Month: March 2009

To women

Today is International Women’s Day.

Thank you to all the women who have helped me survive, grow, learn, fight, love, laugh, hope, cope, and appreciate the beautiful things of the world. To the women who taught me languages and why communication matters, who taught me poetry and prose. To the women who taught me by good and bad example how to behave in public, in business, in life. To the women who gutted it out during some bad time, and I know a million of you: you are all magnificent. To the women who dance and the women who watch, who write and read. To the women who reach and fail and reach again and touch the sun; and then go on to do the next thing that must be done.

I wish every woman in the world a life every bit as real, as full, as safe or risky or quiet or exciting as she herself has ever wanted. I wish that no one would ever again say “a woman can’t…” I wish that people would stop being so damn surprised when a woman they know turns out to be fully human, with all the grace and fear, potential and skill, short-sightedness and clear vision, caring and cruelty, horror and healing, cowardice and courage, and fierce yearning dreams that any human is capable of.

To the women who have enriched my life with your love, wisdom, and silly jokes; who have tended my wounds, held me while I cried, made me food, stood up for me; with whom I’ve shared books and television and movies; and secrets; who have showed me the world, and taught me that the world is just as real in my own back yard; who have believed in me fiercely, forgiven the hurt I have caused them, hauled me up short, told me hard truths; who have shown me the bright beauty of human kindness in a simple act; who have been unkind, frightened, flawed, hurtful, less than helpful, downright mean. You are all a part of me, and I love you.

Trek crack

The movie. May 8. ‘Nuff said. Bring on the Oh-Oh Theme Girl! (Yes, I have just dated myself as someone who grew up on the Star Trek TV show, yes, that one, with James T. Kirk and the green-skinned dancing girl… and the theme song of a woman’s voice singing oh oh oooooooo).

Friday pint

Every Friday I transfer posts here from the Virtual Pint archives.

March is such a tease. The microscopic buds on the tree outside my office window have exploded pow! into little fuzzy puffs of tree-stuff that look just like spring is here to stay. But I’ve been down this road with March before. I know that as soon as I drag out the t-shirts, the freezing rain will begin again…

But it sure is pretty right now. I hope it’s nice where you are, too.

Today’s pints are all topics that I still think long and hard about — love, hope, daily choices. Seems like no matter how far down any particular road I go, I always come back to these things.

Enjoy your Friday.

Being there

Today — as I write this — the California Supreme Court is hearing arguments on Proposition 8. The outcome is very important to me, and even moreso to the thousands of people in California whose marriages may be invalidated as a result.

We won’t know that for a while. Not so long ago, we wouldn’t even have known what arguments were being made until it was reported in general in a newspaper, followed perhaps weeks or months later by more detailed reportage/analysis in a magazine.

Ah, but today… today we have the internet, webcams, blogging, instant messaging, twitter, digital cameras that fit in the palm of a hand, video cameras in mobile phones, PDAs… and we have the social media networks to use them. And so, you and I can be at the hearings through live blogging. Here’s a blogger providing a detailed picture of the argument as it proceeds, one post at a time. Here’s another blogger (friend and author Malinda Lo) giving us minute-by-minute reportage on which any of us may comment at any time — thereby turning the Court hearing into an international conversation.

These things are amazing. Amazing. We can be present in our world in ways we never have before. We can be connected. We can observe or participate. And, of course, we can be observed, we can be the object of participation whether we want it or not. Connection is never a clean issue. It’s rarely exactly the way we want it to be. But I believe in social and political and business transparency, and I am grateful to the inventors, the technology producers, and the people on the benches and in the trenches who share what they are seeing and hearing with the rest of us.

I’ve been thinking about these issues for a little while; and screenwriter John August wrote a thoughtful post recently that made me think more. Today, I am struck anew by the power — the occasional ferocity — of the human desire to know and to participate. Millions of us took ourselves to Washington D.C. to see Barack Obama inaugurated. Millions of us can, if we choose, take ourselves to court today. What next?

Life, really

Here’s a post I like from writer JA Konrath. The topic is writing, but really it’s about Life in the Real World.

I would love to talk more about all the ways these writing truths are also life truths, but I’m in Duck Mode today (as opposed to Daffy Duck or Duck on Fire modes)… Oooooh, duck metaphors! I’ve always enjoyed watching ducks swim — so graceful, so smooth. Then when I was little, I found out that underneath the water they’re whap whap whapping with those webby feet, working like hell for the forward motion. So that’s me today, places to go and things to do, and paddling like hell. Moving forward, I hope, with a certain duck-on-water grace. The other duck modes are not so pretty (grin).

Quack quack to you all.

Get dangerous…

Many thanks to Rich Rennicks of Malaprop’s Bookstore/Cafe in Asheville for this lovely review of Dangerous Space.

I’m grateful to everyone who has blogged about the book or left a review on amazon or on a literary social network. There is nothing better for a writer than good word of mouth. Human enthusiasm is a powerful force. I heart all of you who read books, sell them, talk and blog and podcast about them, lend them, and give them as gifts.

Which brings me to Today’s Special Dangerous Offer: a book-loving person has offered to send a copy of Dangerous Space to the first two people (anywhere in the world) who request it here in comments. I’ll get your mailing information privately — for now, just leave a comment and let me know you’d like a copy. And send a little general love vibe to the generous soul who wants to give you a brush with danger today.

And here’s a little general love from me to all of you. Thank you for letting my work into your minds and hearts. I’m very grateful to you all.

Right now the sun is shining, although the forecast was for unrelenting gray and rain all week. Microscopic buds have appeared as if by magic on the tree outside my office window. I think, I hope, that things are beginning.

Towanda!

I love Fried Green Tomatoes — book, food and film, but today let’s focus on the movie (although here’s a recipe to placate the hungry and an amazon link for the readers among us).

I’ve always liked this film. I laugh, I cry, and I enjoy very much the company of the varied, interesting, complex women in this story. The movie makes some people grumpy because it chooses not to make explicit the relationship between Idgie and Ruth, but honestly, it’s all there on the screen, in every moment between them. It’s lovely. And then there’s phenomenal Kathy Bates, whose work I adore.

So here’s my Monday treat for you. Evelyn (Kathy Bates) isn’t exactly the most assertive woman on the planet. But lately she’s been listening to stories of a mythical mighty woman called Towanda….

Find your inner Towanda! And give her a hug from me.

Ice weasels and angels

Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.
— Matt Groening

No, no, Nicola and I aren’t grumpy at each other, and this isn’t me being bitter and twisted. This quote is just the laugh-out-loud truth about love that no one ever tells us when they’re giving us the Barbie and Ken Dream Wedding Set (and if you’re a guy, trust me, the world gives you the Dream Set too, just in different ways).

There are so many ways that love tests us — all love, from friendship to parenthood to marriage to… whatever. At some point in all these relationships, the ice weasels come and we have to decide if we will lie there while they chew. We have to decide whether the love is worth it.

Why am I thinking Deep Ice Weasel Thoughts on a slow Sunday morning? I have no idea, although perhaps it’s because I am also seeing in the world the kind of love that doesn’t always get much airtime: the love of human beings for the humanity of others. I see it in JobAngels, where people are helping strangers find jobs. I see it in the woman who barters handywork for office tasks that she could easily afford to pay for — she has the money, but she knows things are tight for others and she wants to help. I see it in the people who every day give strangers, including me, a kind word or a reassuring comment on a blog post.

The ice weasels are certainly with us right now. But the angels are too. I’m not religious, so I don’t mean stern beings with wings and white robes. I mean people who commit acts of human love in spite of their own fear and their own struggle, whether it’s a small kindness to a stranger or the sometimes-wrenching choices we make for those we love most closely. All those things we do for love. If we let it, love makes angels of us all.