In the children's book "Big Questions From Little People," author Jeanette Winterson responds to the question, "How do we fall in love?":
"You don't fall in love like you fall in a hole. You fall like falling through space. It's like you jump off your own private planet to visit someone else's planet. And when you get there it all looks different: the flowers, the animals, the colors people wear. It's a big surprise, falling in love, because you thought you had everything just right on your own planet, and that was true, in a way, but then somebody signaled to you across space and the only way you could visit was to take a giant jump. Away you go, falling into someone else's orbit and after awhile you might decide to pull your two planets together and call it home. And you can bring your dog. Or your cat. Your goldfish, hamster, collection of stones, all your old socks. (The ones you lost, including the holes, are on the new planet you found.)
And you can bring your friends to visit. And read your favorite stories to each other. And the falling was really the big jump that you had to make to be with someone that you don't want to be without. That's it.
P.S. You have to be brave."
This phrasing is so sweet. (I hate the word sweet.) But sweet this is, in a nice way. Not too syrupy-cute. Just simple. I love the idea of two people falling in love and reading each other their favorite stories. And bringing your dog. And the image of two planets hitching together.
Oh, internet. Sometimes you bring such nice little happies to me.
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Thursday, March 6, 2014
Sunday, February 23, 2014
Saturday, December 14, 2013
Joy
joy
joi/
noun
noun: joy
- 1.a feeling of great pleasure and happiness."tears of joy"
Joy, today, was a simple thing.
It was picking up my dog, after a week apart, and being snuffled. It was putting on snow boots and a ridiculous hat and walking to the good bagel place, where it was all steamy and warm, for a toasted everything with veggie cream cheese. It was walking a little further, into the small independent bookshop that just opened today in my neighborhood, and geeking out over the coolness of jersey city. It was being on the train, blasting the same Ke$ha song on repeat five actual times and trying desperately not to dance. It was pulling into Hoboken where approximately 100 people dressed as santa claus piled trashily into my car.
It was, later, eating that bagel.
It's so easy to let bad emotions swallow you whole. Sadness, inferiority, stress, depression, anxiety. As a counter-balance its good to let the happy ones swell and rise up, too. When you can find them. Today they were easier to find, and I appreciated that.
Where the hell were all those Santas going, anyway?
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Empathy vs. Sympathy
"Vulnerability isn't good or bad. It's not what we call a dark emotion, nor is it always a light, positive experience. Vulnerability is the core of all emotions and feelings. To feel is to be vulnerable. To believe vulnerability is a weakness is to believe that feeling is a weakness. To foreclose on our emotional life out of a fear that the costs will be too high is to walk away from the very thing that gives purpose and meaning to living....Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path."
-Brene Brown, Daring Greatly
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
The Fourth State Of Matter
"In the porch light the trees shiver, the squirrels turn over in their sleep. The Milky Way is a long smear on the sky, like something erased on a blackboard. Over the neighbor’s house, Mars flashes white, then red, then white again. Jupiter is hidden among the anonymous blinks and glitterings. It has a moon with sulfur-spewing volcanoes and a beautiful name: Io. I learned it at work, from the group of men who surround me there. Space physicists, guys who spend days on end with their heads poked through the fabric of the sky, listening to the sounds of the universe. Guys whose own lives are ticking like alarm clocks getting ready to go off, although none of us are aware of it yet."
If you have time to read a long-form essay, make it this one: The Fourth State of Matter, by Jo Ann Beard.
My brain just melted.
If you have time to read a long-form essay, make it this one: The Fourth State of Matter, by Jo Ann Beard.
My brain just melted.
Sunday, September 22, 2013
Dear Life
"He had often wondered what difference it would make.
But the emptiness in place of her was astounding.
He looked at the nurse in wonder. She thought he was asking her what to do next and she began to tell him. Filling him in. He understood her fine, but was still preoccupied.
He'd thought it had happened long before with Isabel, but it hadn't. Not until now.
She had existed and now she did not. Not at all, as if not ever. And people hurried around, as if this outrageous fact could be overcome by making sensible arrangements. He, too, obeying the customs, signing where he was told to sign, arranging - as they said - for the remains.
What an excellent word - "remains." Like something left to dry out in sooty layers in the cupboard.
And before long he found himself outside, pretending that he had as ordinary and good a reason as anybody else to put one foot ahead of the other.
What he carried with him, all he carried with him, was a lack, something like a lack of air, of proper behavior in his lungs, a difficulty that he supposed would go on forever."
- Leaving Maverly, Dear Life, Alice Munro
...if nothing else, this passage is a lesson in the power of simplicity.
But the emptiness in place of her was astounding.
He looked at the nurse in wonder. She thought he was asking her what to do next and she began to tell him. Filling him in. He understood her fine, but was still preoccupied.
He'd thought it had happened long before with Isabel, but it hadn't. Not until now.
She had existed and now she did not. Not at all, as if not ever. And people hurried around, as if this outrageous fact could be overcome by making sensible arrangements. He, too, obeying the customs, signing where he was told to sign, arranging - as they said - for the remains.
What an excellent word - "remains." Like something left to dry out in sooty layers in the cupboard.
And before long he found himself outside, pretending that he had as ordinary and good a reason as anybody else to put one foot ahead of the other.
What he carried with him, all he carried with him, was a lack, something like a lack of air, of proper behavior in his lungs, a difficulty that he supposed would go on forever."
- Leaving Maverly, Dear Life, Alice Munro
...if nothing else, this passage is a lesson in the power of simplicity.
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
On September Adventures
This morning I woke up early, poured myself some coffee, and said a weepy goodbye to my lovely husband. He's a writer whose third, and most important, book has just come out, and he's headed off on a national book tour for several months.
He travels often, but even the dog seemed to know he'd been gone for awhile this time. She chased him down the stairs of our apartment building in a hysterical howling fashion, and since he left, she's been glued to the windowsill, nothing but watchful waiting.
This is an exciting opportunity for him, and it's also kind of one for me. I'm 32 years old and I've never lived alone. I've lived with roommates in many, many apartments - in Florida, in London, in Hoboken and in Manhattan. Roommates who were close friends of mine, roommates who were strangers I found in the wilds of Craigslist. I always knew, as a teenager, that having a few years to live on my own was something I needed to do. And I considered living with a roommate to still be living on my own. The desire to be alone-alone just wasn't something I possessed. I just wanted my own room, in a town of my own choosing. I wanted to paint my bedroom walls any color I wanted, and pick out my own bedspread, and have my own shelf in the kitchen. That was enough for me.
I also wanted friends within reach, and that's where the roommate idea came into play. In high school and college, my mom used to tease me for my love of the TV show Friends. "That's not real life," she'd say, with a sniff. "People don't really live that way, so get used to it."
And I remember thinking, even as a teenager - but...yes, they do. And that's what I wanted. So, that's what I created. And it was a lot of fun, while it was happening. In particular I loved watching Lost with Karen, my brief-stint-in-NYC roommate, while her little dog napped in his bed in the corner.
But it's true that I've never genuinely lived alone. And while Hollsby (le husband) will only be gone for a couple of months - maybe two, maybe three, with occasional drop-ins back home for a night or so - I'm going to look upon it as my own little solo adventure.
If I want to walk in the front door after a day at work, make myself popcorn for dinner, and sit around eating it in my underwear while watching girly movies, so be it. If I want to go out every night, so be that, too. If I want to not use the stove even one time, except for as a storage device for my extra pots and pans, well, fuck it, whose going to stop me?
I joked to him, just last night, that without him here to cook for me I will probably forget to eat. He will likely return home to a rail-thin wife with a drinking problem and also maybe a tattoo because that is something I've been casually pondering.
He considered this. "The tattoo is fine," he pronounced. "Maybe not so much with the rail thin, though."
He was away earlier in the summer for a week, and I went briefly insane. I boarded our dog so I wouldn't have to take care of anything, and went out every single night - to literary readings, to parties, to the movies. I ate almost nothing except for cereal and potato chips in bed. I drank every night, and I rarely drink, so this was odd of me but enormously fun. By my last night home alone, I was coming down with a bad cold, so I tried to heat up some soup on the stovetop. But I accidentally lit the wrong burner, and while I thought my soup was warming, I got distracted because the movie Mermaids - of all things - was on TV. So when the fire alarms began to go off with a vengeance I was confused, until I realized I'd accidentally been heating up, and then burning, old bacon grease in a leftover pan. Not my chicken noodle soup. The apartment smelled like a peculiar version of bacon-hell, my dog was crying and hiding in the corner, and the smoke was so thick I literally thought about crawling around so I wouldn't die of inhalation. I had to open every single window I have, put on every fan, and stand, in my underwear (of course), under the alarm flinging around a towel to make the noise stop.
By the end of that week I had a terrible sinus infection and had to miss two entire days of work. But lordy, was that a fun week.
This time around I'll try to be a real human adult. Two months of that kind of behavior would clearly put me in a casket, anyway.
My real plan is to use this time to prepare for graduate school. I start up an MFA in creative writing in January, on top of having a day job. So beginning on September 1st, my plan has been to hold myself accountable to what will be my grad school schedule: reading six books, and writing 30 pages of manuscript, per month. I'll start casually this month, reading whatever books move me and writing anything I like. Then I'll try to step it up, adding more focus to the mix, in October.
In honor of this, I spent Monday cleaning and organizing my office, so my writing space would be clear and welcoming. And on September 1st I began and finished my first book - a fun pick, Stephen King's Joyland. What an awesome feeling that is, and has always, been - to begin and finish a fun, breezy book in one languid, rainy day.
So, tonight. After work I will come home, walk the pup, and head to the library. I will pick out five more books, anything that moves me, anything that feels right. And I'll come home, try to remember to feed myself, and then settle into this newly organized, bright and friendly book-room of mine, to begin practicing for my own new life.
You can have adventures by leaving, by moving, by going somewhere new. And admittedly those are my favorite kind. But you can also have them at home, by living in a new way. And I'm genuinely excited for mine to begin.
He travels often, but even the dog seemed to know he'd been gone for awhile this time. She chased him down the stairs of our apartment building in a hysterical howling fashion, and since he left, she's been glued to the windowsill, nothing but watchful waiting.
This is an exciting opportunity for him, and it's also kind of one for me. I'm 32 years old and I've never lived alone. I've lived with roommates in many, many apartments - in Florida, in London, in Hoboken and in Manhattan. Roommates who were close friends of mine, roommates who were strangers I found in the wilds of Craigslist. I always knew, as a teenager, that having a few years to live on my own was something I needed to do. And I considered living with a roommate to still be living on my own. The desire to be alone-alone just wasn't something I possessed. I just wanted my own room, in a town of my own choosing. I wanted to paint my bedroom walls any color I wanted, and pick out my own bedspread, and have my own shelf in the kitchen. That was enough for me.
I also wanted friends within reach, and that's where the roommate idea came into play. In high school and college, my mom used to tease me for my love of the TV show Friends. "That's not real life," she'd say, with a sniff. "People don't really live that way, so get used to it."
And I remember thinking, even as a teenager - but...yes, they do. And that's what I wanted. So, that's what I created. And it was a lot of fun, while it was happening. In particular I loved watching Lost with Karen, my brief-stint-in-NYC roommate, while her little dog napped in his bed in the corner.
But it's true that I've never genuinely lived alone. And while Hollsby (le husband) will only be gone for a couple of months - maybe two, maybe three, with occasional drop-ins back home for a night or so - I'm going to look upon it as my own little solo adventure.
If I want to walk in the front door after a day at work, make myself popcorn for dinner, and sit around eating it in my underwear while watching girly movies, so be it. If I want to go out every night, so be that, too. If I want to not use the stove even one time, except for as a storage device for my extra pots and pans, well, fuck it, whose going to stop me?
I joked to him, just last night, that without him here to cook for me I will probably forget to eat. He will likely return home to a rail-thin wife with a drinking problem and also maybe a tattoo because that is something I've been casually pondering.
He considered this. "The tattoo is fine," he pronounced. "Maybe not so much with the rail thin, though."
He was away earlier in the summer for a week, and I went briefly insane. I boarded our dog so I wouldn't have to take care of anything, and went out every single night - to literary readings, to parties, to the movies. I ate almost nothing except for cereal and potato chips in bed. I drank every night, and I rarely drink, so this was odd of me but enormously fun. By my last night home alone, I was coming down with a bad cold, so I tried to heat up some soup on the stovetop. But I accidentally lit the wrong burner, and while I thought my soup was warming, I got distracted because the movie Mermaids - of all things - was on TV. So when the fire alarms began to go off with a vengeance I was confused, until I realized I'd accidentally been heating up, and then burning, old bacon grease in a leftover pan. Not my chicken noodle soup. The apartment smelled like a peculiar version of bacon-hell, my dog was crying and hiding in the corner, and the smoke was so thick I literally thought about crawling around so I wouldn't die of inhalation. I had to open every single window I have, put on every fan, and stand, in my underwear (of course), under the alarm flinging around a towel to make the noise stop.
By the end of that week I had a terrible sinus infection and had to miss two entire days of work. But lordy, was that a fun week.
This time around I'll try to be a real human adult. Two months of that kind of behavior would clearly put me in a casket, anyway.
My real plan is to use this time to prepare for graduate school. I start up an MFA in creative writing in January, on top of having a day job. So beginning on September 1st, my plan has been to hold myself accountable to what will be my grad school schedule: reading six books, and writing 30 pages of manuscript, per month. I'll start casually this month, reading whatever books move me and writing anything I like. Then I'll try to step it up, adding more focus to the mix, in October.
In honor of this, I spent Monday cleaning and organizing my office, so my writing space would be clear and welcoming. And on September 1st I began and finished my first book - a fun pick, Stephen King's Joyland. What an awesome feeling that is, and has always, been - to begin and finish a fun, breezy book in one languid, rainy day.
So, tonight. After work I will come home, walk the pup, and head to the library. I will pick out five more books, anything that moves me, anything that feels right. And I'll come home, try to remember to feed myself, and then settle into this newly organized, bright and friendly book-room of mine, to begin practicing for my own new life.
You can have adventures by leaving, by moving, by going somewhere new. And admittedly those are my favorite kind. But you can also have them at home, by living in a new way. And I'm genuinely excited for mine to begin.
Sunday, August 4, 2013
Contents May Have Shifted
"I am up front, next to the pilot, Halifax William behind me, a woman from Juneau next to him, our three packs taking up every inch of space in the tail. The pilot turns the plane in a tight circle, we accelerate and lift off, and before he has even pulled in the flaps the first glacier is in front of us, huge and dirty and violent with stretch marks, plunging out of the cloud cover and into the shimmering sun.
Instantly I feel that old surge come back, that seizing of my own life on my own terms. It is such a physical thing, like the time I had my forearm shattered and the nurse came in every four hours on the dot to give me a shot of morphine - that's how physical - and I look down at the glacier and the ice-ridged peaks that go on forever behind it and say, Remember this remember this remember this the next time you think it's over, because some man, or some hope, or some life takes away instead of gives. Remember this and get on an airplane, a small one if possible, because it always works."
- Pam Houston, Contents May Have Shifted
A few months ago I was at my mom's house, watching TV and absentmindedly looking up writer's workshops, to see if there were any to which I might apply. I happened upon one in California in October that would be taught by Cheryl Strayed, an author I'm obsessed with.
I realized I already had a piece, clean and good enough, that I could apply with. I realized I'd used their submission website before, and that applying would take just three clicks, a few thoughtless seconds. So I did it. Then I went to bed and honestly forgot this had happened.
Two days later, on a Sunday afternoon at an outlet mall parking lot deep in Pennsylvania, I got an email saying I'd been accepted. It took a minute to remember to what. But then I did remember and was delighted, but there was a catch. Cheryl Strayed's workshop was full. But I could have a spot in Pam Houston's. Did I want it?
I didn't know who that was. I wanted Cheryl and Cheryl only. This workshop would be on the pricey side, and I didn't want to compromise, so I didn't put down a deposit. Then I forgot about it. Again.
A month ago, I got an email from Pam Houston's private email address, following up. Did I intend to join? No, I didn't. Who the heck was she, anyway?
The other day, I read an interview with Pam Houston on The Rumpus, a lit website I follow. It was about the fusion of memoir and fiction, about how restlessness is bred into the souls of some people and cannot be stamped out, about how there are those among us who can only think when they are moving, walking, running, traveling. It was gorgeous. It was perfect. The next day I went out and finally bought her book. It's also gorgeous. It's also perfect. That sickening "I'm such an asshole" feeling crept into me.
I emailed her personal address, on a whim, to see if I could still get in. She wrote back in minutes, from her iPhone. No space, she said, but I could definitely go on the waitlist. A lot can happen between now and October, she offered up. She asked me where I lived. Rattled off a list of where she's teaching next, and when. Said she hopes to meet me somewhere along the path.
And now I sit in my bed, her book next to me, her email in my inbox, thinking about the fact that you can spend your whole life feeling a little bit weird, a little bit alone, and then one day you realize there is a whole tribe of people out there just like you, who feel too much, who want too much, who think and hurt and process too much, too hard. They're called writers. They're artists. And they were out there all along waiting for you to figure it the fuck out.
I hope I get to meet her someday. I love knowing she's a famous, successful author who answered an email from a nobody like me on the spot, from her phone, as she went about her day. Taking the time to wish me well.
I don't really care if I ever succeed at writing in a commercial way. That desire to be known, or famous, is absolutely not a part of who I am. But I do promise that if I ever am known, in that way, to be similarly kind, and to always, always reach a hand towards those still stuck at the bottom of the mountain. To haul them right up.
Instantly I feel that old surge come back, that seizing of my own life on my own terms. It is such a physical thing, like the time I had my forearm shattered and the nurse came in every four hours on the dot to give me a shot of morphine - that's how physical - and I look down at the glacier and the ice-ridged peaks that go on forever behind it and say, Remember this remember this remember this the next time you think it's over, because some man, or some hope, or some life takes away instead of gives. Remember this and get on an airplane, a small one if possible, because it always works."
- Pam Houston, Contents May Have Shifted
A few months ago I was at my mom's house, watching TV and absentmindedly looking up writer's workshops, to see if there were any to which I might apply. I happened upon one in California in October that would be taught by Cheryl Strayed, an author I'm obsessed with.
I realized I already had a piece, clean and good enough, that I could apply with. I realized I'd used their submission website before, and that applying would take just three clicks, a few thoughtless seconds. So I did it. Then I went to bed and honestly forgot this had happened.
Two days later, on a Sunday afternoon at an outlet mall parking lot deep in Pennsylvania, I got an email saying I'd been accepted. It took a minute to remember to what. But then I did remember and was delighted, but there was a catch. Cheryl Strayed's workshop was full. But I could have a spot in Pam Houston's. Did I want it?
I didn't know who that was. I wanted Cheryl and Cheryl only. This workshop would be on the pricey side, and I didn't want to compromise, so I didn't put down a deposit. Then I forgot about it. Again.
A month ago, I got an email from Pam Houston's private email address, following up. Did I intend to join? No, I didn't. Who the heck was she, anyway?
The other day, I read an interview with Pam Houston on The Rumpus, a lit website I follow. It was about the fusion of memoir and fiction, about how restlessness is bred into the souls of some people and cannot be stamped out, about how there are those among us who can only think when they are moving, walking, running, traveling. It was gorgeous. It was perfect. The next day I went out and finally bought her book. It's also gorgeous. It's also perfect. That sickening "I'm such an asshole" feeling crept into me.
I emailed her personal address, on a whim, to see if I could still get in. She wrote back in minutes, from her iPhone. No space, she said, but I could definitely go on the waitlist. A lot can happen between now and October, she offered up. She asked me where I lived. Rattled off a list of where she's teaching next, and when. Said she hopes to meet me somewhere along the path.
And now I sit in my bed, her book next to me, her email in my inbox, thinking about the fact that you can spend your whole life feeling a little bit weird, a little bit alone, and then one day you realize there is a whole tribe of people out there just like you, who feel too much, who want too much, who think and hurt and process too much, too hard. They're called writers. They're artists. And they were out there all along waiting for you to figure it the fuck out.
I hope I get to meet her someday. I love knowing she's a famous, successful author who answered an email from a nobody like me on the spot, from her phone, as she went about her day. Taking the time to wish me well.
I don't really care if I ever succeed at writing in a commercial way. That desire to be known, or famous, is absolutely not a part of who I am. But I do promise that if I ever am known, in that way, to be similarly kind, and to always, always reach a hand towards those still stuck at the bottom of the mountain. To haul them right up.
Saturday, June 1, 2013
Advice for Writers
"Be brave. Write what's true for you. Write what you think. Write about what confuses or compels you. Write about the crazy, hard, and beautiful. Write what scares you. Write what makes you laugh and write what makes you weep. Writing is risk and revelation. There's no need to show up at the party if you're only going to stand around with your hands in your pockets and stare at the drapes."
- Cheryl Strayed
- Cheryl Strayed
Thursday, March 7, 2013
The Observation of a Good Day
Yesterday was a good day. I got some news that made me happy. I came home after work and ate a weirdo celebratory dinner of guacamole and delicious homemade chicken soup. While I was eating, a song that I'm currently obsessed with and have listened to at least five times today alone came on, so I put it on loud enough to be annoying and didn't care. I took a bath - a bath! this means that my bathtub was clean enough for me to voluntarily sit in, naked! - with a silly candle and an actual flute of champagne and two delicious new books to read. I took a photo of the candle and the champagne perched together on the edge of the bathtub and almost put it on instagram, but then I realized you could see the toilet framed just behind them, which of course made it all a little weird. I got all wrinkly in there in the meantime; it was grand.
I love the word grand. I dig how it automatically makes you sound Irish and lilting and jovial, even if you've said nothing to deserve any of that.
Happy days are uncommon sometimes, particularly during a gray, long winter. It is important to pay attention to them when they come, to notice them and, as a result, inhabit them fully. Otherwise they just slide by and before you know it, you're just another day older with nothing to be thankful for.
For Christmas, my cousin Kim gave me an antique glass jar that was empty except for colorful little slips of blank paper. She said that for every good thing that happens this year, I should pick one piece of paper, write it down, and stick it back in. Then, on New Years Eve next year, I should take them out one by one to remember and honor all those good things - no matter how small - that happened as the year passed.
What a simple, beautiful gift. An empty jar that I get to fill with my own happiness. For perhaps the first time this year, I'll have a few to add this week:
I love the word grand. I dig how it automatically makes you sound Irish and lilting and jovial, even if you've said nothing to deserve any of that.
Happy days are uncommon sometimes, particularly during a gray, long winter. It is important to pay attention to them when they come, to notice them and, as a result, inhabit them fully. Otherwise they just slide by and before you know it, you're just another day older with nothing to be thankful for.
For Christmas, my cousin Kim gave me an antique glass jar that was empty except for colorful little slips of blank paper. She said that for every good thing that happens this year, I should pick one piece of paper, write it down, and stick it back in. Then, on New Years Eve next year, I should take them out one by one to remember and honor all those good things - no matter how small - that happened as the year passed.
What a simple, beautiful gift. An empty jar that I get to fill with my own happiness. For perhaps the first time this year, I'll have a few to add this week:
- The way it felt to watch Carousel at Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center. It was a concert performance with the NY Philharmonic, rather than a traditional stage show, and it was one of the most glorious musical moments I have ever experienced. I cried so hard when it was over that my husband had to stand with me in the balcony and wait for my internal storm to settle so I wouldn't fall down the stairs and kill myself while wailing about how sad and perfect all those dark images were: The park bench they fell in love on when they were young. The wife's childlike faith in his goodness, even after he failed her, even after he beat her. The way he dies so recklessly, so violently. The star he plucks out of the night sky to give to the dancing teenaged daughter he never met in real life, and the way he hovers around with such intense protection during her graduation, but she can't see him there. The falling blossoms on his aging wife, so many years later. But mostly, it's the idea of having one last chance to go back to earth after your death and do one simple good thing, one shining moment to set it all straight, and failing at even that. How perfectly, perfectly human and dark. I have gotten teary at performances before of course, but after this one I *literally* could not stop crying. It was astounding. Also, oh my god Nathan Gunn. Holy shit, people. He is magic.
- The fact that I JUST NOW REALIZED they recorded this performance for PBS!!!! April 26th! Ahhh!
- Being out to dinner afterwards, singing in my seat and dancing along with the bad radio station, shoving pieces of garlic bread into my mouth with wild abandon and absolutely no manners. For a few minutes there I was just lost in it, whatever "it" is, and I felt like myself, and I noticed it. It is the noticing of your own happiness that is important, folks. Paying attention is the thing. Otherwise, I was just an annoying girl singing too loud over her crabcakes.
- I went to Target on Sunday night. I spent an inordinate amount of time selecting new candles for my office, because I guess it turns out I'm a creature of habit and I can't write without a candle next to me. I love Target. Something about the vastness of it all, the great red and white florescent scentless joy of organized commerce, just soothes my tired soul.
- Tonight, of course. Good news and guacamole and chicken soup and champagne and books and a bathtub that is clean enough to climb into without twitching.
So ok, a random visit to Target may not make it into a memory jar, but the way it felt to watch Carousel will. Having a quiet, happy night tonight will. There is a beauty in noticing the simple things and clinging to them as they pass. I suppose that writing is, in essence, my memory jar. This blog, my copious email habit, my journals, all of it is just a way of capturing and preserving both the good and the bad.
I still don't know if that bent towards preservation is a good thing or a bad thing. I wonder about the people, so different than me, who just live their lives forward and never look back. That could be healthy, I suppose. But how do you learn? How do you honor who you were and where you came from, and then choose - with real sureness and direction - where you're going next? Sometimes I think those people are healthier than me, and sometimes I think it's all bullshit, and mostly I think, who the fuck cares? We are who we are.
So much of art is just encapsulation anyway; the effort to grab onto a moment and preserve it. Paintings, sculptures, plays, movies, photography, writing, all of it - it's preservation, it's story-telling, but it's more than that, too. It's illumination. It's paying attention to the world and how we all move within it. It's taking a simple moment, a simple story, and lighting it up. It's finding the spectacular hidden inside of the ordinary.
How could a world that makes a show like Carousel be anything other than beautiful?
I still don't know if that bent towards preservation is a good thing or a bad thing. I wonder about the people, so different than me, who just live their lives forward and never look back. That could be healthy, I suppose. But how do you learn? How do you honor who you were and where you came from, and then choose - with real sureness and direction - where you're going next? Sometimes I think those people are healthier than me, and sometimes I think it's all bullshit, and mostly I think, who the fuck cares? We are who we are.
So much of art is just encapsulation anyway; the effort to grab onto a moment and preserve it. Paintings, sculptures, plays, movies, photography, writing, all of it - it's preservation, it's story-telling, but it's more than that, too. It's illumination. It's paying attention to the world and how we all move within it. It's taking a simple moment, a simple story, and lighting it up. It's finding the spectacular hidden inside of the ordinary.
How could a world that makes a show like Carousel be anything other than beautiful?
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Radiator Heat and Other Musings
Tonight I decided to do whatever I wanted, and so I did.
That seems like such a simple idea, but it's one I rarely follow. When was the last time you spent a night wandering around based on instinct, instead of under the limits of a prior plan? For me, this is such a rare concept that it's essentially extinct.
I left work at five, though I should have worked late. I recently got a promotion at work, which is awesome of course. It's kicking my ass though, which is less than great. I should most definitely have worked late tonight, been a good little paper-pusher, but I decided I didn't want to, so I didn't.
I went to the gym instead, because I wanted to feel better and that's what the gym does for me. When I got there, I intended to run for a little while, my usual one mile warm-up on the treadmill before my hour of strength training. Because that is what I do on Tuesdays. But once I hit the mile mark, I realized I wanted to keep running, so I did. I ran until my heart was exploding and my side was cramping and I was drenched in sweat, relishing the fact that my body is healthy enough to produce this kind of movement and motion and energy.
I remembered being 21, on my first outing a few days after my first spinal surgery, so weak and so tired that I could barely make it across the Kohl's parking lot with my mom. I cried in exhaustion when I made it back to the comfort of her car. Ten years and yet another unpleasant back surgery later, I ran three miles just because I wanted to, because I feel more alive when my heart is about to crack open from exertion than I do at any other time.
I left the gym intending to walk around before my choir rehearsal, but then I passed my favorite local diner and boomeranged inside instead. I didn't have a book or a magazine to occupy me, and when I sat down I ordered the same thing I'd had there for lunch the day before. And so I ate a huge chicken gyro for no reason, comfortable in a booth in the quiet. Because I wanted to. It started to rain, and so I stared out the window at the dark shining streets and the brightly bouncing umbrellas, listening to old school No Doubt and Whitney Houston and Myriah Carey on the old reliable diner radio. It was steamy and calming and when I left, I was happy and warm.
I headed again for choir rehearsal, held in an old church about a ten minute walk across the village. As I walked down the wet streets, umbrella-less as per my usual style, I passed a favorite jewelry store and paused. I knew that going in would make me even more late for choir than I already was. I really, really wanted to go in anyway, so I went ahead and decided to drop out of choir for the season. Because I have been feeling overwhelmed and overworked for weeks, and I'm tired. Because singing is supposed to be a joy, and not another reason for exhaustion. Because I can and I should.
And so, I looked at jewelry instead. Beautiful, hand-crafted, nature-inspired, artistic jewelry. I thought about my mom, how she wanted to buy me a necklace for my birthday last year to celebrate my recent weight loss. She told me to pick one out that I loved, one that would help me remember, but I never did it. I thought about her while I looked at the necklaces. Then I thought about a friend I haven't seen in awhile, one who would love this small, dusty, lovely store to pieces, and fingered a pair of blue beaded earrings on her behalf. I bought nothing.
I kept walking aimlessly in the rain as my hair poofed around me in a high drama. I stopped at a puppy store and rested my forehead against the glass that separated them from me. I hate puppy stores, but my heart bursts with love for those tiny, clumsy beasts romping through the hay in their small storefront window home. So I just stood there and watched them for a little while, even though it was raining on me and I hate puppy stores.
Next I went to a small independent bookstore and spent a half hour dazed with words and rain and solitude. I saw a book I knew a new friend would enjoy, so I bought it. I found a book my husband would love, so I bought that too. I didn't buy anything for myself. But for myself, I stood for a long time in the poetry section. The steam heat was rising up through the radiator, and the only sounds were that comforting warm rush and the murmuring of the shopkeepers to each other from behind the counter.
I remembered being 26, living in a crumbling 5th floor walk-up in Soho. My apartment was so small that in order to get to the toilet, you had to squeeze in sideways past the sink while holding your breath. My window looked out onto Mulberry Street, from where I could hear church bells rolling from time to time. An independent bookstore was directly across from my building's front door, and so from that very first moment I knew that I was home. From that apartment I could walk to work on quiet city streets every morning, grabbing an overpriced coffee from Dean and Deluca's like a real New Yorker, like a regular, crossing the wide avenues with care while I listened to music and watched the steam from the underground drift into the morning light.
My mother came to visit one afternoon and told me that my great-grandmother had lived there, in that exact neighborhood on the border of Little Italy and Soho, when she first immigrated over from Italy in 1918. Maybe even on the same block, she said with a squint from my doorstep, looking down the narrow street as she tried to remember.
My great-grandmother went by Great Nanny to us little ones. She has no teeth left by the time I met her, and made great smacking noises when she kissed my little girl cheeks, and it hurt a little, and her hands felt like claws on my back as I tried to wriggle out of her arms. She always had a stash of Milky Ways in her sock drawer, and used to hit our beagle Frisky with a wooden spoon, shrieking at him in Italian when he got in her way. She refused to call my cousin Mindy by name, referring to her dismissively as "baby girl" instead, because she wasn't named after a Catholic saint and therefore didn't really exist. She raised my mother, along with her own ten birth children, in the bowels of old Brooklyn. One of her sons was special, they said, a teenage hearthrob-type with the singing voice of a matinee idol, of an angel, who coulda been someone. But he had some real problems, they also said, and he drowned one bright, drunk summer day at the beach in Coney Island, while she was at home making dinner like it was any other night.
Her name was Anna. She got on an old boat one summer day in Italy when she was just 18, just a baby, all alone, and sailed all the way to New York. And maybe she lived just like me when she was young, for a year or two, on a beautiful street in a beautiful city in a crumbling old apartment where you had to hold your breath and squeeze to reach the toilet.
My apartment had steam heat that came up through radiators. That first cold November night I went to bed in my room that was so small that the bed was wedged against the wall, and the closet was hung with a sheet instead of a door, because the door would've slammed into the bed, and the heat came up while I was sleeping. The sound of the rising radiator heat, that popping, bubbling rush of air so new to me, slid into my dreams. My mind painted miniature humans rising one by one from the bars of the radiator, floating upwards clutching the strings of bright balloons, laughing and calling to each other gaily as they drifted skyward, drinking from tiny flutes of champagne. I woke up with a laugh bubbling out of me.
I stood in the bookstore tonight, thinking of tiny people sipping tiny flutes of champagne, of what it felt like to be 26 and to wake up laughing, safe in a dollhouse-sized room high above a big city. I touched book after book of poetry in a shop that has no business still existing in this world of e-books and high New York rents, and I felt the kind of happiness that is also sadness, because it is so finite and fleeting that even when you try to grip it with all your might it persists, stubbornly, in leaking away from you.
Tonight I ran for miles. I ate a meal by myself with nothing to read as protection from my own thoughts. I walked in the rain. I touched beautiful jewelry and thought of people I love. I dropped out of something that should make me happy, with the promise to return when happiness is what it means again. I stood in a bookstore and thought of more people I love, including my younger, laughing self.
When you're small, you give up sometimes when you don't feel well or when life starts to feel too big and too hard. You crawl into bed moaning for your mother, for some soup, a glass of water. Someone holds your hand, strokes your hot forehead, reads you a favorite story as you drift off to sleep.
How often do we take the same level of care and love towards ourselves? Tonight I did only things that I wanted to do, things that made me feel cared for. Gentle, soft things. Small things that felt correct and calming and good.
It was a nice night. Maybe I'll decide to do it again soon.
That seems like such a simple idea, but it's one I rarely follow. When was the last time you spent a night wandering around based on instinct, instead of under the limits of a prior plan? For me, this is such a rare concept that it's essentially extinct.
I left work at five, though I should have worked late. I recently got a promotion at work, which is awesome of course. It's kicking my ass though, which is less than great. I should most definitely have worked late tonight, been a good little paper-pusher, but I decided I didn't want to, so I didn't.
I went to the gym instead, because I wanted to feel better and that's what the gym does for me. When I got there, I intended to run for a little while, my usual one mile warm-up on the treadmill before my hour of strength training. Because that is what I do on Tuesdays. But once I hit the mile mark, I realized I wanted to keep running, so I did. I ran until my heart was exploding and my side was cramping and I was drenched in sweat, relishing the fact that my body is healthy enough to produce this kind of movement and motion and energy.
I remembered being 21, on my first outing a few days after my first spinal surgery, so weak and so tired that I could barely make it across the Kohl's parking lot with my mom. I cried in exhaustion when I made it back to the comfort of her car. Ten years and yet another unpleasant back surgery later, I ran three miles just because I wanted to, because I feel more alive when my heart is about to crack open from exertion than I do at any other time.
I left the gym intending to walk around before my choir rehearsal, but then I passed my favorite local diner and boomeranged inside instead. I didn't have a book or a magazine to occupy me, and when I sat down I ordered the same thing I'd had there for lunch the day before. And so I ate a huge chicken gyro for no reason, comfortable in a booth in the quiet. Because I wanted to. It started to rain, and so I stared out the window at the dark shining streets and the brightly bouncing umbrellas, listening to old school No Doubt and Whitney Houston and Myriah Carey on the old reliable diner radio. It was steamy and calming and when I left, I was happy and warm.
I headed again for choir rehearsal, held in an old church about a ten minute walk across the village. As I walked down the wet streets, umbrella-less as per my usual style, I passed a favorite jewelry store and paused. I knew that going in would make me even more late for choir than I already was. I really, really wanted to go in anyway, so I went ahead and decided to drop out of choir for the season. Because I have been feeling overwhelmed and overworked for weeks, and I'm tired. Because singing is supposed to be a joy, and not another reason for exhaustion. Because I can and I should.
And so, I looked at jewelry instead. Beautiful, hand-crafted, nature-inspired, artistic jewelry. I thought about my mom, how she wanted to buy me a necklace for my birthday last year to celebrate my recent weight loss. She told me to pick one out that I loved, one that would help me remember, but I never did it. I thought about her while I looked at the necklaces. Then I thought about a friend I haven't seen in awhile, one who would love this small, dusty, lovely store to pieces, and fingered a pair of blue beaded earrings on her behalf. I bought nothing.
I kept walking aimlessly in the rain as my hair poofed around me in a high drama. I stopped at a puppy store and rested my forehead against the glass that separated them from me. I hate puppy stores, but my heart bursts with love for those tiny, clumsy beasts romping through the hay in their small storefront window home. So I just stood there and watched them for a little while, even though it was raining on me and I hate puppy stores.
Next I went to a small independent bookstore and spent a half hour dazed with words and rain and solitude. I saw a book I knew a new friend would enjoy, so I bought it. I found a book my husband would love, so I bought that too. I didn't buy anything for myself. But for myself, I stood for a long time in the poetry section. The steam heat was rising up through the radiator, and the only sounds were that comforting warm rush and the murmuring of the shopkeepers to each other from behind the counter.
I remembered being 26, living in a crumbling 5th floor walk-up in Soho. My apartment was so small that in order to get to the toilet, you had to squeeze in sideways past the sink while holding your breath. My window looked out onto Mulberry Street, from where I could hear church bells rolling from time to time. An independent bookstore was directly across from my building's front door, and so from that very first moment I knew that I was home. From that apartment I could walk to work on quiet city streets every morning, grabbing an overpriced coffee from Dean and Deluca's like a real New Yorker, like a regular, crossing the wide avenues with care while I listened to music and watched the steam from the underground drift into the morning light.
My mother came to visit one afternoon and told me that my great-grandmother had lived there, in that exact neighborhood on the border of Little Italy and Soho, when she first immigrated over from Italy in 1918. Maybe even on the same block, she said with a squint from my doorstep, looking down the narrow street as she tried to remember.
My great-grandmother went by Great Nanny to us little ones. She has no teeth left by the time I met her, and made great smacking noises when she kissed my little girl cheeks, and it hurt a little, and her hands felt like claws on my back as I tried to wriggle out of her arms. She always had a stash of Milky Ways in her sock drawer, and used to hit our beagle Frisky with a wooden spoon, shrieking at him in Italian when he got in her way. She refused to call my cousin Mindy by name, referring to her dismissively as "baby girl" instead, because she wasn't named after a Catholic saint and therefore didn't really exist. She raised my mother, along with her own ten birth children, in the bowels of old Brooklyn. One of her sons was special, they said, a teenage hearthrob-type with the singing voice of a matinee idol, of an angel, who coulda been someone. But he had some real problems, they also said, and he drowned one bright, drunk summer day at the beach in Coney Island, while she was at home making dinner like it was any other night.
Her name was Anna. She got on an old boat one summer day in Italy when she was just 18, just a baby, all alone, and sailed all the way to New York. And maybe she lived just like me when she was young, for a year or two, on a beautiful street in a beautiful city in a crumbling old apartment where you had to hold your breath and squeeze to reach the toilet.
My apartment had steam heat that came up through radiators. That first cold November night I went to bed in my room that was so small that the bed was wedged against the wall, and the closet was hung with a sheet instead of a door, because the door would've slammed into the bed, and the heat came up while I was sleeping. The sound of the rising radiator heat, that popping, bubbling rush of air so new to me, slid into my dreams. My mind painted miniature humans rising one by one from the bars of the radiator, floating upwards clutching the strings of bright balloons, laughing and calling to each other gaily as they drifted skyward, drinking from tiny flutes of champagne. I woke up with a laugh bubbling out of me.
I stood in the bookstore tonight, thinking of tiny people sipping tiny flutes of champagne, of what it felt like to be 26 and to wake up laughing, safe in a dollhouse-sized room high above a big city. I touched book after book of poetry in a shop that has no business still existing in this world of e-books and high New York rents, and I felt the kind of happiness that is also sadness, because it is so finite and fleeting that even when you try to grip it with all your might it persists, stubbornly, in leaking away from you.
Tonight I ran for miles. I ate a meal by myself with nothing to read as protection from my own thoughts. I walked in the rain. I touched beautiful jewelry and thought of people I love. I dropped out of something that should make me happy, with the promise to return when happiness is what it means again. I stood in a bookstore and thought of more people I love, including my younger, laughing self.
When you're small, you give up sometimes when you don't feel well or when life starts to feel too big and too hard. You crawl into bed moaning for your mother, for some soup, a glass of water. Someone holds your hand, strokes your hot forehead, reads you a favorite story as you drift off to sleep.
How often do we take the same level of care and love towards ourselves? Tonight I did only things that I wanted to do, things that made me feel cared for. Gentle, soft things. Small things that felt correct and calming and good.
It was a nice night. Maybe I'll decide to do it again soon.
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Well, Alright Then, Entire World
"The half-life of love is forever."
I already ranted a bit about Junot Diaz's This Is How You Lose Her on this here blog, but now I have finished it, and then I immediately reread (some of) it, and now I'm about to reread (more of) it, again, so it's imperative that I communicate to absolutely no one that this book is wildly, stupidly, just-go-ahead-and-punch-yourself-in-the-face important.
IMPORTANT.
It's filthy and raw and disrespectful and emphatically real. I appreciate nothing more than brutal truth, so this was a marvel to read. And though I tend towards being effusive and dramatic, I don't use words like "marvel" lightly.
I can imagine tons of people not liking this book. It's crude, overtly sexual, racist, and plain depressing. And though I suppose we must give people the right to their own opinions (eh) I would have to counter that it's the very foulness of it, up against language so perfect it feels like fire in your hands, that makes it so special. It combusts.
Light and dark. High and low. It's the mix of the two where art is found.
"Instead of lowering your head and copping to it like a man, you pick up the journal as one might pick up a baby's beshatted diaper, as one might pinch a recently benutted condom. You glance at the offending passages. Then you look at her and smile a smile your dissembling face will remember until the day you die. Baby, you say, baby, this is part of my novel.
This is how you lose her."
People. Read it. Love it or hate it, but I promise that you won't be bored.
Sunday, January 13, 2013
This Is How You Lose Her
Okay, we didn't work, and all
memories to tell you the truth aren't good.
But sometimes there were good times.
Love was good. I loved your crooked sleep
beside me and never dreamed afraid.
There should be stars for great wars
like ours.
- Sandra Cisneros
I'm currently reading This Is How You Lose Her, a collection of short stories by Junot Diaz, which opens with the poem above. This might be the only time in my life I've been compelled to pay the full hardcover price of $26.95 for a not-long book of short stories, which are not normally my bag. But something about this book kept screaming at me when I wandered in and out of bookstores, which I do a lot. There are enough tiny, perfect, dusty bookstores throughout the hazy streets of the West Village to keep me occupied for probably another seven years of work lunch breaks before I get bored of that neighborhood.
I've only read two of the stories, and so far it's safe to say I'm both enchanted and appalled - which is absolutely correct. The stories all feature the point of view of one man, serial cheating and somewhat hapless Yunior, an immigrant who grows up in a working class Dominican neighborhood in central New Jersey. It's odd to read a book in which someone loiters around Woodbridge Mall, but hey, it's also sort of grounding.
There is a lot to learn from the sparseness of this author's style. To achieve moments of wonder, you don't need to overwrite. You can be short, abrupt. You can tell the stories of a boy, later a man, growing up in a rough neighborhood with a rough family, with the spectre of a rough future pounding down on him, and still find a way to weave in beauty and insight. Without forcing it down the reader's throat. In fact, the beauty is that much more outstanding because of the contrast between the characters, who are ugly and real and full of hard edges, and the rare, fluid moments of clarity they still find. Just like real people do.
Write a paragraph like this and I'm yours forever.
"That was the summer when everything we would become was hovering just over our heads. Girls were starting to take notice of me; I wasn't good-looking but I listened and had boxing muscles in my arms. In another universe I probably came out ok, ended up with mad novias and jobs and a sea of love in which to swim, but in this world I had a brother who was dying of cancer and a long dark patch of life like a mile of black ice waiting for me up ahead."
Also, this:
"Nilda is watching the ground as though she's afraid she might fall. My heart is beating and I think, We could do anything. We could marry. We could drive off to the West Coast. We could start over. It's all possible but neither of us speaks for a long time and the moment closes and we're back in the world we've always known.
Remember the day we met? she asks.
I nod.
You wanted to play baseball.
It was summer, I say. You were wearing a tank top.
You made me put on a shirt before you'd let me be on your team. Do you remember?
I remember, I say.
We never spoke again. A couple of years later I went away to college and I don't know where the fuck she went."
...oof. Also, yes. Absolutely, totally yes.
memories to tell you the truth aren't good.
But sometimes there were good times.
Love was good. I loved your crooked sleep
beside me and never dreamed afraid.
There should be stars for great wars
like ours.
- Sandra Cisneros
I'm currently reading This Is How You Lose Her, a collection of short stories by Junot Diaz, which opens with the poem above. This might be the only time in my life I've been compelled to pay the full hardcover price of $26.95 for a not-long book of short stories, which are not normally my bag. But something about this book kept screaming at me when I wandered in and out of bookstores, which I do a lot. There are enough tiny, perfect, dusty bookstores throughout the hazy streets of the West Village to keep me occupied for probably another seven years of work lunch breaks before I get bored of that neighborhood.
I've only read two of the stories, and so far it's safe to say I'm both enchanted and appalled - which is absolutely correct. The stories all feature the point of view of one man, serial cheating and somewhat hapless Yunior, an immigrant who grows up in a working class Dominican neighborhood in central New Jersey. It's odd to read a book in which someone loiters around Woodbridge Mall, but hey, it's also sort of grounding.
There is a lot to learn from the sparseness of this author's style. To achieve moments of wonder, you don't need to overwrite. You can be short, abrupt. You can tell the stories of a boy, later a man, growing up in a rough neighborhood with a rough family, with the spectre of a rough future pounding down on him, and still find a way to weave in beauty and insight. Without forcing it down the reader's throat. In fact, the beauty is that much more outstanding because of the contrast between the characters, who are ugly and real and full of hard edges, and the rare, fluid moments of clarity they still find. Just like real people do.
Write a paragraph like this and I'm yours forever.
"That was the summer when everything we would become was hovering just over our heads. Girls were starting to take notice of me; I wasn't good-looking but I listened and had boxing muscles in my arms. In another universe I probably came out ok, ended up with mad novias and jobs and a sea of love in which to swim, but in this world I had a brother who was dying of cancer and a long dark patch of life like a mile of black ice waiting for me up ahead."
Also, this:
"Nilda is watching the ground as though she's afraid she might fall. My heart is beating and I think, We could do anything. We could marry. We could drive off to the West Coast. We could start over. It's all possible but neither of us speaks for a long time and the moment closes and we're back in the world we've always known.
Remember the day we met? she asks.
I nod.
You wanted to play baseball.
It was summer, I say. You were wearing a tank top.
You made me put on a shirt before you'd let me be on your team. Do you remember?
I remember, I say.
We never spoke again. A couple of years later I went away to college and I don't know where the fuck she went."
...oof. Also, yes. Absolutely, totally yes.
Friday, January 11, 2013
"My own kind. I'm not sure there's a name for us. I suspect we're born this way: our hearts screwed in tight, already a little broken. We hate sentimentality and yet we're deeply sentimental. Low-grade romantics. Tough but susceptible. Afflicted by parking lots, empty courtyards, nostalgic pop music. When we cried for no reason as babies, just hauled off and wailed, our parents seemed to know, instinctively, that it wasn't diaper rash or colic. It was something deeper that they couldn't find a comfort for."
- Steve Almond
- Steve Almond
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Advice to Myself
Leave the dishes. Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.
Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.
Don't even sew on a button.
Let the wind have it's way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic - decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink mold will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in through the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.
- Louise Erdich
If I'm reading a poem, or watching a movie or listening to a song or just taking in any sort of art, really, I like to pay particular attention to the gut check moment. The one moment, or line, or note, that reaches out through the clutter and the beauty of the rest and brands you right on the heart with its intensity.
I always note that moment for me. In this poem, it's the line: Don't answer the telephone, ever, or weep over anything at all that breaks. It might as well be written in bold, or highlighted in bright yellow, it leaps out at me with that much strength and weight. It shines. It's something to do with the rhythm of the word "ever," the sudden intensity within the whole line. The poet is remembering something particular. Something that made her want to weep, but she refused to fold into her own instincts. I makes me think of all the times I have refused myself the same moment of weakness, how many kitchens or bedrooms or backyards I might have stood in and disallowed myself to fall apart. And the ways in which that refusal to give in can mean strength, but can just as easily be a weakness. It takes strength to feel something - anything - deeply enough to cry. I don't know if I agree with this line or disagree, but either way it catches my heart, and flickers like that are always, always worth noticing.
I enjoy noting these moments to myself, and wondering about them - why that line? What is it about me that responds to that piece more than anything else? But what I really like noticing is what jumps out at other people.
Lots of people don't pay attention to the little things; they just absorb the larger whole and then move on. Neither way is right or wrong, of course. But I relate best to the type of people who chew things over, who are both attentive enough, and self-aware enough, to feel those moments, that punch in the face sensation, and to note it properly. People that wonder. People that absorb. Even if what shines for them is different than what shines for me - actually, especially then. Then I'm so fascinated by their little brains, what makes them tick and hum and spark and what doesn't, that I'm fully, fully in. I'm so in for those kind of talks.
My (current) favorite, perfect pile of strung together words on earth: Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? Poet Mary Oliver, who lives on Cape Cod, writes about nature with a kind of cool, nearly stiff and academic regard that slips into near-religious beauty in moments that surprise you in her work. I love her.
I'm reading a lot of writer Cheryl Strayed these days (another oh-so-passionate-and-certainly-obsessive post to come), whose memoir Wild is just an assault in heartbreak and raw beauty. She quotes poetry a lot in her book, begins chapters with lines of it that meant something to her, acknowledges regularly that she chants some lines in her head every day like a mantra. Like I do. Helplessly and without purpose or plan. She quotes that same perfect line in her book, and I felt the zing of OH MY GOD YES SHE GETS IT, WE BOTH GET IT. I am so in.
My writing instructor Kerry Cohen wrote a memoir called Loose Girls. I've known Kerry for almost a year now, and finally (ugh I hate myself) read her damn book a few weeks ago. Nearing the end, she quotes the same line. And there it was, of course. That moment. That punch.
Out of all the poets, all the novels, all of the arrangements of words in all of the world that might mean something to any human, we three picked the same line. That line is a big deal, it means something to lots of people, of course. But still, loving it makes me feel like I'm a part of a circle of beauty. It makes me believe in the connectivity of art. It makes everything shine.
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.
Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.
Don't even sew on a button.
Let the wind have it's way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic - decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink mold will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in through the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.
- Louise Erdich
If I'm reading a poem, or watching a movie or listening to a song or just taking in any sort of art, really, I like to pay particular attention to the gut check moment. The one moment, or line, or note, that reaches out through the clutter and the beauty of the rest and brands you right on the heart with its intensity.
I always note that moment for me. In this poem, it's the line: Don't answer the telephone, ever, or weep over anything at all that breaks. It might as well be written in bold, or highlighted in bright yellow, it leaps out at me with that much strength and weight. It shines. It's something to do with the rhythm of the word "ever," the sudden intensity within the whole line. The poet is remembering something particular. Something that made her want to weep, but she refused to fold into her own instincts. I makes me think of all the times I have refused myself the same moment of weakness, how many kitchens or bedrooms or backyards I might have stood in and disallowed myself to fall apart. And the ways in which that refusal to give in can mean strength, but can just as easily be a weakness. It takes strength to feel something - anything - deeply enough to cry. I don't know if I agree with this line or disagree, but either way it catches my heart, and flickers like that are always, always worth noticing.
I enjoy noting these moments to myself, and wondering about them - why that line? What is it about me that responds to that piece more than anything else? But what I really like noticing is what jumps out at other people.
Lots of people don't pay attention to the little things; they just absorb the larger whole and then move on. Neither way is right or wrong, of course. But I relate best to the type of people who chew things over, who are both attentive enough, and self-aware enough, to feel those moments, that punch in the face sensation, and to note it properly. People that wonder. People that absorb. Even if what shines for them is different than what shines for me - actually, especially then. Then I'm so fascinated by their little brains, what makes them tick and hum and spark and what doesn't, that I'm fully, fully in. I'm so in for those kind of talks.
My (current) favorite, perfect pile of strung together words on earth: Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? Poet Mary Oliver, who lives on Cape Cod, writes about nature with a kind of cool, nearly stiff and academic regard that slips into near-religious beauty in moments that surprise you in her work. I love her.
I'm reading a lot of writer Cheryl Strayed these days (another oh-so-passionate-and-certainly-obsessive post to come), whose memoir Wild is just an assault in heartbreak and raw beauty. She quotes poetry a lot in her book, begins chapters with lines of it that meant something to her, acknowledges regularly that she chants some lines in her head every day like a mantra. Like I do. Helplessly and without purpose or plan. She quotes that same perfect line in her book, and I felt the zing of OH MY GOD YES SHE GETS IT, WE BOTH GET IT. I am so in.
My writing instructor Kerry Cohen wrote a memoir called Loose Girls. I've known Kerry for almost a year now, and finally (ugh I hate myself) read her damn book a few weeks ago. Nearing the end, she quotes the same line. And there it was, of course. That moment. That punch.
Out of all the poets, all the novels, all of the arrangements of words in all of the world that might mean something to any human, we three picked the same line. That line is a big deal, it means something to lots of people, of course. But still, loving it makes me feel like I'm a part of a circle of beauty. It makes me believe in the connectivity of art. It makes everything shine.
Sunday, November 25, 2012
"...if a bird with a broken neck could fly away, what else might be possible? Water may be older than light, diamonds crack in hot goat's blood, mountaintops give off cold fire, forests appear in mid-ocean, it may happen that a crab is caught with the shadow of a hand on its back, and that the wind be imprisoned in a bit of knotted string.
And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery."
- Annie Proulx, The Shipping News
And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery."
- Annie Proulx, The Shipping News
Friday, November 23, 2012
On Being Not Dead/That Thing
There are people that you know, you just know, that if you met them you'd feel that thing. That subtle click of easy compatability, of moment-by-moment understanding, of eager rhythm, of total yes. People that see the world with the same set of eyes and heart that you do.
These are the kind of people you lock eyes with across a crowded room at a party when something awful or funny or sad just happened in another corner. Right then you look up in embarassment and catch this person's eye, and they know exactly what you're thinking, and you know exactly what they're thinking, and the relief that floods your chest is big and warm. In that moment the world feels a little less like chaos and a little more like art.
That feeling is terribly rare. I've learned that when you find it, you should grab it with both fists, no holding back. What's the point of restraint, anyway? Life is so stupidly short and senseless. Moments like that - people like that - sometimes feel like the entire point. They are my navigation in the dark.
If I met the writer of this op-ed piece in the New York Times, I'm sure I'd feel that thing.
Read it here: On Being Not Dead
These are the kind of people you lock eyes with across a crowded room at a party when something awful or funny or sad just happened in another corner. Right then you look up in embarassment and catch this person's eye, and they know exactly what you're thinking, and you know exactly what they're thinking, and the relief that floods your chest is big and warm. In that moment the world feels a little less like chaos and a little more like art.
That feeling is terribly rare. I've learned that when you find it, you should grab it with both fists, no holding back. What's the point of restraint, anyway? Life is so stupidly short and senseless. Moments like that - people like that - sometimes feel like the entire point. They are my navigation in the dark.
If I met the writer of this op-ed piece in the New York Times, I'm sure I'd feel that thing.
Read it here: On Being Not Dead
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
"Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be bloody-minded. Argue with the world. And never forget that writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on a thousand and one things - childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves - that go on slipping, like sand, through our fingers."
- Salman Rushdie
- Salman Rushdie
Sunday, October 21, 2012
The Promise
In the dream I had when he came back not sick
but whole, and wearing his winter coat,
he looked at me as though he couldn't speak,
as if there were a law against it, a membrane he wouldn't break.
Hi silence was what he could not
not do, like our breathing in this world, like our living,
as we do, in time.
And I told him: I'm reading all this Buddhist stuff,
and listen, we don't die when we die. Death is an event,
a threshold we pass through. We go on and on
and into light forever.
And he looked down, and then back up at me. It was the look we'd pass
across the kitchen table when dad was drunk again and dangerous,
the level look that wants to tell you something,
something important, in a crowded room, and can't.
-Marie Howe
but whole, and wearing his winter coat,
he looked at me as though he couldn't speak,
as if there were a law against it, a membrane he wouldn't break.
Hi silence was what he could not
not do, like our breathing in this world, like our living,
as we do, in time.
And I told him: I'm reading all this Buddhist stuff,
and listen, we don't die when we die. Death is an event,
a threshold we pass through. We go on and on
and into light forever.
And he looked down, and then back up at me. It was the look we'd pass
across the kitchen table when dad was drunk again and dangerous,
the level look that wants to tell you something,
something important, in a crowded room, and can't.
-Marie Howe
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