Okay To Dream

In the late hours last night, I found myself reaching an end. I completed another set of revisions for RABBIT ISLAND, a book that has sent me flying on both real and metaphorical rollercoasters for years, a book whose title I can not seem to shed because it's so rooted in this place that I can't imagine the unimaginative title any other way.

Yesterday, I sat with my boss, Jeff, as I do each week and though the meeting is on our calendar to discuss a weekly status, the discussion is never quite about where we are, but where we wish we, that is to say, our company, our industry, this 'business' of play (I work for a toy company), could be.

Over the years, he and I have stood in conference rooms and pitched endless ideas to bored listeners. We've been dismissed and berated more times than we've been encouraged.  And, while I've often grown weary and retreated, Jeff, instead, continues to fly off on zig-zag paths, what if, what if, and soon he thinks we don't just have an idea but a movement, a musical revue with booming ensemble spectacles in the third act, and I never quite know how we get to Rockette kicks and jazz hands (you'll have to ask him) but I always end up thinking, Okay. Yeah. Yes. Let's go. 

Our discussion yesterday turned towards people, to the leadership of our company, and we wondered what it would be like, if we walked into a room and instead of the eye-roll, the bored sigh, the I don't know, I don't really get it, do we really have time for this now?, we received a help me understand, or, a why don't you try this, or I have an idea! How about...

Last night, I thought a lot about this, about hope, about possibility, about the people who encourage creativity rather than suppress it.  I thought about how it trickles, how one sarcastic, snide comment shifts an entire conference room of people, shifts the culture of a company of hundreds.

I wondered if I have let others stomp and whine and no no no too many times. I thought, if I had to look towards leadership, I'd better look towards Jeff, who will go anywhere, who will piggyback any idea and ride it just to see where it goes.  I thought, I have to be that person to others. I have to be open, kind. I have to shift the mood another way.  It has to start with me.

When I reached the final sentences of my novel, last night, I felt hopeful, a feeling I have foolishly suppressed in the past. Sometimes it's hard to hope, to let yourself wish for things but, yesterday, after I saved the document, then emailed it to myself, watched it pop up bold and new in my inbox, I thought, it has to be okay to dream.  We have to open ourselves, and others, to that possibility.

New York Postcard

Last Monday, I came home late, near the midnight hour, after watching a tennis match at Madison Square Garden. I had an angry fire throat and a pesky cough. I rode the F train and wished desperately for sleep.

The train was crowded but I'd managed a seat while Tyler hung at the pole, and I stared through the cracks of coats and bags, watched as across the way, two burly passengers -- like a children's book, one short and wide, the other large and long -- smashed together into a seat like two cymbals gonging.

There was an immediate confrontation.  The two-seater was suddenly not large enough for all three: the wide one, the long one, and the bag the wide one insisted upon slapping upon the bench.  There were accusations flung.

You didn't ask if you could sit here!

I don't have to ask! 

And over and over, this is a public space, man. This is a public space.

I watched as both of them refused to move and, instead, sat uncomfortably squashed. The wide one clutched his bag beside him, stared straight ahead. The long one smooshed himself between the railing and his enemy, trying to read a newspaper.  He looked like sausage oozing out of the casing, his impossibly long arms bent and woozy, as they awkwardly crinkled the unruly pages. 

On our walk home, Tyler and I laughed at their stubborn, crunched up silence.

I would have snapped a portrait if I could.  A New York postcard.  

Career Assessment

A memory of career assessment.  I was twelve years old. My desk was a flat, wooden arm, winging off my hard-backed seat.  Lead pencil smudged across the bump of my wrist.  I filled in each bubble because I knew, I knew, I'm going to be a writer.  And with every question, my heart would whisper its own.  Is this the answer a writer would give?  I circled. I nodded. I knew.

Days later, a typed description in a printed booklet crossed my desk. Lines dipped and mountain-peaked and soared on a chart.  I scanned the fuzz of wordy descriptions, so certain, so sure.

When I flipped to the final assessment, however, my heart slipped. Writer was low on the list, practically last.  Healer, it read.  Number one.

I didn't understand.  Healer?  I thought I'd be barefoot. I thought I'd hold a flute, charm a snake, rub leaves across others cheeks, touch my hand to a bowed head.

What does this mean? I asked my teacher.

She turned a page, pointed to the description, to the suggested careers.  Doctor. Nurse. Member of the clergy.

I panicked. My grades in science class were abysmal. Doctor and nurse were not in my future.  I'd have to be a nun like Sister Regina at my church, who had made fun of my sign of the cross because it was backwards. Up-down-right-left.  But everyone else went left-right.  Left-right, she had smirked and grabbed my wrist, thunked my hand against my shoulders, over and over, left-right.  

I imagined my future self in a Climb Every Mountain-esque Mother Superior habit, shouting and stomping, left-right, left-right!

Writer was its own separate category with its own suggested careers. Journalist. Novelist.  Poet.  It sat at the bottom of my list.  It sat at the bottom of me.

Choosing Love

My boss's eight year old daughter sent a stack of these bracelets to me.  I could choose just one, was the message from her, just one of four: fortune, health, happiness, or love.

So I chose. 

The Way We Keep Books

While books bulge off my shelves and cascade on my night table with occasional dog-eared pages, for the most part, I don't own many of the books I love. Most are in circulation at a library or travelling through wandering hands at a used-book store.  I used to carry certain slim books of poetry through my life but, after so many brown-box moves, they have vanished.

I used to run into someone on the subway (a person who appears in my life in strange ways since a job I had just out of school.)  What are you reading? I asked once, because he always kept a book in his pocket, a paper fold leaking from the zipper. I'm not reading it, I just like to have it with me, he said. 

I thought I understood. But then I didn't. And then, I thought, he had always been somewhat odd.

I am an avid reader and, I hope, a thoughtful one. I do like to be with books, to have them in my bag, to stand among them in cozy shops or libraries, to know they are near. But books have always stayed with me in strange ways.  I could love a book, clutch it to my heart, oh, oh, oh, and, a week later, someone could ask me its plot.  I'll hmm and stammer.  Most of the time, I don't remember the main character's name.

Books have never been reference for me.  I can't quote a single line. I can't point to the shelf, pull it out, read a passage. Oh, I read that!  I'll say when someone mentions a title. But then I never seem to know the facts, the figures, the names, the place.  

It seems a book is mine and I am its, when it is in my hands.

Feelings, stirrings, moments, do linger after I leave the pages. They do keep.  A certain wishing of almost-twin birthdays on a plane, a girl peeling potatoes in the back room of a catering hall.  Sometimes I can connect these moments to specific books. But most of the time?  I can't tell you the writer or even the title.

For someone who often considers books her life's blood, I have wondered, am I the only one, who is only able to keep pieces of books in a dusty jar of memory?

Twelve Little Girls In Two Straight Lines

New York City is beautiful for so many reasons. This being one of them. A bar of original paintings by Ludwig Bemelmans, the writer and illustrator of Madeline, my favorite children's book of all time.  The murals circle the entire place, every inch of wall, every candle lamp. 

I spent $21 on one cocktail. I didn't care. It's too special of a place to care.

(I'm only sorry the photos are so blurred) 

                                                                   

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday

I love these pale winter petals, brushed by the light of burning lamps on the streets of Society Hill in Philadelphia (where I ran off to, briefly, just the other day.) 

Does anyone know these flowers?  How do they dry and stay through winter?