plot remediation

for plot-tards like me

I’m reading this book, OUTLINING YOUR NOVEL: MAP YOUR WAY TO SUCCESS by K.M. Weiland. Have you seen it? I was attracted by the cover, the sketchy visual cartooniness of it, which mitigates the cheesy marketingish title. (Having spent years writing that sort of imperative call-to-action, I’m always leery of taking the bait).

According to Ms. Kindle, I’m 30% of the way through it, and I’m already drinking the Kool-Aid. Chapter Three, “Crafting Your Premise” has some salient advice on taking a What if … ? statement and concretizing it into a premise. Yeah, it’s basic stuff, but my mind’s such a messy place, I’m happy to step out of the classroom with the Special Ed teacher and have it all broken down for me, particularly in the connection to solidifying characters, conflict and plot.

You see, friends, I am a plot-tard. That part of a writer that bravely marches down the path of most-resistance? The conflict-seeking organ? Well, I was born without that. I’m all, can’t we just be friends? with my characters. I like hanging out with them, and who wants to hang out with troublemakers?

OYN suggests you ask questions specific to your premise and define four or five big moments that will occur in your plot. And then, you dream up at least two complications to those moments—complications that will make your characters uncomfortable. I have pantsed my way toward these ideas in the past, but only in revision, and only after fighting the urge to keep my characters problems private. I mean, I’m embarrassed for them! What if they get caught?

Last time around, I built my little three-panel plot board and sticky-noted illegible plot-points upon until it looked like a colorful skin disease. That helped me visualize the arcs and so forth, but I didn’t do the initial work on blueprinting the premise from the gate, and by the time I’d scribbled on those stickies, I was already invested in my “people,” so the premise and the elements of plot had to serve them. My forte, if I have one at all, is voice, and I like to fit story around voice. Going back to my SPED teacher, if she was any good, she’d put duct tape on my mouth until I came up with the complications to four or five big moments. It’s for my own good!

Now, I’m not saying that this remediation is appropriate for all writers. All you TAG students, you know who you are. Keep pantsing or plotting as per usual, I’m sure your natural aptitude for having darling protagonists open all the wrong doors will spring from your pen like so many frogs (do I sound bitter? Do I?), but if you stutter and drool at the mere suggestion of conflict, pick up (or one-touch) a copy of OYN.

Happy outlining!

Liars, cheaters and frauds. Oh my.

Hey everyone, I'm in Las Vegas! My very first trip here. Possibly my last!

The thing I like most about traveling are the weird dreams I get fitfully sleeping in a foreign bed. And nothing shakes up the dreamworld more than the ridiculous over-stim of Sin City.

Right now, I'm sure you're all like, Oh, God, is she going to detail her dream last night? I hate that! Well, so do I. But hear me out. This one deals with something many writers face, particularly writers in long-standing writers' workshops.

In my dream, I was helping another writer flesh out an idea. The writer was this anonymous guy who tried his hand at a tropey little RomCom and was dissatisfied with it. I took a look and got all inspired and found all these ways to deepen it, strengthen it, get it off the ground. He liked the enthusiasm behind my counsel, but was all, "Nah. I think I'll just throw it in the garbage. I sort of hate the idea, anyway."

At this point I was thoroughly invested in the book. In my dream I contemplated asking him if I could steal his idea and make it my RomCom. But, even in my dream, I decided that was completely unethical, so I watched the manuscript fly off a building (similar to the Flamingo Hotel) and into the great black netherworld of aborted WIPs. I was horribly sad when I awoke. As though someone had died.

So, I guess I have a question to you writer folk. Have you ever been tempted to adopt someone's abandoned WIP? Where's the line between inspiration and thievery? 

need some mind-fi

It's the new year and we all want to be healthy, am I right? Trot that ass to the gym? Banish the sweets? Do more of this and less of that?

Typically, I'm up for all sorts of rearranging come January. Last year, I timed the launch of my new website with the new year. In 2011, I went on that cleanse. Remember that? In 2010, I pledged, once again, "to write before my monkey mind has a foothold." Ha! And here I am in 2009 with my workshop besties, promising this and that.

Now, I'm not knocking the tradition of taking inventory and forming intentions to better navigate the path ahead. I'm for it big time. And yet. Life, you know, sort of happens. The unscripted disasters. The earthquakes, the shootings. Biology, destiny and gravity all meeting in secret, putting together a powerpoint on the ways in which life will conspire to fuck you up.

A word that gets bandied about this time of year is "balance." Yoga and cardio. Fun and work. Kale and steak. Coffee and cigarettes green tea. Balance. Yeah. I'm feeling that one. Lack of balance, actually. Despite my carefully-crafted work time management plan:

• 25% writing for paycheck
• 25% teaching/editing
• 25% marketing, email-checking, blogging, tweeting and generally fucking around on social media
• 25% work-in-progress writing (includes research)

...that ain't happening.

The "marketing, email-checking, blogging, tweeting and generally fucking around on social media" is probably, oh, uh, 78% of my office time. If you pull the "research" out of WIP and stick it where it rightly belongs, in the "fucking around" section, then we're probably up to 86%.

Look, at the start of 2009, Facebook was just beginning to get its foothold. Nobody was on Twitter yet. Blogs were ramping up, but not ubiquitous. Pinterest? Not even a gleam. Now, there are all these sparklers and messages and imperatives to join this, respond to that. And don't, by the way, make a mistake because your digital footprint is unerasable. Sometimes, I'll follow a trail that starts with a tweet, and before I know it, I'm up a dark alley that holds no clue to what I first set out to explore.

What I want for 2013 is engagement. Substance. Depth. I want more steak, but balanced with kale, 'cause, you know, kale is good for you. I want to immerse in my projects and not write myself into a Googleable corner. (Oh, I guess I'd better find out what the world record for the 1500 is, 'cause my character needs to beat it--wait, what sort of training shoes should she be wearing. Better text my stepson and ask him.) Like that. Sometimes, I'm multitasking from device to device, as in:
Yeah, need some serious Mind Fi. So. What's my plan? Do I have a plan? I'm not sure I do. Other than, I think this whole idea might start with reading more. Reading deeply. A novel, a memoir, an article. From beginning to end. With engagement. I long to get deep enough into a book that I forget to check my email, my texts, my Google Analytics. Do you know what I mean?

new adult wip

One of the things I like most about writing is its unpredictability. What other vocation allows, and, indeed, encourages, prurient exploration in the pursuit of production? Say you wake up one day and decide to write a novel set in the red light district of Vancouver, BC. Road trip! Or, suppose your character is undergoing brain surgery--cozy up to a surgeon, and tell him you're writing a thriller, and, BAM! You're in the OR.

I hope I'm never implicated in a homicide--one peek at my Google history this last week and I'd be locked up for a very long time. Why, you ask? Well. Just for the hell of it, I'm writing a crime novel. Novelette, really. Call me a casualty of the GONE GIRL Zeitgeist, mix that up with a fascination for noir classics and, just for the hell of it, throw in a little "new adult" à la Lena Dunham, and, et voilà! It's my new WIP.

Who knew I'd be wrapping my mind around a college-focused whodunnit? And during the holiday season no less. 

Anyone out there starting something new before the calendar-prescribed season of the clean slate?

Prizes! Tips from my hot writing group!

UPDATED AUGUST, 2013
Okay kids. My SUPER popular Dialogue Boot Camp via LitReactor is scheduled for a reprise beginning October 3rd.

As before, I'm bringing the big guns to this class. You will not be disappointed. Not only am I gonna pack it with lectures that will give you insight into what makes dialogue sing, but there will be deconstruction. Evisceration. Good times aplenty!

In ten days, you'll have some mad skills. Some understanding of authority, voice, and the intersection of the two and a have a chance to practice.

And not only that.

The literary heavy-hitters in my workshop, those folks you always see in the New York Times? Yeah, them. They've ponied up some tips that will be unveiled during class. Worth it just for those, eh?

But, that is not all.

The Den Mom, aka, me, will critique three prompt-driven assignments (decided in a lottery). And as an added bonus: Three more students will be selected at random at the end of class to have their work critiqued by me—anything they want, up to 10 pages. We're talking detailed, line-by-line critique.

Sign up now! Don't delay, class starts bright and early October 3rd!

fantasy dinner party

Here's who's on my guest list:
Beatrix Potter
Leonard Cohen
Bill Clinton
Chip Kelly
Julia Child
Sofia Coppola
Bruce Springsteen
and, of course, The Empress

Alternate: Tonya Harding

Who's on your list?

revising a life

Just back from a particularly sweaty walk in my West Portland neighborhood. I often go on these make-it-up-as-I-go-along quests when I'm feeling the metal edges of the hamster wheel too acutely.

This was a five-miler, lots of up and down, and at the end, as I turned up my street, I ran into a neighbor lady out on her own sojourn. A woman who I'd just heard was recovering from breast cancer. She looked lovely in her white knit cap and scarf. Alive, the way only a scrape with cancer can propel a person into aliveness. She was taking a little post-chemo constitutional, and I flagged her down.

Her son is a year ahead of mine in school, so we chatted about freshman year and the local high school and the things that are most important to 14-yr-old boys.

Ah, life. The seasons, the trajectory, the misfires and mayhem. You just never know, right? One day you're thinking you should give that gluten free diet another chance, or hm, maybe go somewhere warm for spring break. The quotidian, "Gee, what should I make for supper." Next day your husband gets hit by a trolley. Which leads me to my little cardio-epiphany on today's slog.

It had to do with God. Really, apropos of nothing, after cresting a particular muddy hill clotted with wet leaves, the idea of God as a writer of the Big Narrative crystallized. What if God was writing a book, and the default for this book was to have each character follow his or her well-worn arc in service to the grand trope. Behave in ways that were consistent with the narrative, because God is under contract to produce a certain type of book. Thinking some more about this, the oft-spoke term "Let go and let God" came to mind, and I had a visceral reaction to it. A roiling rejection of the notion that a person should break their particular stranglehold on something and let the chips fall where they may, as opposed to, say, giving God a little smack. A little, "WTF, Dude (sorry, God will always be a dude in my mind), I'm not down with the plan."

 Did I just swear at God? *Turns around to see if a lightning bolt is on its way through the window*

Heresy aside, what if, instead of believing in a power greater than oneself as the platitude offers, people began to embrace the highest power--the God--inside themselves.What if people were encouraged to stray from the prescribed path in service to their own narrative?

That's when Malala came to mind. Malala, the current face of courage and rebellion. The girl who, with everything stacked against her, continues to write her own narrative, embracing that fire within, bucking the tide.

I was thinking that how the long-sufferers of the world, those chronically complaining that the wrong people keep coming into their lives, and that their jobs suck, and that they can't get no, hey, hey, hey, that those folks are often the ones who invoke God's will when it comes to dealing with their chronic misfortunes. What if those people took the pen from God's hand, just once, and revised the section of the narrative in which they get fucked over, yet again. (Writers know about this. We hear our characters staging revolts all the time. On the page for me today, in fact, my character smacked me upside the head and declared, I'm not doing that. Thus the need for the walk.)

But in terms of staring down the alpha--having the hubris, the audacity, to grow the balls to make the scary decisions, to Malala your way to your dream come-what-may, I'm for it.

What would you be willing to throw away for the dream?

brooklyn castle

Last week I took my schoolteacher husband to see this documentary about a Title 1 public school in Brooklyn nationally recognized for its chess team. Really, I just wanted to have a date with the hub--you know when you get that urge to hold your guy's hand in the dark? It was one of those.

Kirk has been having a really crappy year at school. His district is operating on a skeleton budget, and over the summer the administrators played Pick Up Sticks with the staff in a desperate attempt to balance a totally out-of-whack fiscal situation. You know, the "cliff" everyone's talking about. He has over 40 kids in a few classes. He's teaching a grade he hasn't taught since his practicum days some 35 years ago while grade school teachers have been transferred to high schools faced with subjects they are ill-equipped to teach. I could go on and on, but I'm going to stop there, because this isn't a rant. No, it's a love note.


What makes Brooklyn Castle such a satisfying film has to do with the humanity that pours out of kids and teachers on the screen. The documentary covers more than a year at the school, and follows several students through the ups and downs of competition and the realities of an economy where social programs and education are perennially on the chopping block.

 The filmmaker does a masterful job of bringing out the kids as they really are. Capturing the essence and spectrum of adolescence. The hopes. Pitfalls. Fear of failure. And the backdrop of dedicated teachers and administrators pushing that rock uphill during a perilous time in our economy makes the movie all the more stunning.

Kirk and I both teared up. Sitting there in an audience of four, quietly holding hands and rooting for these kids, for the school. And what a week to be watching such a film, right? The hurricane. The election. So much at stake.

The common denominator of the last seven days, I think, is love. When human beings work together, striving to accomplish that thing just outside the grasp, it's infectious.

What has inspired you lately?

just for fun

http://www.wordle.net/ Have you clouded your ms?

NaNoWriRant

  Greetings from your resident naysayer and spoilsport. Today is November 1st. Day of the Dead AND day one of the 2012 NaNoWriMo blitz. Coincidence? I think not.

Don't get me wrong, I have been a fan of the writing bootcamp, and think it can be instrumental in getting a project off the ground. I've done it. It was an interesting experience, and I got a lot of pages written. Where are those pages now, you ask? On a long crashed hard drive--but the kernel of my project morphed into something that ultimately survived.

The best part of the experience for me was the connection element. I had a few buddies, and at the end of each session we'd trade our final paragraphs of the day. I looked forward to them sparkling down in my inbox, and was eager to share my own, so that kept me motivated and accountable.

That said, I do have reservations about NaNoWriMo. Or, I should say, one GINORMOUS reservation, and that is, the experience can lead to the absolute opposite outcome for writers. Instead of fueling production, it can be one more distraction. E.g. checking in on all your fellow WriMos to see how many words they've written, or spending additional time blogging, responding to blog posts and tweeting about word count, or lack thereof. Even locating the widget you want and backending it onto your blog sidebar can take as much time as writing four pages.

Can you say sink hole?

In the last four years, since my foray, writing communities have bubbled up all over the place. Social media and its ubiquitous, meteoric presence can be another full time job on its own, so with the addition of WriMoVille, you're taking minutes away from writing time. And who has minutes, right?

A few months ago, I wrote a novel in 70 days. A novel that, according to my agent, was in pretty good shape. The final draft took another three weeks, and now it's out to editors, so it's not that I'm a killjoy regarding butt-in-the-seat. For me, it's all about focus. I had to do less things instead of more things to get those 60K words down (and those were the keeper words--double that for rough draft). I had to be strict about my time on social media and extra curriculars and the sorts of communication enticements dangled before me.

I do like the idea of setting goals though, and I think what's most important about the idea of National Novel Writers' Month is figuring out what's the right goal for you. Maybe it's three chapters you work hard to polish. Maybe it's shitting out that initial lump of coal. Maybe it is, indeed, simply connecting with a writing community. My bit of caution, as a dyed-in-the-wool non rule-follower, is to make your WriMo experience particular to your goals as a writer. Don't get sucked in by the numbers unless that's what's important to you as a writer. In other words, make your own rules!

So tell me, writers, what do you wish for writing selves this month?

name that character

Mitch? Rod? Morgan? Julian? Broc?

   So, in between obsessively checking Sandy reports (lots of family on East Coast), today I've been working on fleshing out an outline for a sequel to RAISING CHEER. I'm one of those writers who has to name my characters before I can even write the first sentence (or truly tap out a meaningful outline). Of course, I often search-and-replace the names in subsequent drafts, but I simply cannot lope my people through their various conundrums until I get initial purchase on names.

And before I can name them, I need to know what they look like.

Brady

In the old days, before stock photography, I used to sketch my characters, and make tab-festooned clothing for them. Sort of like those Betsy McCall paper dolls of yore. Thank God I don't have to do that anymore. I'm not much of a sketcher. Now I just pop on a site like this one, and peruse the offerings. It's sort of like porn for character development. You know, like, Hey boy, what're you wearing? You never know where it will lead...

Since the second RC book will have most of the same characters as the first one, the only real name challenge is a new character. A love interest. A swarthy fellow (the pic above is a guy a bit older than the character in my book, but same brand of attitude). The third party in a love triangle. The romantic foil.

Connor

The stoneresque boy pictured left is the hero, Connor, from book one (that's a soft spot I have, I guess-- a sort of scruffier Josh Hartnett type burnout with a heart of gold), and the young gal with the cell phone above is exactly who I envision my main character, Brady, to be.

So, top picks for naming the ass hat (as discussed on Facebook): Julian, Prescott, Marcel (Marc), Broc, Adam, Georgio, Shane.

What do think, oh fabulous writing community? What would you name my asshole?

sit your ass down and write season

   The rain has arrived. Like a reverse groundhog's proclamation, the serious pile up of storms on the Doppler radar has announced six more months of the same.

Not that I'm bitching.

In the 23 years I've lived in Portland, I can't remember such a fantastic lingering sun spell. No rain since the beginning of July. Tomatoes that rival New Jersey August-grown ones. Umbrellas clenched like fists. Car windows left open all night (shit, that reminds me...). Enough, already.

Fitting that weather would change with the onset of Wordstock. Rain is writing weather, after all. Gone is the stray, "let's go bang a couple balls around the court" notion. It's curl up in front of the fire with a stack of books. With your notes. With your big, big ideas for the next book.

It's here. Yes it is. Whatcha gonna write?

art. portland style.

Go to any happening, any event -- concert, sports, literary -- and the most ubiquitous aspect is the bevy of rectangular discs surgically adhered to the palms of the people. The viral share--the YOU ARE THERE--the feeding frenzy of HERE'S WHERE I AM RIGHT THIS MINUTE -- delivered in scooping haste by the masses. Gone are the dusty press-pass-toting members of the media, who, until very recently, everyone relied upon for reportage. Well, maybe not gone, exactly, but certainly upstaged.

Case in point. Last night three members my writing group, Chuck Palahniuk, Chelsea Cain, and Lidia Yuknavitch, teamed up to help launch Lidia's latest book, DORA: A HEADCASE. The venue, one of a handful of surviving indie bookstores, made 100 tickets available (and were sold out within the hour) for this unique confab: bedtime stories for grown-ups. The idea was to spike sales for DORA, while benefitting a brick-and-mortar book store by offering something you just can't get via, ahem, Amazon. Yes, there were adult beverages involved.

Well, the media showed up:



and, as is their style, the on-the-beat reporter began to voiceover during Chuck's reading of a story he'd just, that afternoon, written. Well, if there's one thing I've learned about Chuck lo these 20 years I've been in workshop with him, he's 1) not fond of being interrupted while reading, and 2) he thinks  lightning speed fast on his feet - even when they're covered in bunny slippers.

After a brief brow furrow, the ascot and smoking jacket-clad Chuck put down his fresh, reasonable story and picked up a three-hole binder (another Chuck thing--the binder). "That's it, I'm reading the dirty one," he said. "No going back."

Monica and I and the leopard theme

So while the reporter snagged Chelsea for commentary, and muted Chuck's super graphic, sexual, shocking and amazing reading of the sort of story that has the editors of Playboy salivating, the audience collectively squeezed their prized stuffed animals and got all Harry Potter-eyed while the iconic author of FIGHT CLUB hefted the lets-get-you-good-and-uncomfortable bar to new and glorious heights. Again, demonstrating how now, more than ever, art is defined on-the-ground, by the terms of the artist and audience. Which is really what this celebration of transgressive fiction is all about, right? And what better place than Portland to show it, eh?

What's the coolest event you've been to in the last year?

the assemblage of treasure and scrap

If there's one thing I truly suck at, it's physical organization. I am egregiously handicapped when it comes to sorting and making decisions about objects. If there is a Special Olympics sort of event, or a government issued card I can stick on my rearview mirror to mitigate my retardation in this area, consider my hand officially raised.

Yesterday I bought two books to help me navigate the chaos and clutter in my immediate midst. One book I gave to my husband (also moderately afflicted with the handicap), and the other, well, as you can see it's sitting under my mug of coffee (I know it looks like wine, but, I pinky-dog swear, it really is coffee). The problem is, I don't know where to start. I get all anxious and paralysis sets in, and then I start to hyperventilate. Sounds like a Hoarders case, yes?

I want to, you know, "space clear." Get rid of the bad, stagnant energy and whatnot. Shred useless, outdated documents. Restore my chi. (Or is it qi--I guess I need to excavate the fucking book and find out.)

For the past few months, when not trotting around Europe, we've been in that semi-homeless limbo known as remodeling hell. Our kitchen, dining room and living room -- the central thoroughfare of our lives -- have been off-limits. I've been brewing coffee next to the toilet. Washing dishes in the laundry slop sink. Chopping tomatoes and buttering toast on the dryer. I don't know about you, but when the food part of my routine goes awry for any length of time, it becomes this systemic hell. It's a Maslow thing, right? Food is pretty essential. Consequently, my chi (or qi) is out of whack.

The remodel is just about finished now, and all this week I've been peeking in the bins and boxes I packed up in early June. I've been trying to sort stuff; move the essentials back into their drawers. Which sounds simple and glorious, right? I get to put my kitchen back together! Use a proper cutting board on a solid surface. Alas, would that it were so. This afternoon I stood in front of two Rubbermaid bins completely paralyzed with options. Should I put that grater in the Goodwill box? Or maybe it should be ferried back upstairs to the kitchen and be placed a drawer that I've yet to earmark for such a tool. Or, perhaps I should toss it into the bin for tomorrow's yard sale? Well, that depends on how many graters we actually have. I mean, is this the grater from Kirk's VW camper? Is it our extra grater? And don't we use a Cusinart for grating these days? You'd think I was a husband from the 50's faced with a dead wife and no history of performing simple kitchen tasks.

The anti-clutter book I gave Kirk had this tagline commanding the reader to throw away 50 things. Would this grater be one of the 50 things? Should it be? Okay, move on to the turkey lacing skewers. Hm. And like that. All day long.

I really wish I was a pot-smoker. I think I could probably blaze this conundrum into the vapors of "whatever."

The darker issue here is this fear that my affliction -- the glacial pace with which I attend these sorts of chores -- is only going to become more pronounced as I age. Perhaps I am staring into my future, when I will one day hold a toothbrush in one hand, toothpaste in the other, and try to recall how they go together, and what to do with them once they're joined.

The problem is, of course, we simply have too much crap, us blended boomers. Crates and barrels and bins of sentimental detritus that we should clearly jettison. Or hire someone to jettison for us, lest we get sucked into the nostalgia of things such as a child's kindergarten masterpiece or a Mother's Day ashtray made sixteen years ago (maybe I will take up pot smoking after all! Let's save it, just in case!)

How about you? Are you as organized as a German engineer, or are you headed for your own starring role Hoarders?

Sisi's fancy frocks contest

Want a chance at winning a really cool book by Sangu Mandanna? (She's another Melissa Sarver author --so sort of in my rep family, and her debut book, THE LOST GIRL, is really clever and built on a very cool premise).

You only have until Tuesday, August 28th at 4 pm Pacific Time, so hop on over to the Empress Chronicles and play this fun game! It's a mix-and-match sort of deal.There's fancy court gowns involved. You'll like it. Swear.

xo

on the street where I live

So this morning started with one of the autistic kids from the group home around the corner frantically ringing the doorbell at 6:45. Kirk opened the door, expecting some sort of emergency, and in dashed this six-year old, making a bee-line for the bathroom where he proceeded to flush the toilet repeatedly.

I threw on some clothes and went off into the bizarre Phoenix-like heat of early morning and soon found the frantic caregiver wandering the street. The boy, he told me, had jumped out the window. "He's obsessed with toilets," he said.

This is the third time the kid has found his way into our house, the little escape artist. WTF? Why us? What's the intrigue? Is our toilet giving off secret signals?

Autism is such an interesting and baffling condition. What goes on in there, in those brains? Neural pathways mapping a discordant world where obsessions and compulsions and savant behaviors become hardwired to the exclusion of social construct. The boy in our house this morning had crapped his pants, probably a connection to the flushing toilet. The brain and the body making its causal circuit.

The day, from that point forward, took on a sort of depressing pallor. I kept revisiting the image of the boy being hoisted over the shoulder of his caregiver as they descended our steps, his body gone limp as a sack of rice. What will become of these kids in that group home? Where will they go once they're too large to be hauled back to base? What sort of therapy are these kids given? Are they the babies of crack moms? Are they simply too much for their parents to handle?

My own boys, my girl, somehow they grew to normal size and development, in my womb and then in the world. Their chromosomes all correctly numbered. Their neural pathways wired toward function. My youngest boy, sometimes he ticks me off because he leaves his cereal bowl in the family room. His dirty socks on the floor. I have excellent, thriving, productive kids and step-kids and a loving husband. Blessings beyond measure. I should volunteer. I should give my time and heart to those less fortunate. I should learn about autism and lend a hand over at that group home full of kids who crap their pants and flush toilets and jump out windows.

And yet I know I won't.

When confronted with uncomfortable, unfortunate circumstance, do you ever feel guilty because you're not doing more?

gold

Our poster child for human beingness   

If you've been reading this blog over the past, um, seven years, you know that I'm a little bit of a soccer nut. Even though I, myself, have never played. Yeah, I'm one of those. But, c'mon, I've been a beast of a soccer mom for 20 years, I've written articles about the sport (and its regional fandom), and when it comes to women's soccer, ask my husband, he'll tell you that he NEVER sees me as animated as I am when glued to the Abby-Megan-Alex-Hope show.
 
Though I felt bad for the Canadians with the semi outcome the other day (they gave just as much as our women did, and if you're from Portland, you gotta love watching UP alum Sinclair), I was salivating for the chance to watch USAvJPN again. The Japanese women are simply the smartest, most disciplined team out there. They don't have our drama or individual personality. Our sheer physical intent. Our bravado. But they use every ounce of ability and focus.They punish every mistake. They are winners in the deepest sense of the word.
                            
Last summer's Japan-USA World Cup final was a heartbreaker for the diehard USWNT fans, but one of those emotional sports capstones that paper towel companies relish. The country had been devastated by the earthquake just months before the World Cup. It was this sort of "Well, if the U.S. had to lose, better to the poor Japanese girls than to, say, the Germans or the French" feelings. Which is bullshit, but where would international advertising-fueled, media-inspired sporting events be without sentimentality?

And speaking of the media, nobody was more soundbite-bite worthy than Wambach when she went on record before the London Games with her, "It doesn't matter who gets the goals - I'm going to leave my whole Human Beingness on that field" statement.

Tears of silver 

Today's match was a tad anti-climactic after that amazing semi-final against our neighbors to the north. I mean, Rapinoe was spent and sore. Wambach, bless her heart, looked run over by a freight train for much of the game. Baby Horse was her usual energetic self, but was outshined at the back of the net by Lloyd today--which, in the end, is why I love watching these women. Pia's team is deep. So deep. And know each other so well, you get the feeling that they make plays based upon this sort of infallible intuition that you just don't see with the boys' teams.

And don't even get me started on that stud, Solo. If the Timbers HAD to trade one of their most popular team members, it should have been Solo, not Ricketts, they acquired. (Though my son tells me she's crap against grounders, and that's why she blows shootouts. Hm.)

So the USA wins gold in Women's Football, and soccer-playing girls all over the country have sparky, genuine, incredible athletes as role models, their stature only outsized by their hearts. Silver, Gold, Bronze or no medal at all, I'm a fan. #USWNTTID.

happy birthday

He would have been 50 today, my first husband. He's been dead half his life. There should be a milestone for this day, but I'm not sure, exactly, what.

Years ago our kids and I used to mark his birthday by cooking up his favorite meal: veal cutlets. Frank loved a good veal cutlet. Maybe, over time, he would have seen the cruelty in the veal cutlet, the little huts the baby cows are confined to and so forth (though, his name was Vitello, so maybe not). For our short life together (three years of a marriage that produced two children), we'd celebrate August 1st with eggs Benedict and mimosas upon waking. Jesus, talk about your high cholesterol food choices! Ah, but we were young. What did we know of mortality? What did we know about clogged arteries and politically sensitive eating and the raising of children? We were just out of the snorting coke years. The selling pot years. We had menial minimum-wage jobs in food service. We delivered the Sunday paper together, him--flinging the Arizona Republic from the back of a copper-colored pickup at four in the morning, me--pregnant and disheveled at the wheel.

What would Frank Vitello be like as a 50-year old? Would we have stayed married? Would we have churned out more kids? Where would we be living? When he died, we'd just moved back to New York State. That day they pulled his lifeless, smashed up body from a pile of crumpled Mustang, I was, again, big with baby. My daughter, who was technically a fetus when her father was killed, does not eat veal anymore. Or wheat, for that matter.Would her father be giving her shit for her gluten-free ways? Would he raz her about the tattoo on her ankle? Frank liked a good talk radio show. Would he be voting for Romney, then?

And what would he have to say about his son's chosen career as a poker player? "Why, at your age," he might say, "I was holding down four jobs and digging out the septic tank in preparation for my second child." Or maybe he'd be all proud and amazed that his son is living the life, rolling with the big boys. Doing well with the cards. In reality though, all he could say to his son today is, "Why, when I was your age, I was dead."

I remember my first husband's laugh. The way his eyes crinkled when he was amused. He liked a good, stout ale. He'd approve, I think, that I'm now married to a guy who brews his own. Sometimes I imagine us all at the dining table: my dead husband, my alive one, my ex and my children. One big meld of family sitting amid steaming piles of disparate food: tofu, beef, sauerkraut, pizza. If I could only be a fly on the wall while my various husbands discussed global warming, college sports teams, the upcoming presidential election, raising chickens.

The men. The babies. Life. 

Happy birthday, Frankie. If I had a kitchen, I'd cook you a meal.

Love,
Suzy

dead people's houses

A dozen white cotton gloves in a cardboard box. CDs imploring SPEAK GERMAN! and SPEAK ITALIAN! nestled next to Christmas globes. Cleansing creams and how-to manuals, salmon-silver Jell-O molds and hankies embroidered with Ethiopian mothers bent over under the weight of babies and gourds.

A Thigh-Master, still in its box and advertised by Suzanne Somers's pile of hair and smiling face, leered at the shlumpy masses as they traipsed up steep stairs embellished with blue painting tape to prevent mishap. Self-help paperbacks bleached by the years were spread out in a disheveled pile in an upstairs sleeping porch. All these items, and more. The legacy of some dead lady.

Today was a field trip illustration of folk singer Cheryl Wheeler's terrific song "Estate Sale," and it touched the same nerve that Cheryl's song does, the way we would-be gold-diggers were poking around in all of her stuff. For $1.75 I got a set of six vintage cocktail glasses, the Ethiopian mother hankie, and a bestseller by Diane Mott Davidson called "The Grilling Season" with a tagline that read: Revenge against your ex-husband can be a tasty dish--it can also be murder.

Which gave me pause. I wondered about this dead woman and what wrongs she may have suffered. Who, I wondered, had fucked her over? What was her story? Was her husband a philandering bastard who flirted with and fucked the barmaids down the street? Or was she widowed early on, and left alone, slowly rotting into an Alzheimer's decay until one of her kids tossed her into a home? At one point, she'd wanted to learn yoga, bridge, this woman. She was willing to try new things. To be better at stuff. She longed to keep her hands soft, her heart ready, her thighs firm. She had an electric wok. Imagine that? I almost bought it (everything was 75% off).

As I hauled my paper sack of loot down the crumbling steps, my joy at the deals in my bundle was mitigated by a sorrow. The sort of sorrow that usually sends me into the deep end of project. What sort of fabrication might I conjure? How might exploit the clues here, churn them up in the mixer, and spit out, say, 80K words?

Whose stories have you stolen lately?

Achtung!

After a month traipsing Europe, here's the big takeaway for me. I'm a fan of competence. I prefer order with my exquisite beauty and can only tolerate the occasional surprise. Sobering, that. I mean, all this time I thought I was more whimsical. More, la-di-da. But, sadly, nope. Turns out, I find whimsy and mash-up and spontaneous plan B's disturbing. I have a stick up my ass, in other words.

I far preferred the regimented German-speaking territories to the devil-may-care Italian ones. I didn't like that the Internet was spotty, that the road rules weren't clear, and that it took so fucking long to get your check in Italian restaurants. Oh yeah, and, by the way, the bread sucks in Italy. And mostly the pizza is crappy, burnt flatbread with flavorless sauce.

That said.

All my kinks got unkinked in Italy. My gray hairs turned ungray. My body and brain and spine were overcooked macaroni as I zoned out to the white noise of the ever-present cicadas. It was a dream, my time in Italy. A sensory dep chamber. The womb, maybe? Less come to Jesus than here's your mommy's boob. If Germany, Austria and Slovenia are the fatherland, Italy is the mother ship.

Consider: My grandmother (who just turned 100) left WWII Austria with my one-year-old father in tow. They got on the last ship out, fleeing the Nazis on a boat full of Jews out of Genoa--Italy coming to the rescue again.

Like my father and grandparents, I was born in Vienna. My formative years were an immersion in the structure and cadence of assertion and order. For holidays, we went to Italy and swam in the sea. My godfather, who still lives in Vienna, does the same. The flat in Vienna, the villa in Trieste.

Is it any wonder I'm forever Daddy's little girl?

We have a little of that going on here in the States. I mean, there's blue states and red states. Yankee pot roast and gumbo. Fir trees and birds of paradise. But the divisions are not archetypal the way they are in Europe. Here in Oregon, there's a mixture of mother/father energy. We have mountains and sea. Desert and valley. It's a bit of a mess, frankly. A beautiful mess, but a mess.

So, dear bloggers, where do you live? Mom's house or Dad's? Do you keep your room tidy, or are you a fan of the beautiful mess?