|
|
“Dear Old Love” is a website and now, a wonderful little book of compiled anonymous notes to “former crushes, sweethearts, husbands, wives, & ones that got away.” In honor of Valentine’s Day, I gathered an armful of my favorites to put lovingly in a blog on the dining room table. Feel the love, and eats lots of chocolate, do.
Mother told me, “Don’t buy the first coat you try on.” So I broke up with you. But in retrospect, I think she was talking about coats. Sorry.
I am consoled by the fact that the two of you will have very hairy children.
You were the only worthwhile thing I studied in college.
I’m dreading the first snowfall, because I’ll have to remember a Sunday, white sheets, and pillow creases on your face.
You blew me all out of proportion.
Remember in tenth grade when I said we should meet at Victoria’s Secret, and you showed up with your friends? I was giving you a visa to the land of adult sexuality, and you tried to smuggle three doofuses across the border.
I have to believe our relationship continues to play out in all those particles of cigarette smoke we exhaled together.
Even though we broke up five years ago, I still rate the way I feel about someone new on a scale that goes from Zero to You.
I stopped talking to everyone who grew tired of hearing me talk about you. So now I don’t really talk to anyone.
I can’t believe I miss hearing you yell, “Now that’s what I’m talking about!” after bowel movements you were particularly proud of.
If I’d known I was only going to get one shot, I would have left more marks.
I love how you always chewed gum when we had sex. It was like doing it with a 50’s carhop.
My love for you is like a mummy—carefully preserved, with the brains yanked out.
When I get a hard-on, it points towards Philadelphia. It thinks you’re still there.
I hate when people ask me what my “type” is. Because I always end up describing you.
I keep trying to get my hair back to exactly the way it was when you loved me.
Every time I drove you home, I prayed for traffic.
Nothing you can do would stop me from loving you. My heart has given you tenure.
Hey, Reach. I ended up marrying my safety school.
Being with you was like being on vacation from the world.
Thanks to you, inhalers turn me on.
Your messy car felt like home.
You believed Jesus walked on water, but you wouldn’t believe my fibromyalgia was real.
My folks liked you a lot better than I did. They have good taste, but it isn’t mine.
The worst part is, I can’t talk to you about what to do about you.
“We all miss you” was a cruel thing to say to me, and you knew it.
Because of you, overalls, to me, are forever the height of style.
I want you then.
I’m so miserable without you. It’s like you’re still here.
If disaster strikes, I still plan on coming to save you.
–“Dear Old Love: Anonymous Notes to Former Crushes,Sweethearts, Husbands,Wives,& Ones That Got Away.” Compiled by Andy Selsberg, 2009.
Yesterday I went to the mall to use a 15% off birthday gift card from Anthropologie. It was a very cunning little card with a tiny white birthday candle hanging from an elastic that one could wear as a necklace, if one was inclined to accessorize with small, wax candles. Anyway, it expires at the end of this month, so I figured I’d better get my fifty-year-old butt down there, and leaving the necklace home, went to look for something kicky.
I circled the store several times, plucking the sleeves of many wispy, tops. So cute. So French. So over-priced. I even went so far as to try on some of these wispy, French-o-riffic clothes. None of them fit right. They are cut to fit my daughters or tiny French women. And so, resigned to my age and non-Frenchiness, I trudged off the main floor and went over there…to the housewares section at the store’s periphery. That’s right. The housewares section where everything is sturdy, and one size fits all. Of course, you won’t find anyone under the age of thirty here, either, cooing over tea cups or dish towels. But it was here that I finally had some success and found a charming red butter dish and a cunning, little green pitcher that would be perfect for brunches or a small bunch of flowers that I might gather with great joi de vivre. I was pleased with my purchases and when I arrived home, I modeled the butter dish for my husband. He thought it quite fetching. Personally, I would’ve preferred something in polka dots with a great neckline. But I will have to search that one out somewhere else. And give my future discounts to my daughters. Tant pis pour moi. Quel dommage…merde.
Bunch Of Phonies Mourn J.D. Salinger
 Salinger
CORNISH, NH—In this big dramatic production that didn’t do anyone any good (and was pretty embarrassing, really, if you think about it), thousands upon thousands of phonies across the country mourned the death of author J.D. Salinger, who was 91 years old for crying out loud. “He had a real impact on the literary world and on millions of readers,” said hot-shot English professor David Clarke, who is just like the rest of them, and even works at one of those crumby schools that rich people send their kids to so they don’t have to look at them for four years. “There will never be another voice like his.” Which is exactly the lousy kind of goddamn thing that people say, because really it could mean lots of things, or nothing at all even, and it’s just a perfect example of why you should never tell anybody anything.
–” The Onion,” January 28th, 2010.
I think Salinger would’ve appreciated this. Thanks, J.D. for all your wonderful words and influence.
So this week I am turning fifty, and as a surprising exercise in subconcious hijinks, I find myself compelled to clean the house. Not just my bathroom, but the entire house. Every room– vacuumed and dusted; kitchen floor washed and shined with two coats–count ‘em, two coats– of shiny floor finisher; and bathrooms cleaned from top to bottom including washing the mats. No, I haven’t murdered anyone lately. It’s Shawn Colvin’s “Sunny Came Home” playing repeatedly in my head, not Lady Macbeth’s bloody hit, “Out, out, damn spot!” And as I eagerly head upstairs with the Windex, bathroom cleaner and a fat roll of paper towel tucked under my arm, I’ve thought of my task as a kind of mental mikvah. The word “mikvah” immediately comes to mind because it’s the closest thing I can think of to describe this need. For religious Jewish women, the mikvah is a ritual cleansing bath taken after their period, before their wedding, or anytime the need arises for a good spiritual rinsing off. Something in me felt that it was important to go into my birthday weekend with a clean house. No dust rhinos rolling beneath the dresser, no unsettling coat of body slough and toothpaste on the bathroom counter, no gooky puddle beneath the tooth brushes. No, I wanted a certain purifying, if that’s the right word. And because I’m not generally inclined to being the White Tornado, I can’t help but wonder if there’s something hugely metaphoric about my desire to enter my sixth decade with a clean house. Certainly, a clean house allows new crud and junk to accumulate. But it also presumes a lack of clutter, a broad, smooth surface to work on, an ability to spread out, a crisp outlook, and a cleansing away of all that’s old, unwanted, and getting in my way.
Last week as if someone spirit was following me in my duties, I found a book lying on the table–in the children’s room, mind you. It was a new book called, “Fifty is the New Fifty” by Suzanne Braun Levine, the first editor of Ms. Magazine, and current contributing editor of More magazine. It’s basically a waiting room book. Y’know, the kind you can read in the time it takes to see your doctor. But when I saw that no one seemed to be around to claim this book, I slid it beneath the stack of books about toads I was re-shelving, then tucked it into my bag and took it home. The premise is an affirming one: Fifty is not the new forty, or even the new forty-five. Fifty is its own wonderful age–rich with possibility and promise–and only the beginning of Second Adulthood. It’s an interesting read, and certainly captures a lot of what women my age and older experience as they feel the emotional tectonic plates shifting within, renegotiating their relationships, and discovering who they are, which in many ways, is wonderfully different from who they we were. Viva la fifty and I guess, okay, viva la Regenerist by Olay for when we need to feel some control over things we can’t control. Fifty can be the new fifty with a few less wrinkles…both inside and out. http://www.cmt.com/videos/shawn-colvin/71213/sunny-came-home.jhtml
I have just returned from reading to two joined classes of 5th graders at a local elementary school. I guess it’s National Let A Complete Stranger Read To You week. Every year, this school kindly invites me to participate and I always accept because I’ll do almost anything for a free muffin. Seriously though, it’s always very energizing for me because I get to be with a captured audience of great kids and supportive, enthusiastic teachers who have taught their students to wiggle their fingers in the ASL sign for applause, and who ask questions that every writer should be prepared to answer. I especially liked the kid who asked if I get “depressed and paranoid” when one of my books gets rejected. I think my resounding “YES!” was akin to those Peanuts cartoons where one character’s bold type reply sends the other one hurtling backwards.
I read the opening chapters of Savvy by Ingrid Law, a 2008 Newbery Honor book about a family whose members all receive a special power, or savvy, at the age of thirteen. Mibs’ Great Aunt could go back twenty minutes in time every time she sneezed. Her brother, Rocket, can produce electricity; and her brother Fish, causes hurricanes. What will Mib’s special “savvy” be? And how will it help wake her father after an accident lands him in the hosptial, and lying in a coma?
Although I’m not super keen on twangy narrators, and the prose is a tad indulgent in the alliteration department, the language has a nice musicality, and makes for a good read-aloud. The story is well done, moves at a satisfying pace, and I enjoy reading from good books that the kids might not have already bumped into. Afterwards, a number of them asked where they could find the book. So I considered my work there done.
David Lloyd, one of my TV writing heroes and one of the all-time great writers for The Mary Tyler Moore Show and other television series, passed away this week after a long illness. In additon to writing for MTM, Mr. Lloyd also wrote for Jack Parr, The Bob Newhart Show, Taxi, Cheers, Frasier, and many others. Mr. Lloyd will be remembered best, however, by his masterpiece for MTM, one of the most celebrated episodes in TV history, “Chuckles the Clown Bites the Dust.”
As a big fan of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, there were a few staff writers whose names in the opening credits always made me feel especially excited. I knew my MTM writers (Treva Silverman and Susan Silver were also stars in my book) and I knew that if David Lloyd’s name flashed on the screen, it was going to be a terrific episode. His writing always brought memorable moments between the characters, a lot of laughs, and a fresh way of looking at ourselves.
Thanks David Lloyd for all your wit, wisdom, and for turning our world on with a smile, time and time, again.
chuckles the clown bites the dust
So who put the WriMo in NaNoWriMoDingDong? That’s the question of the day. I am now finishing up Week #2 of this exercise in trust. Yes, trust. Because for me, writing without looking back is akin to that old trust exercise in which you allow yourself to fall backwards into the arms of the person behind you. Just as I must have faith that the person behind me won’t suddenly be overcome by a terrible itch that leaves me falling flat on my back, I have to trust that all the NaNo words I’ve typed the day before are not all doo-doo. And that when the time comes for me to gather my pages and re-read what I’ve got, I won’t want to use those pages to catch the projectile vomit issuing forth from my mouth. No, I’m hoping–no, trusting–that there are seeds, nuggets, maybe even a gem or two–okay, maybe not a gem, but perhaps a Cracker Jack prize–tucked away in the middle of all those pages. This is such a new and different way for me to work. And while I’m definitely outside my comfort zone, I can admire the process for the way it pushes me forward and gives me permission to write scenes that are disjointed and characters who may not make the final cut in casting.
I’m nearing the mid-way point in the word count, but have become less fixated on that. 50,ooo words is way too many. I’ve never written a book over 38, 000. So I don’t really care if I hit the jackpot number. More important for me is reaching the climax in the narrative arc and at least sighting land of the ending. At the moment, I am wandering the the large, flat expanse of the mid-west–the middle. Ugh. Not a decent bagel in sight. It’s all Wendy’s hamburgers and Motel 6 and Wal-Mart. Not very inspiring. I have to make it to Phoenix. I need to see signs that don’t have an ” ‘n” in them as in “Dunkin.’” It’s a schleppy, hard part to get through, but I will put the pedal to the metal, find a good CD to listen to, and move forward.
This week’s 40th anniversary of “Sesame Street” reminded me of how much that show shaped my sensibilities in my writing and in my voice. Even though I was well past the intended audience when it premiered, I remember my older brother and I were completely taken with the wit and style of the show, as well as the endearing quality of the Muppets. It was like meeting someone you immediately click with. Kermit, baby, where have you been all my life?! The humor was so in sync with our sense of humor, and the sweetness was never saccharine. It truly defined “sincere,” a word in our family vocabulary that has more to do with winsome and endearing than honest or genuine. But then, “Sesame Street” never hit a false note, so I suppose it was truly “sincere” in the fullest sense of the word. In any case, for the first time in TV, it made childhood a really cool place to be. Maybe that’s why a ten and thirteen-year old rushed home from school to turn on the TV and discover what new brilliance would be brought to them by letters, numbers and fuzzy, crazed Muppets.
Okay, so I am two days into the insanity of NaNoWriMo–National Novel Writing Month. The goal is 50,000 words by the end of November. So far, I’ve clocked 5,841 words. As Charlie Brown would say, “Only 44,159 to go.” I just hope I won’t end up like Lucy Van Pelt filling the last ten pages with veries, as in “the very,very, very, very, very end.”
Because I didn’t want to face a blank screen yesterday, and because I don’t want my time spent to be a total free-write, I put in some hours beforehand working out what I wanted my novel to be about–sort of. And gathered my cast of characters–sort of. And blocked out the basic trajectory of the narrative–sort of. Then I started writing. By doing this I not only headed off the major source of most writerly anxiety–beginning–but gave myself the added benefit of slacking off on Day 1 of NaNoWriMo, and enjoying the beautiful post-Halloween weather here in Framingham.
My other strategy for psyching myself out (so as not to freak myself out) is writing my novel as a blog, or a “blovel,” as I’ve learned it’s called. I have created a secret blog in cyberspace which I am not inviting anyone to torture their eyes with. And it’s there that I spew my daily bucket of shapeless narrative and disjointed dialogue. Ah, the life of a writer! The benefits of the blovel are two-fold. One, you are forced to name your topic or chapter and thus, commit to the main idea of your chapter or scene. And Two, you have these nice tight little borders to write within. So for those of us who find comfort in the bone-crushing hug, and who feel our heart rate drop to near flatline at being swaddled tightly under the covies, these borders afford the safety of a narrow scope in which one can express oneself. They help enormously in reducing the feeling of floating aimlessly in the infinite void of space. The long and short of it is that a blog post is a workable chunk, and the only way I can possibly manage to move forward and not freeze up and head straight for the Oreos.
The other element of NaNoWriMo that I am instituting, is a system of reward for good behavior. If I fulfill my daily word quota, I am entitled to a small reward. Today the reward was leaving my house to search for colorful long-sleeved T-shirts, the kind that are best for layering. I recently realized that opening my dresser drawers is like peering into a coal mine at night. Everything I own is dark. Black. Brown. Charcoal. Plum. So I went out seeking color. And I found a little bit of it, plus a nifty white summer sweater on the sale rack at Chico’s.
So all in all, not a bad NaNo start. Plus, I got to see a photo of my younger daughter dressed up for Halloween as Leo Botstein, the president of her college. It was fabulous. And I am proud to have a daughter who has the confidence and joie de Halloween to go out in public looking like an academic Daddy Warbucks, or a bald Harry Potter. You go, girl!
Hey, kids what time is it? It’s NaNoWriMo time! That’s write…I mean, right! NaNoWriMo isn’t just splendiferously fun to say, it’s also the acronym for National Novel Writing Month. Yes, for thirty days and nights of literary abandon, people are invited to sign up and commit the damp, drizzly November of their souls and fingers to producing a 175-page novel. That’s 50,000 words, folks. And it doesn’t cost a thing other than your sanity and possibly all the relationships you value most. What’s fun about NaNoWriMo, aside from the simple delight of saying NaNoWriMo, is that the undertaking is all about quantity, not quality. According to their website, the “kamikaze approach to writing will lower your expectations.” Lower expectations? I like that! “Make no mistake about it: You will be writing a lot of crap.”
But that’s good, too. As writer Anne Lamott says in her must-read book on writing, Bird by Bird, it’s crucial to crank out the shitty first draft. Only from the shitty first draft, she asserts, can you possibly begin to glean what your novel is really all about, and what work lies ahead.
I first heard about NaNoWriMo a few years ago and personally, it sounded pretty silly to me. I imagined a virtual Mount St. Helen’s-sized pile of novels about transmogrified unicorns with vowel-starved names being generated across the time zones. But when a couple of friends from VCFA mentioned that they were thinking of participating–one cleverly adding the caveat that she would consider it a “non-binding commitment,” I thought, hmm…. Maybe the kamikaze approach to writing might be just the thing I need to pull that contemplated-but-deferred project from the back of my head and onto the blank screen. Even if it turns out to be utter crap–which it certainly will be–and even if I don’t reach that 50,000 goal line–which will most likely be the case– allowing myself one measly month to put time and effort into something new and uncertain could be a worthwhile endeavor. After all, it’s only 30 days. If I fail abysmally, who will know or care? And if I can tease a few decent paragraphs out of all the utter crap, something that is an actual, honest seed of a novel, then I will consider the time well-spent. Unlike the hours I’ve chalked up contemplating GE Show n Tell players on Ebay.
So what say you closet conjurers of contemplative contemporary fiction? Care to join me–the Queen of Non-commitment? If I can take the plunge (and actually, I don’t know that I can but this verbal crescendo I’ve written myself into requires that I wind this up with lots of enthusiastic bravado), so can you! At the very least, it might get us out of cleaning the bathrooms until December.
In this week’s The New Yorker (Oct. 19) Daniel Zalewski presents an excellent round-up of books that reflect the current parenting zeitgeist (”The Defiant Ones“). At our library today, I came across How Do Dinosaurs Say I Love You?, and was struck, as Zalewski was, by the pathetic eagerness on the part of the parents in this book to praise their children. I agree with Zalewski that there is something disturbing about a kid’s slight gesture of kindness trumping “a day’s worth of belligerence.” I’ve long felt uncomfortable with the celebration of obnoxious, bratty kids in picture books. As winsome as the illustrations are in Ian Falconer’s Olivia, there’s something about the epinymous pig’s know-it-all attitude that makes me wince. Call me old-fashioned, but even though “nobody knew quite so well how to frighten Miss Clavel,” as Madeline did, it was always clear that her wimple-topped teacher/mother-figure was no push-over. I also heartily agree with Zalewski that it takes a very skilled writer/illustrator like Kevin Henkes (Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse) to walk that fine line of acknowledging a child’s raw emotions without turning the parents into total wimps. Maybe our books truly reflect the parenting styles of our times: I grew up on the kind-but-firm parents of Russell Hoban’s “Frances” books, and didn’t even blink when Mr. Bear spanked Edith in “The Lonely Doll” for being naughty. But maybe the pendulum has swung a little too far the other way. Maybe it’s time to make room on the bookshelf for a sprightly illustrated book titled, Because I’m the Mommy!
|
|
