I can’t talk about the trial/case, or give details (I’ve been sworn!) but suffice it to say that all is not resolved in an hour, like on Law & Order (and there’s no Chris Meloni to be found!). Still, it’s been very interesting–who knows, maybe a book will come out of it???

There are certainly no shortage of characters when you hang around a courthouse.

Speaking of… of course my book is getting major neglect right now, though I’ve been sketching out ideas and scenes in my journal.

And summer is two thirds over! I think I have maybe a month left? Yes! A month to the day and I’ll be driving to campus. All those plans I had for a creative summer (writing, reading, making stuff…) are a bit hazy now.

Wahh, wahh, wahh! I’ve still got those four weeks, right?

Julia Cameron, in her book The Artist’s Way Every Day says:

Creativity is inspiration coupled with initiative. It is an act of faith and, in that phrase, the word “act” looms as large as the “faith” that it requires. When we do not act in the direction of our dreams, we are only “dreaming.” Dreams coupled with the firm intention to manifest them take on a steely reality. Our dreams come true when we are true to them. Reality contains the word “real.” We begin to “reel” in our dreams when we toss out the baited hook of intention. When we shift our inner statement from “I’d love to” to “I’m going to,” we shift out of victim and into adventurer.

In any case, I did read the 5 Nonfiction pieces by: Jennifer Egan, Junot Diaz, Tea Obreht, Edward P. Jones, and Salvatore Scibona. They were all good, but my favorites were Scibona’s Where I Learned to Read, Jones’ Shacks, and Diaz’ The Money (and also Jones, but I’ll save that for another blog post).

As a side note, I’m currently reading Tea Obreht’s novel, The Tiger’s Wife, which is getting phenomenal reviews, she’s being called a new wonderkind, and Colum McCann says, “Téa Obreht is the most thrilling literary discovery in years.” I’m only about 100 pages in though I’m enjoying it–especially the magical stories the narrator’s grandfather tells her (hence the title), that are woven throughout the book, which is essentially a mystery (the narrator is trying to discover why her grandfather left home to die without telling anyone).

Anyway, back to the 5 Nonfiction pieces. I love it when NYer does these 1 page shorts, because they’re so easy to use/teach in a writing class. I’m definitely going to be using these in my Fall Creative Nonfiction Workshop at the college.

Scibona’s particularly appealed to me because it’s basically a love letter to reading– though told through a twisty series of events in his young school life. But it reminded me of my own growing up, sneaking away at recess and lunch to the library in grade school to read those short bios of famous people– called the Childhood of Famous Americans Series: Lincoln, Dolly Madison, Jim Thorpe, Betsy Ross, Jane Addams. Remember those bios? They were meant for grade school, probably only about 50 pages (if that) and had the most basic information about the peoples’ lives– though all told very melodramatically (lots of exclamation points!). These were some of my best friends from 2nd to 6th grade.(I SO remember reading this one– Narcissa Whitman, Pioneer Girl).

In talking about finding his way to reading Scibona writes:

By senior year at St. John’s, we were reading Einstein in math, Darwin in lab, Baudelaire in French tutorial, Hegel in seminar. Seminar met twice a week for four years: eight o’clock to ten at night or later, all students addressed by surname. On weekends, I hung out with my friends. The surprise, the wild luck: I had friends. One sat in my room with a beer and “The Phenomenology of Spirit,” reading out a sentence at a time and stopping to ask, “All right, what did that mean?” The gravity of the whole thing would have been laughable if it hadn’t been so much fun, and if it hadn’t been such a gift to find my tribe.

You can also find out what these writers are reading this summer.

Finished Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff. I loved the information about Egypt and Cleo and Mark Antony, but I was missing dialogue (the book is serious nonfiction). Still, Schiff impressed me with her knowledge and Cleo impressed me with her sheer tenacity.

My office at home is looking like one of those NYC apartments where the reclusive tenant saves every newspaper, magazine, letter,  leaflet and flyer. I’m too embarrassed to post a picture of it.

I cut the tip of my middle finger off and it hurt. Ok, it wasn’t really the tip, more like the corner of the tip. But it still hurt. For a couple of days I had to wear one of those splint-thingies so that I wouldn’t bump it on anything, but it definitely made it seem pretty drastic (but if you know me, you know how melodramatic I get with just the sniffles). And then I had to learn how to type without using that finger, which a couple of days ago I finally mastered. But now the finger is healing better and I can pretty much use it, only I have to re-learn how to type with it. Arghh!

While I was in the Emergency room Ted brought me Nicole Krauss’ Great House to read. I absolutely loved The History of Love and have been wanting to read this. It doesn’t disappoint. I read about 50 pages in, but I’m also reading another book so I may have to put the Great House aside until then.

Speaking of books…though I’m not finding, or rather making, the time to write as much as I should (I think that I somehow didn’t get the gene for discipline…), the little bits, spurts of writing that I’m doing I’m pretty pleased with. I’m loving working on two characters that I’d only been sketching out, or had only been on the periphery so far– the young female English High School Teacher with the secret stash of lipsticks in her desk drawer at school and the Shivwit Indian boy, Limpie, whose POV is told entirely through an essay he’s writing. It’s funny how developing these characters more and letting them lead me on this journey has sparked such new energy in me.

Ted‘s out of town for a week visiting his mom and then our new niece, and the cats, Betsy and Jack, are so neurotic (i’m fine though, thanks for asking)! They are completely underfoot. Betsy sits with me while watching TV, her head resting in my lap.

On another note, I’m obsessed with this website Instructables–have you seen it?– from which you can learn how to do anything from how to tie a tie, how to kiss, to other more craft-oriented tips such as  book-making, how to knit, make mosaics, origami, and my recent obsession: how to make linocuts.

I really really would love to have a letterpress machine, but this linocut thing looks a bit simpler (and less expensive). See the samples of what you can do below.

Many of the how-to’s have step-by-step photos and videos. Check them out, search for how to make or do just about anything.

Watched the last episode of TCM’s Moguls and Moviestars– the epic documentary series about the rise and fall of the movie studio system. It was completely fascinating. I couldn’t help but feel for the movie stars and studio heads when the studios started crumbling around them; not to mention the footage of the old studio land that was sold off.

Went to a fantastic reading Friday night at The Ink Spot. James Meetze (in the picture) read from his book of poems DAYGLO of which Rae Armantrout says “James Meetze is, in some sense, a ‘landscape poet,’ except his landscape includes ‘FA-18 Hornets’ that ‘boom above the freeway / as eucalyptus leaves rustle.’ He has a feel for his hometown, which is also mine. In fact, San Diego, with its ahistorical ‘Dayglo’ pastels, best glimpsed in passing from a freeway, is where we all live now, somehow, or soon will.”

Ryan Murphy (a friend from grad school!) says “Dayglo is a conscious artifact…”

Indeed, his poems took me back to my days growing up here. The beaches, the sunsets, the valleys and malls. But also they look at Southern California, and San Diego especially, through the eyes of someone who left here and then came back. They speak about beauty and warmth, of Eucalyptus trees, freeways and fluorescent lights, but also separation, isolation, regret, disappointment.

I’m particularly taken with the first two lines of the poem “To Make You Surfer”:

In all the movies about California youth,

we are made to believe in gold everywhere.

and

which do you like better?

I need to be busy again. Busy-ness makes me feel better. Having things to do, having places to be and responsibilities. I’d like to think it pushes me creatively, too. This summer was just a wash–too much time on my hands and not enough discipline. After the writing retreat in July which was both inspiring and stifling, I came back jazzed about my book but then  I lost the momentum. I need to get it back.

I’m going to sign up for a class at the writing school where I teach and where I do the programming. A really terrific (and prolific) writer named Tammy Greenwood, who also happens to be one of the sweetest most generous people, is teaching a 4 week workshop on prepping for Nanowrimo — National Novel Writing Month. I don’t know that I’ll officially participate in Nanowrimo, but we’ll see. The workshop is all about working on a personal strategy for actually getting it–your novel– done. I think it’s what I need. I’ve got nearly 100 pages of what I’m calling a draft which is so all over the place, fragmented, unstructured, that I need to really get into shape, not to mention I need to really just push forward and get the stuff out.

Of course, I did find some time to make things this summer. Again, trying out new types of postcard making. I made these two things (?), not sure what to call them, with the previously mentioned (in the previous blog) rubber stamps.

These are images taken from magazines that I then stamped with red paint (using the faux-wood-look rubber stamp). Can you guess who is in the first one (it’s from a recent Interview Magazine)? The second one is an ad from Photoplay Magazine from 1954.

Ok, i’m hoping to bring more people to my site, so the celebrity is: Justin Bieber! Bloody Justin Bieber! (no offense to JB, it’s just an artistic rendering; however, this will probably be the only time Mr. B will be on my website. Maybe).

I shared the night with 4 other terrific writer residents: Phil, Louisa, Karen, and Anya. Phil and Anya also showed slides (actually Anya, a writer and performance artist, showed video).

Phil put up this photo of photographer Edward Steichen, which I found incredibly beautiful, it’s called Rodin the Thinker (Rodin Le Penseur 1902). Steichen was known for his “tonal, mood-filled, and mysterious canvases that were praised for their lyrical qualities.”

Furthermore, “he was associated with a style of photography known as Pictorialism. The Pictorialists felt that the aesthetic promise of photography lay in an emulation of painting. Steichen’s early work, then, adopted many Pictorialist techniques (a jiggled tripod, a lens bathed in glycerin, or various darkroom tricks) designed to produce “painterly” soft-focus effects. During this period, Steichen was also a painter, until he burned all his canvases in 1922.” [!!!!!<-- ed.]

I didn’t realize that  I had already seen Steichen’s works in these well known celebrity portraits of Garbo and Gloria Swanson.

Gorgeous.

The visiting writer, Leni Zumas, was a total gem. I met with her on Saturday morning and found her completely engaged and engaging; I felt as if she really understood my project, had really read the sample I sent her closely and thoughtfully and she had very clear specific feedback for me. During this residency i’ve been trying to focus on language–especially the voices of the characters and Leni honed in on that. After reading her story collection,  Farewell Navigator, I can see why: I want to call her prose ‘spare’ but I don’t know if that’s the right word. Because it isn’t really spare. The sentences are sharp and strange but also bold and beautiful, eerie (reminiscent of Mark Richard, one of my faves). Her turns of phrase are fresh and odd and stunning: “…the space between her eyes.”  “I am the leaver, the taker, the bringer.” “…the walls are wet on my palm.”

When she gave her craft talk we did the most inspiring writing activity involving words–new, bizarre, obscure words and phrases that then went on to spark ideas and more dazzling words from us. I hope she doesn’t mind but i’m going to use that activity in my own classes.

And though the week is not over yet (still have until Thursday–I leave VSC on Friday morning), this has been a perfect last week.

It was only a week, I know, but when it’s just me and the kitties it gets a little weird. I wonder what he’s going to do when i’m in Vermont for a month doing my writer’s residency?

So, the other night in one of my classes a student, talking to me after class, asked: how long has your hair been thinning?

WTF??!!!

He is actually a very sweet student, but very chatty. Also, his own hair is thinning so I think he was trying to relate to me… in a strange way…

It did get me thinking though… my hair IS thinning. Not in the back but definitely at the top, or where my [feathered] bangs used to be. What is that part of the head called? Above my forehead.

It’s thinning enough that it’s just starting to look a little, er, funky. And not funky in a good way, but funky in a ‘do I look like I’m trying to grow my hair out so you can’t see that i’m thinning?’ kind of way.

I’m thinking it’s about time I stopped trying to rock a trendy mullet or faux-anything. I might be at the point where

GASP!

i’m going to have to start cutting my hair really really short. Not shaved, by any means, but really short. Sort of Chris Meloni in Law and Order SUV short.

Plus, i’m going to be in Vermont for the month of January, and that means I’ll be wearing winter hats, and that means messy hair, so why not avoid all that and cut my hair short?

I was also thinking of growing a beard, but nah. I like my stache still.

Speaking of beards, I found the COOLEST artist on the website Fecal Face, Keith Shore, and love love love his print called “The Bearded Portraits.” I’ve got to put a bug in Ted’s ear so he’ll get it for me for Christmas.

If you check out Shore’s website you can see more of his paintings– I like how they look almost childish, but there’s something in the way he paints the characters’ eyes and mouths that to me look very tense and real.

Anyway, The Bearded Portraits reminded me of Walt Whitman’s musings on beards so I thought I’d leave you with a couple of excerpts.

Whitman rocked his own beard, as you all know, and mentions them in the preface to Leaves of Grass.

About America, he writes: “Here are the roughs and the beards and space and ruggedness and nonchalance that the soul loves.”

Then again in “Song of Myself”:

Washes and razors for foofoos …. for me freckles and a bristling beard.

*Whitman image from here.

Wowza. It was such a fun night. Sedaris, as I noted in the lobby where he was signing books, is a tiny, pale man. And actually appears much softer and sweeter than I expected. I’ve never seen him in person, only listened to his books on tape while driving, or seen his pictures in magazines or on the back of his books. I guess for some reason I had thought of him as kind of cranky and stiff, but no, he was –of course–very funny but also very warm, even in his cynicism, cut downs, and self-depracation.

And, say what you will about David Sedaris: that he’s a hack, that he is only a comic writer and doesn’t go any deeper, that he’s too dark, that he’s too flip, that he’s (as one Amazon reviewer put it) “no longer truly funny,” or repetetive, yadda yadda.

But one thing you can’t deny is that, at his best, he’s an amazing, entertaining storyteller– he really made me appreciate the art of storytelling– telling a good story. and I don’t mean the ‘writing’ part of it, I mean the reading aloud part of it, the entertaining, the performing. Pulling an audience/listeners in and making them laugh and think and gasp. That’s, to me, is the 2nd job of a writer.

Occasionally I’ll get Creative Writing Students who don’t like to read their work aloud, which is sometimes understandable because it may be in really rough, draft form, or it may be a free write that they just wrote on the spur of the moment. But there’s something about reading your work out loud that is so rewarding and enriching and affirming, whether it’s rough and underdeveloped or polished and published.

Is storytelling–the actual act of storytelling, reading your story, novel chapter, essay, aloud– a dying art? I dunno, but I know it rarely gets its due.

Seeing David Sedaris read made me want to read aloud. Made me understand why I love to do it.

One goal of mine is to go to bed BY 11 PM EVERY WEEK NIGHT. I can’t say that i’ll be able to do that on the weekends, but I’m going to try to do it on weeknights so that I can get up early (7 a.m? 6 a.m.?) to write. Especially on Tues/Thurs when I don’t go in to class until 3.

Can I do it? I hope so.

My classes, though, have been lively so far, which is a good sign. No creative writing classes to teach this semester so i’m channeling all of that energy into my own writing.

I have to say, I’m still loving the newsletter Writers Ask, from Glimmer Train. I find each issue more inspiring than the last. It’s a short (usually 15 pages or so) flyer that comes every three months. It doesn’t tell you how to write or how to get published, but it is chock full of interviews with other writers giving their brief input on the writing process and other aspects of writing. The current issue (came this week) includes:

Naming and Titles

Inspiration

Writing What You Know

Forms

Writing as Art

from such writers as:

Alice Mattison

Michael Cunningham

Amy Bloom

Ann Patchett

Thomas Beller (yay!)

Susan Orlean

Charles Baxter (yay!)

James Lasdun (yay!)

Sandra Cisneros (yay!)

among others.

Thisbe Nissen is asked about the quotes she has at the beginning of a particular story of hers.

She says: Maybe all writers do, but I just love quotes. My bulletin board is covered with Post-its of song lyrics and fragments of poems. As I’m writing I always have some quote that I’m working with.

I’m the same way. I love quotes. I love clipping them out of newspapers or typing them up on my computer and printing them and putting them on my bulletin board. I’ve had this one quote on my board for at least two years:

The two most engaging powers of a writer are to make new things familiar and familiar things new.

– Samuel Johnson

And my friend Kelli gave me a bunch of quotes in a frame, including:

The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.

– Vladimir Nabakov

Writers Ask is inexpensive and so so worth it. Check it out.

Common Ground

by Paul J. Willis

Today I dug an orange tree out of the damp, black earth.
My grandfather bought a grove near Anaheim
at just my age. Like me, he didn’t know much.
“How’d you learn to grow oranges, Bill?”
friends said. “Well,” he said, “I look at what

my neighbor does, and I just do the opposite.”
Up in Oregon, he and his brother discovered
the Willamette River. They were both asleep
on the front of the wagon, the horses stopped,
his brother woke up. “Will,” he said, “am it a river?”

My grandfather, he cooked for the army during the war,
the first one. He flipped the pancakes up the chimney,
they came right back through the window onto the griddle.
In the Depression he worked in a laundry during the night,
struck it rich in pocketknives. My grandfather,

he liked to smoke in his orange grove, as far away on the property
as he could get from my grandmother,
who didn’t approve of life in general, him in particular.
Smoking gave him something to feel disapproved for,
set the world back to rights. Like everyone else,

my grandfather sold his grove to make room
for Disneyland. He laughed all the way to the bank,
bought in town, lived to see his grandsons born
and died of cancer before anyone wanted him to, absent
now in the rootless presence of damp, black earth.

“Common Ground” by Paul J. Willis, from Visiting Home. © Pecan Grove Press, 2008. Reprinted with permission (from The Writer’s Almanac NPR website).

…how it brings the image of the black earth–which it began with– back at the end.

***

Oh, hey. I’m on vacation now! Yay!

Which means of course: writing.

I’ve been teaching this wonderful Nonfiction Writing Workshop for three weeks now and not only are the students talented and smart but they are all so genuinely excited by writing, and sharing their work, and open to new ideas and dialogues about writing. I love teaching this class, working with other serious writers. Don’t get me wrong, I love teaching in general, but when I teach a class like this, as opposed to my Composition classes at the community college (which I do enjoy for the most part), I come away each night after class burning with energy and inspiration. Last week we discussed ‘character’: how to strengthen characters in NF, how to flesh them out, how to give them depth. I gave the class a free-write and, as I usually do, I partook of the free-write, too.

I ended up with the start of an essay that I now want to pursure further, about my third-grade teacher, Mrs. K, who was Armenian, who ran every class as if it were a Wellness Retreat (hugs and back massages were a crucial element to learning), who cried when she got the end of Charlotte’s Web –while reading it to us aloud, who gave most of us, I’m assuming, our first taste of Tabouli, and who introduced us to the term: genocide.