Artist Series at Rock & Sling

Thank you to Rock & Sling for the opportunity to share one of the books that is inspiring me right now. I haven't read The Wide-Awake Princess to my kids in years, but it is still speaking to me. Now more than ever. You can read the whole blog post here.



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New(ish)

Slowly, slowly, I am adding things to Bark Bread Designs. And learning things, and reading things, and trying to catch some of the ideas that flicker in my head. If I can get them onto paper they stay longer, grow brighter. Some make it into the world, which I am glad for--the whole birthing process, and holding what I've made (poem, paper thing, mended thing) and sending it forth into the unknown--I love all of it. Other ideas--I have to remind myself to enjoy all those sparks flying around inside. All that light and warmth.

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Rock & Sling Guest Post: Summer Reading

I am honored to have a piece up on the Rock & Sling blog this past week. It was the wrap-up of their Summer Reading series and a chance to revisit how life and books intertwined at some key summer moments, past and present.

And now that I'm thinking of summer, here's a small bit from a trip to my hometown in June:

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Of Burgers and Barrooms Anthology, Main Street Rag

I am so pleased to have my poem, "This is exactly" included in Main Street Rag's upcoming anthology, Of Burgers and Barrooms. I had the opportunity to peek through the proof, and it looks like a fascinating and varied collection. The projected release date for this collection of stories and poems is November 14, 2017, but you can preorder the book in advance for a discounted price of $10 here. 

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From My Reading, 3/22/17

From Animal Farm, by George Orwell:

Meanwhile life was hard. The winter was as cold as the last one had been, and food was even shorter. Once again all rations were reduced, except those of the pigs and the dogs. A too rigid equality in rations, Squealer explained, would have been contrary to the principles of Animalism. In any case he had no difficulty in proving to the other animals that they were not in reality short of food, whatever the appearances might be. For the time being, certainly, it had been found necessary to make a readjustment of rations (Squealer always spoke of it as a "readjustment," never as a "reduction"), but in comparison with the days of Jones, the improvement was enormous. Reading out the figures in a shrill, rapid voice, he proved to them in detail that they had more oats, more hay, more turnips than they had had in Jones's day, that they worked shorter hours, that their drinking water was of better quality, that they lived longer, that a larger proportion of their young ones survived infancy, and that they had more straw in their stalls and suffered less from fleas. The animals believed every word of it. Truth to tell, Jones and all he stood for had almost faded out of their memories. They knew that life nowadays was harsh and bare, that they were often hungry and often cold, and that they were usually working when they were not asleep. But doubtless it had been worse in the old days. They were glad to believe so. Besides, in those days they had been slaves and now they were free, and that made all the difference, as Squealer did not fail to point out.

*     *     *

I grew up watching the 1954 animated version of this at school. I've lost track of how many times I saw it, but the messages and images are pretty deeply-ingrained: the cruelty of Mr. Jones, the animal uprising, the Seven Commandments of Animalism. Napoleon's takeover. Good and faithful Boxer working himself nearly to death before being carted off to be made into glue. I always understood the movie as a warning about what had happened in the Soviet Union, but underneath that there was always what I now see as the core message: a warning about what we humans are tempted to do with power. What history has shown we do. That is what haunts me now about this book--that and how the truth flickers and shifts in the hands of some. How easily the others lose track, and go along with what is happening. This isn't just the story of a faraway place, locked into one point in time, it is something that happens over and over in our world. How simple it might be to just lose track, go along.

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From My Reading, 2/22/17

I started, but never finished, reading George Orwell's 1984 in high school. Eventually I will get back to it, but I am glad now that I read this first. 

From Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley:

"But why is it prohibited?" asked the Savage. In the excitement of meeting a man who had read Shakespeare he had momentarily forgotten everything else. 

The Controller shrugged his shoulders. "Because it's old; that's the chief reason. We haven't any use for old things here."

"Even when they're beautiful?"

"Particularly when they're beautiful. Beauty's attractive, and we don't want people to be attracted by old things. We want them to like the new ones."

A little later in the conversation, the Controller explains why none of the new things written can be like "Othello":

"Because our world is not the same as Othello's world. You can't make flivvers without steel--and you can't make tragedies without social instability. The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get. They're well off; they're safe; they're never ill; they're not afraid of death; they're blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they're plagued with no mothers or fathers; they've got no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about; they're so conditioned that they practically can't help behaving as they ought to behave. And if anything should go wrong, there's soma. Which you go and chuck out of the window in the name of liberty, Mr. Savage. Liberty!" He laughed. "Expecting Deltas to know what liberty is! And now expecting them to understand Othello! My good boy!"

The Savage was silent for a little. "All the same," he insisted obstinately, "Othello's good, Othello's better than those feelies."

"Of course it is," the Controller agreed. "But that's the price we have to pay for stability. You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We've sacrificed the high art. We have the feelies and the scent organ instead."

"But they don't mean anything." 

"They mean themselves; they mean a lot of agreeable sensations to the audience."

"But they're...they're told by an idiot."

"The Controller laughed. "You're not being very polite to your friend, Mr. Watson. One of our most distinguished Emotional Engineers..."

"But he's right," said Helmholtz gloomily. "Because it is idiotic. Writing when there's nothing to say..."

"Precisely. But that requires the most enormous ingenuity. You're making flivvers out of the absolute minimum of steel--works of art out of practically nothing but pure sensation."

The Savage shook his head. "It all seems to me quite horrible."

"Of course it does. Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand."

*     *     *

More and more I find myself wondering what we are buying, and buying into. How normal it seems in this corner of the world to expect and demand comfort and ease. How natural it seems to be to allow oneself to behave and be treated as first and foremost a consumer. How often I hear people confusing education with job-training. Does it raise a fight in you, the way it does me?

*     *     *

My other offering today, something old and beautiful. Spent, I suppose. But look:

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From My Reading, 2/11/17

from Man's Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy, by Viktor E. Frankl:

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate.

*     *     *

I have been taking my reading extra-seriously these days. There was a time when I was younger that I let myself believe I did not have room to read "for pleasure." It took crisis to realize that reading was not, in fact, a luxury, but food for my heart and mind. I made the decision that there was room in my life for books more than twenty years ago, and sure there are lean times, but I no longer have qualms about calling reading essential. Through the years you might have been able to find me reading while nursing babies, while knitting, while stirring pots of things-that-need-constant-stirring on the stove. Sometimes my head drops into the book on my pillow at night before I've read even a page, and sometimes these days I have trouble keeping the book propped open well enough to read on the treadmill. It does not matter, though; I am finding nourishment, even if it is in tiny bits. Plus, I get to meet the most amazing people through their books. Last week I got to know Viktor Frankl, and while I was familiar with some of his ideas, I needed to hear them more deeply.  Things like the passage above. And like this:

I consider it a dangerous misconception of mental hygiene to assume that what man needs in the first place is equilibrium or, as it is called in biology, "homeostasis," i.e., a tensionless state. What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.

I was also stunned by passages like this one:

For as soon as we have used an opportunity and have actualized a potential meaning, we have done so once and for all. We have rescued it into the past wherein it has been safely delivered and deposited. In the past, nothing is irretrievably lost, but rather, on the contrary, everything is irrevocably stored and treasured. To be sure, people tend to see only the stubble fields of transitoriness but overlook and forget the full granaries of the past into which they have brought the harvest of their lives: the deeds done, the loves loved, and last but not least, the sufferings they have gone through with courage and dignity.

There is poetry in there, don't you think? And maybe enough strength for the day?

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Found, Day 21

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Found, Day 18

Today was an all-girl day. Quiet was maybe hard to come by, but there was sun and warmth and the smell of spring in our hair and books galore, along with as many stolen moments to read as we could find.

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Found, Day 12

From a book I loved in my childhood and still love now:

Now I could use the sword Gull, he thought. But since all I have is my sheath-knife, I’ll have to make do with that. I can’t let the snake eat the old woman. And he rushed forward, waving his knife.

from “The Maiden in the Castle of Rosy Clouds,” by Harald Östenson,

Great Swedish Fairy Tales, illustrated by John Bauer

At the last moment the sword he needs but does not know how to get materializes in his hands, and the young man saves the old woman. Each of the things he needs, in fact, he finds only in the middle of an act of faith.

*     *     *

So imagine Heroic, setting out on a journey because of everything that should not be that is. And the journey is much harder and much longer than she (or maybe he) imagined. And he (or maybe she) keeps getting distracted—by old crones bearing strange gifts, by animals in need, by side adventures that make no sense. And doing the right thing does not seem to get her or him anywhere closer to setting things right. And he (or she) gains allies but not answers. And in the end, of course, all those things that kept Heroic’s path anything-but-straight were exactly what was necessary to face the giant/the dragon/the troll.

*     *     *

And what if, instead of looking at how untidy a life is, how it refuses to match up to whatever you think it’s supposed to match up to, you looked for real at the cracks and tears, the flaws and interruptions and stumblings, and made it your job to read those things, to listen deeply, and tell the story they tell you? 

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Found, Day 10

If, instead of calling ahead for the pizza the person who picks it up orders it when she gets to the restaurant, and if she brings a book and keeps her phone in her jacket pocket and the kids are not fighting at home about what movie they will watch, she may find a space that is near-sacred. This sequence of events may or may not have something to do with the fact that she hates making phone calls (still), even to pizza places. She may or may not call this planning ahead. 

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Medley, 2/2/15

1. That run you get after a long long stretch of runs fueled mostly by the belief that you can feel strong again—that run that actually feels strong—is worth waiting for. It is better, probably, than those past runs fueled by strength you hadn’t known you could have. Those were good for their newness and wonder, this run is good for its being hard-won, and an answer to hope you'd almost forgotten about.

2. That book you are reading right now, the one that is moving so very slowly but is also so very beautifully written—you have not failed it. You keep coming back, finding the pace and wondering at it. (And how many things in life, anyway, have slid into magic focus when you just found the right tempo, the right rhythm?)

3. That snow that finally came, that stopped time and dampened sound and draped your whole city in heavy clean beauty—some part of you must have been holding its breath waiting for it. You started breathing differently when it came.

You find yourself taking these things personally—the run, the book, the snow. Not that they are exclusively for you, just the fact that they were there, tucked into the edges and seams of a weekend, to be seen and held close—it would be wrong not to accept them as gifts. You imagine, sometimes (often,) that much of Ordinariness is really wonder upon wonder, waiting only for you to notice, to accept it as a declaration of love. 

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Medley, 1/21/15

So my writing recently has focused on things other than for this blog. It’s a shift I’m enjoying, but being a little out of the blog habit makes emerging from my shell that much more uncomfortable. Today, though, I thought I’d share a few of the things that have been on my mind:

1. This article about phone use and boredom. It came out more than a week ago but I keep thinking about it. This idea that allowing the mind to wander is great for creativity is not new to me, and I have been working to make/keep space for that in my life. (My new battle cry, in fact, may be “Make space!”—not just for creativity but for life in general.) The idea that my smartphone gets in the way of or fills that space makes sense. I do not think I will download an app to help me with this problem, but it is something I’m attending to in my own life. The thing that actually fascinates me the most about this article, though, is the idea of boredom. I’ve maybe always equated boredom with restlessness, for example being in a situation that I had to pay attention to something I wasn’t interested in. The state I’m in when my mind wanders—I don’t have a lot of trouble getting there, and I enjoy it a lot. I’m not sure I’ve ever considered that boredom. What about you?

2. One of the books I’ve been burying myself in recently is The Gift: Poems byHafiz, translated by Daniel Ladinsky, entirely because of two poems I keep running across/thinking about: “With That Moon Language,” and “Dropping Keys.” I'm moving slowly through this book; I keep finding new favorites. I keep wanting to write more poems myself, and at the same time I feel tempted to quit. Maybe everything good has already been said.

2. And then this, a TED talk by Cristina Domenech, “Poetry that frees the soul,” about teaching poetry in an Argentinian prison: “And in that seventh circle of hell, our very own, beloved circle, they learned that they could make the walls invisible, that they could make the windows yell, and that we could hide inside the shadows.” Please make time for about 12 ½ minutes and subtitles. 
 

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Light: 12/10/14

Flashlight under the pillow, lamp on the headboard, portable book light, illuminated cell phone screen, flashlight app—

the books themselves should glow, for all the light they give off. 

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So—July was a whole lot of traveling.

Now we’re home. A good part of this week has been spent puzzling out a schedule for the school year—for my teaching, for the kids’ school and activities, for everything else. I’m wondering how safe it is to drink lots of coffee while doing this. I was so excited to pay for the kids’ swim club on time, on top of all the Figuring Things Out! I did yesterday morning that I accidentally put the car into drive instead of reverse at the aquatic center and nearly drove down a big grassy hill. 

This time of year is a second January—looking forward, looking back. Last month’s travels are still fresh. The school year ahead is all theory, the outlines of it neatly arranging themselves on a grid. Things will not look this tidy in the thick of it, but that’s where the art lies, right? This is a thought I will try to hold on to.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about Llonio the Gatherer from Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain. I read the books to Oldest and Middle years ago, and Llonio has stayed close—with his approach to life, his skill at using what came to him, the beauty of his outlook: “Trust your luck, Taran Wanderer. But don’t forget to put out your nets!” Because I keep running into this: What You Have and What You Don’t Have are two very important and special things. Yes, both can be harsh, painful, devastating. But you can also make magic, when you start playing with the two. This, too, is something to hold on to.

In the spirit of Llonio, I want to share some of my gatherings from this summer—some of the quieter, magical things that presented themselves along with what was planned:

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What I'm Doing This Week

I’m not sure why I thought I’d get a lot of writing in this week. I am at the Chicago Suzuki Institute with my daughters, filling up on music and technique and new friends and Everything Violin. And—most importantly—reminding myself why we’re doing this in the first place (We are doing this in order to grow, in order to become better human beings. Music, you see, is the medium as much as it is the final product, the art, itself. And our lives—they are the true art.)

Those are noble words. The actual work they describe is awkward and messy and really stinking hard, but it is interspersed with these wonderful moments. Kind of like practicing violin, itself, which when done right is not at all romantic, but instead involves things like practicing the same two notes over and over until they can be played well, and then over and over many times more, until they will never sound ugly again. You don’t necessarily want to be in the room for this process, but the results are worth it. 

There has been music-making this week, and understanding, and beauty. 

We are enjoying ourselves and also bordering on wiped-out. In my characteristic, extremely relationship-oriented/extremely introverted way, I half want to absorb more/connect more/converse more, half want to hide somewhere with a book. One daughter, apparently, talks in her sleep. (“Mom,” a voice just informed me out of the dark of our dorm room, “there are two butterflies in here.”) And to be honest, our moments of beauty and understanding are balanced with healthy doses of snippiness.

Overall though, I feel like we have been able to relax more this year. I prepared myself ahead of time for the comparison game—not that I’m not tempted to play (I am) but I am also (mostly) able to see it for what it is. I resolved early on that frog catching/rescuing (they are tiny and everywhere, crossing the sidewalks like ants,) as well as extra desserts, would be part of our daily schedule along with practicing and brushing teeth. And—luxury of luxuries—I brought an air mattress with me this year. Sleeping on the floor won’t hurt. This is all very good.

This feeling that there’s so much here, that I can’t possibly process it all, that I also don’t want to stop trying to process it all—that must be a good sign. This too, I think, is why we are here.

More about our Suzuki institute and workshop experiences here.

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Summer/Souvenirs

Did you ever come home from the beach with a pocket full of rocks? Each one was chosen for its colors, or how it glistened. It was hard to stop gathering, and on the way home your shorts hung heavy with rock treasure, banged a little against your leg. At home you emptied your pockets and showed them off one by one, spit-polishing the best so you and your fellow rock-admirers could see them just the way they looked when they first caught your eye. Maybe you dreamed of finding a way to string them together, to wear them gleaming around your throat.

My favorite things so far this summer—every summer—are the unmeasurables, the things that happen on the edges, the moments that are almost always unplanned: laughter in the wave pool, the smell of fresh basil, being in the woods, read-at-the-table lunches, chance conversations, treasure-hunting at the library/at the bookstore/at antique stores, coming around the corner and discovering the latest art project. I’m carrying these things around with me like a pocketful of pretty stones. It’s good to take them out every once in a while and admire the colors and shiny spots, to dream a little about what you could make with them.

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Found: 1985

Husband and I have committed the next two weeks to going-through, straightening-up, purging the house of Stuff. I have been anticipating and dreading this time ever since we decided to do it. There’s too much of it in the house, this Stuff, and it is part junk, part treasure. Deciding which is a big job I would kind of like to continue avoiding. I am sustaining myself with fantasies of Order, and some kind of clean efficient spareness that is probably impossible, considering the five of us seem to be part hobbit. I also promised myself  a new project: sharing some of what I find here on the blog.

On June 10, 1985, I went shopping with my mom. I bought a bracelet, an O.P. shirt that showed a bit of my midriff, and a fabric-covered blank book with lined pages. I probably wore the shirt twice, if that often, because with the exception of two bikinis the summers on either side of my freshman year of college I did not feel comfortable baring my midriff. I have no memory of the bracelet. The book, however, came back into my life recently, tucked into a box of things my mother purged from her own home.

The summer of 1985 was the Summer of Penicillin, the Summer of Tonsillitis That Would Not Shake. Within 36 hours of ending a ten-day course of antibiotics, without fail, the tiredness and fever and sore throat would return. Finally the doctors gave up on ten-day courses and I swallowed giant pills daily for two months straight: at Confirmation Camp, at Norwegian Language Camp, on vacation, at home. I learned not to gag on them.

The summer of 1985 was also the summer I went on a diet, the summer I (first) dreamed of having the perfect tan, the perfect body, perfect hair. The summer I scared my parents with my dieting and perfectionism. The summer I read a book about a girl with anorexia that for some became a how-to manual but for me was scary enough to be a life-saver.

I wrote in the journal for seven months.

I thought about boys a lot, or at least wrote about them: I still like ____ a lot. But so does X, and Y, and now, since I’ve told Z I like him, she says she does, too. That’s depressing. X and Y are part of W’s group…and I’m not. I don’t have a chance against girls like them.

I turned 13. I wrote about it six days after my birthday, and one day after surgery to have my tonsils removed: Besides that [the boombox] I got a unicorn notebook, bubble bath, bath oil beads, a Perlman tape, a Tears for Fears tape, bath crystals, 4 pairs of earrings, bracelets, paper dolls, three lolypops [sic.], a Butterfinger, a jump rope, a Chinese yo-yo, two purses, and two stuffed animals, 50 dollars, and a 10-dollar gift certificate to Debbie’s Dollhouse.

I got philosophical and sent unwitting messages to my 41-year-old-mother-self:

That (social) part of my life is better now. But I have trouble getting along with mom. I realize that grownups aren’t really perfect. Nobody is perfect...it's just at different times of life people can conceal (and see through other people’s) faults. As a teenager I can see most faults, but I can’t conceal my own very well.

I was mystified: I want to see “St. Elmo’s Fire” and “That was Then, This is Now,” but they’re both rated “R” and Mom’s prejudiced against movies like that. And—I guess all the boys I’ve liked I’ve only liked as friends. I’m confused.

My last entry was January 18, 1986. It was long. Started with an update about a boy, descended into confusion about boys in general. I resolved to talk to my mom about it. And then this:  PS—I guess I was worried and insecure about the dance too, and everything was fine then…Bye.

And then blank pages.

The dance was fun, I remember that. And the PS--I still talk to myself that way. The PPS is not actually recorded in the book, even though it is written throughout the pages: Dear 41-year-old-mother-self, Listen more, and be gentle. Maybe most things are fine now, too. Maybe “bye” isn’t necessary anymore.

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Wordless 2014, Day 22

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Yours To Do With As You Wish

I bought her a diary at the book fair. It has a jeweled lock, and came with two perfect tiny golden keys. And it’s for writing your dreams. She adores it.

So I can understand why a well-meaning adult would look at it and say, “What did you do to your new diary?” I almost asked the same thing.

“I made the moon blue.”

I don’t know how much she’s heard about blue moons. She’s perceptive, and well-read, and pays attention to all sorts of things you don’t think she’s paying attention to. But clearly blue moons are special.

*     *     *

I loved the idea of a diary, myself. I loved the small book, the perfect tiny golden lock and key, the lined pages waiting to be filled.

I just hated filling it. I could last two or three days, maybe. Over many years I collected journals and notebooks, “All About Me” books that came as gifts, scrapbooks. Ruined them by writing on one or two pages. Abandoned them all.

The one exception was a vinyl-covered notebook, pastel pages climbing with flowers, that I filled with poetry in fifth grade. Filled. But that one never counted.

It turns out I have no patience for trying to recount my day. I do not want to provide a timeline, or a blow-by-blow, I do not want to provide captions. I have never been able to keep up with photo albums or scrapbooks or memory boxes or anything else. The things I want to keep or remember are stuffed in boxes or drawers or stacked in piles in closets I hope you won’t ever get a chance to open. I felt guilty about it for a long time.

Then, maybe because I still wanted to be somebody who kept a journal, I read A Book of One’s Own: People and Their Diaries, by Thomas Mallon. I drank this book. It was full of people and life and writing, and that, maybe, is even better than a tiny golden lock and key. The best part was that it introduced me to the idea of a commonplace book. Like a scrapbook, a commonplace book is a collection of the kind of thing I’ve always written down on scraps of paper, the things I carried in the back of my planner, or left sitting on my desk or dresser: quotes, ideas, notes and letters, lists, books I want to read. That could be my journal. That was my journal, unformed and ungathered. All I needed was that definition, and suddenly—freedom—a whole world unlocked.

*     *     *

During graduate school I worked in a small shop that sold handpainted Italian ceramics—dinnerware and serving bowls and dishes. It was an upscale shop, and I was amused by the people who would come in—people who knew how to do things right—who expressed concern over how they could use the dishes they were thinking of buying.

“Now this bowl—which one is this?”

“That’s the salad bowl. The larger one is the pasta bowl.”

“But what if I want to serve pasta in this smaller one?”

“Well, you can do that. It’s your bowl—use it however you like.”

I was aware of a certain freedom I had, not knowing or caring what size bowl I used to serve food in. I still wonder if, after buying both a salad bowl and a pasta bowl, the people who asked ever felt the freedom to use the bowls the way they saw fit: a gnocci with pesto side dish in the salad bowl, maybe, or a colorful pile of fresh fruit in the pasta bowl.

I wonder about all the things that didn’t count because they didn’t fit the definition. I wonder about all the treasures I looked right at but never saw. 

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