If I’m enthralled with bookstores, my significant other has a grocery store fascination. Unlike some husbands, he enjoys shopping and will agreeably spend hours in the aisles, comparing prices with or without the application of coupons, checking point of origin and size of cans. When he’s feeling low because the Packers have failed him again, we can perk him up with a trip to the grocery store.
Our family stories are twined with where we found the dinner entrée or the dessert; our road trips involve unique grocery stores and small town specialty markets. Where did we find the beef sticks? Which dairy produced that cheese?
All this creates another marvelously symbiotic part of our relationship. I don’t need to plan ahead, or even act responsibly. When I discover that I’m 10 eggs short because I’ve suddenly decided that today is the day to bake fruitcake, he will putdown the tv remote and head off to the store for a dozen (Phil’s cage free. Laid in nests). If the boys are coming to work on a building project and have lunch, he will get their favorite hot dogs (Usinger’s, all meat, ¼# each) before we assemble the cedar or the tools.
This is Wisconsin-Minnesota. We build celebrations and relationships at the table: eating, sharing stories. Listening to each other. Food is love, my grandma used to say. Guy and Julie’s visit is friendship and laughter. It is also apricot Hamantaschen, Groppi’s deli salad, marinated olives, and salami-onion-cheese cubes from Sendik’s. It is asparagus wrapped in specially cured bacon and broiled. It is pots of Berres brothers coffee and books and talk. “Try a little of this.” Tina’s visits are Greek foods; Dick and Millie’s, a choice piece of beef; Deone’s sugar cookies with fondant. There are foods for holidays, old recipes and new experiments. Gran was right: food is love. Love is also someone taking time from the middle of a football game to go to the grocery store.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Giving
We move into the holidays with gifts for others; we come through the holidays with our eyes on the future and our resolutions focused on new: new times, new year, new plans: gifts for those around us, gifts to ourselves.
Teaching overflows with gifts, often comments made by students that illuminate life far beyond the required readings. During one of our discussions, Lori commented, “There’s always that tug of ‘Do what you want,’ versus responsibility, ‘Do what you gotta do.’” We nodded in acquiescence, and I used Lori’s comment at the top of the exam page, and ideas about her comment in the exam directions:
Consider the four major readings of this semester: Othello, The Metamorphosis, The Glass Menagerie, and Neighbour Rosicky. Select one character from each reading. Discuss the character’s most significant decision and its consequences – for the character, other characters in the play, the play/story, the reader. Are the decisions of these characters what they want to do, what they believe they must do, what they are forced by others to do? Explain. Support your thesis.
There were many exams (aren’t there always); from those many a few stood out. Jody’s concluding comments stayed with me:
“Rosicky is a good, honest man. Plain and simple. His decisions are based on what he wants to do. All of his decisions are based on what he should do. There is no separation of the two. He does not have a conflict this way. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all be a little more like Rosicky? Wouldn’t it be nice if we all had a Rosicky in our life? He does die at the end of the story, which is sad. However, we are all going to die someday. Rosicky makes sure everything is taken care of for everyone. He did what he had to, which is exactly what he wanted to.
“In conclusion, I believe we are defined by our actions in life. Some of the characters’ decisions were based on what they should do, while others were solely based on what they wanted to do. One was lucky enough to have both.”
During the holidays and the coming year, may our shoulds and our wants coalesce beautifully, in love and caring. May the peace of Anton Rosicky’s love for his family and his life; the selfless sacrifice and commitment of Gregor Samsa; the creativity of the Wingfield family; and the willingness to love and pursue dreams shown in the characters in Othello bless us all. Peace.
Teaching overflows with gifts, often comments made by students that illuminate life far beyond the required readings. During one of our discussions, Lori commented, “There’s always that tug of ‘Do what you want,’ versus responsibility, ‘Do what you gotta do.’” We nodded in acquiescence, and I used Lori’s comment at the top of the exam page, and ideas about her comment in the exam directions:
Consider the four major readings of this semester: Othello, The Metamorphosis, The Glass Menagerie, and Neighbour Rosicky. Select one character from each reading. Discuss the character’s most significant decision and its consequences – for the character, other characters in the play, the play/story, the reader. Are the decisions of these characters what they want to do, what they believe they must do, what they are forced by others to do? Explain. Support your thesis.
There were many exams (aren’t there always); from those many a few stood out. Jody’s concluding comments stayed with me:
“Rosicky is a good, honest man. Plain and simple. His decisions are based on what he wants to do. All of his decisions are based on what he should do. There is no separation of the two. He does not have a conflict this way. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all be a little more like Rosicky? Wouldn’t it be nice if we all had a Rosicky in our life? He does die at the end of the story, which is sad. However, we are all going to die someday. Rosicky makes sure everything is taken care of for everyone. He did what he had to, which is exactly what he wanted to.
“In conclusion, I believe we are defined by our actions in life. Some of the characters’ decisions were based on what they should do, while others were solely based on what they wanted to do. One was lucky enough to have both.”
During the holidays and the coming year, may our shoulds and our wants coalesce beautifully, in love and caring. May the peace of Anton Rosicky’s love for his family and his life; the selfless sacrifice and commitment of Gregor Samsa; the creativity of the Wingfield family; and the willingness to love and pursue dreams shown in the characters in Othello bless us all. Peace.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
The Cigarette Depot Acts of God Bible Ministry Church - excerpt
This is an excerpt from a novel....
Mary Magdalene: Sweet Reason
Everybody had a reason for being at Mo’s that December Friday night, with dark slush sifting across sidewalks and into coat collars outside, and fish and grease smells clinging to anything inside the bar.
Mine wasn’t as good as most, but after three hours of dark sidewalks with no customers, no traffic, and no halt to the snow, I hunched myself out of a doorway, and trundled into Mo’s. When you’ve forgotten to watch the weather forecast, decided to wear a leather skirt and your black patent leather shoes (recently resoled), it’s better to safeguard your investments than wait on a man who's not coming.
Cigarette haze hung pink and the speckled Hamms sun revolved eternally across blue lake and green trees. Mo had the music turned up high and the heat on medium. Dim humps leaned over their barstools. In one corner poker players slapped cards between themselves, and elbowed the beer bottles dividing them. Couples nursed drinks and grudges. The table by the door had one customer and an empty chair.
Lucky break, I thought, a dry customer. But when I slid onto the chair and tilted my head into a smile, I saw it was George.
“Oh. You.” I told him, taking back the smile.
“Hi, Toots. How’s it going?”
“Lousy. Snow, dark, cold. People have money to spend on Christmas presents, but none on me. At this rate I can’t make the rent, much less pay for my shoes.” I lifted one foot so George could see the resoling job.
“Nice. You know if you keep your leg up like that, you could get muscle cramps.”
“Yeah, well, I was hoping that maybe one of them guys would notice, and you know ... maybe.”
“Them guys at the poker game are duking it out over the cards. Have been since saaay, seven or so.”
“Maybe the ones at the bar?”
“They’re too busy drinking. You don’t want to mess with a drunk.”
Drunk men don’t pinch or bite like mean men, but their fogged clumsiness, coupled with their misplaced chuckles can be just as painful. I don’t know which are worse: mean men or drunks, but it’s probably whichever I’m with. “How drunk?”
“So drunk that even I might look good to them.” George shuddered and drew a circle on the table with his forefinger.
“That’s tough, George.”
“Yeah, I know.”
We sat quietly except for George’s offer of shared beer, and my nod of refusal. “I don’t
drink on the job.” George bent his head inside his coat collar. I tried to keep the conversation going. “So I’m not working because there’s no customers. Why aren’t you working tonight?”
He held up the hand that had been hidden in his lap. “See? I was trying to open a trunk last night and the blade slipped: cut me right across the knuckles.”
“Looks like it hurt.”
“Isn’t the first time, but I thought I would lay off for a day. Business is okay, and it’s going to pick up before Christmas.”
“What’s hot this year?”
“Easier to tell you what’s not: Slot Derby. Everybody’s getting their kid Slot Derby. So many stolen Slot Derby cassettes, they’re not worth anything. What a shame: Millions of kids all
going to grow up alike from playing the same game.” George lifted his hands in resignation, then tucked a small smile into the corner of his chin. “Game controllers are good. Purses. The darndest thing: TV runs a spot on shoplifting, so women are locking their purse in the trunk. Just take their wallet into the shopping center. Sometimes, though, they forget the wallet in the purse. You know: they’re used to taking everything, and they lock the purse in the trunk, but they forget they left the money in the purse.”
“I got it George.”
“I guess it’s because those purses are so big, you know: you lose stuff in your purse. Why do women carry such big purses anyway?”
“So we can use them to hit guys in their nuts when they get fresh.”
“Does it work?”
“I don’t do that any more, so I can’t tell you. I guess so.”
George sighed and let his slow smile slide across the tabletop. “When you do carry your big or small purse, be sure you don’t lose your purse in your car trunk.”
“I don’t have a car anymore. One of the things I gave up with my ex husband. He took that too.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s not so bad. Once you get used to it.”
“Yeah. Well. If you ever decide to get one, let me know. I can tell you about thievery and how to keep your car safe.”
“Thanks, George.”
“Hit me!” one of the card players yelled.
“Quiet over there in the corner,” Mo shouted back. “You want another round?”
The poker players hunched over their fists, ignoring us, so we could look at them. One was Hal Martin, one was Pete Tiesel, and there were three others. Pete’s okay. He’s predictable. I’ve never seen him without two-day-old whiskers, his navy cap, or his white T-shirt. His belly has the same circumference as Dolly Parton’s chest. Pete’s wife Laura, who’s built the same as Pete, wears curlers and stirrup pants to the grocery store. They got married just out of high school when Laura was pregnant. My cousin Tracy went to the wedding fifteen years ago. Now, Laura goes shopping at K Mart for excitement, and Pete comes over to Mo’s for cards. K Mart was past closed, but Pete apparently hadn’t wanted to go home. Pete’s loud, but he’s okay. Martin’s mean: his wife left him, and other than beer drinking or spitting contests, the card table was about the only place people tolerated him.
“And you’re a crook!” one of the poker players yelled, slamming his palm across the table. “I seen what you’ve been doing all night.”
“I don’t cheat.”
“I saw you cheat.”
“All this over a two dollar bet,” George murmured. “What some people do to amuse themselves.”
“Looks like it’s going to get nasty.”
The second man said something fast and low, something so dark that the first man, the shouter, rushed upward, tipping his chair with a clatter. “You son of a bitch!”
“Your mother!”
“Look out,” George mumbled, leaning closer so his words stirred my coat collar. “Here it comes.”
Three of the poker players shoved their chairs from the table, balling their fists against its edge. Tiesel leaned over the table jabbing his thumb toward Hal. “Double crossing son of a bitch liar!” he screamed. His swing overbalanced his body and for longer than it took George to pull the collar on his coat higher, Pete grabbed air.
Hal stood high and still. The Hamms light slid green across his forehead. He laughed from his belly.
“Watch it!” George snapped his head backward. A beer bottle missed Pete’s throat and slammed into the floor.
We could hear sirens, faint, but rising, whining higher. “That’s the Doppler effect,” George pointed out, leaning across the table to thrust his voice under shouts of encouragement from the other card players. “You know, just like weather radar when they show those blue and green patches on the television screen.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You know how sirens sound different when you’re driving and the cop car passes you?”
Normally they stopped for me, but I nodded.
“It’s the same thing. You’re traveling toward them, and they’re traveling toward you and the distance is always changing, getting closer. And then both of you are right there, and you
wait, sort of hoping you don’t get seen.”
“Yeah.”
“And then the cop car goes on, and the sound changes again.” George flickered one hand triumphantly.
“Usually I’m just so happy it goes past I don’t listen to the sound.”
“Yeah. I know how that is. But if you know how the Doppler works, you can slow down just before the cop gets there. Use your reasoning. Sort of become invisible.”
Hal slammed a fist into Pete’s stomach. Pete was so surprised he bit the tongue that was sticking out the corner of his mouth that he was using to concentrate on. Blood leaked down his mouth corner, and his eyes opened wide. “Look what you made me do!” His knuckles
walloped into Hal’s stomach thudded flat, like somebody pounding meat across a cutting board.
“This isn’t going to end soon,” George said. “I think they forgot about the cops.”
“You’re saying we better get out of here.”
“Unless you want to test the invisible Doppler effect.”
“Not tonight.”
We ended up at my place, where George excavated a plate dried to tomato sauce from the sink and began scrubbing it. I grabbed one of those crocheted knot dishrags and rubbed it across the table. “Like this,” George said, taking the cloth and kneading the table. “Do you have any bleach?”
“Under the sink.”
Bleach ran colorless and pungent across the tabletop, welling in cracks and dents. “Like this,” George grunted, leaning his arm into the rag so from the wrist to the shoulder he was one straight line. “My ma taught me this. Keeps the germs out.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
I put away the clean dishes while George gave the kitchen sink his bleach treatment. Then I made a pot of tea, and we sat on chairs at the living room window with our hands around the blue flowered tea cups my former mother-in-law had given me as a wedding present, watching the snow turn to pink and grey slush under the streetlights. Other than the wandering
spit of car tires, the world was quiet.
“Nice,” said George finally. “Peaceful. No dirty car trunks. Good company.”
“Thanks, George.”
“No, it’s true.” Then he saluted me with the teacup, drank the last swallow of liquid, and washed his teacup before he walked down the stairs. His shadow in pale grey snow walked like any man’s going home from a night's work.
For a while longer I watched the snow as it sunk heavily into itself. Then I went to bed.
It was a good evening. I didn’t earn the rent money, but I didn’t have to bail myself out of jail. And I didn’t get the shoes wet or a run in my almost-new black stockings, either.
Mary Magdalene: Sweet Reason
Everybody had a reason for being at Mo’s that December Friday night, with dark slush sifting across sidewalks and into coat collars outside, and fish and grease smells clinging to anything inside the bar.
Mine wasn’t as good as most, but after three hours of dark sidewalks with no customers, no traffic, and no halt to the snow, I hunched myself out of a doorway, and trundled into Mo’s. When you’ve forgotten to watch the weather forecast, decided to wear a leather skirt and your black patent leather shoes (recently resoled), it’s better to safeguard your investments than wait on a man who's not coming.
Cigarette haze hung pink and the speckled Hamms sun revolved eternally across blue lake and green trees. Mo had the music turned up high and the heat on medium. Dim humps leaned over their barstools. In one corner poker players slapped cards between themselves, and elbowed the beer bottles dividing them. Couples nursed drinks and grudges. The table by the door had one customer and an empty chair.
Lucky break, I thought, a dry customer. But when I slid onto the chair and tilted my head into a smile, I saw it was George.
“Oh. You.” I told him, taking back the smile.
“Hi, Toots. How’s it going?”
“Lousy. Snow, dark, cold. People have money to spend on Christmas presents, but none on me. At this rate I can’t make the rent, much less pay for my shoes.” I lifted one foot so George could see the resoling job.
“Nice. You know if you keep your leg up like that, you could get muscle cramps.”
“Yeah, well, I was hoping that maybe one of them guys would notice, and you know ... maybe.”
“Them guys at the poker game are duking it out over the cards. Have been since saaay, seven or so.”
“Maybe the ones at the bar?”
“They’re too busy drinking. You don’t want to mess with a drunk.”
Drunk men don’t pinch or bite like mean men, but their fogged clumsiness, coupled with their misplaced chuckles can be just as painful. I don’t know which are worse: mean men or drunks, but it’s probably whichever I’m with. “How drunk?”
“So drunk that even I might look good to them.” George shuddered and drew a circle on the table with his forefinger.
“That’s tough, George.”
“Yeah, I know.”
We sat quietly except for George’s offer of shared beer, and my nod of refusal. “I don’t
drink on the job.” George bent his head inside his coat collar. I tried to keep the conversation going. “So I’m not working because there’s no customers. Why aren’t you working tonight?”
He held up the hand that had been hidden in his lap. “See? I was trying to open a trunk last night and the blade slipped: cut me right across the knuckles.”
“Looks like it hurt.”
“Isn’t the first time, but I thought I would lay off for a day. Business is okay, and it’s going to pick up before Christmas.”
“What’s hot this year?”
“Easier to tell you what’s not: Slot Derby. Everybody’s getting their kid Slot Derby. So many stolen Slot Derby cassettes, they’re not worth anything. What a shame: Millions of kids all
going to grow up alike from playing the same game.” George lifted his hands in resignation, then tucked a small smile into the corner of his chin. “Game controllers are good. Purses. The darndest thing: TV runs a spot on shoplifting, so women are locking their purse in the trunk. Just take their wallet into the shopping center. Sometimes, though, they forget the wallet in the purse. You know: they’re used to taking everything, and they lock the purse in the trunk, but they forget they left the money in the purse.”
“I got it George.”
“I guess it’s because those purses are so big, you know: you lose stuff in your purse. Why do women carry such big purses anyway?”
“So we can use them to hit guys in their nuts when they get fresh.”
“Does it work?”
“I don’t do that any more, so I can’t tell you. I guess so.”
George sighed and let his slow smile slide across the tabletop. “When you do carry your big or small purse, be sure you don’t lose your purse in your car trunk.”
“I don’t have a car anymore. One of the things I gave up with my ex husband. He took that too.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s not so bad. Once you get used to it.”
“Yeah. Well. If you ever decide to get one, let me know. I can tell you about thievery and how to keep your car safe.”
“Thanks, George.”
“Hit me!” one of the card players yelled.
“Quiet over there in the corner,” Mo shouted back. “You want another round?”
The poker players hunched over their fists, ignoring us, so we could look at them. One was Hal Martin, one was Pete Tiesel, and there were three others. Pete’s okay. He’s predictable. I’ve never seen him without two-day-old whiskers, his navy cap, or his white T-shirt. His belly has the same circumference as Dolly Parton’s chest. Pete’s wife Laura, who’s built the same as Pete, wears curlers and stirrup pants to the grocery store. They got married just out of high school when Laura was pregnant. My cousin Tracy went to the wedding fifteen years ago. Now, Laura goes shopping at K Mart for excitement, and Pete comes over to Mo’s for cards. K Mart was past closed, but Pete apparently hadn’t wanted to go home. Pete’s loud, but he’s okay. Martin’s mean: his wife left him, and other than beer drinking or spitting contests, the card table was about the only place people tolerated him.
“And you’re a crook!” one of the poker players yelled, slamming his palm across the table. “I seen what you’ve been doing all night.”
“I don’t cheat.”
“I saw you cheat.”
“All this over a two dollar bet,” George murmured. “What some people do to amuse themselves.”
“Looks like it’s going to get nasty.”
The second man said something fast and low, something so dark that the first man, the shouter, rushed upward, tipping his chair with a clatter. “You son of a bitch!”
“Your mother!”
“Look out,” George mumbled, leaning closer so his words stirred my coat collar. “Here it comes.”
Three of the poker players shoved their chairs from the table, balling their fists against its edge. Tiesel leaned over the table jabbing his thumb toward Hal. “Double crossing son of a bitch liar!” he screamed. His swing overbalanced his body and for longer than it took George to pull the collar on his coat higher, Pete grabbed air.
Hal stood high and still. The Hamms light slid green across his forehead. He laughed from his belly.
“Watch it!” George snapped his head backward. A beer bottle missed Pete’s throat and slammed into the floor.
We could hear sirens, faint, but rising, whining higher. “That’s the Doppler effect,” George pointed out, leaning across the table to thrust his voice under shouts of encouragement from the other card players. “You know, just like weather radar when they show those blue and green patches on the television screen.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You know how sirens sound different when you’re driving and the cop car passes you?”
Normally they stopped for me, but I nodded.
“It’s the same thing. You’re traveling toward them, and they’re traveling toward you and the distance is always changing, getting closer. And then both of you are right there, and you
wait, sort of hoping you don’t get seen.”
“Yeah.”
“And then the cop car goes on, and the sound changes again.” George flickered one hand triumphantly.
“Usually I’m just so happy it goes past I don’t listen to the sound.”
“Yeah. I know how that is. But if you know how the Doppler works, you can slow down just before the cop gets there. Use your reasoning. Sort of become invisible.”
Hal slammed a fist into Pete’s stomach. Pete was so surprised he bit the tongue that was sticking out the corner of his mouth that he was using to concentrate on. Blood leaked down his mouth corner, and his eyes opened wide. “Look what you made me do!” His knuckles
walloped into Hal’s stomach thudded flat, like somebody pounding meat across a cutting board.
“This isn’t going to end soon,” George said. “I think they forgot about the cops.”
“You’re saying we better get out of here.”
“Unless you want to test the invisible Doppler effect.”
“Not tonight.”
We ended up at my place, where George excavated a plate dried to tomato sauce from the sink and began scrubbing it. I grabbed one of those crocheted knot dishrags and rubbed it across the table. “Like this,” George said, taking the cloth and kneading the table. “Do you have any bleach?”
“Under the sink.”
Bleach ran colorless and pungent across the tabletop, welling in cracks and dents. “Like this,” George grunted, leaning his arm into the rag so from the wrist to the shoulder he was one straight line. “My ma taught me this. Keeps the germs out.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
I put away the clean dishes while George gave the kitchen sink his bleach treatment. Then I made a pot of tea, and we sat on chairs at the living room window with our hands around the blue flowered tea cups my former mother-in-law had given me as a wedding present, watching the snow turn to pink and grey slush under the streetlights. Other than the wandering
spit of car tires, the world was quiet.
“Nice,” said George finally. “Peaceful. No dirty car trunks. Good company.”
“Thanks, George.”
“No, it’s true.” Then he saluted me with the teacup, drank the last swallow of liquid, and washed his teacup before he walked down the stairs. His shadow in pale grey snow walked like any man’s going home from a night's work.
For a while longer I watched the snow as it sunk heavily into itself. Then I went to bed.
It was a good evening. I didn’t earn the rent money, but I didn’t have to bail myself out of jail. And I didn’t get the shoes wet or a run in my almost-new black stockings, either.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
How I Write
On little pieces of paper, left on the kitchen table, the dining room table, the computer table, the hallway, the breakfast bar: bits of paper which sometimes remind me of that crucial idea and sometimes are stolen and gobbled by the dog.
In segmented choices, so the flow of words is not stopped/interrupted/halted/faltering/xxxxx. It’s much easier to go back / change the words in the editing phase than it is to figure out/attempt to figure out/decide/evaluate which words are the best/most inspiring/clearest/best communicate while I am writing. Editing while creating does not work.
Stealing time. Dishes clean up better after they soak for half an hour (when I sit down at the computer to record an idea mid-way through the pots and pans). I don’t mind getting up half an hour earlier (before the rest of the house needs me) to have composing time. Accepting help from others. (Thank you for taking that burned food off the stove: who would have thought that the one minute I needed to write something down would turn into twenty, as the scene in the story grew and the rice in that pot boiled over in revenge).
Searching for inspiration, that idea which will make the writing incandescent. I want to be caught up in the ideas. I want the words to flow. I want people to “get” what I mean. I want them to feel and see the scenes I create.
In awe of what others have done. James filled notebooks with his ideas for writing; Leonardo wrote his famous notebooks; writers keep journals. Ransome wrote that he needed to write the Swallows and Amazons story. His note was, “It wrote itself.” So many words, so many ideas. So much raw material.
With editing. Judy said, “I can’t see the stairway,” when I wrote about the library of TerraeAndrae. I could – but then I can conduct complete conversations in my mind. I rewrote the stairway scene, and Judy reread: she could see the grey stone steps, lit through stained glass windows.
With humor. With attention to detail. Thinking of my audience. Being true to my vision.
With others. Researching new fields is one of the joys of writing. When I write about the cop’s experiences, I work with a cop. The story is not only more realistic, it’s better because I see the characters through his eyes. When I write about medical situations, I ask a doctor, “What do you call this injury?” or “How would you diagnose?” When my characters are insane, I go to a psychiatrist for help in diagnosing. I hunt for books and people: Tiffany lamps; guides to the stars; Calculus made Easy (it wasn’t); The Writer’s Guide to Character Traits; Will’s methods on burying a body; Greg’s science; Kent’s theories on magic.
As much as I can. The more I write, the better I am able to write. I can look at what I wrote yesterday or last year and think, ‘I can do better.’ I could not do better if I did not practice.
In segmented choices, so the flow of words is not stopped/interrupted/halted/faltering/xxxxx. It’s much easier to go back / change the words in the editing phase than it is to figure out/attempt to figure out/decide/evaluate which words are the best/most inspiring/clearest/best communicate while I am writing. Editing while creating does not work.
Stealing time. Dishes clean up better after they soak for half an hour (when I sit down at the computer to record an idea mid-way through the pots and pans). I don’t mind getting up half an hour earlier (before the rest of the house needs me) to have composing time. Accepting help from others. (Thank you for taking that burned food off the stove: who would have thought that the one minute I needed to write something down would turn into twenty, as the scene in the story grew and the rice in that pot boiled over in revenge).
Searching for inspiration, that idea which will make the writing incandescent. I want to be caught up in the ideas. I want the words to flow. I want people to “get” what I mean. I want them to feel and see the scenes I create.
In awe of what others have done. James filled notebooks with his ideas for writing; Leonardo wrote his famous notebooks; writers keep journals. Ransome wrote that he needed to write the Swallows and Amazons story. His note was, “It wrote itself.” So many words, so many ideas. So much raw material.
With editing. Judy said, “I can’t see the stairway,” when I wrote about the library of TerraeAndrae. I could – but then I can conduct complete conversations in my mind. I rewrote the stairway scene, and Judy reread: she could see the grey stone steps, lit through stained glass windows.
With humor. With attention to detail. Thinking of my audience. Being true to my vision.
With others. Researching new fields is one of the joys of writing. When I write about the cop’s experiences, I work with a cop. The story is not only more realistic, it’s better because I see the characters through his eyes. When I write about medical situations, I ask a doctor, “What do you call this injury?” or “How would you diagnose?” When my characters are insane, I go to a psychiatrist for help in diagnosing. I hunt for books and people: Tiffany lamps; guides to the stars; Calculus made Easy (it wasn’t); The Writer’s Guide to Character Traits; Will’s methods on burying a body; Greg’s science; Kent’s theories on magic.
As much as I can. The more I write, the better I am able to write. I can look at what I wrote yesterday or last year and think, ‘I can do better.’ I could not do better if I did not practice.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Hey, Cookie
My first memories of baking are standing at the side of the table where I would not be in the way, watching. My mother and grandmother were center stage, moving between the counter and the kitchen table: mixing, stirring, moving in the rhythm of creamed butter and granulated sugar.
They made pressed butter cookies. No guillotine could be more ruthless. If the pressed forms were not perfect, it was scraped back into the bowl, to be reloaded into the cookie gun and pressed again. Some sheets held five cookies when the cookie gun tube was empty; the rest had turned into lumps of dough waiting for their chance to be reincarnated. One sheet of spirals sprinkled with multicolored sugar dots, one tray of stars sprinkled with yellow sugar, one sheet of poinsettias sprinkled with red sugar. One recipe of trees, colored green, sprinkled with tiny colored sugar balls and topped with a yellow spoch of sugar. We used silver dragees until grandpa began cracking his fillings. The year my sister was old enough to decorate she created a tray of butterflies with food color painted bodies and matching, color patterned wings (30 minutes to decorate one tray of cookies); that remained the standard by which 40 subsequent years of decorated butter cookies were judged.
They made Beth’s nut chocolate: ground walnuts, German sweet chocolate, powdered sugar, bonded with egg whites and topped with a candied cherry. When times were tight, mom sliced the candied cherries in half, so they went further. They made ginger snaps: soft and spicy, sparkling under their cooked sugar crust. They made refrigerator cookies: Mom’s Refrigerator Cookies came from my paternal grandmother, surviving the Great Depression. Not a fancy cookie: brown sugar, spices, nuts, and nourishing as a mother’s hug. Chocolate refrigerator, with nut chips and the siren call of melted chocolate seasoned overnight before baking.
My mother made checkerboard cookies, gauging the dough’s thickness, slicing strips with a knife, assembling with the slit-eyed concentration of a surgeon. “Mom’s doing the checkerboards,” we would whisper to each other, and stay clear. My grandmother made lebkuchen and anise cookies, set in the pantry overnight for their layers to separate.
We stored them in tins, in the unheated attic. Mother wrote the name of each cookie, in crayon, on the lid of each metal can: Holiday, Chocolate Holiday, Trees, Peanut Butter Blossoms, Mom’s, Chocolate Refrigerator. One year, in mischief and rebellion, I switched all the lids, so anyone hunting for a one-cookie snack found himself cracking the lid from tin after tin, muttering, “Where is it,” and sampling cookies along the way.
Over time we kept the canon and added varieties like turtle cookies: brown sugar base, chopped nuts in caramel, and the dark chocolate crust; M&Ms with gritty graham bits; espresso pretzels, twisted and iced; apricot rollups and cookies raised in bas relief from the carved rolling pin.
Our own mythos twined around the recipes. The year Craig ate a complete pan of unbaked ginger snaps and went on to tuck away a full supper. The year Mom’s dog seizured on baking day; she, Bob, and dog went to the vet while I stayed behind to bake. The job where I was threatened unless I produced a recipe for Beth's Nut cookies. The associate dean who spent a Sunday at my kitchen table, patiently applying colored splotches to cookies. The sibling rivalry over who hid the remaining turtle cookies.
Ten kinds, fifteen kinds, twenty-five kinds in one baking season. Days spent in the kitchen, sliding pans into and out of the oven, working as a team: one forming cookies and taking them off the pans; the other creaming the butter and sugar for the next batch. We started at eight in the morning and finished at midnight. We were back in the kitchen at eight the next day. The family knew better than to expect a hot dinner: they slunk into the kitchen for a cold meat sandwich and ate it quietly in another room. Cookie baking was our tradition. The women baked: the men delivered boxes of cookies to friends and relatives, each box containing 2 or 3 dozen, arranged to show off the variety. Our recipes survived the Great Depression and family economics. We may have scraped the money or time together, but we continued baking, through the deaths of Gran, then Mom, through the next primary baker’s two full time jobs, through happy years and the years that helped us appreciate happy years.
This year I’m getting out the mixer and taking inventory: flour, butter, brown and granulated sugar, chocolate chips, maraschino cherries, candied cherries, little colored sugars in shake jars, nuts and caramels. Cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger. No exotic ingredients, just the flavors and spices of everyday life.
Yes, we don’t need the calories. But in a world illuminated by terrorist fires and divided by anger, we need the belief that things will turn out all right. We need the love and the continuity. We need the memories.
They made pressed butter cookies. No guillotine could be more ruthless. If the pressed forms were not perfect, it was scraped back into the bowl, to be reloaded into the cookie gun and pressed again. Some sheets held five cookies when the cookie gun tube was empty; the rest had turned into lumps of dough waiting for their chance to be reincarnated. One sheet of spirals sprinkled with multicolored sugar dots, one tray of stars sprinkled with yellow sugar, one sheet of poinsettias sprinkled with red sugar. One recipe of trees, colored green, sprinkled with tiny colored sugar balls and topped with a yellow spoch of sugar. We used silver dragees until grandpa began cracking his fillings. The year my sister was old enough to decorate she created a tray of butterflies with food color painted bodies and matching, color patterned wings (30 minutes to decorate one tray of cookies); that remained the standard by which 40 subsequent years of decorated butter cookies were judged.
They made Beth’s nut chocolate: ground walnuts, German sweet chocolate, powdered sugar, bonded with egg whites and topped with a candied cherry. When times were tight, mom sliced the candied cherries in half, so they went further. They made ginger snaps: soft and spicy, sparkling under their cooked sugar crust. They made refrigerator cookies: Mom’s Refrigerator Cookies came from my paternal grandmother, surviving the Great Depression. Not a fancy cookie: brown sugar, spices, nuts, and nourishing as a mother’s hug. Chocolate refrigerator, with nut chips and the siren call of melted chocolate seasoned overnight before baking.
My mother made checkerboard cookies, gauging the dough’s thickness, slicing strips with a knife, assembling with the slit-eyed concentration of a surgeon. “Mom’s doing the checkerboards,” we would whisper to each other, and stay clear. My grandmother made lebkuchen and anise cookies, set in the pantry overnight for their layers to separate.
We stored them in tins, in the unheated attic. Mother wrote the name of each cookie, in crayon, on the lid of each metal can: Holiday, Chocolate Holiday, Trees, Peanut Butter Blossoms, Mom’s, Chocolate Refrigerator. One year, in mischief and rebellion, I switched all the lids, so anyone hunting for a one-cookie snack found himself cracking the lid from tin after tin, muttering, “Where is it,” and sampling cookies along the way.
Over time we kept the canon and added varieties like turtle cookies: brown sugar base, chopped nuts in caramel, and the dark chocolate crust; M&Ms with gritty graham bits; espresso pretzels, twisted and iced; apricot rollups and cookies raised in bas relief from the carved rolling pin.
Our own mythos twined around the recipes. The year Craig ate a complete pan of unbaked ginger snaps and went on to tuck away a full supper. The year Mom’s dog seizured on baking day; she, Bob, and dog went to the vet while I stayed behind to bake. The job where I was threatened unless I produced a recipe for Beth's Nut cookies. The associate dean who spent a Sunday at my kitchen table, patiently applying colored splotches to cookies. The sibling rivalry over who hid the remaining turtle cookies.
Ten kinds, fifteen kinds, twenty-five kinds in one baking season. Days spent in the kitchen, sliding pans into and out of the oven, working as a team: one forming cookies and taking them off the pans; the other creaming the butter and sugar for the next batch. We started at eight in the morning and finished at midnight. We were back in the kitchen at eight the next day. The family knew better than to expect a hot dinner: they slunk into the kitchen for a cold meat sandwich and ate it quietly in another room. Cookie baking was our tradition. The women baked: the men delivered boxes of cookies to friends and relatives, each box containing 2 or 3 dozen, arranged to show off the variety. Our recipes survived the Great Depression and family economics. We may have scraped the money or time together, but we continued baking, through the deaths of Gran, then Mom, through the next primary baker’s two full time jobs, through happy years and the years that helped us appreciate happy years.
This year I’m getting out the mixer and taking inventory: flour, butter, brown and granulated sugar, chocolate chips, maraschino cherries, candied cherries, little colored sugars in shake jars, nuts and caramels. Cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger. No exotic ingredients, just the flavors and spices of everyday life.
Yes, we don’t need the calories. But in a world illuminated by terrorist fires and divided by anger, we need the belief that things will turn out all right. We need the love and the continuity. We need the memories.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Come for Supper: Food and Books II
Before we open the door to our guests, we need to make sure they have a horizontal surface on which to rest their food. Recipe sparring aside, this is the most traumatic part of cleaning for company. It’s clean here. We clean regularly: scrub floors, wash rugs, dust. But we do not move the books.
Books sit in towers on every flat surface. Two stacks have taken up residence behind the television (why waste that space?); books nest on the extra dining room chairs; books I am currently reading own the sofa-side table and books he is reading sit on the other side table. Since we have no house plants, there are four stacks of books on the microwave. We cannot move books to the bookcases until the books have been read, utilized for class, and possibly passed on to others to make room for more books. Why? We won’t know where they are.
Admittedly, there have been times when I wandered the house asking my son and husband, “Have you seen my book? I’ve lost my book,” describing its cover color size. Invariably my son replies, “Take another one, there are enough,” gesturing with his hand toward the several hundred waiting to be read.
Books are sorted, by occasion when they were found if not by topic or author. No matter how much I looked forward to them, for years having company meant moving stacks of books to the back room, from which I seemed never able to find the ones I most wanted. Time provided a solution to this problem.
Company is now graded by book-worthiness and comfort level. If you are new and a judging kind of person, we’ll offer to meet you at a neutral restaurant where the only books are menus, whisked away before the bread basket arrives. If we’re more familiar with you, we are able welcome you as we are. We don’t feel the need to move any books, though we will clear the kitchen table. And if you understand us, you know why the space for your drink is only large enough for the glass of whatever you are drinking, and that glass is set next to a pile of books.
Books sit in towers on every flat surface. Two stacks have taken up residence behind the television (why waste that space?); books nest on the extra dining room chairs; books I am currently reading own the sofa-side table and books he is reading sit on the other side table. Since we have no house plants, there are four stacks of books on the microwave. We cannot move books to the bookcases until the books have been read, utilized for class, and possibly passed on to others to make room for more books. Why? We won’t know where they are.
Admittedly, there have been times when I wandered the house asking my son and husband, “Have you seen my book? I’ve lost my book,” describing its cover color size. Invariably my son replies, “Take another one, there are enough,” gesturing with his hand toward the several hundred waiting to be read.
Books are sorted, by occasion when they were found if not by topic or author. No matter how much I looked forward to them, for years having company meant moving stacks of books to the back room, from which I seemed never able to find the ones I most wanted. Time provided a solution to this problem.
Company is now graded by book-worthiness and comfort level. If you are new and a judging kind of person, we’ll offer to meet you at a neutral restaurant where the only books are menus, whisked away before the bread basket arrives. If we’re more familiar with you, we are able welcome you as we are. We don’t feel the need to move any books, though we will clear the kitchen table. And if you understand us, you know why the space for your drink is only large enough for the glass of whatever you are drinking, and that glass is set next to a pile of books.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Author Hunted - fiction
A story about what might happen when characters are truly alive.
‘What are you willing to sacrifice for your own writing?’ I remember that question from the first session of my MA program in creative writing. Too many years ago. Too many course sections of being an instructor instead of a writer. Ironically, I had thought then that I had the answer.
I can tell you when it began. A laundry basket leaking underwear: the sleeve of my favorite blue shirt, striped towels; a brown paper kitchen garbage bag damp-welted and sagging; the patina of dust on my picture frames and shelves. Sunlight spilling through the spider webs in the basement. Clocks running faster than any list of chores, and that perpetual sense of not enough time. I remember I pushed aside an empty detergent bottle, thudded upstairs to fold towels, and then thumped my way back to the basement for the next load (wanting to put something in the dryer and discovering there’s an old load petulantly wrinkling inside). My mind was on seventy other things, until I reached the second last step and saw him standing next to the furnace, arms folded across his chest, chin tilted downward. Waiting for me as a hunter. Frowning just a little. But then that’s the way I always thought of him: frowning just a little, even when he smiled.
I wasn’t surprised, because all day I had had that sense of being watched, someone in the next room, someone just around the corner, someone whose breathing whispered in my ears.
I could feel his awareness, feel him scanning and listening, listening and waiting. If there were anything within half a mile (maybe a mile) he was aware of it. That’s how he had managed to stay alive.
The instant I became aware of him, he acknowledged me. He didn’t say anything, but his eyes were enough to say what he meant. He didn’t reach to touch me, or even gesture. But that, too, was Bruce.
I stood still, not breathing, holding the basket of rumpled laundry, ready to step toward him. Before I could, I woke up. My hand was folded into the palm under my pillow, but the only fingers there were mine. No stranger. I had seen him, felt him, felt him watching me, and he was more real than the pillow covering my hand of the blanket tangled around my feet. I winced: because of all the ways to end a story, ‘It was a dream,’ was perhaps the most trite; then I winced because it was a dream. He was certainly more real than anyone or anything else in the room. In my life.
I thought about Bruce while I dressed (pondering trite), and began a load of laundry (no, there was no figure next to the furnace, and besides that space was occupied with dusty cartons). I stood at the bottom of the steps, studying the place, willing him to have been there. I thought of him as I sat at the kitchen table, prepping classes, but really wondering exactly what it was all supposed to mean, since according to one writer everything in dreams means something and ‘every figure in the dreams no matter who it is should be interpreted as yourself.’ I’d like to be tall, muscled, and silent instead of short, rounded, and too often at a loss for words. I’m not sure about exchanging the female for male, but maybe in dreams that’s not significant.
I thought on Bruce’s significance (as well as his face) while I drove to class, and then, working to explain the difference between denotation and connotation to ten students who didn’t care and five who did, put people who appeared in dreams aside.
It was only when I settled into the squeaky chair in my office (a desk and chair behind a partition from someone else’s desk and chair), poured a cup of coffee from the community pot, and opened a package of cookies in my personal drawer, that the sense of everything not quite under control resurfaced. Stronger. There was nothing in or under control. I owed Mother a call; I owed the 8 a.m. section their essays papers, preferably graded; I owed mid-term grades; luckily I didn’t owe the IRS, but they were about the only ones in the black.
“Too bad,” I said aloud, rattling the cellophane under my fingers while I used one elbow to keep my place in the text book I was reviewing. “I’ve got too much to do.”
“Everybody has too much to do,” Deline answered me. “That’s why we talk to ourselves, to keep track of it all.”
“Hey.”
“Hey, there.”
“Grab a cup if you want some coffee.”
“The cookies were calling me,” dropping her books onto my desk.
“Help yourself.” Then because it was no use hiding what would eventually be wormed from me. “I saw him. Again.” I used the cookie for a bookmark and shrugged to show her it was no big deal.
“Tell me about it.”
“Typical dreams until he showed. Laundry overflowing in the ‘chute, scrambling late for work, ignoring the cleaning. Deline, I could sell the dust bunnies I’m raising. There’s got to be a market in allergy research for them if I could only find it. Or the time to find the market.
“I love all the people in my life, I love all my students this semester – yes, I do, Deline, don’t shake your head at me - and stop smiling. I love the ones who need me to stay after class every session because they missed last class and need extra help. I love the ones who can’t turn in an assignment because their third grandma died, and they had to go to a concert. I love the leaves that need to be raked from under the six trees in my yard, and the spiderwebs that need to be cleaned from my basement ceiling. I love the three faculty committees I got drafted to serve on, and the charity that wants me to go door to door to collect money for them. I love the publishing rep who keeps finding new things I should add to the anthology I’m doing to make the school look good, and the department chair who keeps agreeing with the rep. But all I wanted to do in the dream was to get away from all the wonderful people in my life, just for a little while. I guess, and this is the hokey part, to simply stand there, with him.“
“So who doesn’t want to get away? And some of those are kinky loves, if you ask me. Loving a guy is okay. Nobody enjoys serving on committees.”
I chose not to answer the second part of her statement because it was too correct. How many times did I use “love” and how many times did I mean it? “I can’t. He wasn’t like the exam you forgot to study for; he was real. It was the character, but there was also – and this is the weird part I can’t tell anyone but you – sexual angle there.”
“Honey,” Deline answered, “It’s not weird. Who else could satisfy you better than a man you made up yourself? I’ve had partners who should have taken lessons from the people I created in my stories.”
“It feels as though, each time I walk ‘round a corner, that he might be on the other side.”
“Think of him as one of your students. He’s annoying, so correct him with red pen.”
I tried to pull air into my lungs, but they refused to expand. “He won’t. He’s too intense; he doesn’t even smile, just a grimace. I didn’t make him up to be nice; I made him up to satisfy plot balance.”
“A sense of humor isn’t a non-negotiable requirement in a man.”
“Deline, be serious.”
“Amy, lighten up.”
“I’m trying. It’s just …”
“Serious,” Deline finished for me. “Okay, what do you want me to do? Maybe you shouldn’t be living alone.”
“Thanks, Mom. Finding Mr. Right is not the universal answer.” I gulped. “Mom. I need to call Mom. She’s on the list.”
“What list?”
“The list of things I should have done over the weekend.”
“It’s Wednesday.” Deline folded her arms across her chest. “You keep thinking of him because you want to finish the book. You want to work on your own writing rather than put together an anthology that will make the school look good.”
I lifted my palms in that gesture of futility. “I want to do the anthology. Sort of. It was my idea before the publishing rep and the department and a few other people began making suggestions. I want to do my own writing, for me. I can do both, actually. Just budget my time. Layers. Like paring an onion.”
“Onions make people cry.” She stared at me. “And you want to call your Mother. If you don’t, it’s going to get worse.”
Three more weeks of the eighteen-week semester. I corrected four sets of papers, listened to fifteen old excuses and one new one from students missing work, listened to my neighbor complain about the weeds in the lawn, attended two committee meetings and fell asleep in only one of them. I concentrated on the 806 deadlines in my life, and forgot about a visitor in the basement. Life continued normally until the morning I looked through the kitchen window into a grey misty morning, and met his eyes.
“I saw him last night,” I said slowly, needing to tell someone, half wishing the someone weren’t Deline. She knew too much of his history, and history made him real. “I think it was him, no, I’d bet money it was him. Damn, Deline, I know it was him. But a younger version.”
“I think you need to tell me about it.”
‘I’ve got a department chair looking for me, since I haven’t turned in mid-term grades by deadline.” Deline swallowed the last chunk of her cookie and leaned back in the chair. Some things were more important than deadlines.
“I was at home, standing in the room where I do my writing, looking out the window. There was a man in the yard, and my first impression was that he stood so still because he had a dog on a leash. I was annoyed: why was some guy letting his dog poop right there, in the yard, right outside my window. Then I noticed that he was wasn’t dressed.”
“Nude?”
“Except for a loin cloth sort of thing.” I swept a hand down my side trying to give her the right impression. “Not naked, flaunting himself, just not wearing many clothes. He didn’t care. I guess that’s almost nude. I looked at him, and he turned from whatever he was watching and stared at me.”
“How?”
“Sort of annoyed. Waiting.” I sighed again. “Waiting. As though I were slow at understanding.”
“Were you?”
“Since I was not sure what he wanted, maybe I was.”
“And you’re sure this is Bruce? Was Bruce? Not a new character, you know, some variety?”
I looked at the wall above Deline’s head and wondered if I should scream. I decided a scream would alert people I was hiding in my office. “Yes, I’m sure. But a younger one. Maybe, oh, twenty-five years old. Five years younger than he is, in the story I’m not finishing. His body wasn’t scarred up yet. Face not as lined. Strong, but not where I had him.”
“You could decide he’s a one-dimensional character. Moody, strong, dark and sensual. Flat.”
“No, that is not how he is.” But at the same time I wondered if I did know how he was. Is. I certainly hadn’t anticipated his coming to find me. Didn’t he have something more important, some one more important, to chase? Like a female lead? Some villains? Was this a plot weakness – a character preferring the author? Or just a weak in the head writer?
“Time to wake up,” Deline cajoled. “Amy back to the faculty offices. Return, Amy.” She snapped her fingers, frowning.
I reached toward a cookie. Shook my head, and drew my hand back empty. Folded my hands in my lap, decided they were clenched not folded, and carefully opened them across the fabric of my pants.
“It’s okay, Amy. What you imagine could be perfectly normal. You’re working an overload this semester, trying to finish the novel for publication, and editing that anthology.”
“I’m not finishing the novel, remember?”
“You’re stressed because you’re busy.”
“Duh. Okay, I’m busy. But maybe I’ve added ‘crazy’ to my schedule, just to amuse myself. How many people think about going off with a person they created.”
“You’re not,” Deline said sharply. “You’re just thinking about a character you made up, a long time ago, for a story you haven’t finished. That’s why he’s around: it’s your own to-do list. Face it, honey: The way you’re going, you might never finish it. Your mind is telling you what you already know.”
“That’s not how it feels.”
“You have a fantastic work ethic.” She paused, then, “Who needs another anthology, anyway? You see Bruce, but what you are actually seeing is yourself telling yourself what is important.”
“Thanks, Deline.”
“No thanks necessary. Listen, I’ve love to hear more about these men without clothes, but I have a class. If any deans come hunting for late grades, I’ll say I never saw you.”
I sat back in the chair and considered Bruce. This whole thing wasn’t about ‘men without clothes,’ it went deeper. He wasn’t mean or vindictive. Not haunting me. Or hunting me. It was a healthy relationship. If I had to put a color to it, I’d say green. Real. I sighed. That was part of my problem. What, indeed, was reality?
I played with the folders stacked in front of me. Deline was probably right. What I needed was to find a temporary boyfriend, someone who didn’t match any of Bruce’s pattern: short, pudgy, friendly, and undemanding. Talkative. Noisy enough that his babble would chuckle and gurgle its way over, under, around, and through the other man. Just like a good preposition and about as valuable to a life sentence.
I decided that since I could never hope to finish all the projects in my life, professional and personal [who needs to get along with neighbors after all, and mothers will understand], and that I did have a committee meeting in twenty-five minutes on how students could better use technical resources to develop interpersonal skills, I might as well escape the building for a short walk. Students do it all the time; why shouldn’t instructors? It was a glorious day with a cool wind. The woods bordering two sides of campus were deep, shadowy green. Sunlight made yellow freckles on the paths beneath the trees until the wood’s closed those paths in shadow. The sky was bright, and there was the smell of rain coming from far away. I sat on a bench in the sunshine at the edge of the pond, still watching the woods on its far side, baking my brains, and feeling the false peace that comes from desperately ignoring deadlines before they overwhelm. When my feet got cold, I looked down and noticed the sun had moved westward enough to put them in shadow. Checked my watch. Well, there were two wasted hours. No anthology progress. No committee meeting; wonder if they missed me. But no Bruce, either.
It didn’t feel horrible, being irresponsible. It felt sane. I decided it was safer to decamp to the library. If a fellow committee-ite were looking, he would check the faculty offices. I could work off some guilt before I was found, and the best place to do that was the library.
I scuttled furtively to a carrel in a dark corner of the library, plopped down the stack of folders. Sighed. Thought about Bruce and how his visits had lightened my days. “I don’t have time. It’s a character I created. I made him.” I held my head between my hands so my eyes had to look at the folders.
A girl in a black, V-necked sweater moved to the computer cubicles. One of the student aides squeaked past with a cart of books. Across the room, someone crumpled a piece of paper. The turnstile clicked another patron into the campus library.
My hands moved all by themselves out of my hair and into the stack of folders: class folders, notes for the next lecture, telephone messages to be returned, timeline for the anthology selections which would become a manuscript for the publisher, and then a book that would help our school look good.
If anything was insane it was the decision to work here instead of the faculty offices where it was quieter and more controlled. Or at home – no, wrong. If I were at home I’d be cleaning. I’d be figuring out which of the hundred home chores I should have finished last week. Or hoping I didn’t see him around a corner. Home was not an option if I wanted to finish anything by deadline. The offices were not an option unless I wanted to have a lovely afternoon talking with my peers. The library was not either, but it made the most sense of the trinity. I blew the stale air out of my lungs and tapped my fingers on the top folder: Alone. All grown up and afraid to be alone, was that what it had come to?
I was a target. Every time I had been a successful target, I was alone. Until the hunt was called off, I had two goals: finish the anthology / finish the semester, and not be alone. Call Mom. I might as well finish writing his story too while I was finishing off things. Maybe I could write him into exile. Or kill him. But I didn’t want to kill him. I didn’t want to exile him, either.
One of the printers began its pre-birth whine. If home was quiet, there would always be someone in the library: shuffling books, whispering study carrels, running notes through the copier. Ironically the library was where I first got the idea for him one fall afternoon. Life caught up with you. Except it wouldn’t. Going to find a nice dull person. Going to find a faculty person I hadn’t met already, someone, anyone. I’m going to do it, Bruce. Then we’ll get out our matching red pens, and edit you out.
I looked grimly around the edge of the carrel, over the short stacks, to the windows. Sloping lawns, a pond, and surrounding the campus that green belt of woods. A perfect place to lose myself. A perfect place: just me, a bunch of students, and a few thousand deadlines. And next semester it would start all over again.
I made working motions, doodling notes, shuffling papers in the ‘anthology’ folder. The afternoon slid toward later. Shadows began seeping from under the stacks, battling the fluorescent lights.
There was movement. I looked up and saw all the usual things. Across the room someone laughed at a joke. Someone ran the copy machine. A girl shoved books onto the shelves. Beyond her shoulder, in the afternoon shadows, there was deliberate movement, silent motion.
It was the eyes I noticed first: dark, dark brown that looked like black, then the rough brows under rough cut hair. Older: not the younger one who had stood in my yard, but the older. Two, three, maybe five years older than I. Hard to tell with the mileage, though. Scar, faint scar along the cheekbone. I remembered that. Needed a shave. That ironic frown that was more a looking into-the-sun squint. I stopped. Inventory was useless. Or stupid. It was apparently inevitable.
What might have been a smile of agreement tugged his mouth into a scythe and emphasized his cheekbones.
What was it I had said to Deline? ‘I’m exactly where I wanted to be five years ago.’ But time is unimportant. I’m exactly where I want to be. What could an author do? I stood and walked toward him, even before the ‘anthology’ folder had closed beneath my fingers.
‘What are you willing to sacrifice for your own writing?’ I remember that question from the first session of my MA program in creative writing. Too many years ago. Too many course sections of being an instructor instead of a writer. Ironically, I had thought then that I had the answer.
I can tell you when it began. A laundry basket leaking underwear: the sleeve of my favorite blue shirt, striped towels; a brown paper kitchen garbage bag damp-welted and sagging; the patina of dust on my picture frames and shelves. Sunlight spilling through the spider webs in the basement. Clocks running faster than any list of chores, and that perpetual sense of not enough time. I remember I pushed aside an empty detergent bottle, thudded upstairs to fold towels, and then thumped my way back to the basement for the next load (wanting to put something in the dryer and discovering there’s an old load petulantly wrinkling inside). My mind was on seventy other things, until I reached the second last step and saw him standing next to the furnace, arms folded across his chest, chin tilted downward. Waiting for me as a hunter. Frowning just a little. But then that’s the way I always thought of him: frowning just a little, even when he smiled.
I wasn’t surprised, because all day I had had that sense of being watched, someone in the next room, someone just around the corner, someone whose breathing whispered in my ears.
I could feel his awareness, feel him scanning and listening, listening and waiting. If there were anything within half a mile (maybe a mile) he was aware of it. That’s how he had managed to stay alive.
The instant I became aware of him, he acknowledged me. He didn’t say anything, but his eyes were enough to say what he meant. He didn’t reach to touch me, or even gesture. But that, too, was Bruce.
I stood still, not breathing, holding the basket of rumpled laundry, ready to step toward him. Before I could, I woke up. My hand was folded into the palm under my pillow, but the only fingers there were mine. No stranger. I had seen him, felt him, felt him watching me, and he was more real than the pillow covering my hand of the blanket tangled around my feet. I winced: because of all the ways to end a story, ‘It was a dream,’ was perhaps the most trite; then I winced because it was a dream. He was certainly more real than anyone or anything else in the room. In my life.
I thought about Bruce while I dressed (pondering trite), and began a load of laundry (no, there was no figure next to the furnace, and besides that space was occupied with dusty cartons). I stood at the bottom of the steps, studying the place, willing him to have been there. I thought of him as I sat at the kitchen table, prepping classes, but really wondering exactly what it was all supposed to mean, since according to one writer everything in dreams means something and ‘every figure in the dreams no matter who it is should be interpreted as yourself.’ I’d like to be tall, muscled, and silent instead of short, rounded, and too often at a loss for words. I’m not sure about exchanging the female for male, but maybe in dreams that’s not significant.
I thought on Bruce’s significance (as well as his face) while I drove to class, and then, working to explain the difference between denotation and connotation to ten students who didn’t care and five who did, put people who appeared in dreams aside.
It was only when I settled into the squeaky chair in my office (a desk and chair behind a partition from someone else’s desk and chair), poured a cup of coffee from the community pot, and opened a package of cookies in my personal drawer, that the sense of everything not quite under control resurfaced. Stronger. There was nothing in or under control. I owed Mother a call; I owed the 8 a.m. section their essays papers, preferably graded; I owed mid-term grades; luckily I didn’t owe the IRS, but they were about the only ones in the black.
“Too bad,” I said aloud, rattling the cellophane under my fingers while I used one elbow to keep my place in the text book I was reviewing. “I’ve got too much to do.”
“Everybody has too much to do,” Deline answered me. “That’s why we talk to ourselves, to keep track of it all.”
“Hey.”
“Hey, there.”
“Grab a cup if you want some coffee.”
“The cookies were calling me,” dropping her books onto my desk.
“Help yourself.” Then because it was no use hiding what would eventually be wormed from me. “I saw him. Again.” I used the cookie for a bookmark and shrugged to show her it was no big deal.
“Tell me about it.”
“Typical dreams until he showed. Laundry overflowing in the ‘chute, scrambling late for work, ignoring the cleaning. Deline, I could sell the dust bunnies I’m raising. There’s got to be a market in allergy research for them if I could only find it. Or the time to find the market.
“I love all the people in my life, I love all my students this semester – yes, I do, Deline, don’t shake your head at me - and stop smiling. I love the ones who need me to stay after class every session because they missed last class and need extra help. I love the ones who can’t turn in an assignment because their third grandma died, and they had to go to a concert. I love the leaves that need to be raked from under the six trees in my yard, and the spiderwebs that need to be cleaned from my basement ceiling. I love the three faculty committees I got drafted to serve on, and the charity that wants me to go door to door to collect money for them. I love the publishing rep who keeps finding new things I should add to the anthology I’m doing to make the school look good, and the department chair who keeps agreeing with the rep. But all I wanted to do in the dream was to get away from all the wonderful people in my life, just for a little while. I guess, and this is the hokey part, to simply stand there, with him.“
“So who doesn’t want to get away? And some of those are kinky loves, if you ask me. Loving a guy is okay. Nobody enjoys serving on committees.”
I chose not to answer the second part of her statement because it was too correct. How many times did I use “love” and how many times did I mean it? “I can’t. He wasn’t like the exam you forgot to study for; he was real. It was the character, but there was also – and this is the weird part I can’t tell anyone but you – sexual angle there.”
“Honey,” Deline answered, “It’s not weird. Who else could satisfy you better than a man you made up yourself? I’ve had partners who should have taken lessons from the people I created in my stories.”
“It feels as though, each time I walk ‘round a corner, that he might be on the other side.”
“Think of him as one of your students. He’s annoying, so correct him with red pen.”
I tried to pull air into my lungs, but they refused to expand. “He won’t. He’s too intense; he doesn’t even smile, just a grimace. I didn’t make him up to be nice; I made him up to satisfy plot balance.”
“A sense of humor isn’t a non-negotiable requirement in a man.”
“Deline, be serious.”
“Amy, lighten up.”
“I’m trying. It’s just …”
“Serious,” Deline finished for me. “Okay, what do you want me to do? Maybe you shouldn’t be living alone.”
“Thanks, Mom. Finding Mr. Right is not the universal answer.” I gulped. “Mom. I need to call Mom. She’s on the list.”
“What list?”
“The list of things I should have done over the weekend.”
“It’s Wednesday.” Deline folded her arms across her chest. “You keep thinking of him because you want to finish the book. You want to work on your own writing rather than put together an anthology that will make the school look good.”
I lifted my palms in that gesture of futility. “I want to do the anthology. Sort of. It was my idea before the publishing rep and the department and a few other people began making suggestions. I want to do my own writing, for me. I can do both, actually. Just budget my time. Layers. Like paring an onion.”
“Onions make people cry.” She stared at me. “And you want to call your Mother. If you don’t, it’s going to get worse.”
Three more weeks of the eighteen-week semester. I corrected four sets of papers, listened to fifteen old excuses and one new one from students missing work, listened to my neighbor complain about the weeds in the lawn, attended two committee meetings and fell asleep in only one of them. I concentrated on the 806 deadlines in my life, and forgot about a visitor in the basement. Life continued normally until the morning I looked through the kitchen window into a grey misty morning, and met his eyes.
“I saw him last night,” I said slowly, needing to tell someone, half wishing the someone weren’t Deline. She knew too much of his history, and history made him real. “I think it was him, no, I’d bet money it was him. Damn, Deline, I know it was him. But a younger version.”
“I think you need to tell me about it.”
‘I’ve got a department chair looking for me, since I haven’t turned in mid-term grades by deadline.” Deline swallowed the last chunk of her cookie and leaned back in the chair. Some things were more important than deadlines.
“I was at home, standing in the room where I do my writing, looking out the window. There was a man in the yard, and my first impression was that he stood so still because he had a dog on a leash. I was annoyed: why was some guy letting his dog poop right there, in the yard, right outside my window. Then I noticed that he was wasn’t dressed.”
“Nude?”
“Except for a loin cloth sort of thing.” I swept a hand down my side trying to give her the right impression. “Not naked, flaunting himself, just not wearing many clothes. He didn’t care. I guess that’s almost nude. I looked at him, and he turned from whatever he was watching and stared at me.”
“How?”
“Sort of annoyed. Waiting.” I sighed again. “Waiting. As though I were slow at understanding.”
“Were you?”
“Since I was not sure what he wanted, maybe I was.”
“And you’re sure this is Bruce? Was Bruce? Not a new character, you know, some variety?”
I looked at the wall above Deline’s head and wondered if I should scream. I decided a scream would alert people I was hiding in my office. “Yes, I’m sure. But a younger one. Maybe, oh, twenty-five years old. Five years younger than he is, in the story I’m not finishing. His body wasn’t scarred up yet. Face not as lined. Strong, but not where I had him.”
“You could decide he’s a one-dimensional character. Moody, strong, dark and sensual. Flat.”
“No, that is not how he is.” But at the same time I wondered if I did know how he was. Is. I certainly hadn’t anticipated his coming to find me. Didn’t he have something more important, some one more important, to chase? Like a female lead? Some villains? Was this a plot weakness – a character preferring the author? Or just a weak in the head writer?
“Time to wake up,” Deline cajoled. “Amy back to the faculty offices. Return, Amy.” She snapped her fingers, frowning.
I reached toward a cookie. Shook my head, and drew my hand back empty. Folded my hands in my lap, decided they were clenched not folded, and carefully opened them across the fabric of my pants.
“It’s okay, Amy. What you imagine could be perfectly normal. You’re working an overload this semester, trying to finish the novel for publication, and editing that anthology.”
“I’m not finishing the novel, remember?”
“You’re stressed because you’re busy.”
“Duh. Okay, I’m busy. But maybe I’ve added ‘crazy’ to my schedule, just to amuse myself. How many people think about going off with a person they created.”
“You’re not,” Deline said sharply. “You’re just thinking about a character you made up, a long time ago, for a story you haven’t finished. That’s why he’s around: it’s your own to-do list. Face it, honey: The way you’re going, you might never finish it. Your mind is telling you what you already know.”
“That’s not how it feels.”
“You have a fantastic work ethic.” She paused, then, “Who needs another anthology, anyway? You see Bruce, but what you are actually seeing is yourself telling yourself what is important.”
“Thanks, Deline.”
“No thanks necessary. Listen, I’ve love to hear more about these men without clothes, but I have a class. If any deans come hunting for late grades, I’ll say I never saw you.”
I sat back in the chair and considered Bruce. This whole thing wasn’t about ‘men without clothes,’ it went deeper. He wasn’t mean or vindictive. Not haunting me. Or hunting me. It was a healthy relationship. If I had to put a color to it, I’d say green. Real. I sighed. That was part of my problem. What, indeed, was reality?
I played with the folders stacked in front of me. Deline was probably right. What I needed was to find a temporary boyfriend, someone who didn’t match any of Bruce’s pattern: short, pudgy, friendly, and undemanding. Talkative. Noisy enough that his babble would chuckle and gurgle its way over, under, around, and through the other man. Just like a good preposition and about as valuable to a life sentence.
I decided that since I could never hope to finish all the projects in my life, professional and personal [who needs to get along with neighbors after all, and mothers will understand], and that I did have a committee meeting in twenty-five minutes on how students could better use technical resources to develop interpersonal skills, I might as well escape the building for a short walk. Students do it all the time; why shouldn’t instructors? It was a glorious day with a cool wind. The woods bordering two sides of campus were deep, shadowy green. Sunlight made yellow freckles on the paths beneath the trees until the wood’s closed those paths in shadow. The sky was bright, and there was the smell of rain coming from far away. I sat on a bench in the sunshine at the edge of the pond, still watching the woods on its far side, baking my brains, and feeling the false peace that comes from desperately ignoring deadlines before they overwhelm. When my feet got cold, I looked down and noticed the sun had moved westward enough to put them in shadow. Checked my watch. Well, there were two wasted hours. No anthology progress. No committee meeting; wonder if they missed me. But no Bruce, either.
It didn’t feel horrible, being irresponsible. It felt sane. I decided it was safer to decamp to the library. If a fellow committee-ite were looking, he would check the faculty offices. I could work off some guilt before I was found, and the best place to do that was the library.
I scuttled furtively to a carrel in a dark corner of the library, plopped down the stack of folders. Sighed. Thought about Bruce and how his visits had lightened my days. “I don’t have time. It’s a character I created. I made him.” I held my head between my hands so my eyes had to look at the folders.
A girl in a black, V-necked sweater moved to the computer cubicles. One of the student aides squeaked past with a cart of books. Across the room, someone crumpled a piece of paper. The turnstile clicked another patron into the campus library.
My hands moved all by themselves out of my hair and into the stack of folders: class folders, notes for the next lecture, telephone messages to be returned, timeline for the anthology selections which would become a manuscript for the publisher, and then a book that would help our school look good.
If anything was insane it was the decision to work here instead of the faculty offices where it was quieter and more controlled. Or at home – no, wrong. If I were at home I’d be cleaning. I’d be figuring out which of the hundred home chores I should have finished last week. Or hoping I didn’t see him around a corner. Home was not an option if I wanted to finish anything by deadline. The offices were not an option unless I wanted to have a lovely afternoon talking with my peers. The library was not either, but it made the most sense of the trinity. I blew the stale air out of my lungs and tapped my fingers on the top folder: Alone. All grown up and afraid to be alone, was that what it had come to?
I was a target. Every time I had been a successful target, I was alone. Until the hunt was called off, I had two goals: finish the anthology / finish the semester, and not be alone. Call Mom. I might as well finish writing his story too while I was finishing off things. Maybe I could write him into exile. Or kill him. But I didn’t want to kill him. I didn’t want to exile him, either.
One of the printers began its pre-birth whine. If home was quiet, there would always be someone in the library: shuffling books, whispering study carrels, running notes through the copier. Ironically the library was where I first got the idea for him one fall afternoon. Life caught up with you. Except it wouldn’t. Going to find a nice dull person. Going to find a faculty person I hadn’t met already, someone, anyone. I’m going to do it, Bruce. Then we’ll get out our matching red pens, and edit you out.
I looked grimly around the edge of the carrel, over the short stacks, to the windows. Sloping lawns, a pond, and surrounding the campus that green belt of woods. A perfect place to lose myself. A perfect place: just me, a bunch of students, and a few thousand deadlines. And next semester it would start all over again.
I made working motions, doodling notes, shuffling papers in the ‘anthology’ folder. The afternoon slid toward later. Shadows began seeping from under the stacks, battling the fluorescent lights.
There was movement. I looked up and saw all the usual things. Across the room someone laughed at a joke. Someone ran the copy machine. A girl shoved books onto the shelves. Beyond her shoulder, in the afternoon shadows, there was deliberate movement, silent motion.
It was the eyes I noticed first: dark, dark brown that looked like black, then the rough brows under rough cut hair. Older: not the younger one who had stood in my yard, but the older. Two, three, maybe five years older than I. Hard to tell with the mileage, though. Scar, faint scar along the cheekbone. I remembered that. Needed a shave. That ironic frown that was more a looking into-the-sun squint. I stopped. Inventory was useless. Or stupid. It was apparently inevitable.
What might have been a smile of agreement tugged his mouth into a scythe and emphasized his cheekbones.
What was it I had said to Deline? ‘I’m exactly where I wanted to be five years ago.’ But time is unimportant. I’m exactly where I want to be. What could an author do? I stood and walked toward him, even before the ‘anthology’ folder had closed beneath my fingers.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Welcome Home
We’re talking about prodigal child stories in class this week, not because it’s an election year, but because many of the stories in our text and our life seem to involve journeys and finding our way with the people we love (and sometimes dislike with great intensity).
Wolff’s “The Rich Brother”; Tan’s “A Pair of Tickets”; Williams’ The Glass Menagerie; Keillor’s Prodigal Son radio play; Ishiguro’s “Family Supper”; Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues,” and so many other tales, including our own lives: all have elements of that prodigal child.
What and where is home? I write on the board. What is the journey? How do the characters perceive and define home and their journeys?
We’re all prodigals at some time in our lives, often at many times in our lives. We leave via our bodies, or our emotions, or our minds. Even if we’re not the ones apparently leaving, we experience the prodigal child on multiple levels. There’s family relationships: Who’s Mom’s favorite? Who is not the golden child? There’s group relationships: Who’s the prodigal? How do the rest of us treat him? There’s changing roles: Sometimes I’m the prodigal and sometimes the other child. Sometimes I’m the one who journeys; and sometimes the one who stays home. Sometimes the parent; and sometimes the child.
Which role do we want to play, and what’s the meaning of it for us? Do we feel caught in a role? Being the good and responsible child gets old after a while. Is the prodigal child always the prodigal? Do we want to stop breaking the rules and start making them?
What’s at stake? Control. Limited resources: land, inheritance, love. Fear. Status. Self-identity. How much of who we are comes from inside and how much comes from asking others to give us our role and our worth?
If we’re out there, walking the byways or thumbing a lift, we’ve got the choice of going back. We can go back to be accepted. We can return to confront problems. We can be confronted in pain or anger by those we’ve left behind. We can go back to claim our rightful status, responsibility, and identity. We can claim our destiny.
Or we can refuse to return home: we can keep wandering. Maybe we’re haunted. Maybe we don’t want to accept our family or our identity; and maybe we’re busy creating a new one.
Yet if we identify prodigal with its meaning of luxuriant and abundant, we must include the father in that parable. He gives to both his children, throughout the story. He stays at home, waiting, but we need to remember that he also is wandering.
Every day we have the opportunity to go out, learn something, and come back home. We bring something back with us: sometimes a bottle of wine to share at dinner, sometimes a skill, sometimes love for the people who got dinner going and ran the washing machine. Sometimes not. Sometimes we bring back the same resentment we left with, not even airing it out on the trip.
Whoever has won, however we have voted, and wherever we come back to: welcome home
Wolff’s “The Rich Brother”; Tan’s “A Pair of Tickets”; Williams’ The Glass Menagerie; Keillor’s Prodigal Son radio play; Ishiguro’s “Family Supper”; Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues,” and so many other tales, including our own lives: all have elements of that prodigal child.
What and where is home? I write on the board. What is the journey? How do the characters perceive and define home and their journeys?
We’re all prodigals at some time in our lives, often at many times in our lives. We leave via our bodies, or our emotions, or our minds. Even if we’re not the ones apparently leaving, we experience the prodigal child on multiple levels. There’s family relationships: Who’s Mom’s favorite? Who is not the golden child? There’s group relationships: Who’s the prodigal? How do the rest of us treat him? There’s changing roles: Sometimes I’m the prodigal and sometimes the other child. Sometimes I’m the one who journeys; and sometimes the one who stays home. Sometimes the parent; and sometimes the child.
Which role do we want to play, and what’s the meaning of it for us? Do we feel caught in a role? Being the good and responsible child gets old after a while. Is the prodigal child always the prodigal? Do we want to stop breaking the rules and start making them?
What’s at stake? Control. Limited resources: land, inheritance, love. Fear. Status. Self-identity. How much of who we are comes from inside and how much comes from asking others to give us our role and our worth?
If we’re out there, walking the byways or thumbing a lift, we’ve got the choice of going back. We can go back to be accepted. We can return to confront problems. We can be confronted in pain or anger by those we’ve left behind. We can go back to claim our rightful status, responsibility, and identity. We can claim our destiny.
Or we can refuse to return home: we can keep wandering. Maybe we’re haunted. Maybe we don’t want to accept our family or our identity; and maybe we’re busy creating a new one.
Yet if we identify prodigal with its meaning of luxuriant and abundant, we must include the father in that parable. He gives to both his children, throughout the story. He stays at home, waiting, but we need to remember that he also is wandering.
Every day we have the opportunity to go out, learn something, and come back home. We bring something back with us: sometimes a bottle of wine to share at dinner, sometimes a skill, sometimes love for the people who got dinner going and ran the washing machine. Sometimes not. Sometimes we bring back the same resentment we left with, not even airing it out on the trip.
Whoever has won, however we have voted, and wherever we come back to: welcome home
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Dreams of Many Colored Glass - excerpt
A man finds his life changed – against his wishes – by someone else’s dreams.
Before I got too settled, I wanted more information, so I hunted out Fish Eyes. “Doesn’t he have anyone around? And what about this Marjorie who used to be his wife? Did she have money? Is that why he married her?”
“Is that all you think about: money?” Fish Eyes dropped the wooden spoon. “You can’t trust people who think only about money. And what business is it of yours? She turned from the mixing bowl in front of her to stare at me. “Why do you want to know, anyway?”
“I like to see what makes things tick.”
“It’s more than ticking that makes things work.”
I of course had no compunction about probing further than good manners, and had richly earned my reputation of being willing to prod a vice-principal, a topic, a little sister, or a parent until it exploded. That was when I still cared.
“Did she?”
“As a matter of fact she did, not that it is any of your business.”
“So where did her money come from?”
“Her father. His family had money. Marjorie grew up used to it.”
“So that’s why he married her? So Fritz got into shady activities to get her what she wanted?”
“Who said that? The grandkids lying again?” Fish Eyes picked up a rolling pin.
“Nope. Nothing. Nada.” I held up my palms in surrender. “Haven’t met the grandkids. I was just wondering, and no one wants to tell me anything.”
“No one wants to tell you things that are none of your business.”
“So how did Fritz earn his money, if Marjorie came already equipped with it?”
Smash! The rolling pin came down on a piece of wax paper, and the brown sugar beneath that canopy shivered into tiny pieces. “Business. He was an inventor.”
“Of what?”
“Of things you can’t see.”
“Like what? Electrons? Pixie dust? Batman during the daytime?”
“Like things inside electric connections that nobody had thought of before. He was a smart man. Still is.”
“Then why doesn’t he have them here? There aren’t any electrical connection books in the library.”
Fish Eyes sighed again. “It was what he did, not what he loved. He loved Marjorie.”
“Who fell in love with a guy who made little tiny things inside electric plugs.”
“That’s it. Now maybe you can stop asking questions and go back to work, while I bake this coffee cake.”
“Why aren’t we having pie?”
“Because Fritz likes coffee cake.”
I wandered back to the office, thinking about electricity and coffee cake. If Fish Eyes was right, and Fritz’s invention hadn’t been reinvented, every time someone turned on a light a couple more pennies dropped into Fritz’s bank account. Let there be light. I wondered if God would sizzle me for the blasphemy. No, obviously not: Fritz didn’t allow frying near the lamps.
I gave the photos that Fritz had on the shelf in his office one more glance before I settled back to work. Lots of money, lots of lamps, no visitors. The answer had to be in that collection of faces, and I was going to find it.
“Tell me about the rest of Fritz’s family. Like the grandkids,” I asked Fish Eyes another day. Unfortunately she was in a less talkative mood.
“You better be careful, or you’re going to see more than you bargained for.” She pressed her lips into wrinkles and stared into the pot of soup she was cooking.
When I remembered our conversation later, I thought she had certainly been right: It was like saying Moby Dick was about more than catching fish.
Before I got too settled, I wanted more information, so I hunted out Fish Eyes. “Doesn’t he have anyone around? And what about this Marjorie who used to be his wife? Did she have money? Is that why he married her?”
“Is that all you think about: money?” Fish Eyes dropped the wooden spoon. “You can’t trust people who think only about money. And what business is it of yours? She turned from the mixing bowl in front of her to stare at me. “Why do you want to know, anyway?”
“I like to see what makes things tick.”
“It’s more than ticking that makes things work.”
I of course had no compunction about probing further than good manners, and had richly earned my reputation of being willing to prod a vice-principal, a topic, a little sister, or a parent until it exploded. That was when I still cared.
“Did she?”
“As a matter of fact she did, not that it is any of your business.”
“So where did her money come from?”
“Her father. His family had money. Marjorie grew up used to it.”
“So that’s why he married her? So Fritz got into shady activities to get her what she wanted?”
“Who said that? The grandkids lying again?” Fish Eyes picked up a rolling pin.
“Nope. Nothing. Nada.” I held up my palms in surrender. “Haven’t met the grandkids. I was just wondering, and no one wants to tell me anything.”
“No one wants to tell you things that are none of your business.”
“So how did Fritz earn his money, if Marjorie came already equipped with it?”
Smash! The rolling pin came down on a piece of wax paper, and the brown sugar beneath that canopy shivered into tiny pieces. “Business. He was an inventor.”
“Of what?”
“Of things you can’t see.”
“Like what? Electrons? Pixie dust? Batman during the daytime?”
“Like things inside electric connections that nobody had thought of before. He was a smart man. Still is.”
“Then why doesn’t he have them here? There aren’t any electrical connection books in the library.”
Fish Eyes sighed again. “It was what he did, not what he loved. He loved Marjorie.”
“Who fell in love with a guy who made little tiny things inside electric plugs.”
“That’s it. Now maybe you can stop asking questions and go back to work, while I bake this coffee cake.”
“Why aren’t we having pie?”
“Because Fritz likes coffee cake.”
I wandered back to the office, thinking about electricity and coffee cake. If Fish Eyes was right, and Fritz’s invention hadn’t been reinvented, every time someone turned on a light a couple more pennies dropped into Fritz’s bank account. Let there be light. I wondered if God would sizzle me for the blasphemy. No, obviously not: Fritz didn’t allow frying near the lamps.
I gave the photos that Fritz had on the shelf in his office one more glance before I settled back to work. Lots of money, lots of lamps, no visitors. The answer had to be in that collection of faces, and I was going to find it.
“Tell me about the rest of Fritz’s family. Like the grandkids,” I asked Fish Eyes another day. Unfortunately she was in a less talkative mood.
“You better be careful, or you’re going to see more than you bargained for.” She pressed her lips into wrinkles and stared into the pot of soup she was cooking.
When I remembered our conversation later, I thought she had certainly been right: It was like saying Moby Dick was about more than catching fish.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Dreams of Many Colored Glass - excerpt
A brilliant young man finds his life changed – against his wishes – by someone else’s dreams.
Fritz kept filling in the Grand Canyons of my education with anecdotes.
“Many years ago, Robert Koch bought his first Tiffany favrile for $4, which was a significant amount of money then.”
“I thought the Colonials traded in wampum.”
“You should respect your elders.” Fritz dipped his chin so he could look at me over his glasses.
“I do. But they need to earn the respect.”
“Koch wrote a definitive biography. He amassed a collection of Art Nouveau, including Tiffany art. Including a god-awful punch bowl that looks like it should have come from a carnival. But it’s a glorious example. His wife became a dealer instead of a teacher, so she could help him.”
The last statement seemed to come from deeper inside Fritz. I speculated what Mrs. Fritz had given up, in her husband’s pursuit of lamps.
So began my entry into the world of Tiffany, an entire ecosystem built on sand, fire, and light. There were times – coming into the breakfast room when 6 a.m. light bounced through an amber shade; seeing twilight change the sapphire and cream maze of a peacock lamp; sitting in a warm June evening when the peonies outside were almost as beautiful as the ones he created - that I caught myself from falling into the Tiffany well. I would never have admitted it to Fritz, but it would have been an easy fall. The lamps were gorgeous, if not worth the money.
Fritz kept filling in the Grand Canyons of my education with anecdotes.
“Many years ago, Robert Koch bought his first Tiffany favrile for $4, which was a significant amount of money then.”
“I thought the Colonials traded in wampum.”
“You should respect your elders.” Fritz dipped his chin so he could look at me over his glasses.
“I do. But they need to earn the respect.”
“Koch wrote a definitive biography. He amassed a collection of Art Nouveau, including Tiffany art. Including a god-awful punch bowl that looks like it should have come from a carnival. But it’s a glorious example. His wife became a dealer instead of a teacher, so she could help him.”
The last statement seemed to come from deeper inside Fritz. I speculated what Mrs. Fritz had given up, in her husband’s pursuit of lamps.
So began my entry into the world of Tiffany, an entire ecosystem built on sand, fire, and light. There were times – coming into the breakfast room when 6 a.m. light bounced through an amber shade; seeing twilight change the sapphire and cream maze of a peacock lamp; sitting in a warm June evening when the peonies outside were almost as beautiful as the ones he created - that I caught myself from falling into the Tiffany well. I would never have admitted it to Fritz, but it would have been an easy fall. The lamps were gorgeous, if not worth the money.
Come for Supper: Food and Books
“We could do pot pies,” I say hopefully. “One of each: chicken and beef. I could make that perfect pie crust recipe from my student who was a chef and a white sauce and use asparagus with the chicken.” I think of Dan who refers to it as “little trees” and revise, “or green beans.”
“We could do a rib roast,” my husband answers.
“We always do a rib roast.”
“And people always enjoy it. Why change what works?”
I think of the Forsytes’ inevitable saddle of mutton, appearing at every family dinner, varied only by geographic origin or sheep type, and push my imagination into flaky piecrust, thick pie contents steaming with carrots, potatoes, meat, green beans. Dinner rolls homemade.
“I think that’s a great idea,” he reinforces himself. “When do you want to have people over?”
Dinner with company is a time to share food with friends, a time to catch up on what’s new. Maybe what we serve should have some newness to it also.
Joe searches the Internet for recipes showcasing what’s in season and showcases the food: We’ve watched him toss heaped yellow, orange, and red peppers mushrooms and onions, over the gas flame, anticipated the broccoli soup in our bowls and held our hands out for his grilled shrimp skewers. Keith renews his engagement with the knife and gives us chop salad dense with carrots, peppers, and crunch. When we visit them for dinner, we demand what we’ve loved before. Support for Bob’s rib roast argument.
Tina spends November and December inside the magazine features on holiday food, or newspaper Entrée sections (where I found a marvelous fruitcake recipe once I modified it). I used to bake twenty-five kinds of Christmas cookies and give most of them away. [Maybe I should return to the tradition this year?] More argument supporting rib roast.
In one of my stories, the characters reminisce about great food scenes which also advance the plot. They, and I, are rebelling against the inept writing teacher who claimed that writing about meals is always boring. Handled well, food enhances stories and relationships. Handled ineptly, food preparation gives us boredom, humor, sometimes tradition (and enhances stories).
My mom’s Waterloo proved to be Shrimp Elegant (accent on the last syllable to distinguish it from ordinary shrimp). The woman who could make a perfect pie, give her company unparalleled dinners, and turn out family meals every day for years, had one set of shrimp that refused to sit up and behave. Conscienceless children that we were, we reminded her of that debacle. I think she shredded the recipe, in an era before professional shredding machines.
Reading Julie’s recipes is just like listening to Julie [“whomp the cream”; “I had a cloves disaster, but didn’t matter much”], and I know the results from her recipes will be delicious. Marinated cold vegetables glisten orange, pale green, ivory, red, chartreuse under their light oil and wine dressing [“don’t spend money on the expensive olive oil”]. Tina, Bob, and I ate our first Linzer cookies at Schreiner’s in Fond du Lac, and the woman who brought grape salad to the dog rescue reunion was extolled and hounded, until she provided the recipe. Come to think of it, I have been threatened with unpleasant consequences by coworkers if I did not share the recipe for Beth’s Nut cookies. Recently, we and our company enjoyed the chocolate espresso cake from Eat Cake.
Back to what we will serve. Rib roast, he maintains. Perhaps Marge’s Lasagna recipe? One of the desserts from my mom’s recipe collection? Tradition acknowledged, if only we are not always sitting down to saddle of mutton.
“We could do a rib roast,” my husband answers.
“We always do a rib roast.”
“And people always enjoy it. Why change what works?”
I think of the Forsytes’ inevitable saddle of mutton, appearing at every family dinner, varied only by geographic origin or sheep type, and push my imagination into flaky piecrust, thick pie contents steaming with carrots, potatoes, meat, green beans. Dinner rolls homemade.
“I think that’s a great idea,” he reinforces himself. “When do you want to have people over?”
Dinner with company is a time to share food with friends, a time to catch up on what’s new. Maybe what we serve should have some newness to it also.
Joe searches the Internet for recipes showcasing what’s in season and showcases the food: We’ve watched him toss heaped yellow, orange, and red peppers mushrooms and onions, over the gas flame, anticipated the broccoli soup in our bowls and held our hands out for his grilled shrimp skewers. Keith renews his engagement with the knife and gives us chop salad dense with carrots, peppers, and crunch. When we visit them for dinner, we demand what we’ve loved before. Support for Bob’s rib roast argument.
Tina spends November and December inside the magazine features on holiday food, or newspaper Entrée sections (where I found a marvelous fruitcake recipe once I modified it). I used to bake twenty-five kinds of Christmas cookies and give most of them away. [Maybe I should return to the tradition this year?] More argument supporting rib roast.
In one of my stories, the characters reminisce about great food scenes which also advance the plot. They, and I, are rebelling against the inept writing teacher who claimed that writing about meals is always boring. Handled well, food enhances stories and relationships. Handled ineptly, food preparation gives us boredom, humor, sometimes tradition (and enhances stories).
My mom’s Waterloo proved to be Shrimp Elegant (accent on the last syllable to distinguish it from ordinary shrimp). The woman who could make a perfect pie, give her company unparalleled dinners, and turn out family meals every day for years, had one set of shrimp that refused to sit up and behave. Conscienceless children that we were, we reminded her of that debacle. I think she shredded the recipe, in an era before professional shredding machines.
Reading Julie’s recipes is just like listening to Julie [“whomp the cream”; “I had a cloves disaster, but didn’t matter much”], and I know the results from her recipes will be delicious. Marinated cold vegetables glisten orange, pale green, ivory, red, chartreuse under their light oil and wine dressing [“don’t spend money on the expensive olive oil”]. Tina, Bob, and I ate our first Linzer cookies at Schreiner’s in Fond du Lac, and the woman who brought grape salad to the dog rescue reunion was extolled and hounded, until she provided the recipe. Come to think of it, I have been threatened with unpleasant consequences by coworkers if I did not share the recipe for Beth’s Nut cookies. Recently, we and our company enjoyed the chocolate espresso cake from Eat Cake.
Back to what we will serve. Rib roast, he maintains. Perhaps Marge’s Lasagna recipe? One of the desserts from my mom’s recipe collection? Tradition acknowledged, if only we are not always sitting down to saddle of mutton.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Nobody Ever Died of Terminal Weirdness - excerpt
Nobody Ever Died of Terminal Weirdness is the narration by a high school student of the year that he decided to become normal (just like everyone else in his high school class). Normal meant avoiding tangles with the vice principal and track coach, but mostly normal meant having a girlfriend.
Last year my counselor signed me up for advanced chemistry. On the crest of my new resolution, I figured it offered another opportunity. Any girl in advanced chem was not exactly typical, so "weird" became just a matter of degree. The why she (like anyone else) was there fit into a limited number of slots. You might be actually gifted in chemicals and tiny number equations; your parent might be pretty persuasive about how you should be put into an advanced class so they could brag about you to their friends; the science department might believe you would do less damage in advanced chemistry playing with chemicals than in advanced biology playing with preserved pigs' feet and Mr. Green's mind; the school might be short a few slots on its minimum roster to make the class run. By the end of biology with Mr. Green, we could figure out who was going to be in advanced chemistry: we added up the laboratory emergencies, tallied the broken glass column, looked at who had the most after-school talks with Mr. Green about biological and chemical applications to the real world (like the school bathrooms), and we had have most of the ad chem list. Considering the relationship I established with Mr. Green, I figured I was a natural.
Mr. Grey the Advanced Chem teacher has leftover white hair, thick round glasses, and weathered sweaters that smell of Bunsen burners. He's also old. I know this because of the way he walks when he turns from the doorway to begin our class, and also because he scratches his head considerably. If it's not fleas starting his scratch, then it's puzzlement. We respected his age, and we vowed to do anything in our ability to add to his puzzlement.
There's a nose-biting sharpness to chemistry rooms, and the excitement of knowing that the dust particles above your head might frizzle if you hold a match aloft. The chemistry lab is the only place on school grounds where you can legally have matches. If there are girls at the next lab table who are afraid of the Bunsen burner, you can generally get their chemicals in exchange for copies of your lab results. Best of all, lurking always among all these chemicals is the possibility of blowing up a lab table, and if you're lucky, your lab partner along with it.
The main point of chemistry was messing around with whatever chemicals were stored in Mr. Grey's hundreds of glass bottles. Mr. Grey categorized his chemicals, not by alphabet, or periodic table, but by danger.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Life
Life's like the tide: energy, money, sunshine, connections to others come in cycles. The tide comes in, and there's lots of water. The tide goes out and there's more beach. If we don't have a pier, then when the tide goes out we might get lost at sea.
Money
Money is on our minds. It’s an election year with both candidates predicting economic disaster should I vote for the other guy; Wall Street is imitating a yo-yo; pay raises may or may not have kept pace with inflation, but they probably have not kept pace with the gasoline/heating energy/food price increases.
I’ve been thinking about money. What’s essential, what’s non-negotiable? Where do we economize and where do we blow the budget? The other morning my husband remarked, “You know I have never liked this blanket,” as he straightened the cotton woven blanket on the bed. I believe “too many books” is an implausible and impossible concept. Everybody needs to eat. It’s nice to stay warm when the thermometer registers 30 degrees. Compromise? Refusal to negotiate? I liked that sage colored cotton throw.
I found a turquoise and lime cotton stitched blanket at Target: $59.99 reduced 75% to $12.48. It was tied into a nice bundle, which felt heavy enough to be the right size. Maybe turquoise wasn’t our first color choice, but who sleeps with their eyes open? We keep bringing home books, but often they’re from thrift stores (25 cents/book) or library sales (the much higher price of $1/book). I shop the used book division of Amazon, weighing condition, shipping charges, and rationalizations (but if I spent $25 on their new books, I get free shipping from Amazon). That’s rationalization. Or survival. Or compromise.
Some of us buy in quantity – a quarter cow or industrial size bottles of soap. Some of us get movies from the library instead of Netflix. Some of us find the joys of used book stores. According to a news item, hundreds of people waited in line to get into a new Goodwill store in Connecticut. More of us are bartering. We’re thinking about where we are willing to compromise and which parts of our lives make us who we are (and are non-compromisable).
Quality food is important. We are what we eat, in more ways than the scale. What’s it worth to spend more on cage-free eggs? Better taste, better conscience, happier hens. If I’m going to eat a donut, I want it to be a toothsome donut. I’d rather turn the thermostat down, put on an extra sweater, and take that money to the grocery store. (Some people have told me this is a Midwest trait.)
Some things we cannot give up. I have a habit of finding wonderful books, and then finding additional copies to share with others. Creating Money, by Roman and Packer, has been one of those standbys, (along with Your Money or Your Life by Dominguez and Robin and You Don’t Have to go Home from Work Exhausted! By McGee-Cooper, et al).
We evoke situations (and people) by our beliefs. Money is energy. Money is a way to demonstrate ego, or a tool to help others. Money is connected with work, whether we take joy or misery from our job. Even when we’ve been given a pink slip and shown the door, that door is not a one-way trip to Hades. Sometimes we think it is – but invariably good emerges, like a phoenix rising from destruction.
The most important thing we bring to money is our attitude about it. Get out your library card and go read Creating Money and Your Money or Your Life. Remember that phoenix.
I’ve been thinking about money. What’s essential, what’s non-negotiable? Where do we economize and where do we blow the budget? The other morning my husband remarked, “You know I have never liked this blanket,” as he straightened the cotton woven blanket on the bed. I believe “too many books” is an implausible and impossible concept. Everybody needs to eat. It’s nice to stay warm when the thermometer registers 30 degrees. Compromise? Refusal to negotiate? I liked that sage colored cotton throw.
I found a turquoise and lime cotton stitched blanket at Target: $59.99 reduced 75% to $12.48. It was tied into a nice bundle, which felt heavy enough to be the right size. Maybe turquoise wasn’t our first color choice, but who sleeps with their eyes open? We keep bringing home books, but often they’re from thrift stores (25 cents/book) or library sales (the much higher price of $1/book). I shop the used book division of Amazon, weighing condition, shipping charges, and rationalizations (but if I spent $25 on their new books, I get free shipping from Amazon). That’s rationalization. Or survival. Or compromise.
Some of us buy in quantity – a quarter cow or industrial size bottles of soap. Some of us get movies from the library instead of Netflix. Some of us find the joys of used book stores. According to a news item, hundreds of people waited in line to get into a new Goodwill store in Connecticut. More of us are bartering. We’re thinking about where we are willing to compromise and which parts of our lives make us who we are (and are non-compromisable).
Quality food is important. We are what we eat, in more ways than the scale. What’s it worth to spend more on cage-free eggs? Better taste, better conscience, happier hens. If I’m going to eat a donut, I want it to be a toothsome donut. I’d rather turn the thermostat down, put on an extra sweater, and take that money to the grocery store. (Some people have told me this is a Midwest trait.)
Some things we cannot give up. I have a habit of finding wonderful books, and then finding additional copies to share with others. Creating Money, by Roman and Packer, has been one of those standbys, (along with Your Money or Your Life by Dominguez and Robin and You Don’t Have to go Home from Work Exhausted! By McGee-Cooper, et al).
We evoke situations (and people) by our beliefs. Money is energy. Money is a way to demonstrate ego, or a tool to help others. Money is connected with work, whether we take joy or misery from our job. Even when we’ve been given a pink slip and shown the door, that door is not a one-way trip to Hades. Sometimes we think it is – but invariably good emerges, like a phoenix rising from destruction.
The most important thing we bring to money is our attitude about it. Get out your library card and go read Creating Money and Your Money or Your Life. Remember that phoenix.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
The Universal Woman
Visiting Rosemary moved us out of where we were, into where we found out we wanted to be. Or, you could argue, it got us in trouble.
Judy and I went to see Rosemary-at-home, in our volunteer capacity for dog rescue. [What kind of dog would be happiest in the home? is one way of explaining it. You don’t want to place a dog with arthritis in a tri-level home with stairs to each entrance and bedrooms on the topmost level.]
Rosemary’s back hallway was one step up from the yard, so there was no arthritis factor. “Oh my, oh my,” Judy and I said to each other. “Oh, my.” What awed us was Rosemary’s matter of fact creation of everyday life. All she did was answer our off-topic comments.
“How did you get the walls to have that swirl of colors? Like light and shadow, or silk, or water color.” “Oh that?” Rosemary waved a hand at the walls, “Faux painting. I could show you how to do that in a short time: maybe half an hour. You could do that easily.” Judy and I looked at each other. I know my painting range.
We talked about dog and person happiness, but unlike other home visits, we ranged across the Home Depot/Lowe’s/Mendard’s/Big Lots/Goodwill/Ace Hardware universe. “How did you install the tile?” “Got a sledge hammer because the people who had this house before had poured a 2” layer of concrete on the kitchen floor to level it.” “Who’s the person in the photograph?” “I don’t know, but I like old pictures, the kind that would have been taken when the house was built [1914], so when I find them together, I don’t throw the photo away.” She slipped off her shoes and climbed onto the sofa to lift a photo of some people at a picnic from the wall, “And sometimes there’s inscriptions on the back. I wouldn’t want to lose those.” We looked at the penciled words in a old-style handwriting: Washington Park, June 6, 1910.
She was comfortable where she was, with all she had accomplished. We were comfortable in our role of prying questioners. “That panel of stained glass matches the colors in the kitchen.” “It should; I made it in the studio upstairs where I teach. It’s not hard.” Having spent a summer cutting shreds of stained glass, I knew that the theory was not hard; it’s the cutting line that doesn’t always run true. It’s not easy to create a panel 3 x 4 ft where all the pieces need to match their paper patterns.
“The tin tiles on the walls aren’t part of the original house?” “I bought it as a condemned property; it was there at the time I needed a house. There were holes in the walls, and mice running across the floors. It took a couple years. Pretty soon I’ll be finished inside, then I’m going to work on the yard – more flower gardens.” She paused and touched the cookbook open on her counter. She shrugged and smiled. “I like doing it. The countertop, for instance: I happened to find a company that had the right size piece of granite, to fit in the corner of the kitchen.”
One of Rosemary’s gifts was that she made things seem possible (I could go to Home Depot for materials and accomplish a similar project); another was that she didn’t promote herself; the other was that each of the projects had worked toward her goal: creating the home. And the one that won us completely over was her sense of humor, “Sorry about the little branches on the front porch. They’re doing road work in the next block, so all the squirrels that used to live there, moved here for the summer. They didn’t want to be displaced, and they’re going kind of schizophrenic, so they keep chewing off little branches.”
She had a suggestion, too, on dog motion sickness (aka turning green around the eyes and depositing their last meal on the car’s back seat) to add to our list of helpful solutions. (“Give them a tiny bit of ginger”).
I’m not faux painting, but we did go hunting for granite and old picture frames. Seeing someone else’s work toward goals can do that. We step out of our routine, take a deep breath at what our eyes see, and go back home looking around with a new perspective and belief the projects in our imagination can turn out fine, even if we’re beginning them on dreams and courage. Thank you, Rosemary.
Judy and I went to see Rosemary-at-home, in our volunteer capacity for dog rescue. [What kind of dog would be happiest in the home? is one way of explaining it. You don’t want to place a dog with arthritis in a tri-level home with stairs to each entrance and bedrooms on the topmost level.]
Rosemary’s back hallway was one step up from the yard, so there was no arthritis factor. “Oh my, oh my,” Judy and I said to each other. “Oh, my.” What awed us was Rosemary’s matter of fact creation of everyday life. All she did was answer our off-topic comments.
“How did you get the walls to have that swirl of colors? Like light and shadow, or silk, or water color.” “Oh that?” Rosemary waved a hand at the walls, “Faux painting. I could show you how to do that in a short time: maybe half an hour. You could do that easily.” Judy and I looked at each other. I know my painting range.
We talked about dog and person happiness, but unlike other home visits, we ranged across the Home Depot/Lowe’s/Mendard’s/Big Lots/Goodwill/Ace Hardware universe. “How did you install the tile?” “Got a sledge hammer because the people who had this house before had poured a 2” layer of concrete on the kitchen floor to level it.” “Who’s the person in the photograph?” “I don’t know, but I like old pictures, the kind that would have been taken when the house was built [1914], so when I find them together, I don’t throw the photo away.” She slipped off her shoes and climbed onto the sofa to lift a photo of some people at a picnic from the wall, “And sometimes there’s inscriptions on the back. I wouldn’t want to lose those.” We looked at the penciled words in a old-style handwriting: Washington Park, June 6, 1910.
She was comfortable where she was, with all she had accomplished. We were comfortable in our role of prying questioners. “That panel of stained glass matches the colors in the kitchen.” “It should; I made it in the studio upstairs where I teach. It’s not hard.” Having spent a summer cutting shreds of stained glass, I knew that the theory was not hard; it’s the cutting line that doesn’t always run true. It’s not easy to create a panel 3 x 4 ft where all the pieces need to match their paper patterns.
“The tin tiles on the walls aren’t part of the original house?” “I bought it as a condemned property; it was there at the time I needed a house. There were holes in the walls, and mice running across the floors. It took a couple years. Pretty soon I’ll be finished inside, then I’m going to work on the yard – more flower gardens.” She paused and touched the cookbook open on her counter. She shrugged and smiled. “I like doing it. The countertop, for instance: I happened to find a company that had the right size piece of granite, to fit in the corner of the kitchen.”
One of Rosemary’s gifts was that she made things seem possible (I could go to Home Depot for materials and accomplish a similar project); another was that she didn’t promote herself; the other was that each of the projects had worked toward her goal: creating the home. And the one that won us completely over was her sense of humor, “Sorry about the little branches on the front porch. They’re doing road work in the next block, so all the squirrels that used to live there, moved here for the summer. They didn’t want to be displaced, and they’re going kind of schizophrenic, so they keep chewing off little branches.”
She had a suggestion, too, on dog motion sickness (aka turning green around the eyes and depositing their last meal on the car’s back seat) to add to our list of helpful solutions. (“Give them a tiny bit of ginger”).
I’m not faux painting, but we did go hunting for granite and old picture frames. Seeing someone else’s work toward goals can do that. We step out of our routine, take a deep breath at what our eyes see, and go back home looking around with a new perspective and belief the projects in our imagination can turn out fine, even if we’re beginning them on dreams and courage. Thank you, Rosemary.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Dreams of Many Colored Glass - excerpt
A man finds his life changed – against his wishes – by someone else’s dreams.
Beauty is truth and truth is beauty, and that’s all you need to know. Until you drop and break it, when you get the bill for truth and beauty, plus the twenty-two per cent revolving interest charge, and a free speeding ticket.
Sitting in Buffalo Bill’s Fabulous Family Burgers (Buffalo, NY - in case they thought some of their customers might miss the predictability), wondering what she was going to do after she walked back to the booth, I thought about beauty and truth, life and death, breaking things and being found. I peered out the window to the parking lot for the third time. Yup. Truck was still there. Nice and tidy, angled neatly between the yellow lines. If you were an ordinary observer, you could believe Old Marsh was anybody’s truck, filled with cardboard boxes which were probably filled with deliveries. Donuts. Yeah.
I settled my back solidly against the seat cushion and watched her silent, sneaker-footed, grey-eyed advance.
“Listen, uh.”
“It’s Ran,” she said slowly.
“Ran. Right.”
“Ran. As in ‘Run, Ran, Have Run.’”
“Is ‘Ran’ short for something?”
“Yeah. It’s short for, ‘Start talking if you want me to keep listening.’”
I didn’t want her to listen at all, but she wasn’t going to give up. So what was a clean cut guy with dark circles under his eyes, an average looking jacket, size 12 nondescript sneakers, and fingertips drumming the tabletop wanting to get out of there going to do?
Ran: the woman who had been following me across the country finally had a name. Or half of one. She also looked familiar. My mind rummaged inside my brain, opening and closing file cabinets, trying to remember where I had seen here before. Flowers: she reminded me of flowers – which was pretty incongruous, since she was staring at me like someone gauging the distance from home plate to the outfield fence. I stared at her. She looked back at me. I lifted my coffee cup and gave a half-shrug.
I considered what I should say, what I could say without jeopardizing Fritz’s plan, and what would make her go away. I gave Ran a glance. She was still staring back.
I wondered how much of this was well founded suspicion, and how much was my desire to not get caught again before I finally reached where I was going, and how much was Fritz’s insistence on covering every aspect of the situation. Fritz believed that paranoia could be healthy. Fritz.
Sitting in the restaurant, my back feeling grateful for a booth instead of a truck seat, our past broke over me like an explosion of colored glass. I set down my coffee cup, looked at Ran who must have fit into this some way, and started talking.
Beauty is truth and truth is beauty, and that’s all you need to know. Until you drop and break it, when you get the bill for truth and beauty, plus the twenty-two per cent revolving interest charge, and a free speeding ticket.
Sitting in Buffalo Bill’s Fabulous Family Burgers (Buffalo, NY - in case they thought some of their customers might miss the predictability), wondering what she was going to do after she walked back to the booth, I thought about beauty and truth, life and death, breaking things and being found. I peered out the window to the parking lot for the third time. Yup. Truck was still there. Nice and tidy, angled neatly between the yellow lines. If you were an ordinary observer, you could believe Old Marsh was anybody’s truck, filled with cardboard boxes which were probably filled with deliveries. Donuts. Yeah.
I settled my back solidly against the seat cushion and watched her silent, sneaker-footed, grey-eyed advance.
“Listen, uh.”
“It’s Ran,” she said slowly.
“Ran. Right.”
“Ran. As in ‘Run, Ran, Have Run.’”
“Is ‘Ran’ short for something?”
“Yeah. It’s short for, ‘Start talking if you want me to keep listening.’”
I didn’t want her to listen at all, but she wasn’t going to give up. So what was a clean cut guy with dark circles under his eyes, an average looking jacket, size 12 nondescript sneakers, and fingertips drumming the tabletop wanting to get out of there going to do?
Ran: the woman who had been following me across the country finally had a name. Or half of one. She also looked familiar. My mind rummaged inside my brain, opening and closing file cabinets, trying to remember where I had seen here before. Flowers: she reminded me of flowers – which was pretty incongruous, since she was staring at me like someone gauging the distance from home plate to the outfield fence. I stared at her. She looked back at me. I lifted my coffee cup and gave a half-shrug.
I considered what I should say, what I could say without jeopardizing Fritz’s plan, and what would make her go away. I gave Ran a glance. She was still staring back.
I wondered how much of this was well founded suspicion, and how much was my desire to not get caught again before I finally reached where I was going, and how much was Fritz’s insistence on covering every aspect of the situation. Fritz believed that paranoia could be healthy. Fritz.
Sitting in the restaurant, my back feeling grateful for a booth instead of a truck seat, our past broke over me like an explosion of colored glass. I set down my coffee cup, looked at Ran who must have fit into this some way, and started talking.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Nobody Ever Died of Terminal Weirdness - excerpt
Nobody Ever Died of Terminal Weirdness is the narration by a high school student of the year he decided to become normal (just like everyone else in his high school class). Normal meant avoiding tangles with the vice principal and the track coach, but mostly normal meant having a girlfriend.
I decided that by the end of the week, the end of the year, or the end of my life - whichever came first - I would have a steady girlfriend, and be considered normal. What made this only more difficult was no one in my family believed I needed changing.
I figured they were not the best ones to judge normal.
"You don't need to worry about impressing girls at your age," my mother said. "Just be yourself."
"I can't afford a big date on a social security check, and with the help you give me, that's about when it's going to happen."
"I didn't date at your age."
"Listen," I said as kindly as I could, "Growing up to be like my mother is not my top priority." I left my mother talking to the back to school shopping list, and looked up my brother, the football team captain, Honor Society president, and Boyfriend. Since he managed to avoid the family curse and actually acquire a girlfriend, I thought I could get some pointers. "This is the year," I said, standing in his doorway, "I'm going to get a girlfriend. Also get on a sports team, win over the vice principal, and be normal. Do you think you can help me out?"
"Are you still combing your hair once a year on Christmas Eve?" he asked. "You could start there."
"I hoped to make some progress before December," I answered. "But thanks anyway." My brother unfortunately considered himself a solo operator.
My father was watching the twentieth rerun of the Ice Bowl, but he swiveled from the tv to my question. "Just remember most things are a plot, and you can't really trust women to tell you if your fly is open," he admonished. "Also that you can't always get points when you need them, and sometimes neither can the other team." Since I wanted to find a female I could trust with more than basic neatness or football strategy concerns, I thanked my father and trotted back to my room.
After I locked the door, I began to plan.
I decided that by the end of the week, the end of the year, or the end of my life - whichever came first - I would have a steady girlfriend, and be considered normal. What made this only more difficult was no one in my family believed I needed changing.
I figured they were not the best ones to judge normal.
"You don't need to worry about impressing girls at your age," my mother said. "Just be yourself."
"I can't afford a big date on a social security check, and with the help you give me, that's about when it's going to happen."
"I didn't date at your age."
"Listen," I said as kindly as I could, "Growing up to be like my mother is not my top priority." I left my mother talking to the back to school shopping list, and looked up my brother, the football team captain, Honor Society president, and Boyfriend. Since he managed to avoid the family curse and actually acquire a girlfriend, I thought I could get some pointers. "This is the year," I said, standing in his doorway, "I'm going to get a girlfriend. Also get on a sports team, win over the vice principal, and be normal. Do you think you can help me out?"
"Are you still combing your hair once a year on Christmas Eve?" he asked. "You could start there."
"I hoped to make some progress before December," I answered. "But thanks anyway." My brother unfortunately considered himself a solo operator.
My father was watching the twentieth rerun of the Ice Bowl, but he swiveled from the tv to my question. "Just remember most things are a plot, and you can't really trust women to tell you if your fly is open," he admonished. "Also that you can't always get points when you need them, and sometimes neither can the other team." Since I wanted to find a female I could trust with more than basic neatness or football strategy concerns, I thanked my father and trotted back to my room.
After I locked the door, I began to plan.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
About (of course) books
Amazon, Borders, Barnes & Noble, and Powells send me regular emails. Half Price Books keeps me informed of sales with their coupon cards. Polite staff at The Book Seller, housed in the main library, sell me their withdrawn books. When I need books that I didn’t know I needed – for reference and for reading - I visit Tina’s Paperback Book Exchange.
Tina knows books. She’s known books since grade school, or before. She sits at the counter looking over the cover of the book she is currently reading, to answer my questions, to direct me to books, to suggest that the book I don’t know I am looking for might be the third one down on the second shelf, to talk books.
Tina finds books I didn’t know existed. Amazon might have alerted me about them once I bought something similar, but Tina has the ability to synthesize all the parts of my interests. She’s a reading book-seller, able to anticipate what I would like and what aspect of a book is going to be important in what I’m writing.
A few months ago, as I began developing a manuscript about an astro physicist, I was at Paperback Book Exchange browsing the shelves. “I need an old book about the stars,” I said, “something that would have been kept in the attic, read by a kid years ago. A good book.”
“What about this one?” The illustrations were vaguely Art Deco, the paper thick, the dust jacket slightly chipped at the bottom of the spine, the smell of old paper, dry attics, and time. The Young Folk’s Book of the Heavens. Published in 1925. It was perfect. Up to date astronomy information I could find on the Internet. What I needed and Tina found was period information for my story’s plot and character development.
Books reach Tina in the usual ways and in some not so usual. Customers trade in their have-reads to be applied toward the price of to-be-read finds. Stock keeps changing, augmented by sources only Tina knows about. In addition to an exhaustive knowledge of what’s in the store, Tina has the ability to find what someone is looking for. “I need a book on quantum physics that I can understand,” I tell her, acknowledging that I’m requesting a specialized item geared toward a non-science bent mind. She will find it.
Tina remembers. “I’m looking for all the books Margot Benary-Isbert or Alexandra Raife or Joseph Altsheler have written,” I say. One by one, she finds them. She sets aside other books for me to look at on my next visit, books that she has unearthed at rummage sales, found in tag bins, discards, results of her regular route of discovery.
A few times I’ve accompanied Tina on book scouting expeditions. I will quickly scan the titles on the shelves and be ready to move on. She will reach to the shelf; pull out a book, and say, “Is this the one you were hunting for?” Tina found The Forsytes by Suleika Dawson, a contemporary continuation of the family story. She also found John Fisher’s The World of the Forsytes, a book about the society and customs of Galsworthy’s original Forsyte saga family. Books come to her. Books like her.
There’s a box of Free to Good Home books at the back door of the Paperback Book Exchange, but there’s a hundred thousand or more books for sale inside the store: paperback and hardcover, familiar and hard to find, all arranged by category. What’s there? Tina knows. “Do you have any mysteries by Agatha Christie?” asks a customer. “In the mystery section right around the corner in the next room, on the third shelf,” Tina answers.
Today I have time to browse: I let my hands and eyes look over who has appeared on the shelves since my last visit. A book about psychology, mentioned in something else I read. A biography of Victoria Woodhull (Notorious Victoria), the first woman to run for president, the first female Wall Street broker, one of the first women to advocate Free Love (a term Henry Thoreau coined long before the 1960s movement). Books of poetry, travel, adventure, escape, romance, mystery, philosophy, and war.
Paperback Book Exchange is more than a bookstore. There’s time to stand and talk; there’s time to ponder the character, the plot, the plausibility of what happened in a bestseller or a much loved classic. Surrounding us are thousands of books. The smell of paper and ink, turned pages and book memories fill the store. It’s better than a library, because once I buy a book, I don’t need to take it back. I can simply go there again, for talk about books and stories, and more books.
As Tina would say, “Imagine that: about books.”
Paperback Book Exchange – Neenah, WI
Tina knows books. She’s known books since grade school, or before. She sits at the counter looking over the cover of the book she is currently reading, to answer my questions, to direct me to books, to suggest that the book I don’t know I am looking for might be the third one down on the second shelf, to talk books.
Tina finds books I didn’t know existed. Amazon might have alerted me about them once I bought something similar, but Tina has the ability to synthesize all the parts of my interests. She’s a reading book-seller, able to anticipate what I would like and what aspect of a book is going to be important in what I’m writing.
A few months ago, as I began developing a manuscript about an astro physicist, I was at Paperback Book Exchange browsing the shelves. “I need an old book about the stars,” I said, “something that would have been kept in the attic, read by a kid years ago. A good book.”
“What about this one?” The illustrations were vaguely Art Deco, the paper thick, the dust jacket slightly chipped at the bottom of the spine, the smell of old paper, dry attics, and time. The Young Folk’s Book of the Heavens. Published in 1925. It was perfect. Up to date astronomy information I could find on the Internet. What I needed and Tina found was period information for my story’s plot and character development.
Books reach Tina in the usual ways and in some not so usual. Customers trade in their have-reads to be applied toward the price of to-be-read finds. Stock keeps changing, augmented by sources only Tina knows about. In addition to an exhaustive knowledge of what’s in the store, Tina has the ability to find what someone is looking for. “I need a book on quantum physics that I can understand,” I tell her, acknowledging that I’m requesting a specialized item geared toward a non-science bent mind. She will find it.
Tina remembers. “I’m looking for all the books Margot Benary-Isbert or Alexandra Raife or Joseph Altsheler have written,” I say. One by one, she finds them. She sets aside other books for me to look at on my next visit, books that she has unearthed at rummage sales, found in tag bins, discards, results of her regular route of discovery.
A few times I’ve accompanied Tina on book scouting expeditions. I will quickly scan the titles on the shelves and be ready to move on. She will reach to the shelf; pull out a book, and say, “Is this the one you were hunting for?” Tina found The Forsytes by Suleika Dawson, a contemporary continuation of the family story. She also found John Fisher’s The World of the Forsytes, a book about the society and customs of Galsworthy’s original Forsyte saga family. Books come to her. Books like her.
There’s a box of Free to Good Home books at the back door of the Paperback Book Exchange, but there’s a hundred thousand or more books for sale inside the store: paperback and hardcover, familiar and hard to find, all arranged by category. What’s there? Tina knows. “Do you have any mysteries by Agatha Christie?” asks a customer. “In the mystery section right around the corner in the next room, on the third shelf,” Tina answers.
Today I have time to browse: I let my hands and eyes look over who has appeared on the shelves since my last visit. A book about psychology, mentioned in something else I read. A biography of Victoria Woodhull (Notorious Victoria), the first woman to run for president, the first female Wall Street broker, one of the first women to advocate Free Love (a term Henry Thoreau coined long before the 1960s movement). Books of poetry, travel, adventure, escape, romance, mystery, philosophy, and war.
Paperback Book Exchange is more than a bookstore. There’s time to stand and talk; there’s time to ponder the character, the plot, the plausibility of what happened in a bestseller or a much loved classic. Surrounding us are thousands of books. The smell of paper and ink, turned pages and book memories fill the store. It’s better than a library, because once I buy a book, I don’t need to take it back. I can simply go there again, for talk about books and stories, and more books.
As Tina would say, “Imagine that: about books.”
Paperback Book Exchange – Neenah, WI
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Excerpt from a story I am writing
He could see the beginning of day: pink streaking the black sky. Far up, miles into the horizon, were blue splotches with dark grey clouds among them, a reflection of day curving from the other side of the earth.
He didn’t need to pretend any more.
A little after 5 a.m. he crested the rise and came swiftly down into the town. Convenience store lights picked out a yellow and white pattern, bright stones on dark concrete. Signs told him where he could get a drink, come opening time; where he could sleep, come night; where he could shop, if there was anything he wanted to shop for. Behind it all lay the mountains like heavy clouds holding down the horizon.
He didn’t need anything. He was back. And he was looking for whoever it was, he had to meet.
He didn’t need to pretend any more.
A little after 5 a.m. he crested the rise and came swiftly down into the town. Convenience store lights picked out a yellow and white pattern, bright stones on dark concrete. Signs told him where he could get a drink, come opening time; where he could sleep, come night; where he could shop, if there was anything he wanted to shop for. Behind it all lay the mountains like heavy clouds holding down the horizon.
He didn’t need anything. He was back. And he was looking for whoever it was, he had to meet.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Weather as a Literary Phenomenon
Today is sunny and warm. I took a break from commenting on students’ essays to sit in the sun. It’s seasonably warm (for the frozen Tundra). Even without looking at the calendar, though, I can feel fall. The quality of the sunshine is different, and so is the air.
In spring, there’s an underlying coolness to the air. We’re opening up doors, uncovering ourselves from the winter cold, emerging from blankets and layers of clothing. We’re like sheep free of their heavy wool. The ground is boggy and anything that’s growing is fighting fiercely for its bit of earth. The insects are frenzied as they lay their millions of eggs. We’re frenzied as we spray poison, plan the good weather projects, and calculate how many days of sunshine we are entitled to. In fall, there’s an underlying warmth to the air. The insects have done their work, the plants are figuring that they managed the program (leaf-bloom-seed) and can rest. The green and white plates of Queen Anne’s lace have curled into brown bird nests. We’re either still frenzied (How much squash am I supposed to make into zucchini bread?) or we’re thinking back over the summer. The air has a golden clearness, like white grape juice, or white wine.
Season, to be obvious, plays such an important part in stories. It’s much easier to send a prowler through the yards in October (dark by 6 p.m.) than in June (dark around 9:30 or so). Night to day’s ratio has increased. I can sift snow over my characters and then, if they are not showing enough fortitude or misery, ship them into January and slip a couple degrees out of the thermometer. We can feel sorry for the homeless much more easily when it’s cold, than in June when we must meet curfew and they are free to the starry nights. On the local highways and byways, we say there are two seasons: winter and road construction. Those also lend themselves to story telling.
My mom used to say that she hated fall because “everything dies.” It rests. Some of it goes underground for a while, some of it turns its face elsewhere as the planets and stars revolve above us. And some of the vegetation begins plotting its revenge of next year.
One of the things I think about doing “someday” is making a list of memorable literary events, in the seasons they occur, and considering the season-life relationship. Not every character dies in fall, though the drawing to the end of the growing season offers obvious parallels to human life spans. Not every baby is born in spring, and not every happy marriage takes place in June. [That cliché: “If you’re married in June, you’ll always be a bride. Who wants to always be a bride?] Every season offers something to the writer. No better words in the English language, Henry James commented, than summer afternoon. Maybe he was considering the warm afternoons free of visitors, free to him as he dictated his stories; maybe he was thinking of the tea table.
In spring, there’s an underlying coolness to the air. We’re opening up doors, uncovering ourselves from the winter cold, emerging from blankets and layers of clothing. We’re like sheep free of their heavy wool. The ground is boggy and anything that’s growing is fighting fiercely for its bit of earth. The insects are frenzied as they lay their millions of eggs. We’re frenzied as we spray poison, plan the good weather projects, and calculate how many days of sunshine we are entitled to. In fall, there’s an underlying warmth to the air. The insects have done their work, the plants are figuring that they managed the program (leaf-bloom-seed) and can rest. The green and white plates of Queen Anne’s lace have curled into brown bird nests. We’re either still frenzied (How much squash am I supposed to make into zucchini bread?) or we’re thinking back over the summer. The air has a golden clearness, like white grape juice, or white wine.
Season, to be obvious, plays such an important part in stories. It’s much easier to send a prowler through the yards in October (dark by 6 p.m.) than in June (dark around 9:30 or so). Night to day’s ratio has increased. I can sift snow over my characters and then, if they are not showing enough fortitude or misery, ship them into January and slip a couple degrees out of the thermometer. We can feel sorry for the homeless much more easily when it’s cold, than in June when we must meet curfew and they are free to the starry nights. On the local highways and byways, we say there are two seasons: winter and road construction. Those also lend themselves to story telling.
My mom used to say that she hated fall because “everything dies.” It rests. Some of it goes underground for a while, some of it turns its face elsewhere as the planets and stars revolve above us. And some of the vegetation begins plotting its revenge of next year.
One of the things I think about doing “someday” is making a list of memorable literary events, in the seasons they occur, and considering the season-life relationship. Not every character dies in fall, though the drawing to the end of the growing season offers obvious parallels to human life spans. Not every baby is born in spring, and not every happy marriage takes place in June. [That cliché: “If you’re married in June, you’ll always be a bride. Who wants to always be a bride?] Every season offers something to the writer. No better words in the English language, Henry James commented, than summer afternoon. Maybe he was considering the warm afternoons free of visitors, free to him as he dictated his stories; maybe he was thinking of the tea table.
Different
He brushes with Crest; I use Tom’s of Maine. When the thermometer hits 70, he’s pulling on a t shirt, sweatshirt, jeans and thick socks; I speed-dress in t shirt and shorts so my knees can breathe. I look forward to the swaths of tiny bright blue scilla blooming amid our spring grass; he asks when he can get out the lawnmower and guillotine them. My favorite physical presents have involved books or wood or clocks or colored glass, while his might be the 14 cu ft freezer in which he can count resources. (“We have three packages of ground chuck which I got at 30% off, one loaf of white bread, and two sirloin steaks.”) No ice cream, I comment to myself (flavor doesn’t matter, so long as it’s ice cream).
However, last fall, he was the one with the second shovel, lifting divots of lawn so we could slip 200 scilla bulbs (25 for $6 at Jung’s Plants; plant with the pointed end up) into their earth envelope, and a few days ago I was the one saying, “If you want to get another package of meat, go ahead.”
Given the opportunity to do so, I can obscure the details in the large picture (“It’s a gorgeous day”) while he keeps the details intact (“There’s a forty per cent chance of rain this afternoon, so take along your raincoat”) that maintain sanity in our lives. Weather is a system of chaos, I tell him; there’s an enormous uncertainty factor. One shift in the wind, and everything changes. “But if you have your raincoat, you’re okay,” he will answer. He’s right. I can choose to get wet, or I can pull on the raincoat and put up the hood.
Different could have become a series of antagonisms, a point of ridicule, or a set of skirmishes. Thanks to time and the financial ability to purchase two different brands of toothpaste on the same shopping trip, different is an enriching part of our lives.
However, last fall, he was the one with the second shovel, lifting divots of lawn so we could slip 200 scilla bulbs (25 for $6 at Jung’s Plants; plant with the pointed end up) into their earth envelope, and a few days ago I was the one saying, “If you want to get another package of meat, go ahead.”
Given the opportunity to do so, I can obscure the details in the large picture (“It’s a gorgeous day”) while he keeps the details intact (“There’s a forty per cent chance of rain this afternoon, so take along your raincoat”) that maintain sanity in our lives. Weather is a system of chaos, I tell him; there’s an enormous uncertainty factor. One shift in the wind, and everything changes. “But if you have your raincoat, you’re okay,” he will answer. He’s right. I can choose to get wet, or I can pull on the raincoat and put up the hood.
Different could have become a series of antagonisms, a point of ridicule, or a set of skirmishes. Thanks to time and the financial ability to purchase two different brands of toothpaste on the same shopping trip, different is an enriching part of our lives.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Books
Enough of a title in itself, some of us would argue.
I have had a long fascination with books. My son would call it a mania, as he pointed out, laughing uproariously as he read aloud the quiz from the book Bibliomania. “Are books the first thing people notice when they walk into your house?” He answered for me, “No. They are the only thing.”
For a childhood birthday party, my mom suggested to someone that she get me a copy of King of the Wind, Marguerite Henry’s story of the Godolphin Arabian, because for months my name had been the only one on the library’s check out card (back when books in the library had check out cards). And there, at the party, holding in my hands a copy of the book that I did not need to give back when its borrowing time was up, I entered the world of owning books.
That was not the only book I could call mine; I had many childhood books, the Little Golden Books, story books passed on from my mom’s childhood. But to have a book that was something I wanted to read, a book that did not reflect the interests of someone else in the family: that was new. I was hooked into books (paraphrasing the title of another book).
I can justify book ownership. Some of them I need for teaching: reference books, books about the writers we discuss in class, books illustrating how people dressed to make the descriptions in a story clearer. Some of them are reading books for winter nights, or summer afternoons, or when I need to enter a world that’s less frantic than 200 cable channels available through a series of remote-clicks. Some of them tell me how I should do things like repair a piece of furniture, and my mind thinks it understands even if my hands do not have the skills to follow the directions. Those are the books that I could validate to my son and anyone commenting that I certainly have a lot of books. (Over the years there have been a few people of that opinion.)
There’s something to be argued, though, for simply having books. Turn the page of an old library book, and your fingers feel the difference on the page where hundreds of fingers have worn the piece of paper thinner. How many people had the time, made the time, to go through the book. I will likely never meet them, but we have enjoyed the same book.
Books give us space. I enjoy the Internet. I like having quick communication. Sometimes, though, it’s nice to sit down with something that doesn’t want me to engage in noise, except for the turning of pages. And the interrupting of others when I read aloud a particularly good passage in the book. My son claims I have forever ruined one of his horror stories because at the same time I was reading Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals, and insisted on sharing the hilarious sections.
Books offer solace. Sometimes I already know how the story turns out; in rereading I can appreciate the technical aspects of story development, I can attend to the background characters, I can observe the symbolism. I can simply enjoy reading a story I have read many times before: spending time with a good friend. How many times have I reread The Forsyte Saga since the summer afternoon I sat in a lawn chair, turning the pages of a library copy? I don’t know, but now (just like that birthday present book) I have a copy of my own. Opening it and reading John Galsworthy’s dedication [“To My Wife I dedicate the Forsyte Saga in its entirety, believing it to be of all my work the least unworthy of one without whose encouragement, sympathy and criticism I could never have become even such a writer as I am”], I think, Wow. I think about Galsworthy’s life, and the parallel examples of literary love (the Brownings for example, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “How do I Love Thee”). I think about how The Forsyte Saga grew into quite a few books about that society, as it changed from Victorian into Edwardian times and beyond. Galsworthy’s character Soames Forsyte received an obituary [not a book review notice] in London’s newspaper, when Galsworthy sent Soames into the literary great beyond.
Books tell us about the people who wrote them. One of the things I ponder is: What’s this writer’s message? If I could condense a writer’s message into one or two sentences, what would all his/her books be about? Society forms people; or You can/can’t go home again; or Give your all and you will succeed; or good will eventually triumph. I wonder if the books we write change their message over our writing careers, or if our characters change; but our core message, no matter how the plots change and the characters vary, remains the same.
There's not much to dislike about books.
I have had a long fascination with books. My son would call it a mania, as he pointed out, laughing uproariously as he read aloud the quiz from the book Bibliomania. “Are books the first thing people notice when they walk into your house?” He answered for me, “No. They are the only thing.”
For a childhood birthday party, my mom suggested to someone that she get me a copy of King of the Wind, Marguerite Henry’s story of the Godolphin Arabian, because for months my name had been the only one on the library’s check out card (back when books in the library had check out cards). And there, at the party, holding in my hands a copy of the book that I did not need to give back when its borrowing time was up, I entered the world of owning books.
That was not the only book I could call mine; I had many childhood books, the Little Golden Books, story books passed on from my mom’s childhood. But to have a book that was something I wanted to read, a book that did not reflect the interests of someone else in the family: that was new. I was hooked into books (paraphrasing the title of another book).
I can justify book ownership. Some of them I need for teaching: reference books, books about the writers we discuss in class, books illustrating how people dressed to make the descriptions in a story clearer. Some of them are reading books for winter nights, or summer afternoons, or when I need to enter a world that’s less frantic than 200 cable channels available through a series of remote-clicks. Some of them tell me how I should do things like repair a piece of furniture, and my mind thinks it understands even if my hands do not have the skills to follow the directions. Those are the books that I could validate to my son and anyone commenting that I certainly have a lot of books. (Over the years there have been a few people of that opinion.)
There’s something to be argued, though, for simply having books. Turn the page of an old library book, and your fingers feel the difference on the page where hundreds of fingers have worn the piece of paper thinner. How many people had the time, made the time, to go through the book. I will likely never meet them, but we have enjoyed the same book.
Books give us space. I enjoy the Internet. I like having quick communication. Sometimes, though, it’s nice to sit down with something that doesn’t want me to engage in noise, except for the turning of pages. And the interrupting of others when I read aloud a particularly good passage in the book. My son claims I have forever ruined one of his horror stories because at the same time I was reading Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals, and insisted on sharing the hilarious sections.
Books offer solace. Sometimes I already know how the story turns out; in rereading I can appreciate the technical aspects of story development, I can attend to the background characters, I can observe the symbolism. I can simply enjoy reading a story I have read many times before: spending time with a good friend. How many times have I reread The Forsyte Saga since the summer afternoon I sat in a lawn chair, turning the pages of a library copy? I don’t know, but now (just like that birthday present book) I have a copy of my own. Opening it and reading John Galsworthy’s dedication [“To My Wife I dedicate the Forsyte Saga in its entirety, believing it to be of all my work the least unworthy of one without whose encouragement, sympathy and criticism I could never have become even such a writer as I am”], I think, Wow. I think about Galsworthy’s life, and the parallel examples of literary love (the Brownings for example, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “How do I Love Thee”). I think about how The Forsyte Saga grew into quite a few books about that society, as it changed from Victorian into Edwardian times and beyond. Galsworthy’s character Soames Forsyte received an obituary [not a book review notice] in London’s newspaper, when Galsworthy sent Soames into the literary great beyond.
Books tell us about the people who wrote them. One of the things I ponder is: What’s this writer’s message? If I could condense a writer’s message into one or two sentences, what would all his/her books be about? Society forms people; or You can/can’t go home again; or Give your all and you will succeed; or good will eventually triumph. I wonder if the books we write change their message over our writing careers, or if our characters change; but our core message, no matter how the plots change and the characters vary, remains the same.
There's not much to dislike about books.
Monday, September 1, 2008
Long Term Consequences
Just as Capstar works with fleas, searching the Internet for matching word patterns detects plagiarism. Both treat the immediate condition. Neither eradicates the source or prevents its recurrence.
Sometimes fleas are picturesque: the novelistic portrayals, or “flea bites,” those tiny dings in use-worn marbles. Mostly, fleas and plagiarism are less than ideal.
They’re a parasite on the host: the dog or the Internet;
They have a tendency to spread effects to the unsuspecting: members of the family, and students who did their own work;
They are socially unacceptable in certain circles and the norm in others;
One culture encourages the infestation while another wants to fumigate it out of existence, and supports an industry designed to do just that.
Even the usually revered Founding Fathers paraphrased their sources, someone could argue. Ah, but the Founding Fathers believed in working for a cause, education, and thinking.
Some of my students spend hours writing, thinking, writing, researching, and laboring over their final copy. They didn't enjoy devoting nights and weekends to the project. They committed the time because the essay was a class assignment, because they believed my comments ("With each writing you do, you will become a better writer"). They don't see the long term result yet, but they appreciate the short term satisfaction of completing an assignment and receiving positive comments when it comes back to them. They also deeply resent the people who economized on time and improved hand coordination by copy/pasting a response posted elsewhere, written by someone else. As an instructor, I've spent hours before I hand out the assignment, trying to create directions that will encourage students to do their own work, their own thinking, their own writing. I've shared rough drafts of the assignment with others, asking "How can I make it better?" Collectively, we (the students and I) resent copying: they because they want everyone to be equal, I think. I because I want everyone to think and write.
The plagiarists, confronted with "their" essay as it appeared elsewhere under someone else's name have reacted with nonchalance. They have shrugged. They have said their roommate/friend/parent was the one responsible for copying. They have said that the online source copied from them. I give my "It's about thinking" response. Sometimes they nod their heads to indicate they have heard me (or so I stop explaining). Plagiarism is being untrue to yourself as well as others. That’s one perspective I tell myself, as I return to reading a stack of essays.
We finished sealing the cedar gazebo. For weeks, our garage smelled of cedar, that wood more aromatic than pine or redwood. Cedar is less expensive than some of the other choices, it's somewhat weather-resistant even without sealing the wood, and it's beautiful. Knots and grain in the boards make each piece of wood unique.
For weeks, I would open the door, and draw a deep breath. Board by board over the summer, we moved materials from storage to construction, figuring out how the cross pieces fit into the frame, how the roof could be attached. To protect the wood more than its natural resistance offered, we wanted to waterproof it, and did. Which led eventually to my idea of decorating the patio.
“I can tell where you painted,” Bob said, pointing. “Everywhere you worked on it, you left a mess underneath. Bob is right: I am a Messy Painter.
I have a Painting Outfit: oversize t shirt with souvenirs of each project (dark green, blue, white, cream, yellow, teal, and a splotch large as a handprint on one shoulder where I thoughtlessly rested a paint-covered hand), and somewhat less paint-decorated shorts. “Everyone has specific talents,” I tell my students. “Some of you are great at Finding Jobs, or Getting a Boyfriend, or Cooking.” One of my talents is Messy Painter.
I can wash the shirt and shorts, but it’s going to be a little more difficult to remove sealant splotches from the concrete. “What if we make it artistic?” I ask. “I can drop paint of all different colors around there, and it will look nice.”
“I think it would look weird,” he says.
But maybe if I practice on an unsuspecting surface…? Random spots of color, wherever they happen to fall from the brush…play to my talent of Messy Painter?
Sometimes fleas are picturesque: the novelistic portrayals, or “flea bites,” those tiny dings in use-worn marbles. Mostly, fleas and plagiarism are less than ideal.
They’re a parasite on the host: the dog or the Internet;
They have a tendency to spread effects to the unsuspecting: members of the family, and students who did their own work;
They are socially unacceptable in certain circles and the norm in others;
One culture encourages the infestation while another wants to fumigate it out of existence, and supports an industry designed to do just that.
Even the usually revered Founding Fathers paraphrased their sources, someone could argue. Ah, but the Founding Fathers believed in working for a cause, education, and thinking.
Some of my students spend hours writing, thinking, writing, researching, and laboring over their final copy. They didn't enjoy devoting nights and weekends to the project. They committed the time because the essay was a class assignment, because they believed my comments ("With each writing you do, you will become a better writer"). They don't see the long term result yet, but they appreciate the short term satisfaction of completing an assignment and receiving positive comments when it comes back to them. They also deeply resent the people who economized on time and improved hand coordination by copy/pasting a response posted elsewhere, written by someone else. As an instructor, I've spent hours before I hand out the assignment, trying to create directions that will encourage students to do their own work, their own thinking, their own writing. I've shared rough drafts of the assignment with others, asking "How can I make it better?" Collectively, we (the students and I) resent copying: they because they want everyone to be equal, I think. I because I want everyone to think and write.
The plagiarists, confronted with "their" essay as it appeared elsewhere under someone else's name have reacted with nonchalance. They have shrugged. They have said their roommate/friend/parent was the one responsible for copying. They have said that the online source copied from them. I give my "It's about thinking" response. Sometimes they nod their heads to indicate they have heard me (or so I stop explaining). Plagiarism is being untrue to yourself as well as others. That’s one perspective I tell myself, as I return to reading a stack of essays.
We finished sealing the cedar gazebo. For weeks, our garage smelled of cedar, that wood more aromatic than pine or redwood. Cedar is less expensive than some of the other choices, it's somewhat weather-resistant even without sealing the wood, and it's beautiful. Knots and grain in the boards make each piece of wood unique.
For weeks, I would open the door, and draw a deep breath. Board by board over the summer, we moved materials from storage to construction, figuring out how the cross pieces fit into the frame, how the roof could be attached. To protect the wood more than its natural resistance offered, we wanted to waterproof it, and did. Which led eventually to my idea of decorating the patio.
“I can tell where you painted,” Bob said, pointing. “Everywhere you worked on it, you left a mess underneath. Bob is right: I am a Messy Painter.
I have a Painting Outfit: oversize t shirt with souvenirs of each project (dark green, blue, white, cream, yellow, teal, and a splotch large as a handprint on one shoulder where I thoughtlessly rested a paint-covered hand), and somewhat less paint-decorated shorts. “Everyone has specific talents,” I tell my students. “Some of you are great at Finding Jobs, or Getting a Boyfriend, or Cooking.” One of my talents is Messy Painter.
I can wash the shirt and shorts, but it’s going to be a little more difficult to remove sealant splotches from the concrete. “What if we make it artistic?” I ask. “I can drop paint of all different colors around there, and it will look nice.”
“I think it would look weird,” he says.
But maybe if I practice on an unsuspecting surface…? Random spots of color, wherever they happen to fall from the brush…play to my talent of Messy Painter?
Sunday, August 31, 2008
This blog is about writing, teaching, teaching about writing and literature (aka other people’s writing), dogs, food: life. I’ve taught students from kindergarten through college over the years; coached student teams; written stories, magazine feature articles, course outlines, assignments, notes, apologies, poetry, letters, and more stories which took their own mind and became novels.
So why Searching for X, also the title of one of my stories? I think we are all searching for X, in some aspect of our lives. Maybe it’s a better job, the person we’re going to fall in love with, the perfect recipe for sugar cookies. (Which I have, by the way, thanks to my friend Ina.)
We were talking about what-we-were-going-to-do-over-the-summer. “I’m going to find the perfect sugar cookie recipe,” I told her. I had it all planned: bake a batch a week, and spend the long bright days trying them. Some would be too floury: the butter taste would not come through and they’d be flat, even fresh out of the oven. Some would have too much sugar: they might have the right taste, but the consistency of a sandcake. Some might taste like the original Girl Scout cookie recipe (another goal). In between cookie batches, I’d sit in the sun, go to the Lake, watch tree leaves wave green flags against the blue sky. I might gain a pound a week (you can’t gain more than a pound per batch of cookies, right?), but by the end of the summer I’d feel relaxed and have the right sugar cookie recipe.
“I have the perfect recipe,” she said. “It melts in your mouth. Everyone loves it. I will write it out and give you a copy.” She could have baked some to go with the recipe card, but she was busy with her summer, earning an “A” in Greek 2.
When I got the recipe, I stared at it for a few days. I could have put it aside and puttered about with butter and flour, sugar and salt in the cookbooks’ Sugar Cookie suggestions. But I sighed, and faced up to her truth. It made the best sugar cookies I had tasted.
So I rode my bike, sat under the trees, watched the lake’s bands of colors, and reminded myself that I had saved putting on a few pounds.
I also needed another goal for the summer. I needed to search for X.
X is the elusive, beyond-where we are, the something that – when we reach it - we discover is Y, or Z, or NaCl, taking us into a new subject which might explode in our faces or sprinkle itself across our breakfast.
Once we have it, as my friend Tina says, we find a new X. It’s the quest toward, not the finding of, that is important.
So why Searching for X, also the title of one of my stories? I think we are all searching for X, in some aspect of our lives. Maybe it’s a better job, the person we’re going to fall in love with, the perfect recipe for sugar cookies. (Which I have, by the way, thanks to my friend Ina.)
We were talking about what-we-were-going-to-do-over-the-summer. “I’m going to find the perfect sugar cookie recipe,” I told her. I had it all planned: bake a batch a week, and spend the long bright days trying them. Some would be too floury: the butter taste would not come through and they’d be flat, even fresh out of the oven. Some would have too much sugar: they might have the right taste, but the consistency of a sandcake. Some might taste like the original Girl Scout cookie recipe (another goal). In between cookie batches, I’d sit in the sun, go to the Lake, watch tree leaves wave green flags against the blue sky. I might gain a pound a week (you can’t gain more than a pound per batch of cookies, right?), but by the end of the summer I’d feel relaxed and have the right sugar cookie recipe.
“I have the perfect recipe,” she said. “It melts in your mouth. Everyone loves it. I will write it out and give you a copy.” She could have baked some to go with the recipe card, but she was busy with her summer, earning an “A” in Greek 2.
When I got the recipe, I stared at it for a few days. I could have put it aside and puttered about with butter and flour, sugar and salt in the cookbooks’ Sugar Cookie suggestions. But I sighed, and faced up to her truth. It made the best sugar cookies I had tasted.
So I rode my bike, sat under the trees, watched the lake’s bands of colors, and reminded myself that I had saved putting on a few pounds.
I also needed another goal for the summer. I needed to search for X.
X is the elusive, beyond-where we are, the something that – when we reach it - we discover is Y, or Z, or NaCl, taking us into a new subject which might explode in our faces or sprinkle itself across our breakfast.
Once we have it, as my friend Tina says, we find a new X. It’s the quest toward, not the finding of, that is important.
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