When my maternal grandmother died in 1994, one of the things passed along to me was a sagging corrugated cardboard box. Within, nestled in yellowed wads of the San Antonio Express were at least twenty-five china plates, cups and saucers rimmed all with gold and painted with a sort of blowsy bloom unknown to botany. A cross between a rose and a peony — let's call it Late Victorian-Era Floral, and examples of it gather dust in every single antique store in the United States. I didn't know that then; all I knew was that the set of china had been painted by some vaguely-related female ancestor — a great great aunt, a cousin thrice-removed as is the wont of old southern families — who had been quite skilled with her brush.
How artistic! I thought, picturing some rebellious, bohemian artist type making do with what she could get in Mexia, Texas in 1902 (canvas and oils seeming unlikely).
Fast forward a few more years to the death of my paternal grandmother, and I'm bequeathed the twin of that self-same sagging cardboard box. Only this time the newspaper the china's wrapped in is the Dallas Times-Herald and the blossom is leggier; a cross between a columbine and a violet, maybe. Same level of execution (pretty darn good), same gold rimming the edges.
And so I learned about the fad of china-painting, the scrapbooking of the early 1900s. And once I knew about the kilns women bought, the boxes of blanks from Europe shipped by the boatload and the gatherings to paint them in Victorian parlors, I started seeing examples of the fad everywhere: practically every female friend I have has at least one piece done by some ancestor shoved to the back of their kitchen cabinet.
Is it Art or is it Craft?
Apparently I have very complicated, mixed feelings about these two states— in fact, you might even say that along with Bad Mommy Spectre and Bad Writer Spectre, Art and Craft tend to duke it out pretty often in my mind. Snobbery, cliches, elitism: I am embarrassed to say that I've fallen prey to all of them.
Interestingly enough, Art vs Craft wasn't much of a debate I had with myself pre-motherhood. Sitting down to write a short story was clearly engaging in the pursuit of art (let's set aside, for the moment, how pretentious that might sound). The fact that around the holidays I bought a bag of potatoes and made potato stamps and created my own Christmas cards while I watched TV was Craft, pure and simple. And what made it Craft? The fact that I could do it while watching TV? The fact that I hadn't gone to grad school in potato-printmaking but had in short story writing? That I wasn't very good at it? I didn't even care, I just did it.
Last year, during one of those life-periods when the family boat has a brand-spanking-new coat of glossy paint and is riding high and pretty in the water, I took a Collage and Assemblage Class at SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design, Atlanta campus), and after years of putting any creative energy I had into words and text, I loved doing something visual. Was I good at it? No. Could I do it while watching TV? Yep. Clearly Craft, then.
The whole debate would be like wondering how many angels can dance on the head of a pin except that apparently I have set myself a fairly stringent criteria for any free time I might ever have. Novel-writing? High art. Or if not high art, at least a productive expenditure of time. This Blog? Collaging a canvas for a Christmas present or to adorn Elder Girleen's room? Craft, pure and simple.
Those poor Victorian matrons, I used to think. Sitting around painting china when they could have been striping canvases with manly bold strokes of oil. History has clearly seen them for the sad joke they that they were (or so I told myself).
Or has it?
The other day I ran into my favorite coffee shop (small, not bitter) for a latte. The baristas (so quick to offer me a Large Special Friend) clearly take their calling seriously: the cup handed across the counter to me was adorned with a lovely, leafy fern composed of striations in the foamy crema.
Art or Craft? They could probably do it while watching TV (if they had an espresso machine in their living rooms). Heck, they do it in thirty seconds while they work. So it's craft, right?
I dunno. It looks like art to me.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Just Put Me On the Cover of Bad Mommy Monthly (Repeat Once More, With Feeling)
Last night, Younger Girleen was troubled by a very particular sort of rash that made her a very unhappy camper. How do I know this? Because between 11 p.m. and 12:30 a.m. she sobbed out at intervals "Mommy, Daddy! My bauble hurts!"
First off, I suggest we ALL begin referring to our girly parts as "baubles" (If we are of that portion of society that possesses them). Authors of Mother-Blogs I've found myself reading occasionally wax anxious over what name they should teach their girl children for the the body parts that make them particularly girlish (fathers do not have this anxiety about their sons' body parts, and actually, now that I think about it, mothers probably don't either). But now, hooray— here's Younger Girleen, to save the day! In my book, bauble wins hands-down over "front bottom," a moniker a mom acquaintance actually once uttered in my presence. Without laughing.
(Even my parenthetical expressions have parentheses! This is a writerly talent on a par with being able to manage flashbacks within flashbacks, right?)
All this being said, nature abhors a vacuum, as we all know, and there's no vacuum like the brain of a mother who's lying in bed, every nerve tingling, waiting for the next cry of a child that she knows has not had done with crying for the night. Last night mine quickly became the perfect space for the Bad Mommy Spectre to insinuate herself into into.
O, Bad Mommy Spectre, my old friend, where've you been? I was missing you!
First things first, the Bad Mommy Spectre let me know in no uncertain terms that Younger Girleen most certainly had this particular rash because I had fallen down on the job. In fact, if I'd really been on top of things, she wouldn't even be in diapers at this point. Bad Mommy Spectre and I then moved on at a merry clip to revisit the conversation I'd had earlier in the day with Elder Girleen's teacher about the fact that seeing a picture taken of herself on a recent field trip with her eyes closed had forced Elder Girleen to have a complete and utter emotional breakdown for a portion of the school day.
Bad Mommy Spectre and I then hand-in-hand revisited the rest of my day (Bad Mommy Spectre shares some traits with the Ghost of Christmas Past from A Christmas Carol) and determined that the chaos of the dinner table, the kvetching, the refusal to let certain foods touch certain lips, the penchant for getting out of one's chair and making a complete circuit of the house before sitting back down are of course all due to my neglect of my duties.
We then dwelled upon the fact that Younger Girleen's best friend is moving in March (he's her best friend mainly because his mother is the mother I most often choose to hang out with, but still...) and because of my lack of attention to her social life, I have no idea who we will invite to her birthday party next May. If I were a good mother, I wouldn't be walking us over to X's house so I can have coffee with X's mother while Younger Girleen and X play, I would be forging friendships with the mothers of two-and-a-half-year-olds who won't be moving any time soon. Even if I don't like them!
Even recounting all this makes me tired. You get the picture, though.
Bad Mommy Spectre's best friend is Bad Writer Spectre. Having less material to work with these days, Bad Writer Spectre just shows up every so often to tell me I suck, and then wanders off for a smoke break.
First off, I suggest we ALL begin referring to our girly parts as "baubles" (If we are of that portion of society that possesses them). Authors of Mother-Blogs I've found myself reading occasionally wax anxious over what name they should teach their girl children for the the body parts that make them particularly girlish (fathers do not have this anxiety about their sons' body parts, and actually, now that I think about it, mothers probably don't either). But now, hooray— here's Younger Girleen, to save the day! In my book, bauble wins hands-down over "front bottom," a moniker a mom acquaintance actually once uttered in my presence. Without laughing.
(Even my parenthetical expressions have parentheses! This is a writerly talent on a par with being able to manage flashbacks within flashbacks, right?)
All this being said, nature abhors a vacuum, as we all know, and there's no vacuum like the brain of a mother who's lying in bed, every nerve tingling, waiting for the next cry of a child that she knows has not had done with crying for the night. Last night mine quickly became the perfect space for the Bad Mommy Spectre to insinuate herself into into.
O, Bad Mommy Spectre, my old friend, where've you been? I was missing you!
First things first, the Bad Mommy Spectre let me know in no uncertain terms that Younger Girleen most certainly had this particular rash because I had fallen down on the job. In fact, if I'd really been on top of things, she wouldn't even be in diapers at this point. Bad Mommy Spectre and I then moved on at a merry clip to revisit the conversation I'd had earlier in the day with Elder Girleen's teacher about the fact that seeing a picture taken of herself on a recent field trip with her eyes closed had forced Elder Girleen to have a complete and utter emotional breakdown for a portion of the school day.
Bad Mommy Spectre and I then hand-in-hand revisited the rest of my day (Bad Mommy Spectre shares some traits with the Ghost of Christmas Past from A Christmas Carol) and determined that the chaos of the dinner table, the kvetching, the refusal to let certain foods touch certain lips, the penchant for getting out of one's chair and making a complete circuit of the house before sitting back down are of course all due to my neglect of my duties.
We then dwelled upon the fact that Younger Girleen's best friend is moving in March (he's her best friend mainly because his mother is the mother I most often choose to hang out with, but still...) and because of my lack of attention to her social life, I have no idea who we will invite to her birthday party next May. If I were a good mother, I wouldn't be walking us over to X's house so I can have coffee with X's mother while Younger Girleen and X play, I would be forging friendships with the mothers of two-and-a-half-year-olds who won't be moving any time soon. Even if I don't like them!
Even recounting all this makes me tired. You get the picture, though.
Bad Mommy Spectre's best friend is Bad Writer Spectre. Having less material to work with these days, Bad Writer Spectre just shows up every so often to tell me I suck, and then wanders off for a smoke break.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Happy Thanksgiving: Another List
Younger Girleen, according to her teacher, is thankful for Mommy, Daddy, Sister and CAREBEARS.
Elder Girleen is thankful for her family and her friends.
And me?
The lovely blue glaze of the sky the past few weeks, especially when coupled with the brilliant yellow of the gingko leaves.
The pair of hawks taken up residence at the pinnacle of a neighborhood oak, and the fact that I have enough time in my day (at least a few times a week) to take Younger Girleen on a walk past them.
That I made it through the last school fundraising auction without spending over a thousand bucks on a mosaic table or a bauhaus-style playhouse (but o, how I wanted to!)
That we will be having pumpkin chiffon pie with candied pumpkin curls rather than a storebought pumpkin pie from Kroger (since I am making this, we may wish for that Kroger pie before it's all over).
That, since starting this blog, I put pen-to-paper at least a couple of times a week.
For friends and family.
And of course, god love them, for CAREBEARS.
Elder Girleen is thankful for her family and her friends.
And me?
The lovely blue glaze of the sky the past few weeks, especially when coupled with the brilliant yellow of the gingko leaves.
The pair of hawks taken up residence at the pinnacle of a neighborhood oak, and the fact that I have enough time in my day (at least a few times a week) to take Younger Girleen on a walk past them.
That I made it through the last school fundraising auction without spending over a thousand bucks on a mosaic table or a bauhaus-style playhouse (but o, how I wanted to!)
That we will be having pumpkin chiffon pie with candied pumpkin curls rather than a storebought pumpkin pie from Kroger (since I am making this, we may wish for that Kroger pie before it's all over).
That, since starting this blog, I put pen-to-paper at least a couple of times a week.
For friends and family.
And of course, god love them, for CAREBEARS.
Go, Frere
The past month or so, my day begins with the sound of a small hiccup of crying.
Poor Younger Girleen, it must be those molars!
About 5:30 in the morning, she abruptly and wordlessly mourns for a moment (the operative word is wordlessly, not silently: she whimpers). Then: Go Frere? Go Fair? No Fair! she grieves sorrowfully. Sleep is a river that carries her small boat along, and for a second there, we hit an eddy strong enough to wake her. Then, just like that, she subsides back into sleep.
Because I'm her mother, I, on the other hand, am up for the day. And because I'm her mother, I know exactly where she got that pronouncement (astute readers that you are, I know you know it too!)
Her elder sister. Who uses it like a teenager, and dear god, she's only five!
Yesterday, Younger Girleen and I saddled up to run errands while Elder Girleen was at school.
Where we going, Mommy?
Shortsighted and foolish woman that I am, I tell her the way I'd tell Friend J, sitting in the passenger seat beside me:
First, we're going to the coffee shop so Mama can run in and get a cup of Special Blend Coffee*** Then to the florist that has the show of paintings by a mom-turned-painter Mama heard about. Then to look for Grandmommy's birthday present!
Sounds like a blast to me.
Go Frere? Go Fair? NO FAIR! Younger Girleen pronounces.
You'll be happy to know I conceded the point and aborted the mission. After the coffee, of course; every mom's allowed her vice.
But oh, to be a younger sibling! Always toddling to keep up. Immersed at an unsuitable age at media aimed at her sister's generation (the options are pretty benign around here --- I'm talking SuperWhy? on PBS). Where's Sister? she says on rising. Where's Sister? she wonders before she slips into sleep at night. She's the mascot of her sister's kindergarten class. (Will she ever get big? a boy in the class asks.)
Yes, they torment each other, but oh, how they love each other! Mom and Dad are constants, but Sister: she's the pinch of salt that pulls the family dish together!
All of us with siblings, we must have been that way once.
And then we grew up.
That early bond, though: it's not a bad thing to think about on the eve of Thanksgiving, as the season when families are at their most dysfunctional gets underway.
*** Occasionally when I order my Special Blend Coffee, the barista says oh, yes, of course you can have a LARGE SPECIAL FRIEND.
Poor Younger Girleen, it must be those molars!
About 5:30 in the morning, she abruptly and wordlessly mourns for a moment (the operative word is wordlessly, not silently: she whimpers). Then: Go Frere? Go Fair? No Fair! she grieves sorrowfully. Sleep is a river that carries her small boat along, and for a second there, we hit an eddy strong enough to wake her. Then, just like that, she subsides back into sleep.
Because I'm her mother, I, on the other hand, am up for the day. And because I'm her mother, I know exactly where she got that pronouncement (astute readers that you are, I know you know it too!)
Her elder sister. Who uses it like a teenager, and dear god, she's only five!
Yesterday, Younger Girleen and I saddled up to run errands while Elder Girleen was at school.
Where we going, Mommy?
Shortsighted and foolish woman that I am, I tell her the way I'd tell Friend J, sitting in the passenger seat beside me:
First, we're going to the coffee shop so Mama can run in and get a cup of Special Blend Coffee*** Then to the florist that has the show of paintings by a mom-turned-painter Mama heard about. Then to look for Grandmommy's birthday present!
Sounds like a blast to me.
Go Frere? Go Fair? NO FAIR! Younger Girleen pronounces.
You'll be happy to know I conceded the point and aborted the mission. After the coffee, of course; every mom's allowed her vice.
But oh, to be a younger sibling! Always toddling to keep up. Immersed at an unsuitable age at media aimed at her sister's generation (the options are pretty benign around here --- I'm talking SuperWhy? on PBS). Where's Sister? she says on rising. Where's Sister? she wonders before she slips into sleep at night. She's the mascot of her sister's kindergarten class. (Will she ever get big? a boy in the class asks.)
Yes, they torment each other, but oh, how they love each other! Mom and Dad are constants, but Sister: she's the pinch of salt that pulls the family dish together!
All of us with siblings, we must have been that way once.
And then we grew up.
That early bond, though: it's not a bad thing to think about on the eve of Thanksgiving, as the season when families are at their most dysfunctional gets underway.
*** Occasionally when I order my Special Blend Coffee, the barista says oh, yes, of course you can have a LARGE SPECIAL FRIEND.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Readling Lists
Astute readers have noticed, along with the typo that created a Readling List rather than a Reading List,* a few wild card books nestled amongst the lit fiction and anthologies a while back. Maisie Goes to the Library for one (not the tea-cosy mystery I wish it was sometimes); The Wild Trees for another.
I try not to look at my gradual slide into reading more and more nonfiction as a clue that I should no longer write FICTION (I daily parse out the universe for these kinds of signs, ie: I left academia, therefore I must not really want a literary career, I like to cook now more than I like working on a novel, therefore I should hang it all up, I find it easier to sit down and write this blog than write fiction, therefore I am a real loser, etc).
An excerpt from The Wild Trees appeared in The New Yorker a while back, and it was one of those crazy-long articles I can settle into with satisfaction, as comfortable as a toddler with a necessary favorite blanket. (A sidenote: the other day, The Husband asked me who I thought was the demographic for The New Yorker and I replied that I didn't know, but it certainly wasn't anybody around here. This may be one reason I blog, so I can talk to my heart's content about things I read in the New York Times or The New Yorker that elicit blank stares in my daily life.)
The Wild Trees is about the tallest redwoods in the U.S. and the botanists, sorta like the skate punks of the scientific world, who climb them. I hearby declare The Wild Trees my book of the month, because if nothing else, it renewed my deep appreciation for trees, an especially happy coincidence since this is the exact moment when the trees around here are shedding their leaves and tracing elegant chinoserie against the sky. Yesterday they swayed as the cold front approached, ships with masts and rigging headed for rough weather. Hold fast. Ease, swirl, reverse. Such a precise, polite minuet!
Reading The Wild Trees I began to remember trees I'd climbed as a child and realized what deep memories they might be, buried in my heartwood: a plum tree of greenish dappled space perfumed by the scent of sun-warmed ripe plums, a space made perilous by wasps, a place oddly adult-less, where we clambered and picked without regard for any rules. An elderly neighbor's deodara cedar, with limbs as straight as floors, weeping sap like jewels from the braille the woodpeckers inscribed on its trunk.
I'm sure we never asked permission to climb! I'm sure my mother never knew how high we went!
Gradually, since I metamorphosed into A Mother, I've become a agitator for, and steward of, various outdoor spaces: the outdoor classrooms at both Girleen's schools, the neglected city park down the street. And sometimes that expenditure of energy seems so unimportant, so suburban. If I was a serious person, I tell myself, I would be putting that energy elsewhere. There are wars being fought! Presidential candidates campaigning! (And of course, always the insectile hum in my brain: novels to be written).
All true. But even so, it somehow seems like it would be good for the world: if the Girleen's generation had the opportunity and the freedom to climb trees.
*Maybe a Readling List is like a fledgling reading list: the kernel that contains the idea of what you'd like to be reading.
I try not to look at my gradual slide into reading more and more nonfiction as a clue that I should no longer write FICTION (I daily parse out the universe for these kinds of signs, ie: I left academia, therefore I must not really want a literary career, I like to cook now more than I like working on a novel, therefore I should hang it all up, I find it easier to sit down and write this blog than write fiction, therefore I am a real loser, etc).
An excerpt from The Wild Trees appeared in The New Yorker a while back, and it was one of those crazy-long articles I can settle into with satisfaction, as comfortable as a toddler with a necessary favorite blanket. (A sidenote: the other day, The Husband asked me who I thought was the demographic for The New Yorker and I replied that I didn't know, but it certainly wasn't anybody around here. This may be one reason I blog, so I can talk to my heart's content about things I read in the New York Times or The New Yorker that elicit blank stares in my daily life.)
The Wild Trees is about the tallest redwoods in the U.S. and the botanists, sorta like the skate punks of the scientific world, who climb them. I hearby declare The Wild Trees my book of the month, because if nothing else, it renewed my deep appreciation for trees, an especially happy coincidence since this is the exact moment when the trees around here are shedding their leaves and tracing elegant chinoserie against the sky. Yesterday they swayed as the cold front approached, ships with masts and rigging headed for rough weather. Hold fast. Ease, swirl, reverse. Such a precise, polite minuet!
Reading The Wild Trees I began to remember trees I'd climbed as a child and realized what deep memories they might be, buried in my heartwood: a plum tree of greenish dappled space perfumed by the scent of sun-warmed ripe plums, a space made perilous by wasps, a place oddly adult-less, where we clambered and picked without regard for any rules. An elderly neighbor's deodara cedar, with limbs as straight as floors, weeping sap like jewels from the braille the woodpeckers inscribed on its trunk.
I'm sure we never asked permission to climb! I'm sure my mother never knew how high we went!
Gradually, since I metamorphosed into A Mother, I've become a agitator for, and steward of, various outdoor spaces: the outdoor classrooms at both Girleen's schools, the neglected city park down the street. And sometimes that expenditure of energy seems so unimportant, so suburban. If I was a serious person, I tell myself, I would be putting that energy elsewhere. There are wars being fought! Presidential candidates campaigning! (And of course, always the insectile hum in my brain: novels to be written).
All true. But even so, it somehow seems like it would be good for the world: if the Girleen's generation had the opportunity and the freedom to climb trees.
*Maybe a Readling List is like a fledgling reading list: the kernel that contains the idea of what you'd like to be reading.
Friday, November 16, 2007
State of the Union: November 16, 2007
The other day we were at the playground and another mom and I stood watching the Girleens run up a grassy incline and start dancing hand-in-hand. The leaves falling around them were such a lovely lick of flame and color — it was one of those idyllic childhood moments (except that when I say "ran" what I really mean is careened; and the fact that there were vodka bottles tossed into the hydrangeas behind them changes the image slightly).
Other Mom turned to me and said "It must be great to have two! They can entertain each other!"
There was a certain tinge of what might've been ... desperation ... in her voice and I realized I hadn't seen this particular Other Mom at the playground in a while. I also remembered that this is EXACTLY what I told myself when I was pregnant with Younger Girleen and spent a lot of time hugging the toilet while a three-year-old Older Girleen stood outside the bathroom door asking plaintively "What's Mommy DOING?"
I think I laughed and said something along the lines of "oh, yes, sometimes, it's great!" I refrained from saying: "Yep, pulling a sibling's hair, slamming doors to keep hair-pulling sibling out of bedroom, taunting, teasing and SCREAMING LIKE A TEA KETTLE are all fabulous entertainment."
All this is a roundabout way of saying that Younger Girleen has contracted a particularly virulent case of two-year-old angst. (And now that I think about it, maybe Elder Girleen has contracted the five-year-old version).
Maybe it's her molars coming in.
Over the past few weeks, we've gone from a sudden HATRED of wearing pull-ups (I know, I know, but on school days it's what the teacher wants) to a sudden conviction that any diapers that don't have Elmo printed on BOTH SIDES will scald us like boiling water, to an even stronger conviction that ANY diapers at all will scar us for life.
So yesterday, short-sighted Mom threw up her hands and left a buck naked Younger Girleen standing on the hooked rug designed by an illustrious ancestor at the turn of the century and went in the other room to get dressed herself, all while Younger Girleen shrieked like a tea kettle.
I'd gotten one article of clothing on when the shrieks changed. Now, in addition to wordless fury, I could make out the message: "Mommy, mommy, mommy. I peed on the floor!"
This, ladies and gentleman of the jury, is why I had a twitch in my left eye yesterday.
Other Mom turned to me and said "It must be great to have two! They can entertain each other!"
There was a certain tinge of what might've been ... desperation ... in her voice and I realized I hadn't seen this particular Other Mom at the playground in a while. I also remembered that this is EXACTLY what I told myself when I was pregnant with Younger Girleen and spent a lot of time hugging the toilet while a three-year-old Older Girleen stood outside the bathroom door asking plaintively "What's Mommy DOING?"
I think I laughed and said something along the lines of "oh, yes, sometimes, it's great!" I refrained from saying: "Yep, pulling a sibling's hair, slamming doors to keep hair-pulling sibling out of bedroom, taunting, teasing and SCREAMING LIKE A TEA KETTLE are all fabulous entertainment."
All this is a roundabout way of saying that Younger Girleen has contracted a particularly virulent case of two-year-old angst. (And now that I think about it, maybe Elder Girleen has contracted the five-year-old version).
Maybe it's her molars coming in.
Over the past few weeks, we've gone from a sudden HATRED of wearing pull-ups (I know, I know, but on school days it's what the teacher wants) to a sudden conviction that any diapers that don't have Elmo printed on BOTH SIDES will scald us like boiling water, to an even stronger conviction that ANY diapers at all will scar us for life.
So yesterday, short-sighted Mom threw up her hands and left a buck naked Younger Girleen standing on the hooked rug designed by an illustrious ancestor at the turn of the century and went in the other room to get dressed herself, all while Younger Girleen shrieked like a tea kettle.
I'd gotten one article of clothing on when the shrieks changed. Now, in addition to wordless fury, I could make out the message: "Mommy, mommy, mommy. I peed on the floor!"
This, ladies and gentleman of the jury, is why I had a twitch in my left eye yesterday.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Sixteen Tons
Sixteen years of sending out submissions! Setting this figure down on (virtual) paper turns out to have been a very dangerous accounting to have engaged in.
Not because acknowledging how hard publication is will turn off the thousands of people with publishing power trolling the 'net for their next meal ticket the way Hollywood discovered starlets at Schwab's lunch counter back in the day. Not because admitting how hard publication can be cracks the head-to-toe veneer of positive spin the business of writing now requires from each and every writer — although by airing this bit of dirty laundry I probably have doomed myself to booklessness evermore.
Rather — it was dangerous more because only the foolhardy add up how many years they've spent on any avocation, and only the quixotic look at that final sum and think it's a good idea to keep on keeping on.
This past weekend, I thought off and on about that number. Sixteen years! In that amount of time you could create offspring almost old enough to vote. You could build a house from scratch. Using tinkertoys. Hell, in that amount of time Manifest Destiny populated the entire western half of the country, exterminating everything in its path.
Sixteen years! If you like, you can hum "Sixteen Tons" while you read the rest of this:
You load sixteen tons, and what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter, don't you call me, 'cause I can't go;
I owe my soul to the company store...
This past weekend I mulled this figure over. I added and subtracted (years since I wrote my first "book": 35. Years I could deduct through creative accounting and because of childrearing sabbatical: five?) until I came up with what momentarily seemed like a profound insight.
You know, I said to The Husband, it's a waste of time to ask myself whether or not I should hang it all up. When it's time to hang it all up, it'll just happen. People just don't keep doing things they don't get any satisfaction from.
This is what passes for profound thought in our house, where it's considered calm when we're eating a hastily-thrown-together Sunday lunch of peanut butter sandwiches and cherry tomatoes with two people under four feet tall, one of whom is busily shoving crusts of bread into a glass of milk teetering on the edge of the table, the other of whom is singing a Hannah Montana (who is she? I am getting close to despising her) song so violently she can hardly keep her rear end in her chair.
The Husband looked gravely at me. Katherine, he said. People keep doing things they don't get any satisfaction from ALL THE TIME.
Not because acknowledging how hard publication is will turn off the thousands of people with publishing power trolling the 'net for their next meal ticket the way Hollywood discovered starlets at Schwab's lunch counter back in the day. Not because admitting how hard publication can be cracks the head-to-toe veneer of positive spin the business of writing now requires from each and every writer — although by airing this bit of dirty laundry I probably have doomed myself to booklessness evermore.
Rather — it was dangerous more because only the foolhardy add up how many years they've spent on any avocation, and only the quixotic look at that final sum and think it's a good idea to keep on keeping on.
This past weekend, I thought off and on about that number. Sixteen years! In that amount of time you could create offspring almost old enough to vote. You could build a house from scratch. Using tinkertoys. Hell, in that amount of time Manifest Destiny populated the entire western half of the country, exterminating everything in its path.
Sixteen years! If you like, you can hum "Sixteen Tons" while you read the rest of this:
You load sixteen tons, and what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter, don't you call me, 'cause I can't go;
I owe my soul to the company store...
This past weekend I mulled this figure over. I added and subtracted (years since I wrote my first "book": 35. Years I could deduct through creative accounting and because of childrearing sabbatical: five?) until I came up with what momentarily seemed like a profound insight.
You know, I said to The Husband, it's a waste of time to ask myself whether or not I should hang it all up. When it's time to hang it all up, it'll just happen. People just don't keep doing things they don't get any satisfaction from.
This is what passes for profound thought in our house, where it's considered calm when we're eating a hastily-thrown-together Sunday lunch of peanut butter sandwiches and cherry tomatoes with two people under four feet tall, one of whom is busily shoving crusts of bread into a glass of milk teetering on the edge of the table, the other of whom is singing a Hannah Montana (who is she? I am getting close to despising her) song so violently she can hardly keep her rear end in her chair.
The Husband looked gravely at me. Katherine, he said. People keep doing things they don't get any satisfaction from ALL THE TIME.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Vice
Saturday morning, early. The slap of the Times hitting the walkway, a particularly bright star (probably a planet but I'm not going to fritter time figuring out which one it might be) charting a path from lower corner of arched sunporch window to upper. The family asleep and I am furtively, happily indulging in ...
Vice.
Vice. Such a lovely Victorian word, and who would think a middle-aged mom could even have one?
Once, I applied myself with an almost religious fervor to sitting on the back stoop of tinkertoy-like, uninsulated Austin rentals, cigarette in one hand, Big Gulp of Diet Coke on the ground beside my foot, and music, preferably melancholy, pulsing from the blown speakers I was too broke to have repaired.
I'm too overextended to give anything that same sort of focus these days, but I do like my coffee (and judging from the red-letter-day's worth of comments last time I talked about coffee, so does my small, much loved readership). That in and of itself probably can't constitute much of a vice... or if it is one, it's along the lines of the valedictorian of the senior class telling the school stoner oh, gee, I'm sure jonsing for a peanut butter sandwich! But mine has an additional facet. I have become addicted to... House Porn.
You know exactly what I'm talking about. All the flaws are photoshopped out. In fact, all the reality is airbrushed out. The photos of paint jobs and furniture arrangement are as glossy as a Bunny's lipgloss. Every house is beautiful and if you were to visit these actual houses you could walk through the rooms and have no clue you're walking through the same room depicted. They look that different.
Every time I take the Girleens to the library for their weekly dose of Maisie, Clarice Bean and the struggle to get mom to check out Hannah Montana dvds, I swing by the 700s shelf of the adult section and grab myself a few coffee table books. Sometimes I even grab ones I already checked out before. The content matters that little.
We are all about the fantasy around here.
Addiction, I have found, may in part be about yearning. And not to make light of real, serious addiction (this is my blog and I can be as shallow as I want!), when you parse it out, yearning can be such a hopeful, optimistic act.
I bring my stack of glossy coffee table House Porn home. I yearn; I feel a tantalizing itch. If only I ran out to Benjamin Moore right now, I too could have a bedroom painted a mouthwateringly serene shade called, unappetizingly, Smoked Trout. If only...
The main thing about these books, about this airbrushed vision of domestic life is that usually there are no people in it. No kids with noses that continuously beg Mom, pay attention! Wipe me! And wipe me now before I use my sleeve!. No mom wearing yoga paints and stained t-shirts. No bills, no dirty dishes... oh, you get the picture.
I know it's not real, so why do I still lust to attain it? I suppose that is what makes it a vice, rather than something I just like to read.
Vice.
Vice. Such a lovely Victorian word, and who would think a middle-aged mom could even have one?
Once, I applied myself with an almost religious fervor to sitting on the back stoop of tinkertoy-like, uninsulated Austin rentals, cigarette in one hand, Big Gulp of Diet Coke on the ground beside my foot, and music, preferably melancholy, pulsing from the blown speakers I was too broke to have repaired.
I'm too overextended to give anything that same sort of focus these days, but I do like my coffee (and judging from the red-letter-day's worth of comments last time I talked about coffee, so does my small, much loved readership). That in and of itself probably can't constitute much of a vice... or if it is one, it's along the lines of the valedictorian of the senior class telling the school stoner oh, gee, I'm sure jonsing for a peanut butter sandwich! But mine has an additional facet. I have become addicted to... House Porn.
You know exactly what I'm talking about. All the flaws are photoshopped out. In fact, all the reality is airbrushed out. The photos of paint jobs and furniture arrangement are as glossy as a Bunny's lipgloss. Every house is beautiful and if you were to visit these actual houses you could walk through the rooms and have no clue you're walking through the same room depicted. They look that different.
Every time I take the Girleens to the library for their weekly dose of Maisie, Clarice Bean and the struggle to get mom to check out Hannah Montana dvds, I swing by the 700s shelf of the adult section and grab myself a few coffee table books. Sometimes I even grab ones I already checked out before. The content matters that little.
We are all about the fantasy around here.
Addiction, I have found, may in part be about yearning. And not to make light of real, serious addiction (this is my blog and I can be as shallow as I want!), when you parse it out, yearning can be such a hopeful, optimistic act.
I bring my stack of glossy coffee table House Porn home. I yearn; I feel a tantalizing itch. If only I ran out to Benjamin Moore right now, I too could have a bedroom painted a mouthwateringly serene shade called, unappetizingly, Smoked Trout. If only...
The main thing about these books, about this airbrushed vision of domestic life is that usually there are no people in it. No kids with noses that continuously beg Mom, pay attention! Wipe me! And wipe me now before I use my sleeve!. No mom wearing yoga paints and stained t-shirts. No bills, no dirty dishes... oh, you get the picture.
I know it's not real, so why do I still lust to attain it? I suppose that is what makes it a vice, rather than something I just like to read.
Friday, November 9, 2007
Party Oatmeal
A very graffiti'ed tunnel under the CMX freight railyard has linked my here and there since we moved to the 'hood. (Yeah, we're literally on the wrong side of the tracks). I drive it practically daily: to Younger Girleen's preschool, to the grocery store, to just about anywhere I have to go outside our neighborhood, and a few weeks ago, a particular piece of graffiti appeared to replace my previous fave on the concrete outside the tunnel, Please Save Us From Ourselves.
Party Animal is what the paint-dripping scrawl really says — but when I drive Younger Girleen to school and see it, I read Party Oatmeal instead.
Party Oatmeal seems like it might be a fairly good way to describe, not the middle-aged equivalent of being a Party Animal, but some measure of geologic time. We've got B.C., A.D., the Cretaceous Era... and we've also got Party Oatmeal, which, boiled down to its essence, is that period of time when most of the humans you spend time with are under the age of six. Sometimes fun, sometimes a quagmire. Deeply domestic. What could it be, other than Party Oatmeal?
Party Animal is what the paint-dripping scrawl really says — but when I drive Younger Girleen to school and see it, I read Party Oatmeal instead.
Party Oatmeal seems like it might be a fairly good way to describe, not the middle-aged equivalent of being a Party Animal, but some measure of geologic time. We've got B.C., A.D., the Cretaceous Era... and we've also got Party Oatmeal, which, boiled down to its essence, is that period of time when most of the humans you spend time with are under the age of six. Sometimes fun, sometimes a quagmire. Deeply domestic. What could it be, other than Party Oatmeal?
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
The Business of Writing
Back in the days when I was employed as an Administrative Assistant, a career "move"* that drove to me apply to grad school in creative writing, I had no idea how well what seemed like an OCD-level attention to detail would serve me in later life. (Nothing like being reminded to use color-coordinated thumb tacks on the bulletin board that hangs behind your desk to make you re-evaluate what you're doing with your life.)
Not only has my "administrative" bent come in handy for times when I prove I'm out of my mind by doing things like serving on preschool Boards, it's one of the few things that's allowed me to keep my sanity for SIXTEEN YEARS of submitting short fiction.
Sixteen years! If the simplest definition of mental illness is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results, I clearly should be institutionalized.
On such administration did I squander my morning. But in the process, I uncovered this site devoted to the business side of the submission process.
It's a dirty job but somebody's gotta do it.
And for anybody who's interested, apparently there's a genre we've all been reading called Brooklyn Books of Wonder. And a backlash against it as well.
It sucks to be so behind the cultural times.
*It seemed better than managing the Bennetton's at the mall.
Not only has my "administrative" bent come in handy for times when I prove I'm out of my mind by doing things like serving on preschool Boards, it's one of the few things that's allowed me to keep my sanity for SIXTEEN YEARS of submitting short fiction.
Sixteen years! If the simplest definition of mental illness is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results, I clearly should be institutionalized.
On such administration did I squander my morning. But in the process, I uncovered this site devoted to the business side of the submission process.
It's a dirty job but somebody's gotta do it.
And for anybody who's interested, apparently there's a genre we've all been reading called Brooklyn Books of Wonder. And a backlash against it as well.
It sucks to be so behind the cultural times.
*It seemed better than managing the Bennetton's at the mall.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Down at the Drive-In
Last night was Movie Night for Elder Girleen's school at the drive-in, so we made a nest of pillows and hello kitty sleeping bags in the back of the station wagon and headed out to see Bee Movie.
Well, ladies of the evening may use the play structure at our neighborhood park as a great place to ply their trade; the biggest hill around here might actually be the old landfill; but a straight shot down the thoroughfare leads you past Nail World, Dollar Land, Super Valu and the Foxxxy Lady straight to... the drive-in, and I wouldn't live anywhere else in the city (except maybe a huge Victorian manse complete with cupola on the other side of I-20).
As luck would have it, we ended up positioning the station wagon RIGHT NEXT to Elder Girleen's two favorite kindergarten guys. She almost exploded. Groups of kids ran recklessly from car to car, possessed by the anarchy that takes over when the adults of your world are otherwise occupied (in our case by figuring out how to extinguish the light in the back of the station wagon for primo movie watching).
The cold front blew in, we settled in: and I give the experience an A +. About the movie, though...
Ratatouille was at least about a rat expressing his creativity through cooking. Bee Movie, on the other hand, is about a LAWSUIT. The hive is sorta like the city in Metropolis but not in an ironic or interesting way, the whole honey making project isn't very ... scientific and the best thing I can say about it is that it made me realize how LUCKY we are that it's not the 90s anymore, when we all thought Jerry was the funniest thing since sliced bread.
Well, ladies of the evening may use the play structure at our neighborhood park as a great place to ply their trade; the biggest hill around here might actually be the old landfill; but a straight shot down the thoroughfare leads you past Nail World, Dollar Land, Super Valu and the Foxxxy Lady straight to... the drive-in, and I wouldn't live anywhere else in the city (except maybe a huge Victorian manse complete with cupola on the other side of I-20).
As luck would have it, we ended up positioning the station wagon RIGHT NEXT to Elder Girleen's two favorite kindergarten guys. She almost exploded. Groups of kids ran recklessly from car to car, possessed by the anarchy that takes over when the adults of your world are otherwise occupied (in our case by figuring out how to extinguish the light in the back of the station wagon for primo movie watching).
The cold front blew in, we settled in: and I give the experience an A +. About the movie, though...
Ratatouille was at least about a rat expressing his creativity through cooking. Bee Movie, on the other hand, is about a LAWSUIT. The hive is sorta like the city in Metropolis but not in an ironic or interesting way, the whole honey making project isn't very ... scientific and the best thing I can say about it is that it made me realize how LUCKY we are that it's not the 90s anymore, when we all thought Jerry was the funniest thing since sliced bread.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Readling Lists
What's Currently on My Bedside Table:
Rise and shine : a novel
Quindlen, Anna.
The wild trees : a story of passion and daring
Preston, Richard, 1954-
Right livelihoods : three novellas
Moody, Rick.
Maisy goes to the library
Cousins, Lucy.
The uses of enchantment : a novel
Julavits, Heidi.
The encyclopedia of ghosts and spirits
Guiley, Rosemary.
A child's garden : enchanting outdoor spaces for children and parents
Dannenmaier, Molly
The collector
Fowles, John, 1926-
Moby Dick
St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves
Russell, Karen
Will any of these get read? Only the Shadow knows.
Rise and shine : a novel
Quindlen, Anna.
The wild trees : a story of passion and daring
Preston, Richard, 1954-
Right livelihoods : three novellas
Moody, Rick.
Maisy goes to the library
Cousins, Lucy.
The uses of enchantment : a novel
Julavits, Heidi.
The encyclopedia of ghosts and spirits
Guiley, Rosemary.
A child's garden : enchanting outdoor spaces for children and parents
Dannenmaier, Molly
The collector
Fowles, John, 1926-
Moby Dick
St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves
Russell, Karen
Will any of these get read? Only the Shadow knows.
State of the Union: November 5, 2007
From the moment the plane bringing us back from our friends' wedding last Sunday hit the Atlanta tarmac, the name of the game was civic responsibility, or more specifically, educational volunteering. And before I go any further I just have to say one thing: I don't know how moms who work 40-70 hours in addition to their Mom Job do it. They must possess Kevlar vests or emotional force fields to protect them from feeling obligated to step into the volunteering maelstrom that's become such a part of our children's lives. Not that parental involvement isn't a good thing: I just doff my hat to any woman who shows up at the school in the hose and high heels of her "straight" job and sits down criss-cross-apple-sauce with such a good will to read a slew of kindergarteners Lilly's Big Day. I at least have the luxury of showing up unshowered and dressed down.
I would wax eloquently along these lines a couple of paragraphs more, but I just realized why the shift back to standard time is not the extra hour of sleep it used to be: no sleeping kids at 6 this morning. Good thing I got that solitary cup of coffee in a couple of mornings ago.
I would wax eloquently along these lines a couple of paragraphs more, but I just realized why the shift back to standard time is not the extra hour of sleep it used to be: no sleeping kids at 6 this morning. Good thing I got that solitary cup of coffee in a couple of mornings ago.
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Morning Meditations
Here in Atlanta, we've gone straight from weather so hot you've got the windows shut... to weather so cool you've got the windows shut. No time to lollygag around with Indian Summer these days: it's a busy busy world and we went straight from the dog days of summer to ... well, I was going to say "to thinking about hot apple cider" but it's not THAT cool yet (and may never be, if the smell of hot apple juice makes you gag).
Spring in Georgia is confectionary: all meringue peaks of white blossoms and excess, it breaks your heart with its beauty. I'm a sucker for it and because of that I've never really considered myself a "fall" person.
But this morning it was pitch black dark at seven, and the down comforter was like a benediction laid across the bed. The little family sleeping, in fact APPLYING itself to sleep wholeheartedly. You could practically hear their exhalations of breath: Big Bear, Little Bear and Tiny Bear (who I suspect has inherited her father's tendency to allergies and was snorting pretty noisily).
Me, on the other hand — entirely wide awake through the machinations of the intersection of my past life and my present one. One second I was dreaming that I was in a seminar room attached to the PCL Library at UT taking part in a creative writing workshop with a Very Famous Writer who suddenly turned to me and asked me to go get him some donuts, which apparently could be purchased from a downstairs vending machine. The next second, I'm wide awake, staring at the clock which says 7:05, bang in the middle of the split second mental inventory that goes like this: o woe we're late for school, late for... o, it's saturday ok not so bad, but o crap there's that workday at the preschool at 9:00 and i've gotta go pick up the donuts!
But then at least I roused myself to realize picking up donuts is a couple of hours away, everybody else in the house is still asleep and if I think fast I might be able to get in a solitary cup of coffee.
This early, the shadow of leaves cast by streetlight against the curtain of our front window makes a scrim like thai shadow puppets. As I've sat here, rosy dawn's begun to seep across the sky.
And oh, my God: that coffee. That quiet. All is right with the world.
Enjoy your weekend.
Spring in Georgia is confectionary: all meringue peaks of white blossoms and excess, it breaks your heart with its beauty. I'm a sucker for it and because of that I've never really considered myself a "fall" person.
But this morning it was pitch black dark at seven, and the down comforter was like a benediction laid across the bed. The little family sleeping, in fact APPLYING itself to sleep wholeheartedly. You could practically hear their exhalations of breath: Big Bear, Little Bear and Tiny Bear (who I suspect has inherited her father's tendency to allergies and was snorting pretty noisily).
Me, on the other hand — entirely wide awake through the machinations of the intersection of my past life and my present one. One second I was dreaming that I was in a seminar room attached to the PCL Library at UT taking part in a creative writing workshop with a Very Famous Writer who suddenly turned to me and asked me to go get him some donuts, which apparently could be purchased from a downstairs vending machine. The next second, I'm wide awake, staring at the clock which says 7:05, bang in the middle of the split second mental inventory that goes like this: o woe we're late for school, late for... o, it's saturday ok not so bad, but o crap there's that workday at the preschool at 9:00 and i've gotta go pick up the donuts!
But then at least I roused myself to realize picking up donuts is a couple of hours away, everybody else in the house is still asleep and if I think fast I might be able to get in a solitary cup of coffee.
This early, the shadow of leaves cast by streetlight against the curtain of our front window makes a scrim like thai shadow puppets. As I've sat here, rosy dawn's begun to seep across the sky.
And oh, my God: that coffee. That quiet. All is right with the world.
Enjoy your weekend.
Friday, November 2, 2007
State of the Union: November 2, 2007
Seven years ago, when the Husband and I first moved in to our 'hood (back in the sepia-toned day B.C.— Before Children) our next-door neighbor debriefed us on what to expect come Halloween night, but we had no idea exactly what he meant until that first time the door bell rang (3.2 minutes after I got home from work, while it was still DAYLIGHT, and lasting until we ran out of candy and turned off the lights and hid, cowering, in the back of the house).
We're talking mini-vans with Henry County plates (a county south of here). We're talking groups of seven or eight at a time, one after another. And, those first few years, we were also talking: most of them without costumes, old enough to shave, SMOKING CIGARETTES, carrying plastic Kroger bags, soliciting for absent family members and two-month-old infants who should have been home in bed long ago.
Halloween 2007: well, we still got mini-vans idling at the curb like rock band tour buses just to keep things lively, but we've also got costumes. And maybe I'm just a sucker for the top two costumes of the night (Knights and Fairies as opposed to ... Sponge Bob Square Pants), but I was impressed by the creativity this year. The fact that Knights have replaced Munch's Scream Face with a gizmo that pumps blood down it as the boy costume of the year has got to say something optimistic about the state of the world, doesn't it?
Other trends:
Once they reach middle school, girls go for the undead prom queen look: you still get the glitter but now you've got blood dripping from your mouth.
Boys the same age seem to like a costume that my brother (we compared notes on Halloween here vs Halloween in South Carolina after we shut down for the night) thought were supposed to represent "guys with no faces" and I thought were supposed to be Ninjas. Whatever it is, think stealth. Since this was the main population that went for the Bloody Scream Face, this is a definite step in the right creative direction as far as I'm concerned.
And how did Halloween treat our own Flower Fairies, you ask?
I probably spent the years from 25-35 seeing little point in Halloween in general and trick-or-treating more specifically, but you know, now that I'm a parent I realized that besides being just plain fun, Halloween actually serves a purpose of sorts. Dark but not TOO dark it allows kids to roam just a little bit farther than they usually do (emotionally and physically). Being terribly shy as a kid, I used to hate it that my dad hung back at the end of the driveway when we trudged up to a house to trick or treat, but night before last I did the same thing with Elder Girleen, watching as with each step and social transaction that cord between parent and child was pulled out a little bit more elastically. This is how you start to figure out how to walk through the world.
Yeah, right. Cut the social commentary, Ma, it's really about getting LOTS AND LOTS OF CANDY.
Unless you're Younger Girleen, who after coming face to face with the Grim Reaper and the single Bloody Scream Face of the evening in the very first block had had enough and spent the rest of the event nestled in her Daddy's arms eating pretzels, and STILL hasn't completely recovered.
We're talking mini-vans with Henry County plates (a county south of here). We're talking groups of seven or eight at a time, one after another. And, those first few years, we were also talking: most of them without costumes, old enough to shave, SMOKING CIGARETTES, carrying plastic Kroger bags, soliciting for absent family members and two-month-old infants who should have been home in bed long ago.
Halloween 2007: well, we still got mini-vans idling at the curb like rock band tour buses just to keep things lively, but we've also got costumes. And maybe I'm just a sucker for the top two costumes of the night (Knights and Fairies as opposed to ... Sponge Bob Square Pants), but I was impressed by the creativity this year. The fact that Knights have replaced Munch's Scream Face with a gizmo that pumps blood down it as the boy costume of the year has got to say something optimistic about the state of the world, doesn't it?
Other trends:
Once they reach middle school, girls go for the undead prom queen look: you still get the glitter but now you've got blood dripping from your mouth.
Boys the same age seem to like a costume that my brother (we compared notes on Halloween here vs Halloween in South Carolina after we shut down for the night) thought were supposed to represent "guys with no faces" and I thought were supposed to be Ninjas. Whatever it is, think stealth. Since this was the main population that went for the Bloody Scream Face, this is a definite step in the right creative direction as far as I'm concerned.
And how did Halloween treat our own Flower Fairies, you ask?
I probably spent the years from 25-35 seeing little point in Halloween in general and trick-or-treating more specifically, but you know, now that I'm a parent I realized that besides being just plain fun, Halloween actually serves a purpose of sorts. Dark but not TOO dark it allows kids to roam just a little bit farther than they usually do (emotionally and physically). Being terribly shy as a kid, I used to hate it that my dad hung back at the end of the driveway when we trudged up to a house to trick or treat, but night before last I did the same thing with Elder Girleen, watching as with each step and social transaction that cord between parent and child was pulled out a little bit more elastically. This is how you start to figure out how to walk through the world.
Yeah, right. Cut the social commentary, Ma, it's really about getting LOTS AND LOTS OF CANDY.
Unless you're Younger Girleen, who after coming face to face with the Grim Reaper and the single Bloody Scream Face of the evening in the very first block had had enough and spent the rest of the event nestled in her Daddy's arms eating pretzels, and STILL hasn't completely recovered.
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