Today, this:
What is it to feel unrealized, other than strangely exquisite? It is the soul's plea to matter. It is the exhausting submersion of caring for others, sometimes at the expense of our own creative spark. It is age and mortality settling upon us like a kneading cat, prodding us to Hurry up and do something. Make something. Be something.
From the exquisite, talented Kate at Sweet|Salty
It's this same voice in my head that drives me to do crazy things like declare my NaNoWriMo goal, and to long with my clunky, wanderlust heart to hang glide someday; live somewhere far from here; to keep doing things that terrify me, or are hard, or are brand new. Because if not this, now, then what? Tomorrow might be dust. Tomorrow might anything. But today, this. We hold it in our hands.
And also this: two cups of french press coffee + cream and a new friend = a very good thing.
Timing is everything
Hi Monday. Apparently I hit publish last night before bed, and this odd collection of urls and lines of text went live yesterday night sometime. Oy. ( I'm glad you liked my 'experiment,' Denise.)
I did want to share all sorts of things I've been crushing on lately though, including these poems, and enough gorgeous pink blooms here to almost make me weep. Also, this inspiration to play around with some stenciling. (I've always had a crush on Banksy.) And this artist's interpretation of the "Missed Connections" section in the paper, which is where I go, too, when I'm looking for a new story.
Speaking of a new story, I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year. You all remember my failed attempt in August, I am sure (which was kiboshed by a heaping helping of freelance copy-editing.) This time? No excuses. I need to get this story out of my system. I need to get this story on the page. I need to see my words accumulate following NaNoWriMo's instructions:
"Do not edit as you go. Editing is for December. Think of November as an experiment in pure output. Even if it's hard at first, leave ugly prose and poorly written passages on the page to be cleaned up later. Your inner editor will be very grumpy about this, but your inner editor is a nitpicky jerk who foolishly believes that it is possible to write a brilliant first draft if you write it slowly enough. It isn't. Every book you've ever loved started out as a beautifully flawed first draft. In November, embrace imperfection and see where it takes you."
So basically, it's ON, November.
Also, I got a part time job at a place that is very close to my heart--doing something I've never done before, with lots of opportunities to learn new creative things like In Design which will, in part, help to pay for my writing habit. So this coming month it's all about time management and balance. A week or so ago, at the suggestion of my very dear and very organized friend, I watched this lecture on time management, and I'm inspired to try to keep a time log this week to attempt to become more aware of how I spend my time. I'll likely be posting more on this at the end of the week..
This week is all about getting ready for Halloween around our house. Carving pumpkins. An obscene amount of foil tape and a pretty cool robot costume in the works. It's also about finishing two short stories and getting an essay submitted so that I have a clean plate for November's novel insanity.
What are you up to? Where do you think you spend your time? Have you ever kept a time log? Where do you know you need to become more efficient?
Learning to fly
We make paper airplanes. A fleet of them tossed into space after dinner, twirling, looping, landing on the hardwood, on the couch cushions, on the edges of ledges and windowsills. Our hearts on our sleeves, laughter filling the living room, as the cold autumn night crowds in around at the windows and Sprout chases after each one, newly crawling, hands going fwap, fwap, fwap across the floor. This is my life, I think. These boys, these moments. What does it matter that I’ve missed a deadline I wanted to meet, or that tiredness makes me stupid some mornings? Everything that really matters is in this room tonight. “Here, I’ll show you how fold one,” I say to Bean, not really believing that he’ll be able to follow my lead, and remembering second graders I’ve taught who have burst into tears with frustration, not able to follow the same sequence of folds.
“Really?” he grins. Then he sits on the floor with a stack of paper, his legs folded behind him on the floor like a little frog.
He watches intently, copying every fold.
First a rectangle, then the nose folded in to make opposing triangles, then the whole thing in half, then the wings folded down. Symmetry and sequence matter now. He breath is shallow, intent.
“Let me try it again,” he says after we toss our new planes high and watch them land. Sprout squeals in delight. A candle still flickers on the dinner table. Night is here, making the window glass into mirrors that catch our grins.
I watch him as he makes another, all himself. The entire sequence of steps folded from memory, after only being shown twice. And his plane flies beautifully. It lifts improbably, air pushing up under the flimsy paper and carrying it up to the ceiling before it swoops down, twirling in arbitrary circles before landing at his feet.
His grin is bigger than the room.
My grin is bigger than the room.
This boy, this beautiful boy of mine, teaches me so much. He challenges me at every turn to grow, to become more organized, more intentional, more prepared. He is my mirror, revealing the fragile and haphazard parts of my being that dangle and drag like dropped stitches. Where I am weakest, this is where parenting him forces me to grow the most.
I can’t coast, parenting him. He never gives me the chance to sit back on my laurels and get comfy. He questions everything. He is always pushing me to the edge of my comfort zone. He’s a kid who seems porous to me: the entire environment saturates his little being. He soaks everything up. Watches everything. Asks about everything.
He sees a thing once, and remembers it, classifying it with other similar things: the makes of cars, the inner workings of tractors, street signs, logos, maps. He has a particular obsession with learning new words and he insists on using them again and again until they blend into his daily vocabulary. Words like scenery and astounding, and investigate.
He is never content with the simple answer. He is always full force, full throttle, determined. He is fragile. He is allergic (to dust, grass, pollen, pets.) He is picky. He is persistent. He is easily overwhelmed by sensory stimulation. He exhausts me.
And I’m starting to get it: this boy of mine might be one of the most profound teacher’s I’ll ever know.
Wishstuido
I have a post up here this week. Go check it out! It's about balancing motherhood and writing... something I try for again and again every single day... How do you find balance?
At it again
Today I felt like maybe, finally, I might be making progress. I can't really describe the way I've felt for the past couple of weeks, other than to say that I've felt like I've been drifting somewhere above myself, above my life. Out of touch, maybe, or tangled. Desultory. Haphazard. And this week has been all about coming down to earth. Getting on top of things. Organizing. It was a busy month, and maybe that is my excuse. Introverted by nature, non-stop wedding parties and a week long visit with my dearest of dear friends, and a weekend visit from my sister and her husband, packed my September to it's gills. Not to mention freelance work was eating up all my spare moments. The result: dislocation, distraction, doubt, disillusion, despondency. (Okay, so I'm suddenly alliteration drunk. But you get the idea.)
Either way, for the past couple of days since all the fun ended I've been moping about the house, doing heaps of laundry. SIDE NOTE: I kind of want to write another entire post about laundry, actually. How I had this groundbreaking moment watching my friend fold my laundry precisely, neatly, into these perfectly stacked rectangular piles of shirts and jeans and sweaters. Groundbreaking as in: it never occurred to me that the purpose of folding the damn laundry might be expanded to a) fitting more in one's drawers neatly and b) to reduce the amount of wrinkles in any given garment. I honestly have been folding laundry all these years because it's what you're supposed do with laundry, right? I mean, who doesn't fold laundry? But truthfully, I never put thought into it. Now, I am reformed. See? I simply must post more about this (with pictures!)--it's become a new obsession.
It's taken all week to sort myself out. But finally I'm starting to get the hang of my life again. I have my submissions calendar sorted out and some clear-cut goals, and some long term novel goals (40k words by the end of October) and some maybe sort of plans for an autumn party with the community of friends I am gradually starting to make here, and it all feels good.
It kind of astounds me how easily I got knocked off kilter in the past two months. I've felt so alarmingly fragile, up to my neck in angst and uncertainty that I've had hardly anything to post. Things have felt tenuous and flimsy around here financially lately, and that too adds to my apparent state of internal vertigo. My mind has been twirling all day long, but when I've come up for air, there has been nothing to put on the page. No way to capture the tightly wound, tugged-at feeling that's lodged itself in the pit of my stomach except maybe to say that a part of me has been feeling a little like a kite caught up in a tree, thrashing about in the wind. But less so today after eight loads of laundry, and listening to Selected Shorts while making apple sauce.
So. Hmmm. All this brings me to October.
I have plans for October. Real, practical, concrete plans to disentangle and make things happen around here, including more organization and less stress.
And I'm thinking of doing morning poems again, as a way to slip back into writing for real. I have done morning poems in the past, and have loved it when you have joined me. I've gotten so much this exchange. These small scraps of joy and arc and moment that we capture, first thing, before the blur of the day takes over; before the laundry piles up.
Are you in? The rules are really simple. Show up at the page every morning and write a poem. It doesn't have to be good. It doesn't have to be much of anything. All it needs to be is a small handful of words tossed up to the gods; an offering, a gift, a start to the day.
Suspended
I feel like a part of me is suspended above myself somewhere, caught among the helium balloon strings of my heart. Can't quite seem to find solid ground, yet, again. It's become a pattern for me lately.
Everything is gold and rust here: the light, the leaves, the barns bathed in late afternoon sun. Trying to catch my breath and find a rhythm today.
In my molskine quickly scribbled quotes. Together, they're where I'm at right now:
"I believe in everything that has not yet been said." ~ Rilke
"I write to discover what I know." ~ Flannery O'Connor
"The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as a part of the process. Ask different questions." ~ Bruce Mau
"It is as if mothers have two hearts and two bodies--one heart loves the babies, the other heart attends to the world; one body feeds the babies, the other body moves through ttime and space." ~ Elizabeth Lesser
Today is my Monday
There and back. Maine. 11 hours in the car each way with both boys & my best friend from forever. The wedding of a dear, beautiful friend. Them together. The windy, sunny days. Good lattes and sail boats in the town. Bean in brown converse, as the ring bearer. Sprout cutting his first two teeth (and not making a big deal out of it at all). Friends who love my kids. iPhone apps and silly putty in the car. Hardly any fussing from either boy (a momentous fact, really, seeing as we were literally on the road for 11 hours, with stops.) Back home, bed felt like heaven. Yesterday was a blur of catching up. And being sick with a head cold. Today is my Monday. Hi. I missed checking in here last week. This week: lots of photo posts, organizing my submissions calendar for the fall. Taking a few naps. Saying goodbye to my mother who is moving away. And another wedding of another dear, dear friend this Friday.
*
Things on my mind lately:* My novel. I'm scared to go back. * Running, hard. * Feeling moody. Often. * Finding my stride again, maybe. * Indian summer. * Wishing things were easier. * Getting a glimpse of what a house with TWO boys in it will be like. * Learning to check pockets stain treat laundry.
You?
Unfinished things
Certain things are never done. The wash for one; the spoons in the sink are always there again, and the bowls; the small hands that need scrubbing; the ripe things waiting for harvest in the garden, some silent and round under the dirt, or fat and humming with wasps, sides split open in the late summer sun.
These are days when the light is amber and still. The grasshoppers are huge, springing into the hedgerows as we run by. Their legs are always bent, poised again and again for the small prayer of almost-flight; temporary, dizzying, before they land again among brambles and gravel.
This. This life. It feels so small, so incredibly small and so enormous all at once.
Walking about the house gathering toys in the quiet that comes after small boys finally sleep and the dishwasher runs, I wonder if this can be enough for anyone? If anything is ever enough, if any heart beats regularly with contentment; or if to be alive always means to crave, to lunge, and long and push. We have our hearts after all, full of muscles that never sleep, and chambers secret even to us.
I put a wide mouthed jar of zinnias on the windowsill; follow the hawk with my eyes as I run. Its body is gold and white in the sun, circling against the blue. It is only there, present in the sky. Eyes like arrows, bones hollow, feathers tilting and lifting its small handful of life into the wind.
Ho-Hum.
Today the rain is falling and I can’t put two and two together to make anything even close to resembling four. I have cold feet and fingers and I keep forgetting things. Out the window and the ornamental crabapple has blossoms on a single branch. Now. At the brink of September, after a summer that for all intents and purposes never came at all. It’s rained almost straight for the past three months. The delicate pink blossoms are almost shocking among all the late summer foliage. Green everywhere.
I cannot see the mountains. Clouds press up close around our little hilltop and I am restless today. I cannot put my finger on what is wrong. I am listless. I should be grateful. I have so much to be thankful for and yet I woke up with the surly ungrateful attitude that there would be nothing to look forward to today, and I am proving myself right by default. The law of attraction. I am annoying myself.
Bean is also annoying me. There. I said it. I hate myself for this—for feeling like my child is someone I don’t want to be around, but I don’t. Uh-uh. Not today. He is one big negotiation after another. Temperamental, every few minutes whining about something or gritting his teeth or intentionally twirling something heavy or sharp through the air at the end of a very thin string.
I am at the end of a very thin string with him. I want patience. I want grace. But today with the rain cold and splattering and perpetual all I’ve been is too close to everyone in the same quarters and all I want is to be somewhere the heck away from here. Of course this matters not at all. When you're someone's mother you can’t just get up and shake off your life for a day. And to be honest, the glumness is so pervasive today I can’t think what I want. I have no idea what would make today sparkle.
It’s like I woke up and tripped over a bucket of gray paint and it’s gotten everywhere, obliterating the possibility of a sunny outlook. Humbug. I am hungry even though I just ate. Again. This is how I am all day long with the whole nursing thing. I am always ravenous. Hum.
Maybe baking will cure things.
What should I bake?
Do you ever feel this way? Grouchy without a single real reason in the world to be so? What do you do then? ** UPDATED: I finally went for a run on the treadmill & made a new record. 3 miles. 23:50 minutes. And after running hard, the world felt more in context, as it often does when I run. Why can I not remember this when I am in the thick of feeling sorry for myself?
Monday crushes
Zoom!That was just the entire month of August flying by. I cannot believe how quickly it has gone. One week until September. Already there are fallen leaves on the lawn.
I wanted to share a few things I have been crushing on today:
This darling little clock project.
This glorious sketchbook series and this lovely inspiration wall.
And this list of stories. Good to listen to while doing the dishes.
The past week has been a blur of copy-edit days. Every scrap of time spent close to the thesaurus and the delete key. I miss my book. I miss talking to my characters in my head in the shower. I hope they're waiting. It terrifies me that maybe they have slipped away. A page of events and scenes languishes in the top drawer of my desk. It cracks me up that I professed big plans for this story by the end of the month and here I am at end of the month. And I am not even close.
But there is something to this that I've been learning and learning again this summer. Things come and go---and really, you can't hold on to anything too tightly.
I'm starting to get that it's okay to just ride the waves. To be greedy with sleep and joy and creativity when they find you---and to sink into work and fast-paced days and tiredness on the days that those things hit hard. Each will return, and leave, and return again. There is something in this of faith, I think.
Whatever today is, tomorrow will be different. Yet there is a thread that loops through the fabric of both with its promise. Continuity somewhere. Balance, eventually.
It's scary though to feel a surge of creativity, only to have it plundered by more practical things. There are moments where it feels like having a blindfold yanked down over my eyes, and I'm just bumping into things, fingering the shape of each moment with hands as unknowing as the blind eyes of potatoes.
Are you doing the life you want daily?
Hmm.
August.
Except. I haven't had a scrap of time to write--on my novel, or here. Still trying to find balance. Always this. Is there such a thing? I am determined to sink deep into these last summer days with gratitude.
The humid hot and sticky days. Making cherry pie, served warm with whipped cream. Yellow watermelon. Friends visiting a lot. Backyard bonfires. The corn almost ripe in the garden. Oscillating fans. Rain falling from sunny skies. My apricot colored cat on the white sheets. The dragonflies circling in the heavy air, waiting for rain. Falling in love again, more, enormously with my guy. New calf muscles, and biceps. Running hard almost every day. Swimming in the pond in the rain. Bean's obsession with helium balloons. My beautiful, gorgeous baby boy Sprout who is six months old, sitting, almost crawling, smiling always. I adore him. Utterly. He is a dream baby, and I don't want him to grow up yet.
I found these lines at the end of a poem today--in the Sun, from A Warning by Eric Anderson Nothing ever goes away enough or arrives enough, and I want to cry when I think of my heart, muscle pounding in muscle, greedy always for joy.
This is exactly how I feel.
***
What do you want to remember about August?
91 degrees
We are sweltering. It is official: I hate summer. Well, maybe that is too strong. Oh wait, no it isn't. Not if summer means this. This 91 degrees business. This so hot my brain inside my head feels like a lump of boiled ham bumping about on a plate.
Oh you poor thing, you are thinking. Where I am it's 110. Yeah. Well. And where you are probably has air conditioning.
Sooo. Can you tell I'm a delight today? The whole weekend has been a bit like this. One ill advised idea after another. Yesterday we decided to go camping. Sort of off the cuff. We had initially decided we wouldn't go camping and would just go to spend the day at a lake somewhere, but then DH called some camping place and they had a teeny little cabin available for the night and we thought: cabin + 6 month old + 4 year old might be better than a tent in that same equation. But it wasn't.
It was a cabin at one of those places where people are sandwiched in like sardines. It was by the bathrooms, and didn't have it's own bathroom. And it was surrounded by EIGHTH GRADERS on some vaguely organized youth group camping trip. Really. Dozens and dozens of them listening to music with the refrain "I wanna have sex with you" (I couldn't find out who sings it. It was some very innocent sounding girlie, actually. I did discover that maybe it's not wise to search for that phrase on the Internet.)
Evidently they were not a church group. Also, I was the only one who was noticeably snickering and/or flinching as these lyrics blasted sweetly through the campground which made me feel terribly, depressingly old. I am a prude. Who knew? But wait, it gets worse.
Once we had settled in and unpacked somewhat, we loaded up the running stroller with an ENORMOUS amount of stuff (ninety percent of which we didn't use) to take to the beach across the road because we didn't want to be going back and forth across the relatively busy highway for every little thing...but when we got to the beach, it was PACKED. Again with the whole sardine business. People and their kids and kayaks and fun noodles and towels and umbrellas and dogs on every square inch of sand.
So we schlepped all of our ridiculous stuff through the woods along a very bumpy rooted trail to another beach I'd seen out of the corner of my eye as we drove up, one cove over from the first beach.
Picture us please: it was 90 degrees yesterday and we'd spent the morning packing all kinds of crap and then driving, and all we had had to eat were hot peanut butter sandwiches. We wanted to swim. We were dreaming of leaping into cool lake water and parking our stuff in some nice little secluded corner where Bean could wade, and Sprout could occupy himself on the blanket, and DH and I could finally cool off, sip something refreshing...and blah blah.
Picture the stuffed cooler and the iced tea cooler and the heap of towels. Picture Sprout (who was an angel ALL DAY LONG by the way) stuffed in there too, and Bean running uncontrollably ahead, nearly slipping off the edge of the steep path in his crocs. Picture: huff puff. Swatting mosquitoes in the shade. Snapping at each other. Heave ho. And then picture this: rounding the bend we finally came to a beautiful secluded beach with pristine water and...
... at least three dozen naked old men and a few very brave naked women.
A nude beach. Fantastic.
To be clear I don't really mind nude beaches. I've gone naked more than once on the beach (alright, it was France, but still.) So it's not the naked that bothered me so much. It was just. Well.
"Are you okay with it?" "Yeah I guess so, are you?" DH said scanning the view. "Sure, I mean if it was France...." I let my sentence trail off.
Passing us: an old guy with a saggy paunch wearing a bright blue tank top and NO PANTS. Really, buddy? News flash: Penises, even young ones + a shirt = not that flattering. No. Not at all. Something about the way those bits dangle makes them look compromised and foolish when poking out from under a shirt.
"So, what do you think of that other beach we passed?" I finished.
The other beach was at the other end of the lake. A five minute drive, but DH agreed. It was really too much to wrap our heads around: navigating between naked folks with a bulging stroller and a questionably behaved four year old. We could already imagine his loud proclamations. "WHY ARE THEY NOT WEARING PANTS, MOMMY? WHY DOES HE LOOK LIKE THAT MOMMY?" It could go terribly wrong. Just think what we could bump into. See? It's official. I am a prude.
So we pushed the stroller back and shoved the entire thing into the truck and drove to the other beach which was a thin strip of sand between the lake and the road. A road that seemed to be the 'it' place for all the locals to cruise by with their music blaring (when did I become such a grump?) But we were going to have fun, damn it. And also. It was hot.
So we situated ourselves on the only available postage stamp sized piece of sand we could find and attempted to have FUN. Fun was Bean wading out into the lake and trying to kick away from me in his inner tube despite the fact that he can't swim, and ending with me catching him and him just as he was going under and him coming up sobbing. Fun meaning, DH breaking the buckle on my favorite belt trying to use it to open a beer while I was in the water instead of just asking me where the bottle opener was. Fun, as in: sand everywhere. And also the girl next to us was very pregnant and very young and very decidedly chain smoking.
It just about broke my heart, watching her watch us. She had this vapid depressed look on her pale face. Like it was the end of the world. Like we were everything she never wanted to be. Us, with our baby and our Tupperware of watermelon and our umbrella blowing away. Us, with Bean covered in sand and 'accidentally' hurling a toy that nearly took out some unsuspecting sunbathers.
Her boyfriend was blond with lots of tattoos and a soft stomach. He kept taking his shoes off and putting them back on. I heard her say, "I just can't get comfortable," as she took a drag on her cigarette and squirmed about on her towel, her belly round and pale, like she'd swallowed a watermelon. I kept picturing them in the middle of the night with their newborn and it was devastating. And it put things in perspective.
Because really, even though the day proved to be more disaster than not, DH summed it up perfectly when he said, "If I have to have a day like this, I'm so glad you're here to have it with." And really, it wasn't that bad. Sprout was delightful the entire time, and Bean, well, he's a rascal at 4 and a half. He had a lot of sugar and he was thrilled about the bunk beds in the cabin, and let's just say we might have fared better had it not been 90 degrees with Eminem playing and soccer balls flying over our heads.
Still, we managed to salvage the afternoon by going back to the campsite as the sun was setting. We lightened our load significantly, bought some ice cream and then went down to the first beach we'd gone to in the morning and it was much less crowded and the water was pristine. Bean and I swam and the light was golden. DH had fun grilling sausages on the camp stove. We made a fire and roasted marshmallows. We licked our sticky fingers.
And then we drove home.
Because really, after the day we had just had, imagining a night in a tiny cabin with two tiny windows (and no screen on the door) and a double bed with a baby just sounded impossibly horrific when we could be home in our own bed in just over an hour.
Turns out, we're not so much the car camping type. Backpackers first, DH and I both long for seclusion and nature when we camp, and the point of being in a small uncomfortable space (tent) with compromised sanitation is lost when multiple neighbors playing loud music are added to the equation. I have always loved to camp, and it's one of the things I miss the most about summertime now that I have children.
Obviously, backpacking is out of the equation until both boys can tote their own small packs (with their own clothes/sleeping bags), but I would like to believe that car-camping can achieve a similar experience, if done right, in the right place. This apparently means massive research and planning and checking online in advance about things like nude beaches and how people define the phrase "spectacular views."
Also, ziplocs. We forgot ziplocs.
Do you have any tips/advice/stories about camping with kids? I would love to hear your experiences and must-haves lists. Or your condolences. Or anything really. Something. Because I'm still rather traumatized and it has only just now gotten cool enough to commence breathing indoors, and heat and I apparently do not mix well.
Pictures tomorrow. :)
Inspiration & such
The rain falls hard, shaken from the heavy air, in spite of the sun. Rivulets run down my arms, the thin cotton of my t-shirt immediately soaked. Even though it has rained all summer I love storms like these. Flat-out rain. The sky impossibly blue overhead, clouds ripped apart like pillows after a bedroom romp.
I’m listening to Penguin Café this afternoon. Trying to mow through the heap of things that has accumulated this week. Filling out forms for kindergarten (Bean starts in a multi-age classroom in a couple of weeks), running to the post office for stamps and to mail packages, copy-editing, writing. Always that.
Of course the very day, yes, the EXACT SAME DAY, I posted about my enormous writing goals for this month, an unbelievably awesome freelance copy editing/writing job fell into my lap. I am beyond grateful. And excited. And happy and such things. But now of course there is really no way I’ll meet my 80K goal by the end of the month. Things are competing for my time. Big time.
I’m thinking 40K will be more reasonable. But I’m also discovering things about the writing process that I didn’t know before—straight up novel writing is so different than short story writing or memoir writing or anything else I have ever done. I’m learning how I can be effective with small chunks of time: to map out future sections—to think in terms of events and scenes. To get notes down on paper no matter what.
Speaking of organizing, on Tuesday I tried out putting a couple of my favorite images I’ve ripped out of magazines together, inspired by this blog.
It was fun. And I had the idea of clipping each successive page one on top of the other on the cork board by my desk—that way I’ll gradually accumulate a whole stack of images that speak to me, and one day, maybe, I’ll get back around to painting and drawing again, and I’ll have them all in one place, rather than in piles on shelves and in boxes.
Now, some lovely things for Wednesday:
A pretty little card.
These summertime pics, and these foodie pics.
Also, this movie. Meryl Streep is glorious, as always. And it’s a story that makes you want to grab hold of the things you love and want, and to pursue them tenaciously and with conviction. Julia Child was told repeatedly that she was a terrible cook and would never have any kind of successful career. It reminded me to not get to bent out of shape about rejections.
And finally, though this has no connection whatsoever to anything else in this post, what is your favorite salad dressing recipe? Please share.
This is what I know today
To be a child means living wonder, without knowing wonder is a concept, an abstraction.
I was a star before I fell down into your tummy, Mommy, Bean tells me. We’re on his bed, the blue Hawaiian print sheets in a rumple, the lights dim, twilight outside.
Everyone dies, he says but we don’t stay dead. We go up to heaven and then we come back down again as a new baby.
I want to tell you things...
I want to tell you things. I want to capture moments and pin them down, and preserve them like the fragile wings of the butterflies we sometimes find dead along the roadside at the end of summer.
I want to tell you about the fragrance of peaches. The way they melt in my mouth, the fragrance filling every crevice of memory and consciousness with the utter sweetness of late summer. They are a thing to behold, peaches, now, when you can cut them in half, twisting so that the fruit separates easily from the pit and the skin slides off like a party dress.
I want to tell you about the way the house smelled like blueberry boy bait this afternoon. Cakey and heavenly, made with freshly ground flour and local berries.
I want to tell you about the fat green watermelon resting on my counter, its round rind a map of green and pale stripes. It will split open easily, revealing the red fruit and dark seeds. Watermelon is summer. Summer is red sticky juice running down little boy’s chins, and spitting seeds, and sitting on the front step with big slices watching the storm clouds come. In the garden our own sugar babies and moon and stars are ripening, their leaves like ruffled skirts creeping over ground to fraternize the long girlish legs of the corn.
I want to tell you how everything is always one thing and then another. How a morning can be good or bad, and so the day will go, always sort of unexpected. Always abrupt and unfolding. Every day is a small surprise. I am struck by this again and again: that being alive sometimes feels so fickle and permeable, each day a handful of pebbled moments bumping up against each other in god’s pockets. The mountains are blue. The day ends earlier. The clouds come. They bring rain. I wake up with a headache wanting to cry; but then there is the fragrance of roses by the stoop, summer peaches, watermelon, boy bait on plates with forks and crumbs.
I want you to understand this, because I want to understand it too: that today can be anything. That it can be lost and reclaimed a hundred times.
* * * I also want to tell you thank you for your comments on my last post. I loved reading every single one. Loved discovering some new blogs and old favorites and all the amazing goals for August that you have. I want to come here daily, post things, share snippets, but the hours are never long enough. Never. I’m falling behind on my word count, though I’m typing frantically to keep up (just above 12k today.)
And oh, the headache that is this morning. Sigh.
What are you up to today?
A new look.
Hi. It's about time for a new look around here.
In the process, I seem to have lost a post, but no big deal. It's Monday and its sunny which are two things I generally really love, except last night Sprout woke up at 4am and pretty much didn't go back to sleep the rest of the night/morning. And how I count on those two hours. Oh man. It will certainly be a two latte day.
Now that things are fresh and clean around here, I want to share some links I've found lately that I've been enjoying.
Firstly, Tait Simpsons's photographs. They are full of line and texture and mood. Also Sophik's dreamy summer photos. Especially this one. I've always had a soft spot for old trucks. These portraits by Mikael Kennedy also grabbed me. They are haunting and memorable and somehow almost secretive, like you're there in the room, but no one knows.
Also, a little music. I'm listening to this over and over again. It's in a story I'm working on, and the more I listen the more I love it. Gould was a fascinating, remarkable, devastating musician. Speaking of music, have you heard this? If not, you are in for a treat. It's the kind of mixed up soundtrack that makes sense to me. That music is like what stories do in my head: one talking to another until they become part of another story together.
So. Hi. What are your plans for August? I'll tell you mine, if you tell me yours. I want this month to be outstanding. It's the last month of summer. The month when all the insects start singing in the grass and the blackberries get ripe. Its the month for doing big things.
So I'll admit. I have an embarrassingly enormous writing goal for August. I had a story blindside me the other day, and it won't let go. It's as far away from anything I'm comfortable writing as I've ever been, and yet it's good and the exciting and the characters just keep whispering in my ears. It's all rather discombobulating, as I was right in the middle of my book project, and I have more than one short story on the stove too right now. But it wont leave and is demanding to be written, so I am.
I decided to do my own little August version of NaNoWriMo. Ha. Did I just say little? Not so much really. I am aiming to have about 80,000 words by the end of the month. I know, right? Crazy. I can't help it though. The story must. be. written. And I figure if I write about it here it will be just one more reason to do it.
Also, I am really interested to see how I respond to such concrete writing goals and completely new material. The stuff I've been working on for other book is so different. I have so much material already there that I am constantly tripping myself up with ambivalence and indecision. That story is close to my heart and I love it, but it is a pain in the ass. Kind of like another child.
The new story, though, this hit-me-upside-the-head story is more like someone I have a crush on. I am obsessed. I want to do nothing but sit down and listen to the characters as they chatter amongst themselves. My fingers ache at night from typing, and there is no way, no way at all I can type fast enough to get everything down it seems. And I like it like that. And I am interested to see what happens if I go for it, all out, no hold barred, no excuses.
See, the thing is, I respond well to goals and deadlines whether I want to admit it or not. And I also respond well to doing things in little bite sized manageable pieces. Like the 30 Day Shred, or running 3 miles, committing to 2500 words a night seems like a concrete and small enough goal that it will actually get me somewhere. Like in the neighborhood of an entire novel by the end of this month.
Right, so, off the deep end I go. Tra la la.
What are you up to this month? What thing do you really want to do in that quiet secret compartment in your heart? I dare you. I dare you to do it every day. For the whole month. (PS-Because I'm into doing things big this month, I am declaring it an unofficial delurking day. Please say hi. Your comments are one of my favorite things in the world.)
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