What, Me Writer?

posted in: Art, Paean, Word Nerd, Work 2
She was okay, I guess.
She was okay, I guess.

My mother is writing a novel. I may have mentioned it.

She’s had her concept for years but in the past eighteen months she’s actually started writing the thing. At the start of the process she was brimming with confidence and wore her task with no sense of burden or doom. As she’s descended further into the pain and agony of writing a book that she very much wishes to be good, she’s decidedly less chirpy. My mother is the first to say that she has a lot to learn about writing; she’s joined several writing workshops, she’s read or is reading lots of books on how to write effective, engaging fiction, and she’s working every day on this project. She’s going at it the right way, now. She’s going at it like she’s going into battle.

When I’m home in Iowa or up at the lake house as I was for the past five days, I am the first to greet my mother each day. This is because she and I wake up about the same time and do the same thing every day, wherever we are: we write. She gets her coffee and her laptop and stabs away at her novel there on the couch; I get my Earl Grey and my current journal and write away in that, sitting in an easy chair (in another room.) We don’t say much at that hour — it’s usually before 6am — because neither of us has gotten up to chat. We’re up to write, good, bad, or ugly. What is true for me is true for my mom, too: that morning writing time is usually the best part of our day. No matter where I find myself in the morning — a Holiday Inn in Omaha, a brownstone in Manhattan, an airplane, etc. — I find my pen and spend time on paper.

Why do it?

Mom and I have different reasons for writing, but whatever compels people to get up before dawn to put thoughts into words is complex, so it’s hard to sort motivational distinctions. Most writers want all the things being a “good writer” confers; the order of the list of stuff might change, but the stuff stays the same. My mom wants to write a novel because she loves to read; because she wants the sense of accomplishment that being a published fiction writer would bring; she wants to show the world she’s good at something other than quilts; she loves and believes in her book concept; because writing it is hard but it is frequently fun; because it’s a challenge. She wants to be interviewed by Terry Gross on Fresh Air, too, and has a few of her replies already prepared for when the time comes.

I write for different reasons and before I say what those are, I must emphasize that Mom’s reasons are not better than mine, nor are mine better than hers. They’re just different reasons. I write because I would lose my mind if I didn’t. That’s not hyperbole; that’s the straight dope. The only way I can make sense of my life, this planet, what I see, what I experience, how I think, what I do, what you do, and what it all might possibly mean, is to write it down. If I don’t write it down, it didn’t happen. That’s figurative (read: “If it’s not written down, it didn’t matter that much”) but it’s also literal: If I don’t write it down, I fear it did not happen. There isn’t always reliable proof of the past. Were we there? Did she say that? Is he really gone? When did we go? What was I wearing? Could we have really felt that way and then felt another way? Life is but a dream: I’d better keep a record or risk waking up and forgetting it completely.

I also write because of something American philosopher John Dewey said that, when I came across it many years ago, stuck to my brain like a wad of gum on a theater seat:

“If you are deeply moved by some experience, write a letter to your grandmother. It will help you to better understand the experience and it will bring great pleasure to your grandmother.”

To make sense of the world, I have to write it down. If it brings pleasure to someone else, well, that’s some pie a la mode, right there. Most of it sucks. I’ll never be Mark Twain. I’ll never even be Erma Bombeck (who was great, in her Bombeckian way.) I’ll just be me, sorting it all out.

Art Interlude: Patchwork Foto

posted in: Art 2

 

Foto Scan, 2014.
Patchwork Foto No. 291871, 2014.
Patchwork Foto, 2014.
Patchwork Foto No. 101, 2014.
Patchwork Foto No. 00917, 2014.
Patchwork Foto No. 00917, 2014.

I make art from time to time. I like to put words on things and enjoy using my utter lack of training in computer-aided graphic design to my advantage.

Example: the homepage of my website. I needed new slideshow pictures desperately. I have no web designer on retainer at the moment, nor do I have Photoshop (these things are expensive and I need to pay rent in New York right now.) Necessity is the mother of invention, as anyone with a website and no “web guy” knows, so, faced with a creative challenge, I cobbled together a solution that I feel turned out pretty slick. I used from images from my book, multiplying them and staggering them just so. I like the result. Check it out when you’re done here, if you like.

The humble scanner is a great tool for non art-school people who wish to make art with their computer. The scanner is really a camera, only what you take pictures of takes on this flattened quality because, you know, the scanner is flat and stuff. I started scanning quilt blocks a few years ago (my Twitter banner has been a scanned red quilt block forever) and thought they were just rad-looking; there’s a milky quality to fabric when it’s scanned, and all the threads seem magnified and all the rips are suddenly centerstage. I love it.

This weekend I did some scans, this time with messages and fabric from my stash with some patchwork thrown in for fun. Examples above of what I call “Patchwork Foto.” That’s what these sorts of pictures are called, I’ve decided. It’s like “ramen.” Singular, but it has lots of pieces. It’s art! You gotta name it funny.

I’m breaking the “one image only” rule for PaperGirl but the exception proves the rule and besides, this is a series. Watch for more of these and the development of them. They’re part of a larger project.

St. Mark’s Place, NYC.

Exhibit A: Punk lighting cigarette.
Exhibit A: Punk lighting cigarette.

Of all the streets I’ve lived on in my life (are there ten? twelve?) St. Mark’s Place is the most colorful.

This is a street with a popular history. I’m sure 29th and 112th Street have their lore, and we all know about Broadway and Madison Ave., the hogs! But St. Mark’s hauls itself into the better-known of New York streets because of the now-famous punk scene that flourished here in the 70s. The American punk, an eye-catching animal, continues to slink around the neighborhood, reminding you of the history of the place. There has not been a real punk “scene” here for decades and decades, but some young punks (from Oregon, or Iowa, or maybe just Far Rockaway) come here just the same, still.

St. Mark’s Place is three blocks long. That’s it. The street starts (or ends, depending on which direction you’re walking) at 3rd Ave. and dead-ends at Thompkins Square Park, there at Avenue A. Manhattan streets are numbered going up after Houston St. in Lower Manhattan. If you’re walking north on, say, 3rd Ave., you cross Houston and hit 1st St., then 2nd St., and so on. If St. Mark’s were a number, it would be 8th St., followed by 9th, etc.

The street is named for nearby St. Mark’s Church In-The-Bowery (which makes me think of Stratford-Upon-Avon but is very far away from that place.) St. Mark’s Church is very old. The first incarnation of the church was a chapel built in 1660 by early New York City player Peter Stuyvesant and he is buried there, but we’re not here to talk about him. We’re here to talk about why there are so many kids with safety pins through their lips on my block. They would ask why I’m on their block, and I can appreciate that.

In 1967, Abbie Hoffman started the Youth International Party (they called themselves “yippies”) at a club on St. Mark’s and counterculture settled in (it has a tendency to do that quickly, much to the chagrin of all the counterculturists standing around.) The yippies and the hippies and their ilk needed places to hang out and party, so clubs like Electric Circus opened where Andy Warhol and Jimi Hendrix and The Velvet Underground all made art and did heroic amounts of drugs. But what to wear? A pair of shops called Trash & Vaudeville opened in the early 70s right in the middle of St. Mark’s. Debbie Harry shopped there and The Ramones, too, and the punk rock scene was really taking off because of bands like The Ramones, the Sex Pistols, and Damned In London, who were all singing and screaming and making music which, at the time, was a person had to admit was really fresh and amazing and different, even if you hated it. Which most people did.

For true punk people, the music was only legit from like, 1976 to 1979. This is what I’ve learned in researching St. Mark’s. But boy, did it have an effect. The look of the musicians was hard, all spikes and leather and neon mohawks and pierced everything. It was a look that said, “Back off” and “I am pretty sure I don’t like you already.” Mean? Scary? Revolting? Maybe a little of all that, but a) they achieved what they wanted, perception-wise, so you gotta give the kids credit and b) I’m sure many of the punks (then and now) are roly-poly little bunny-shaped sweethearts when you get to know them. Isn’t that how it works?

There are so many punks hanging out on the street this summer. Several people have told me there are more than usual. Maybe because the weather hasn’t been too bad. Maybe because there are good punk bands playing here in NYC this summer and they’ve all made the pilgrimage. Many of them are painful to look at, with sores and things. I wonder if they do have a place to go and choose not to go there or if they are as homeless as their signs say. I could ask, but I’m not sure that would be appropriate. Sometimes I put change in the cups.

Perhaps I could tell them I went as a “punk rocker” like five times for Halloween when I was a kid. That could be a good conversation starter. Or not.

The Mornings Are Like This: Home Edition

posted in: Day In The Life 4
Suspense, by Charles Burton Barber, 1894.
Suspense, Charles Burton Barber, 1894.

It all begins at about 6am. It’s gone this way for years, now, with few variations.

1. Wake. Blink. Consider previous day: Was exercise executed? Were healthful comestibles consumed in sane quantities? Was enough work done to avoid panic immediately upon the opening of the eyes? If the answer is “yes” to at least 2 out of 3 of these status questions, optimism is available.

2. Look left. Consider sleeping man. Kiss sleeping man’s shoulder. Sigh with contentment.

3. Rise. Pad into kitchen. Fill kettle. Put kettle on stove. Activate burner.

4. Enter bathroom. Perform noncommittal morning ablutions. Mostly just look in mirror and make faces. Consider birthday next month.

5. Cross back through kitchen. Eye kettle. Prepare tea tray with honey, milk, spoon, mug Rebecca made for me in her pottery class that I love more than life itself, cloth napkin, French press with tea in it. Consider a) cutting back on the tea; b) loving the mug slightly less because it’s a mug for heaven’s sake.

6. Feel generally anxious about day.

7. While waiting for water to boil, flop on couch and pick up something to read. Read a little bit of it before the kettle whistles.

8. Bolt up, leap in three bounds to the kettle to flip the lid so it doesn’t wake Yuri. Pour water into French press. Take tea tray into living room. Set on coffee table. Consider the hurt feelings of the tea tray: coffee gets a whole table.

9. Drink tea and write or read for a good hour. Toward the end of the hour, feel more anxious about day but internally struggle with need to have a few more minutes. Consider taking a short, post-tea nap with sleeping man.

10. Say, “Alllllright” to no one. Get dressed.

11. Begin.

Annie: A Dream Deferred

A 12'' vinyl record suits a 42'' female child.
A 12” vinyl record suits a 42” female child.

My paternal grandmother Venita wore denim skirts, drank Heineken, and had a black cat name Pru.

But this is where we see the ecstasy and the agony of words because while everything I just wrote about my paternal grandmother is true, it paints a wildly inaccurate picture of the woman. Venita wore long denim skirts; Ralph Lauren, usually, paired with turtlenecks and loafers. She drank Heineken once a year at the most and it was this big deal when she did. And her cat was indeed black and Venita did call her “Pru,” but that was short for “Prudence,” and “prudence” means “cautiousness” which is exactly what Venita was going for. “Cautious” is the perfect word to describe my late grandmother; she used to tie a damned bonnet on my head whenever we went outside so I wouldn’t get an earache. I got earaches anyway and I couldn’t hear anything.

Ach. Now I’m sad about the bonnet. She meant well.

I owe Venita big, too, because when I was six I visited her and Grampa Lloyd in Houston and Gramma bought me a present: the 1977 original Broadway recording of Annie. As in “Little Orphan.”

The movie version came out in ’82 and I had seen it somehow; we didn’t have a VCR, so it must’ve played on network TV. However I knew the story, I knew it all right, and like any little girl who sees Annie, I was obsessed. The story was about me. These little girls were my homies. It wasn’t about being an orphan or having red hair; it was about being a small female with feisty friends full of song; it was about longing for happiness and attractive, capable parents and an indoor swimming pool.

When Gramma V. gave me the record, I probably didn’t know what I was looking at, exactly, since the Broadway art and the movie art look so different. But when Gramma put the needle on the record and that first overture played, a living room star was born. I learnt every groove in that wax, baby, backwards and forwards, from Miss Hannigan to Punjab and back and I sang — oooh! how I sang! — every single song at the top of my lungs. Annie’s a great musical, but if you’re six and female, it’s a religion.

“TOOOOOOOOOOOO-MAAAAAAAA-ROW! TOOO-MAA-ROW! I LOVE YAAA, TOOOO-MAAA-ROW! YER’ O-NLY A DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH”

:: pause to gasp for air ::

“WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Oh, my poor grandfather. Oh, that man must’ve wanted to kill himself. Because I could not stop at five repeats of my Annie record, nor did I stop for six. I could not stop for death, so Grampa kindly stopped the record for me after several hours each day. If I have any singing ability (and I have a teensy-tiny-weensy ability to belt, decent pitch, and nothing more) it’s because of Annie. If I am theatrical at times, it’s because of Annie. And I realized in searching for the image of the record up there, that my favorite color, a red in the carmine-vermillion-cherry family, is clearly Annie red.

All this came up because the other morning, lounging in bed, I suddenly burst into the key change section of “Sandy” from the musical. Yuri was as confused as I was, then I started weeping from nostalgia, and then I had to look up the lyrics, which I had gotten 90% right after all these years.

We are the songs we sang as kids, I think.

I Am A Cheetah

posted in: Family, Luv 6
Lee Meriwether, everyone. Image: Wikipedia.

 

 

Let’s out with it: Yuri is younger than I am. Notably younger.

Notably, but maybe not noticeably. I moisturize, I don’t smoke, I hardly drink. I do my best to keep trim. But there’s nothing like dating a younger man to make you moisturize more, continue to not smoke, and pass up the pork belly appetizer and the second glass of wine you would definitely have ordered if you were dating a man who was, say, fifty-six. As opposed to a man (ahem) thirty years that man’s junior.

Do you see what I’m saying? Yuri’s in his twenties. Yes he is.

In the grand tradition of comparing women to cats, I have learned that there is a feline name for me. As a woman in my 30’s dating a man in his 20’s, apparently I am a “cheetah.”

I can’t be a cougar, you see, because cougars are women in their 40’s who date men in their 20’s, and cheetahs are younger than cougars? Anyhow, I’m not a Courtney Cox-starring sitcom pitch yet, but I am dating down, age-wise, so I must be given a moniker. How else could I be effectively marketed to? I’m sorry, my cynicism’s showing. I should stop. Wouldn’t want any fine lines forming when I furrow my brow in that cynical way I do when I think about Proctor & Gamble/Lancome/Big Pharma.

In the years since my divorce, I have done some dating. I have met wonderful, kind, interesting, intelligent men. They are out there. I met a few I didn’t click with, sure, but that doesn’t mean they’re frogs*; we just lived our lives differently and it wasn’t practical to pursue a relationship. Every one of these gentlemen were older than me, sometimes by a notable (there’s that word again) margin. I thought that’s what worked for me and what a gal generally wants: a fellow older than herself. I’m not sure why, but I think for many of us it has to do with security. It’s deep-seated. It’s not easy to explain, but the converse proves the rule: I would never have considered dating a person younger than myself if you had asked. Are you crazy? Younger men are immature! They’re still figuring out everything! They drink non-micro-brewed domestic beer. Ew!

But then…

Enter Yuri, The Younger Man. Exit Hamlet’s Ghost.

There is so much that’s wonderful about dating someone in their twenties, someone who is currently climbing various ladders. Older men have climbed. They’re in the business now of maintaining their perch. But I’m a hustler, so I love the guy scaling the cliff wall. The ambition, the drive of Yuri, this excites me because I recognize it. Every day of my life — and this was true before my illness but has been much stronger since — I am aware that I have a woefully limited time on the planet. I must work hard, must play hard, must go hard as I possibly can because this is a war with death. I can’t wait, can’t stop. And Yuri’s right there. His energy to go matches my energy to go. So we go, then check back at the end of a bone-wearying day, knowing we did wring every last drop of marrow. And we sure do have fun doing it.

There are other benefits. I will spare you any crowing about his physique, though you must pardon me while I fan myself with this here fancy fan on this here fainting couch.

:: fans self, faints ::

Do I fear the semi-significant age gap? From time to time. There have already been a handful of moments when a twenty-something chick plopped down on a barstool near us and I thought, “Ah, she graduated when he did,” or something equally self-defeating. I’ll take a deep breath and have to consciously remember that I have earned every single day of my life and am rather proud of the sum, thank you. In a way, these moments are good. I’m reminded that, as cute as that girl may be, I do not want to trade places with her. At all. I’m stoked that I’m a) still alive and b) wearing cuter shoes. The second isn’t so petty: when you work really hard for many years and can buy the shoes that make your heart sing, this transcends catty Girl Zone stuff and becomes more about loving oneself and setting an example. When I was in my mid-twenties, I totally wanted to be able to afford better shoes. Now I can, and that came from working hard. No shame in this, no competition. Just achievement, and all girls can claim it if they like.

I miss you, Yuri. I hope it’s okay I told everyone you’re younger than me.

 

*Men get amphibians, women get cats. I don’t make the rules, but I am happy with the arrangement.

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