Get busy

3 September 2008 | 4 Comments

The best novella I know is “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption” by Stephen King. It was made into a brilliant movie, but the novella is even better.

It’s about hope. I talk a lot about hope, mostly in ambivalent ways. But perhaps I am coming to some conclusions. Perhaps there are different kinds of hope, like mushrooms, some that are truffles and some that will kill you dead.

“Shawshank” is the most comprehensive, brutal, joyful examination I’ve ever read of the different kinds of hope. The hope like a rattlesnake you keep insisting makes a really good pet until it bites you hard and then coils away looking for its next meal. The hope that is indistinguishable from fear. The hope that relies on magical thinking, if only… And there is the hope that is the first cousin of will, that sees you to the end of a long hard road.

When I was learning to swim, the instructor would step back ten feet from where I clung to the edge of the pool, and hold out his arms, and smile: swim to me, he would say, and I would throw myself out and gasp and thrash and paddle like hell, and he would step back and back and back, and I had to keep going. But he was always there at the end. That is perhaps the only hope that has ever really done me any good, the hope that makes me willing to keep swimming because there will be something at the end that is risk rewarded, that is safety and triumph and relief and a new kind of knowledge of myself and the world. Not if only, but rather if I do…

Dear Red,

If you’re reading this, then you’re out. One way or another, you’re out. And if you’ve followed along this far, you might be willing to come a little further. I think you remember the name of the town, don’t you? I could use a good man to help me get my project on wheels. Meanwhile, have a drink on me — and do think it over. I will be keeping an eye out for you. Remember that hope is a good thing, Red, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies. I will be hoping that this letter finds you, and finds you well.

I didn’t read that letter in the field [... ] I went back to my room and read it there, with the smell of old men’s dinners drifting up the stairwell to me — Beefaroni, Rice-a-Roni, Noodle Roni. You can be that whatever the old folks of America, the ones on fixed incomes, are eating tonight, it almost certainly ends in roni.

I opened the envelope and read the letter and then I put my head in my arms and cried. With the letter there were twenty new fifty-dollar bills.

And here I am in the Brewster Hotel, technically a fugitive from justice again — parole violation is my crime. No one’s going to throw up any roadblocks to catch a criminal wanted on that charge, I guess — wondering what I should do now.

I have this manuscript. I have a small piece of luggage about the size of a doctor’s bag that holds everything I own. I have nineteen fifties, four tens, a five, three ones, and assorted change. I broke one of the fifties to buy this tablet of paper and a deck of smokes.

Wondering what I should do.

But there’s really no question. It always comes down to just two choices. Get busy living or get busy dying.

–from “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption” by Stephen King

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, quotes, reading

Poetry for cats

30 August 2008 | 2 Comments

Here’s a little literary fun for a holiday weekend. This is from Poetry for Cats: Tthe Definitive Anthology of Distinguished Feline Verse, by Henry Beard. It’s a lovely, clever collection of poems, ostensibly written by famous poets’ cats, which is brilliant both as hommage and as a study of feline psychology.

Here’s a taste. Enjoy.

To A Vase
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Cat

How do I break thee? Let me count the ways.
I break thee if thou art at any height
My paw can reach, when, smarting from some slight,
I sulk, or have one of my crazy days.
I break thee with an accidental graze
Or twitch of tail, if I should take a fright.
I break thee out of pure and simple spite
The way I broke the jar of mayonnaise.
I break thee if a bug upon thee sits.
I break thee if I’m in a playful mood,
And then I wrestle with the shiny bits.
I break thee if I do not like my food.
And if someone thy shards together fits,
I’ll break thee once again when thou art glued.

– from Poetry for Cats by Henry Beard

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, quotes, reading

Pandemonium

26 August 2008 | 2 Comments

Daryl Gregory was at Clarion in 1988. At the workshop, he wrote a story about drag-racing demons, and I knew then that he was one of the good ones, someone who would go out and blow a hole through SF. He’s been publishing great stories for years, and getting a lot of well-deserved attention.

And I’m totally thrilled that today he publishes his first novel, Pandemonium. The book is already getting great reviews (Publisher’s Weekly, Locus, The Agony Column). And hey, the first taste is free — you can read the first chapter here.

Congratulations, Daryl! I’m excited for you. Go celebrate, man. I’ll be here reading the book.

Pandemonium by Daryl Gregory

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, reading

Dandelion Wine

3 August 2008 | 9 Comments

Dandelion Wine is a summer book, every word is rich with summer-ness like ice cream and hot sun, and soft heavy evenings full of tree frogs and parents laughing quietly in the other room and screen doors slamming in the distance.

I first read it in high school, and it didn’t really speak to me. It wasn’t weird enough, and the boy in the book was too young for me to care about, and it was set in 1928 — you may imagine the roll of teenage eyes, god, that was like a thousand years ago…

I was in my 30′s before I understood the deep richness of this book, the joy and the sadness and the absolute brilliance with which Bradbury captures a summer that I never had and yet remember so well. Summer as a state of mind. Summer as a collection of moments out of usual time in which we may, if we choose, live slow and do mundane things and find at bedtime that it has been one of the richest days…

We’ve had very unsatisfactory weather in Seattle these last couple weeks, restless laughing autumn weather that I love, but am not yet ready for. But we are promised summer again this week, and although outside my window it’s hazy and 50 degrees, I see sun and hints of blue sky behind the gray smoke. And today, when the sun comes out (and I know it will, I know), I will stretch out in it with iced tea and Dandelion Wine and remember what it’s like when everything in one’s world is exciting and new and so full of possibility. I’ll remember that from my little deck, a place familiar and known and not so much about possibility as it is about perspective and the considered choice to throw myself into things or not, to be new or not, to sit in the sun or go inside. Because I’m no longer twelve, and I need my twelve-year-old summer days more than ever.

In the first eight pages of the book, Douglas Spaulding, age 12, is out in the woods with his father and younger brother Tom. Doug and Tom are wrestling. And Douglas discovers something amazing:

And at last, slowly, afraid he would find nothing, Douglas opened one eye.

And everything, absolutely everything, was there.

The world, like a great iris of an even more gigantic eye, which has also just opened and stretched out to encompass everything, stared back at him.

And he knew what it was that had leaped upon him to stay and would not run away now.

I’m alive, he thought.

[...]

The grass whispered under his body. He put his arm down, feeling the sheath of fuzz on it, and, far away, below, his toes creaking in his shoes. The wind sighed over his shelled ears. The world slipped bright over the glassy round of his eyeballs like images sparked in a crystal sphere. Flowers were sun and fiery spots of sky strewn through the vast inverted pond of heaven. His breath raked over his teeth, going in ice, coming out fire. Insects shocked the air with electric clearness. Ten thousand individual hairs grew a millionth of an inch on his head. He heard the twin hearts beating in each ear, the third heart beating in his throat, the two hearts throbbing in his wrists, the real heart pounding in his chest. The million pores on his body opened.

I’m really alive! he thought. I never knew it before, or if I did I don’t remember!

He yelled it loud but silent, a dozen times! Think of it, think of it! Twelve years old and only now! Now discovering this rare timepiece, this clock gold-bright and guaranteed to run threescore and ten, left under a tree and found while wrestling.

“Doug, you okay?”

Douglas yelled, grabbed Tom, and rolled.

“Doug, you’re crazy!”

“Crazy!”

They spilled downhill, the sun in their mouths, in their eyes like shattered lemon glass, gasping like trout thrown out on a bank, laughing till they cried.

“Doug, you’re not mad?”

“No, no, no, no, no!”

Douglas, eyes shut, saw spotted leopards pad in the dark.

“Tom!” Then, quieter. “Tom… does everyone in the world… know he’s alive?”

“Sure. Heck, yes!”

The leopards trotted soundlessly off through darker lands where eyeballs could not turn to follow.

“I hope they do,” whispered Douglas. “Oh, I sure hope they know.”

– from Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, life, quotes, reading

Play like a girl

20 July 2008 | Comments Off

Another in the occasional Being Human series of posts.

Nicola posted this today. And I love it. I love that these young women are so brilliant at this. I would have killed for mad body skills like this as a young woman. I always admired the girls I knew who were good at sports, and this… well, it combines grace and talent and skill and a hundred split-second decisions about physics and geometry, and I just stand in awe.

And they make it look so easy. I just love their absolute sense of expertise, their genuine pleasure in making the shots, and the total lack of any body language that “apologizes” for either. And the ending is priceless, all the more so because it’s not that she didn’t make the cool shot, it’s just not the cool shot she was going for…

Anyway, go watch, and enjoy. I sure did.

Edited to add: Aha… it turns out that this is a viral marketing video from Nike. Well, here’s what I think about that.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under being human, blog, life, music, reading

What Stephen King says…

15 June 2008 | 4 Comments

…goes double for me.

I look for stories that care about my feelings as well as my intellect, and when I find one that is all-out emotionally assaultive… I grab that baby and hold on tight. Do I want something that appeals to my critical nose? Maybe later (and, I admit it, maybe never). What I want to start with is something that comes at me full-bore, like a big hot meteor screaming down from the Kansas sky. I want the ancient pleasure that probably goes back to the cave: to be blown clean out of myself for a while, as violently as a fighter pilot who pushes the EJECT button in his F-111. I certainly don’t want some fraidy-cat’s writing school imitation of Faulkner, or some stream-of-consciousness bullshit about what Bob Dylan once called “the true meaning of a peach.”

– Stephen King, from the Introduction to The Best American Short Stories 2007

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, reading, writing

Old Man’s War

15 May 2008 | 4 Comments

A friend recently discovered an author she likes (J.M. Coetzee, for inquiring minds) and immediately embarked on the adventure of reading everything she can find by him. I envied her. My life of late has been all screenplay, all the time, and that has had some unexpected consequences, not the least of which is that I read much less new-to-me fiction than I did. That’s partly because all the learning about screenwriting is enough “new” for me right now; and because I spend more of my leisure time (hah, such as it is) watching films (more with the learning); and because most of my new-reading bandwidth is taken up with YA as I continue to make notes and build the framework for the YA novel that’s coming up on my project list.

And because I’m so damned tired a lot of the time that all I want is serious comfort. Comfort food (my mom’s tuna casserole, Nicola’s Portuguese soup, the kick-ass marrow-bone vegetable beef soup that I make that we call shtoup because it’s thick like stew but it’s not stew, no matter what Nicola says). And comfort reading. I’ve been revisiting a lot of old favorites lately — Travis McGee, Bone Dance, and I’ve got my eye on a bunch of Stephen King novellas.

But I’ve been reluctant to engage with writers whose work I don’t already know. And then along came Old Man’s War by John Scalzi. I’ve been reading Scalzi’s blog for a while, but not his fiction. And I really enjoyed this book.

I loved Heinlein from the first book of his I read (Time Enough For Love, if I recall correctly), and I love that Scalzi has captured the best spirit of RAH without rehashing him — this isn’t Heinlein-lite, it’s post-Heinlein, with a good story, interesting characters, cool ideas and accessible science. And as much to say about war — what it is, what it isn’t, how it changes those who wage it — as The Forever War or Ender’s Game. I love the voices, the relationships, the details of moving from one life into another… all the stuff I like, wrapped up in a story that has particular resonance for me right now.

And so now I too have found a new writer to read. Very exciting. Thanks, John, I liked your book.

And I would love to hear what new-to-you writers others have found — there’s nothing like sharing the wealth!

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, reading

What Sparrow says

28 April 2008 | 4 Comments

I’ve just re-read Bone Dance by Emma Bull. This is an old favorite of mine, because of the lovely writing and the really cool characters — people I’d love to meet (well, except the creepy ones) — and the very compelling Sparrow whose voice leads us through it all. And I love it because it’s a novel of identity and hope and connection. I am sure, re-reading it this week, that it influenced Solitaire.

Sparrow says:

There is a whole class of answers to life’s big questions that, when examined closely, proves to be nothing but another set of questions. I now know my origins, body and soul. That’s like knowing that magnetic tape is iron oxide particles bonded to plastic film. Wonderful — now, what’s it for? What does it do?

It does, I suppose, what it has to do. It does what it loves to do, or what needs doing. It helps others do the same. So I do that. And sometimes (….) I can feel it, very close: the power and clarity and brilliance, the strength and lightness, that I had once in a dream, a dream of dancing, a hoodoo dream.

–from Bone Dance by Emma Bull

I love this idea that the goal is to do what we love to, and to do what needs doing. I understand both of those. I think one without the other is a path to superficiality and isolation and numbness — the death of the “best self” through complete disregard for others or through the bitterness that comes from regarding others always to the cost of oneself.

Power and clarity and brilliance, strength and lightness. When I imagine my best self, these are things I hope to be.

So thanks again, Emma. Dreams of dancing, dreams of flying, dreams of self discovered and finally embraced — those are good dreams, awake or asleep.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, reading, writing

Not this year(2) – 30th reunion

22 April 2008 | 5 Comments

A series of posts about things I thought or hoped or feared I would do in 2008.

At the end of May, when Nicola and I are in LA reading, drinking, meeting folks and taking the sun (at least I hope so — it just started snowing again here, clearly the weather is broken), my 30th high school reunion will happen on the campus of the boarding school in New Hampshire that I attended for four years. Since we don’t have transporters yet, I’ll miss it. (Note to Scientists: where is all the Star Trek technology that was supposed to make my life so convenient?)

I had a blast at my 25th reunion. I hope the 30th will be as great for the folks who are there.

Things I will miss about this reunion:

Seeing old friends — Nora, Holly, Els, John and Beret, Carolyn, Edie, Hobson.

Here are some pictures of some of us at the 25th reunion in 2003.

Seeing the school — So much beauty. But it’s a different place now, too, and that is both right and a bit hard. It’s not “my school” anymore. (Hmm. I seem to be doing a lot of thinking right now about things that are no longer mine… see previous post about Wiscon.) But my school is alive in me in the way of the best memory — so vibrant and integral that even the changed reality doesn’t dislodge it. I don’t know… it’s funny how being there for the 25th and seeing the graduating students made me so conscious of my age and at the same time feel like 17 again.

Being in the boat — I have to preface this by saying that I am the least athletic person I know. So it’s very funny that I have a JV and a Varsity letter in anything, especially crew. It’s even more funny when you know that I was the tallest cox in the world and therefore weighed more (even at 110 pounds I was at least 20 pounds heavier than a cox was supposed to be). But the women who rowed in my boats were amazing, strong, focused, and so gutsy… (no pun intended, since rowing is the kind of sport where people throw up over the side of the boat when the race is over, especially if they’ve been rowing hard enough to win).

We were a great crew, and at these reunions we gather whoever is there from the original crew, round up other willing folk to fill the open slots, and go out on the water together again. The faculty person in charge of the boats that day always looks nervous as hell in the repressed But we can’t piss off the alumni way. Nora, who was the stroke of our boat, always has to remind me of at least one vocabulary term. And every time, the women of the crew are so beautiful on the water. We had so many powerful moments in that boat, training and winning and learning to pull together. My experience with crew is still one of the Great Happy Anomalies of my life.

I’ve written about the 25th reunion and my experience at school at length over the years, and have imported those posts from the Virtual Pint section of my old website for anyone who’s interested.

In chronological and conversational order:

Enjoy. And if you’d like to start a conversation, please do so — it’s easy. Or come back later and use the link on the sidebar, and let’s talk. Some of the stories and realizations that have been most important to me over the years have come directly out of these online conversations, and I’m always grateful for them.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, friday pint, life, music, reading

More Trav

25 January 2008 | 2 Comments

But I could not get into it. I am apart. Always I have seen around me all the games and parades of life and have always envied the players and the marchers. I watch the cards they play and feel in my belly the hollowness as the big drums go by, and I smile and shrug and say, Who needs games? Who wants parades? The world seems to be masses of smiling people who hug each other and sway back and forth in front of a fire and sing old songs and laugh into each other’s faces, all truth and trust. And I kneel at the edge of the woods, too far to feel the heat of the fire. Everything seems to come to me in some kind of secondhand way which I cannot describe. Am I not meat and tears, bone and fears, just as they? Yet when the most deeply touched, I seem, too often, to respond with smirk or sneer, another page in my immense catalog of remorses. I seem forever on the edge of expressing the inexpressible, touching what has never been touched, but I cannot reach through the veil of apartness. I am living without being truly alive. I can love without loving. When I am in the midst of friends, when there is laughter, closeness, empathy, warmth, sometimes I can look at myself from a little way off and think that they do not really know who is with them there, what strangeness is there beside them, trying to be something else.

Once, just deep enough into the cup to be articulate about subjective things, I tried to tell Meyer all this. I shall never forget the strange expression on his face. “But we are all like that!” he said. “That’s the way it is. For everyone in the world. Didn’t you know?”

from The Scarlet Ruse by John D. MacDonald, 1973

An earlier post on Travis McGee here.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, life, reading

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