A link to something I wrote for my real job, the one for which I get paid:
Local Travelogue One
“I have traveled a great deal in Concord.” – Henry David Thoreau
My husband, kids and I have taken two major vacations and several minor road trips. (The kids are 16 and 13.) The first major do was a drive to the Grand Canyon in 2006. That trip involved a lot of camping and one tornado. The other was a trip to Florida this past November, marking our first experience of flying together as a family.
I’d love to travel more, but in the past month, my life has taken a turn that promises to keep me anchored for the foreseeable future. So I’ve decided to take Thoreau as my inspiration and travel my hometown. To that end, my first hyper-local travelogue in photos.
So Many Mistake
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering.
– Leonard Cohen (“Anthem”)
I want to take a moment to acknowledge that I make a lot of mistakes in my blog posts. Get used to it. I have. I generally write and publish them immediately, with very little rewriting. I do try to proofread, but you know you can never catch your own mistakes when you proofread the same day. No matter how carefully I think I’ve looked over my post before I hit the “publish” button, I almost always find a typo later. I fretted over this for a bit, but I’m over it now.
When I write stories or poems for publication, I rewrite and proofread, and rewrite and proofread, lather, rinse, repeat. Yes, I know this is publication, but not the same kind. I’ve decided this is the place where I will allow myself to be gloriously open and flawed. This is my arena for just getting my thoughts out there, and I hope I’m providing some value, even if it’s not perfect. Sometimes, when I look at someone else’s blog and see a mistake or two, I enjoy it even more, because I’m reminded there’s a human being behind it. There’s a connection there. I’d like to think it’s a reciprocal feeling, at least sometimes.
Let’s Be Purists
Here’s a phrase I’d like to see used only in its original context: “lowest common denominator.” I suggest we stick to purist principles and use these words only in relation to actual math problems. I’m feeling pretty done with hearing the expression applied to human beings, especially children. To be honest, I’ve used it myself in the past. But I’ve declared a personal moratorium on it.
Think about it. That kid who is struggling with his reading – he’s a real person. He’s someone’s child. The girl who takes a few minutes longer than your kid to figure out the least common denominator in math class – she’s a human, and she’s good at something that some of the other kids aren’t. Every child, and every adult for that matter, struggles with something, and nobody wants to be ridiculed for it.
If I want my humanity recognized, I need to recognize it in others, and not use dismissive terms. Lowest Common Denominator, I hereby by banish you from the realm of humanity-describing adjectives.
The Borrowers – Recapturing the Joy
Last night I went with my daughter to see “The Secret World of Arrietty,“ a Studio Ghibly film based on “The Borrowers“ by Mary Norton. I adored these books when I was a kid. After seeing the movie, I remember why they were so captivating. Who doesn’t want to dream about little tiny people who genuinely could use the dollhouse furnishings? It made so much sense to me. Of course that’s where the stray buttons and spools of thread went when we couldn’t find them. They were borrowed by the little people. And yet, wouldn’t it be a life of adventure, too? All this needing to hide from the big people, encountering insects nearly your size and the borrowing itself, which requires a borrower to combine the hardiness of a mountaineer with the cunning of a spy.
I remember spending hours trying to create my own little borrower homes with items from around the house. Um, sorry Mom, that is where the missing buttons and thread spools went. I bent paper clips and stuck them through an upended cardboard bank check box to try to simulate a closet. It didn’t look great, but I give myself and A for effort.
It was a true joy watching this movie as an adult. As with all Studio Ghibli productions, the animation was outstanding. If ever a movie called for attention to detail, it’s this one. The fields of wild flowers, in particular, caught my eye. I could pick out individual types of flowers – black-eyed susans and bachelor’s buttons.
Though differing from the book in some regards, the movie was faithful to the basic story and the spirit of the original. My only quibble is with the character of the borrower named Homily, who is Arrietty’s mother. I thought the movie made her too panicky and fretful. If I remember correctly (and I do, because I looked it up), in the book it was Homily who sent Arrietty out borrowing. She wasn’t a mom who stayed home and fainted over things.
Still, I love that the movie, like the books, doesn’t go for the cheap, easy, saccharine ending. It keeps the complexities of the relationships between borrowers and human beans.
My recommendation: see the movie and read the books. I’m going to re-read them myself.
Favorite Romances
I don’t read genre romances. I’m not knocking them; only saying they’re not my thing. But I am a sucker for a love story, happy or tragic or confused, as long as it’s well done. Sometimes the relationship is the story, and sometimes it’s only part of the bigger picture. Off the top of my head, here’s a list of books with my favorite romances. These are in no particular order.
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. This is a tale of two magicians, a girl and boy, bound into a rivalry as children. The venue of their lifelong duel is a magical, mysterious circus.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Oh Gatsby – you let Daisy consume you too much.
The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith. This series has two relationships I adore. Precious Ramotswe and JLB Matakoni is the first. Grace Makutsi and Phuti Radiphuti. They’re so real and sweet and awkward.
Second Nature by Alice Hoffman. Nearly feral love with a semi-werewolf.
Emma by Jane Austen. The intrepid match-maker who can’t see her own life clearly. For those who have never read Jane Austen and think she’s stuffy, you couldn’t be more wrong. This book is downright funny. Also touching.
Patchwork Planet by Anne Tyler. Flawed and wonderful characters who stumble through wrong relationships on their way to each other.
Confessions of Domestic Deficiency, and a Poem
One day my son, who was around seven at the time, came into the kitchen where I was working. I’ve never heard more sincere effusiveness in a voice than when he expressed his excitement over what I was preparing for dinner. “That’s my favorite recipe out of everything you make!” he told me. I was opening cans of soup.
And he’s not the only youngster I’ve impressed with my cuisine. A friend of his spent the afternoon with us once and went home to tell his parents about what I had served for a snack. “She makes the best waffles!” he told them. “You cook them right in the toaster.” The kid’s mom is a friend of mine, so we were able to laugh when she related this to me later.
I’ve never been…enthusiastic, shall we say…about cooking. For me, it’s much more about the end result than the process. Frankly, I’d rather be writing. Which is why I don’t impress the adults quite so much.
The list of my culinary failures is long. When I was a young newlywed, my extremely large extended family held a reunion. One of my aunts put herself in charge of organizing the food. Which was probably smart and necessary, so we wouldn’t end up with fifty bowls of potato salad. But I think she made certain assumptions. Such as believing my two X chromosomes enabled deviled egg making abilities. Shortly before the reunion, I received a letter from my aunt listing what dish each family member should bring. And by each family member, I mean the adult females, even the ones who had married into the clan. Her own sons were responsible for nothing, but their wives were.
Next to my name, I saw the words “deviled eggs.” I had no idea how to make those. This was in the days before the internet, so I couldn’t have a recipe on my computer screen within five minutes. Oh, I suppose I could have cracked open a cookbook during one of my frequent trips to the public library. Or, you know, called my mom. But I decided I’d rather put my energies toward rants about the ingrained sexism in my family of origin.
“This is exactly why I hate cooking!” I’d say to my long-suffering husband. “Because women are just *expected* to do it.” Oh, I was happy to move away from my conservative old-fashioned upbringing, in which women were judged by cooking abilities. Meanwhile, I had a family reunion to attend, at which I appeared bearing a dozen hard-boiled eggs with devil faces drawn on the shells. Clever of me, wasn’t it?
In the more current meantime, I have friends and relatives all along the conservative-liberal spectrum. And I find many of the liberal friends are all about what and how people cook. Is it organic? Did you buy local? I like slow food. You’re not wasting packaging by buying pre-made foods are you? Where can I go that I’m not expected to cook??????
It’s not that I want to shirk the food prep altogether. I have learned to cook a few things along the way. I’m not bad at non-canned soups when I have time – you cut things up and throw them in a pan together. We even have a garden every year. Okay, mostly my husband has a garden every year. But I weed sometimes and I do use the food in our meals. I’ve gone as far as to make my own salsa.
About three years ago, I decided I would change my attitude. I would embrace cooking. I would enjoy the process, being in present for the experience, totally in the moment. I really threw myself into it, and I came to…eh, not hate the chore as much as I once did. I’ve come to realize cooking is necessary, and can even be enjoyable. But, while I no longer detest it, I also know it will never be The Thing That Fulfills Me. I will never find myself thinking “If only I had half an hour to myself to go into the kitchen and whip something up” in the same way that I long for a half an hour to write.
I did write a poem about my lack of domesticity, though:
What Gift Is This*
Next to us the neighbor grows
Peppers, chives, tomatoes, lettuce
Brings a gift of produce freshly
Picked to welcome us as we settle
Sisters, friends and cousins knit
Scarves and blankets, bake and sew
Cookies, quilts or crochet afghans
Always they are ready with
An Offering for any major
Life event – a baby, death
Or illness, they appear in front halls
Bringing sustenance, warmth and comfort
My dilemma – how to pay
In kind when I am overdone
In cooking, brown of thumb, too large
Of stitch, and plain old undomestic
What reaction would I see
If I showed up, a sheaf of papers
In my hand, a look of welcome/
Sympathy / congratulations
On my face and said to them
Have some poems freshly penned
*This poem originally appeared in Well Versed.
A Year of Gratitude
What kind of awesome was 2011? All kinds of awesome. This past year, I decided to use my Twitter account (I’m @damari19 if anyone’s interested) as a sort of personal/public gratitude journal. My goal was to tweet about something I found awesome every day for a year. I missed a few days, but very few. I highly recommend doing this, whether via twitter or post-it notes or a silent thought right before you go to sleep. Getting in the habit of noticing one specific good thing each day has helped my mood and attitude tremendously.
I tried to find something new each day, though sometimes I forgot I’d already counted something as awesome earlier in the year. Omelets got three separate mentions. So did Dr. Who.
Looking back over my year in gratitude tweets, certain themes are prominent:
My top category seems to be food, which might explain what’s happened to my waistline. See omelets, above. Pie got two nods from me, once on 3/14 and again at Christmas. But I was also grateful for lettuce from our garden, basil from our garden, and the salsa I made using jalapenos from our garden. Halloween candy. A falafel dog from Mutt’s in Oklahoma City. Also drinks – coffee and tea come up, tea more than once.
Family and friends garnered many mentions. My husband cleaned the windows. I noticed when my kids did chores without being nagged. Got to visit my mom. My brother and sister-in-law knocked themselves out as hosts when we visited for Thanksgiving. Coffee with a friend. Inside jokes with old friends. I am immensely and always grateful for my various relationships.
I notice I commented a lot on the trouble don’t last category. Getting over a cold. Kids getting over colds. Rain after a drought. Figuring out how we’re going to pay for unexpected expenses. Cicadas went away. It’s all good.
Then there was nature. Crocus. Daffodils. Peonies. Autumn leaves. Goldfinches who visit our yard every day. Playing in the snow.
I had lots of comments on internet stuff, either cool websites or links to inspiring stories. Here are a few.:
1,000 Awesome Things – my inspiration
ALEKS – my daughter does her homeschool math through ALEKS.
Khan Academy – another educational resource
TED Talks
Fictiondb – near-comprehensive lists of fiction series.
Newsreel footage of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan.
Project Gutenberg – free ebooks
Literature plays a big part in my life. This past year I’ve found awesome in authors’ birthdays – e.g. Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut. Various books. Meeting with a new writers’ group. Meeting writing goals. Getting paid to write blog entries and newspaper articles as part of my day job. My son asking to go to the library because he’d read everything he has in the house. A student running a banned books library from her school locker.
Events, small and large: Corn maze. 4th of July fireworks. Biggest family vacation ever – a trip to Florida where we visited Universal Islands of Adventure (one a side note, the Forbidden Journey is the best amusement park ride I’ve ever experienced) and my kids saw the ocean for the first time.
Those that defy categorization:
2/24/11: W. Shatner singing Mr. Tambourine Man & L. Nimoy singing Where Is Love on same CD
3/7/11: Using the large almost-vintage paper-cutter at work, with its dials and wheels. A combination of meditation & steampunk.
7/19/11: Seeing the interior lights come on when I click the unlocker in the direction of my van. It looks so happy to see me!
10/17/11: Curly hair being considered cool again. Thanks Alex Kingston and River Song!
And finally, one from a category I think of as “In Retrospect, the Joke’s on Me.”
“10/22/11: Procured winter coat for son at a great price.” Yeah, he’s already outgrown it.
My November Word Count
6,207. I said it in my previous post, and I think I’ll have to adopt it as my motto: “No sneering, NaNoWriMo participants. I’m a busy woman.”
I know many of you cranked out 50,000 words this past month. Yay for you! I mean that; it’s not sarcastic. Or bitter. Really. No, really, I mean it. I’m impressed. Maybe some year it’ll be me.
Knowing I would have next to no time in November (day job at which I worked extra hours in early November, one homeschooling kid, one public schooled kid who has auditory processing difficulties and thus requires a fair amount of parental involvement to keep track of what’s going on, providing driving lessons to the older child who has a permit but no license yet, taking one of the kids to physical therapy appointments, taking the other kid to orthodontic appointments, assisting with the running of a writers’ conference, oh and a fabulous week-long vacation in Florida, which required planning and packing for and unpacking from) there was no way I could do NaNo. I regret nothing, especially not the vacation.
Still, I tried to absorb inspiration from all the dedication wafting around in my writerly circles. I decided to make an effort to write every day, even if I only had ten minutes, and keep track of my word count. This went okay until vacation, when I dropped the ball (or quill or something) and didn’t pick it back up for ten days.
I have written a bit of a novel. I also counted blog posts, both personal and work-related. Add in a couple of other miscellaneous forays into the brain-ink continuum and my 20 total days of writing resulted in 6,207 words. One of those days, I managed five minutes for a word count of 76.
Thing is, though, I can keep this up year-round, and accomplish a respectable amount, all things considered. For now, I accept my lot as a plodding SoMisWriYe (Solitary Miscellaneous Writing Year) tortoise amongst the crowd of NaNo hares.
Eventually, I might join the race. Or I might not.
And to think, I could have spent that time at a desk, subsisting on coffee and toast crusts, hunched over a computer, frantically typing until my fingers bled. Awww…too bad for me.
My First Novel: a Love Story
When I say love story, I’m not talking about the plot. I’m speaking of the relationship between me and my book.
I finished writing the first draft of my first novel a two years ago. A couple of people read and offered me their thoughts. I have done a couple of revisions. I’ve sent it out a few places and been rejected.
Now, I’m meeting with a novel-writing group and having my manuscript read by more people, who are giving quite helpful feedback. Hearing their comments, I’ve come to see the strengths and weaknesses I display should have been predictable. I’ve spent countless hours of my life immersed in poetry. In more recent years, I’ve produced a number of short stories. My strengths in my first novel, according to my first and second responders, are in dialogue, description and character development. I have many individual wonderful scenes with great dialogue. But it’s obvious this is the first time I’ve plotted something this size. I need to work on the story arc.
I’m trying to decide whether to do another rewrite and work on getting this volume published or whether to let it be and move on. I already have a start on my second novel. I’m about 5,000 words in at the moment. (No sneering at me, please, NaNoWriMo people. I’m a busy woman.)
The other night, while I was pondering my options regarding my firstborn book, I had a happy epiphany. I possess a very healthy emotional relationship with this novel. Whether I do any more revisions, whether I ever publish it or not, I’m so happy to have written it. It’s a story I needed to tell and I’ve told it, if only to a handful of my closest fellow-writers and my spouse. I’m not staking my entire self-concept as a writer on getting it published. I’ve gained some publication credits with several poems and a small handful of short stories. I’ve even been paid some of those times. I learned a lot in the first-novel process and my second book is benefitting already.
See, I don’t have a co-dependent thing going. But I do have a deep, true, abiding love. I’m able to see my novel’s flaws and still care for it – warty story arc and all. I love my characters. I love my sense of accomplishment in having finished an entire book. I love how much I learned. No matter what I do with my writing in the future, no matter how many books I finish, I will never forget you, first novel. You will always have a special place in my heart.
Nomadic Noesis 