Monday, November 2, 2009
To Be or Not to Be a Memoirist (When Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction)
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
The Right Book at the Wrong Time: A Deviant History of Reading
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Words are my weakness. And cowgirls. And olives.
Luckily though, the gods are benevolant and when I shipped off to a fancy NY college in 1993, they roomed me next to a blonde-headed angel with a sense of direction big enough for the both of us. And in this case, "sense of direction" applied to more than how the hell do you get to the train station. Jenne always seemed to know where she was going and how to get there. If she didn't yet, she would soon. She took internships, participated in school activities, took advantage of the vast opportunities offered to those motivationally inclined. I, meanwhile designed a major in Heartbreak and Whiskey with a minor in Creative Writing, really excelling at it, as much as one can with that sort of thing.
One summer back home in Denver, Jenne found a want-ad for a wrangler at a remote ranch in the Flat Tops Wilderness Area. "I called Jack and Elaine 37 times," she said, "and they finally agreed to meet me at Denny's where they offered me a waitressing job."
"I didn't call to be a waitress," she told them. "I called to be a wrangler." You can just imagine the paradigm shift that blew their brains as they finally agreed to let Jenne be the first female wrangler in the history of Budge's White River Resort. That summer she wrangled the shit out of some horses, kicked ass and took prisoners (mainly smitten cowboys). I went to visit her and on the second full day she led me up and down a mountain and through a valley with a couple of horses and a pack of mules. That night, after 8 hours on my first ever horse, drinking whiskey in a lodge full of hard-ass wrangler types, I threw up into my own hand. And the next summer, I went back to work at Budge's as a waitress, only my official title was "Cabin Girl."
After that, Jenne went on to hitchhike from one end of South America to the other, selling macrame and crotched hats, purses and bikinis to pay her way. Down South, she ran a bed and breakfast (although she said it was more of a breakfast and hammock), befriended an alcoholic monkey and was a street mime, although this is a grotesquely short list of her many and sundry adventures.
She is the kind of friend I expect to drink coffee with in my late 90's after all of our boyfriends and husbands are dead. Sometime in college, I named her my North Star because no matter how long it's been since I've seen her or how far apart we are, the thought of her face instills in me a sense of the right place to go.
This past weekend I saw Jenne for the first time in 7 years. She flew from Portland (where she is a third grade bilingual teacher, Lewis and Clark college professor and Flamenco dancer)to Boston, where she rented a car for an East Coast tour. At my dad's ex-alpaca farm out in the country we indulged in 24 blissful hours of old records (with good lyrics), long sunset bedazzled walks, river wading, candles, mozzarella, chocolate, salmon, basil and big, fat Kalamata olives that we ate like candy.
Tomorrow she and I are getting up early and driving to New York. I have not been there for 11 years and will do my best to spend 72 hours making up for it. We will take turns driving. I hope to trust my sense of direction, but God knows who will hold the map.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Subterranean Protozoa, Reincarnation & Hope
As a more mature adult, it's been my belief in reincarnation that's helped me reconcile the fact that my name is conspicuously absent from Oprah's bestseller list. I have multiple lifetimes to achieve greatness! My soul has been pretty busy building pyramids, schlepping water in pails out of rivers and rubbing elbows with the Queen. Maybe more than that- I'm not sure- the latest Facebook quiz assures me I'm 88% gay, not big news to my husband THIS lifetime. So after receiving several lovely rejection letters from my first-ever national magazines queries (my fave came from Men's Vogue, which I didn't know existed 10 minutes before I sent them a typed up shard of my latest adventure query-style. Turns out they don't. "Sounds like a good idea, but Men's Vogue is no longer," wrote the editor), I've decided THAT article is just another chapter for the memoir. Which thus far exists 50% as a huge unwieldy mess on my hard drive, 10% in the journal that VANISHED from the face of the earth last month, 7% in my witty, comprehensive, beautifully crafted status updates that disappear into the ether of nowhere land and 33% in my repressed subconscious.
Regardless, I seek out my place on the food chain of literary fame and find myself subterranean protozoa, again and again. And then there's always this perspective offered by my good friend and the oft-published author, Eliezer Sobel last November at the Jewish Book Fair. "How's your book coming?" he asked.
"Miserably," I said. "I'll never get published."
"Well, hurry up and get published so you can be miserable AND published like the rest of us," he said.
So last week, plodding through the unsung joys of domestication peppered with a few rare and erotic moments of inspiration, I organized a panel for a local nonprofit on playwriting and screenwriting. You might say I joined the nonprofit so I could borrow someone else's budget to organize such panels, carting in my handful of wildly successful friends from around the country to the capitol of the South just so I can hear them talk.
Of course prior to the panel, I was most concerned with what to wear. After amassing a pile of unsightlys on the sagging mattress, I headed to the local Exxon to vacuum out the inch of dirt, twigs and volcanic sediment encrusting the bottom of my car before driving to the airport to pick up my good friend Bryan, creator of The Philocetes Project. Handing me change for a dollar, the curly-haired Hispanic woman behind the counter said, "Hey, I see you the last Thursday of every month!" I quickly scanned my memory for all of the various cults I attend regularly but came up blank. "You know, The Writing Show!" she said, introducing herself by way of her name plate, "HOPE." "I started going last October."
"No kidding!" I said. "I hope you can come tonight- it's gonna be a good one."
"I'll try," she said. "But it's the end of the month and there are a lot of inspections to get through."
Right then and there I felt more famous than God. Someone recognized me at the GAS STATION!! My whole attitude and outlook on life changed. When I saw Hope later that night in the front row of the audience splendid in a lavender v-neck, I gave her a huge hug and introduced her to the panel.
So for today, fame may not be what I'm after, after all. As I write this, I'm reminded that for a while there in '98, aspects of my life on the farm in Arkansas paralleled Monica Lewinski's and I never envied her press package one bit.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
[Editorial aside: Ladies, if you have even the remotest desire for ex-boyfriends or other unruly specimens to ring you up I suggest you write an article about a dominatrix too. What are you waiting for? Get on it!]
After that, I essentially continued interviewing authors and writing about books. People kept sending them to me! Events kept happening! I couldn't say no. I didn't want to say no. And knowing the intense amount of sorting, labeling, reading and hysterical laughter required to run the Fiction Contest, I offered to help with that too. In the end, I ran it. For the 5th consecutive year. And I loved it just as much as I ever had. Around a smoky bar after the winners had been awarded, read and gone home I had a heart to heart with my editor, who is very inconsiderately moving to California in July.
I want you to have something regular here, he said, so it won't confuse my successor.
OK, I said. I'll be the book editor again.
Good, he said.
You never gave it away, I said.
I knew you'd be back, he said. A good editor knows you better than you know yourself.
And maybe he never met my grandmother and doesn't have a clue what kind of granola I eat with lowfat vanilla yogurt, but dammit if he hasn't had a thread connected to the big picture all along. Five years ago we met at a crowded intersection. He was whistling and smiling and I didn't know what to do with my hands. Why aren't you crossing the street? he asked. I'm afraid of getting hit by cars, I said, a bird might shit on my head and what if I don't recognize the grass or the sounds or the glints of light on the other side.
C'mon, it's easy, he said and crossed with a confident gait, a wink, a snap bouncing off the end of his long fingers. I waited another second before following, everything new and breathless and possible waiting for me on the other side.
Now, I'm at another intersection, but this time it's a cliff atop a deep sea filled with jagged rocks and circling sharks. For months I have been pacing the precipice, hearing the sirens call. I don't want to drown, I'm scared of getting my dress wet, of being eaten alive, of falling for some horrid merman and never regaining my rightful place on solid ground. As I try to think of what will happen if I lose my balance, or jump or if I am pushed, I realize that I may not know how to fly, but I already know how to swim.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Bad Valley Takes the Night Bus.
Bad Valley pretends to listen while she daydreams. It is Bad Valley’s Jesus Year and she is full of sin. She is full of hellfire and damnation and those little guys in Purgatory that wait around with hooks and crooks to drag good people down. Bad Valley rides the tilt-a-whirl backwards. She knows where and why and how the grass is greener and yet still she steadfastly refuses to plant or tend to anything.
She closes her eyes, nodding occasionally and lets the wig lady buy her a cheeseburger and a coke. And a coffee. And a beer. Bad Valley is always drinking something and usually way too much of it. She is ready to sleep on someone else’s floor. She is ready to abandon someone else’s dishes and someone else’s laundry on someone else’s dime. She wants to listen to scratchy records and smoke unfiltered cigarettes indoors all day, without a clue as to whether or not the sun is out. Bad Valley doesn’t want to call home or check in. Bad Valley doesn’t carry the proper documents for travel. She shreds her parking tickets, her state taxes and any evidence of having being insured, past, present and future. Her license and her visa are expired. She only keeps them around for their pictures, which are pretty and dark and difficult to discern.
When it stops, Bad Valley has no desire to get off the bus and doesn’t have enough money for another ticket so she cries until the driver takes pity on her and takes her where she thinks she wants to go. Bad Valley arrives unannounced, unaccounted for and unexpected. Even so, Bad Valley is welcome where she is found.
Bad Valley doesn’t care what Good Valley thinks. Bad Valley doesn’t have a bedtime, watches the sun rise, makes the sunset hazier with smoke from her swishers sweet cigar. Bad Valley doesn’t teach, she takes. She doesn’t’ listen, she tells. She doesn’t wake them up when she gets to where she is going. She crawls into their bed, puts her arms around their waist and whispers to them until she is the most important thing they have ever dared to dream.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Some Jobs Are Like Bad Boyfriends
Packing up my massive stack of papers from the ice-hockey table (I don't exactly have a desk anymore) I felt the satisfaction of accomplishment. A job well done- or at least done. I didn't wonder if I should continue to revise (OK, I did) or if I should start a whole new draft or chuck the whole damn thing in the already overflowing recycle bin. There was a start line and a finish line and I made it from one to the other, from A to B-- zip zip zap. Not so easily done in "real life" anymore.
A decade ago, in my first months home off of the boat in Alaska I felt utterly lost, directionless and adrift. I felt that I had to have a job to stand and be counted but during that time I wasn't exactly employable. My mother, the artist, pointed to the cat lounging luxuriously on the bed by my side. "Does Felicia have a job?" she asked. "No," I said. "And she's perfect just the way she is," said my mother.
And I got it. It wasn’t about numbers or things but the quality of my ability to simply be. Something I’m still not good at. The minute I start to meditate I think of an email that must be sent IMMEDIATELY. If I don’t have specific plans, I’m restless, moody, pacing, trying to stalk down everything contained within the moment that I should be seizing. When I sit down to write, I wish I were writing something different. It’s why I couldn’t stand to live in New York. The constant influx of choices at every moment. Each street, each alley, each job, each bad boyfriend calling my name.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
creative house cleaning
For the last 10 years I have lived in the house that I grew up in. The feelings surrounding this are as complex as the sedimentary layers of dust and dead skin and karma that have built up like invisible earth. I light sage, I put mirrors behind the toilet and baguas in the corners but the sacred hold of the past and dead things and my childhood burns stronger. I woke up this morning with every intention of setting things straight. Putting this here and that there. Sorting, folding, sifting, washing, scrubbing, arranging. But I simply cannot muster up the right kind of energy to make it happen. Over animal crackers and steak this morning, I told my husband I was too busy anymore to attend to domestic duties and asked if we could please hire a maid.
Sure, he said. How should we pay for it? Well, you could sleep with her in exchange for laundry, I suggested. OK, he said. But in that case, I get to pick who we hire. And you're in charge of finding lawn care.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Sunday, March 15, 2009
reality check
So. I admit it. I have never read Moby Dick. I haven't read the collected works of Jane Austen. I only made it through .094 of chapter one of Gravity's Rainbow.
And I had only read one short story by Richard Bausch when I interviewed him by phone two days ago from my home office. I hate interviewing someone with whose work I am only marginally familiar. (with whom's work I am only marginally familiar? whose work with which I am only marginally...?? PLEASE, if you have an idea about how to make this sentence grammatically correct, I would LOVE to hear it!) And Richard Bausch has written about 100 books. And at least 1000 short stories. The one I read was compelling, excellent, enviable. And he's very distinguished and important looking.
But I was on a deadline. And I had to make the call. I felt the entire time like a complete, bumbling idiot. "So, uh, you've, uh, written, a lot of ummm, books, right?" is, I, believe how I started the conversation. And in my mind, it only got worse from there. Soon, I gave up all hope of sounding intelligent and just prayed that he would politely overlook my idiocy and say something quotable. He did. He said a lot of great stuff and thankfully I have an article to prove it. But the thing that really floored me was what he said at the end. "Are you a fiction writer, too?" he asked. "Ummm, yeah," I said. "I could tell," he said. "You're questions were more intelligent than most."Oh, geez, uh, thanks," I said. I told him how honored I was to be able to interview him and when I got off the phone I did a big, stupid dance around my house. I'm not sure if our conversation proved that most people who have interviewed Richard Baush shouldn't have been let off the farm or if, maybe, possibly, I am too hard on myself and have a slightly skewed perception of reality. Or maybe, it's a lucky combination of both.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
letting the baby breathe
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Gainful Unemployment
Of course, the kinds of jobs I've wanted have included mopping the floor at Waffle House and scrubbing other people's toilets, but still. Work has always materialized when I needed it. I have never, ever found a job through the classifieds, but just peeking makes me want to fling myself from the closest window. Because my BA in Creative Writing does not qualify me to run a group home or sell insurance or assist in brain surgery. Nor do I want to be an office administrator for the Marijuana Policy Project (this job can be YOURS if you check Craig's List today) or supervise 37 kids for $8 an hour. No, my degree qualifies me for those really special jobs that usually don't get printed in the paper. Stained Glass Maker's Assistant. Cruise ship stewardess. Dude Ranch Cabin Girl. Freelance Writer.
When I got laid off from my desk job at the local alternative weekly last September I felt- in a sad way- part of an historic movement. The downsizing of print media. The big recession of late 0-8. The first job I was ever asked to leave. Historic, yes. Convenient, no.
Because answering phones and greeting people for 20 hours a week provided me with 2 invaluable necessities. a) Health Insurance and b) the unambiguous knowledge that I had "a job." If someone said "do you have a job?" I could answer them without having to think about it. If there was an argument in my home about who was actually employed, I was above reproach. Now- even though I'm writing articles here and there and teaching an odd ball assortment of classes- I don't always know the answer to any of those questions.
Do I work? Yes. I wash the laundry and then throw it in the general direction of the dresser. I scrub the dishes. I pack my son's snack and take him to school. Then I interview dominatrixes and try to come up with witty introductory sentences to reviews of their memoirs. I check facebook and debate about what, who and when to update my status. Then I run out and teach a class across town for an hour and a half, come back, cook dinner, decide not to vacuum and put my child to bed. Does that count? Yes. But is it succinct? No. And does it provide health insurance. Hell no.
Which brings me and every other writer/artist/musician/creative type I know to the same harrowing debate. Is it worth it to risk gazillions of dollars of unpaid hospital bills in order to stay home and fulfill our life's desire by creating art? After a moment of tortured reflection, I think yes. But is it worth it to put my child at risk to stay home and create my art? This one isn't so easy. This is the question that has tortured me for the weeks and months since I have been laid off. Because at the same time that the market is saturated with thousands of people looking for work, I have been picky. I have wanted health insurance, but I haven't wanted it at the risk of a mind numbing, soul eating, blood sucking vacuous 40+ hour a week job copy writing credit card ads. (Anyone out there who does this, hats off! I admire you for your stamina and power of will! REALLY!) But the very thought makes my insides shudder and wilt. I'd rather wear rags and learn how to plant carrots in a front yard victory garden than succumb to the likes of that.
So, today, as I apply for state funded health insurance for my son, finish my article about the teenage dominatrix and revise (again) chapter 2 of my book, I will for now, quiet the inner beast that has raged with doubt and confusion. We might not be able to go out to dinner, but tonight I will revel in the luxury of staying home and eating my words.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
back again
Because the truth is I have a bevy of amazing, hilarious and good looking friends. I have the most beautiful son on the planet who says funny and entertaining things (that's Venus not Penis!!!) and then hugs me and says "I love you Mommy!" Today he even said, "Mommy, thank you for cleaning my room." Amazing! He attends a wonderful community based preschool that provides for a lot of interesting conversations and opportunities to participate in my son's education.
I have a husband who loves me when I'm wearing sweatpants.
It's easy to complain about living across the street from my mom and turn a blind eye to the baked chickens, raw carrot juice and ginormous emounts of babysitting that most neighbors don't provide.
And when I found out the other day that I didn't get the full time job I'd applied for, I rededicated myself to my book which has been simmering on the back burner for way too long.
In fact, I've begun working on it everyday and I'm beginning to remember who the hell I am and why I bother. Which I'd started to forget in the midst of the grind, the numbers and trying to make all that outside chaos add up. Because out there, the world might never make complete and perfect sense. But here on the inside, it's time to start writing.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Existential Crisises "R" Us (or Stephenie, can I please steal your brilliant title for this chapter of my life?)
But I'm still incredibly freaked out by the course of my life and the dreaded worry that I will not live up to my potential. I might die without ever getting on Oprah's book club.
I'm 33. I live in the house I grew up in. In the suburbs. I like to say it's not, but it is. My mom lives across the street. I've lived here for the last 10 years. It was supposed to be a short term layover between travels. But it wasn't. It was permanent. At least a decade's worth of permanent. I got a dog, a marriage, a mortgage and a son, in that order. Technically we're in a good school district and we have a fenced in back yard, all features which are supposed to make me not want to rent a one bedroom apartment by myself somewhere in a big city far away. I feel like the Paul Simon lyric: "I'm a wanderer. Not really, I've always lived in my parent's house...."
On a good day I remember that I am the luckiest woman alive to have a devoted husband and a healthy son, but on a bad day I feel like a choose your own adventure book that somebody forgot to keep writing. The first dozen chapters are action packed cliffhangers and then you reach this long section in the middle that just kind of goes on and on and on and on and on. There are trips to the dentist and the doctors and to grandma's house and the food court at the mall and the park and the playground and maybe to chuckecheese or the children's museum but the map is succinct and the paths are well worn. Grooved. Deep.
Enter Josh.
I am involved with a local nonprofit that brings people to Richmond to talk about the business and craft of writing. This week I had the good fortune to fly in Josh- a friend from my freshman year college writing workshop who has gone on to become a senior fiction editor at Viking Penguin. All told his trip was a less than 24 hour whirlwind of catching up on the last 15 years, eating over-priced fish, speaking brilliantly to the public about the future of fiction (him), trying to put out event related fires (me) and pretending, as a lifelong Richmonder, to be knowledgable about the history of Richmond while being sure to show off only the beautiful stuff, not the Walmarts and Burger Kings- on my side of town.
While, perhaps what I should be blogging about is all the briliant, witty and insightful stuff he said, what interested me far more was the alchemic reaction that occured within me as a result of his trip. In college, we went out once but he just wasn't cool enough for me to date. And by "cool" I mean he wasn't a pretentious, conceited budding alchoholic womanizer and hence not "fun" enough for me. In fact, I mentioned to him the "boy" I was obsessed with for the entire length of my college career and he said "You mean ---? That arrogant prick?" Yes! That's exactly who I mean! And I felt really sad for my 18 year old self who went for the mean guy who treated me like trash instead of the nice, earnest, sincere, friendly young man who treated me like an equal. Do I think my tale of woe is unusal? Not in the slightest. I think it's one of the most common blues a woman can sing. I think it's the other half of the Cinderella fairytale. I think it's a cliche. Which cheers and depresses me, both.
Did I accidentally get stuck in my hometown or is this a deliberate, educated, sophisticated choice that I continue to make everyday?
Have I sacrificed some sort of brilliant, world-changing career by getting married at 25 and becoming a mother four years later? Can I really blame my lack of worldly success on the fact that I have a child and live in the suburbs? (Hardly, but wouldn't that be an easy out?)
Do the soul searing effects of my bottom feeder self-esteem in college continue to effect the choices I make today?
I wish I could sum up this blog entry with a snappy come back to gratitude or a self-searching realization that makes it all worth it in the end. But I can't do that. Yet. I'm still a suburban mom struggling to come to terms with the choices I've made. And like another fabled cliche, if I went back through the chapters of my life knowing what I know now, would I make different choices?
I don't know. I haven't finished reading yet.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Bad Valley Lives
She has refused to keep you in the loop.
She lives in squalor, entertaining roches and the friends and families of roches. She drinks instant coffee, boiled like black soup from the microwave. She never grinds her own beans. She crunches raw ramen noodles, twinkies and red hot cheetos straight from their wrappers.
Bad Valley lives by caller id, doesn't answer the phone or return emails. Her inbox is full, you can't leave a message. She is too busy watching daytime tv and pasting cutouts of her head onto the pages of US magazine. Bad Valley eats apple pie for breakfast and drives even if she's just going around the corner and there are sidewalks.
Bad Valley has a perfectly good bike rusting in the shed.
Bad Valley doesn't recycle. She never takes the trash out on the right day. When she does take the trash out, she doesn't move the can out of sight after it's been emptied. She rakes her leaves but lets them rot in putrid little piles in the front yard, never bagging them, blowing them or calling the county to haul them away. Bad Valley forgets to eat the vegetables she buys and they go bad at the bottom of the refrigerator. Instead of washing her sheets she sprays Febreeze. She doesn't price check either. She just buys the first thing that catches her fancy. She throws away coupons and doesn't record her receipts. She has no idea what's in the bank, what's coming down the pike or how to reconcile her checkbook with a hill of beans. Bad Valley doesn't brush her teeth very often.
Bad Valley stuffs her clothes in her drawers rather than folding them neatly. Bad Valley doesn't know what's at the bottom of her closet, hasn't organized it in years, hopes that it will somehow-magically- take care of itself.