Perspective

Waaay back when we started this blog, I remember thinking that since I have such an active, fertile imagination, I could - if I wanted to - imagine how awful it must be for someone to go through a natural disaster and lose the people they love. Like my hero Bartleby, I preferred not to.

I'd really like my imagination to just take a little break now and again. A couple of weeks ago, my brother-in-law, a brash, obnoxious, totally lovable New Yorker hailing from Brooklyn, had surgery to remove a malignant tumor the size of an orange from his lower intestine, and about two feet of colon along with it. You ought to see the scar; it's insane. It starts in the center of his chest, just under the solar plexus, and goes down like a zipper sewn in by a drunken tailor, to just above the happy trail, which is, I gather, not so happy at the moment.

So he had the surgery and the margins were clean and we were all happy and hell, Jimmy's going back to work in two weeks! Everything's back to normal.

Except it's not. Nowhere close.

He has two spots on his liver. At first They couldn't identify them - then decided it was cancer, and started him on either radiation or chemo immediately. Don't know which - this is all being filtered through my husband, who is less concerned with details and more concerned about his sister, who was, as of last night, officially freaking out.

Once They saw the two spots, the next question became whether it was liver cancer, or colon cancer that had spread to the liver. And then They had to figure out how far it had spread.

So off my brother- and sister-in-law went to the oncologist yesterday, to have a look at the results.

I don't know what they were, specifically. My father-in-law's text last night was highly melodramatic and I won't repeat it because it doesn't do any good to say something like that about a fifty-year-old man with two young daughters and a family history of fast-growing terminal cancer.

What I do know is that they're putting him on hard-core chemo for two weeks, then operating again. On his liver.

Goddamn it.

I understand how people turn to God in times like these - really, I do. Because that way, you at least feel like you can do something useful - you can pray. At the moment, I don't feel like I can do anything at all. Not for Jimmy, not for Christie, not for their daughters Addison and Cadyn. And I don't know what to do for Brian, who has known Jimmy since adolescence and is spending a lot of time in the backyard in the evenings, talking on the phone with his father, and drinking.

Maybe we can get an increase on our credit limit. That way, if we need to get there quickly, we can. I can't think of anything else to do. Tearing my hair out and screaming at the top of my lungs at this brutal injustice will do nothing but wreck my vocal cords.

See, when Brian and I are faced with something bad - like surgery on the cat or the dog, like impending foreclosure, like being too broke to afford child care - one of us is always able to say, "It's okay, honey. Everything's going to be all right."

But that's in the blue sky period, when nothing's certain, when the vet can still save a leg or a paw, when the fight with the mortgage company isn't over quite yet, when the biopsy hasn't come back from the doctor and it's probably nothing to worry about anyway. It's scary to think that compared to what my sister-in-law and her husband are going through right now, at this very moment, those things are a walk in the fucking park.

I came into work this morning and one of my co-workers was bitching as he usually does about something or other, it was all I could do not to offer him a big, heaping plate of Shut The Fuck Up. "Harry," I wanted to say, "you're reasonably healthy, although God knows you could drop dead of a heart attack at any second. Any of us could. Your daughter is grown up and healthy. You have a job, and you're fit enough to do it. You own your own goddamned house. So get some perspective and shut the fuck up."

I wish I could say to my husband that everything's going to be all right. But I can't. I wouldn't believe it, and neither would he.

Morning Sun

I've been seeing a lot of sunrises over the past few months. Okay, not sunrises exactly, but early morning sun. For those who know me, that probably comes as a surprise. It goes like this...

Every year when I Amtrak back to New England, I have to readjust my schedule to that of a house with two small children -- no quiet late nights, and luxuriating in bed till ten a.m. I don't mind; I get to spend all the hours of the day with my sister and her family. Quiet reading time is still a must, so I snuggle in "Kiki's Room" with a book at night, switching off the light at midnight or so, and then my basic-five-years-ago cell phone rings annoyingly around seven, reminding me to get up, shove contacts into my swollen eyes, grab some coffee, and settle down on the couch with J and V and R for "Curious George" while we let my sister sleep in.

Early summer mornings have been the rule for seven years now, and I've discovered a small -- very small -- taste for the weak lemon light at the start of the day, and the odd feeling that I might actually get multiple things done before it's even noon. (A trip to the beach! Or maybe just the local market, library, and sundry errands, but still!)

And then every year when I return to New Mexico, it takes me a few weeks to get back to my normal schedule -- a few bizarre weeks of snapping awake in the dark at five a.m., perhaps even wondering where I am (and who the fuck is that naked man beside me?). A funny thing happened this year after my return, though. I kept getting up early.

I don't know why. I mean, it's partly on purpose; a job hovers in the near-future. But despite having been a night owl my whole life, I'm actually enjoying the mornings. The New Mexico summer sun isn't like New England's, obviously -- it's white-hot and bright from the second it rises over the Organ Mountains. But early morning has a quiet and peace that's not unlike late nights.

I miss the silent vampire dark. But sitting here with my coffee, listening to the chatter of birds, watching my cats prowl around the east-facing porch, I feel almost as if my sister is inside, in the kitchen, pouring her own coffee and getting ready to share another beautiful New England day with me. So close even though she's so far...that makes it totally worthwhile.

Triple Thai Hot

I feel kind of silly, posting about food again -- this isn't a food blog -- but so be it. It's a funny story, anyway.

So my totally fab friend Kate was in town for the weekend, and we decided to have an early Saturday lunch at one of our local Thai restaurants. I ordered the vegetarian version of Thai Basil and (not for the first time) had to reassure the waitress that yes, I really really really wanted it Thai hot. As a very fair-skinned person, I'm not unfamiliar with having to convince waitstaff that I'm certain about wanting a high spice level, but that almost never happens in southern New Mexico. Out here, spice is a given. But anyway, this lady wanted reassurance; I gave it; I thought that was it.

But no. Kate piped up. "She wants it crazy hot! That's what she likes! Trust me!"

The waitress paused. "You want double Thai hot? Triple?"

I was in ecstasy at the very concept. "You do triple? Yes, please! That!"

And so it went, and eventually they wanted me to go to the kitchen to reassure the chef himself. Which I did, and then they took a picture of me eating (heavenly -- the food, not the picture), and another picture of me and the chef.

Is there a moral to this story? Wait -- you thought I dealt in fucking morals? No. The point is -- you never know you can get triple Thai hot unless you ask. Thank you, Kate. Thank you, Thai Delight. Bring on the chiles!

Kale Crisps

While we're sharing recipes, here's one I just tried that is really surprisingly good. It requires kale, olive oil, and salt. Break up kale into bite sized pieces. Wash, dry. On a cookie sheet, drizzle kale with olive oil and sprinkle with salt. Bake in oven at 350 degrees for 10 - 15 minutes. Super crispy yummy yum yum!! And of course super healthy, vegan, gluten free too!

Crazy Soup

No, not my brain, silly. It's another scorching summer day in southern New Mexico, so I decided to get cooking out of the way early, before my kitchen hits ninety degrees (one of the swamp coolers is out, but the pool is finally up and running, WOO HOO). I made a variation of one of my favorite soups. I'm a soup goddess -- I cook a lot, mostly vegan, but soups are where my creativity really comes out, and most of what I make is wholly invented from my own perfervid brain.

For this soup, which is kind of Asian and kind of southern and has no name, I start by cubing a block of extra firm tofu and stir-frying it in canola oil, Sriracha, and soy sauce. When the tofu starts to brown, I add a chopped white onion, the chopped stalks of a bunch of red Swiss chard, and some crushed red pepper. When this mixture starts to smell really good, I add water, the torn Swiss chard leaves, a bunch of chopped carrots, some minced jalapeno, a couple vegetarian bouillon cubes, cover it, and let it simmer for fifteen or twenty minutes. I serve it over a mix of brown and wild rice, with lots of extra Sriracha.

According to an online recipe calculator, this soup is incredibly fucking healthy. More importantly, it tastes great. I like to blow my mind with hot sauce, but I also appreciate the deep flavor of the Swiss chard, or any other type of greens. People tend to think of greens as a southern food, but I grew up with all types of greens in the northeast, and I crave them. It pisses me off that you rarely see a greens recipe that calls for any use of the stalks; they're usually discarded. I love their texture and flavor, and never throw them away.

So try my soup. And don't leave out the Sriracha and jalapenos, you pussies.

New Zealand Sangria

Yeah, I haven't posted in forever. Expecting any commentary on that? Fuck you.

Haha.

Last night was the MLB All Star Game. I watched with the BF and a good friend. We drank New Zealand Sangria with some added vodka (does that explain my fuzzy head this morning? Why yes, it does). It wasn't a great game, and the AL lost, but it was a really fun night. New Mexico, like much of the southwest and deep south, has been in terrible drought conditions for a while now, and we all cheered as the thunderstorms moved in. Terrifying, persistent lightning rent the sky and lit the thirsty desert; rain fell off and on for several hours. My hair curled up a couple inches shorter and got correspondingly wider and higher. It was fucking awesome.

I just got back from Maine, an earlier trip than usual, and while I'm happy to have gone, I'm also glad to be here during monsoon season for a change. There is nothing like rain in the desert, the cool wet wind when days have been over a hundred degrees and heated like an oven, the scent of creosote suddenly permeating everything. I scream with pleasure for nights like that.

So. Scattered. But I'm back.

Nothing really

When my computer hard drive crashed AGAIN (yes, the new one that I got last summer), I kind of gave up. Without my computer, my whole organizational system was thrown off. I must say that I think it was good for me in a way, to look at things differently. I started writing things out BY HAND, like journaling in the morning with coffee and actually writing letters to my mother and sending them by snail-mail. I think it is good to get this different perspective every once in a while, and to have that connection between your mind and your writing hand and the pen and paper.

Since I got my latest hard drive, my computer has been slower than ever. I have been very unmotivated to use it for much of anything. But, I am still here. I just feel like I don't really have anything to say.

I have had to focus on basic survival issues so much lately that I have not done a scrap of fictional writing. A great deal of my time goes toward keeping myself and my children healthy, especially my son with Cystic Fibrosis, who has had to do extra breathing treatments lately due to a scary bacterial infection that we are having trouble getting rid of (you'd never know it to look at him, he seems the picture of health, a very active and rambunctious 5 year-old boy). Then there is my persistent anemia, that I thought I had taken care of, but now seems to be resurfacing.

We've been trying to survive winter again, in this crappy economy where my husband's job is pretty much seasonal and I have been having a really difficult time finding work. Then it got really cold, below zero, and our pipes froze. It's my least favorite time of year, contrary to the popular song lyrics, "it's the most wonderful time of the year." Bullshit.

I don't mean to complain, just to explain where I've been. Things are looking up. I got a part-time job, working with some friends who have their own business in their home. It's a great situation. And I've got another job interview coming up. And I've decided to go back to school in the spring, to work toward finishing my masters degree (taking one class).

So where I am at right now is very grounded in survival and reality - heck, I'm not even reading any fiction, just non-fiction lately. And I've been thinking about getting my first tattoo ever. When I can eventually afford it. So, what's going on? Nothing really.

You & Your Heart

I haven't posted in a while -- partly because I'm lazy, partly because I'm in my usual horratious November funk. I'm getting awfully tired of feeling sorry for myself, though. That takes a lot of energy, suprisingly, and surely I should put that energy to better use. Nonetheless I was being my usual useless November self when I decided to fire up YouTube and listen to some Jack Johnson. If you have perchance lived under a rock for the last few years, Jack is a cool, laid-back ex-surfer who did the soundtrack to the "Curious George" movie, and has multiple other, wicked awesome albums. (Albums? How fucking old am I?)

Anyway, Jack totally set me on fire, especially the video for "You and Your Heart." In case you didn't know (and if you didn't know, you either don't know me or ignored everything I've said in the last five months), I learned to surf this summer with my fabulous sister and multiple fabulous East Coast friends. So this video really hit me. Sure, I'm in New Mexico now, with no real hope of surfing till my next East Coast trip. But just seeing the gorgeous waves and water sent my heart soaring. I felt like a modern, bizarre surf-version of the fucking "Sound of Music" or something.

I love surfing. What really makes it amazing to me is that when I'm standing up on a wave, nothing else exists. Nothing. I can't emphasize that enough. I can't even really explain it. It' s just me on the wave.

Surely I can take this pure feeling and find other ways to experience it. It's not like November is good for anything else.

Advice from my daughter

Whenever I tell people I’m writing a novel, they inevitably want to know when I will finish it; I hope this is because they’d like to read it, but I can’t speak for them, of course. Frankly, I’d like to know when I will finish it, too. I have 100 pages that are almost good enough, in my opinion, to send out for critiques. The first three chapters, in other words, although it may turn out to be four, depending on the story flow.

I am under the thumb of my own perfectionism. I can’t help but try to make it as readable and believable as I possibly can. I run across poor word choices, too many adverbs, repeated words, repeated phrases, continuity errors, et cetera et cetera ad fucking nauseam. I work almost every night after my family goes to bed, and I still don’t have the first three chapters.

However. Once I’ve sent those chapters out, I’ll take all the critiques I receive and put them in a separate file that I won’t even look at until much, much later. That will be a big help, I’m sure.

I’ve told one of my friends I’ll have the manuscript finished by the end of the year. The calendar, evil bastard that it is, tells me that this is eight weeks away. Yeah... no, don’t see it happening.

Given the time it takes for agents to read and reject or otherwise respond to queries, not to mention the lengthy process of publication if a house decides to buy the book, I suspect I’ll be working my day job for at least another two years. Which means that I have to deal with the causes of my procrastination there.

What it comes down to is that I’m not comfortable offering criticism to some of the managers here. Unfortunately one of those managers is my boss, whom, owing to circumstances beyond my control, I have to audit at least twice a year. Reporting nonconformances to her is a huge pain in the ass, and it makes me want to dig a very deep hole and hide away in it until the nonconformances go away.

This approach has not worked.

So I’ve been considering the feasibility of bringing up my discomfort with her and trying to improve our relationship. When I suggested this at the dinner table last night, I knew how absurd the idea was as soon as the words were out of my mouth. I'm going to change my boss or her attitude; that’s a fact. What I can change is my own approach to those uncomfortable situations.

Before I even began to articulate this line of reasoning out loud, my daughter piped up.

“Mom, you just have to remember three things. No, four. First, be polite. Second, talk slowly so they can understand you. Third, talk about important things, because that’s what people want to talk about when they’re at work. Fourth, be serious about it, because that’s how people act when they’re at work.”

Did I mention that she’s seven?

She had pegged my three main failings and told me how to correct them. When I’m talking to management about what they’ve fucked up, I tend to speak quickly to get it over with. I sometimes lump trivial stuff in with the important things. And I very often try to lighten the mood and come off as not-so-serious to avoid putting the other person on the defensive.

This takes a lot of time and energy. It’s a waste.

So I’m going to follow her advice. I’m going to be polite (I always am anyway, at least in these situations), I will speak slowly, I will focus on important things, and I will take them seriously. Because it’s my job, and as long as I’m here, I might as well do it right.

And if they don’t like it, they can kiss my ass.

Hei Matau

In the spirit of surfing, and of my interest in all things Polynesian, I recently bought a Maori (New Zealand Polynesian) fish hook necklace. It is made of bone ("Human?" someone asked in horror, which made me laugh, and also made me realize that, vegetarian though I am, I didn't actually give a shit if it were human). According to the seller, the carving

signifies abundance and plenty, strength and determination. A good luck charm for catching good luck and positive energy, and safe journey over water.

It just seemed like a really nice necklace for a chick who digs water, and surfing, and Polynesia. I might even have to come up with a haiku...

Sad, Sad, Sad...

The happiest day of the year is when I arrive in New England to see my sister, her husband, and my nephew and niece. The second happiest day of the year is when I fill my pool.

The saddest day of the year is when I have to leave New England. The second saddest is when I empty my pool.

Today is the second saddest day of the year.

Other people's problems

People like to tell me things. I am not exaggerating when I say that perfect strangers have come up to me and started telling me intimate details of their lives. I've thought that maybe I should go into counseling, because I obviously look like I care. Sometimes I do, but mostly I don't. I do find other people and their problems interesting though. I guess that's why I got that useless degree in Psychology way back when, because I wanted to study people. When it came down to actually working with people and their problems, I found myself wishing that I could be a carpenter or something simple like that, where at the end of the day you could actually see some progress.

So when I start wallowing in my own self-pity (oh, I'm so tired because my son with CF kept me up coughing in the middle of the night...), I think of other people's problems, and I don't feel so bad. Because everyone I know has got them, and I wouldn't trade with any of them. Now, if I knew someone who had the problem of having too much money and not knowing what to do with it, I would be willing to trade problems with them.

One day, when I was feeling particularly tired, a friend of mine sent me a link to a blog, which I have since lost, by this young woman who works a full-time job, has an infant, AND she herself has CF (Cystic Fibrosis). I thought, damn, it's hard enough to take care of yourself when you have an infant, let alone working full-time, then top that with this life-threatening illness...argh. I really wished at that moment that I had the problem of too much money, I would have sent her a boatload.

Then there are the people who you think have it made, but when you really get to know them, you see that they too have problems that you would not want. So what the hell am I getting at? Not really sure. Just wanted to share a thought, since I have been so busy lately and haven't contributed much to our ongoing online conversation.

I have been soooo busy, and soooo tired, but I've been having a great time too. Sure, I've got some serious problems. My son has this serious life-threatening illness. My husband works two random part-time jobs and we never know when or how much money we will have. I don't have a job at all. So I work full-time at being the best mother, wife, and household manager that I can be, and sometimes I still come up short. But I also get to go for long runs in the mountains with my incredibly fit husband with whom I am still in love after 14 years.

So, that's life. We all have problems. We need to be compassionate with others because you never know what kind of shit they are dealing with. And be thankful for those days when the problems are small, or at least manageable, and you get a quiet moment to sit and write or walk outside on a beautiful day. Which is what I plan to do today.

a relatively mild and somewhat thoughtful rant

I am terribly sick of reading shit by published writers who have obviously stolen my fucking ideas. And of discovering that plot devices I have used are as common as flies on feces. And of having to consider and reconsider the title of the book.

Over the last few days, I've been reading Angelology, by Danielle Trussoni. The first twenty pages sucked me in, then the quality of the writing and the pace made me suspect that the senior editors had polished up those first twenty pages and quit, handing the rest of it down to the interns. Maybe they figured that once a reader is hooked, she won't put a book down. Fuckers are right, too, at least in my case.

The book is a fictional interpretation of angels, fallen and otherwise, and how they interact with the human world. Published this year. So I have to read it, to stay current and know what to rip off and what I can't, what works in terms of theory and application and what doesn't.

Parts of Angelology made me cackle, and not in a way that Trussoni would appreciate.* At the same time, I am breathing a huge sigh of relief that her take on fallen angels and the Nephilim (their progeny) digresses from mine in several major ways. Also she's hooking her concepts into a big good versus evil/end of the world kind of thing, whereas I just want to write a good love story.

That's another thing that distances me from this novel – it lacks the emotional depth that, for me, translates into the ephemeral quality of soul, of heart. And there are great passions described in this novel, human and “Nephilistic,” but they are described, not evoked. There's a ton of telling and not showing. I kinda thought that wasn't a good thing? Then again, I don't think emotional involvement is what she's going for; this is trying to be a thriller more than anything else. But hell, if I'm not going to get emotionally involved, I'd just as soon read Wikipedia.

Angelology is well-researched, much more so than my paltry efforts, and very imaginative. But the narrative devices, not to mention the names, strike me as more than a little contrived, and I don't really give a shit about any of the characters, not even the ones I want to like. This is uncharacteristic for me. Could be me, could be the writing. Either way, I'll be glad when it's over. Which doesn't really recommend it much.

I didn't mean for this a book review. I was supposed to segue very smoothly into a mention of one of the writer's blurbs on the back cover, you know, where other writers gush about the book in hopes that you'll trust them enough to give it a shot.

Four quotes down is a blurb by Raymond Khoury, author of The Last Templar and Sanctuary.

Goddamn it. Another one. William Faulkner published his potboiler Sanctuary in 1931. Way different from mine, but there it is. Then there's the TV show, which is straight-up sci-fi and has not exactly made enormous waves, critically speaking, but it's been renewed for a third season so apparently it doesn't entirely suck, which is entirely beside the point anyway. Khoury's thriller is actually called The Sanctuary, and I'm actually tempted to read it if only because I can't distill the idea of it into three or four words.

The main problem, as I see it, is Nora Roberts. You may have heard of her. Her Sanctuary is a romance, but, happily, not a paranormal one. There's a town called Sanctuary that's featured in the book, is all, and I haven't read it to find out how meaningful the word is.

It is profoundly meaningful to me. I had some godawful title picked out years ago, thinking, well, this sucks ass but it'll do for now and surely something better will strike me eventually. I can't remember when Sanctuary popped into my head, but as soon as it did, it stuck fast.

A lot of it has to do with the fact that the word is so flexible. In one sense, it means safety, a place of refuge. The other sense is a consecrated place of worship. For my story, it works on both these levels, because there's such a strong religious background to the thing. You can hardly escape it if you're writing about an angel and a witch, and I have no desire to. It works in the other sense, too. My MCs come to find sanctuary with each other, realizing that physical walls can't keep you safe any more than they can define a place of worship. Only love does that.

And ain't that just the cheesiest shit you ever heard? Fucking A.

But damn it, there's no other word that says safety and worship at the same time. I've looked. Extensively. And I've toyed with other cheesy titles, more traditionally romantic, that are so wretched I can't bring myself to repeat them to anyone, let along on a public blog.

Also, I had the names of the next two books picked out, both of which are single words beginning with S. Sanctuary, Serenity, Salvation. I mean, shit, how much simpler can it be, right?

But there are other things to worry about at the moment. For example, the soon-to-be-published fantasist in the critical writing group has mentioned in a crit for another person that using a random homeless person or bum as a plot device is almost a cliché. So, fuck, there's another scene that will need tweaking. Not a big deal, really, it's making me flex my muscles, imaginationally speaking (new word, you like it?).

Then there's the mention of a John Travolta movie called Michael, where the angel smells like cookies to a particular woman. One of my critters mentioned that a while back, too, so I'm having to work in a slightly different direction to keep that original.

Individually, these aren't hard to manage. What worries me is that there are more that I'm missing.

And sometimes I just have to throw up my hands and say, well, fuck, there are reasons for the cliches and they're called goddamned archetypes, you know? Scary things are underground, in basements, dungeons, caves, and catacombs. New York City is a backdrop for so many stories because it's bursting at the seams with them – anything you can possibly imagine has happened in New York City, and probably a lot of shit you can't, or would prefer not to. Homeless people make good stand-in characters because they're so far out of the norm you can make them do anything and it doesn't necessarily have to make sense immediately. Pull in a homeless person, a bum, a lunatic, and you immediately tap into the idea of the fringes of sanity and society, the absence of rules, the absence of safety. The element of chaos, in other words. And deathbed revelations happen because people often try to tie up their loose ends before they die. There's a reason we cherish last words.

Maybe it's not just cliché – maybe it's commonality, a language of story that we all understand. I don't know. Whatever.

It's not slowing me down, it's not messing with my motivation or making me doubt the work or the writing, it's just annoying. That's all.

Hope this post finds you both well, and looking forward to Halloween, even though some evil fucker scheduled it on a school night.

~Andi

*I am basing this on the sometimes pretentious writing, not to mention the author photograph on the inside back jacket. Maybe she does have a sense of humor – but if so, it doesn't show in this book.

Superfly (Ball)

I'm a bitch in the fall -- October, anyway. You might have gotten a sense of that from my last post, but I'm actually deadly serious. The baseball postseason renders me useless, foul, and heinously cold to those who love me. I don't care. I mean, I don't care that I'm like that, and I don't care about you.

I don't know what that says about me. Normally I not only consider myself highly empathetic, I pride myself on that quality. The baseball playoffs send all that sensitive crap out the window. For one month, I don't give a shit. I just want to soak up all the baseball I can before winter arrives and there's no baseball and there's no swimming and I'd rather just hibernate, but no one gives me that fucking choice, now, do they?

I've said as much about the playoffs and about October, here and elsewhere. Andi astutely noted that I can also be useless during the major tennis tournaments but, trust me, it's not the same. I'm kinda sorta out-of-touch during the Grand Slams. Baseball? I'm another person.

I've made that absence plain over the years. Once, my BF told me we were hosting a party during a playoff night. I told him he could either reschedule or understand that I would not talk or mingle or even cook during the game. He didn't reschedule. I didn't acknowledge anyone's presence until the game was over.

Another time, the constant ringing of the phone drove me mad. So I recorded a new message for my voicemail. "Hi, this is Kelly. You didn't really think I'd answer the phone during baseball playoffs? Leave a message and I'll get back to you in November."

So...I don't know if I have a point. But that's how it is.

writing on the wall

Last night Aeryn and I went to our local library to see a two-woman play called We Can Do It, about notable female figures in American history. It was a little heavy-handed at times, but it had its moments, especially in their portrayal of Susan B. Anthony, who did a lot of pissed-off hopping around and bitching that her amendment extending voting rights to women didn’t pass until forty-two years after her death. Elizabeth Cady Stanton replied, rather archly, “Yes, but you were the only woman to ever be on American currency. I got a stamp.”

Then there was the dialogue between contemporaries Clara Barton, who founded the American Red Cross, and Elizabeth Van Lew, who was a spy for the Union during the Civil War. The take on Van Lew was very funny – she did a lot of slinking about onstage and saying mysteriously, “I might be… or I might not!” Clara Barton was an effective straight man to Van Lew’s outrageousness.*

During the play, the actors pointed out the quotes written on the walls of the set – from Elizabeth Cady Stanton to the aforementioned Clara Barton to Eleanor Roosevelt. And towards the end, they started talking about what their own contributions to the world would be.

Specifically, one asked, “What will you write on the wall?”

A chill crept up my back.

The other looked at her partner with wide eyes and said, “Uh. Er. That’s a huge question. I have no idea!” Which I thought was a damned honest answer.

The first actor said, “Well, you don’t have to answer now, do you? Many of these women didn’t come into their own until later in life, after they’d lived and learned and experienced so much in the world.” She went on to note that Clara Barton founded the Red Cross when she was sixty. Sojourner Truth delivered the “Ain’t I A Woman” speech when she was fifty-four. And Laura Ingalls Wilder didn’t publish Little House on the Prairie until she was sixty-five years old.

See, I don’t want to cover the wall. I just want a little square inch that shows people transcending what they believe to be their essential dichotomies and differences, through couragelovetrustcompassionhonestyimagination. You know, that shit.

And I want to raise my daughter so that she uses her extraordinary emotional intelligence and charisma to make the world a better place. To write her own message on the wall.

I’ll be forty in December. The point was obvious, even to me: It’s not too late to write on the wall. It never is.

Help!

I haven't written anything since last spring. Seriously, I can't think of anything, other than blog entries. It all stopped around the same time - my dog got shot, my hard-drive crashed, then the kids were out of school for the summer. It all added up to no writing for me.

I work really hard at being a good parent, so much so that I ignore my own needs. And I'm talking about basic needs like sleep and food, forget about my creative needs. But let's not forget about them. They are important. I need to remember, and to focus.

But when it comes to writing, I really feel like I need a new project. I want a big project, something I can really sink my metaphorical teeth into, but I need help forming a plan. How does one write a novel? What do I want to write about? I need an idea, a plot, some characters. I need to come up with a few good characters and put them in a room together, let them talk it out.

See, I'm really fucking lost here. For a little while today I considered going back to one of my old projects but I get stuck. I don't want to be stuck there, I want to go out into new places, explore new ideas. Or at least put new ideas into the old places.

It seems so cliche to me, but I keep going back to New England in my mind, the way that so many writers tend to write about the place where they grew up. I want to write about the crisp fall air and the brilliant leaves and halloween and the scary movies of the early 80s...I want to write about sneaking out at night and creepy old New England houses...the unsolved serial murders of teenage girls in the town next door...

I just don't know where to begin.

Bittersweet October

It rained tonight, the first real rain in nearly a month, and reminded me again that October is so fucking bittersweet. Not like bittersweet chocolate, an awful lie (that shit is mostly just sweet), but truly bittersweet, in a way that can close your throat with joy and tears at the same time.

Why must you do this to me, October? Let me count the ways...

Summer is over. Oh, it's still been pretty warm here, eighties and even ninety in the past week or so. But a chill creeps into the late night air and I know winter is around the corner. There is no exuberant display of autumn leaves, unlike my childhood home. It always looks the same in southern New Mexico. It's gorgeous desert. But there's not even that payoff. Fuck you, non-existent leaves.

The pool must be drained. I always put this off at least two weeks past a reasonable point. There's no way I'm going swimming again. But the water looks so lovely and inviting, shimmering under the brilliant sun. I mourn its absence even while it's still there. Don't leave me cold and dry!

Baseball -- the post-season -- so exciting! The White Sox didn't make it this year, but any baseball is good baseball. But after the World Series...nothing until spring training in March. Oh, fuck you, baseball, why must you go away every year and leave me all alone?

Halloween, my favorite holiday since I was old enough to grasp the concept. What could be more delightful than to cuddle in an old (or new) York Beach sweatshirt after the sun goes down and fall into the seductively evil embrace of a Christopher Lee Hammer films marathon? I love you, C-Lee Dracula!

Oh, October, my own secret abusive boyfriend. Fuck you, October. I love you so much.

Have you heard the one about...

First of all, I would like to thank Kiki for bringing this news story to my attention. You know, the one about the woman, the dog, the bear, and the zucchini. One of the funny things about this is that it took my friend from another state to tell me about something that happened just a couple of miles from my house. And no, it was not me, but it sure sounds a lot like my life.

We have seen bears on our property out here. One young male got chased up a tree by our dogs, then came down and chased the chickens. My husband went out there with a camera at first (the footage is mysteriously lost) until he realized a gun might be more appropriate. When the bear came close to the house, he shot near it to scare it away. We didn't see him again, but last year a very small  young bear (probably out on its own for its first season) right outside our front gate. When we went outside to look at it, it ran away. And one time my husband nearly ran into a mama bear with two cubs, who actually charged at him. Kind of a "worst case scenario." But he managed to get away unscathed.

Lately I have been spending more time at my lovely home out here in the forest, enjoying the quiet that you can only get here when everyone else is at school or work. We've had beautiful autumn weather, crisp and sunny. I've been harvesting my garden and making lots of great food with the fresh ingredients. Yesterday I made jalapeno applesauce, spicy salsa, and spinach soup. Zucchini bread has become a staple around here for the boys. I also like zucchini baked, fried, grilled, roasted, and in potato pancakes (shredded zucc, shredded pre-baked potato, egg). 

Now I can add "self-defense against bears" to my list of "the many uses for zucchini."

Black bears are pretty common around here, and this time of year they are taking part in the harvest as well, out there trying to fatten up for the winter. It is just their nature. And it is in the nature of dogs to protect their homes, and people to defend their dogs, and bears to defend themselves.

free-floating anxiety

There's a whole lot of that swirling around me at the moment - or rather, in me. It's a very odd physical sensation and not at all pleasant - it's like the feeling you get right before you go down the other side of the rollercoaster, except not as dramatic and much more mysterious and disturbing.

I know part of what this is about. Ditching Blackwell, or relegating him to the back burner, is a huge step towards casting away the last bits of what this novel was years and years ago when I first started writing it. A little scary. Kinda feels like jumping off a cliff, which, of course, would explain the feeling.

But then some of it has to do with my progress. It's not like there hasn't been any - I'm working steadily and regularly, but when I get my daily updates from the critical writing board, I feel terribly anxious that I haven't offered any crits (not that there's a minimum or anything) and that I haven't posted anything else since the third scene.

And the only thing that helps is to work. So off I go to do the shit I have to do to make this weekend work. Finish shopping for the party, bake and frost the cake, clean the house so our visitors from out of town can at least have a clean toilet to vomit in should the need arise, and still slap some lunch together for Aeryn.

Then I can work. And then, hopefully, this awful sense that I'm plodding slowly down the road while everyone else is catching up with the ice cream truck, so scared that there won't be any left for me by the time I get there. It's almost like preemptive grief. Or disappointment. Or something.

No rest for the wicked, right?

Right.

Will someone please tell me...

... how to write this fucking book without having the priest's POV? Because he's a real pain in the ass to write. The male and female protagonists are coming along nicely but writing Blackwell is like pulling teeth.

Damn it. It's a paranormal, for crap's sake. SURELY I can figure out a way to get enough hints in on what's going on without having to bore the fuck out of a reader in these scenes, because they're boring the SHIT out of me.

Maybe... I don't know, a telepathic connection? A little more information from her mother? A misplaced ribbon? Damned if I know. But there has got to be a way out of this; I'm terribly, awfully sick of slogging through these scenes.

Pardon the vent. It's late. However, now that I've put my brain on this path, it might take a few stumbling steps while I'm asleep. Once I wash the water bottles. And other stuff. Damn it.