What's Up Wednesday #3

What I'm Reading

I just started Per Petterson's Out Stealing Horses, recommended by Beth Kephart, whose taste in books I trust implicitly. So far, and I am only a few chapters in, it's beautiful. Already there is a scene that haunts me, involving a crushed birds nest. It's one of those moments that is so richly drawn, I can see it, feel it, will always see it as if it happened to me. I'm hoping to learn a lot from this writer.

What I'm Writing

Finishing final revisions to RABBIT ISLAND and that's it. I've decided to take a break from writing anything new for the month of June. Then July will be dedicated to research for The Oyster Book before I dive into a draft in August. There are some short stories and essays I'd like to polish up and send out into the world.

What Inspires Me Right Now

The written words of others. As always.

What Else I've Been Up To

I thought maybe an instagram collage would help explain the days.

Yesterday, before attending a wonderful event about writing history for children (more on this later) I stopped in Washington Square Park. The fountain looks a bit like it's sprouting up into the sun.

Our summer CSA has begun, which means a summer full of fresh local greens and experimenting with unknown vegetables that over the years we've come to know a little better (kohlrabi, tatsoi, etc.)  These strawberries are actually from the farmer's market but I thought they were really beautiful.

Last weekend I went to the Belmont Stakes for the first time in many years. I loved the beautiful clothes and hats. After watching a few races, we left early, and did what my family does best: eat pasta at one of the local Italian joints with the best bolognese I have ever tasted. It turned out to be a good day.

Beyond that, I've been struggling a bit at work. I hesitate to write about my job here because I realize it's public but my boss and coworkers know my frustration and unhappiness. I've been working to change this part of my life, working very hard, and, while I sense a shift, I have yet to see a real change. Part of the hands-off approach I mentioned last week is letting go a bit, allowing the universe to decide what is best for me. I don't see this as giving up. I'm hoping that two years of hard work and persistence to make a transition will open the doors I've been banging at. It's summer. It's time to reassess, to step back and just be  for a while.

For more What's Up Wednesday, go here.

The Future

An interesting discovery in a public restroom and yet, there it was, reminding me that the future is only moments away, that we have the ability to see and control some of it, that it can be just as near as it is distant:

The Future

In the future about
in one second from
now I will be writing
this amazing poem. A cople
years from now I will
be a singer and 
a actress.

By: Willow


Also. I washed my hands before taking this photo.

Do You Wanna?

I read from the grass and then from the bed, both times in the shadow of leaves, next to children's laughter. First the park, then in my apartment, up from the street, where summer floods from the fire hydrants and the blow-up bouncy castle is green and blue, matching my view from the ground.

My neighbor Leo has swim goggles wrapped across his forehead. Spy glasses, he tells me, and I have glasses that can read backwards, his friend chimes in because Leo has wanted me to meet her, his friend, my friend, I don't know how many times he has said this now, my friend, my friend, who I must meet.

Her brown bangs take off running above her eyebrows in a straight line, eyes huge as she surveys my apartment. Leo has flung the door open and soldiered in barefoot but she remains in the hallway, against the wall and tells me her name is Annique not Unique, she is very specific about that, and I wonder, still, how she spells it.

Their tongues are matching green and her shirt is stained the same as they each slurp from wooden sticks and when Leo's ice slides to the floor, before I can chime in that we haven't washed it, his dirt-stained hands are wrapped around the forest green chunk and it's back in his mouth, with Annique gasping, her head shaking at her friend, her friend, her friend.

They speak a language I know I used to understand because while I think to grab a paper towel for the green ice that now leaks across the floorboards, they are already, do you wanna, and the words are off running along side the excitement caught up in her shriek, hand in hand galloping down the stairs past walls that are covered in the dust of tire tracks from carrying the bicycles up and down.

They are off, our brief, necessary meet and greet now over, and I smile thinking of summer and ice melting at my tongue, palms sticky, shirt stained, running hand in hand, breathless with do you wanna?

What's Up Wednesday #2

What I'm Reading

Charming Billy by Alice McDermott. When my local used bookstore closed last spring, the owner let me take an entire tiny shelf of literary fiction paperbacks. I've slowly been making my way through them and only recently did I discover I actually owned this National Book Award winner from the year I graduated high school. It's beautiful so far.

Also, from that same stack, I just finished Sarah's Key by Tatiana De Rosnay. I knew nothing about the Vel' d'Hiv round up in France during World War II and I found the story absolutely fascinating.

What I'm Writing

The reason I've been missing in action from the blog is because I was finishing up revisions to RABBIT ISLAND for my agent. While the revisions were not extensive, I found I had to dig deep into the psychology of my characters in order to better understand some of the underlying emotions behind several conversations, story lines, and relationships. It turned out to be a tough pass. Now that they are turned over, I'll sleep well, gear up for another revision, if there is to be one, and continue dreaming and researching The Oyster Book.

What Inspires Me Right Now

The possibilities of summer.

What Else I've Been Up To

I've been in a sort of head fog these days, a bit distracted, nervous, preoccupied in spiraling thoughts, fidgety yet tired. In many ways, not myself.  On the actual side of things, there have been dinners with friends, plans with family, working each day, hoping for the right opportunities, writing and reading each night, and an unhealthy amount of viewing of Frasier reruns on Netflix. That cast of characters is really making me laugh.

Because I feel so tired these days, I think I'm going to experience a period of hands-off for a little while. A sigh. A release. Let the universe take over.

Beyond that, I'm dreaming of our upcoming trip to Ireland. And I hope one day this weekend, maybe Sunday, I'll wake up and go absolutely nowhere. That would be a beautiful thing.  

For more What's Up Wednesday, go here.

Thoughts on Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent by Beth Kephart

I always wait impatiently for my friend Beth Kephart's books. I'm lucky they appear on the shelves often. I'm never disappointed when I crack open their spines.  I read her latest, Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent, quickly and quietly because I don't like fits and chokes and starts when I read a Kephart book. I prefer to chug it in its entirety. Then sit happy and full.

That is what I love, love, love about this book.  The fullness and richness of this writhing adventure. Each sentence swells with the endurance of characters that are, in many ways, running on empty, past empty, but with their hearts bursting full at their worn seams.

Fourteen year old William Quinn is a finder and fixer despite a life of tremendous loss (his father in jail, his brother, Francis, murdered, his mother slowly disappearing from a broken heart.) His best friend, Career, still stomps across the dust with a ripped sack jacket and a 'too-big-for-him' vest while he doggedly pursues even bigger dreams.  His mother, struggling every day to cope, still manages to rise from bed and stitch that sleeve. And I haven't even got into blowzy Pearl and her boisterous kindness or the amazing, persistent, stubborn Molly whose yellow bow, against all odds, still clings to her hair. Even the empty promise of the magical sarsaparilla (it's just root beer) doesn't stop them (or me) from believing, hoping, knowing, that their strength is resolute.

I'm not smart enough to really know the time period (1871) or the place (Bush Hill, Philadelphia) but I'm lucky Beth fills the pages with the sound and spirit of the time so I can come to understand it (a most gorgeous review that goes into that here.) And, in collaboration with her husband, artist William Sulit, the beautiful illustrations reveal the scratch and charcoal and steam of those words.  

This winter, in freezing cold, I did visit the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, where parts of the novel take place. As a symbol of atonement and redemption, the former prison (known as Cherry Hill) seems to stand at the center of the book, and the characters make their amazing rescues and deliverances around its imposing walls.

I'd pull every sentence from the book if I could, such is the care Beth puts into each one. But I'll just excerpt one of my favorite moments:

William leans against the streetlamp, corner of Broad and Pennsylvania, the light an apron of yellow around his old, broke boots. Two brown moths lap at his head, fuzzy creatures with gigantic wings that make him think of the night he and Francis and Ma sat within the spectacle of the Phasmatrope. She'd caught her breath as soon as the first projected waltz had begun, and by the time the tumblers started galvanizing and leaping across the screen, Ma was pulled to the edge of her seat, her sons on either side each holding one hand. Ma's fingers were white from the laundry bleach. Her nails were short and square. It was her gold ring that shone like a star that night, an infinity band. William remembers remembering Pa and what Pa'd been through and what he'd done and lost, and how the bearing of him had changed, but never his outright love for Ma.  

I love this moment for the wide-eyed, knowing, perhaps misunderstood kindness that brought them to the Phasmatrope, William's memory of it, and the enduring love behind it, always at the center of Beth Kephart's beautiful books. If I must wait for the next one at least I always, always, wait happy and full.

In Clouds

It's been a strange week. I'm feeling more silent than usual, with this idea that I shouldn't speak, not necessarily that I can't.  It began with a move to a new office space. Suddenly I find myself with a desk set far back into a tiny room with a door and four walls to dampen sound.

I work with audio and music and character voices that are often painfully shrill, and, while the move to this newly renovated office floor has meant smaller, less private workspaces for many big-wigs, it has meant a larger, completely private workspace for nobodys like me.  Because of the painfully shrill voices, you see. Not to mention my department coworker Sam's ear-splitting whistle toy, which nearly sent all of us and a particularly cranky Design Director to the looney bin.

So, as a result of annoying an entire company of toymakers with our vast array of whistling, shouting, screaming, singing, buzzing, (and even farting!) toys, a truly happy thing has happened. I now have my own office. A door. Soft lighting. I listen to music while I write scripts. And I see no one. Until I am forced into a meeting or until I make a choice.

It seems, with choice, I am decidedly more social. I emerge from my new cave and swing my legs from the benches next to friend's desks and laugh with my birthday sister Kira and wonder, out loud, rather than through email, where we all might go for lunch (a new experience, today, with seitan, from the gangly group of vegans who insisted I try, and I'll never understand the strangeness of recreating the sense of meat where there is no meat, I'll never.)

This afternoon, I found myself in a high-level executive meeting where it wasn't clear whether I was wanted, a strange back and forth of invites that turned into dis-invites that turned into maybe come, into definitely don't you dare, into are-you-kidding-get-on-the-subway-and-meet-us-now.

So, up in this tall building in Times Square, I stood and looked out and my feet had that tingly feeling, that one more step and you could fall feeling, but today there was nothing except fog and the memory of a river and, sitting at the long conference table, with the nagging feeling of shouldn't, shouldn't, I didn't say a word.

On the way home it felt as if I'd been caught in a secret all week, shrouded in the atmosphere of those clouds. A stranger asked me where the subway was and it was only after I gestured the way, told him of these few blocks and that one right turn, after I walked for a moment, then stopped to whip around, that I registered the staggering, unsteady girl just behind him.

I called out softly after them, Are you okay?  But they didn't answer and I stood wondering why I didn't notice sooner, why I didn't speak louder, why a terrible, nagging, piece inside me wished not to bother, wanted to be alone in secret, in clouds. The same piece that wished I hadn't seen her at all.  A different piece than the one that fears for and wonders, too late, about her now.

International Be Positive Day

Robyn Campbell and Sharon Mayhew, two of the loveliest children's writers and friends I know, have declared today International Be Positive Day.

It's a day to be positive, to encourage one another, to share the happy, through twitter, Facebook, and your blog.  Will you join us?

I walked this path in Laguardia, Spain last May. When I think of this place, I think, here, is where dreams seem possible.

The dirt is thick sandy desert rushing into shrubbed meadows, lake, then mountain rock. There are jungle green grape vines, technicolor sky, and storybook clouds.  Nearby, a gardener tends to his roses, and they are larger and brighter than any other I've seen.

When I think of this place, I think dream big. I think, it is possible for the sky to open up to us, for us to see how endless it really is.

Do you have a place where it feels possible to dream bigger?