off the grid

Tuesday night I fly East to Buffalo and Canada for ten days of family/vacation/regrouping and connecting. I'm not bringing my laptop. I'll have the iPhone along, but only plan on using it for the weather and the foreign exchange rates.

Really, that's my plan.

There might be a little detox crabby restlessness that goes along with the prying my keyboard from my cold, dead hands, but, having done this for a week last August, I do see the benefits in, as a colleague puts it, sharpening the saw.

A client of mine (who shoots me far more daily emails than any other person, but who doesn't engage in social media) shared the actual hard copy of this terrific article by one of my favorite satirists, Gary Shteyngart. In the article, Shteyngart chronicles the ways in which his life changed upon signing up for his smart phone: "'This right here,' said the curly-haired, 20-something Apple Store glam-nerd who sold me my latest iPhone, 'is the most important purchase you will ever make in your life,'" he whines. Then, goes on to recall, "He looked at me, trying to gauge whether the holiness of this moment had registered as he passed me the Eucharist with two firm, unblemished hands.

So starts Shteyngart's adventure in the world of diverted attention. NYC disappears, overnight, and is replaced by all things global via his pocket-sized computer. His addiction leads him to long to dry out in the barless pockets of upstate NY, where he will partake in a data fast, and reengage with actual books by dead authors.

So, friends, I too will be pilgramming to the hinterlands for some cyber-relief. Off the grid, disconnected, and free to process experience without the lens of predigested information.

summer of blame

Summer incites the edges of possibility. When I was very young, daydreams overtook, responding, perhaps, to the heat. Following Thermodynamic Law. If wishes were horses than beggars would ride. Everything either was or could be mine. Days stretched and lapped boredom. Summer was a lifetime.

Late adolescence, early adulthood boys and booze--those summers possibility courted excitement. I got into my share of trouble.

So now, wedged into potentially inert middle-age, where blockbusters, beach reads and food that hovers around poison (deep fried onions dipped in blue cheese dressing? Really?) begin to vie for a spot on the calendar, I turn to the rascal inside me. That sunlit muse; that mercurial sprite. And how it comes, when it comes, is as instinct for paradigm subversion. Because I'm pretty broke this summer, all my trouble needs to be free, and luckily, our library system is one of the best, if not the best, in the country.

Finally, I worked my way up the holds queue and it's my turn for Blame.

I'm three-quarters through it and I'm making myself put it down, lest I plummet too quickly in post-good-read-depression. What makes this book so damn good, you ask? At the risk of being hopelessly derivative, I'm with Brigitte Frase, whose LA Times review called Huneven's prose "elegant" while suggesting that even better than elegant prose is aesthetic pleasure. The delicate, unsentimental perp-walk along moral ambiguity, unapologetic nakedness and the darkest of the shadow of humanity has me so engaged, I'm nearly paralyzed. Which is the other side of summer: the promise of unending sloth. Dog days, they're called, but I think of them more as cat days. Willful suspension of brain activity in favor of wonder and magic.

Huneven's book blows everything out of the water. You must read it.

resilience

My sister-in-law, Lisa Walker, died on July 2. This time last year, unless you were privy to microscopic changes in her body, she was the picture of health. The week of Christmas, six months ago, she learned that a nagging pain under her rib cage was not a gall bladder problem.

That's how pancreatic cancer works. Silently. Quickly. Intrusively.

It's too soon for me to write about this in detail. Down the road I certainly plan to, but for now, I'm in that hazy grief-fog, just trying to remember why it is again that I went to the grocery store? What have we run out of? Where did I park the car?

In the Charlotte airport awaiting my connecting flight home, I picked up a consumable book. Something I could start, read, finish before touchdown at PDX. I didn't want anything funny. I didn't want anything too literary. I didn't want anything stupid. Less than 250 pages. A paperback, easily crammable in my more than two carry-on items which, in order to avoid the ridiculous $25 fee, I knew I'd need to consolidate or parcel out to my kids (even in grief, I'm cheap, it appears).

I ambled down the book shelf at the newsstand, picking up, rejecting. I briefly considered a book of Sudoku puzzles for the disabled. A similar book of crosswords. And then, there she was, Elizabeth. The pillar--the icon--of a woman pummeled. Repeatedly. Name a shitty thing, and Elizabeth Edwards has suffered it. A suddenly dead child. Breast cancer that won't go away. A lying, cheating fuckwad of a husband. Intrusive media. A vicious, attention-seeking mistress who got herself knocked up. I expected the book to suck, of course. Churned out memoirs of the famously shafted typically are.

Resilience not only does not suck, it's fantastic. Rather than being driven by solipsistic rants and martyr-infused sentimentality, this little memoir, I hope, will find itself amid other thought-provoking, poetic, honest books, like Gift from the Sea. Or even, dare I say it, Auster's The Invention of Solitude.

Having just spent hours watching a beloved relative die an untimely death; her agonal breathing still embossed in my brain, her husband's weeping, her children, my children, her parents, her best friends, coming to grips with a loss as big or bigger than any they had suffered previously, Resilience was the only book I could have attended. It is not written from the distance of safety; it's penned in the midst of devastation and unprocessed grief, and yet, it's coherent, lovely, full of the sort of wisdom that only comes from asking questions, and following a depth of inquiry that leads to a sort of celebration. I'm alive, still, kept being the message.

So God bless Elizabeth. Say what you will about celebrity memoirs and bids for attention, Resilience is an important book.

let's talk about the hottest writing group in Portland

Jeff Baker, The Oregonian's books editor, wrote a very comprehensive article about our writing group that appears in today's O section.

He did a great job (and I'm not just saying that 'cause I got the call-out in the print version and Cheryl Strayed was quoted as naming me the "best writer without a book in Portland") capturing the spirit of our merry band. And, I have to remark that, it's not exactly easy to flesh out a profile on a large group like ours. It's sort of like writing a scene with multiple characters and keeping the energy moving forward. The juxtaposition! The flow! The dialogue! Baker nailed them all.

Now I'm going to take my "house mother" self back up to the soccer pitch where fifteen eleven-year-old boys need cheering on!

Trying to be fueled by distraction

My son woke up today and narrated a very interesting dream. His first ever (as far as I can tell) stress dream. All the players in his eleven-year-old life were featured, and the first person character kept getting into trouble.

It got me thinking about how storytellers develop. How much is narration, how much is perspective, how much is will. My little guy is on the cusp of adolescence and pushing against everything he knows while clawing to keep safe and secure in his frame of reference. It's the hardest time to parent, because as a mother you're continually stretched between the whole roots-and-wings concept. Allow enough unstructured time for creativity and personality to bloom while staying very, very close to set the walls up just in the nick of time.

It's the main reason I moved my office back home, and I have to keep reminding myself of that.

This week I have Carson in "skateboard camp"--again, trying to straddle the line between structure and fun. Skateboard camp is a little more lax than, say, baseball camp, as noted when one of the "instructors" handed me the medical release form he should have given me yesterday. "We sort of, um, forgot."

Meanwhile, I'm trying to figure out how to keep from going upstairs for another plate of hummus and Ak Mak crackers every five minutes.

Years ago, my colleague Monica Drake and I hosted a workshop that she named "Fueled by Distraction." The idea was to harness the energy of distraction to pour into satisfying art rather than to be derailed by the myriad distractions we artists are so seduced by. (And that was before Facebook!)

Wherever I am, the tendency to jump ship on deep concentration is pulling at me--and working from home offers a whole new array of possibilities. This week though, my son is sequestered in a concrete bowl being supervised by stoned teenagers. I need to seize the opportunity and get to it. But first, another mug of microwaved coffee...

I just want to be a blue dress party girl when I grow up

Today I woke up with a sore throat and a bad attitude. It was Monday, and I usually love Mondays because they herald structure, and structure, for a person of scattered tendencies, is a good thing. But today, on the heels of our big Mad Menesque soire, my son's graduation from the U, and myriad loose ends, I sorta didn't want to get out of bed.

I am a bit adrift right now--having passed my novel off to an agent for appraisal, and sorting through the various false starts and stories that could be forever tightened, and the screenplay I have just begun, not to mention a queue of work-work, an overflowing inbox, the beck and call of social media, the need to keep up, respond, reply, etc, I, plain and simple, wanted to go back to being a hostess at a cocktail party.

I ticked off the work stuff, watched the gorgeous Spanish men win a soccer match, and noted that it didn't rain today (although it's still MUCH TOO COLD), and did nothing for my writing. I did not write at all! Not a lick. Bah!

Tomorrow, then.

Friends Forever

Today my youngest child took part in what serves as a graduation ceremony from elementary school. I use the qualifier because the public school system prefers "promotion" to graduation, but for me, the semantic distinction is silly. For more than half of his life he's reported to a building, been part of a community, and now he's leaving it. He's graduating.

And it's a big deal.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not about to rue this passage or lament this leap away from childhood, but I will weep. I'm certain of that. I will tear up because that's what mommies do when their babies are clearly not babies any longer. A huge piece of my heart is in that school. It's where Carson lost teeth, learned to read and write, and gained prowess on the jungle gym. As their "promotion" song suggests, the friendships he made at Maplewood will stay with him until he breathes his last.

Here he is, the smaller of the two boys in red t-shirts, dancing something called "the jerk." Thank God he's still young and innocent enough not to get the irony in that name. For now, anyway!

The Passion Parade

I love writing about Passion. Watching passion unfold in a fledgling writer, or a writer who's had a breakthrough. Lately, I've had more than my share of opportunities to be part of the Passion Parade.

I have a piece on David Jackson in this month's Goodness Magazine, and it's one of the few times I've enjoyed re-reading something of mine in print--rather than scanning the article for errors, as is typical, I sunk into it, like a reader, and allowed the subject and his zest to talk to me--invite me into his world--which I gladly relived.

I've also been working with a visual artist, helping him find his voice inside of a series of lyric essays. The process has been delightful and engaging. Working with this client, I get to revisit my own journey with the pen, discover anew why it is I do what I do. The magic of it. The sweet whisper in the ear. The disappearing hours. The floats and marching bands--even the shitting parade horses. I've never been a Rose Festival Queen, but I'm feeling pretty damn happy with my baton.

Rock and Roll and Steve Almond

Remember when all that kept the breath going in and out of your flat little chest was shutting your bedroom door, slamming down the Close 'n Play, and wailing along with Linda Ronstadt as she compared her broken heart to a wheel? Or maybe bootleg Dead tapes were your thing: Smokestack Lightning at the Filmore, sheeeeettt! Or, like my darling husband, The Guess Who still trips your trigger. He had a roommate his first year in college who played the band's one record religiously. The Pavlovian association with American Woman and brewskis, all that.

Reading Steve Almond's Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life brings it all back. Almond's homage to the music that caused him to become a Drooling Fanatic (DF), along with delicious rants about the vapid pop that plagues the masses, makes this the latest must read in Almond's theme-driven memoirs. (C'mon Steve, candy, music, dare I ask what's next???)

The book is laugh-out-loud funny, btw, and his accompanying tour--complete with a "bad hair" introductory slide show and playlist, offers more goodies, including Almond's comedic timing and charm.

I have to admit though--I don't quite have the chops to call myself a DF. Maybe a DFH (Drooling Fanatic Hag), since, as a college coed, I hung out with guys for whom Jerry was God, and a lost weekend meant quizzically enduring a Pink Floyd marathon, but me myself, my devotion is causal. Can't face the treadmill without Jungleland pumping into my earbuds, and don't be playing Brandi Carlile's cover of Hallelujah if you're not handing me an ice cold Scotch.

Like Almond, though, I get cranky at the effervescent popularity of inane tunes, especially when I see my kid latching onto, say, Replay by the hip hop icon I.Y.A.Z.

Replay, how apt! Especially since every car trip in the past three months has been accompanied with:
Shawty´s like a melody
in my head
That I can´t keep out...

(in an effort to proffer forth my disapproval in a palatable way, I made up even stupider Weird Al-esque lyrics:
Hotter than a four-slice toaster
that girl is a crime they say...)

And what's up with, I queried my boy, Shawty--which seems to be the pervading slang common denominator in my son's top ten.

"It means girlfriend, Mom." At eleven, he's got eye-rolling down.

Shawty is indeed the latest tweener euphemism for girlfriend. The Urban Dictionary defines it as fine ass woman, so there you go.

Over the last couple of weeks Carson seems to have moved on from Replay, thank God, and on to an I.Y.A.Z. song I like better (though it's similarly mindless) -- Solo, which he plans to sing (ironically) in duet with another boy in the upcoming fifth grade talent show. My stomach hurts in vicarious embarrassment--have I spawned an exoticizer? Will he be wearing his ballcap backwards with his dungarees exposing his boxers whilst arranging his fingers into a palsy-like spasm? Is today's appropriation of hip hop by white kids the latest minstrel show?

But, alas, I have to let my child figure this all out on his own. After all, I was that lame ass (as opposed to fine ass) teenage girl listening to Ronstadt's covers of the world's most banal love songs. (Desperado, anyone?) And, the place in my brain where memorized Shakespeare sonnets should reside is SRO with the lyrics to all of Jim Croce's woebegotten ballads. I have some ammunition though. This morning's breakfast music included Almond's online soundtrack of Bob Schneider's Get Fucked Up and Do Some Fucking blaring from my computer. With all that funky inappropriateness from which to rebel, my kid will have to try a lot harder to shock his mama.

setting up shop

For the past four days I've been setting up my new writing space in the new house, and I'm finding myself being overly particular about what goes where, and what gets tossed and where to put my reference books versus favorite novels versus administrative crap.

I've been resisting cracking open several old plastic bins that contain relics--fragments of my late adolescence and the slips of paper upon which I wrote sophomorically profound epiphanies. But crack them I have, and up bubbled some discourse between my dad and I dating back to college. The epistolary exchange developed over my wanting to quit biochemistry and hence derail my journey toward becoming a registered dietitian.

My dad's points were carefully wrought and admittedly full of ego and regret. Essentially, the message was: buckle down and get your credentials like I did. My retort: I'm not sure I'm cut out for a life as a clinician. Instead, I see myself as a vagabond who follows her heart. Funnily enough, the argument hinged on independence. How without the right credentials one is beholden to compromise.

My, my how the world has turned that one on its ear. My father, as a 72-yr old physician, is at the mercy of a broken system, while I basically do whatever the hell I want. True, I don't make a lot of dough, but as I disgorge the tools of my trade, liberate them from their plastic bins and cardboard boxes and build my nest: the books, the letters, the memories, the scribbles, I realize that, at 22, I wasn't a complete moron after all. Good to know!

Ah, nostalgia. You move and there you are, smacked in the face with it. Now, the big question. To chuck or not to chuck!

homage to the writing space at 8305

In this house I've written, maybe, a million pages. Ok, doing the math, more realistically, 500,000. Nethertheless, in the eleven years I've lived here, a half-dozen novels have been drafted, two of which I've considered "done." I've written poetry here. dozens of essays. Possibly 50 articles. I won't even start with blog posts, emails, and other outgoing missives.

Saying goodbye to a writing space is a subset of the general goodbye--less fraught with toil, but infused with emotion. Yesterday, I found myself dissolved to tears several times. Out of nowhere: grief, sorrow, frustration. The things I did, the things I failed to do (yes, I'm aware this sounds like a Catholic creed).

In this house I've written award-winning pieces. I've received great news (grants, prizes, publication), and countless rejections. I sit here stymied by the hope, dashed hope, and tenacity of the writers' life manifest. And, of course, part of me wonders where it will all go. Will I be able to write in my new house? Will I be so besieged by the trivialities and pragmatic concerns (I have to buy a microwave! All the walls are dingy and dated! Get rid of the carpet in favor of the virgin hardwood that lies underneath!) that writing will forever take a back burner to swapping out the burners on the ancient cooktop?

Ah. And oy. And aye! Lament but press on!

Coincidentally, I have packaged up my manuscript, and SOL is now rattling about in the hands of others--being appraised, considered, what have you. Closure abounds.

And yet.

I'm itching to channel some of this free-floating angst in a productive direction. All of My Children Are Not Here awaits!

Writers' Homicide

My days are spent alternating between fondling sentences and wrestling words to the ground. Sometimes, the other way around. Occasionally words pin me to the mat so hard, I lie helpless, paralyzed, suffocating. Block, you say? I think not! When words fail me it's more like homicide. Writers' Homicide. The pen of self-inflicting sword-like slashings.

This is not happening at the moment, as a certain mania has taken hold, and I'm serving up words as fast as a short order grill cook--but a couple of weeks ago, I experienced a frightening lull in my ability and desire to write.

I've been told that those periods are fertile ground for collecting, as opposed to spewing. That they are every bit as important to the writer's cycle as output. I've always been skeptical of that. Somewhat. What I realize in hindsight with this particular go-round is that there is a difference between active and passive wool-gathering, and it has to do with synthesizing information, putting it into context, and filing it in the creative part of the noggin. It's not fugue state, but rather, extended curiosity. Making space for inquiry.

Now, on the other side of this Writers' Homicide, I'm ready to go out and slay a thing or two.

tranquility

Yesterday, at 3:30 p.m., my house officially passed along to its next owner. As with many big life transitions, the exchange was marked by last-minute drama and craziness, but in the end, the transaction prevailed, and I am now officially a renter.

Next week I will once again be a homeowner, but for now, I'm basking in the interstitial splendor of it all.

To fully appreciate my respite from real estate, I've taken advantage of my good friend Laura's offer to hole up in her houseboat for a few days.

This morning I'm looking over the channel, watching low-flying geese flapping and honking in pairs, swerving to miss the occasional tugboat or barge. My husband left early this morning for his job as a teacher across town, and I immersed myself in some writing as the river and sky unfolded in light, feeling the invitation to absorb the minutes of the day instead of scything through them.

Unaccustomed pleasure

Last week I read a book. For pleasure. That may not sound like a big whoop, but, actually, it's been several MONTHS since I've allowed myself to sink into a book without a pen in my hand. I'd forgotten how deliriously indulgent that is.

The book I read wasn't even one I'd picked out--it was pilfered from my husband's sleeping body: Jhumpa Lahiri's UNACCUSTOMED EARTH. He'd read two or three of the stories (not in order, even, sacrelige!) and when he had fallen asleep in the sun, the book on his chest, I snatched it, and wouldn't give it back. (Don't you HATE when people do that?)

I'd read THE NAMESAKE years ago, and loved it, and anytime she has a piece in the New Yorker, I devour it, but the bliss of following her heart through the trials of the various Bengali families in her pages was nearly as satisfying as swimming with dolphins.

The partial pastiche she created, the negative space, the deft shifts in POV, offered a larger story than NAMESAKE--a mural as opposed to a single painting. In the end, Lahiri's book left me feeling fuller, richer, sadder and wiser. I love when that happens.

the writer on vacation

Many of the stories writers weave--okay, most of them--are mired in a melange of experiences, appropriations and fantasies. So it goes to follow that when a writer goes on vacation, senses are heightened at the same time that blockades to the imagination are freed up, and the result can be a volcanic eruption of story.

I'm at the tail end of my week in Hawaii. First trip anywhere this far West OR South, so a pretty big deal. Tropical Island vacations have never called to me the way they have my husband. The ocean is lovely, but I never pine for it. Swimming, I can take or leave. Hot, sticky air mostly disagrees with me. It's the oddness of leaving so much of my normative world behind that is the seduction here, to be honest. The suspension of disbelief, really. For instance, down the island apiece is the old sacred ground known as Place of Refuge, where for centuries citizens would brave shark-infested waters for possible redemption from the kapu they committed that would otherwise sentence them to death.

And.

Pele, the passionate and capricious Goddess of Fire, shaped the island with her bouts of jealousy by spewing molten lava from Kilauea when betrayed.

More.

King Kamehaha upended the Naha Rock in Hilo (all 7,000 pounds of it)to prove he was worthy Hawaii's greatest king.

But nothing compares to the stories that live in nature here on this amazing young island, and never in my life have I been closer to the natural world than these past six days. Snorkeling with a pod of dolphins, swimming alongside a sea turtle, watching the slow, steady heartbeat of a resting monk seal, following a couple of Moorish Idols as they wave their sickle crest extensions in the surf and kiss the spongey tunicates off the reef rock--this is the raw material for weaving stories.
In regular-real life, it's often easy to forget the basics, and we generally avert any stimulus that takes our attention away from the list that spits us through our days. The best writing happens when we allow the visions, wonders and curiosities to flood us and drag us away from the quotidian tide.

I hope I can remember that when I'm back on the mainland.

the plot thickened...

but, really, I'm hoping for a quick denouement.

Here's what the book jacket might read, if my recent life were a novel:

After much soul-searching, Kirk and Suzy decide that they should buy their own home, rather than to continue chipping away at the home that once belonged to Suzy and her former husband. They interview a couple of realtors, and decide on an energetic, "get her done," type, even though they realize that their comfort zone, on every level, will be stretched.

It's just after the Christmas holidays when they sign on and agree to a February 15th on market date, and they dive into the mess of dismantling, decluttering, and stripping their bungalow bare. Seven contractors, each one touting a specialty, and many with colorful personalities, dovetail their tasks. The next four weeks will involve myriad chicken-or-egg chronology to arrive at an overall outcome with such a delicate time line.

Things go mildly awry: a deluge floods the basement due to a broken drain pipe; Kirk and Suzy break a window in the front door while moving a sofa; backs go out; temperatures rise; noses run (it's winter after all!); after the floors are scraped the dust is so thick that the shop vac goes on strike and a mucusy cough infiltrates the lungs of everyone involved. Finally, though, on schedule, the house has been transformed, lightened, brightened and divested of all of its crap. A spate of unseasonably mild weather hits just in time for the opening weekend and an SRO open house.

Before the end of February, an offer comes in. "What?!" say Kirk and Suzy, we haven't even identified a house to buy yet! Things proceed quickly. Kirk and Suzy and Carson go house-shopping. They find the perfect counter to the hundred year old house they're leaving: a modern three-story house on a cul-de-sac that has been meticulously maintained. The house is light, bright and new! They are all set to make an offer, when...

the would-be buyers have a change of heart. They hadn't realized in their four visits that one of the bedrooms didn't have a heat source. They question the square footage. They bring in an alarmist inspector who points out potential issues--none of which bear out--but, hey, the would-be buyers wanted an adorable vintage bungalow that was buttoned up like a contemporary townhome, so they pull their offer.

After a week off the market, the bungalow is BOM. Which is sort of poison. As a result of this new twist of events, Kirk and Suzy did not make an offer on the light and bright house. But, another possibility has emerged. A long shot, their realistic, energetic realtor cautions, but the proverbial "tip" has been whispered in her ear. A house in a really hot neighborhood is "not quite on the market." "Let's go see it," invites the realtor.

See it, they do. The house is an "original owner" mid-century and it backs up to a hidden neighborhood park. It has three fireplaces, which, since 1964, have been used a handful of times. Oak floors that were immediately covered by carpet. A family room. A shop. A two-car garage. An office! The house is on the market for exactly the same price Kirk and Suzy are asking for their house. Not only is the house is in the school district that allows Carson to go to the middle school that all his friends will attend, but it's also in the best high school district in the state. The current owner is a lovely 92-year old woman who immediately connects with the energetic realtor, and decides that Kirk and Suzy are ones who will buy her house. If they can sell their house. In two weeks.

The energetic (and realistic) realtor convinces Kirk and Suzy to drop the price of their house. By 20K! This is a leap of faith. If the price is dropped in order to sell in two weeks, but it doesn't, then Kirk and Suzy lose the mid-century, and then have a reduced price house that will impact their ability to buy the next house--which they'd hoped would be a step up.

The energetic realtor has a plan though. She's putting her efforts on all burners. She'll have another open. She'll bake cookies! Two hours before the open house, people are lined up. It's a fire sale, after all! By the end of the day, there are two offers on the table. A tiny bidding war ensues. Initially, there is cash involved in this bidding war. The house is sold to the highest, most "in love with the house" bidder. Kirk and Suzy have a cocktail and pass out.

I know the deal ain't done. The fat lady is warming up her pipes, but she's still in the green room. But this deal will go through. I feel it and know it. It's going to be a happy ending!

on working the soul in revision

One of my most splendid and brilliant writing teachers was a man named Jim Heynan. He taught me, by way of an exercise, that being creative and prolific often happens when you're busy living, rather than retreating from, your life.

I was thrilled to see a recent essay of his in Brevity on the soul work of revision. Read it--especially if you didn't catch the "Lincoln" piece in the January 2009 New Yorker. The difference in the two drafts of Lincoln's second inaugural address are profound.

As for Heynan, as usual, his insight is one I take with me for ever more, as he counsels: "Even in the honing and pruning stage, when you spot language that doesn’t measure up to the sentiment you intended, don’t desert the sentiment too quickly in pursuit of fashion or conformity; stay with the sentiment until you find the words that are both true to the sentiment and satisfying for you."

selling the dollhouse

Christmas of third grade, my grandfather made my sister and me an elaborate dollhouse. My grandmother sewed outfits for the dolls and tiny cushions for the homemade chairs and couches. The dollhouse had to stay at my grandparent's house (I think Oma thought us too reckless, my mother too aloof, to be awarded custody), and for the next several years, the dollhouse was the centerpiece of our visits.

Unlike our real house, which was typically in a state of squalor, the dollhouse was kept pristine and orderly. The fake dollhouse family: mom, dad, brother, sister, infant, and maid, never interacted. Each occupied its own room, staged like the furnishings. The maid ironed outfits on the homemade ironing board in the penthouse section; the dad sat at an expansive desk in his study, a tiny cocktail sitting on the miniature ink blotter in front of him; the brother sat on the wooden toilet my Opa had fashioned from balsa and felt (poop and boys went together, somehow); and the sister frolicked in the play room amongst even tinier dolls, with the legless infant in its cradle down the hall. I don't remember where we propped up the mother.

Now, as a grown-up, week two of my real home having a "for sale" sign in front of it has proven to be a trip back in time. We've stashed, burned or given away all the clutter, and what remains is the scaffolding--the bare bones--of our bungalow. Every morning, like the dollhouse maid, I tuck, smooth, fold and neaten all evidence of life. I re-inflate the leaky Aerobed in the guest room, slip the toothbrush jar behind the molding in the open bathroom closet, replace the white bath mat so it adequately covers the cold tile and ugly-colored grout. I turn on the classical station, dial up the heat, rearrange the bowl of fake apples, and strategically turn on lights. I stop short of ironing our pillowcases, but just barely.

The weird thing is--I'm enjoying this ritual. I've timed it so I can leave the house with everything in place within 20 minutes of my little boy catching the school bus. Each day I've been fielding phone calls from eager real estate agents who are bustling to show the dollhouse to smiling families. There are two couples who've been do-si-doing each other in their follow-up visits to my perfectly staged abode.

What I remember most about my time with Opa's dollhouse is the feeling of satisfaction after leaving everything "just so." Though getting my house to this point was daunting and twitch-invoking, now that it's tidy, I feel calm, centered, grateful and relaxed when I go home at night and pour my goblet of Scotch. Just like the fake father in the dollhouse, I enjoy the quiet moments, surveying the lack of disorder around me.

ash wednesday

My dear friend, Laura, always sends out this poem on Ash Wednesday. And I always read it, Catholic that I am, with a new take-away.

Today it's patience.

Ash Wednesday
by T.S. Eliot

I

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is
nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.


II
Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
In the cool of the day, having fed to sateity
On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been
contained
In the hollow round of my skull. And God said
Shall these bones live? shall these
Bones live? And that which had been contained
In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping:
Because of the goodness of this Lady
And because of her loveliness, and because
She honours the Virgin in meditation,
We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled
Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love
To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.
It is this which recovers
My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions
Which the leopards reject. The Lady is withdrawn
In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown.
Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness.
There is no life in them. As I am forgotten
And would be forgotten, so I would forget
Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose. And God said
Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen. And the bones sang chirping
With the burden of the grasshopper, saying

Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied
End of the endless
Journey to no end
Conclusion of all that
Is inconclusible
Speech without word and
Word of no speech
Grace to the Mother
For the Garden
Where all love ends.

Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining
We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each
other,
Under a tree in the cool of day, with the blessing of sand,
Forgetting themselves and each other, united
In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye
Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity
Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.



III

At the first turning of the second stair
I turned and saw below
The same shape twisted on the banister
Under the vapour in the fetid air
Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears
The deceitul face of hope and of despair.

At the second turning of the second stair
I left them twisting, turning below;
There were no more faces and the stair was dark,
Damp, jaggèd, like an old man's mouth drivelling, beyond
repair,
Or the toothed gullet of an agèd shark.

At the first turning of the third stair
Was a slotted window bellied like the figs's fruit
And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene
The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green
Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute.
Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,
Lilac and brown hair;
Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind
over the third stair,
Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair
Climbing the third stair.


Lord, I am not worthy
Lord, I am not worthy

but speak the word only.

IV
Who walked between the violet and the violet
Who walked between
The various ranks of varied green
Going in white and blue, in Mary's colour,
Talking of trivial things
In ignorance and knowledge of eternal dolour
Who moved among the others as they walked,
Who then made strong the fountains and made fresh the springs

Made cool the dry rock and made firm the sand
In blue of larkspur, blue of Mary's colour,
Sovegna vos

Here are the years that walk between, bearing
Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring
One who moves in the time between sleep and waking, wearing

White light folded, sheathing about her, folded.
The new years walk, restoring
Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring
With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem
The time. Redeem
The unread vision in the higher dream
While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.

The silent sister veiled in white and blue
Between the yews, behind the garden god,
Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but spoke
no word

But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down
Redeem the time, redeem the dream
The token of the word unheard, unspoken

Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew

And after this our exile


V
If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny
the voice

Will the veiled sister pray for
Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee,
Those who are torn on the horn between season and season,
time and time, between
Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait
In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray
For children at the gate
Who will not go away and cannot pray:
Pray for those who chose and oppose

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Will the veiled sister between the slender
Yew trees pray for those who offend her
And are terrified and cannot surrender
And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks
In the last desert before the last blue rocks
The desert in the garden the garden in the desert
Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.


O my people.


VI
Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth

This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit
of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.

tune in, step out, drop in

Writing has become challenging this past week. Or rather, finding time for meaningful writing has become challenging. However, my New Year's Commitment had to do with banishing excuses for not writing, and finding solutions when things get in my way, so here goes.

As a swerve to O'Leary's "turn on, tune in, drop out," my attempt at resolving the perennial no-time-to-write conundrum is "tune in, step out, drop in," and here's how it works:
1. Tune in: listen to what people are saying
2. Step out: of my comfort zone by questioning reflexive behavior
3. Drop in: Try doing things a new way, experiment in the name of efficiency or expansion.

Here's how I applied it today.
I listened to a conversation in the Post Office line and learned that in order to have your face on a stamp, you have to have been dead for 10 years. Unless you're a President, then you only have to wait one birthday after death. I'll use this eavesdrop in dialogue, I'm certain, (lest you think it'll find its final resting place here, in my blog). But I was so intrigued with the information, I didn't pay attention to what I was doing and I knocked my coffee off the counter that serves as a package rest in the waiting line.

Next, I stepped out of my comfort zone by not immediately and apoplectically freaking out and overcompensating for my clumsiness by trying to fix it. Instead, I called the clerk's attention to the mess I made, and, to the shock of the queue behind me, took my turn at the counter and let the only other clerk leave her post to clean my mess. Of course, I apologized. Both to the clerk and to the folks in line because mistakes were made.

Once at work, I engaged in tasks that I hate first, then taught myself how to use the screen extension function so I could utilize my monitor in the manner it was intended. This little bit of dropping in I'd resisted, because I knew it would take me at least a half-hour to figure it out, but long-term efficiency is the goal, said I, so I wrestled it to the mat.

Now that I'm supremely virtuous, I better get my fanny in gear with pages!