It's the Little Things

Many, many years ago, someone gave me one of those calendar flip-books of "Quotes from Great Women."

I have loved it, memorized it, and carried it with me from city to city, state to state, mountains to sea and back again. I think it's possible that the thing is 14 years old. Just this week, I decided that it'd had a good, long life, and was time to meet the recycling bin. But before it was laid to rest, I copied down every quote in a file on my computer.

I did this because those quotes spoke to me, and have (obviously) at different stages in my life. Since I got the calendar when I was in my teens and in college, had it has an early 20s outdoor educator sleeping in a cabin on top of a mountain, had it when I was single and in graduate school (the first time), and now as a married mama... well, the words and their meanings have certainly changed for me.

From imdb.com

Consider this quote by Bette Midler:

"After thirty, a body has a mind of its own."

When I was 19, or, heck--even 28, this would've meant nothing to me. Now, in my early 30s, boy howdy does it!

(I won't elaborate. But if you've seen this scene from the movie The Sweetest Thing, where Cameron Diaz and Christina Applegate are in a dressing room discussing the effects of gravity on boobage, you'll know what I mean.)

Or, on a more serious note, this one from one of my favorite American heroines, Abigail Adams:



Abigail Adams
From Gulliver's Nest

"I am more and more convinced that man is a dangerous creature."

The first Gulf War happened when I was in middle and high school, and we've been sucked into the sands of the Middle East ever since. But I never looked at international conflicts then the way I do now. This quote also applies, I think now, to disasters from oil spills to hurricane clean-ups, from a teenager driving while texting to a state deciding to pass a law.

As a mother, so much of what those great ladies said and wrote sings to me. Here's one from Jill Eikenberry. Though I don't have a child this age, I think this could be applied to the two year-old:

"You have a wonderful child. Then, when he's thirteen, gremlins carry him away and leave in his place a stranger who gives you not a moment's peace. You have to hang in there, because two or three years later, the gremlins will return your child, and he'll be wonderful again."

And so, for some Wednesday fun, here are 10 of my favorite quotes from that wonderful, ratty old flip calendar I've finally let go of:  (I wonder if the recycling has gone out yet?)

10 Quotes from Great Women

1. “I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.”
~ Agatha Christie

2. “All my life through, the new sights of nature made me rejoice like a child.”
~ Marie Curie

3. “Ideological differences are no excuse for rudeness.”
~ Judith Martin

4. “We ought to be able to learn some things second hand. There is not enough time for us to make all the mistakes ourselves.”

~ Harriet Hall

5. “You can take no credit for beauty at 16. But if you are beautiful at 60, it will be your own soul’s doing.”

~ Marie Stopes

6. “Friends and good manners will carry you where money won’t go.”
~ Margaret Walker

7. “Can you imagine a world without men? No crime and lots of happy fat women.”
~ (Sylvia) Nicole Hollander

8. “In the end, what affects your life most deeply are things too simple to talk about.”
~ Nell Blaine

9. “I want real things—music that makes holes in the sky.”
~ Georgia O' Keefe

10. “The true woman is as yet a dream of the future.”
~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

I love quotes, so please share! Has there been a particular quote (by a great man or great woman) that has stuck with you over the years?

Poetry as Prayer and Parenting on the Fly

This week has been a doozy.

On top of the normal--you know, all those things I signed up to do because I imagine myself Lynda Carter in shiny red go-go boots: teach classes, be a grad student, write a new novel--my husband and I have had a shake-up in our work worlds. And to top it off, our 2 and 3/4s year-old has decided that life would be much more fun if she did the following:

From lasplash.com

1. Wake up every morning at 4 or 5 a.m., bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (I love that metaphor--it makes me think of Big Bird), shouting our names and being sure to enunciate every syllable.

Ma-Ma? Ma-Ma! Da-Dee! I. want. out.
I. want. some. orange. juice.
Ma-Ma? Da-Dee! I'm. thirsty!
Can you tell me a story? How about Wylie and Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin and Piglet and Eeyore and Kanga and Baby Roo and Rabbit and Owl go to the PLAYGROUND! And swing on the bouncy swings?
Ma-Ma? Dah-dee?

2. Shorten her naps to about 30 - 45 minutes, when only last week she was taking two to (sometimes) three hour naps. This is not cool to do to the Mama. Not when the Mama is in the midst of final exams.

Portrait of Cate the Great taken from Goodreads

3. Channel her favorite alternate ego: the Russian despot. You've probably heard of her, if you've been reading here. Well, she and the Orlov Trotters she rode in on are back.

This week alone, the Czarina resorted to physical violence with her sainted mother and father, shrieked at her loyal dog, mopped the floor with her flailing body, practiced her ninja skills (okay, so moving away from the Russian metaphor) on various objects around the house--including the sofa, her books, and her loyal stuffed animal subjects--and screamed, "No! Off with his head!" when offered her usual favored blueberry yogurt.

In addition to the Czarina's royal moodiness, our faithful family dog has decided that anything making a noise outside the family compound is a threat, and must be eliminated. This includes the mailman, the small dog in the yard behind ours, the screened door, the neighbors having a conversation outside in their own driveway, the recycling truck, joggers, road bikers, planes flying overhead, the wind, the birds, etc.

I make light. But it has been stressful. All of it. And I've lost my temper. Of which I am not proud.

Some people, in situations like these, find solace in prayer. Or talking on the phone to their friends. I certainly pray, and I sometimes talk on the phone to my friends... when I can find my phone. And when I've remembered to charge it.

And though I'm no poet, I have always found solace, relief, inspiration, peace... in poetry. Through the years I've come to think of poetry as prayer--of poets as writers winging out their best hopes, their most gorgeously realized dreams to the universe, and hoping somebody picks up on it. Mostly, I get my poems from my daily dose of The Writer's Almanac. This morning did not disappoint.

There it was, "Eagle Poem," by Joy Harjo. And in its first lines I found my relief: "To pray you open your whole self/ To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon/ To one whole voice that is you./ And know there is more/ That you can't see, can't hear/ Can't know except in moments/ Steadily growing, and in languages/ That aren't always sound but other/ Circles of motion."

Because isn't that the very definition of our daily lives as we stride--sometimes muddle along--through the universe? We are constantly moving in "circles of motion," and it is so very easy to close. To put up our personal blinders, our make-it-through-the-day sunglasses that shade the side roads, the inessentials. But isn't part of prayer, prayer to whomever and whatever we choose, to release, to "open your whole self"?

My Grandmama Jean was convinced by the power of prayer. That, in itself, would be enough for me. But I've always been certain that words have power, and that by putting those words out into the universe we are pleading for our own release, hoping in our darkest places that the Mystery will answer back, in one way or another.

My parental prayers change on a daily basis. They move along the lines of, "Let the world be kind to my daughter," to "Let my daughter be kind to the world." Mostly they sound more like, "Grant me patience."

And sometimes I pray simply that there is blueberry yogurt in the refrigerator.

Book Clubs Cometh; or, Hurrah for People Who Like to Read!

Yesterday was a good day for me: I booked my first book club discussion of KEOWEE VALLEY, down in Greenville, South Carolina. Hurrah for the Wednesday Afternoon Book Club!

Granted, this meeting-in-which-my-novel-is-discussed-by-awesome-ladies will not occur until early 2013, but I'm still jacked. The fun is beginning.

And if you, dear reader, would like to read KEOWEE VALLEY in your book club, and have me there to talk to on the day you discuss it, just let me know. If I'm close enough, I'll come in person. And if not, let's arrange a Skype date. I truly love to talk books with booky people.

From Coffeee: It's History, Cultivation, and Uses, by Robert Hewitt, 1872

Book clubs are a fabulous invention, and they've been around for a long time. (Or at least "long" in American time. Europeans consider the 1700s the recent past.) Scholars may debate, but I believe much of what we recognize as the modern idea of the book club--meeting to talk of all things literary--began in the European coffee houses of the late 1600s and early 1700s. Folks had always gathered to talk literature and politics and writing--no Kardashian gossip or what-actress-has-the-biggest-baby-bump for these guys (although there was probably a version of this sort of gossip, maybe something like "who is the king beheading today?")--but suddenly these gatherings exploded. This is because three new items appeared on ships from the Far East and other exotic places.

These three things are now a bastion of modern life. They certainly make my life happy. They were:

1. Coffee
2. Tea
3. Chocolate

From Calvin and Hobbes, by Bill Watterson

No one needed much of an excuse to gather to eat and drink these things, and so they did. Or, only the men did, at first, though the women would beginning gathering publicly just a short time after. These coffeehouses were different than taverns: for one thing, they were "men only" gatherings. Sort of latter-day versions of the "No Girls Allowed" sign in the treehouse.

 Any man, of any social class, could enter the coffeehouse. But there were a few rules. According to The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, a penny was usually charged for admission. And, "Some establishments posted rules of behavior stipulating that all customers were deemed equal and prohibiting gambling, swearing, quarrelling, and mourning over lost love."

I love this. Basically, no one could bash their exes or brawl in the coffeehouse. (Or, at least, were encouraged not to. But those wigged men, I'm sure, could throw down.) However, these were places for partaking of all the good things, including books, newspapers, and other assorted treatises. (People wrote treatises back them, tacked them up on trees and buildings around town. Now we blog.)

 

In the 1700s, especially in England, coffeehouses became so popular and important that like-minded folks gathered in specific places: ship captains and assorted seaman in one coffeehouse, politicians in another, businessmen and doctors in yet another. Rank and class seems to have not been much of an issue.

Today, book clubs meet--usually in someone's private home or in a coffee shop around town--and they are grand things. A list of books is drawn up, books are borrowed and bought, and then read and discussed. There're usually good things to eat and drink at these gatherings, including coffee--and soemtimes wine. Sometimes the authors arrive to add an extra element to the discussion. In our blindingly fast-paced world, a world in which many of us spend in artificial light, typing at a keypad or Ipad or Iphone, book clubs are a chance to slow down, to engage the brain and the imagination, to enjoy fellowship with other book lovers and friends.

A while back, I was a member of a book club I adored. Called "The Unconventional Book Club," we were an assortment of ages and backgrounds, we read books of all genres (fiction and nonfiction) and we met monthly in each other's homes. There was good food to be had, and wine and coffee to be drunk. And, more often than not, there was chocolate.

Sadly, busy schedules got the better of us all, and we disbanded. Now, I'm back in grad school, in a MFA program surrounded by other writers and teachers, all readers. At my first residency, there were inpromptu "book clubs" meeting everywhere, at all times: in the dininghall at meals, walking to lectures and readings, during and after workshops, and in the dorms. We shared beloved book titles and authors, talked writing into the wee hours. We are carrying on the traditions of the coffeehouses, only ours aren't segregated by gender.

However, there is still wine, lots of coffee, and chocolate.

   Amen.





Just Call Me Alexander



Cover art from the children's book by Judith Viorst

"I think I'll move to Australia."

~ Judith Viorst, from Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Last Monday, I sprained my ankle. I was trail running, about halfway through my run, and it just happened. Crunch. Stumble. Much cursing. (Unfortunately including the F-bomb. I'm certain I offended the rhondodendron, and I hope they'll forgive me.) It HURT.  

It took me about 40 minutes to hike out of the forest, and though I'd been giving myself a pep talk on the hike (okay, limp), by the time I got to my car I knew it to be true: I'd sprained my ankle badly enough to put me out of exercise commission for at least a week. 

It's difficult for me to sit still on a pretty day. And since I've just returned to trail running over the past few months, it thoroughly annoys me that this (insert Daffy Duck-stuttered expletives here) injury will set me back--in my fitness and weight loss goals. But that, I suppose, is life. The fact that  I haven't sprained an ankle since I was in my 20s doesn't help, either. Oh, and lest I forget: hobbling around on crutches while chasing a 2 1/2 year old is loads of fun.

So, the ankle sprain set me up for a week of sitting, elevating, icing, Advil-popping. I tried to stay off it as much as I could, but this was next to impossible.

You would think, wouldn't you, that this would be the perfect excuse for writing. That I'd embrace my immobility and get cracking on my new novel, or on the pages of creative and critical work I've got to send to my grad school advisor soon... too soon. But I couldn't make it happen. The words just weren't there, and neither was the (gasp) inspiration.

Lately, as I told my husband last night, I've felt a little lost. It's been a difficult period, this time after my first novel has been sold, edited, and is now awaiting publication. I'm a bit worn out. And I crave the thrill and excitement I felt when writing the novel: I miss those 16-page days where I wrote well into the night, on a writer's high. I want them back. 

Over the weekend, my husband took my daughter to see her grandparents on Hilton Head Island, where they live. It was the perfect, rare chance for me to have a weekend alone, just for writing--for me to work hours upon hours on my fiction and grad school assignments and on my teacherly schoolwork, for me to embrace being alone in my house for more than a few hours... something that is so rare I'm not actually sure when the last time was that this happened.

But I was... lonely. Surprisingly so. And uninspired. And really, thoroughly, annoyed about my ankle, which continued to ache. Normally, I adhere to the "suck it up" philosophy instilled in my sister and me by my Dad throughout our childhoods. Yes, it can be brutal. Yes, at times unsympathetic. But it's in me, and it isn't going anywhere. For some reason, though, I couldn't make it happen over the weekend. I had periods of efficiency and productivity, and then I slipped back into petulance. Like Alexander after he'd dropped his ice cream cone.

This is not attractive in a 30s-ish year-old woman, and I'm glad no one was around to see it. (Okay, my dog was there. And she just ignored me.)

I need a cure. A cure for this writerly ennui.

Anyone remember that fabulous Gilmore Girls episode, where Michel decides he's got ennui, and passes it on to Sookie. This is how I feel.

Any suggestions?



Arguments Among Friends

 "The truth springs from arguments among friends."

~ David Hume, Scottish philosopher

I love arguing, especially with my friends. I get a little thrill, a ping beneath the skin, when an argument turns passionate and voices rise. And when the argument rides that wicked edge between debate and fight, I often feel myself coming alive in the blood.

This can be a problem.

Especially when you're arguing with someone who doesn't particularly like the practice. Especially when you're arguing with someone who considers all arguing to be distressing, distateful, or simply fighting. And, I admit, when an argument does cross that line from debate to full-on fight, I've got a fuse that can be extinguished so quickly it leaves my loved ones breathless. I can be ready to move on, and they're still mad.

Like I said, a problem.

But I don't think Hume meant "fights" when he wrote "arguments." I think he meant debate--good, old fashioned, disagreeing debate. We all remember those, right? The kinds of conversations where the speakers kept their minds open, and those minds could be changed?

The American conscious (and conscience) sprouted, grew and flourished because of debate: because smart people argued with each other--smart people who respected each other, even when they disagreed. Smart people who found the debate a useful, changing, and illuminating tool. Who were willing to see past the parameters of their own backgrounds and beliefs. And, like Hume said, the truth sprung. (Can I get an "amen"?)

Today, debate sometimes seems useless. Listeners often seem unwilling to crack the windows of their deeply-held beliefs, even to allow in the fresh air. And instead, in all situations and on all sides, the air grows stagnant, and eventually will stink.

I love my friends. I've got friends with whom I agree on just about everything: politics, literature, religion, football. I've also got friends with whom I disagree, on all the above. Most of my friends are willing to enter the argument: to talk, exchange ideas, to laugh with and at each other when it all grows ridiculous. I'm lucky for this. And I have friends with whom I've learned simply not to broach certain topics for the sake of the friendship. And this, too, is okay--though I long to enter the argument, I want to do so if only I could be assured its outcome would be that our friendship be unaltered.

DKG and me, after she signed my ripped event ticket because I'd loaned out her book

In the Fall, I was lucky enough to sit very close to a stage where Doris Kearns Goodwin, reknowned American historian and bestselling author of Team of Rivals, et. al.--also one of my very favorite writers--regaled a large audience with tales of ex-presidents, baseball, and history. In that audience sat folks of all ilk and belief, and Goodwin was a rock star. And I'm quite certain that everyone in the audience, be they Democrat or Republican, Manhattanite or mountain-dweller, Christian or Hindi, had a marvelous time. That they (we) all learned something. That we walked away from the presentation of an historical debate the better for having engaged in it.

I'm still working on my problem of enjoying the argument a bit too much. But the truth is, it's in my blood. And I hope beyond hope, that when it comes to most debates, my mind is open. That it may be changed. And that if it's not, that out of the argument the truth will spring in all its glory, and I'll catch a bit of it in my hands.



Rick Bragg's South

Author Rick Bragg & his mother, from the May 2012 issue of Southern Living

I get a little thrill when my latest issue of Southern Living magazine gets slid through the mail slot on my porch. Granted, this wasn't always the case: the Southern Living of my youth never really appealed to me, with its pastel-colored covers of cakes and table settings, its interior seemingly directed at ladies closer to my Grandmama's age. But the Southern Living of the past couple of years (perhaps longer) is a horse of a different color.

After some editorial changes--and the fold of Cottage Living, my formerly favorite "home" magazine--Southern Living has become something that very much appeals to me, a modern Southern woman in my 30s: it's cool, colorful, fun, and fresh, with vignettes of great writing that curl my toes.

My favorite spot in the magazine: "Southern Journal," recently taken over by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Rick Bragg. This is a section that used to be filled by freelancers, a place I dreamed of one day seeing my writing. When Southern Living stopped using freelancers a few years ago, I was frustrated and sad that the chance had been lost to me.

But in stepped Bragg, a storyteller as real and scarred and soulful as the Southern landscape. I've put away my disappointment and petty writer's jealousies as I've quickly fallen in love with each and every piece he writes in the "Southern Journal" section, located on the last page of each issue.

If you haven't picked up the May 2012 issue, you should--Southerner or not, writer or not. It's heartbreaking and elegant, painful and immediately warm--like a grown-up sip of Jack Daniels. And it's about a South that's fast disappearing, though the remnants remain. And though Bragg is much older than I am, I can feel my own memories--some very different from his--surround me as I read his words, thick as early August heat in the air. So much of what he says, too, seems pertinent to me... especially as I cast my ballot in local elections this morning.

Though the piece itself isn't available yet on the magazine web site, it's called "My Brother's Garden," and I had to pass along a taste.

Here's a bit from the middle:

"The South, like chiggers and divinity candy, is everlasting. It will always be, though it will not always be as we remember. The South of our childhoods rusts, peels, and goes away. Brush arbors have left no trace on it. Preachers who thrust ragged Bibles at bare rafters now shout politics from the pulpit. Civility, toward even those with whom we do not agree, is an heirloom. Quilts, the kind made for warmth instead of cash, as a thing of antiquity, their patterns a mystery slowly fading in an old woman's eyes. Young men can play 5,000 video games but cannot sharpen a pocket knife; lost are the men who tested their truck's electrical system by holding to a coil wire. I listen for the past, but I cannot hear it. The juke joints fall silent, cotton mills wind down to a final, solitary thread, and a last buck dancer shuffles off into the mountain mist. Then I see my brother Mark in his garden, and know that not everything must fade away."

Get thee a copy, reader. You'll enjoy it.

Dedications

I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I've been thinking about the dedication for my novel, Keowee Valley, for quite some time. Long before it was bought by my publisher, long before I even found a literary agent. The thought of what I'd say, if and when I had the chance to say it, has probably been percolating for years.

I've always enjoyed novel and book dedications. For me, they're a magical blink at an author's real life--a glimpse under a faery raft at an artist's real world. Some are straight-forward, others mysterious; some are sad, some hilarious. And we never really know, do we, exactly what the author is trying to say, and to whom she's trying to say it.

Writing the perfect dedication, I'm finding, is a Herculean task. I honestly don't think anything I come up with will come out the way I want. Especially since this will be my first novel, and it's been a long time coming, and I've got so many folks to thank. I also live in fear that I'll leave someone out.

So, because the editing process on the novel is coming to an end (at least until the galleys, etc), I've had to actually get cranking on my own dedication. I went through my personal library (this, of course, being the stacks and shelves of books positioned haphazardly throughout my house) and picked my favorite books, flipping through to see how other authors have done it. How have they managed to determine just how to thank the people who've supported, encouraged, loved, and downright put up with them during their writing years?

What I've ultimately decided is that I like the way writers like Pat Conroy and Diana Gabaldon do it: they offer a short dedication, and then an acknowledgements page--sort of a supplement to the dedication, wherein they list the folks they can't possibly leave out. So if my editor and publisher are willing, I think--though I, and my book, are no Conroy or Gabaldon--that I'll do it this way, too. Besides, I've always been mouthy.

I'd love to hear about some of your favorite book dedications!

Just for fun, here are some of mine:

"For Jenny, who saved my life,
thus making it possible for me to write this book"
~ Lucy March, A Little Night Magic

"To the Memory of My Mother,
Who Taught Me to Read--
Jacqueline Sykes Gabaldon"
~ Diana Gabaldon, Outlander

"This book is dedicated to my lost daughter,
Susannah Ansley Conroy. Know this: I love you
with my heart and always will. Your return
to my life would be one of the happiest moments
I could imagine."
~ Pat Conroy, My Reading Life

"Lucinda Margaret Grealy
June 3, 1963-December 18, 2002
Pettest of my pets"
~ Ann Patchett, Truth & Beauty: A Friendship

"I    To my cousin, Lieutenant William Porter, the sec-
       ond Sergeant York: he has the courage and the
       bravery, and furthermore he practiced for years,
       firing at targets.
II    To my cousin, Professor B. O. Williams of the Uni-
       versity of Georgia: he has the knowledge and
       the vision and the power to inspire.
III   To my father: he is the salt of the Southern earth."
~ Ben Robertson, Red Hills and Cotton

"This book is for every roadside Picasso who paints heaven on a
weathered board, for every sculptor of found objects who twists a tin
can or a rusty timber saw into an objet d' art, and for all the other
dreamers who have the courage to create something wonderful out
of nothing."
~ Deborah Smith, from the dedication in On Bear Mountain

"Equitare, Arcum tendere, Veritatem dicere"
(To ride, to shoot, to tell the truth.)
~ Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa