In praise of process

Leroux’s blackberry brandy in celebration of one of my own projects (a group project actually)!!!!!

I just had to let you know that, two weeks ago, I reread, “The Hum of Human Cities”, way too many commas here, I’m sure…I was distracted the first time I read it and couldn’t enjoy it the way I wanted to. Anyway, it got me thinking about a project that me and some friends had been working on. Oh, our thing was nothing like your short story, so I don’t even know why it made me think of it. I guess it got me thinking back to a more creative time.

It’s a film project, sort of. My friend came up with this idea in 1993, but it didn’t start taking shape until 2000 (that’s when we met and became friends). I suggested that some of the dialogue could be better so he gave me what he had and told me to rewrite it. So, I did (I’m not a writer. Just an okay ear.). This got him and an other friend thinking up even more ideas. So, the three of us spent hours writing together…and drinking blackberry brandy. We rewrote the thing 17 times because we kept coming up with better ideas (that and one of the locations we wrote around got torn down).

We broke up. What started out as fun became a pain in the ass. People who said they’d act for us, showed up when they wanted to. We took on the roles of the main characters ourselves. We had to get rid of characters because there was nobody to play them…more rewrites. We argued all the time. It was a mess. And we walked away from it with silent fuck you’s. That was a little over a year ago. We haven’t seen or spoken to each other since.

After rereading your short story, my friends were on my mind more than ever. For two weeks, all I thought about was the needless death of our project. Then my friend called and said he was sorry for being an asshole and could we give it another shot. So I said sorry too and yesterday, we met up with our other friend and had blackberry brandy.

Maybe it would’ve happened sooner or later, but for now, I’m chalking it up to “The Hum of Human Cities”. So…thanks.

Don’t worry, I’m not a pub stalker. I’m just really excited about the project and thought to pass the joy along. After all, it was your story that got me thinking so hard.

Thanks again.

Lindsey

Oh, I almost forgot… If anyone is curious, it’s a pg-13 sci-fi, action-adventure, comedy, spy, romance series. It’ll be a whole bunch of 15min. shorts. Sort of like watching a comic book. Fun not deep or enlightening.

I’m curious! It’s been a while since you sent this in (my bad, sorry) –” any developments?

Passing joy along is a Good Thing. I appreciate it. It would be nice to think that Hum had something to do with it, but in the end you and your friends made the choice to reconnect. Choice is what it’s about. Choosing to pick up the phone. Choosing to have the conversation. Or choosing not to. You did the work, you get the blackberry brandy (smile). I hope everyone has a great time together, whether the project gets done or not.

This got me thinking about process (Lindsey, this isn’t about your specific story… just me wandering off into the woods of management theory). There’s an assumption down deep in our culture that if people have the burning desire to achieve a particular result, it will happen as if by magic… and if it doesn’t, it’s because someone screwed up or wasn’t really committed, or whatever. And that’s just not always the case. Bad process brings bad results, even with all the goodwill in the world among the players. How we do things may not be the sole priority, but it’s important.

The biggest conflicts I had in my corporate life revolved around this issue: I worked with some executives who were adamant that process was bullshit: it didn’t matter how chaotic our everyday was as long as we made the numbers and did the deals. These same folks were so surprised that the Project Management team of 26 people could manage half a billion dollars of product development in a year with fewer mistakes and less stress and more workplace happiness than ever before. Huh, they said, scratching their heads. What’s the secret? And when it turned out the secret was in communication, process negotiation and re-negotiation, accountability without abuse, clear descriptions of who was responsible for what, etc… oh, the horror! I could never do that! To which my response was (and still is), what an asshole. Anyone can do it. It’s just a job skill.

But whose fault is this? Our culture has historically valued independence and bootstrapping more than collaboration and community. “Everyone knows” that results without process is better than process without results. My question is, who decided this had to be an either/or equation? And my thinking, more subversively, is that sometimes process is more important. Sometimes it’s better to have agreements about working together so that people don’t have to disconnect in order to maintain their own boundaries or manage their disappointment. If Nicola and I ever collaborate on something, what counts more: the published book (or screenplay, that’d be fun!), or the next 50 years of our relationship? Well, duh.

So why, why, why aren’t these skills part of a child’s basic education? We teach our kids how to be competitive and encourage them to assert their individuality, and then wonder why they grow up with fractured notions of community and the belief that winning is an exclusive activity rather than an inclusive one. It seems that recently a balancing force has come into play in schools –” I hear more about kids being exposed to conflict management skills, collaborative activities, etc. I hope this is true. I don’t think we should raise a bunch of polite robots –” just people who understand that if we’re all going to take so much pride in being individuals, it means we have to do a little more bridging work in order to get a group result. That’s my vision. Have our cake and eat it together.

Rant off (grin). This is all coming up for me in part because of my learning more about Deaf history and Deaf culture, and the particular assumptions that exist in American (hearing) culture about what is language, what is communication, and how do we assign class and status based on those things? We read a book called Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language by Nora Ellen Groce that was instructive. She’s a researcher who traced the origins of hereditary deafness on Martha’s Vineyard, where for most of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century a huge percentage of the population was deaf. During that time, everyone in the community, hearing and deaf, was multi-lingual in some combination of spoken English, written English, and sign. She was able to talk to elders who were alive during this time, and without exception they didn’t differentiate between deaf and hearing status. When asked to remember people who were “handicapped,” they would pull out examples of people losing limbs or with some sort of mental disability. When asked specifically about deafness, one woman said, “Those people weren’t handicapped. They were just deaf.” No one was denied access to the community based on language modality.

Yikes, I’m not going to get started again. Rant control engaged. But my corporate skills and my cultural learning and my concerns as a writer (story, connection, the human heart) are beginning to mesh in some pretty interesting ways.

I believe in stories

Hmm…Yes, she does have an unbelievable amount of energy. It drives me and my brother crazy sometimes.

There were a couple of misprints in that article. My mom says that, “work is a four-letter word, but when you do it, you get back another four-letter word… love”, not “love and work are four-letter words”. And I don’t know where they got twelve adopted kids from. It’s my brother (bio.), me (adopted — thank god, karma, energy, whoever because I don’t think I would’ve made a good Angela Salerno), and four fosters that we haven’t seen in a very long time… So, it has been just me and my brother for quite a while. For a few years anyway, there were six of us. But, I’m sure if there had been thirteen of us, she would have dealt with it just the same (she became a single parent overnight. walked not died).

Then, she needed that focus and energy. She put us all in the van one night and drove us through the projects. We’d never seen them before. Broken toys and lawn chairs out in the concrete yards in the middle of winter. “We can live here or we can work. What do you want to do?” We said, “work.” And we did. Non-stop. Asses off. What had been a hobby for my mom, became a business when someone called to hire her to do a show. We did almost 200 shows a month every month for two years. It was a big exhausting blur. I was eight by then, and even though I continued to help her out until high school, something about the shows left behind a nasty aftertaste. I think smiling for strangers when our elevator crashed made every show feel like a lie. Something about it just stuck in my head.

Of course all that is different now, and it’s long since gone back to being a hobby and my mom has hired help.

Lately, she’s been doing a lot of shows at teen lock-down facilities and alternative learning schools. I help her out sometimes when her other helpers are unavailable. Those are the best shows because I really get to see what she does. We get in the room and set up and these kids come in with these attitudes… And I don’t blame them. Most of them have been told that they are pieces of shit. They’ve been wrecked and they’re angry. They come in and look at us like, “who the fuck are you? why the fuck are you here? take your fuckin’ animals home ’cause I don’t give a fuck about them or you.” It’s nothing like a blue and gold banquet or a birthday party. She breaks out the more personal stories for these kids. The kind of stories I hardly ever tell because I don’t want anyone to feel bad for me or my family. Maybe it’s the humor she uses or maybe these kids can relate to what she’s saying… I don’t know. But midway through her presentation, the room isn’t so angry, people are laughing, asking all kinds of questions, holding animals they didn’t even want to see and someone who may have looked emotionless at the beginning, now looks like they have so much to say. Those are the times when I think, Wow. This woman is changing a little piece of the world. And she’s my mom. Cool. I know that sounds extremely cheesy, but it’s true.

Interestingly, that article came from the Lakeview Manor newsletter… Lakeview Manor is the new name of those projects we drove through.

Lindsey

Doesn’t sound cheesy at all to me. I believe there’s no power in the ‘verse like the moment that two people experience a connection.

I believe in stories. They’re good for so many things –” teaching, integrating new information, connecting, distancing ourselves, praising, punishing. In some ways story is at the heart of all human interaction. Here’s what I did when I was 12 and my parents got divorced. Here’s what happened to my friend. Here’s how you and I are different. Here’s how we are the same. I remember… Personal stories can be such a powerful bridge. Sometimes they’re a momentary recognition, like a smile I give a stranger on the street. Sometimes they’re just a way of making myself hideously vulnerable without getting anything back. Sometimes they’re a lifeline for someone in a way that I may never anticipate or realize. But stories are always a gift. I like to give them and receive them, and I’m not likely to ever trust someone who isn’t willing to tell their own stories and listen to the stories of others. Good for your mom. She sounds like one of the Great Connectors.

I’m not just talking about the Big Stories; even the small stuff can make unexpected connections between folks. But the big stories can make a big impact. I think I understand what it might have been like for you helping out your mom, hearing her talk about your lives to strangers. Particularly those parts that might make people feel sorry for you, or give them just a little too much of a window into your world. I’ve been there.

One of the things that my high school class did in preparation for our upcoming reunion was to put together a “Reunion Book.” We filled out questionnaires, and the answers were collected into a booklet along with recent (or old) pictures. There were some evocative questions. And of course, all my memory comes back to me in the form of story, however abbreviated. So, Lindsey, thanks for your stories, and here are a few of mine.

St. Paul’s School 25th Anniversary Questionnaire

Kelley Eskridge
Occupation/Employment: writer

Partner’s Name: Nicola Griffith
Partner’s Occupation: novelist

Colleges/Universities and Degrees
BA Theatre Performance, University of South Florida

Public and Community Service Involvement
Various volunteer activities in the Deaf and Deaf-Blind communities, as part of my study of American Sign Language and interpreting.

Describe a favorite memory or moment at St. Paul’s
I have so many. Sneaking back onto campus with Jordie Hawley so late one night that even Checker Cabs was closed, and we had to hitch a ride (first time I ever did that!). The girls’ first boat winning Worcester even after one of our oarlocks popped and the race had to be started over. Time spent alone in the woods, or the boat docks, or Little Turkey–”part of me knew that I might never again get so much uninterrupted beauty and peace and space for myself. Time spent with friends. Almost any night at the Coffeehouse. All the conversations. Dances. Autonomy. Buying the first poster and the first piece of jewelry I ever picked for myself, at Isis & Rasputin (I still have both). Jon Sweet waking me up with a bottle of champagne because we’d kicked everyone’s ass at the debating championships. Checker Cabs delivering late-night ice cream. John Tweedy leaving a $200 check in my mailbox after he saw me crying because I couldn’t afford to reserve my place in the freshman class at Northwestern, a kindness done with such unintrusive grace that it set a lifelong standard for me. Lying in the snow outside Upper, watching my first meteor shower. How it feels to have people throw you in the pond because they like you. Roaring down Fisk Hill in the dark on a borrowed bicycle at a thousand miles per hour after the last crew party. Peppermint ice cream with chocolate syrup. The first time I stepped onto campus, for my tour and interview, and realized that there was a bigger life outside of Tampa, Florida: I fell in love with the school and the life in that moment, and I’ve never looked back.

What did SPS best prepare you for?
To learn in new situations–”to see things clearly and suss them out for myself, instead of waiting to be told what to think.

What did you NOT learn at St. Paul’s that you wish you had?
How to have the confidence of a 42-year-old.

What is your proudest accomplishment?
I’ve learned to live large, love unreservedly, build a marriage, be brave, appreciate difference, embrace joy, clean up my own mess, dream big dreams and then be responsible for whether I get them or not. Everything else is details.

If you could be granted one wish now, what would it be?
A miracle cure for multiple sclerosis.

What do you really hope to accomplish in the next 25 years?
Write and publish beautiful, powerful books. Interpret a U2 concert in ASL. Have 25 more years of food, drink and conversation with Nicola. Learn screenwriting. Take another trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. Cherish the people I love. Cherish myself. Meet new fascinating people and have some of them become life-friends. Dance more. Go farther than I ever imagined. Be joyful.

Any other thoughts or comments you’d like to share with your Formmates?
Life is short and the world is wide, and there are plenty of ways to be happy. I hope we have all found some.

Lindsey’s mom

A comfort beverage today. Those little wax bottles filled with dyed, fruit flavored sugar water (what are they called anyway?). I’ve got plenty a napkins to go around…you have to spit out the wax somewhere. I must say, I prefer to gather up a big wad of wax in my mouth then spit it into my hand –” If you hold it tight for a few minutes, you can form neat shapes out of it.

Your latest response got me thinking about my mom. She, in a way, trains people to “cope with difference together” almost every day. She’s a storyteller of sorts…using animals. She takes in abused, neglected and “imperfect” creatures –” snakes, turtles, birds, lizards. For 27 years, she’s been known as the “Snake Lady”. Most of her animals are missing legs or feet, or have been scarred in some way. Through her animal stories, she teaches kids and reminds grownups that….well, she teaches them lots of things: diversity, individuality, tolerance –” This is not as easy to explain as I thought it would be. I mean, I grew up with it. I should be able to put it to words. There’s an article about what she does on the web. There are tons of snake ladies, so you’d have to look up Bonnie Main Snake Lady. She had no idea that she was on the internet until I told her about two months ago. Don’t worry, she won’t mind that I put her name here… She’s all about access.

Years ago, she did a show at New England Home For Little Wanderers and ended up inviting four kids over for lunch (they thought she was cool and the animals too). She figured they’d like to meet the rest of her animals. When they told her that they were going to be split up into different foster homes (they were brother and sisters), she told them that wasn’t going to happen. They lived with us for five years.

— Lindsey

I did look up your mom (note from Kelley/2008 — the original link I found is broken now, so I’ve substituted a more recent one. You’ll have to get past a little formatting wackiness, but it’s worth it. Bonnie Main rocks.) Pretty amazing. She seems like one of those people who have both focus and an incredible amount of energy to back it up –” sort of like a broad-beam flashlight, if that makes any sense. I haven’t known many people like that. I imagine having such a parent makes a big impact on a person.

Your mom is quoted as saying, “Love and work are both four-letter words.” That made me smile. Love and work are where so many of us spend most of our time and energy, which is why they interest me so much to write about. My next book (which I will now get back to working on) has some things to say about this.

Again from 2008: Here’s a video I found of Bonnie. Lindsey, tell your mom we all said hi.

The men of Solitaire

I read solitaire in a few hours, and I must confess I couldn’t stop. The book left me with a sense of deja vu.

Somehow, it reminded me –” specially the shangri la apartments (and I cannot really say why this association) –” of William Gibson’s books, like all tomorrow’s parties. do you read his books? is it a known influence? I know things like earthgov and korporations are all over science fiction, asimov laid it all out in foundation, maybe even someone before I am not even aware of , but your books adds a twist to it, the korporation is chacal’s home, not just the almighty enemy, she is part of it.

Something I really enjoyed in your book is that women have a saying. Maybe you overdo it, the male characters are all extremely weak and nearly non-existent, but what the hell! there’s plenty of books, movies… where the girl is only there to show cleavage. Thanks! I work on a very machista (= male chauvinistic) field –” science –” and even with plenty of women my age there are very few women in positions of power and women are still treated mostly as second class. i.e., my boss gets drunk at a conference and he is great, a woman colleague does the same and she is not just as great.

Anyway, I really enjoyed solitaire and will look forward to your coming novels 🙂

c.

Glad you liked it. Thanks for taking the time to write.

I’ve read some Gibson, of which I reckon Neuromancer had the most impact. I was in my early twenties and had never read anything like it. There’s a certain measure of Sprawl influence in my vision of the NNA, as well as a bit of Philip K Dick and John Brunner. EarthGov is a pretty standard SF trope, you’re right. Politics as a basis for story doesn’t interest me, which is why the specifics of EarthGov are left to the reader’s imagination (grin).

But I really was trying to be different with Ko. The evil corporation is a tiresome story idea, and in my opinion also just plain inaccurate. Corporations aren’t evil, although sometimes people are. And it seems that protagonists in SF so rarely have everyday jobs unless they are pawns of the Evil Corporation. Where are the janitors and the secretaries and the food servers and the kindergarten teachers? We have enough space pilots, already.

It’s interesting that you think the male characters are all extremely weak and nearly non-existent. I disagree utterly, but that’s why we have a word in the language for “opinion.” I suppose it depends on what you mean by weak (what do you mean?). To me, Solitaire is a book full of people who are weak in some ways and strong in others, but not based on gender. To say that all the men or women in the book are a certain way implies some kind of agenda (conscious or unconscious) that I don’t think accurately describes me as a writer or a person. But you see the book differently, and that’s cool with me. It’s an interesting response.

And I’m completely with you on the double standard. I used to work in television a long time ago. I was a freelance technician on remote television productions like sports events or awards ceremonies, where a 55-foot trailer full of TV equipment shows up and they do the television broadcast from the site. When we did “packages” (such as an entire season of Pac-10 college football, for example), we would travel around the country and do a different event every few days or every week. At that time there were few women on these crews, and it soon became clear to me that women weren’t real in some way. I wasn’t really a woman, you see –” I was on the crew –” so the guys used to talk in front of me about the women they would meet at the bars we went to after the shoot. A lot of steam got blown off those nights, and I saw and heard some astonishing things that I never would have if they’d remembered I was a woman. It went as far as having one of the men tell me one night after several beers that he liked me and respected me so much he wouldn’t even try to fuck me. What can you say to that? (I said “thank you”).

Do I think all men are like this? Nope. It’s a mixed bag, it always is. There’s plenty of assholes in the world. Some of them are men, some of them are women, some of them are someone’s grandma. But I do think that when people group together they will look for commonalities, for a group baseline, and it’s unfortunate that so often those baselines default to extreme gendered or class or cultural behavior. You’d think someone would have figured out by now that teaching little kids diversity-respect skills would be more of a passport to happiness than all the algebra in the world.

Please, no grumpy letters from math teachers. Math is Good. I’m just trying to make a point here.

What about some short stories?

I believe I’ve read all the short stories on your website, and I loved every one of them. What are the chances of you publishing a short story anthology so that I can read more of them, take them home and give them as presents to friends? Or maybe you and Nicola could do a short story anthology together…

Nicola and I do kick around the notion of doing a joint collection, and tend to think that would be more attractive to publishers right now than a single collection from either of us (because there’s the whole couple spin for marketing purposes, and the academics and reviewers can have a field day trying to figure out who stole what from whom). I honestly don’t think I could sell a single author collection right now1. I don’t have enough of an SF reputation to support a collection in the genre (that’s a really hard sell), and mainstream publishers wouldn’t touch it. So there you go.

I’m glad you enjoyed the stories. If you were signed up on the mailing list before January 1, you’ve also read an as-yet unpublished story (“Shine”) that I sent out to the list as a Happy New Year gift. Otherwise, you’ve read everything there is for a while, at least.

1 — But maybe in a few years (grin)…

I wish we could feel differently about difference

(Kelley’s note: if you wish, you can follow the conversation back to Lindsey’s previous question).

I’m always bringing something to the table. Today, I’ll have whatever everyone else is having–”except beer, unless it’s Zima… I know, chick beer. I get ragged on for it every time. So, feel free.

Your ASL class sounds GREAT! I’m a fan of small classes. I went to a tiny, private, all-girls school (for the last 3 years of high school). It was more like a big blue house. There were 72 students and that was from grades 6 to 12 –” 5 in my class. So, definitely no hiding. For two years, I was the only one in my French class. And, our teachers treated us like grownups. When I got to college, I was like, is this it? But it’s so easy.

I wish I’d seen that episode of The Practice. There should have been something like that in Children of a Lesser God. If I remember correctly, William Hurt voiced everything.

Camryn Manheim does rock. So does Allison Janney (C.J. on The West Wing). And I think Ileana Douglas needs more (and better) roles because she rocks too.

As far as seizures go, I should have said, in my comment on access, that it embarrasses me when I see that someone is embarrassed for me (why I wouldn’t discuss it outside the pub). A lot of this has to do with my high school graduation… A snippet of a story if I may: There we were, all four of us (one girl didn’t go. It was said that she thought she was too fat and didn’t want to be up on stage). Our sad little gym, for we were the poorest of private schools, was filled with family and friends and faculty and the lower class and their parents. And so, we sat in our folding chairs on that sagging stage, in our white gowns, our big hair done up around our white caps, and took turns applauding each other for this award or that. I had just returned to my seat with my scholar-athlete award and was bitching to myself because my name was spelled wrong again, when our headmaster announced that he had a special guest who wished to make a special presentation. An alumna, in an orange dress, wearing the same blue and yellow honor society sash as three of us, gimped her way to the podium with her ER “Dr. Weaver” crutch –” now, I know that’s not a nice way to put it, but I was a teenager on stage about to get a handicap award. And I was not pleased. I have no idea what she said. I was watching the audience fidget. They looked down or off to the side or to me and then down again. They were uncomfortable or embarrassed. Or both, I couldn’t tell. I glared at my mother so she would know how pissed I was. She tilted her head in the direction of the podium. The woman had finished speaking. I went over, shook her hand, took the stupid Cross pen and looked back at the empty seat (five had been set up in case the other girl changed her mind). “I’m not handicapped. And I’m not fucking retarded, so keep it,” is what I wanted to say. I smiled and said thank you and wished I were somewhere else.

Anyway, I didn’t mean to make myself vulnerable in my comment on access. Talking about seizures doesn’t bother me at all. Weird as it sounds, I’ve had some pretty funny postictal moments. When I said that I wouldn’t ask you about aftershock as seizures (outside the pub), what I meant was, I wouldn’t want that kind of fidgety attention (I should just get over that). Even in the pub, I was nervous that someone would think I was being too personal (side note: I get embarrassed when someone is too personal too soon and I didn’t want to be one of those people). Then I thought, why am I being so wispy about this? When did I start caring about what other people thought about me???

I don’t know what my point is anymore.

Ah, with anything though, it makes a difference when you can laugh at yourself and at each other. And now I sound preachy and I’m boring myself. It must be the Zima….

This was a long one, and with you being a writer with work to do, you don’t have to respond. A simple nod is fine. Besides, the more you talk about your next book, the more we want you to hurry up and finish it (grin).

Lindsey

I went to a boarding school for high school and felt a similar way about college when I got there, although my response was more geared toward the lifestyle than the teaching style. I requested a single room in a co-ed dorm, and was instead placed in a dorm full of freshman girls (all double rooms) for whom the Big Autonomy of college was as much a major adjustment as leaving home was. But I’d been living away from home and doing my own laundry and taking myself off to the cafeteria for 4 years by then, and I felt like a fish in the desert.

I can understand your comment about being embarrassed by other people’s “fidgety attention” (nice phrase, that). Being singled out for “overcoming disability” is a pretty ambivalent experience, isn’t it? I think people have a real desire to acknowledge perseverance and the extra effort that’s required in our society to achieve many of the things that people without physical or emotional conditions take for granted. But there’s also often an unfortunate flavor of “why, she’s really hardly a cripple at all” that I have less patience with as I get older. Our culture is uncomfortable with difference, and we tend to reward people who manage their difference in ways that make them more like “normal” people (lord, don’t even get me started on normative socialization, we’ll be here for days).

I’m getting a hefty dose of this in my ongoing education in ASL. I have a Deaf friend who teaches ASL and starts the first class with an interpreter (the only time an interpreter comes to class) so she can explain that being deaf does not mean being a broken hearing person who has to be fixed: it means being a person with a different language modality. She stands up in class and tells the students, “I’m not broken!” and she’s right –” she’s strong, articulate, powerful, and talks with her hands and face and body instead of her voice. Anyone who calls her disabled had better duck and cover.

I suppose what I really want is for people to acknowledge difference with respect and an approach of “okay, how can we all work together” instead of with discomfort or denial. When Nicola and I go somewhere, I want people to ease her passage and observe some standard courtesies (like making sure she has a chair). They don’t need to waste any time (theirs or mine) telling me what a fucking tragedy it is about the MS, or how brave we are, or how sad it makes them. I don’t care. Our bravery is our business, and there is nothing about our life that I would ever refer to as a tragedy, and it’s insulting to imply that I should. But… I also understand that people want to connect and want to express what are, in fact, their feelings. I just wish people could feel differently. I wish that people could understand that there are physical and emotional variations of humans, rather than the “ideal normal” standard to which most of us can’t really measure up anyway. Wouldn’t it be great to train everyone to cope with difference together, rather than having to give out awards for people who cope successfully with it alone?

The will to be

Greetings,

I’ve got to start with the cliche: I could not put down Solitaire. One of two books I’ve read in the last year that absolutely floored me, pushed me back in my chair and would not let me up until they were done (the other was Stay).

One of the things that intrigued me most about Solitaire was the VC sequence, the way Jackal was forced to confront every last face of herself in order to come away with any semblance of self. I am reminded of two experiences in my own life.

First is the idea of time compression. Quick story: two people, friends for a few months, both coming out of relationships that ended badly, go out to a movie. Just a friend thing, no romantic strings. It’s snowing when they go in and it’s still snowing when they come out, but they’re not worried, it’s the weekend. They head back to one of the apartments to kick back in front of the TV and, before you know it, a record snowfall has trapped them together in the apartment. Plenty of food, heat bill paid up, so no big deal, but over the course of a weekend together, the spark between them that might have taken months to kindle, or even smothered in the outside psychic wind, bursts into flame. Seven years later, it’s still burning, and they both credit the weekend trapped together, away from all other people and influences, with speeding up time and kickstarting the relationship. True story. Time compression is real and its effects are not illusory.

Second big thing is also true, but it didn’t happen directly to me so the details are a little murkier. I had a friend who, after nearly two decades of living behind unbearable illusions, cracked. Every last shell of illusion shattered and fell around her feet, and in order to survive at all, she holed up in a room in her brother’s house and didn’t come out for three or four months. She wasn’t alone — her new lover was with her, and maybe it would have been better for her if she had been alone; but when she emerged from behind the wall months later, she referred to the time away as “the Trance.” She described it vividly in terms of losing hold of all reality, a true mental breakdown, during which she was forced to face up to and come to terms with every last scrap of psychological mold growing behind her tiles. During the Trance, she went through every possible emotional state, from the highest euphoria to the lowest depression. When she emerged, she was as if newborn for a while, before old habits and the world at large began to reassert their places in her life. We all became very close immediately after the Trance — she leaned on us and we let her. But now, we’ve been unceremoniously dumped, haven’t seen or spoken to her in near a year. Maybe we reminded her of things she did not want to face. I believe that she faced the crocodile during the Trance; maybe it got her, but it certainly haunts her.

I was going to ask at this point where the VC sequence came from, what or who in your life may have inspired the book, but perhaps that is too prying a question to be bandied about over a cyber-brew. So I’ll just leave it at that. Thanks for the pint, and the ear.

Later,

AD

These are fascinating stories, and I appreciate hearing them. People astonish me. So brave and stubborn and fragile.

Some reviews characterize Solitaire as a “coming of age” novel. If that’s true, then it seems to me that Jackal grows up not when she survives VC, but when she learns to integrate those hard-won gains into life in the real world with some measure of grace. I believe in the power and the fierce beauty of self-awareness: I also know from my own experience that these recognitions and reconciliations of self don’t always hold up in the implacable everyday world. Then I have the choice to abandon those lessons, or to try to learn them again. Knowing myself isn’t enough; the real test is whether I have the will to then be myself. That’s really what Solitaire ended up being about.

I think we all either face our crocodiles or spend a lifetime avoiding the confrontation. I’ve danced a time or two, although in ways much less dramatic than either Jackal or your friend. I am lucky to have had some amazing role models, including a close family member who broke apart and then psychologically reconstructed herself and got on with her life in an act of courage and will that has persisted for more than thirty years so far. That’s her victory. I love and admire her more than I can say.

I also used in the VC section my own experience of living alone for an extended period of time; and by alone I mean not simply one person in an apartment, but to a great extent one person in a life. I had family and friends, but I constructed a daily life that kept them farther out on the periphery than is generally accepted in our society. This culture promotes individualism at the same time it denigrates aloneness, which is a hell of a mixed message, but I tried to find the balance. Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn’t. Sometimes I was brilliantly happy and other times horribly sad. That’s how it goes. A dozen times a day I ran into someone’s assumption that because I was alone, I must be fundamentally miserable. I thought that was silly. There is a kind of joy that can only be felt in the spaces that are empty of other people, the same way that there are particular fears that gain most power in the absence of other people or perspectives. It’s all just life, you know? It’s good to have the skills for both solitude and connection. When Jackal yearns to be able to move back and forth between VC-Ko and the real world, well, I understand that. And I wanted to explore it. That’s really where the VC section comes from.

On a tangential note, I’m having a conversation with a friend via email about the movie The Razor’s Edge (based on the Somerset Maugham book for those who may have read it). The main character (Bill Murray in a fine dramatic performance) spends most of the movie coming to an awareness of himself and the world, trying to find a system of belief that is meaningful to him. Towards the end, he realizes that he’s been expecting to be rewarded for living a good life, but that there is no reward beyond the life that’s been lived. The corollary to this that my friend expressed (I’m paraphrasing now) is that self-awareness doesn’t necessarily make you a better person. It just makes you a more self-aware person. I think it’s what we choose to do with that awareness that marks us, and shapes our lives.

The time compression story is about you and your person, yes? Good on you both. I’m glad the universe opened a door for you, but you still had to walk through it. I think love almost always begins with an act of bravery. Let’s drink to courage and hope.

Access and connection

…soft twist annnnnnnnd, SIGH. Cleopatras out for the pouring. Oh, how a virtual Cristal toast is delicious! “Ooh lala lalalalalala”. (note for the connoisseurs: I know those are not the best glasses. I just liked the sound of it.)

My last question –” I’m not sure if you got it because my computer did something funky –” was about Children of a Lesser God and aftershock as seizures. (Kelley’s note: Yep, here it is, sorry for the delay.) Well, if you got it, then what I’m about to say will make sense. And if you didn’t, then I’ll ask all over again later.

My comment is about that access you were talking about earlier. I didn’t give it much thought until I asked my seizure question. Outside of this pub, I would never ask you a question about seizures. Like, at a reading/signing thing… there’s no way I would raise my hand and say, Well, I have juvenile myoclonic epilepsy (JME) and I was just wondering about Scully’s aftershock episode…. etc., etc. I mean, even in the pub, it took me 4 or 5 questions to get to it. My last question was really my first. It’s just a thing I don’t talk about unless I have to (teachers, employers, new friends). Outside the pub, I probably wouldn’t ask any questions at all. I’d wait for someone else to ask the same question in my head. Lame, I know. So, for me, this kind of access is cool because I can ask what I really want to ask. I think a lot of people are afraid of asking “stupid questions.” But then you get to a point where you just say, “Fuck it, I want to know this”. Anyone else here a “But why?/Yeah, but what if?” kid in school? I had no problem asking all kinds of questions when I was younger. Pissed most of my teachers off. I feel a huge ramble session coming on, so I’m going to stop right here.

Congratulations!!!

Lindsey

p.s. In my need-to-know more kick, I discovered that there is cow blood in chewing gum. Fascinating.

Serious ick. Cow blood belongs in steak, not in Wrigley’s.

Virtual Pint is definitely a lower-risk experience than raising one’s hand at a public event. That’s part of the point. People are vulnerable even in the dream pub, but maybe not as much. And it’s a way for people to “see” me who may never come to a reading or signing. Here, just as at a public event, people can reach out to me if they choose, or get a sense of me without having to reveal themselves. But if no one raises their hand (in either scenario), then the conversation runs out of steam pretty quickly. No fun there.

One of the big perks of my aging process turns out to be a diminished fear of personal lameness. I am relieved. I was one of those kids who wouldn’t raise my hand unless I knew the answer, and was mortally afraid of having people think I was stupid. This same fear as an adult has sometimes kept me from taking a risk with someone I admire. Oh, they’ll think I’m dumb. I’ll look like an asshole. I want them to see me for the singular amazing person that I am, but to them I’ll just be another sappy fan.

And that’s quite possibly true. It’s a hard thing to know that some people have a bigger place in my emotional space than I have in theirs. And that I’ll never even have a chance to tell some of them how much impact their work has had on me, how much it means. How it has shaped some essential corner or curve of my self. The thing about touching more people is that there seems to be less and less actual contact. I go to U2 concerts because it’s amazing to share space with those four men, but does that mean I’m actually connecting with them? Only in the way that I am an atom of audience, a part of the larger whole that is really all they see. And yet that’s better (for me, for them) than watching it on TV.

What does it mean? I’m not sure, but it has something to do with connection and access and with my increased willingness to let go of what I think the experience should be, and just give it up to whatever the experience is. And take the risk: say the thing that is true for me, and if I look or feel like an asshole, well, it certainly won’t be the first time.

Access is an interesting and slippery notion. Nicola and I talk about it sometimes over beer. (They sure do drink a lot! Kelley and Nicola wouldn’t have made it without beer, would they, Dad? No, they wouldn’t, and that’s a fact.1) What I yearn for is to be best friends with the people I admire. What I actually think is reasonable to hope for is an open door to say something and have it be heard. So that’s what I try to offer here.

How arrogant is it to create this space? It’s some arrogant, to be sure (as well as fun). And I hope I’m being clear: I don’t think I’m such a celebrity that people should be lining up with their questions. But I’m on record as saying that the point of my work is to explore and to connect, and I hope that here there is an open door to do both.

1 With apologies to JRR Tolkien.

Revenge and love in Solitaire

Hello, Just a note with bits and bites of my thoughts on your book.

Nicola might have passed on i posted on the AOL lesbian reading group bulletin board that i really liked Solitaire. Anyhow, in no particular order, here are some thoughts.

Hope you get the Nebula. And the Lammy.

Oops spoiler here i guess, the book didn’t really kick in for me until the elevator attack. I stopped reading at that point and had a deep breath. Then she gets the option of going into VC and when she says ‘I don’t think i can be alone for eight years’, wow, i stopped there again. That’s really where this book went BANG for me and then i was hooked lined and sinkered. The first part was mostly set up, but there were bits of Jackal and Snow that made me think they weren’t going to be cut off. At least it made me pull for the characters to come out ok.

I noted how the story doesn’t touch revenge or getting even. I didn’t find it necessary, just somewhat unusual.

Jackal doesn’t even get mad at her parents, at least not her father, nor Neill, nor KO and it’s so easy to hate some big corporation. But i guess the corporation in a way is home to her, it’s where she went while in VC.

I thought the line where Snow tells Neil that Jackal loves him just stuck out, didn’t go anywhere. He’s important but to use the word ‘love’ was a bit far. ‘Love’ is between Snow and Jackal. You had some lines there (i can’t recall them anymore) that really felt spot on for me. I know the book wasn’t intended to be romantic, but there was a bit of it the way i read it.

Boy, do they drink a lot. (g)

What about a sequel? More, more.

Thanks for writing a thought provoking, heart rending read.

Please leave off my email if you post this on the virtual pint. Nice name that.

Cheers, V.

I’m glad you liked it. Thanks for taking the time to share your response.

No Lammy for Solitaire. The nominations have been posted, and Solitaire is not among them (although Nicola’s novel Stay has been nominated, which is a Very Fine Thing). Thanks for your kind wishes about the Nebula. Win or no, it will be fun to turn up at the ceremony and spend time with people that we haven’t seen for a while. I very rarely really feel like part of the science fiction community, and it will be unusual and interesting to be right in the thick of it for a few days.

Revenge in books is mostly wish-fulfillment. That’s fine, but not what I wanted to do in Solitaire. I think we’d like to believe that we can get even when bad things happen to us, but usually it doesn’t work out that way. Just think about the language — we want to get “even” with the people who have hurt us. But that’s not possible. If someone damages me or the people I love, how can I make that even? How can there be a balance for that? At the end of it all, Jackal has to live with what’s happened, and so do we. I do think she’s mad at her parents, at Ko, sometimes at the whole damn world. But the book isn’t about someone being bitter. I said in the previous question that Jackal behaves the way I would like to, and that’s also true for what we’re talking about here — I hope that when my foundation drops out from under me in one of the several inevitable ways, I will find a way through it rather than being swallowed up. Sometimes the things I write about are a kind of rehearsal.

We can disagree about proper applications of the word “love.” It’s the word I meant to use, and I think Jackal does love Neill, although not the way she loves Snow, or her parents, or the Ko greenbelt, or the feeling of being a Hope, or any of the other degrees of attachment and vulnerability possible along this particular emotional spectrum. It’s a shame to make one poor little word do so much work, but there it is. Your mileage may vary.

They do drink a lot, don’t they? (grin). I wonder where they get that from.

Cheers.

ASL and JME

Just some ice water…had a bonfire in the snow last night…a break-up party for a friend… too much schnapps in the Swiss Miss.

I was wondering about a couple of things. In a previous question, you mentioned your interest in sign language. Did you start that program? Is it really good? And, have you ever seen the movie Children of a Lesser God? I loved that movie –” when she describes the sound of the ocean –” when she screamed, “Hear my voice,” I was bawling my eyes out. That movie made me want to learn sign language. And for a year I had a crush on Marlee Matlin (sp?)…I was thirteen. I never did get around to learning it though. I know the alphabet and I used to know how to count. But that’s all. If it had been there when I was in school, I probably would have taken it instead of french.

In Solitaire, Scully’s aftershock behind the bar made me think of seizures. I’ve never seen a real one. Have you? I have JME and have had plenty of seizures (haven’t had one in 9 yrs and no more zombie meds either)… Anyway, friends and classmates would tell me what I looked like when I was having one. When Scully looked like he was going to reach out, when he made the nasty strangled sound and his eyes rolled back… that whole scene (except that his body was relaxed during the aftershock), was scary for me to read because, in a weird way, it was as if I hit play on the VCR and there I was seizing in front of myself. What Jackal does for Scully, other people have done for me… move stuff out of the way etc., etc. So, have you seen a seizure? Have you ever had to move stuff out of the way for someone? Just curious.

Thanks for taking the time to answer yet another one of my questions,

Lindsey

I enjoy your questions, it’s nice to have an extended conversation.

I did start my class and I love it. Love love love. I study at ASLIS, the American Sign Language & Interpreting School of Seattle. It turns out that many students in my class moved to Seattle specifically to study at the school, and that kind of commitment makes for a pretty tight bonding experience. It’s a great place to be if one is serious about ASL. Classes are small (and will get smaller next year, since some people take class as a foreign language credit for the University of Washington, and won’t be staying for the full program). We get a lot of teacher attention (also known as nowhere to run, nowhere to hide…) There’s a big emphasis on community involvement and learning about Deaf culture. It’s focused and intense and treats us like grownups, all of which work well for me in a learning situation.

I have seen Children of a Lesser God 2 or 3 times and really admire Marlee Matlin’s work. I love the scene in which she dances, feeling the music. I recently saw a repeat of an episode of The Practice that she did in 2000, in which she played a woman on trial for killing the man who murdered her daughter. There was an amazing scene between Matlin and Camryn Manheim (side note, Camryn Manheim rocks) –” they have an argument in ASL and as it heats up, Manheim stops voicing, and there’s a good 60-90 seconds of (silent) ASL between two very pissed-off people. No subtitles for the ASL-impaired; either the viewer keeps up or she doesn’t. It was exciting to watch, and very powerful.

I don’t believe I’ve ever witnessed a seizure –” I’m guessing the images and notions I have mostly come from books and movies/TV. I’m glad you don’t have to make a daily choice between seizing and zombification –” that sounds pretty unhappy either way. This is the first time I’ve really thought about the fact that people who experience seizures might not know what one is like (what they look like, or how people react). I imagine it’s unsettling to know something about yourself only from others’ perceptions, especially if the people around you are afraid. I hope your friends and classmates were sensible, although so much of that depends on our particular socialization (“bodies are icky and illness is embarrassing and what if I do the wrong thing?” versus “bodies are part of the package, they get wacky or hurt sometimes, and we just have to do what we think is best to help”).

So few of us are trained how to approach new and urgent situations, and how to trust ourselves in action. Specialized knowledge is good, but damn, there’s no substitute for common sense and the willingness to take some responsibility. Jackal behaves the way I hope I would: and now that I’m thinking about this, I realize that my next book looks at this issue (how people behave in crisis) more intentionally. Hmm. I wonder how many little moments in Solitaire reflect themes or ideas that are important to me but still subterranean, that I will explore in future books, maybe forever.