Media Record Day 2

Started off on media bistro this morning, and found my way here. Again apropos. I like how even here, in the seeming chaos and of the Internet, like attracts like, and patterns emerge.

Later my mother sent me a link to this fascinating review of Winifred Gallagher's Rapt; a book I now very much want to read.

From there the day fragmented into lots of email, a little twitter, and thankfully a lot of writing. (Saw this post, via Twitter, and started wondering is conflict essential to all good fiction?

What do you think? I am very interested in hearing your ideas on this...

Also watched So You Think You Can Dance, which I adore, because as I've said here before: if I could have a talent bestowed upon me, it would be the ability to dance.

It was a roller coaster day though. Storm clouds, indecisive rain, sallow sun, moods getting tossed all around our house. One of those days where everything seemed annoying: Bean's loud sing song voice, the way he is inclined to DASH everywhere lately, Sprout's new inclination to spit up gallons of sour milk without any warning whatsoever, the never ending dampness that has become this summer, and one too many issues with the poultry (the chicks escaped again--and the same hoopla of chasing them around a very sharp pine tree in the rain, in the mud, that occurred two days ago, took place again today.)

It should also be noted, as somewhat of a highlight, that our goose hatched a baby chick today. Chick, as in chicken. Long story. I'm not sure if it will survive. Something in me isn't quite sure she'll know how to mama a baby that small and fluffy (I'll post pictures tomorrow!) but when I checked on her this evening the little chick was tucked in on her back, at the nape of her neck, peeping away. She's still sitting on two other eggs. Here's to seriously hoping she'll figure it out. I've kind of had enough poultry drama for a while.

Honestly it was one of those days where I kind of wished I lived somewhere utterly urban: full of angles and elbows, people wearing black, umbrellas, pointy shoes, bustling bodegas, sharp lines, bright lights. I'd happily settle willingly for anywhere sunny though. Then I could throw a garden party just like this (found via a friend on facebook.)

What were your media moments today?

Media Record Day 1

Here is a record, more or less of the media I interacted with today: The continuation of a hysterical email exchange with my dear girlfriends about married names and given names and choosing names. One of my friends is marrying a man who happens to have the same name as her, minus a syllable. You can see how this might get tricky.

Another email exchange with some amazing friends about their reading habits, re: fiction or memoir? (Weigh in please!)

Visiting and revisiting twitter and still not quite getting how such a multi-directional, utterly dislocated conversation with a thousand different people going all at the same time makes any sense at all. But kind of liking reading about the goings on in the literary agent world (last weeks #queryfail made me laugh, though apparently it made others cry.)

Facebook, twice. A friend posted this: “prioritizing inappropriately” and it couldn’t be more apropos.

SheWrites, once. Since I signed up on Monday, the place has a zillion new members. I’m still not sure how to use the opportunity here. I’m tempted to spend all day networking. But then there’s that pesky thing called ACTUALLY WRITING which I should be doing more of. I have 90 pages of raw material. I need to double that. Then I can talk. Or maybe then I should focus my energies on revising?

Read this rather morbid list, while researching the circumstances of Plath's death for my book. Oy. I haven't chosen a profession with a guaranteed pleasant outcome, have I?

Then I read "Suspension" by Rebecca Makkai, and loved it because of it’s form. I googled Makkai after reading her story “The Worst You Ever Feel” in the 2008 Best American, and this story is where I landed.

On paper, in actual three dimensions I read Lorrie Moore’s piece "Childcare" in this weeks New Yorker. A few great lines, like this one: “ I accidentally nodded. I had no idea, conversationally, where we were. I searched, as I too often found myself having to do, to find a language, or even an octave in which to speak” made me smile because I could relate. But the piece was generally meh. Not something that will likely stick with me, though maybe now it will because I am writing about it. (Go read it! Tell me what you think. I loved doing that last time--hearing your ideas about a story. Having a little impromptu book club.)

And I read the intro in Molly’s book a Homemade Life. Every time I hold the book in my hands I am smitten with simultaneous inspiration and envy. It’s not a good combination and thus far has prevented me from reading farther. However it has inspired me to try my hand at homemade pasta. Also chocolate cupcakes.

Finally, I read yesterday's headlines in the Wall Street Journal, while walking back up the driveway with a sleeping Sprout, but I cannot recall any of them. Only that there was an entire full page add about Presidential Armored Safe's that you can obtain for FREE if you purchase multiple sets of 'government coins that never loose their value.'

I am certain I consumed other bits of information, and yet my memory of them is even more frail and blurred. What is the point of all this consumption if I cannot even remember it?

Maybe I should also note that I also did some revising, finished a chapter, started two art projects while bouncing Sprout in the ergo, took a walk (to get him to sleep), did the shred, and baked cookies. Also there was dinner and bedtime stories and so forth. Gasp. Does anyone ever feel like they have enough time?

*** Your turn: what media did you interact with today?

Media Habits

Wednesday. When I type that word I think of fifth grade, of the yellow lined paper I used to practice spelling it on in loopy cursive, Wed-nes-day. I still say it that way in my head when I write it out.

Funny how certain things stick and others evaporate in a second. Just as I was writing this I thought of the premise for a perfect short story. By the time I’d pulled up a new sticky note on my desktop, it had slipped my mind and all I could remember was the fact that I need to email several friends and am very remiss in doing so. Maddening.

Memory. It’s such a loopy, lumpy thing, like an old floral couch with little spots burned in the fabric from where the sun struck it, shining through a vase on the windowsill just so.

I remember my childhood vividly and sporadically. From fifth grade I remember learning the entire Greek alphabet, all of the prepositions in alphabetical order, how to spell Wednesday, and how I kicked Zachary O’Day in the crotch with those slouchy pointy toed boots that were all the rage along with acid washed jeans in 1986.

I do not however, remember yesterday, unless I put some serious mental effort towards the task.

No. That isn’t true. I do remember the way last night we decided to go with a red metal bucket to pick raspberries down by the pond and a quarter of the way there ran into two stray dogs. One was a yellow lab with one of those pronged collars that look vaguely threatening, and the other was a black wisp of a dog with floppy ears and lanky legs and pale ghost blue eyes, part husky for sure. They weren’t from around here. Not any of the neighbor's dogs, and when we went towards them they ran, away from us, up our hill, towards our house and our free range chickens.

Incidentally, just yesterday DH decided that our two month old chicks were old enough to go free range, without the enclosure we normally put them into. And by decided, I mean he took the path of least resistance, as they had escaped him when he was trying to transfer them from the large wooden box where they spend the night in the coop, to the enclosure on the lawn. They escaped and he decided to hell with them. So they were out under the pine all day and just fine except that now of course two feral and rather hungry looking dogs were heading right towards them.

We ran back up our hill, pushing the stroller with Sprout who indignantly began to wail and Bean, who dropped his bike and skittered up after us, his yellow helmet bobbing, his eyes on the sky where thunder had begun to rumble. "I saw lightening," he said, his voice all quavery. "It might get us."

Seriously, when it rains it pours around here.

And so there we were, trying to deter the dogs by yelling and throwing rocks in their general direction, and then trying to catch and re-coop the not so big and definitely not so smart chicks who would make a mad dash for the coop door and then at the very last minute would scatter frantically in all directions.

I remember this. Yes I do. But what I don’t remember—unless I stop now and really think of it—is what I read yesterday, what I learned, what media I consumed. And I’ve been thinking about that since my last post: how I am maybe suffering from information/networking overload and what to do about it.

And I came up with this: For the rest of the week I am going to try to keep notes here about my media habits and see where this gets me. Likely, I'll be back with my first record this afternoon. You in?

Placeholder {updated}

Sometimes he still looks so small to me...

***

Holding my breath, watching the election results.

*** President Obmama = awesome.

Things I want to know:

... If every 3 ½ year old goes through a phase of DISAGREABLE that involves rejecting every choice and every option presented to him, and also often involves throwing himself to the floor in sobbing dramatics when told that those are his only choices, or even, at his very worst, saying, No Mommy! You listen to me! when told to listen. And also…

If the rest of the world really thinks Palin is a charming and gorgeous as Pakistan’s president does (ick.)

Why anyone in the world really thinks Palin would make a good VP, or, god forbid, the president.

Why McCain thought smirking endlessly during the debates would make him come off as anything other than an ass.

Why anyone really would vote for someone who has voted for 90% of the things Bush has voted for. Seriously.

Why I am still feeling indigestion/nausea/ridiculous unpleasantries when I am 18 weeks pregnant.

A welcome

The beautiful, talented, Sam just had her baby boy—on (I believe) Bean’s half birthday. He's still in the hospital (check her blog for the details) but doing well. If I could, I'd be there in a heartbeat. Instead, they're in my thoughts. A lot.

Welcome to mamahood, Sam! Welcome to the world, little one, you’ve got an amazing mama!

Trembling heart

Sometimes my heart feels like a starfish belly: outside me, devouring the things I love. Sometimes it feels like an urchin’s purple back: a hundred quills around its pliant center. Sometimes it’s like the soft belly of a cat: turning to the sunlight, thrumming with internal delight. Sometimes it’s hard to have a heart this tender, this wide open to other people’s grief.

At work we’re just finally now sorting through the relics of trauma that we’ve carried like splinters through the school year. I’m more okay than many others, in part, because I was new there, and also because I am young and resilient. The middle kid in my family. The peace maker. The relativist who can see both sides, while still seeing the cup half full. I wasn’t rooted, familiar with the way 'things always were.' The lives lost weren’t ones I knew.

And yet, oh and yet, it is so very hard for me to sit in a room with everyone’s emotions running high like floodwaters, just below the surface of their pale blue veins. So hard to see their faces hurt, to see the different sides, to see the grief and feel it all. I try to envision a protective shield to stop some of it from saturating, but the sorrow and loss and anger that fills the building, and eddies as two people pass in the halls, is so present, so tangible, I can’t shake it off. I am devastated, still. And then I read in the paper about the little girl in Portugal, abducted from her hotel room, or about sweet|salty’s beautiful tiny premie boys and my heart feels pulpy and fragile and broken open all over again, as if sorrow were a new ingredient in air.

I came home exhausted today. I think I’ve come home exhausted all year. I thought I was the only one, but in the past two days of meetings, everyone says they’ve been ungodly tired, sleepwalking through the days. Someone said it was like we were trying to fix four flats on a car with the car still moving. And it has really been like that, post trauma, moving full throttle forward because of the wide eyed kids who want to learn about the arctic and the desert and addition and how to spell the word miss-iss-ipp-i.

Then I stumbled on this: I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise.

I choose to risk my significance, to live so that which came to me as seed goes on to the next as blossom, and so that which came to me as blossom goes on as fruit.

Dawna Markova

A weekend in Quebec

Sinking into the plush down of a king sized bed. Chocolates on the pillow. Bright green apples in a black ceramic bowl on the end table. Lattes in the morning in white cups with saucers, firelight, flaky croissants and tall slender glasses of orange juice.

Walking cobblestone streets in the icy cold. Like a family of dragons, our breath clouding up around us every time we spoke or laughed. Quilted down jackets. Shearling gloves. Bean in a snowsuit with so many layers of wool and fleece beneath it, he could barely bend his knees.

Carnival horns, and ruckus cheering. An ice palace. Snow sculptures. Dog sled races, paws pounding down a snowy path through the turning streets of the old city. Hot mulled wine and French onion soup. Clouds of steam rising up from the hot chocolate gripped in Bean’s mittened hands.

Collapsing into bed with milk and PBJ sandwiches for lunch, wearing long johns and watching Inuit cartoons on TV. Bean sitting on the wide windowsill showing his monkey and cheetah the giddy five story view below.

Sipping dry red wine and eating warmed olives and toasted spicy almonds in the lounge, remembering what it feels like to be an adult with some place to be after 8pm. Shimmying close on the couch and kissing. Playing Gin. Winning. Laughing.

Stopping at a tiny bakery to buy delicate almond, orange & chocolate cookies, crispy and thin. Perfect discs of sweetness to melt in our mouths. Eating crepes hot of the griddle, chocolate everywhere.

Riding the plummeting drop in a little glass rail car, with the wide sweep of the St. Lawrence below us. Stopping in small shops to warm our fingers, Bean jumping from every stoop. Street musicians with cold fingers playing the fiddle, frozen snow breaking under foot.

Sandwiches on warm baguettes and then the long ride home, sun drenched across the wide flat expanse between here and there. Snow covered and wind swept fields, the sun sinking west. Full of joy to finally have had time to simply be: a family, a lover, a wanderer in a foreign city. So good. A perfect, perfect birthday weekend.

Photos here. I'll be putting more up, once I've found the other flash card in our luggage.

PS: thank you SO MUCH for all your awesome birthday wishes!

Hi. Already.

Hello, Internets !

I haven't checked my stats in so long, I believe I've forgotten my passwords. But I know that there are many cool people out there who come here, and some of you write me absolutely awesome emails, or send me lovely chocolate covered figs, or gorgeous photos, or cds with amazing girly housewarming tunes (thank you, thank you, a zillion times, thank you!)

But others of you I'm sure, lurk your way through my posts each day, never toching your keyboard. And in your honor, it's that week again. That's right. NATIONAL DELURKING WEEK. Go ahead, say hi. Every single one of you. You will make my day. My week, even. Really. And just for you, I painted this picture (in keeping with my January art every day resolution.)

Because I always root for the underdog

I'm so happy Jeffery won on Project Runway! (My one tv watching obsession is hereby revealed.) I loved his couture dress, and that green striped dress with the exquisite detail. I could ever get up the guts to really let my hair down and dress my inner wild self, I'd wear his clothes. (Stop gasping. I know I never where anything but jeans, and an exciting day for me in fashion is a pair of heeled boots. But just imagine. I'm good at imagining.) Another good thing? I have off the next two days, and am thrilled to have time to hang out with my little guy, and make food, and play with friends, and in genral, catch up on life. Bean seems to have been missing me big time tonight. Every time I'd stop rocking and prepare to put him to bed, thinking he was sound asleep, he'd roust himself and say "grock! grock!" I didn't quite get what he was saying at first, but then I realized it was "rock!" as in, 'keep rocking me mommy." And so I did, humming songs in the dark, and feeling emotions rise and then ebb away as my mind gradually stilled.

Here's to quiet moments, good wins, and long weekends.

Saturday Notebook

The autumnal bird migrations have begun, and last night we watched them fly across the golden sky, each bird a small winged fleck of gratitude. I am alive. Yet my heart aches at the loss, and at the wonderment of my own self preservation. Like Penelope, I keep returning to the spool of memory, unraveling each moment of terror again and again. The mistaken stitches of “what if” tangle the tapestry of these moments.

I breathe. I sleep. I carry the loss of life and injury in a fragile compartment next to my heart, each moment grateful, each moment heartbroken. And then I remember to be right here.

No farther than this moment with birds spiraling up into the evening sky. No farther than their flight of air and feathers, silhouettes against the bright balloons of hedonists, drinking the good beauty of the day drawing to a close.

Then I breathe again. I breath in air sweet with drying hay, and leaves turning hue. Again I am learning how to bow at the alter of the moment. Again I am learning that now is all I have.

Friday Notebook

Know this: Your life is precious. YOU are precious. Carry the gift of your life in both your hands with utter awe and gratitude. Everything can turn in a moment. Everything.

I'm sorry I can't write more--I'm not sure about this medium of blog when it comes to matters of deep crisis and privacy, but I also love the community I've found here and need to share some small image of what has taken place in my life in the past few days. Those of you who know me well will probably understand this post. Those who do not, should read it simply as a reminder. Live your life fully. Love yourself and your family. Be grateful for every single day.

Edited to add: Thank you for all your concerned emails. I am okay and my family is okay, for which I am deeply grateful. I was in shooting at the school where I work, and not all of my colleagues are okay.

Upon arrival

Sun drunk, I remember how much I love the ocean. To be pounded over and over by salt water, to feel sand, rife with shells under my feet. In the back yard, a pond with possible alligators, ibis, herons. On the beach, sea turtle tracks like swirving half moons up the sand, marking the way to round nests of eggs. Giddy to be around a woman I love this much---who also loves Bean and DH, and even giddier to walk out the door from lunch to see the space shuttle shooting up into the sky, suddenly dissapearing beyond the blue. Tomorrow more time to write and post, and some pictures of the long legged birds, the hundred lizareds, and Bean frollicking on the beach. Happy 4th!

I can't help it

I am now officially a teeny bit in love with Steven Colbert because of this. He's brilliant.

Dislocation

I just finished this painting, and am fascinated by how it turned out. The process of painting is so organic for me: far more wildly right brained than writing is. I start with a canvass, and just push paint around. I let the background sit for a couple of days, there on my easel in the middle of the room. I allow it to saturate my subconscious. I think about it in the still moments when I’m nursing Bean, or rocking him to sleep, or when I’m lying in bed just at the cusp of sleep myself. If I’m attentive, images will often alight on the cinemascape of my mind. I’ll see stalky bird legs, or a particular wash of color. Or I might pick up on a mood.

Days go by this way. Until I find the right image to follow, and then I do.

In this painting the colors of the background were so moody, I struggled with how to extend an image beyond their sheer rawness. I wanted this piece to be another in the series I’m making for upcoming café shows, so I wanted to stick with the theme I’d chosen of juxtaposing organic and inorganic; detail and chaos.

Flipping through the bird book DH gave me for Valentine's Day (along with a pair of incredible binoculars! Yes we’re like that. I gave him a telescope. And no, we didn’t discuss our presents in advance. That’s just how we think.) I found myself lingering over the image of the great blue heron: so majestic, wild, fierce, lonely.

After I’d made the bird, the dark city landscape evolved to go behind it. I was writing about dislocation and creating home at the time, and these ideas became the narrative of this painting.

In Connecticut, where I used to live and work, I’d drive along 95 and I’d feel heartsick at the trash, the urbanization, the acres of cement overrunning coastal wetlands and marshes belonging to egrets and herons, red tailed hawks, grebes, and mallards. Now I’m living northwards by several hundred miles and things seem more in synch. There are wide swaths of open space designated for the birds. Along the sandbar heading towards the islands in Lake Champlain, and huge osprey aeries sit atop telephone poles every mile or so.

But I can’t help feeling like somehow it’s up to me to be a part of making this last. It’s easy to feel entitled. Easy to say, “this is my land.” Harder to make actions reflect the fluttering wonder of my heart.

I am interested: what choices do you make consciously to protect the natural habitat where you live?

Merry Christmas!

The years fold on top of each other like the pages in an accordion book, each one nearly obscuring the last. Tonight we decorated the tree with ornaments from DH’s childhood. Bean’s eyes were wide with wonder, and he tried pulling on the strings of lights. We spent the evening watching old home movies from when DH was small and eager, hoisting his parents out of bed before the first morning light to unwrap heaps of presents. Crazy how his parents have the same voices twenty years later. How they say the same things. How some things never change. And then we wonder: is this how we’ll still be?

I try to remember my own Christmases growing up. I see snapshots. Glass bells and red balls. Real candles on the tree. Christmas morning pancakes. Taking turns to open just a few presents, and then saving more for the remaining days of Christmas. Singing carols around the tree in the semi dark of dancing candle light.

I try to remember my parents, and gather only scraps. The warmth of my father’s chest as I sat curled up against him singing carols. His eyes like bluebirds in flight as he guessed the content of each present. My mother making gingerbread, her hands holding the wooden rolling pin. Her eyes tearing up at a certain German carol that reminded her of her own childhood traditions.

DH and I imagine making Christmas next year in our new house. Snow on the ground. Good food. We laugh trying to imagine how Bean will remember us after years there. What will we look like to ourselves when we look back on the blurry video footage of NOW?

The clock is about to chime bringing tomorrow. Another Christmas with some small nook of my heart still filled with wonder at that bright Christmas star that led shepherds and wisemen to the birth of an incredible being. But it is also filled with a flood of love—for the people I am with, and for those I’m missing across the country.

Merry Christmas to all of you wonderful blogging folk who have filled my life with so much humor and brilliance and beauty and snarkiness and joy!

Go Vote

The Best of Blogs is doing their second annual awards soon. I'm doing lots of nominating. Check out the categories & vote. It's fun.

postcards recieved

I recieved the last of the postcards from the sawp Nichola organized. I was amazed at all the delicate stitchery---all but two had some form of sewing. It's easy to impress me with sewing. I have hilarious memories of learning to use a sewing machine in seventh grade. Our project was to make a nightgown. My best friend, whose mother makes dolls for a living, sewed the most exquisite nightgown imaginable. Little Peter Rabbit buttons, pleats, even hems. I made mine by laying out two layers of fabric and cutting out a shape that roughly resembled a gingerbread girl, and then sewing up the sides. My hems went haywire. My final project, a hideous costume that I tried to revive with too many buttons. I also remember talking the entire class, and sassing the teacher who I was sure didn't like me. She called me a bitch to my face and sent me out. I told the principal. I've never touched a sewing machine since.

Here are some glimpses at the cards I recieved:

From Nichola, in Australia.

From Suzy, in Japan.

From Shelly, in Australia.

From Natalie (who is 11 and doesn't have a blog), in England.

From Sarah, in Australia.

From Robyn, in Tulsa.

Small things, big things

Snow was predicted for today, but instead sun. Outside the street is bright and striped with angled shadows. Most of the leaves have fallen now, and the tree branches are bare--reminding me of capillaries or rivers viewed from above. Each tree, a network of twigs, sap slowing for winter.

After I got out of the shower this morning, the house was quieter than it usually is. I came into the bedroom and found my boys had gone back to sleep: my husband curled around our son, their cheeks touching. I tiptoed out and reveled in the early morning quiet, making French toast and herby omelets. Watching the cats loll in the checkered sunlight on the floor. Taking the time to breathe; to notice the faint smoky haze across the room, making the light streaming through the window appear in falling rays.

I've been thinking lately about how each day is filled with choices that are momentary and small, yet when viewed from a wider angle, have an impact on a far greater scale in my life, and in the lives of others. Taking time the time to notice these small things---or not. Breathing deeply, in the moment---or forgetting to. But also choices like these: buying milk from the local organic dairy, instead of from huge national conglomerates that pump their cows full of hormones, or eating the small bumpy heirloom apples grown here, rather than the smooth skinned ones trucked in from across the country.

So often, I find myself reacting rather than consciously choosing. When tired, pushed to blurry limits, it's easy to forget to live with active intention. But since moving here, to this place where people stop when the light is GREEN to let a pedestrian walk across the street, I've started to make the daily effort. It matters. Every day matters.

When they woke up, my two guys looked so scrumptious I wanted to devour the both of them whole: pillow cheeks, rumpled hair, sweet smelling and drowsy from sleep. And because it was still early, we had time to eat together, giving thanks. Outside, I could hear geese calling, migrating south high up in the windy sky.

Illustration Friday: Roots

Listen to this. Andrei Codrescu's words filled my soul last Wednesday, and for days I've kept running over these sentences in my head. Images suit me better in times of wonder or grief. So I painted.

Starting with a topographic map of the Mississippi delta, I wanted to convey how hope takes root, like it always has. How it floods up through song, through sorrow, through the mouths of the poor enraged by poorer leadership. How our country, always feeling entitled, stumbles and then reaches out, realizing that to blame is not the point. And from flooded rubble, a million small stories of human grace turning devastation into song. So much is lost, but this we can remember.