The Quiet

Shhhhh. Do you hear that? The quiet?

Or are you right now surrounded? Are you walking down the street on the way to work, earbuds in, IPod feeding your brain music to cancel out the sound of the street? While you walk do you check your messages disregarding the paths of people you’re walking in front of? Are you listening to music, texting and perhaps making a to-do list in your head? Do you see people or are ordinary people not only a waste of your time but not significant enough to note?

Ahhh. Silence. Right now. Silence. Still. I can hear the tip-tap of the keys and an old refrigerator running. My daughter is coughing. My son’s lullaby music set to be heard over the fan.

But my brain is silent and it is in the silence that I can hear.

I can hear who I’ve become and who I used to be. I can almost, almost find a thread to attach the two.

Did you know that the ability to sit with sadness is a gift? I was watching a movie recently, and at a heart-wrenching moment, you know the one, she’s going to die, she has four children, a single mom, and it punched me in the gut. Movie or no, the idea of it tightened my throat, that familiar feeling of stifling a sob. Just at that moment, the very moment of complete understanding, someone in the room said something, off-hand, casual to break the tension, to push aside the sadness. I think as a culture we are growing sociopathic, but in this case that wasn’t it.

For some people it’s too hard to show weakness. For some, it’s too hard to feel pain. For some, it’s too hard to feel.

So, they diffuse it.

I used to be one of those people.

But I’m not anymore.

And for that I am thankful. I can sit in the silence and feel sad. I can imagine devastating loss.

I didn’t cry. I do have an image to maintain.

Signs all around me point to finding my center. I’m surrounded by so many versions of myself, my past, my present, the mom, the career woman, the daughter, the sister. I’ve become a jumbled mess, a multi-colored paint splatter on a Spin Art sheet.

But recently, from the books I’m reading (Green Girl, The Journal Keeper, The Tiger’s Wife, The Empty Family) to the movies I’m watching (The Skin I Live In, A Single Man, Far From Heaven, Finding Neverland) are conspiring to show me something.

There is family, and sexuality, and gender, and beauty, and ugliness, and myth, and fiction so real reality pales.

Yes.

It is in the quiet that I see these things.

This is what I need to write, to live, to breathe, to be.

 

 

Exhaustion

I’m tired of running in circles chasing my tail. I’m tired of writing and not having the words, having the words but them never reaching the story.

I’m tired of commuting, of running out the door, hair wet, driving, driving, driving to a train that is just pulling out of the station.

I’m tired of texting a manager that I’m late because of a detour. I’m tired of getting a look when I tell him I draw the line at leaving my house at 5:30 A.M.

I’m tired of apathetic people, of people who do the least they can to get by, of people who don’t do the right thing because no one is watching.

I’m tired of pain running down my leg, I’m tired of feeling every day of my age and then some.

I’m tired of not being able to run on the streets in a t-shirt and sneakers. The only running I do is the kind that doesn’t count.

I’m tired of rushing nowhere.

I’m tired of waiting for something and not knowing what it is.

I’m tired of writing, of waiting, of wondering what I’m waiting for, of wondering when my real life begins.

I don’t need a pep talk. I don’t need a positive attitude.

I need to figure out why writing makes a damn bit of difference in a life so overscheduled that I’m living in a revolving door.

The only time I remember feeling this exhausted was when I had a newborn.

I have cakes to bake and books to write and birthday parties to plan, and all I want to do is crawl into bed.

And tomorrow I’ll be getting in the car again.

And wondering why.

Something’s got to give.

 

Tenth Grade

Do you remember being a young high school student and trying out a new laugh? A tee-hee-hee, a loud guffaw, a chuckle, I tried them all out in search of something I had been doing since probably around four months of age.

It seems to me there is a point when we either try out a new mode of dress, mine took the form of my dad’s old dress shirts, stolen from his chifferobe a wood-worn, black piece of furniture smelling of dry wood and Old Spice, or a signature piece of ourselves, in my case a laugh.

The irony came when I could laugh my new laugh only when I was faking. If I then began to laugh for real, the sound would stop and I would shake, tears running down my face and dripping off of my jawline. My real laugh was silent, my fake laugh was someone else’s. My father, my aunt and myself, all had the same real laugh, messy and wet and silent.

The fake laugh lasted a short time, so I was back to stealing my dad’s old worn button-downs, buttoning them up to the top, and pinning a big, brassy broach in between the collar. Did I layer bracelets? Oh, yes, you know I did. Black rubber bracelets layered in with every costume jewelry bracelet I could find lying around.

Those stuck. They were much more me (and Molly Ringwald, but those of you going to school back then probably guessed how much I loved Pretty in Pink. That was until Some Kind of Wonderful came along and my worship of Mary Stuart Masterson, the gloves, the short, short blonde hair).

The music changed from Madonna and Bruce Springsteen to Depeche Mode, The Cure and The Violent Femmes. The latter stuck with me to this day, and I still have a fondness for my female rockers/angst-ridden guitar ladies: Sheryl Crow, Melissa Etheridge, Alannis Morrisette, Natalie Merchant.

With editing in full swing, I have noticed that I’m reliving my youth. I wrote a book, yes. But as I’m typing it and having the first go at editing I’m waffling. One day as I’m reading, there is too much description so out it goes. The next day, it is too spare, description gets added. I wish I could say it’s because I have a clear vision of where this book going and how it should be sculpted, but I know me, and I know that isn’t the case.

I’m doubting who I am and what I have to say. I’m reading too many agent interviews about silly things like if they aren’t grabbed by the first chapter, no the first paragraph, no the first sentence, screw it! you have one word to grab their attention or you’re done. I find myself being that high school student trying to find myself, dying my hair purple and deciding that black liner and red lips is where I’ll find me.

If there was any doubt, I write big. I write long. I have families and generations and one is more messed up than the last. When I clean it up to spare, it becomes something else, something less interesting, something less me. When I add description just to add it, it becomes unwieldy and foreign, with paragraphs that are too much for the scene they are trying to hold.

Then there is the matter of voice, VOICE, perhaps you’ve heard of it? The matter of whether someone can gather your VOICE in one word. As my friend’s grandmother would have said, Oy vey.

It’s too much. I still wear bracelets although they get piled on because I hate having to choose between them. I still listen to The Cure and Depeche Mode, but it’s more a surprise when the IPod is on shuffle and they pop up like an e-mail from an old, dear friend.

I’ve begun typing what I have written, cutting out major sections that have no reason to be there, and I clean up the language for aural offense (is it still aural if it is the way the words sound inside of your head?) but otherwise, I’m not chopping and I’m not adding.

Not yet.

As a writer I haven’t found myself. I’m somewhere in the tenth grade of my writing life. The best I can do is just soldier on. It’ll come and maybe I’ll be better off for shutting out all of the conflicting advice.

If not, it can’t be worse than the purple hair.

If Only…

If only I had more time to write…

That’s where it starts, the thoughts round and round my head, decisions I’ve made, how things could be different, always better in my mind’s eye, not things I’d like to admit, coming as they do from a place of someone has it easier, better.

If I spent time on my book instead of these posts…

I wouldn’t have met all of you. I wouldn’t have a dear friend whom I reach out to throughout the day with panic-stricken e-mails on the state of publishing. I wouldn’t have this posse, many of whom are now published or in the process, who get the joke, the one we don’t even admit to ourselves on most days, that although publishing a book is like winning the lottery, we think we’ll be the one. I wouldn’t be surrounded by people who think this is truly possible.

If I spent time on my book instead of planting with my kids…

I would have missed the moment when my son and I spotted an orange plastic Adirondack chair and somehow squeezed it in the front seat of my Honda Civic. I would have missed how hard he made me laugh as he squeezed into his younger brother’s booster seat, yelling “This is so embarrassing!” as the chair scratched up my hand every time I had to switch gears. We wouldn’t have been at Home Depot for the second time in as many hours because we forgot the dirt. We wouldn’t have gotten home, and the boys and I wouldn’t have planted random flower seeds into twenty-five small containers for our garden this summer. They wouldn’t be unfurling out of the dirt after five days. We wouldn’t have a border that will now be either Impatiens or seven-foot Sunflowers as we didn’t label the baby plants.

If I didn’t have to work, my book would be done…

And I’d spend all of my time in a panic about money, eventually losing my house. We wouldn’t have gotten a new washer when ours broke last month, and goodness knows, I barely use the vacuum. What the hell would I have done with a washboard and a metal basin.

If I didn’t live in the middle of nowhere, I’d have time to do it all. I’d be able to see my kids more, and write in all of my spare time instead of commuting…

If I didn’t live here, I wouldn’t have married my husband. I wouldn’t have two beautiful boys and my beautiful step-daughter. I would have a book and no family. I wouldn’t have my husband, the only one who knows me and loves me anyway. I can’t finish the thought. It strickens me to think of my life without him. I wake up at night sometimes in a panic at the idea of something happening to him, covered in sweat, a metallic taste in my mouth, the taste of adrenaline.

If I didn’t have the commute…

I wouldn’t have finished the book to begin with. I’d be doing most moms are doing, coming home, doing homework, taking care of business. My commute drudgery is also what allowed me to write a book, an hour at a time, an hour I wouldn’t have had otherwise.

Today I found out an acquaintance’s wife passed away. It is a year after she was diagnosed. I read her obituary and couldn’t get over her accomplishments in life, a full-life lived and cut short at the age of 54. 54. 54. She left behind a husband and two daughters. My heart breaks for them.

Every moment, every second is a decision. Cause and effect. And there are a bunch of “if only I…” segments. But as I started to think on them, it came to me that it is because of the things I am not doing, that I have what I have.

If I had made different decisions, I wouldn’t be me.

I’m forty years old and it’s about damn time I embrace the decisions I’ve made and start making the most of the blessings I have.

It’s only a damn book. All the rest? It’s my life.

One that I’m glad you’re all a part of.

The book will come in time, but if it doesn’t? I wouldn’t have traded one, single thing on my path.

They made me who I am.

Playdate

Aha!

After taking a scientific test to find out who I write like the clouds have parted, the fog has cleared, the purple prose has run rampant all to tell me…I’m schizophrenic.

I plugged in three different sections of my novel only to discover I begin as James Joyce, somewhere in the middle I become Ian Fleming, and then end up writing like Stephen King.

Shall we discuss my gender identity issues as well or go right my ability to cross genres and styles. Oh yes, surely that’s a good thing? (crickets…ahem…alrighty then.)

This weekend my soon-to-be seven-year old asked if he could invite a friend over. Our weekends are packed with chores, and then I did what any good mother would do and thought, “Hey, if I play my cards right, I can get some writing in.” “We are always doing things we have to do, why not?” And so, he did.

Lo and behold, the two older boys under duress included the little one, and I had a chunk of two hours to type out my book. Okay, I’m being generous. I had fifteen minute increments between dragging toys to and from the basement (or asking my husband to, whatever), cutting up some fruit, threatening encouraging my son to include his little brother, etc.

It was amazing. And really difficult. Because I’m typing and editing, I’d just grasp the exact wording to fix a sentence when someone would need something and it would be gone. Music was playing in the other room. My husband cooked in the kitchen (good, good man). I did realize that I can get a groove on and do it competently, but I wonder what I could do with focused silence. What if I need/want more than competence?

I think of the writers I heard speak at AWP, along with the interviews I’ve obsessively studiously read in The Paris Review, and the heavy hitters are not working around what most of us our working around. I’m not saying that’s why they are who they are…

But I don’t think it’s a coincidence that many of the serious female writers do not have children and the female writers with children write women’s fiction, thrillers, mysteries and young adult, genres that count on short chapters with action that keeps things moving (and yes, I think of women’s fiction as fast-paced as compared to literary fiction). The short chapters are a civil way to handle the numerous interruptions in our lives, no? (The “many” I speak of is a completely fabricated study in my own head and there are certainly exceptions to the rule.)

Sometimes it seems all I can do to keep the storyline straight in my head. Then I’ll read about agents discussing how they want a book that makes them miss their subway stop.

I wonder if it’s possible to do that, to create that intense of a story without more than an hour (on the high end) a day. I wonder about potential and how it means nothing if I can’t find the time. I look at me and wonder if I don’t do it now, when?

Maybe I just need to schedule more playdates.

(Let the record show that the only word I hate more than “networking” or “my brand” is “playdate”. It makes me want to roll my kids around in the mud and tell them to go play in traffic, you know, something character building. Could anything sound more ridiculous than scheduled play? Atrocious.)

 

Resemblance

I have one of those faces.

When I was younger I was told that I looked like Michelle Pfeiffer and once, Uma Thurman. The person who told me Uma, however, was trying to take me home. I leave it to you to decide whether or not it worked.

I had a construction worker stop me outside of Union Station speaking in Polish. He tapped me on the shoulder and even as I turned, a foot away from him, he went on until I told him I was sorry, I didn’t understand. He looked at me, brows knit, puzzled before laughing and saying he thought I was someone else. He did ask me if I had ever been to [insert name of Polish town here that I couldn't make out] before saying, no, no, I wasn’t her. But the resemblance! Then he walked away checking back a couple of times while shaking his head before he turned the corner.

I heard my co-workers talking the other day, the way you can hear people talking once they mention your name even when you can’t make out what they’re saying. I turned to see four of them staring at me (yes, truly a lovely feeling that…). The three men sat down at their desks but I stared down the one woman, my eyebrows raised until she said, “We were just saying you look like Bonnie Raitt.” My odd expression, not that I don’t usually have a confused expression at work, led her to add, “Well, not you, but your hair.”

Ah yes. Said hair is presently auburn faded to red, with blonde streaks faded to white. I had my hair dresser line up a blond streak right in the front over my arched cow lick, where the hair has grown white for years. The first thing I did was google Bonnie Raitt. She’s 62, and not beside the point a fantastic guitar player. How I would rather it be said that I play like her. (Another side, one of my best friends had Thanksgiving dinner with her and she is a genuinely lovely woman, in case any of you were wondering.)

More than any for the last ten years, I have been told I look like Allison Janney. It was right around the time of West Wing that I started getting stopped. My typical response is “Oh? Thank you”. The difference this time is that people would then say, “No really! You do!”

It’s a very strange feeling as I can’t see it. Until Friday.

Bored at work I googled Allison Janney and clicked on “Images”. Picture after picture smaller than an inch high and some of them I would have mistaken for myself. Then it occurred to me that the great thing about this was I could check out the hair that worked for her and it was like having a Hollywood stylist.

I know, this is mind blowing, right? (Oh, hush. If you can’t say anything nice…)

It got me to wondering who I write like. We all have physical traits (in my case wide-set large eyes that make people (and by people I mean actual doctors {?!}) ask if I have a thyroid problem) that give people pause, but are my writing quirks equally naildownable?

I’m off to go and do some more hard-hitting research.

Back to you.

You Are Not a Multi-tasker

Last night I laid on the couch, a comfortable position for my wonky back. I was waiting for my husband to watch “No Reservations”, Anthony Bourdain’s travel/eating show.

I flipped open The Tiger’s Wife, a book I love. More on that next time.

He turned on the show and I continued reading. I began to read the same paragraph over and over, my eyes drifting up to Mozambique, back to the story, then to Bourdain giving the village he was visiting a goat, back to the story. Then the slaughtering of said goat, back to the story, the poverty, back to the story, the dancing, back to the story, the fact that they don’t name their children before they turn a year old because so many of them don’t make it. Game over.

We live in a world of multi-tasking except here’s the thing; you are unable to do more than one thing at a time. Did you know that? These aren’t my facts. This is neuroscience.

You may be distracted and hop from project to project, thought to thought, television to book to facebook to twitter, but you cannot hold simultaneous thoughts. There is no such thing as multi-tasking.

This has been your public service announcement.

That being said, I took my book up to bed because I didn’t want to hear anymore about nameless babies in slings. Sometimes I have to shut it out, not in denial, but because the thought process will drag me under. I’m no good to anyone if I’m submerged.

I thought about how I blew through  The Hunger Games. Now, unlike many people, not only did I love the book, but I didn’t feel the need to justify it. I was in tears within the first chapter when Katniss volunteered for her sister. I kid you not. I cried.

I read this book every moment I could, a page here, a page there. Sometimes I’d only get in a paragraph, but I was focused on the world of The Hunger Games.

I looked at the clock. 11:00 p.m. I would only read The Tiger’s Wife until 11:15 p.m. The time came and went and I couldn’t put it down. I was exhausted and could not stop reading. There was no good stopping place.

We are surrounded by such cacophony that because some things are better in solitude, the things that require contemplation, focus, they are said to be unworthy. I don’t know how many times I’ve read about people giving up on literary fiction because it isn’t any fun. It isn’t interesting. Why not skip to the good stuff?

I don’t get it. There has been such a backlash against literary fiction (warning: rant ahead). I have read more than once that certain popular young adult books are written better than literary fiction, that a book like The Hunger Games is better than The Tiger’s Wife because it is well-written and keeps you turning the pages.

I’m just going to say it.

No.

It isn’t better written. It really, really isn’t. There are things that Tea Obreht does in that novel, that cannot even be discussed no less understood in the context of The Hunger Games. This is coming from someone who loved both books and lest you think it’s my personal preference, I will go head to head with anyone. You pick the best sentence out of The Hunger Games, and I’ll pick the best sentence out of The Tiger’s Wife. They are not the same.

But here’s the thing. Why has everyone gotten their panties in a bunch about this? Why do people feel the need to compare the two?

And why is the basis of a great book whether or not you have to pay attention? When did it become bad form to need quiet to contemplate a sentence? How on earth does needing to work at a book, trying to figure out a book,  make it not interesting?

I just don’t get it.

I love going out for gnocchi in a tomato pesto cream sauce, a crisp Pinot Grigio, and let’s not forget the crusty bread and the olive oil in the little glass bottle, the basil leaf floating inside.

I also love me some Five Guys. Fry that burger up with some processed cheese, mayo and jalapenos and don’t forget the fries in the greasy paper bag.

But I’m not bringing my kids out for gnocchi. That meal needs to be savored.

When did savoring go out of style?

Mother Bunny

“Easter has been the worst day ever!” This was yelled from the bathroom into the bedroom where my husband, myself, my youngest son and daughter were gathered reading.

My middle son, needing to be heard, ruminating on his day, wanting the world to know how unjust his life is.

And due to parenting in a vacuum, being 800 miles from my closest friends and having no one around to emulate, I did what I presume a mother should never do. I told him he was behaving like a spoiled brat.

His day consisted of waking up his siblings at 6:00am to hunt Easter eggs. They then ripped through their baskets donning new shades and flip-flops. We watched a few Easter cartoons before heading out to play catch, go for a bike ride, play at a park, a quick game of football, dinner, making t-shirts for four of us with a batman stencil, some old t-shirts and a spray bottle filled with bleach and water.

At every turn, something didn’t go his way. He responded accordingly. So did I.

I look back now, as I do when we have waged war right before bed, he and I, regretful that I didn’t have a better way of handling it. I probably should have just let him rage, knowing he was tired and over-sugared, and let him come around. But tonight as with many nights, I just couldn’t do it.

Every complaint he had, I argued. I am not proud.

I told him that he had the same day as his brother and sister, but he made choices that brought on his consequences. I told him that I was tired of hearing about it. I told him that he was behaving like a spoiled brat, that when one thing doesn’t go his way, he insists on going over and over that instead of looking at all the great things. He screamed and cried…and I went numb.

It’s exhausting being a mom, knowing you’re going down the wrong path, and being too tired to deal with it knowing you don’t have the tools.

I did learn something. I just spent the last ten minutes yelling at my son about how sick I was of him yelling. Text book mother-of-the-year.

I berated him for being egocentric. He’s six. Of course he’s egocentric. Duh.

But the thing is, I have two kids that know when to stop.

I have one kid that doesn’t know, has no internal stop mechanism. He’s the same one who had nine hours a day of colic as a baby, the one who wouldn’t look at me when I got home from work, so upset that I’d been gone all day. He was six months when he started doing that.

I am certain all I’ve managed to do tonight is teach him nothing other than not to trust me. Because I told him he isn’t allowed to feel what he feels.

Bravo.

Fear

There’s real fear, walking alone down a city street and realizing that three men are following you (I had this happen. Trust me, that’s fear) which releases such a primitive force you can run faster than Michael Johnson. And then there’s psychological fear.

Psychological fear. Where does this come from? How many times do we talk ourselves out of doing something, making lists of why it wouldn’t work out?

I just did something that leaves my hands still shaking as I type this. I’m nervous and excited, but actually more than any of it, I’m proud of myself. I came up with so many reasons for why it was a bad idea, and then I did it anyway.

I may talk a good game, but believe me, I’m a safety first girl. I end up stuck in the status quo because I can rationalize anything, and much of the time the anything sounds like this…

• “Who in their right mind would go from the frying pan to the fire?

• “It’s the devil I know versus the devil I don’t. Still a devil.”

So I did it. And you know what? It was scary. But here’s the thing. Those people out in the world who do amazing things, do so because they stop saying they shouldn’t or they can’t and just do it. They figure out they can’t by trying to, not by talking themselves out before they begin.

At least that’s what I imagine they do.

How will we ever realize our potential if we won’t get out of our comfort zone? It isn’t possible. It is through failure that we reach better failure.

It isn’t about getting the story published, it’s about becoming a better storyteller. Screw art and craft and all of that nonsense. It’s about writing a sentence and then a year later reading it and knowing ten different ways to improve upon it, when a year ago that was the best you had.

It’s about getting out of our own damn way and trying as a means to see what we can do, not intellectualizing the hell out of it.

Try. Try again.

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

~ Thomas Alva Edison

 

Attention to Detail

Do you see it?

What about now?

How could someone create this earring out of nothing more than paint?

What do you see here?

Does this help?

Did you see the children before you read the sign?

What do you see here?

But now?

I think when I write, I forget that it’s up to me to show what needs to be seen. We are the painters, and the words are our brushstrokes. What to focus on, who do we focus on, and how clear do we need the image to be?

Lastly there is this. It’s a horribly blurry photo, my apologies. I didn’t take a picture of the painting, only the painter’s words. I liked the way they applied to writing.

“Do not be afraid of the face of human being.” Meidner once said. “Don’t let your pen stop until the soul of that one opposite you is wedded to yours in a covenant of pathos.”

Oh yes.