bible:

And kept the levity in life:

I hear it's 100+ degrees in good old Williamsburg, Virginia. The NOAA web page has a picture of a cactus next to Williamsburg. Too bad I'm in Colorado, wearing a jacket.

*Blog title lyrics by Leonard Cohen, as if you didn't know

2010-06-29T19:59:00.003-04:00

Twas September of 2001 and the second night of college--whoever it was pulled the dormitory fire alarm that night, I've got a lot to thank you for.

Out on the median in the middle of the street I met a boy named Corey--cute, funny, sweet. I'd forgotten to grab my college ID on the way out, so he promised to vouch for me when we went back inside.

A five-minute conversation, a flash of the baby blues, and I was hooked for life.

Nearly 9 years later we're married. The minute he leaves, no matter where he's going or for how long, I start thinking about when I'll see him again.

Last night was our 2nd wedding anniversary, so I came down to Denver and we painted the town red.

What's better than palling around with your best friend? Especially if that best friend happens to be good-looking.

The morning

2010-06-26T17:17:00.003-04:00

The morning has so many secrets I would otherwise not know about, if not for a sleepless night.

So thank you worries, thank you concerns...

...in truth you never got the best of me.

And I'm reading this book:

I demand you go out and buy a copy today. It may be making it into my Top 5 Ever.

The Weekly Reader

2010-06-22T15:14:00.005-04:00

It's quiet here on the mountaintop. Yesterday--the first day of summer--was marked by an elk herd sighting, and, get this, a baby deer sighting as well! (I was furious with myself for not having my camera with me.) I had never seen a baby deer before. I had no idea they were so small. For some reason when I thought of a baby deer I was picturing the baby cow that's born out on the trail in the movie City Slickers. But no, they are adorably little, and speckled, and this one was hopping like a bunny just following his (or her) mom down a big hill with his (or her) little head darting all around looking at the great big world. For a moment I wanted to be a deer, so I could have deer babies...

(wunderground.com)

In other news, I wanted to share the book I'm reading with all of you--I know I did this just a few days ago, but when the really good ones come along, I think I've got a duty to share. I mentioned in that post that I was intrigued by Julie Orringer's new book, The Invisible Bridge. Well, before I started that one, I thought it would be good to read her first book, a short story collection called How to Breathe Underwater. I picked it up from the library last night around 7:30pm and at 12:30pm today I've got about 60 pages left to go. Yes, it was one of those that I sort of, um, stayed up all night reading. Most of the stories have to do with girls coming of age, and as someone who tends to read a lot of women's literature, I'd be hard pressed to think of anything I've read that achieves such a pitch-perfect portrayal of what it is to be a girl, in terms of our relationships with men, each other, our families, and ourselves. It's just beautiful, and makes me so excited to pick up The Invisible Bridge. Before I started How to Breathe Underwater, I had been reading Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, a book about which I've read and heard many excellent reviews. But I just couldn't get into it--it's just so British, like the petroleum. Other than the Immortal Bard, Brit Lit has just never been my thing. Think I'll wait until it's out in paperback so I can slog through it on my own time and not have to beg the library for one more week.

I titled this post "The Weekly Reader" thinking it was a clever title for a weekly reading update, but then it reminded me of an old elementary school memory. Remember Weekly Readers?

(wow, found a very retro one)

And that reminded me of another elementary school memory. Scholastic book orders! Do they still do those?

(Yep, looks like they do. Sadly the one pictured above is offering "American Idol" books. What?)

On book order day I would literally go mad. The teacher would bring in the box after lunch--the white one, with the Scholastic red. She'd say, "If we have time, we'll hand these out at the end of the day." I'd spend the rest of the afternoon eyeing that box behind her desk, and if I felt like she was forgetting, I'd go up to her desk and remind her. Having to wait until tomorrow was simply not an option.

Many are happy it's summer. I am too--seems like summertime always produces a few happy, carefree times. But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't happy that we are now on the down slope--the days will all be getting shorter, fall is the next immediate season. But I shall attempt to live in the moment.

Celtic Pride

2010-06-18T02:43:00.004-04:00

This day started out wonderfully.

We're talking tea, with a really funny name...

Yes, I NEED my morning thunder.

And it was supped against an inexplicably beautiful backdrop...

And accompanied by a good book, and a good fruit...

Then in the evening I met cute husband at a pizza joint--we hadn't seen each other in three days. It was a joyful reunion. The reason we went to the pizza joint was to watch the beginning of the Boston Celtics-LA Lakers basketball game. It was game 7. High stakes.

We left after the first quarter and headed for home--the Celtics were up, we had great hope, though of course we lived in fear, as any true fan will.

Interlude:
Nearly six years ago, in the winter of 2004, a college girl sat in her heat-less, mouse-infested apartment in Boston, Mass. sipping her morning coffee. The anchor of the early morning local news came on the television and reported that the Boston Celtics had lost yet another game. With a dismissive grin and a shake of his head he said, "Ah, folks. The Celtics aren't just bad, they're completely irrelevant."

Meanwhile, the college girl's boyfriend--a die hard NBA basketball fan--often spoke to her about his favorite basketball player, a man--an intense, passionate man--by the name of Kevin Garnett. They called him KG for short. He played--toiled, really--for an abysmal team called the Minnesota Timberwolves. The college girl's boyfriend worried that he would be stuck in cold and unforgiving Minnesota forever, never living up to his potential, the world never knowing how great he could be.

A couple of years passed, the college girl and her boyfriend left Boston for good.

Then, like a miracle, in 2007, that player--KG--got traded. To the irrelevant Boston Celtics. And in June of 2008, KG and the Celtics won the Championship. They beat the LA Lakers. And oh the victory was sweet.

The no-longer college girl and her boyfriend celebrated by getting married that very month, and nearly two years into their marriage, there was a rematch. Lakers v. Celts in the Finals.

They watched each game with their hearts in their throats.

And on the evening of June 17th, 2010 as the clock neared 10pm mountain time, their hearts were broken. The Celtics lost.

Doc Rivers--the majestic coach, Rajon Rondo--the boy wonder, Paul Pierce--the warrior, Ray Allen--the shooter, Big Baby (Glen Davis)--the gentle giant, and Kevin Garnett--the unbreakable heart of the team. They lost.

And though our hearts are broken, to loosely quote Denzel Washington in Remember the Titans, "They're Hall of Fame in our book."

I love you guys.

Summer reading

2010-06-16T17:18:00.003-04:00

Between the local library and the small but excellent indie bookstore at the bottom of the mountain, I've been doing more reading up here than I've done in a long time. (This is not necessarily a good thing, considering there's some other stuff I need to be doing, but really, when is reading great books bad?)

This summer has so far produced a wealth of interesting-seeming books that have now been bumped to the top of my list. Cases in point: The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer, The Passage by Justin Cronin, The Stormchasers by Jenna Blum, and The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall (both Brady Udall and Jenna Blum have visited or will soon visit that great local bookstore at the bottom of the mountain that I was talking about). I'm also intrigued by Brady Udall's older book, The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint.

But this week I'm reading Day for Night by Frederick Reiken, who happens to have been one of my college profs. Before I got to college, and with the goal in mind of taking a course from him, I read his earlier two books--The Odd Sea and The Lost Legends of New Jersey--just because I was so excited to be taking class from a real live published author I could find at Barnes & Noble! Both of his books were quite good, but this one that I'm reading this week is leaps and bounds beyond quite good. It's amazing to see how much he's changed and grown, even within the confines of his own specific set of excellent skills.

I don't want to give too much away about the book--it's one of those that it's best to go into it sort of blind--but I will say that it's got me rethinking the way that I write in the sense that it's telling a story in a truly daring and different way. When I sit down to write, I tend to think very linearly and very straightforwardly in terms of narrative, description, character development, and all those other writerly (and annoying) buzzwords. Reiken's book knocks all that on its head to great effect, and does so without being even remotely showy or bizarre.

I've updated my to-read list (jeez, now it's just gotten out of hand) on the right, so take a peek and maybe we can all read something great together.

Now, a transcendent mountain photo.

I decided to just recycle a rainbow photo, since books are a great way to get to the end of the rainbow, no wishes or leprechauns necessary.

Speaking of...

...Memories!

Last night...

2010-06-13T18:30:00.005-04:00

...this happened:

Snow on June 12th. Others complained, I put on my boots and frolicked.

Then my brother, cute husband and I stayed up watching the snow fall and drinking Colorado beer.

It was one of those nights you just know you'll always remember.

The unlikely scientist

2010-06-10T01:12:00.010-04:00

I was sitting this evening in a chair. Stock-still. Thinking about this and that, about how I want to write a novel, and about all of the sane and not so sane reasons that I want to do so. A few:

- prove I am worthy

- make the expensive education mean something

- begin my journey to accepting an Academy Award for best adapted screenplay (taken from my own novel)

- back up my passion with something actual (indeed, the goal of any life worth living)

And it occurred to me that writing, while part art, is other part science.

There is the figuring out what you really want to say to the world. Then there is the saying it. Then there is the saying it better. And better. As good as you can get it. It takes hours in the mind's own laboratory, attempting this, that, and the other thing until what you were searching for reveals itself.

Writing is not invention, but discovery. Everything is already there--the story waiting to be told, screaming, gasping, hoping to get out of the thought cave and into the world. Will this writer give me life? it asks. The writer is the searcher, the try-anything-you-never-know and the one-more-day-and-I'll-get-there sayer, the trial and error maker, the believer in the ultimate power of her work. And it's a belief so vivid, so her, that it easily washes out the non-believers.

She never stops. She believes strongly that a world without her words is not acceptable, that Academy Award or no, her laboratory is a legitimate one, and one ordinary evening, in the fading light, what she was meant to know, she will know.

What if someone whispered: it's there just over the hilltop...

A few shining moments

2010-06-06T19:40:00.004-04:00

Due to rapid snow melt, the water rose 2 feet overnight, making the river rapids unbelievably fast.

A mountain rainbow and some fine Scotch whisky, and that's about all you need.

Poor little bookworm

2010-06-03T01:14:00.011-04:00

I really relate to this New Yorker cover:

But the desire for extra schooling can actually be blamed entirely on my parents--more specifically, on my mom's large book collection: Book Owners Have Smarter Kids, Salon.com. And my dad saw fit to read me T.S. Eliot by the age of three, so I'm completely doomed.

Best part of the article: according to a study, "...simply giving low-income children 12 books (of their own choosing) on the first day of summer vacation 'may be as effective as summer school' in preventing 'summer slide' -- the degree to which lower-income students slip behind their more affluent peers academically every year."

Hope for our weary world folks, hope for our weary world...

Seriously, the oil spill is making me scream and stomp. I'll concede the argument that God gave us oil along with water and all of the creatures that live in or near the water, but we all just need to buy bikes now.

Wise old mountain moon...

2010-05-30T14:04:00.000-04:00

...shining through the tree branches.

Moments of perfection dot the hours of everything else.

Hope everyone is enjoying the long weekend.

Nature's bounty

2010-05-27T11:05:00.001-04:00

I'd be quite happy to come back as a four-legged mountain dweller...

(I think that's the mom. Or possibly our neighborhood fox, Klaus.)

I don't know what all these photos have to do with writing specifically, but there's something about these mountains and the glorious creatures contained within them that brings out that little nipping creature in my brain who taps against my skull and whispers, "You ought to write a little something, don't you think?"

And I especially enjoy the concept that "no studies have been done to determine what to do" if you encounter a mountain lion. C'est la vie.

Gas station, mountain home, not a thing to call my own...

2010-05-25T01:30:00.007-04:00

Back again! I don't know if you lovely readers are thinking, yay! or crap, I thought this blog was done!

We are in Colorado for the summer so that cute husband can be an intern for a few months. He is working his tush off and I'm...blogging...

We drove all the way from Virginia, through West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and my sci-fi looking home state of Kansas.

I do think the windmills are amazing though--bring on clean energy!

And so here we are. Funny how you can say that phrase after a long journey to a place you want to be. Or when you wake up in the morning. Or looking in the mirror, wondering what to do next.

The good news is, it's beautiful here, as always. And, as always, everywhere you look someone is exercising...vigorously...like running up a mountain really fast. Me, I like to just sit and read and watch the mountains. I feel that they speak to me in some spiritual sense--I just don't understand how they can be so beautiful, so all-encompassing.

And the best part...we had snow this morning. For a snow-lover like me, it was like waking up in heaven, though I hear the Colorado folk are sick to death of the stuff.

See the white space between the trees? There's actually mountains there.

So I put on my slippers...

and chose some books...

(I don't think I brought enough to choose from.)

...and later we got this...

It's a hard knock life.

In truth the serenity of this magical place does not quite match our mood. We are trying to figure things out for the summer and for the rest of our lives. But it's a godsend to wake up to this each morning. It's like a spoonful of instant peace and calm to replenish our dwindling stores.

So here we are.

*Post title is lyrics from "Penny to My Name," and Eva Cassidy does a soul-stirring version of it.

Crime & Punishment or, law school

2010-05-04T23:27:00.011-04:00

I hadn't planned on blogging this evening. I got home late and was doing good just to be sitting in front of my computer spooning my Trader Joe's Chana Masala into my mouth while surfing the net. Cute husband is in finals so dinner together is, basically, out of the question. Law students in finals are fascinating, someone has got to do a study. They sit in one place for hours at a time in a state of complete and total concentration. When they do finally get up--either to eat or go to the bathroom--they remain in a kind of airtight bubble out of which NOTHING can pull them. I will simply say, "How's it going? Feel like you're making progress?" And I get this haunted stare, like, WHO ARE YOU, why have you entered my extremely private thought cave? Furthermore, he is so in the swing of torturing himself so that he can do well, that any offers of kindness are rebuked as scathing critiques of his ascetic way of life. "Need anything?" I say in my sing-song sweetest-wife-ever voice, as I do his dinner dishes. He does not look up from his papers. "All I truly need is to study."

Touche.

So I guess I decided to blog tonight because, well, I'm kind of lonely.

During my sad and pathetic dinner/web surf, I found this link and I had to share it. Once again it was found via Blog of a Bookslut. Apparently, there is, truly, now a video game of Dante's Inferno. So someone by the name of Robert Brenner decided to write a what-if of a Crime & Punishment video game.

Highlights:

CHARACTER: You’re Raskolnikov, a student radical in St. Petersburg. Somebody’s stolen your birthright. Somebody’s gonna pay.

MISSION: Fight your way through a nightmarish philosophical struggle that anticipates the rise of Communism. Smash the capitalist class. Raise the consciousness of the lumpenproletariat. Redistribute the wealth—to yourself.

WEAPONS: Marxist dialectics, Napoleonic complex, an axe. You can upgrade your axe to a chainsaw.

CHEAT CODE: Ctrl-P unlocks Sofia’s panties.

It cracks me up...

But it got me thinking about reading Crime & Punishment in Mrs. Jenkins' 12th grade English class. (Lauren was by my side for this traumatic experience, hope she reads this so she can tell me if I'm remembering everything correctly.) Mrs. Jenkins spent weeks telling us how much we were going to love Crime & Punishment--it was going to change our lives, make us better people, turn us into geniuses in just under 500 pages. On the day the books arrived we were all chomping at the bit with our $5 cash, thinking, I've got to get my hands on this thing!

That night I sat in my bed struggling, fighting against the meager 30 pages she'd assigned us. It was the first time in my whole life when I was truly just reading words; they meant nothing to me. Night after night I kept forcing myself, promising myself I would get to the bitter end, I had to see the bright light I knew must be at the end of this tunnel. But alas it was an oncoming train--of nothingness. To this day, I hate that novel. I have met many people who loved it. I even married one of them.

A professor in college said that reading is just the reader trying to connect with the writer any way that he can--searching for any commonality that will put them both on the same ground so that he (the reader) can feel like he's in good hands, like he's listening to someone who knows something about him, and the two of them can move forward together. Dostoevsky and I just weren't meant to be. Mrs. Jenkins loved that novel so much. She just couldn't get over its power. I do that with books too--I push them on people, say, it's so amazing, it will change your life, you'll never forget it! But in the end reading is just for two. And what happens between reader and writer no one can ever really know.

But it wasn't all for naught. Tonight when I ran across Crime & Punishment: the video game, it was nice to get the jokes.

Saturday's thoughts

2010-05-01T16:44:00.002-04:00

When asked to list my favorite authors, Margaret Atwood is always one of the first to come to mind. In truth, I've only ever read two of her books (Cat's Eye & The Blind Assassin), and feel quite ashamed that I haven't gotten through this one, which is the one everyone loves, the one that's taught in the schools. Reading her books is work--but the good kind. She rewards her reader, and manages to weave together (with no seam showing) great storytelling, philosophy, and a strong social consciousness. That is to say, you can't read one of her books and not feel smarter and better off upon finishing.

Today she has a piece up on Daily Beast called "Why We Must Defend Writers". <---(In this case, the period goes outside the quotations because it's a preexisting quotation. Argh now I'm confusing myself.)

Anyway, here's my favorite part:

For writers can’t retire, nor can they be fired: As we hear constantly from those who think there should be no arts grants, writers don’t have real jobs. That’s true, in a way: They have no employers. Or rather their employers are their readers: which imposes on them a truly Kafkaesque burden of responsibility and even guilt, for how can you tell whether you’re coming up to the standards of people you don’t even know? Publishing a book is like stuffing a note into a bottle and hurling it into the sea. Some bottles drown, some come safe to land, where the notes are read and then possibly cherished, or else misinterpreted, or else understood all too well by those who hate the message. You never know who your readers might be.

But the whole thing (only two pages) is worth a read, if you are so inclined. I actually think this article dovetails well with thoughts on The Book Thief. And in general, with our ongoing discussion of why stories matter, and as an extension of that, why stories have power.

Hope you are enjoying the weekend, preferably with a good book at your fingertips and loved ones in close proximity. I'm back in Williamsburg, so of course we're in full sweltering-heat swing, with temps in the 90s and slated to stay that way. The swimming pool down the street is completely packed with screaming children, and there are men outside in sleeveless shirts barbecuing meat.

So I'm pretending it's still Novemeber and staying inside and baking. I made muffins.

See you soon.

On the road again

2010-04-27T22:29:00.008-04:00

All things must end...

...the evening clouds disappear into the veil of night...

...the most perfect dinner is consumed...

...your favorite tile gets old and must be ripped out...violently...

...and the gardens in such brilliant bloom this season, will go quiet in the season to come...

...and I have to leave Kansas City, where I think, no matter how many other cool places I go to and live in on Earth, my heart will always be.

But I'm one of the lucky people who has good stuff waiting for me at both the arrival and departure gates of airports, and so tomorrow I get to see cute husband for the first time in 3 weeks!!!!!!

Often all that's left of a time is a darkening sky, and a happy memory or two.

And the sad but beautiful part is, you've got to just make due with that.

Groovin + grammarin

2010-04-26T00:09:00.011-04:00

This weekend I was trolling the Internets and ran across this song at npr.org. I know chances are slim you will click on this link--after all, clicking on the hyperlinks in a blog post indicates a certain, shall we say, lack of a life. I know this because I click on hyperlinks. So that fully admitted, I would like to try and get you to click on the link because I believe it will really make you happy to hear this song. It's called "My Feet Can't Fail Me Now," and if it doesn't put a smile on your face and a little bounce in your foot, then frankly you need medical attention.

It's a brass band jam from a New Orleans outfit called the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. I loved this quote from the article that preceded the music samples:

William Claiborne, the first American governor of the Louisiana territory, believed New Orleans was ungovernable due to the citizenry's preoccupation with dancing.

Holy moly, what a wonderful world it would be if that was our problem in the usa today. If everyone just sort of took to the streets and danced. Great music would be playing all the time, and our spirits would all be a little lighter. I know it's Monday and I'm a little groggy, but I don't think this idea sounds that crazy. The only time I dance nowadays is at weddings, and when I crash into my bed afterward, I always say to myself, "We really gotta do that more often." But then we just go another year until the next wedding. Occasionally, I'll wiggle a little when a good song comes on my ipod and there's no one else around, but that's not enough!

So, humor me?

Now, humor me again. I have something I need to say as a writer, a reader, an almost-teacher, a language-lover, and an avid sentence-diagram-er. It's directed at the whole world--again, I delude myself into thinking this blog has wide readership. So here it is, take it to heart, paint it on your wall, tattoo it on your tush:

The period goes inside the quotation marks.

And you can quote me on that. "The period goes inside the quotation marks."

So does the comma in the middle of the sentence: We tell Elaine that we are "heartbroken," but alas, to us, Franklin was just a goldfish.

Now, apparently the British do it differently, but we are not British. (If you happen to be British and reading this, please by all means do it your way, we'll agree to disagree.)

I fear that you will take me for a stuck-up grammarian. I am not at all that way. I enjoy a well-thought out sentence, and people who can speak clearly and eloquently off-the-cuff always impress me, but in truth I believe that, given time, anything can become grammatical. That is to say, if we make it part of our vernacular, then it becomes correct and we must accept it. Saying "ain't" ain't pretty, but we know what someone means when they say it, so it's grammatical--it makes sense. Language constantly mutates and builds upon itself, and it's crazy not to adapt along with it; it's how we all came to say, "cool" to everything. But for the love of Pete, World, you gotta keep those periods and commas contained. They look goofy and desperate hanging out like that! They are like prostitutes out on the sidewalk that must be hastily ushered inside, so that no one gets offended, or, worse, the wrong idea.

Merry weekend to all

2010-04-24T23:00:00.004-04:00

It's been raining here for three days, which I kind of enjoy. Gives me an excuse to spend my whole day with a book and not come across as nerdy or lazy.

But these trees are everywhere, and the rains seem only to strengthen them.

Springtime sure does make you wonder about the universe, doesn't it? So elegant, so well-planned.

See you next week, you wonderful people.

Can't get no satisfaction

2010-04-22T18:17:00.010-04:00

Don't know if you know this, but I really love Shakespeare. I don't always understand him. In truth, I got through many of his plays reading these alongside the original plays, which reside inside my giant red THE COMPLETE SHAKESPEARE book, spelled out in big, obnoxious, you-are-not-smart-enough-to-understand-this block letters just like that. For awhile, I really loved King Lear--it's kind of messy and extremely melodramatic, and one of my favorite contemporary novels, A Thousand Acres, is a modern retelling of it (keep this in mind for later: A Thousand Acres won the Pulitzer Prize). But in years past I've come to love Romeo & Juliet the very best. Part of it is because in addition to reading it in high school, college, and graduate school, I also taught it three different times while I did my student teaching. So it's the one that I understand the most fully, and the one that I've done the most reading about. And beyond all that it just makes me swoon.

But this post isn't really about R&J or the Immortal Bard.

Remember the scene in the play when Romeo is outside Juliet's window the first night they meet, and he's shouting up to her where she stands on the balcony?

He says, "Wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?"

And Juliet responds, "What satisfaction canst thou have to-night?"

And Romeo says, "The exchange of thy love's faithful vow for mine."

Well this little exchange came to my mind today as I was reading a New York Times article about the author of the newest Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel, called Tinkers. I haven't read the book yet (and I have absolutely no doubt that it may be quite good), but this post isn't even specifically about that book either. In the article, there was this quote from the author, Paul Harding, on getting rejection letters when he first sent out Tinkers:

"They would lecture me about the pace of life today," Mr. Harding said last week over lunch at a diner in this college town, where he is now teaching at the workshop. "It was, ‘Where are the car chases?’ ” he said, recalling the gist of the letters. “ ‘Nobody wants to read a slow, contemplative, meditative, quiet book."

Then, one of his writing professors and a Pulitzer-Prize-winning novelist herself, Marilynne Robinson, gave this quote:

“One of the problems I have is making my students believe that they can write something that satisfies their definition of good, and they don’t have to calculate the market,” Ms. Robinson said. “Now that I have the Paul anecdote, they will believe me more.”

So here are a few thoughts on this, because it's been bothering me all day...

I love a quiet book. Three of my favorite books that are also quiet books:

The Folded World by Amity Gage
Crow Lake by Mary Lawson
Evening by Susan Minot

And it's true, like Marilynne Robinson says, there are so many writers out there who read things just to see what their own stories should be like. They want to know what sells and then they want to duplicate it so that they too can be published. I went through a phase where I was doing this...

But when we talk about books being marketable, and we talk, figuratively, about the "car crashes" in books, I think what we're really talking about is satisfying our reader. Not boring them. Not making them feel dumb. Not giving them characters that do randomly odd stuff that does nothing to illuminate life or the way we live. We're talking about giving readers a good story. Something that is not work (work in the ugly sense of the word, it's okay if it's in the good sense) and keeps them turning the pages late into the night, not caring that they have a busy day tomorrow, or forgetting, as they sit riveted in an airport terminal, that they are there to get on a plane.

To me it's false to suggest that books that are page-turners and books that are meditative are meant for two different types of readers. As though those of us who spent good money on English degrees don't appreciate a good story, and those who were smart and got applicable college degrees, or no degrees at all, are not capable of sitting quietly and appreciating something quiet.

Right now, I'm reading a Luanne Rice novel! I'm loving it!

And Luanne Rice, though she'd never pass muster in a writer's workshop, seems to be VERY concerned that I am enjoying her book. She seems like she'd be hurt if I stopped turning the pages, because on every page there's something that makes me want to keep reading. She doesn't think it's about her, but about us, writer and reader together, exchanging a faithful vow of love.

Write me something that transports me--whether by thrill or meditation--and I shall sit dutifully enthralled. Think of all the twists and turns in Romeo & Juliet: Romeo is depressed, Romeo meets Juliet (their families hate each other), Juliet and Romeo fall in love, Romeo kills Juliet's cousin, Romeo is banished, Juliet seeks out a magic potion to seem dead, Romeo believes that she is dead, Romeo kills himself, Juliet kills herself!!!!

A good writer, like a good lover, cares about the other person.

Where do you go when the world's got you down?

2010-04-22T00:50:00.005-04:00

In between worries for summer plans (cute husband's and mine), and the fact that my parents are stranded in Europe due to volcanic ash, not to mention other various and sundry concerns that define my anxiety-ridden way of life, I have been escaping in my mind to a little beachfront cottage with a white deck that looks out over the water, with no one else in sight so I can hear the soothing sounds of the waves. (I really don't think there's ANY sound more relaxing--if I could live and sleep each night by the ocean I think my night owl lifestyle would be cured.) In my daydream I'm alternating margaritas (my new recipe: tequila, lime juice, and a floater of Grand Marnier) with Louis Jadot Chardonnay. Cute husband sits on the ledge and plays his guitar. In the mornings I walk for miles along the beach and by afternoon get brave enough to go far out into the water, wading for hours and feeling the sunlight on the top of my head. When I get home as the day begins to fade, I step into the front hallway of the white cottage, the floor covered in sand, and this poem painted on the wall to remind me of what's important.

Whenever I had trouble sleeping as a kid, my mom would tell me to just go somewhere nice in my mind, somewhere I'd love to be, and imagine all the things I might do in that place. To this day, I still do it, and it really works! I think it has an effect on my writing too, as it helps me create scenarios in my mind and forces me to take the time to really flesh out all the details that help bring a scene to life.

So if you've got troubles, if you've got worries, meet me here, in the little cottage with a white deck...

...of course you can't see the cottage in this photo because it's invisible to the naked eye. It appears quite clearly after two margaritas.

The runaway train

2010-04-19T20:45:00.005-04:00

Today I've been thinking about getting older. I know some of my readers will groan here...just a second, let's let them groan...because they might find it a bit, shall we say, naive, for me to be talking about getting old when I am but a rip-snorting twenty-seven. I know I've written here before about how twenty-seven feels old because all of the items on my "To Do By 27" list have not quite been checked off yet, but that's not really what I'm talking about today.

Today I'm thinking about how pleasant it can be to get older, how there is a certain wisdom involved in admitting that time is passing, and that you are moving along with it. Being home, it has been nice to drive by old places and remember them when they looked new. I feel a certain pride as I walk through my neighborhood admiring the tallness of the trees and the thickness of their roots, because I was here when the trees were tiny, when the trees had just been planted. We used to have to be extra careful to close our blinds at night, but now it's not such a big deal, because the trees are big enough to obstruct the view. It's funny to remember my parents commiserating with my friends' parents, "Can you believe how small the trees are? They're practically bushes. It's going to take forever for them to look normal." But forever turned out to be the duration of our childhoods; none of us can believe how fast forever went.

I like to remember the block parties we used to have down the street, and how we are one of only a few families that remain here from those older days. My parents tell me there are no more block parties, and that makes the memory even sweeter. My vision of it is like a cloud that clears in the center to reveal a muggy July night and the dads in shorts and the moms running back and forth to their houses to grab more food, and the kids in bathing suits waiting on the curb for the fire department to arrive (they used to come and spray us). And best of all the falling night, as people start to trickle home, but a few stay, drinking beers, swatting mosquitoes, laughing and talking and telling the kids to stay close, it's getting dark. It's hard to believe now, but that was the best night of the whole summer: we all started looking forward to it the day school got out in May, and for the end of July and August we were sad that it was over, and said how it had been the best one yet.

The passage of time is undoubtedly scary--I think Ben Folds' analogy of life barreling on like a runaway train is quite apt. But I can't help but feel glad for the things that I have to remember, I can't help but feel that they make my heart bigger and make going into my own mind even more fun than it used to be, when I was younger, and I used to just think about the things that were to come. I miss so many things, I regret not savoring certain moments more, but how nice to have them stored along the little shelves of my mind. How nice to know they are there.

Chips

2010-04-16T23:18:00.006-04:00

The coffee still tastes good out of a chipped cup... If not better, because a chip means age, and maybe a nasty run-in with the kitchen sink, and good things come with time and experience.

My mission for the weekend is to accept the little chips of life as elements that add character. Hope you'll do the same.

I also need to get reading...

{ my bedside table }

This always happens when I come home. It's actually a 3-tiered problem, as follows. (1) I am incapable of bringing just one or two books with me when I travel, I bring 6-7 because I never know what kind of mood I'll be in (needless to say I never finish all the books I bring), (2) I end up going through my old books I store here and finding a stack that I want to bring back with me, (3) I can't go a week without a stop in at the bookstore, especially when I'm home and our Barnes & Noble is oh so well stocked, so I end up buying a couple. That I'm a nut goes without saying.

Happy weekend my friends. Thanks for reading this week, it really means a lot to me.

Wasteland

2010-04-15T17:54:00.009-04:00

Driving back from my shooting on Monday, where I mostly took photos of the springtime color and the flowing water in Brush Creek, I noticed that at the other end of the creek things were less pristine. The trees were old and spindly instead of colorful and the water seemed to flow more slowly, and with less sun glinting off its surface. I'm new to photography, but one of the things that I enjoy most about it is the way you can find beauty even in the ugly stuff--a landscape can be striking on camera whether it's lit by sun and marked by plenty or defined by its darkness and shadow. To me, this is perhaps the greatest similarity between the two disparate arts of writing and photography--there is always the work of trying to make beauty, no matter what you attempt to convey. My father--a photography-lover himself--told me that there is what you see and what your camera sees, and the art lies in making the camera see what you see. The sentiment helps me when I'm trying to capture scenes I find beautiful--I ask myself, what is it that's striking me? I think it's also a powerful question to ask myself when I sit down to write. That is to say, how do I make my readers see what I want them to--what I believe they must see?

And, so, do I even need to say it? April is the cruelest month...

...breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

--T.S. Eliot

Another day, another dime

2010-04-15T17:34:00.003-04:00

Since life here in the Midwest is always fairly quiet (unless we have a tornado or a flood), I've had time to take a few more pictures for your enjoyment. This post marks a few of my favorite Kansas City spots, and the next one will be a bit more dark and macabre, as I got down close to the creek like I'd hoped and took a few of all those stones and dark flowing water.

One of the BEST places in Kansas City is The Dime Store in Brookside. We used to go here on Saturdays when I was a wee one, and often I was allowed to pick out a toy. The best part about the Dime Store: the creaky, slanted wood floors. I'd joyfully hop from floorboard to floorboard just to hear the creaks. And though the Dime Store has undergone some rennovation and is under new ownership, the floors live on!

Inside are various and sundry treasures you might never see anywhere else...

Even after all these years, they still have a respectable jokes and gags section.

And then, two wonderful local bookstores, and you know how I feel about local bookstores...

The first was Rainy Day Books in Fairway, KS...

(You have to respect stacks of Judy Blume books.)

And the second is just for kids...

...Reading Reptile in Brookside!

Before heading home, a stop at Topsy's. A place that will change your views on popcorn forever.

Kansas Citians give one another these huge tins of popcorn as holiday gifts. I bet there will be a museum for them one day.

Reading to the little people

2010-04-14T13:06:00.002-04:00

As some of you know I wanted to be an English teacher in a former life, so as you can imagine, I'm passionate about reading to kids. I'm the person at a baby shower who just gives a stack of books and everyone groans... It's recommended that kids have at least 1000 books read to them by the time they enter Kindergarten--it could be the same book 1000 times, but reading to them obsessively--before bed, while you wait for the car to be fixed, or for the pediatrician to come into the exam room--is the single most important thing you can do to stimulate their developing minds. One of my professors in my education program said that the night you get home from the hospital, put the baby in the crib, and then get out a book and start reading. It's never too soon! I recommend going book-shopping with an elementary school teacher--my mother-in-law can tell within seconds of flipping through a picture book whether or not it's good or bad (it's actually quite amazing to watch her).

SO, now that I've climbed down off my soapbox, I wanted to share with you this list, compiled by the wonderful and amazing Tattered Cover Bookstore of Denver (this famous local bookstore is one I've actually been to!) of literary websites just for kids. Since everything is increasingly web-based, I thought this might be a good tool for both my teacher readers and readers who know little people. That is to say, I'm hoping you'll pass this along. I found the link via a book blog called Blog of a Bookslut, which is a wonderful literary website--they always have reviews and suggestions about books I'd otherwise never hear about.

My personal motto is, when all else fails, read.

Let me introduce you to a gem...

2010-04-12T17:29:00.004-04:00

...found right smack dab in the middle of the country. A little place I call home. A little place called...Kansas City, MO.

Thinking about my 5-6 daily readers, I know that most of you have already been to Kansas City. Some for our wedding, others, well, are from here too. But I've decided to do a little post about it anyway, just in case there's someone out there who happens to be both reading my blog and under appreciating Kansas City.

Perhaps it's because this is where I grew up, and if all goes well and your childhood is nice, you always have happy memories of the place you spent your youth. Others see buildings and parks--you see the doctor's office where you got your braces off, and the park where your father taught you to ride your bicycle. But having said that, I really do believe--as do most people who live here--that Kansas City is a hidden gem. It's easy to get around, there's very little traffic for such a large metropolitan area, the people are unusually friendly, and for a place that most of the country considers a hick town, there's a lot of culture here: museums, jazz clubs (and a rich jazz history), an art institute, divey bars, and delicious restaurants.

This morning I sipped coffee out of my old chipped heart mug--my parents bought this for me one Saturday when I was about eight or nine at Pryde's Old Westport, the best kitchen store on Earth.

{ Have I mentioned to you my new favorite breakfast: yogurt, granola, and a spoonful of jam--quite good. }

Then I went down to the Plaza for some shooting, and here's what I found...

{ Goodness gracious I love tulips. These have such vibrant color that they came out looking psychedelic on my camera. }

{ In the parking garage, I spied a birdie--I was worried that she was hurt, but I think she was just getting out of the sun for a bit. }

{ Then I walked over to Brush Creek and took photos from the footbridge. The footbridge is in honor of our sister cities, many of which were very exotic! }

{ And though the Spring is magnificent in all its splendor, I still think the remnants are pretty and poignant. }

{ After my shoot walk, I headed home to blog and on the way picked up a sandwich from the best sub shop on Earth--Mr. Goodcents! $4.69 for a sammy! }

Just a few things I love about this place. I think if I ever do write a novel, I will set it here in my homeland. There may be more photos to come, tomorrow I'm planning on venturing down closer to the creek where I can get some more dramatic (think wasteland) shots.

This is one of my favorite...

2010-04-12T01:18:00.004-04:00

...literary passages of all time. It's from Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections. I read this book while I was in college (while I should have been focusing on assigned reading), and because I was in the literary hotbed of Boston, MA, I attended a free Jonathan Franzen reading in an auditorium at the Boston Public Library. Sadly, I don't remember much from the reading, I just remember laughing a lot and feeling really cool that I was at a reading, in Boston. (Side note, and something I may blog about later: lately, my lack of cohesive memories has really been bothering me--I stare up at my bookshelf sometimes, at books I list as some of my favorites of all time, and cannot totally remember their plot lines. Same is becoming true of some childhood memories that used to be very lucid; even college is beginning to blur. It doesn't scare me so much as make me feel like I've lost something--namely, essential elements of my being. That said, maybe it's not so much the experiences themselves that make up our "essential being," but the effect of those experiences upon us, which means that only with time--and by extension, forgetfulness--do we achieve a measure of our true selves.)

Anyway, here's that passage from The Corrections. I don't know what made me think of it last night (talk about a strange memory), but a quick Google search of "the corrections depressed person tv" brought it right up on Google Books. By the way, if you haven't read the book yet, I envy you such joy on the horizon. It's about a crazy (therefore typical) family.

Earlier in the day, while killing some hours by circling in blue ball-point ink every uppercase M in the front section of a month-old New York Times, Chip had concluded that he was behaving like a depressed person. Now, as his telephone began to ring, it occurred to him that a depressed person ought to continue staring at the TV and ignore the ringing--ought to light another cigarette and, with no trace of emotional affect, watch another cartoon while his machine took whoever's message.

That his impulse, instead, was to jump to his feet and answer the phone--that he could so casually betray the arduous wasting of a day--cast doubt on the authenticity of his suffering. He felt as if he lacked the ability to lose all volition and connection with reality the way depressed people did in books and movies. It seemed to him, as he silenced the TV and hurried into his kitchen, that he was failing even at the miserable task of falling properly apart.

--Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections

The marks of time

2010-04-09T18:30:00.012-04:00

In Kansas City for a little while...
While there is one major drawback (cute husband is missing), it's nice to be home.
These old books now live in my old bedroom and I couldn't help but snap a photo. To think of all the hands that had to hold them, all the boxes that they traveled in and out of, all the fingers that lightly gripped an edge and turned a page. It's magical.

I'll meet you back here next week for some more verbose posting.

In the meantime, here's some visual stimulation for the weekend, found in bridges (click through the slide show). Some of these took my breath away.

And in the spirit of springtime, some flowers I spotted today. While we don't want our prose to be purple and flowery, it's fine for our flowers to be so. (Tee hee couldn't resist.)

{ Happy Spring! }

The Book Thief

2010-04-05T11:57:00.009-04:00

I finished the wonderful and amazing book The Book Thief last night. For me, it was one of those rare books that will probably stick with me through the years. I know some of my readers have read it (it was on the recommendations of my mom and my father-in-law that I finally got to reading it), but for those of you who haven't yet, I really hope you'll pick it up one day soon.

Somewhere in the middle of the book's 550 pages, the characters became real to me--whether for their own sake or because many of them reminded me of people in my own life, it's the same difference. At least to me, it was such an unbelievable story of the triumph of words. And more specifically, the ultimate triumph of good words over bad: a reminder of the importance of telling one's own story in the face of tragedy. Surely writing is one of the great human acts of renewal, one that I think rivals what others tell me of their religious or spiritual experiences--it's a way to clear a path through worry and pain and surprise yourself by finding the good in things you were so sure were completely bad.

Just wait'll you meet Liesel Meminger and Hans Hubermann, and sweet little Rudy Steiner, a boy with a pure heart. And, as books about World War II go, I can't think of one that gave me a stronger sense of time and place, nor one that had such a strong hypothesis to the oft repeated (and unanswered) question of how Hitler and the Nazis could have done what they did. Just as good words have real power to heal, so do bad ones have power to destroy...and I'll leave it at that for now.

In the same vein--because you know how you'll be thinking about one thing you've read and then you read something completely unrelated and yet somehow the two stick together in your mind for no other reason than their proximity to one another--here's an interesting article from The New York Times that I read late on Saturday night. It's about a palliative care doctor who, when faced with her own form of terminal cancer, decided--again and again--against palliative care. I found myself thinking of her story in terms of what it might offer the rest of us. It's something I feel I could ruminate on all day: this idea of feeling one way your whole life, but when faced with a decision, acting in defiance of those feelings. How frightening and exhilarating to think of ourselves in this way--so unpredictable, even to ourselves.

And here are a few photos of our weekend. How was yours?

UPDATE: Some updated thoughts. I've just been perusing the internet a bit looking for others' thoughts on The Book Thief, and the vast majority are highly favorable. That said, some think it's overwrought and doesn't deserve, as the book jacket suggests, to be included in the same literary canon as Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl. I've heard this same sort of criticism about the book Little Bee (haven't read it yet), which is not about WWII and the Holocaust, but which also claims to be an "important," "life-changing" book. Similarly, cute husband, as most of you know, is a Bob Dylan freak and finds that many fans are hesitant to give Bob credit for his later work (namely, the sublime Love & Theft, released on 9/11/2001). They claim that the legend has lost his touch, when in truth he's just changing.

I find this phenomenon fascinating and annoying. There seems to be a fear of adding something new alongside the old, as though the two cannot co-exist without canceling out one another. I think that the process of older works giving way to and having influence upon the newer works is the essence of what we think of as "Literature" (big L).

Any thoughts?

Take the heat

2010-04-01T17:03:00.005-04:00

Since we're coming up on two years of living in Virginia, and I'm going through my second round of experiencing the seasons, I've come to understand that this state basically has no Spring. Winter lasts only about six weeks (from mid-December to mid-February), then suddenly we're talking 70s. Today, April 1st, we're cresting the 80 degree mark. It's really quite depressing for someone like me who loves winter and often opens her closet door just to stare longingly at her sweaters hanging neatly in a row. However, there is something kind of wonderful about the summertime lifestyle. The swimsuit simply lives on the edge of the bathtub because it's always wet and needs to be dry by tomorrow so that the poolside (and here, beach side) activities can be repeated again. There's lots of beer-drinking because everyone is so darn hot, and though we use the AC as much as we can, by the time the June electric bill arrives in the mail we make ourselves go old school in the evenings: windows and fans. Long about July, you learn to just be content sweating as you read your book and sip your third margarita. (At least I do. Cute husband absolutely cannot stand the heat, mostly due to his very pale skin--his idea of a perfect summer day is going to three movies in a row so he can revel in the always overpowering movie theater AC. My mom also feels this way; she has pale skin too).

And oh the summer rains--the waiting inside for the sky to clear so you can go back to the pool because you know it will be hotter and muggier afterwards than it was before. Or the few times when the rain does cool things off a bit and the breeze that follows the storm is like a new start on the day...

I just think it's so interesting how our moods and routines change just a little bit with each season. Is this something we impose upon ourselves or something imposed upon us? Nearly all of the bloggers I follow seem to want to document these season changes--there have been so many posts about the changing trees, the freakishly warm weather, the demands of changing one's wardrobe with the season. Awhile ago I wrote about how in winter it always seems like we are being led into hibernation--our god-given time to just ruminate a bit, stay inside, care for the ones we love for lack of anything better to do. And so too does spring and the coming summer seem like instructions handed down from a higher place: go outside, be happy there, let the sun ease your worried mind.

It's simplistic for sure, but most right answers are.

Staying awake

2010-03-26T02:29:00.013-04:00

The wee hours of the morning are upon me now. As I think I've mentioned to you before, this is when I come alive. 6pm is my 9am. Around that time I feel like I finally start to wake up, think about what I'd like to accomplish, get a little excited for my day. Except it's dinnertime and time to sit down and watch the college basketball tournament. Round about midnight I get my midday burst of energy--tonight, since cute husband doesn't have class on Fridays, I convinced him to take a walk with me at 12:23am...and it's raining here.

As we were out walking I noticed lights on in a few windows and wondered if they were fellow night owls, or just up late seeing if K-State could pull it out over Xavier. As we walked, a few cars pulled out of the parking lot and I wondered where they were going--to an overnight shift, or to Walgreen's for a kid with a late night ailment.

In college cute husband had to work an overnight shift one night a week. At the time we were living far apart from one another and he would call me before he started his shift. The eight hours of work that lay ahead of him always seemed so daunting because he had to endure them in the middle of the night. There's something more terrible about doing your work in that kind of solitude. I would wake up at 3am thinking, he only has five hours left, at 5 am, only three more hours, at 7:30, knowing he was watching the clock, doing the last few things before he could go home and sleep away the day.

When I was five or six, my brother (a baby at the time) had a god awful earache one night and I remember my dad going out at three in the morning to find something to ease the pain. Even then I remember being worried at the thought of my dad driving all alone out on those dark quiet streets searching for the right medicine. To six-year-old me, the whole scene was frightening and tragic, my baby brother's screams matched with my mom's worried face as she rocked him. But in the morning he was fine again--for my parents it was just a mark along the timeline of their hectic lives, for me it had been a huge event, a spectacle that lives vividly in my memory even today.

I admit sometimes there is nothing more nourishing than a good night of rest. The warmth--the familiar warmth--of your bed, the ability to close your eyes and think, despite every little hassle and tragedy of life, again, tomorrow. But I have to say that staying awake a few times in your life almost always makes you a more interesting person. It's a time to hear the strange creaks of your house, the ones that get lost in even the tiniest movements of daytime; a time to work tirelessly, alone with your thoughts, pushing through every urge to sleep. And at 7am, as you hear the sounds of the world coming awake, you know that you have withstood the scary silence, and too the solitude, that masterful interrogator; you have lived time that others haven't.

In the mailbag

2010-03-24T17:03:00.011-04:00

Ever heard of Powell's Books? Well, I've never been there, but as a book/bookstore aficionado it's one of my "places to see before I die." Others wish for the Scottish Highlands, India, Marrakesh...me, I just plan future trips to famous local bookstores.

Well, since I sometimes spend my evenings just browsing the Powell's website, I recently discovered that you can sell your old books to them online--send them to Powell's media mail for free--and get "virtual credit" added to your online account. It was a no-brainer. As much as I love reading, there are always a few that I don't like so much, and a few more that I know I'll never get around to reading, so I do occasionally part with some so that I can have a little cash to buy a few new ones.

My package from Powell's arrived today and I got three new books that I can't wait to dive into ("into which I can't wait to dive?"--the whole hanging preposition thing sometimes seems pretentious to me). Plus I had an awkward few dollars left over so I decided to go for a Powell's pint glass to hold me over until I can actually go there and buy a tee shirt.

1. World in Half by Cristina Henriquez, 2. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie: A Flavia de Luce Mystery by Alan Bradley, 3. If You Follow Me by Malena Watrous

Also, the New Yorker illustrators are really wowing me this year with their designs--can't wait to dive into this one, as this week's fiction is by Joyce Carol Oates (that link is to read it online, if you like). Squeel!

I love holding books and magazines in my hands, knowing there might be a great story contained therein. I love opening the cover, the copyright page, the title page, the dedication page...eyes scan to find chapter one, and then, the first line. Sometimes I have trouble getting into it, sometimes it starts off good but gets boring...and sometimes it's the beginning of something great.

Some inspiration

2010-03-23T18:27:00.008-04:00

This blog post broke my heart and reminded me that sometimes you just have to pick up and go, and that doing so takes the biggest kind of courage.

This business left me in awe. To me, the best work out there simply captures some important feeling--nothing fancy, just precisely right. (Click through the videos on the right side of the site, numbered 1-6). (Found via honey living.)

And I loved this photo, and the Steinbeck quote that acts as the caption. Perfect.

P.S. You'll notice that the blog is a little bit WIDER today. I actually went in and rewrote some HTML. There may be hope for me yet...

No you are not hallucinating

2010-03-22T15:58:00.002-04:00

Well you know it's bad when your little brother--who is swamped with schoolwork and other related college duties and really doesn't have a whole lot of time to peruse the blogosphere--looks at you aghast over drinks one evening and says (and I do mean in all caps), "YOU HAVEN'T POSTED SINCE FEBRUARY 17TH." We were sitting at a table with my parents and cute husband and we were having the "Alison, what are you doing with your life?" conversation. When one of them asked me, "So, what's next?" and I responded with a noncommittal shrug, it was my brother Alex who said, "Well for starters you could update your blog."

As is usually the case, the kid was right.

The main thing keeping me from writing was that I've failed in all of my promises for this blog--the story, the application to an MFA program, and on, and on. During the first couple of months of the year, when I was spending each day in front of my computer screen crying and pulling out strands of hair, I just became completely annoyed with myself for only posting about "the struggle of writing." Ugh, I was boring myself. And furthermore, as I was sitting down to write each day--trying to turn what started, with this blog, as a "regimen" into a "day job"--I got an overall sour taste in my mouth about writing in general. While avoiding writing, I would web surf and find articles about how an MFA gets you nothing in this world, and how most writers with one are about as destitute as the writers without one. And long about the end of February, when the MFA app was about to come due, I realized that writing stops becoming an outlet and starts becoming torture when you begin to think about it in terms of proving your wares to people (e.g. getting published, getting into an MFA program, so you can tell all your friends and so your parents can finally tell all their friends that your life is not a total waste).

Cute husband thinks the answer is in putting myself out there as much as possible, turning this blog into a business where I attempt to interact with other writers, and build up a sort of community that helps one another out in times of writerly stress. I'm pondering this...

My dad thinks I should go to law school because both my husband and soon my brother are doing so, and he has visions of a family business. (And he thinks I'm smarter than I actually am.)

Mom just keeps cheering maniacally from the sidelines--the woman is incapable of giving up on me, which I find really endearing, considering what a flake I can be.

Cute husband's parents (cute parents), too, seem to be indelibly in my corner and send sweet emails on a regular basis saying how whatever I decide will be good.

Yeah, the people in my life are way too nice.

But for my part, I want to just come back to this blog as a place to write about my thoughts, whether they have to do with writing, books, someone that puzzled me out on the street, and other categories that fit into a larger sub-title of "random musings." I feel like I'm at my best and most confident when I'm writing little essays about things, so that, in general, is what I'm going to do. I know I've written here before, saying, I'm back!, only to NOT come back. But my hope is that in letting Promise to Write just BE, with me as your humble author and you as a few nice people who check in every now and again to hear my thoughts, this can work again, and maybe something new and exciting can grow here after all.

Writerly angst (what else is new?)

2010-02-17T20:04:00.012-05:00

The problem with blogs is that once you put stuff out there, you can't really take it back. Furthermore, you're forced to look at your own bad writing while attempting to try and write a post that you can at the very least call decent. I'm sick of writing about how tough writing is and I bet you're kind of sick of reading about it.

Here's an article that reminds us to appreciate the overwhelming power of words--their ability to satisfy, sustain, and take the place of other things we once deemed essential. It also happens to be the story of a very special person by the name of Roger Ebert. It's one of those things that upon reading will fill you with gratitude and awe.

And as far as my self-imposed writing deadlines go, I am reminded of the great Douglas Adams:

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they go by.

And while we're on the subject of Douglas Adams, I just looked him up and found this quote, which made me feel all the better about everything:

The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.

I'm still here. I'm writing, but not as much as I should be. My stories keep getting muddled, the characters so clear to me in one sentence and in the next they've escaped my dark chamber of a story, they're out walking in the sunshine laughing because they fooled me. My expectations for myself keep getting higher, and the higher they get the harder it is to type. Truly, my fingers bunch up and my knuckles suddenly ache and it's an excuse to walk into the other room and open a book--during the reading of which I recite to myself, I'll never be able to write something this long or this good--or eat a muffin (I'm now baking health-food muffins because I end up eating too many muffins) or resign myself to a day of despair and internal recitations of "I'll try again tomorrow," but with no intention of actually doing the things I say to myself I. will. do.

But I see words floating between the blood and muscle and ligaments of my fingers...worry, evidence, regret, cry, dark, blue, sky. There's a switch that will release them, and all these bad days constitute my stumbling search for the switch in the dark. If I can find it, flip it, and allow the words--using the speed of my own racing pulse--to reach, at long last, their perfect place, then I am a writer again.

Writing diet

2010-02-03T17:04:00.006-05:00

I'm going to take the advice of a few different people and start another story. I've got the seed of an idea in my head--it popped in last night during my second glass of wine. I won't share it yet because every time I talk about an idea it somewhat jinxes it for me--ruins the act of discovery that is writing. Not giving up on the Christmas story as a submission piece, just trying to keep my options open. And I'm going to go about this one differently. Starting today and ending next Friday, with Saturday & Sunday as editing days, I must write 3 pages a day. Three pages per day for 8 days is 24 pages and that's long enough for a submission piece. And there's not going to be any excuses. I MUST WRITE 3 PAGES...NO MATTER WHAT. I can't obsess that they're not perfect or decide to call it quits because I'm having a bad brain day. I've just got to get a story on paper. After it's on paper, I can go into obsession mode while I try to fix it up.

To clear my head, I'm off to take a shooting walk (where I just go outside and take a long stroll with camera in hand) in the beautiful dusk light. Then, two pages still to go for today.

I'll update you daily on my progress. And feel free to leave nasty comments if you sense I'm getting off task. Time for some tough love.

How the pros do it

2010-02-02T18:53:00.001-05:00

Today was a major writer's block day. I was so desperate that I did a Google search for "novel ideas" (I'd worked myself into a frenzy and decided to give up on the short story and start a novel. Don't worry, that didn't really last).

But my Google search found a very cool page via NPR where established writers describe their cures for writers block, where their motivation to write comes from, et cetera.

It helped me to read that famous writers get writer's block too and that they set a 5 page goal for the day and come midnight only have 3 paragraphs. And that they go on too long letting certain characters ruminate only to realize after about 10 pages that nothing has happened in the story. Obviously, they've been able to overcome these things, and it gives me a little flicker of hope that I can too.

Peruse a few: Novel Ideas.

Meditations on Six Feet Under

2010-02-01T17:24:00.005-05:00

As the time approaches 5pm on this Monday, I think it's probably obvious to you that I've been a real procrastinator today. I'm really trying to get back on my blogging regimen and post 3-4 times a week, religiously. But so much of sitting down to write is consumed by: "What the heck am I going to write about today?" At times it feels like a bit of a cop out to just pull something out of the air and go with it, but I also realize that that's sort of what writing is. The good stuff can only emerge by exploring all the possibilities out there.

So pardon me if this seems a little random.

Corey and I have been watching a new TV on DVD--you may have heard of it--called Six Feet Under. This is an HBO show that began in 2001 (the year cute husband and I started college) and ran until 2006. I actually rented the first season from Blockbuster one summer when I was home from school and after about three episodes decided I wasn't that interested. So imagine my mixed emotions when I opened up the complete series from cute husband on Christmas Day. He could tell I was less than thrilled... But the man is going to be a lawyer--he's very convincing. Let's just say we started season one about three weeks ago and we're now about to start season five (the final season). In short: we can't get enough of it and though I won't make this official until we finish season five, I can comfortably say that it's my favorite television show ever.

I'm not posting about it here so much to recommend it to all of you (while of course I do recommend it, I know it's different strokes for different folks and I know TV on DVD can consume a lot of time) but just to have some sort of discussion with myself about what makes it great from a writing standpoint. I took a screenwriting course in college and found that style of writing to be incredibly limiting and difficult, but that hasn't stopped me from having involved daydreams about converting my novel into a screenplay and winning an Oscar.

So these are things I love about SFU.

I love that the writers have dared to give us weird characters--not weird as in fetishes and obsessions, but weird in the way that most of us and most of the people we know are weird. Everyone has little strangenesses about them and it's those things that are most intriguing; it's those things that draw us to one another. It's our weird hangups--the things that bother us and press our buttons and excite us for no good reason--that color our relationships with everyone we know.

I love that the strangeness of the characters makes for a strange family (the show focuses entirely on a family of funeral directors), but not so strange that they can't function and love one another. All families are dysfunctional in some way, but only in rare cases does this mean that there's no love there. In my experience, most movies, television shows, even books want to give us the rarer story and forget to tell us about the truth of most "normal" families--yes we're weird, but it just makes things interesting.

I love the portrayal of gay and minority characters as real people. What a novel idea! The most normal couple in the show is the gay couple.

I love that the writers let us hear whole conversations--long meditations between two people or several members of the Fisher family really hashing it out, saying what they mean, letting things out that they've been holding in for a long time. Being mean to one another.

I love how the characters go through marked ups and downs. They can be on the right track for months at a time. Life is going well, there's a modicum of contentment each night before they fall asleep. And yet restlessness always returns. They re-examine things and upset the apple cart again.

I love the relationships that exist between each of the children and their mother. All three are like her in some way, and though she drives them crazy, they all love her more than they could ever express. Though their father is dead--he comes back in the form of a ghost--I love that all of the characters still seek his approval for so many things: not just congratulations on a triumph, but permission to be sad or angry, or to move on.

I love that the show is willing to discuss death in a matter-of-fact way. Not in a religious or mystical sense, but as something that happens to all of us. And I love that it has no opinion about life after death. We just know that in some way the dead visit us again, whether in our own minds or in some ghostly way, we don't ever really know. But does it matter? Either way, they are speaking to us.

It's fun to think about what makes something you love so good. My hope is that some of these bullet points will seep into my work.

Three stages of creativity: inspiried, uninspired, re-inspired

2010-01-29T14:18:00.002-05:00

Friday afternoon and my writing day is winding down--I didn't get nearly as much done today or this week as I wanted to, so I'm promising myself that this weekend and next week I'll do better and work harder at sticking with it. My March 1st deadline is creeping up on me; I spent January in such a fog that it kind of passed me by. Cute husband and I are finally going to see Crazy Heart this evening, a movie we've been dying to see (but we live in a place where movies take a long time to get here), so I'm hoping it will be a chance to enjoy a really great story and will re-inspire me for some writing time tomorrow. I love the movie's tag line: "The harder the life, the sweeter the song." I also highly recommend looking into the music of Ryan Bingham (yes, odd coincidence that he has the same name as the main character of another great movie, Up in the Air) who wrote some of the tunes for the movie. The link to Crazy Heart above takes you to a website that plays one of his songs for you. Corey gave me two of his albums for Christmas and we really love them.

Rumor has it there's snow in the forecast for tomorrow, and what's more romantic than sipping a cup of tea and working on your story while the windows darken with snow. Sounds pretty nice to me.

But speaking of being re-inspired, wanted to share with you this card from my mom that arrived in the mail yesterday:

Yep, so true. And much needed at this juncture. Thanks Mom.

Have a happy weekend all. Find a little thing that inspires you and just run with it. See where it takes you, it might be a nice place.

Important conversations and a radioactive computer

2010-01-27T18:01:00.008-05:00

Yesterday cute husband and I were out for an evening walk to our favorite store--Trader Joe's--when I asked him what he thought of my story.

Let me be frank with you. While I'm thrilled to be writing again and thrilled to finally have a real project going--something I'm waking up each day knowing I need to work on--it's also been an extremely tense and sometimes depressing few weeks. It's so easy for me to lose my confidence and even easier for me to avoid my computer all day, some days literally not writing a word, walking past my desk all day long with my head turned away like the computer is radioactive or might eat me. I know I've told you this before and I hope it doesn't sound too much like complaining, but things are just extremely uncertain right now--not just for me, but for Corey too--and I can't help but put a ton of pressure on myself to make my story great, get into a writing program, write a bestselling novel and ride off into the sunset.

That said, I always try and stop myself from saying the sentence, "Things will be perfect when..." to myself because that's never the way it works out. I remember hearing once that our bad habit of playing "what if" with ourselves (what if I'd taken that job in New York City, what if I'd gotten a degree in photography instead of accounting, and on and ON) is not only an exercise in futility because we can't go back again, but also because even if we could there'd still be so many things that could go wrong in that alternate reality. E.g. you move to New York City for the job but move into a crappy apartment there (because it's all you can afford) and the building collapses, trapping you for days and causing a concussion that erases your short term memory. Or you get that photography degree but doing so takes you out of Accounting 202, where you met your husband or your-best-friend-to-this-day, et cetera. But to get off my meandering path and come back to the point: while things are little bit less than ideal right now, I know that it's all part of the journey (no, let's call it a trip) we're on.

So all of that explained, let me get back to our walk yesterday. When I asked Corey what he thought of my story, he said he loved it. He gave me compliments and said how much he'd missed reading my writing. Then, he paused. "But can I give you a few points to focus on," he said. And then he dropped the bomb: "Get out of your comfort zone. I love how you write but when you describe your characters it sounds like you talking, and it needs to sound like them talking." I said, "Okay," thinking the pain was over. He continued: "And I know this goes against everything you believe, but you need to make an outline or something of what's going to happen. You need to plot everything out and then make it happen." He paused again. "And don't put your entire life into this story--like if it doesn't come together you can't apply to a program. You can start again on something new or start on something new in the middle of writing this one."

My head was reeling as we wandered through Trader Joe's--usually I scan the shelves obsessively looking for new items I might want to try, but yesterday I just grabbed 2 green peppers, a tub of hummus, and a bag of oranges. Internal monologue went something like this: I'm no good. Even my biggest fan, second only to my mom, thinks I'm no good. He's trying to find a polite way to tell his wife, you might not have what it takes, move on to something else. My characters aren't even characters then, if they just sound like me. "What are we having for dinner, though?" Cute husband asked. "Don't know," I said, making a dash for the cash register. "I guess we're just going to forage tonight," I said. Forage is our polite way of saying "leftovers."

Needless to say it was a quiet walk home, but by the time the oranges were in the fruit bowl I realized that it was the best conversation I'd had in a long time about my writing. That sometimes you need someone to tell you--Be bolder! Take all the little stuff you're really good at and blow it up! And when I opened up my story last night I was reading it over in a whole new way and suddenly thinking about all of the directions I could take it in because it was as though someone had finally given me the permission to do so.

But it doesn't end there...

Today at around noon, Mom called. I hadn't mentioned any of this to her, but somehow--it actually has been determined that she has ESP--she seemed to know that I was struggling and for about twenty minutes, under the guise of just talking to me about some good books she'd read recently, said, about fifteen times, "You can do it. I really believe you'll do this."

And lo and behold after the application of several scientific testing instruments, my computer shows no trace of radioactivity.

Write to the music

2010-01-26T15:43:00.007-05:00

Today I purchased a CD by one of my favorite musical artists: Patty Griffin's Downtown Church. Patty is a folksinger, but with bits of rock and bluegrass mixed in, and I've loved her since college when I heard her song "Moses." Since then I've bought every new album on the day it's released. Just in case you might be in the market for some new music, Downtown Church is Patty's adaptation of several gospel classics, all of which were recorded in the basement of a Presbyterian church. After two listens, I can promise you it will be money well spent--very beautiful interpretations of beautiful old songs.

I bring this up because I've been using music these last few weeks to inspire my writing. So much of writing is getting into a rhythm--just sort of finding the flow so you can really start to let loose for a little while and, like I've mentioned before, find the more organic elements of your story, instead of trying to manufacture every little thing. I know that other writers do this because often in the acknowledgments they thank Bob Dylan or The Rolling Stones, etc., saying, for example, "thank you for your music, which got me through the long, dark hours of writing this book." And it makes sense: music is a powerful tool for doing anything that requires motivation. I read just recently that good music is integral to a successful running routine because there are certain rhythms and beats that actually trigger a psychological response that makes you want to get up and move. (Thus, dancing.)

As for music's role in writing, I actually think there is also an element of feeling like you've got a fellow artist looking over your shoulder as you write. Yes, you get lost in the music and as you begin to write the melody supports your own ability to find a narrative "melody" and cadence, but it's also nice to know that you're listening to something that had to be written first. Whether it's Mozart or Bob Dylan or Shakira (yes, sometimes she is my drug of choice, I admit it), it all had to be conceived of first, and reworked, and put back together. And like anything else, it's comforting to know someone who's been through it before is there helping you do it for the first time.

Monday musings on practice makes perfect

2010-01-25T16:46:00.001-05:00

Hi old friends. I'm so sorry I've abandoned you these last few weeks. For some reason I've been in a blogging rut--very little to say, other than, yep, still writing, still struggling. That Christmas story I started back in December has become something of an obsession, as I've decided to try and make it my submission piece for the writing program. In a way this has relieved some stress because I no longer have to feel like I've got no ideas, but at the same time the pressure is twenty-fold because I know I must make this really good. It's such an internal mind game with me: I know that I can do this, I know that if I got into this program I would flourish there and learn valuable things that would help propel me to the next level of my writing capabilities (maybe a novel?), and yet there are many moments in the day where I truly lose sight of all that, and start thinking about working at Talbots again.

But enough of the melodramatics... That's where things stand.

So all of that stuff said, I've really missed blogging and the ability to write what I'm feeling on any given day or sometimes go off into strange territory just writing about some aspect of life I've been thinking about lately. So I apologize, and I'm back. Sorry everyone, but the beginning of the new year is always a tough time for me.

I think I mentioned to all of you back in December that I was loving a book of short stories by Maile Meloy (who, I've since found out is the sister of Colin Meloy of the Decemberists! what a talented family!) called Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It. No doubt I've been trying to channel her as I write my own short story. The truth is, the only way to get better at writing is to read read read and then write write write. The summer before I went away to college, I remember reading 35 books (in a three month period). (Thanks to my dad for letting me read while I worked at his office.) It was interesting to then go back and look and the stuff I'd written before that reading binge and compare it to the stuff written immediately after. In so many ways, grasping the nature of a strong narrative has to become internalized--something you're not so much thinking about as just naturally producing like tears, or saliva. Furthermore, it's interesting to examine what I imagine as the "rungs" of my writing life. With each new piece of writing I climb a little higher and complicate things a little more. With each new story you're adding one more thing you want to try and perfect on the paper and ultimately I imagine that you're able to hold in your brain a million different worries about what you're doing and work to avoid mistakes. But this philosophy can be hard to live by. My tendency is to look at every story like it should be good, polished, something I'd be willing to submit for publication. But in reality even the crappy stuff can be helpful--sometimes the best way to avoid going wrong is to examine what happens when things do go wrong so you can right yourself when all hell breaks loose. Yep, it's a lot like working for NASA.

So as I grow more frustrated by the day, I have to remember to trust myself. To have faith that even if I mess something up while I'm writing, there is this magical thing waiting in the wings called editing, where I'll force myself to be critical and find the missing pieces that, contrary to popular belief, are not gone forever.

See you tomorrow. I promise.

An attempt to...not write

2010-01-12T01:19:00.000-05:00

Hi friends. Still writing away over here, believe it or not, but have picked up a new hobby to relieve some of my writing-related stress. Hope you'll join me for a touch of whimsy on my new photography blog, Bread & Bottle. And don't worry, Promise to Write is still my main game (it won't suffer the fate of wrenthen).

Writing my way across the divide, to the New Year on the other side

2009-12-31T19:07:00.009-05:00

Well it's about a quarter to five where I am right now, and as I wile away the hours until the new year, I've been tinkering away again with my short story. I don't know if other writers do this, but whenever I'm in the middle of something that I'm very unsure about it's very hard for me to face it each day and work on it. I hate not being confident; I begin to doubt every word I write, and for lack of a better term, I start to feel like there's no "flow." That is to say, it starts to feel like the events are not unfolding organically, but in a very strained, contrived way. So with these frustrations in mind I've been trying to study up on the short story as a form. While my ultimate goal in life--the thing that would make me feel like I'd truly accomplished my dream--is to write a complete novel (and get it published), I've never actually written anything that long before (hence the dream part). I've always just written stories. And to be honest, I love a good short story, but if you asked me what made it good, I don't know if I could tell you.

And this is a problem. It's comparable to baking a cake: if you don't know the ingredients, you, um, can't really make the thing.

Today, as I was perusing Barnes & Noble.com's "Best of 09" list, I found this quote in a review of one of Alice Munro's (the supposed master of the short story) books: "The novelist Benjamin Cheever once brilliantly summed up New Yorker fiction as the kind of story where nothing much happens, but you feel a little sad about it anyway." And it's true--the stories in the New Yorker always kind of go nowhere, and frankly I'm not sure if I like that. That said, some of my favorite stories are just ruminations on a life--a quick peek into someone's existence, and in the end it's not as though there's a big explosion or a moment of truth with a nemesis, most of the time things just stay the same. But it always feels as though I've gained something from just knowing their way of life for a few minutes.

When I think about my own short stories, stuff I've written in the past, I don't know that all that much does happen--usually the story starts out with something big happening and then we move forward from that point, exploring different people's reactions to it, examining the ways in which it might have changed people's lives and with a bit of backstory thrown in so we know the kind of people we're dealing with.

As I mentioned, I've been reading (and just finished) a wonderful short story collection by Maile Meloy called Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It. She's just so good! It makes me want to write like crazy, but at the same time it makes me want to drop my pen forever because I'll never be as good as Maile! I'm sitting here thumbing back through the book trying to pinpoint what exactly I loved so much and trying to figure out how to incorporate those qualities into my own writing, but it's not working that well...

Frankly, I've got no answers here. This post is basically just a summary of what's been going through my head today as I try to think about the story I'm working on in a larger context: what do I want it to be? As always, I think the simplest answer is to just keep writing until I get a little more comfortable in my own skin again. But it's hard. You know my favorite quote because I've told you before: "Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way." When you think about it, that's the way many things are in life--we don't know what's ahead of us, nor do we have a total understanding of what's behind us, but we keep going. I guess I just forgot how easy it is to get frightened, paranoid, and filled with self-doubt when you can't see a blessed thing around you. But I'm determined to keep driving, so you can expect to read this blog in the new year.

Those are my crazy thoughts this New Year's Eve. Happy New Year!

Musings on a winter's day

2009-12-29T18:17:00.004-05:00

Hi friends. I hope everyone is enjoying this quiet time between Christmas and New Years, hopefully with a few more fun get-togethers on the horizon and the snow still something you think looks kind of nice. Next week this time we'll all be staring the long hard winter in the face while trying to follow through on our New Years resolutions (I traditionally give up on mine on January 18th, which I commemorate by drinking heavily that evening). Cute husband and I have been traversing the country visiting loved ones left and right. We were with cute husband's parents (henceforth to be referred to as "cute parents") for what we call "First Christmas" since we do Christmas there a few days early. Then we hopped a plane to the mountain region to be with my parents, where we enjoyed Christmas Day. Somewhere along the way my Christmas story got lost inside my word processor and yesterday I finally found it and dusted it off a bit. I've been writing a little bit each morning and am determined to share this one with you in its entirety, so thank you for giving me a little extra time to make it readable.

In other news, I know it's annoying that I keep changing the blog format, but the purple was making my eyes hurt--something about winter makes me crave the neutral tones. Speaking of which, come late next week many of us will have fallen into our post-Christmas midwinter depression. I know that we did book lists just a couple of weeks ago, but I wanted to share my January stack with you. These are the books I'm planning on leaning on to get me through the sad cold months, and I'm hoping a few of you might pick up one or two along with me so we can enjoy them together.

On the right are a few fun ones I got for Christmas:

Wishin' & Hopin' by Wally Lamb (I'm a big fan--I'd rank She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True among my favorite books)

Pictorial Websters -- I've been reading about this one on some of the design blogs I follow and I can tell you that thumbing through the pages looking at old-fashioned woodcuts is surprisingly fun when you're feeling a little low.

American Family -- You might remember my post about this one awhile back. It lives up to what I imagined and more! Every time I hand it to one of my family members to thumb through they become instantly captivated.

Now the LIT-RA-TOOR, from bottom to top:

Half-Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls -- Her last book, a memoir called The Glass Castle, blew me away, so I look forward to this one, which is a fictionalized account of her grandmother's crazy life.

A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore -- I bought this one in October on the day it came out because I've been a Lorrie Moore fan since I was about seventeen. It's since made about every best of 09 list out there, so I'm going to dive in come the cold depressing days.

Hurry Down Sunshine by Michael Greenberg -- Read about this one a few months ago and couldn't find it anywhere but found it in the tiny--but fabulous!--local bookstore here in the mountains on Christmas Eve (I called Santa and asked if I could just go ahead and buy it for myself and he promised to reimburse me). It's a memoir written by a father about his mentally ill daughter and I think it promises to be heart-wrenching (a feeling I enjoy).

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann -- I'm not even entirely sure what this one's about, but I keep hearing about it so what the heck!

Hope everyone is getting a little time to relax and enjoy the season. And though I know I make jokes about the New Year, it really is a marvelous time. It's such a great tradition we have: every 12 months we take a breath and give ourselves a chance to start anew. I like it.

As you can see, the Christmas story isn't here yet...

2009-12-26T01:42:00.001-05:00

...but it's coming. I promise.

A special treat for Christmas, sponsored by cute husband

2009-12-16T20:51:00.006-05:00

Since his last final was yesterday, cute husband has emerged from the study lair he inhabits for the better part of the day during the semester to chime in with his own excellent Top Ten Books of the Decade list. He actually held his list to a legitimate ten and only cheated once or twice on books actually written in the decade (the point is he read them this decade). His explanations are much better (and longer) than mine. You'll see why he's one of my favorite writers--so smart! so eloquent!

Take it away, Corey!

2666/The Savage Detectives- Roberto Bolano (2008): A star in Latin America for quite a few years, Bolano (recently deceased) has been suddenly embraced by the American/European literary elite. Believe the hype. The massive 2666 is sprawling, disjointed, fascinating, with a sense of dread hanging over every page that is pitch-perfect for our times. Detectives is slightly more cohesive, slightly more muscular, and a masterpiece in its own right. What’s so great about this fellow? Most writers understandingly create a character and then allow the twists and turns of their stories shape and evolve that character. Bolano creates characters (thousands of them…), fleshes them out fully, and lets their quirks and psychoses shape the narrative; he lets his characters write the story…

A Prayer for Owen Meany- John Irving (2002): One of the first books Alison insisted I read… If Bolano lets his characters write the story, Irving is on the other pole of the spectrum, in constant and complete control of every part of the story. I think he can be a little hit and miss, but in this book it works to perfection, stringing the reader along, attaching us to the characters, then pulling it all together with a bang that is both exhilarating and moving. This is a world-class piece of storytelling.

The Road- Cormac McCarthy (2007): This is the most depressing, distressing, devastating book I’ve ever read. Many of the haunting and unspeakable horrors in this book seem more at home in those twisted Saw movies than in a book many people are calling a masterpiece. What makes it all so impressive is that anyone can write horrifying stuff- McCarthy makes it all seem honest (and thus more horrifying), and at the very end creates a glimmer of hope that’s earned, not contrived.

Fay- Larry Brown (2009): I echo Alison completely on this one. She gave this to me as a gift a few years ago and I finally got around to reading it this spring. It is a tremendously well-written book that creates a true, sticky, ugly, deep-south environment for its characters, rather than the “bustling city streets” that so many young writers today rely on.

Nickel and Dimed- Barbara Ehrenreich (2003): Most of my friends have world-class metabolisms, can live large and never worry about developing the gut I’ve been dragging around since starting college. In the past, when one has made a crack about a severely overweight person (there are far too many in this country), I’ve tried to explain what a non-stop, endlessly frustrating job losing weight is, but just can’t. Ms. Ehrenreich’s book takes a similarly unexplainable circumstance- the constant struggle for survival that is living on near-minimum wage in this country- and makes it plain to even the most privileged of us. We’ve heard a lot about the unemployment rate lately- try reading this book, then consider that every person you see working retail this Christmas, every waitress who takes your order, are considered “employed,” and many are even thought of as “middle class.”

Somewhat Honorable Mention: The Lucifer Effect- Dr. Phillip Lombardo (2006): This is a book, very much like “N&D” above, that you try to mention and discuss in conversation, and that folks who haven’t read it, or, thankfully, haven’t “been there” can’ t understand. Lombardo was the psychiatrist in charge of the famous “Stanford Prison Experiment,” in which everyday college kids were cast as “guards” and “prisoners,” and cruel, humiliating behavior reared its head in a matter of days. Lombardo compares his experiment to the conditions that led to the torture at Abu Ghraib. It’s a fascinating and troubling argument that we can’t just write off the soldiers responsible as “bad apples,” that in the wrong situation we’re all subject to our darkest demons. Unfortunately, Lombardo can’t help but being an arrogant jerk who admits his mistakes, then qualifies them and rewrites history, thus the honorable mention.

His Dark Materials- Phillip Pullman (2006): I can’t say enough about the effect Harry Potter has had getting kids to read. And I am an admitted and proud Lord of the Rings geek. But for my money this trilogy combines the magic and briskness of the Potter books (briskness is lacking in the clunky LOTR books), with the complexities and sense of discovery of LOTR (something that’s lacking- at least beyond contrived mysteries- in HP). It’s impressive stuff.

The Book of Daniel- E.L. Doctorow (2003): I think Doctorow is one of the better writers out there, and this is my favorite. It’s the story of the children of two martyrs directly based on Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. It’s a fascinating bit of speculative history, but most impressive are the subtle little scars that reveal themselves in the two children.

The Inheritance- David Sanger (2009): Since starting law school I’ve gotten increasingly wrapped up in non-fiction, and this book gets the honorary NF spot because it’s well-researched, well-written and an absolute must read for anyone who claims to care about national security. Considering it was written in 2007 and early 2008, aimed at describing the challenges that either Presidential candidate could face, it’s also a pretty strong argument for an end to the politicization of national security.

What Is the What?- Dave Eggers (2006): I wasn’t crazy about Mr. Eggers’ first book (Staggering Pants…). Thought it was sort of self-indulgent, showy and thin. It was mighty popular and critically acclaimed though, and he could’ve easily continued on that path and still been a big young literary figure. Instead he discovered non-fiction, and it’s a great fit (between Alison’s Zeitoun and my pick here). What is the story of a Lost Boy of Sudan, a gripping, terrifying, uplifting true story; It’s a testament to how good it can be for a very talented writer to get out of his head and tackle a first-class story.

Dishonorable Mention- Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace (2001-2009): I began this book 8 years ago, mostly to impress myself (and girls, ask Alison), with its girth and Mr. Wallace’s reputation. I never finished, and only recently picked it up again, starting fresh. I’m about halfway through its 1,000 pages, and still can’t decide whether it’s an overly showy, but valuable, book, or if it’s a pretentious waste of talent. Lately I’m leaning towards the latter, but that said, Mr. Wallace predicts (in 1998 or so) with remarkable accuracy a number of things about our culture, including Netflix and the demise of network TV.

**Note from Alison: Yes, in college Corey always seemed to be reading Infinite Jest. I learned from talking to his roommate that each night Corey would fall asleep reading Infinite Jest in the top bunk and then in the middle of the night it would drop down onto the bottom bunk, hitting Corey's roommate (often square in the head). And at over 1000 pages, it's a big book. What can I say, it did impress me...and the rest is history.

My top ten books

2009-12-15T01:54:00.005-05:00

One of my favorite end of the year traditions is the top ten lists. Top Ten Movies! Top Ten Books! Top Ten Crazy Celebrity Moments! Today I was even sucked in by the Top Ten Senate Races! And of course this year is even more fun because it's the end of a decade, so everyone feels the need to reflect. So since the only thing I'm a semi-expert on in terms of making lists is books, I decided to make one of my own. The disclaimer: this isn't a scientifically tested list, it's entirely based on personal preference and is meant, basically, to just give you a few ideas for reading over the holidays (namely around the 23rd when the increasing number of family members and the plummeting of your self-esteem seem to be meeting at the same point on the graph and all of the presents you have yet to wrap are oddly shaped and you start really counting the number of calories most likely consumed in your thrice-daily hot chocolate breaks that you've been taking since Dec. 9th) when you decide to escape to a quiet place, shut the door, burrow under a blanket and escape into a book.

So, my list of Top Ten (17, because for the life of me I couldn't narrow it down) Books I've Read This Decade (or just lately), in no particular order, and without regard for their publication dates (as in, some were published way before this decade). I included the year I read them (as best I could remember) just for nostalgia's sake.

1. The Help by Kathryn Stockett, read in 2009 -- Just a good old-fashioned good story. Characters you love, characters you hate; truly one I felt like I had stepped inside of and didn't want to leave. (About race relations in the 1960s South.)

2. The Romantic by Barbara Gowdy, read in 2003 -- Plain and simple, what it's like to be terribly in love.

3. Close Range: Wyoming Stories by Annie Proulx, read in 2004 -- Still the best collection of short stories I have ever read. Stories that made me realize how deeply I cared about rodeo riders in Wyoming.

4. Fay by Larry Brown, read in 2001 -- Possibly the best book I have ever read. Just please read it and then we will discuss the religious experience as only true believers can.

5. You Remind Me of Me by Dan Chaon, read in 2006 -- A beautiful tale of intersecting lives and why it's so interesting and important when lives do intersect.

6. The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan, read in 2009 -- A memoir about the pain, yes pain, of trying to be a grown-up when your childhood was so happy and nice that you have no reason to want to leave it.

7. A Hole in the Earth by Robert Bausch, read in 2003 -- No one just writes about families anymore. Just a wonderful story about a family.

8. Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It: Stories by Maile Meloy, reading now -- I'm going to bed at night thinking about the characters in these stories, seriously agitated that I don't know what they're doing right now (or maybe haunted by the fact that I do).

9. How to Be Good by Nick Hornby, read in 2001 -- A book that taught me about enduring...for the sake of someone else.

10. Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, read in 2007 -- Oft cited on best lists, but my heart was legitimately filled with pain and worry for every word of this book.

11. After the Plague: Stories by T.C. Boyle, read in 2003 -- I always admire stories that take me into places I adamantly don't want to go, and then when it comes time to leave, I'm begging to stay.

12. Zeitoun by Dave Eggers, read in 2009 -- Must be read to truly understand Hurricane Katrina. You think you understand it before you read it, but you really don't.

13. Evening by Susan Minot, read in 2007 -- Beauty embodied in a book.

14. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, read in 2004 -- I still can't get over the scope of this story--I think about the characters still, they live and breathe in my mind as they were described on the last page.

15. When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka, read in 2004 -- Again, read it to understand something you think you already do: World War II.

16. American Pastoral by Philip Roth, read in 2001 -- I read this in the last month of my senior year of high school, and I think it was the first time I truly understood desperation and what it meant to want more than life itself to help another person, but to not be able to.

17. The Waves by Virginia Woolf, read in 2003 -- When I think about this book I return to the pose I maintained while I read it: mouth wide open in awe.

Now tell me yours!

Thumb trouble now vanquished, brain trouble sets in

2009-12-12T20:11:00.001-05:00

Alas, I am a writer with a finger injury. This is akin to a soccer player with a broken kicking leg. Last night, cute husband and I decided to be Christmasy and make fondue, which requires some pretty intense cheese grating. Well the cheese grater got me, friends. It got me good. My right thumb has an ugly gash in it on the second knuckle--it's absolutely disgusting. Well, after a day of feeling sorry for myself as I discovered nearly everything one does requires a thumb, I went to Target and stocked up on Neosporin (with pain killer), Bactine (with pain killer), and Band-aids (with pain killer), and all is well again. I'm enjoying a glass of wine now as well and frankly it's like the thumb isn't even there anymore. So, since my excuse for not writing this Christmas story has evaporated (unless of course the world's grape supply suddenly runs out), here I sit on a Saturday evening trying to write.

The little deadline (Dec. 24th) I've set for myself on the Christmas story is proving to be both helpful and scary. When I sit down to write I'm thinking, Sheesh, I've gotta finish this thing, which is actually very motivating (I know that if I don't post it here for all of you, there will be hell to pay). At the same time, I'm very concerned about making it perfect (about really impressing all of you), which is what I mean by scary. There's such a nasty little critic in my mind: I imagine him as a short little man with a black cane and a pointy nose, with spectacles hanging around his neck. With each word I write he brings the spectacles up to his nose, snickers, and says, "You're kidding, right? You think you might be publishable one day? You're really going to share this with your loved ones? And you expect them to still encourage you afterward? Ha!"

And yet something keeps me typing away and hoping that somewhere along the way I'll find the seed I've been searching for and have something good to share with you in a little less than two weeks. So far I've got a woman, her husband, and her daughters waking up on Christmas Eve and all I know is that the woman is sad about something big and she knows this Christmas won't be the same...

Anyone want to write the rest for me?

While trying to be perfect never, ever works, that doesn't mean it's not a good strategy. Trying to see the characters as clearly as I can, trying to see their troubles as clearly as I can, with as much compassion as I can, is what will, if nothing else, keep propelling me forward. The more questions I ask, the more I'll have to answer, and that, my lovely loyal readers, is how you make your word count (inch by inch, row by row, with great reverence for every and, the, but, though and so).

Thanks for waiting, and I hope I'll do you proud.

Memories and possibilities

2009-12-09T00:18:00.004-05:00

So sorry I've been so quiet these last few days my dears, but I've been in that magical place we call home. Cute husband is in law school finals and we've made it a little tradition for me to kind of get out his way during finals and visit my parents for a few days. It's a little post-Thanksgiving/pre-Christmas breather for me (which I feel guilty about since Corey is sweating and suffering over giant books with super small type supposedly written in English, lord knows I can't understand them--yes, law books are just the pits). Mom and I have been doing our Christmas elf errands and in the evenings we reconvene with my dad and have been enjoying warm delicious meals and great chats (the talks not the cats). And, a major bonus: there's a winter storm going on! As you know, my new geographic location has left me longing for cold blustery days and finally I've been given a few! It's just so much easier for me to be in the spirit when I feel a bit of cold chapping my cheeks.

It's late and I want to take full advantage of my last few hours here by curling up on my parents' comfy couch and enjoying just being in the happy place in which I grew up, so I will let brevity rule the night. But I just wanted to say hello and tell you that I've got about four ideas for that Christmas story I promised you. It's exciting to think about sitting down to write this thing when I get home tomorrow. We'll see if I'm still this optimistic in two days, but for now I'm embracing the ever-present possibility that exists in writing--the story not yet told, but slowly moving forward into complete view. It's exciting to imagine what might be there (kind of like Christmas morning).

"Something both bleak and profoundly beautiful"

2009-12-01T18:47:00.003-05:00

Enjoying the new Sting Christmas album, If on a Winter's Night... From the liner notes:

The cold months of the northern hemisphere have been granted to us by the fortunate tilt of the earth on its axis, and they exercise a powerful influence on our collective psychology. They are part of the myth of ourselves we carry inside our heads, created as much in the shared landscape of the imagination as in the concrete reality of our surroundings. Like all earthly creatures we seem pre-wired to recognize and respond to the polar archetypes of light and dark, of heat and cold, as they are encoded in the rhythm of the days and nights and the perpetual cycle of the seasons.

...There is something of the Winter that is primal, mysterious and utterly irreplaceable, something both bleak and profoundly beautiful, something essential to this myth of ourselves, to the story of our humanity, as if we somehow need the darkness of the
winter months to replenish our inner spirits as much as we need the light, energy and warmth of the summer.

It's easier for me to understand and accept so many things in life when I remember the promise of the seasons, the nighttime that will always turn to day; the inherent rhythm of things. If there's a cycle all around us, we're just a part of it and, for me, thinking of life in that sense makes everything so much more manageable.

The last month of the year

2009-12-01T16:43:00.006-05:00

Hello my beloved December. While you are a fickle friend--one minute I can't get enough of the falling snow, the colored lights, the hustle and bustle to the tune of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas," but the next I'm in a hot toddy-induced stupor lamenting this godforsaken season and all its maniacal traditions when really we're just supposed to be celebrating THE LORD--I am nonetheless always glad to see you.

And while I will be spending considerable time doing all the things one does in this lovely little month--checking people off my list, experimenting with baked goods, and traveling to be with loved ones whenever possible--I'm also going to kick things up a little this month in terms of my writing goals. I know it might make more sense to wait until January, but I hate the whole notion of "New Years resolutions" because they just make me dread the new year instead of see its possibilities. If I just jump right in and start now, then it feels less like a major life change (something I don't cope well with) and more like making a few minor adjustments.

So here are my plans:

I want to be able to send something out to be published by February 1st. Whether or not it gets published is out of my control, but it's got to be something that I believe is publishable. I can't just send out crap and say I met my goal of sending something out.

In the spirit of the season, I've got to write one Christmas story. Since I love Christmas so much and tend to get distracted by it, this will allow me to integrate it into my work duties and have a little fun. I'll have it done by December 24th and post it here for all of you.

And now the big one...

Reapply to an MFA program. I have one in mind that I haven't been able to get out of my head since I first applied four years ago, so I'm going to give it one more shot (for those of you who've missed the great drama of years past, I have been rejected from a total of 8 MFA writing programs). My materials are due by March and I'm going to start thinking of my writing in terms of whether or not it can turn into 25 pages that I can submit by then. That is to say, I'm going to be working on writing longer things and sticking with things that I think have potential, as opposed to what I've kind of been doing these last months, which is starting and stopping a lot and with little to show for it in terms of finished, polished work.

At first I felt strange about sharing my MFA hopes with all of you because I always worry I'll jinx things, and after being rejected so many times I know that getting in is considerably less than a sure thing. But I'm going to try my darnedest and if I fail anyway, that'll just be something else to share with all of you when it happens.

And I'm off...

Thanks a million

2009-11-26T18:48:00.004-05:00

Nestled in at cute husband's parents' house in a part of the country that is decidedly colder than where we came from! Yay! A delicious dinner among loved ones has been ingested and is slowly digesting. Now we sip wine, and perhaps, a little later, a bit of peppermint schnapps. My dad and I sip on a flask of peppermint schnapps when we go snow shoeing (something we love to do together)--he carries it in his coat pocket and when we reach the summit we marvel at the view, catch our breaths, take some photos, and enjoy our schnapps. It's one of the many things in my life I'm thankful for, not just today, but all days.

Wanted to share with you a sweet little editorial from today: Editorial: Thanksgiving

Here's my favorite part:

There will be thanks for the present union and reunion of us all. And there will be prayerful thanks for the future. But it’s worth raising a glass (or suspending a forkful for those of you who’ve gotten ahead of the toast) to be thankful for the unexpected, for all the ways that life interrupts and renews itself without warning.

What would our lives look like if they held only what we’d planned? Where would our wisdom or patience — or our hope — come from? How could we account for these new faces at the Thanksgiving table or for the faces we’re missing this holiday, missing perhaps now all these years?

It's true, we can even be thankful for the stuff we don't see coming...

Happy Thanksgiving lovely loyal readers.

Paying attention

2009-11-24T01:04:00.002-05:00

It's late into the night or, depending on how you look at things, early into the morning and I'm awake packing for our Thanksgiving travels tomorrow. Today was chilly and rainy in our little town and as I was passing by the neighborhood bar just up the street I caught a glimpse through the raindrop-speckled window of a man clearing away dishes and stacking them in a tub. For a moment our eyes met. The moment stayed with me, and off and on today I've been thinking of him--he was an older man, and in the small split second that we saw one another I could tell he was tired. I wondered today where he was going for the holiday, or if he would be alone. I wondered what brought him to that neighborhood bar in this small mid-Atlantic town looking for work. I wondered what he was most worried about in that moment when I caught his eye and could tell he was harried, and disappointed, and ready to go home.

I'm thinking of him tonight as I pack up my things for some time away. Yes, I might write about him, but not because I think it will be a juicy story--most likely it will fizzle like so many other ideas (that's just the nature of throwing out ideas)--but because writing is a way of saving those that we only know fleetingly. The people we wonder about, the people we hope the best for. It will be a way for me ease my worry about the man in the window. It's not about giving him a happy ending, but just about giving him a story, giving meaning to his life by telling his story. And really, that's even what I'm doing when I try to write about the people I do know well, not just fleetingly, when I try to incorporate little bits of the lives of the people I know and love into my work. It's my way of sharing their meaning with the world. Remember in Death of a Salesman when Willy Loman screams over and over, "Attention must be paid!" All he wanted was for someone to know about his life, so that he wouldn't disappear into the silence.

Are you ready?

2009-11-22T15:26:00.004-05:00

Lovely loyal readers, Thanksgiving is in a scant four days! Before we know it we'll have a Hot Toddy in one hand and scissors in the other--for wrapping presents of course. Despite my sometimes harried existence at this time of year, the holiday season is what I live for. I love the holly, the reindeer, the ho ho ho-ing (cute husband does a freakishly good "ho ho ho"), the gift-wrapping and giving, the baking, and the overall sense of love and joy in the air once the day finally arrives. You know the Kingston Trio song that goes, "Why can't we have Christmas / the whole year around?" Well that's me. If there is a heaven, I hope it's just the feeling of the Christmas season all of the time.

We put up our Christmas tree (and about 4 others boxes worth of Christmas decor--yes, I have a problem) this weekend, the computer has been loaded with Christmas tunes, and despite the less than desirable warm weather in these parts, I'm starting to feel the spirit seeping in. Yes, I know we haven't even had Thanksgiving yet, but I've been holding this in since Halloween people!

And look what we found at our local Trader Joe's.

My mom always wraps up a box of these for me each Christmas, but they're the Crate & Barrel kind that cost upwards of $20. The TJ's kind are just $6 and oh so yummy! I think it's a more than necessary snack for a budding writer to nibble upon as she sits at her computer desk during the holiday season.

Cracks and tears

2009-11-20T00:55:00.003-05:00

Thinking about many of my previous posts, which I admit have had somewhat of a theme of things not being perfect, I'm reminded of one of my favorite quotes. From Leonard Cohen: "There is a crack, a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in."

One of my favorite shows when I was a teenager (ahem, well, it's still kind of one of my favorite shows...) was Felicity. I remember an episode where Felicity's older, wiser letter-writing friend back in California wrote her a letter saying that after something bad happens in one part of our lives we tend to start seeing cracks in everything else. And I think this is pretty true based on my experience. When we're disappointed or hurt we get a little bit cynical, at least for awhile, until we can find a way to sew the tear back up and learn to live with the seam. Sometimes, in the midst of this whole process, we begin to see Leonard Cohen's light and it gives us an appreciation of life. It's not the pure and sweet kind of appreciation, like when we are struck by the beauty of a sunrise, though watching a sunrise can bring out this kind of appreciation. It's born of sadness, and sometimes anger or fear, but when it awakens it's strong and lasting and above all, freeing. To have survived something you deem big is to walk on bravely, until the next thing. A walk along the wooded path with no cracks between the trees would make for a dark and lonely journey.

A little something . . .

2009-11-19T15:00:00.001-05:00

I'm hoping to get inspired later for a good post, but in the meantime I wanted to share Gail Collins' column today: The Breast Brouhaha. I clicked on it because I like Gail Collins and I wanted to know her thoughts on, yes, the breast brouhaha, which has created quite a stir. I'm sharing it here not only because she makes great points, but also because her easy humor and insights about life remind me of why I'm doing this, and of the kind of writer I hope to be.

Bless the mess

2009-11-15T16:49:00.001-05:00

Those of you who know me know that I tend towards obsessive compulsive disorder. I can't wear my wedding ring right now due to skin irritation caused by excessive hand washing. I don't touch most hard surfaces that I have not cleaned myself. Oil-based things make my heart pound with anxiety. Et cetera.

That's why this afternoon, as the day is beginning to wind down into night here in the east, I was shocked at my own reaction to our messy house. It's nothing too egregious--a New York Times in shambles on the coffee table, the blanket that's usually folded neatly over the back of the couch is wadded up in a ball on the love seat, the kitchen wears dirty dishes and an empty coffee pot dotted with condensation. My fall candles have been burning all month long and they've taken on that dilapidated look that means they're about to sputter out. Cute husband's computer is on the living room floor atop a pile of giant law books.

But something about the mess is refreshingly homey, as though we've achieved in mess what I haven't been able to in my premeditated decorating. I can walk from end to end of our little abode and see what we've been doing all day. I can peek in the kitchen and recount the warm cream cheese inside the pita bread that I ate for breakfast, and be reminded again and again of the special treat that is the Sunday NY Times (did you know it's gone up to 6 bucks!).

When things are not perfect, the truth of life emerges. We struggle to do things right, to make our lives turn out just as we always imagined them; we try again and again to help people that ultimately cannot be helped or changed, and still things go wrong, or perhaps just keep going in the not-so-perfect way they've been going. Sometimes we find a new path, sometimes we stay on the one we're on with a new outlook or a renewed, if small, sense of hope. And not even so much hope that things will change, but that we can live our lives in acceptance of how they are. And in this place our stories are born and told.

Peering inside (and outside at the weather)

2009-11-13T02:42:00.010-05:00

I bet you thought I'd fallen into a foxhole. Alas, I'm above ground and here to apologize for a light blogging week. We all know that not blogging is in direct violation of this blog's purpose, and no doubt I deserve 40 lashes with a wet noodle (thank you Mom for that wonderful colloquialism). Corey and I will for sure be cooking a pasta dish this weekend, so I'll have him do the dirty work.

I have many excuses that I won't list here, except for the most interesting one, which is that I'm in the middle of a Nor'easter! Now, I've been through them before--when I was a Bostonian they were a way of life each winter. Long about mid-January I could expect to be holed up for at least three days while the snow fell outside and I watched reports on TV of piers falling into the ocean. One year my heat went out and so I stayed on my couch wrapped in wool drinking soup for three days straight. But now I live in the Mid-Atlantic so Nor'easters arrive in November and are not snow and wind, but rain and wind. It's been so bizarre living like this--the rain has literally not stopped for three days. So I've been lighting candles and making warm foods and writing a bit, but I found myself at a loss for good blog material, so I decided to just stay silent for a little while in hopes that inspiration would find me if I just had the patience to sit still.

Being cooped up always causes me to have insomnia and last night was a whopper. It was a 4am-er. My rule, as a lifelong insomniac, is that if I'm not asleep by 5am, I just call it a night--I don't go to bed, I give up and go about my day as best I can. So while that didn't happen, making it to 4 was still a pretty big deal. Anyway, my sleepless night's experience was a PBS documentary called The Way We Get By. In honor of Veteran's Day it was a documentary about three elderly men and women who greet and send off troops going to and coming back from Iraq & Afghanistan. They live in Bangor, Maine, which is a major entrance and exit point for troops. But to me the documentary was less about the soldiers than about the three men and women who greeted them. They were all older people, all living alone, all retired, and the trips to the airport each day were the events around which their lives revolved. I won't give away all the great moments that the movie captures (you should watch it yourself if you have some time--it's streaming free on pbs.org until December 12th), but I bring it up here because it reminded me again of the importance of telling stories and the importance, in doing so, of capturing the moments that matter. The phrases and movements and insights of a person that tell us everything we need to know about them in a way that's undeniable--felt rather than just understood. That is to say, we don't just want to know that Tom likes the ocean or loves his wife. We want--and need--to know how Tom feels about the life he's lived, about his mistakes, his family, his purpose on earth.

And while capturing and explaining these things is often a writer's curse, it's also the blessing of the craft--that we are able to reach inside of people and explain things. It's something we can't always do in real life. When I think of writing in this very simple way, I am always struck by what I see as the best and most interesting part of humanity. We want to understand each other--we want to know each other. What makes us seek each other out to this extent? Why do we speculate so much about the people we love, not to mention the people we dislike? When I write, I'm trying to stand on a little stool (I'm short) outside someone's window and peer inside. And the stool is unsteady, set atop a bunch of weeds and uneven soil outside, so it is often an unbalanced existence, but I keep trying to find my center, and I shift my weight from toe to toe, and if I stay up there long enough, neck straining, I will eventually see the moment that matters, the one that tells me what I need to know and out of which a whole story can grow.

(If you do watch the film sometime, let me know what you thought of it. My favorite of the three subjects was Jerry. At this point I can't quite put into words why, though I do know (I felt what he was about), but I'll think on it...)

Oh one more thing...I added a picture of the chive cream cheese from Monday after all (scroll down below). When I was about 19 and my dad was trying to teach me how to cook (and I was very reluctant to learn) he told me, "Cooking takes your mind off things." As is typical, seven years later I realize he was right: of late I've found it to be the single most mind-soothing thing I can do. It frees my brain for an hour or so as I obsess solely about whether or not the sauce is thickening and how to slice the mushrooms so they look right, and by the time the dishes are clean I'm ready to go back over to my computer and re-enter my mind.

A fun way to avoid something today

2009-11-09T13:58:00.006-05:00

Remember the days of trying to write and sound smart on topics about which, in reality, you had no understanding? Or was that just me?

This would have been very helpful: Make Your Own Academic Sentence

novemberstory.doc

2009-11-09T11:06:00.012-05:00

Tuesday evening and she was grabbing her purse off the big chair and headed out the door for the five blocks to the church. Her hair had grown long—longer than she might have thought appropriate for a grandmother, if you’d asked her six years ago. But it didn’t matter much now, like so many other things. Her husband might have worried about her on this walk—it was nearly five o’clock and deep into autumn, it would be dark by the time she made it to the church, and she was a woman alone—but they had resigned themselves to things, agreeing to forego the work of prediction.

She walked along the brick pathway to the church’s back door—the only one kept unlocked this time of the day—and entered the basement. The floors were white linoleum, but seemed speckled—it was the years of grime that the mop would never get. To her left was the boxcar-like room that for nearly thirty years now had been used for Mother’s Day Out. She’d brought her youngest child here each Wednesday and Friday for three years of his early life. She could not look over there anymore, but out of the corner of her eye she saw the white of the crib bars, the room lit only slightly and with no one inside. She didn't know if it was her real or her mind’s eye that saw the child-sized blue rocking chair in the middle of the room. She climbed the dark staircase and knocked on the basement door that opened into the church sanctuary and waited for one of the other parents to unlock it.

My fascinating mind

2009-11-09T10:58:00.010-05:00

My oh so writerly mind this morning. (Remniscent of the movie Adaptation, though decidedly less funny.)

I’m really glad I thought of this last night, glad I remembered it, better get this down. [Sound of typing.] This is bad, this doesn’t sound like something that would be reviewed in The New York Times Book Review as “redefining contemporary American fiction as we know it,” why am I doing this, why didn’t I major in business? I should have done some sort of new media/communications major, my college was well known for that. I could have just gone to my adviser--what a weird guy--and just said, I want to be in television production and he would have just transferred me to that department. Could I go back? I bet they would take back someone who had already graduated but had yet to use the degree--it would be a guilt thing or a least I could appeal to that emotion in my essay. I wish I was a producer on Morning Joe--or even a makeup artist, not that I could actually do that, but it would get my foot in the door. I have two paragraphs, but now where is this going? I mean do I talk about her husband now? Is he depressed? Every husband in stories is depressed. I need more coffee but I’ve had too much coffee. What should I get [insert your name here] for Christmas? I should make a list of all the people I need to buy presents for...

[10 minute break to do that]

[10 minute surf of Amazon.com for gift ideas]

I think I'll make some chive cream cheese now.

(See the next post for fruits of my labor--the two paragraphs of writing, not the chive cream cheese.)

Thoreau Thursday

2009-11-05T13:56:00.002-05:00

On going confidently in the direction of our dreams and living the life we have imagined.

This morning in my ritual combing of the Internets I ran across this article by Betsy Lerner, a writer and editor: Keep Your Day Job. The title pretty much says it all: Dear Writers, you will never make money writing. Aarg! Isn't that kind of the point of my mission here...

I've heard many writers say that they write because, well, they can't not write. This immediately brings to mind an image of a long-haired hipster writing away with his fountain pen in his little brown notebook on the train ride home to his tiny apartment, or maybe box. But for me it is not this way. Sure, a big part of my life, as I heard John Grisham put it yesterday in an interview, is "my hyperactive imagination." I spend more time than I would like to admit playing out weird scenarios in my head that often turn into stories or at least starts for stories. But frankly writing--the physical act of putting fingertips to keyboard--is all about extrinsic motivations for me. I want people to like me! I want people to like my writing! I want to be famous! I want to make money at this. I seek awards.

And I know the publishing world is a scary place. Right after I graduated from college I worked at a literary agency (basically the people who represent the writers and sell their work to publishers) where I was sent into the back corner of the office to read the "slush pile" for eight hours a day and write rejection letters accordingly. If I thought someone's 25 page submission had potential, I was allowed to call them and ask for more work, but usually that just resulted in us saying, essentially, "Well, upon reading a little more of your work, you're not as good as we thought you might be." It was a terrible job--especially for someone who was hoping to be a writer one day! With each thanks-but-no-thanks letter I signed, I really felt like I was completely skewing my writerly karma. My work has been in variations of that slush pile and the rejection letters are always swift and cold. I once got a rejection letter from my college's literary magazine saying that they almost published my story except they felt it didn't really make sense! Eeeek!

So much of being a writer is being told that you're good. Otherwise you are just a toiler, a wannabe. What is the antidote to this? I think to make the decision to be good, to be one's own editor and critic, to put forth what you know is true. To tell stories that illuminate something, however big, however small. To seek out characters who have suffered. To explain redemption. To invent a new language and give voice. All of that's publishable.

An Imperfect Island

2009-11-02T17:09:00.005-05:00

One of the most difficult things about my new commitment to writing and my promise to myself to at least try to do the thing that I've always said I've wanted to do, is that I feel like a real slow poke in the game of life. This December I'll turn the whopping (and, frankly, ugly-sounding) age of 27. It depresses me greatly that to this point I've still yet to have a true career or an income that's not hourly-based. If you had asked me at 17 where I thought I'd be in ten years, I probably would not have said, "Nowhere."

Additionally, cute husband is also in a transitioning/no non-hourly-based income stage of life. Though he spent three years after college working as a newspaper reporter, he's now back in school and we're smack dab in the middle of the three-year commitment to law school and all its grueling days and late nights and an overriding fear, considering the bad economy, that the great job he left the working world to find, won't actually be there when he gets out. Add to that that we've moved to a part of the country (the South!) that neither of us is very familiar with and that neither of us ever would have imagined living in. In so many ways we feel like we're on our own little island, away from the family and friends that we care about most in the world, trying to plod our way to our dreams.

But when I got to thinking about it I realized that marriage is, by definition, moving to your own little two-person island, no matter if your home happens to be centrally located in the middle of all of your loved ones or in a far corner of Siberia. At the end of the day you are still just coming home to one person and only the two of you know the truth of what's real between you. The relationship is the center of your reality--the thing that everything else flows through.

And the more I thought about it I realized that this little island we feel like we're on right now is just one island in a sea of islands that make up a life. That life is elementally a series of stages that we go through--times when we aren't getting what we want, times when we're muddling through, times defined by little things: the burrito place down the street that my husband and I go to each Monday evening so we can spin the wheel and maybe win a free burrito because it cheers us up a little and gives us a little time, if only 30 minutes or so, to complain, whine, maybe celebrate, attempt to make each other laugh, at which we sometimes succeed, sometimes fail, and then we walk home hand-in-hand. And something tells me that no matter where we are ten years from now, we'll still talk about Monday night burritos, and all we'll remember is how much fun it was, and probably how young we were, and how all of the things we were unsure about actually turned out okay in one way or another.

And I'm reminded of another island of my life. When I was five my family and I made a move from one state to another and due to many different circumstances we hadn't had the time to buy a house in the state we were moving to. So for about a month we had to live in a Residence Inn hotel. Add to this it was late summer and there was a horrible drought, and my mom was eight-months pregnant with my brother, and add to that my mom's uncle--someone we all really loved--was dying of lung cancer, leaving my dad as the only person who could care for him at and between chemo sessions. And so we lived in the crappy little motel and by day I wandered over to the crappy little motel pool and cooled off while the man who cleaned the pool each afternoon learned my name and entertained me with stories I didn't understand. And back inside the hotel room, which my mom kept at around 50 degrees, I wrapped myself in sweatshirts and she and I watched the old Monkees TV show and giggled our brains out.

In the midst of what was probably one of the lowest points for my parents, when nothing was going right, and at any moment things could go terribly wrong, this is what I remember--that cool pool in the deep and abiding midwestern heat and giggling all afternoon at the Monkees. Maybe it's just because I was so young and therefore oblivious, but I can hear myself saying those two words about myself as I am now, another twenty or so years down the road.

And so I realized that though we are not in the perfect place we've imagined for ourselves, there is something worthwhile in the muddling through. There is no such thing as being nowhere when you are trying to get somewhere. And though right now this island feels big and wide and we can't even see the water anymore, somewhere off in the distance our boat's still tethered to shore and soon we'll walk our way back to it and ride away thinking fondly of our time here.

So I'll keep writing my way towards my 27th birthday. And if anyone asks, I'm 23.