Claiming Space

I see him each day right in the middle of the bike path on Columbia Street, next to a fence covered in tarp, near the shipyards lining the waterfront.   He sits in a dilapidated lawn chair, poking at the air with an umbrella as a cane.  He is blanketed in all black, head and shoulders draped with candy colored serapes, shrouded in a cloud of bobbing pigeons.  Stray cats leak from his feet, circle him like the horses of a slow carousel.

He is a fixture, the subject of local articles, a prophet of sorts, sharing the thoughts of the alley cats he claims to know.  At night, I am told, or so the articles say, he leaves for Manhattan, rides his bike or walks over the legend of a bridge.

When I pass, when I pedal or run the path, he is not kind.  The whites of his eyes grow large and he often stands, makes a show of it, sticks the flaking, dry skin of his middle finger right in my face.  I make a point to thank him.  Out loud.  I say the words because I know no other way to acknowledge his anger than to be unapologetically grateful that I am the recipient.

He thinks the space, the slice of concrete, is his to keep.  He thinks I do not belong there with him even if I am just passing through.  What have you really claimed? I want to ask.  What's here but you?

Tomatoes From Seed: Progress

I continue to attempt to grow tomatoes from seed. Last I wrote, the seeds had germinated and I was waiting for true leaves.

They have been upgraded from the recycled egg carton to the plastic tumbler cups.  When temperatures allow, I adjust them to the outdoors. I bring them back to the sill.  I sing to them because I am told that helps and, besides that, they don't appear to mind listening. The roots nudge, impatiently, and their space grows smaller and mine diminishes too.

I'll move them to proper pots, to full sun.  I'll witness their progress and hope it's a bit like viewing my own.

 

Followed (Not Quite) Home By the Tabby Cat

He walked in the kind of blur my life has been.  This orange and white tabby. He crossed streets with me, stopped when I stopped, scampered ahead, then paused, looked back, waited for me to catch up.

I shook my head in the darkness, No. I am not the one you want to follow. 


But he stayed close.

After ten minutes, we reached the footbridge together, the rush of highway roaring beneath us, and he stopped at the corner while I continued ahead. I looked back. I wanted to see him give up.  I wanted to know that it was not me who let go.

Instead he watched me.  He would not cross but he would not turn around.

I thought I'd stand there forever.  Thought we'd grow old together.  Follow or go, I pleaded with him, without words, only in the way I lingered on the bridge and waited there while the cars streamed below.

He did not move.

Of course, it would be me.  I would be the one to turn away.

The End of A Beginning

While I have been writing since I was a young girl, have been sitting with a dream, swinging my legs impatiently, it wasn't until 2008 that I began to write with the idea that I wanted to be published.

I wrote a novel with the aid of writing workshops and fell into the lap of a writer's group made up of characters I had no business meeting with (a New York Times staff writer, a Professor of Comparative Literature at Columbia, to give you an idea of how far outside the league I sat.) 


This writing thing...we're all a bit like bored housewives, aren't we? one of the big leaguers said.  And I thought, if this 'writing thing' is a frivolous endeavor to someone like him, an established journalist frequently on assignment in Iraq with one non-fiction book already under his belt, then what on earth would it be to someone like me?

I decided to take the plunge anyway, decided to take myself seriously enough to learn, at least, all I could about the publishing industry, the business of it, and what it would mean to be a part of it.

I started by reading two blogs where I learned...well...everything I know.  Which is to say, very little, and yet a lot. That's just how much there is to learn.

Last week, both of these bloggers, just one day apart, announced they would no longer be blogging.  What now? I wondered.

This now, I guess. I thought I'd share the archives of their blogs here, their wealth of information, in the hopes that if you didn't begin there, you'll end up there anyway.

Allison Winn Scotch's Ask Allison

Jessica Faust's The BookEnds Literary Agency Blog

Is there a place you began learning about writing and publishing? Please share!

On the Tracks

I saw these objects on different days (weeks apart, actually) and at different train stations.

It startled me, how similar they were. How similar they are.

A lost story (a book.)  An abandoned heart.

Together

Standing on the subway this morning, holding on to the slick of greasy pole, I stood before a woman sitting in a fur vest who, after staring out into nothing, erupted into sudden laughter.  Shoulder-shaking, head thrown back, breathless squeaking, twelve year old girl at a sleepover with underwear in the freezer kind of laughter.  She wasn't holding a book, a phone, listening to a music player, or watching a scene unfold. I searched for the cause of laughter. I looked at the people sitting beside her, to see if anyone joined in, to see if she was a part of something I could not place, but she laughed alone. 

So, I deemed her crazy.  Harmless crazy (on the New York City subway we must make these distinctions) but crazy none-the-less.

After the laughter subsided, and this laughter had gone on for quite some time, after she caught her breath, wiped her eyes and sat still, she turned to the man sitting beside her, who had been quietly reading a book, and fell into the ease of conversation, because, all along, they had been paired.

Their connection surprised me.  I had labeled him: 'man reading'.  Her: 'crazy person laughing'. I had thought them strangers to one another.  And I don't know why it bothered me, to discover their togetherness.  But it did.

Cyrille Aimee and A Crowded Mind

My mind is crowded these days. If I've been out of sorts, I apologize.  I've been pushing myself really hard and if I'm not pushing, if I'm sitting for even just a moment, I am angry with myself for not pushing far enough forward, and it's strange and exhausting and I'm working on this part of me that can't sit still, can not relax, I swear I am, but working on it is, in reality, just another thing to do.

(Is this making any sense?) (I've been asking that a lot lately. In metaphorical and real parentheses. Like this.)

Tonight is what I'll call 'working on it'.  I'll see one of my favorite singers, Cyrille Aimee.  I LOVE her voice, I love to be in it for the time it takes to step inside and I can not wait to see her live for the first time.

I rarely click on videos when people post them .  I'm not sure why.  But I hope you'll click on this video, because you don't have to watch it, there's nothing to see, you just have to listen while you run off and do other things.

Maybe you'll like to listen to Cyrille (we're on a first name basis, I've decided) as much I do.