"Something both bleak and profoundly beautiful"

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

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

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

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?

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

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 . . .

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.