Category: life

Thanks every day

We were talking last night over a celebratory bottle of Spanish wine about our urge to live more of a city life, to have more urban energy around us. As we drove to the restaurant last night, the city spread out in the night all lit up for the holidays, full of people, and we thought how lovely it would be to have known places nearby once again, the way we used to when our favorite restaurant was just down the street, when the dry cleaner and the wine shop and the market and the bakery and the pub were all right there, full of familiar strangers. It can be very good to belong in a place like that.

And it’s also good to belong where we do, and to be who we are right now. Last night we celebrated 22 years of living together. The nice people at the restaurant gave us a dessert (gooey chocolate cake, espresso flan, profiterole!). We talked about small moments and big ideas. We remembered, and we looked ahead… It was a lovely evening. And it reminded me that I am both a creature of yearning and big dreams, and one who prizes the beauty and joy of the small daily moments. I’m grateful for those things, and although there is much about me I would change, I am grateful to be what I am.

And since I am currently in a mood to eschew the authority of the calendar (Hah! to your structure I say, hah!), today is my thanksgiving day; and because I am so goddamn busy, I’ll let other people talk about the yearning and the big dreams and the everyday beauty and joy. They say it so well.

Here’s John Scalzi talking about right here, right now.

And here are many of your sister and brother humans talking about their lives at The Rumpus.

Whoever we are, whatever may have come to us in life, we have this day. I’m thankful to spend part of mine with you. I hope you enjoy yours.

To all the invincible women

Last week, my mother’s sister Gaylia and her husband Al came to Seattle for a visit. It’s been a while since we all saw each other. The wine and conversation flowed. And my Aunt Gay brought me an unexpected present that surprised me so much, and touched me so deeply, that I began to cry at the restaurant table. Drip drip drip into my salmon…

Gaylia brought me a locket that belonged to my great-grandmother Margie, our Nana.

Nana was an amazing woman. Amazing. A little woman with small bones and a high, light voice like a bird. A fierce and questing soul. Guts by the barrelful. When Nana was 15, she walked from her home in the Midwest (Oklahoma?) all the way to New Orleans to avoid an arranged marriage to a much older man. When she was forced to marry him anyway, she made the best life for him and his kids that she could, and she held him in her arms when he died. And then she lived alone for the rest of her life. She painted small oil and watercolor pictures on scraps of paper and the backs of greeting cards, and gave them away. She loved cats, and her garden, and her independence, and she loved my mother and Gaylia and me. She knew a lot about pain and a lot about joy. I hope there’s a lot of her in me.

So this was Nana’s locket. I would treasure it for that alone, but then Gaylia opened it and showed me what was inside.
 

On the bottom (left, below) is my mother Sharon at about 17-18. On the top (right, below) is Gaylia, about 13-14. These were taken at the beach somewhere in Southern California.


 
Aren’t they beautiful?

Here’s the thing: I know they were both having hard lives at that point, for a variety of reasons. But here they are, on a summer’s day, together, smiling… well, I admire them both extremely, and I am struck again (and again, and again!) by the power of the human spirit to find joy wherever it can, no matter what.

Albert Camus said, In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me lay an invincible summer. My Nana was invincible. Sharon and Gaylia are too. And me, well, I’m trying.

Enjoy your day. Go invince.

Here’s to standing up

A while back, I posted a video of the ABC special show What Would You Do? staging a scene of discrimination against a Muslim woman to see how people would react. It made me cry and I wanted to share it, and it made me hope aloud (in internet terms, and over beer with Nicola) that I would do the right thing and stand up for others.

The same show went to Texas to see whether folks there would react to a gay family experiencing discrimination in a restaurant. This one made me cry too, and it gives me hope that if I need it, other people might stand up for me. Especially, it turns out, people in Texas. Texas may be one of 26 states where LGBT people can be refused service (which I did not know and makes me want to shriek!), but the people in this restaurant are not some faceless homophobic state statute, and I hereby apologize for every offhand dismissive generalization I have made about their state. I should know better, honestly, and it is just too fucking easy to paint in broad strokes. When I see things like this video, I remember to get out my finer brushes.
 

 
Enjoy your day.

Playtime

Nicola earned sweetie points over the holidays by watching two Johnny Depp movies in a row (I know!), and I earned sweetie points by watching 17,000 hours of Antiques Roadshow and then, Thursday night, Toy Story 3. Those Pixar folks sure do know how to reduce a person to jelly tell a story.

Massive spoiler alert. MASSIVE. If you have not seen the film, please please please do yourself a favor and just don’t read this part, okay? Assert some adult discipline and go on to the next section. Go on…..

——–

Okay. So, I thought the storytelling was just brilliant. I was terrified by the Junkyard Spiral of Fiery Doom; I honestly thought for about five seconds that they were really going to kill them all, even Slinky Dog and Bullseye the horse! I couldn’t see how they would be saved… then the perfection (!) of the three little green guys and the Giant Claw. Perfect setup, perfect payoff.

And then the last three minutes…. oh, I wept. Don’t you remember the times you left part of your childhood behind? It’s a thing we do in small ways without realizing, of course: ask any parent watching a child grow about all the childish things a small person can simply seem to forget in the whirlwind rush to the next grade, the next inch of height, the expanding world. But then there are the ritual moments of leaving, of putting away, of letting go, that we cannot help but realize are final. Watching Andy play with his toys one final afternoon before driving away to college, watching him abandon himself to an old joy one more time, just gutted me. To know that we are doing something for the last time is… jesus, someone pass me the kleenex. The fucking movie made me want to go up to our attic and find my teddy bear and my stuffed bunny and my beanbag frog and just hold onto them, just love them.

And then what? Put them away again? Give them to a stranger child who might beat the stuffing out of them and send them off to their own Junkyard Spiral of Fiery Doom? This is the power of story, my friends — to ask us questions we can never answer right; to remind us of what we cannot bear to remember, to teach us what we cannot bear to know, and to make us fucking laugh right before we cry. To make us like it. To make us want to go back to the well of human stories and find another one and do it all again.

——–

/spoilers off/

I took yesterday off of editing and read Stephen King’s latest collection Full Dark, No Stars. I bought the book with an Amazon.com birthday gift card from an anonymous reader, so thank you once again, Anon.

King is the living writer whom I most love. I really mean it that way: I do not love everything he has written equally, and a small bit of it I do not love at all, but I love this man as a writer. I love his clarity, his rock-and-roll vibe, his forays into gleeful grue. He has so much fun! And for my money, he’s the best writer of American character on the planet. He is, as I hope I am, a writer who goes down deep into the well and brings back what he finds of being human. I love him for his honesty and his brutal compassion and his joy.

And I love him for the Afterword to this book. At one point, King quotes writer Frank Norris: “I never truckled; I never took off my hat to Fashion and held it out for pennies. By God, I told them the truth.” And then King goes on to say:

But when it comes to fiction, the writer’s only responsibility is to look for the truth inside his own heart. It won’t always be the reader’s truth, or the critic’s truth, but as long as it’s the writer’s truth — as long as he or she doesn’t truckle, or hold his or her hat to Fashion — all is well. For writers who knowingly lie, for those who substitute unbelievable human behavior for the way people really act, I have nothing but contempt. Bad writing is more than a matter of shit syntax and faulty observation; bad writing usually arises from a stubborn refusal to tell stories about what people actually do….
— from the Afterword of Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King

Amen.

On New Year’s Eve, Nicola and I did what we always do: we drank champagne and ate tasty food, and talked about the year that was and the one that will be. We try in these conversations to tell the truth about our experience and our disappointments and our “must do betters” and the things that were fantastic. We try to tell what we actually did. It’s an interesting conversation to have year after year, because part of the truth of a long-term marriage is that people don’t always have the same year. We travel together and we always will, but we are not always on the same journey. This does not bother me or even frighten me anymore, although it can be pretty fucking inconvenient sometimes. But it’s important to tell each other the stories of where we have been and where we think we might go next, so that we don’t lose each other on the way.

Nicola has distilled her year with her usual brilliance and brio. Me, well, here is some of my 2010:

    The Yay

  • I became the board chair of the Clarion West Writers Workshop. I love CW and the people in it — staff, board, volunteers, donors, students, the incredible community here in Seattle and around the world. I know the workshop does good for students and for the world of speculative fiction, and I think I’m doing some good for the workshop. It pleases me deeply to pay forward in this way.
  • We’ve had great response to Sterling Editing, and a wonderful batch of clients. As a result, I have clarified the particular skills and perspective that I can bring to another writer’s work. I’ve always been a very good editor; I am now well down the road to becoming a great one, and that’s not a thing I say casually or take lightly. I will take your book apart if I must, but I will never hand it back to you in a bucket of broken pieces.
  • I got the chance to see Nicola being brilliant in lots of ways this year. I love that. It makes her happy, and that makes me happy too even when my own road isn’t so shiny. She did an amazing job at the LLF Emerging Voice Writers Retreat, and I thoroughly enjoyed being a Guest Lecturer, and having meals and beer with the wonderful, talented students. They enriched a week of my life.
  • Nicola was also brilliant this year by leading the charge to build the LLF website, and writing a novel that is going to be scarifyingly good. She can tell you all about it. Even more than those wonderful things, she was brilliant about life stuff, about herself and me, in ways that mattered a lot to me personally. I love you, honey. Thanks.
  • We have the good fortune of new friends, people who love their lives as much as we love ours, who are exuberant and smart and talented and funny and kind and unafraid to be themselves. We have the good fortune of old friends who have taught me over and over this year the value of love and perseverance and who can make me laugh no matter what. And for probably the first time in my life, I actually believe that people will help me if I need it. We don’t need to get all jiggy with the psychology of Me, but let’s just say that this is a pretty big deal for me.
  • We are 50! And since we shamelessly strong-armed our friends into a series of celebratory events (dinners! wine! parties! And best, the wonderful conversations), we got to string it out and out and out (we still have one gift certificate to use, and thank you Ronnie and Dan — it’s going to be special and amazing). I like celebrating. I am grateful that so many people cared enough to want to help me make this one special.
  • I have stepped up my writing game, my friends. You can’t see it because it’s all in process, but I will say that I got a lot of joy this year out of feeling the gears tighten a notch in both fiction and screenplay. One of my great successes of the year is that I am more conscious of my craft than ever before.
  • And although you can’t see new work right now, you’ll soon be able to see the old again. Small Beer Press will reissue Solitaire any second now, and I’m delighted to have the book back in print and in the hands of such a fine publisher, and honored by the care they’ve taken with it. Beautiful cover, beautiful internal design, and a chance for Jackal’s story to find new friends. Available in print and DRM-free from Small Beer Press, in print and on Kindle from Amazon.com.
    The Meh

  • I taught a six-week writing class at Hugo House, the Northwest’s premiere literary writing center. Great students, including one person who I am delighted is becoming a friend. But I won’t do it again. I am not persuaded of the value of a classroom experience. Workshops, yes — absolutely. Lectures and reading and exercises — meh. And I am certainly not persuaded of my own value as a teacher in this context. There are better ways for me to share what I know.
  • Some people bailed on me this year in ways that made my life harder. It happens, and it wasn’t a tragedy, but it certainly wasn’t any fun. I understand that we can’t all cope all the time, but I am getting a little tired of people assuming that I will take care of things just because I am good at it. Look for more Sorry, not my responsibility, good luck with that from me this year.
    The Really Would Rather Not Have

  • Our neighbors cut down the beautiful tall thick laurels that gave us total privacy. We now have total nonprivacy, and the guy who lives behind us seems to believe the backyard is where a person is supposed to keep all their ugly shit so it can get rained on and rusty. We are taking steps and it’ll be okay, but the loss of privacy from someone I actively don’t like is the sort of thing that can make me crazy. In one of her moments of brilliance, Nicola said, Well, we’ve been relying on other people for our privacy. Now we’ll be taking charge of it ourselves. And suddenly I didn’t feel so helpless anymore. Isn’t she great?
  • Nicola has MS. There is nothing good about MS. MS keeps her from doing things, and it is worse for her than me; but it keeps me from doing things too, sometimes things I really care about. Many of the Gosh, can I send this back and order something different? moments this year have been off this menu.
  • I wish the economy weren’t so bad. I wish people I love wouldn’t keep having to dust themselves off and cope with one more hard thing. I wish so many people I care about weren’t struggling and scared. I wish I hadn’t felt at times this year like I was struggling and scared about money or career or Nicola’s health or the losses that we experienced, or at least had to face as possible, someday.

Ah, and here we are back to the joys and the losses. Here we come full circle to Toy Story 3. And you thought I had lost the plot of this post (grin). I have not. I know now more than ever that the plot always takes us back to the joys and the losses, but never in a straight line. And so although I usually have goals for the year and yes, goals are good, yay goals, this year…. well, this year I think I am going to live my life with less concern about the straight-line-ness of it all. Love and life and hard work and those trips to the writing well inside me, those are my toys. I am going to play with my beloved toys as long and joyfully as I can.

Thank you for being part of my new year. Enjoy your 2011.

Happy New Year

I hope tomorrow to have a post about the year, because it’s been a while since I’ve found time to share more than a moment here, and it would be nice to chat.

In the meantime, here is sunrise in Seattle on the last day of the decade, taken (prosaically enough) from the parking lot of the grocery store. Yes, I was there early: I have learned that all the bread is fresh and there is never a long checkout line. The meat and fish guys are cheerfully sharpening their knives, the vegetable guys are putting brightly-colored produce into the bins, the deli people are laughing and making sandwiches for the lunch rush. There are birds who live in the rafters; they fluff and flutter, and you can only hear their little voices when there aren’t so many people. A market in the first hour is a place of becoming; everything feels wide open and full of possibility.

And so too does the sky. And so too does the year, the decade, the life.

Enjoy your day, and Happy New Year to us all.
 

 

Thankful for…

…so much that it is hard to find the perfect words and the graceful phrases.

I am blessed to have so much love in my life.

Between writing prose and essays and screenplays, and editing, and reading, and music and movies and television, and all the conversations with Nicola, I live my life immersed in story. I love that so much.

I love my family and friends. You all make me feel that the world is a bigger and better place because you are in it.

I am grateful for every single laugh, smile, kiss, hug, moment of excitement, beautiful view, birdsong, meal, hard workout at the gym and hot shower afterward. All the conversations, the beer and wine and tea and coffee. The small special moments that wouldn’t matter to anyone but me, and the moments that I share with others.

I am grateful to every person who has ever read anything I have written.

I’m grateful to every client who has trusted me with their work, and allowed me the privilege of helping.

I am grateful for all the help I’ve received — with writing, with life. I’ve learned a lot, and am thankful for the teachers who were patient with me when I did not learn gracefully.

I am so thankful for writing that even thinking about how to say so makes me want to burst into tears. I am thankful to Nicola for saying it so well.

And more, and more, and more. And none of this really says what I am feeling, which is that I am so glad to be alive and to be myself, and becoming more myself all the time. So many people, friends and strangers, have a part in that. You’re reading this, so you do too. I’m grateful to you all. Thank you.

Enjoy your day.

Seattle snowbrain

It’s snowing here. Excuse me while I just go off into a corner of the internet and bang my head. (Ow! Ow ow ow! Okay, not really, since the internet is only hard in metaphorical, logistical, political, moral, ethical and communication ways, but doesn’t actually have any walls, except that’s a whole new set of metaphors so let’s not go there right now…)

Okay, sorry. This unfortunate incident has been brought to you by The Snowbrain Drivers of Seattle, who do not get that snow is, like, water, you know? It’s slippery! And when you smush it into the road with your hot tires and then the cold wind blows, it turns into ice! (Oh my god! You should totally have stayed awake in science class!) And guess what? If you put your car on a patch of that ice and push your gas pedal, your tires will go round and round and round and make a funny noise, and your car will go sideways!

I went to the gym early this morning, when everything was cold and still and asphalt- and tree-colored, as the world should be. When I came out of my workout, everything was cold and blowy and white. That is not how I like my immediate environment to be. If I wanted a winter wonderland, I would live in Saskatchewan (*bows in respect to all of you who are Not Like Me*). And almost immediately, many people on the road decided that the best thing to do when driving in snow is to try to outrun it. So they went faster. They tailgated. They ran the yellow lights on a left turn. And their tires made funny noises, and their cars went sideways.

I went straight from the gym to the grocery store to do all the Thanksgiving shopping. I think there were maybe ten customers there, and we all had that focused, determined look of people who know that the last loaf of bread will be gone baby gone four hours from now. Because there are going to be three inches of snow and we will all starve in our homes!

I swear, I am not making any of this up. (Edited to add: And now I have proof!)

The turkey is in the refrigerator. The car is in the driveway. I am going to have some more tea and contemplate the joy of not being on the road right now.

Enjoy your day.

Overheard at the gym

I have talked before about the world of women (not ladies!) at my gym. If you have opinions about the niceness and demureness of sedate-looking women of a certain age, well, keep your jury out on that until you spent some time working out with them. Because a 70-something woman told this joke today…

Three old ladies are sitting on a park bench. A flasher stops in front of them and pulls his raincoat wide. So Mabel has a stroke. Then Louella has a stroke. But Bessie was too old; she couldn’t reach that far.

Enjoy your day.