Category: life

22

Nicola and I met at the Clarion Writers Workshop 22 years ago today.

Our friend Mark, also a Clarion ’88 alum, has posted some of his workshop memories along with photos — one that shows a workshop session in progress, with me waving my hands and looking serious and so young. Another photo shows all of us dressed like idiots for the traditional Locus photo. Nicola, however, manages to make idiotic look powerful and fascinating instead, so there you go. 22 years later, she still fascinates me and protects me and empowers me to be the best that I can. We love each other.

Thanks to Mark for the memories. And thanks to Nicola for the years, this life together that I love.

Write-a-thon running total: 1,850 words out of 12,000. Still swapping words, deleting as many as I write for a net gain that looks small but actually represents a process of seeing that is essential for me at this stage… It’s as if I am circling, circling, handling the story from every angle, trying to find the way in that will open it up most deeply. I’m now at the point of making notes within the text as openings appear: for example, what I thought was a throwaway line is actually an opportunity to introduce one of the important characters, and so it needs to be its own scene. Tomorrow.

Some of these openings won’t lead anywhere productive. And then it’s more sentences off to word heaven, or wherever they go when I delete them. That’s writing. More work, more work, but the lovely thing about being 22 years on from Clarion is that I know how to do it.

Kidnapped, kinda

So there’s a company in France offering a new kind of recreation adventure — for a fee, they will kidnap you. Now you too can experience the thrill of being taken off the street at some unexpected moment, thrown in a van or a car trunk, taken somewhere, tied up, terrorized just enough to get a taste of the “real thing,” and then turned loose after a preset number of hours. Or for a little more, you can even add in the entire ransom negotiation experience. Or customize your abduction (who knows, maybe you can be kidnapped by willing women in bikinis or men in tight pants, or something…)

Have you seen the movie The Game? I really enjoy that film, and I think it’s a cool movie idea. I find that I’m less sanguine about the reality. I’m fine with the general notion of folks paying for adventures in expensive role-playing games — what I don’t like is that a kind of violence that is visited on so many people in the world is now being turned into a Disney ride. Kidnapping is a brutal business with horrible consequences to victims and families. It’s not a game.

If I’m reading various blogs correctly, you can get one of these packages for about 1,000 GBP. Somewhere in the range of $1,500 – $2,000 USD, depending on the exchange rate. If that’s the case, then this moves from the realm of the uber-rich vacation into a realm that most people on an executive salary, for example, could easily afford. And it’s weird to me to think that this kind of “sport” might enter the mainstream/middle-class consciousness as an alternative to, I don’t know, going to the Grand Canyon or renting a beach cottage for a week, or all the other ways that people like to spend their leisure budget.

There are plenty of ways that people use their money that I find personally disturbing, and so I don’t spend my money that way. But when people do things I wouldn’t do, I mostly think Meh or Huh or even sometimes I wish I had the guts to do that too. But those are personal choices that affect only the people involved. This one seems… hmm, bigger than that. This seems like a choice about “visiting” other people’s pain. It feels like a bad idea on a social level.

I dunno. Am I just being a sensitive plant? Maybe it’s all just good fun and I should lighten up. Still, wouldn’t it be lovely if there was a company that could make a profit from taking people by force out of their office jobs and subjecting them to an entire afternoon of picnics and peace?

Eye to eye with germs

Okay, can I just say ewww?

I am not the Howard Hughes of my neighborhood: I shake hands and no one has to wear scrubs and latex to step through my door. But I am becoming less patient with other people’s ick. We were in a doctor’s waiting room the other day with a woman who proudly announced to the receptionist that she was pretty sure she had pneumonia (and she had the cough to back it up), but she had come anyway because it was so hard to get an appointment these days. Everyone else in the room spent the next 15 minutes trying to hold their breath. Why didn’t the receptionist send her home? I have no idea.

I am turning into a curmudgeon. I think things like Turn down your music! and Cover your mouth!, and I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before I have my very own You kids get off my lawn! Clint-Eastwood-movie-moment. Is it possible to be more generally accepting of the fact that we’re all human at the same time as being less tolerant of the particulars? Because that’s where I think I am…

New Bones

Something beautiful from poet Lucille Clifton, who died in February. There’s so much to say about it that I find I can’t say anything, except that I believe in sun, and honey time.
—-
New Bones
by Lucille Clifton

we will wear
new bones again.
we will leave
these rainy days.
break out through another mouth
into sun and honey time
worlds buzz over us like bees,
we be splendid in new bones.
other people think they know
how long life is
how strong life is.
we know.

Doomsplaining, bleh

Last night I had a Dark Night of the Soul about all the work I have to do: currently so much of it that I am not able to do things that are also work but do not make money quite so immediately, like, you know: writing; reading other people’s books (which is part of my job as well as my pleasure); reading other people’s screenplays (ditto); watching a DVD without also watching the clock. I ordered pizza last night because I couldn’t face cooking a whole meal; in fact, I entertained brief notions of dumping all our skillets into the ravine and forcing my sweetie to live on Thai takeout and baked potatoes and tuna sandwiches forever and ever and ever, or at least until our personal Fairy Godmother Chef comes along.

But all the skillets would be washed out to sea and… well, rust and leach heavy metals and poison the little baby fishes or something, so I guess that plan is out. I am not that self-absorbed quite yet, although one of the effects of fatigue is that I become more persuaded of my own Special Snowflakeness with every passing minute. Because of course no one else in the whole big world/long spread of human history has ever had too much to do before! No one’s evah been as tired as me! Me me me me me…

I am really boring. I think I will stop now and suck it up and do some work and bring some structure to my life that allows me to Get Things Done as opposed to Freak the Fuck Out and Lie Around All Night Feeling Special and Doomed.

For reasons I don’t quite understand, this post by Justine Larbalestier about mansplaining and whitesplaining really cheered me up. It was actually reading this post that made me get over myself today. I have no idea why, but thanks, Justine. I think I will stop doomsplaining to myself and instead recall my extreme great good fortune in a) having work, b) being happy, c) being ALIVE.

And now I am going to go make another cup of tea and get on with it. I wish all you other busy, alive people a very good day. You are truly special, you know, in the non-Snowflake way, and I look forward to being back among you.

Fuddy duddy

After careful consideration and thoughtful analysis, I have scarifyingly concluded that I am becoming a fuddy duddy writer.

I am at home all the time. It’s where I work as well as live, but, ya know, I’m just always here. I dislike shoes a great deal and so, when at home, I wear socks and slippers. Like an Old Person. I wear my glasses on a string around my neck because I need them to see close but not far, so they go on and off, on and off, all day long.

I also wear a really old cardigan that I’ve had forever. It’s so old that it is worn through on one shoulder, and because I have no sewing skills whatsoever, I have repaired the hole with a safety pin. It’s a charming fashion statement, really hip. Also, the cardigan is currently missing a button that came off a couple of weeks ago when I was loading dishes into the dishwasher, and one of the buttons snagged on a cup hook and blammo, there you go, button overboard. The button currently lives on my monitor stand, where it regards me mournfully, as if to say When will I be loved? When will I reunite with my button brothers and sisters? Given my sewing skills, the answer is Long time, button dude.

I wear this cardigan every single day that I am working, because I like to be warm. Except sometimes I have to put it in the laundry, like a kid with her blankie, and then I am twitchy until it is dry and I can wear it again.

Fom my father I seem to have inherited the Get Up Early gene, and I am currently working hard on this and that, so these days I fade early and well, just want to go to bed. Like a fuddy duddy old person. I talk back to the television. I drink endless cups of tea while I write. I like my space tidy and my bed made. I eat oatmeal. My god, I just willingly watched educational TV with my sweetie last night. Where is the young person who stayed up until three a.m. reading and then went, owl-eyed but reasonably coherent, to classes the next day? Where is the woman who could drink six rum-and-tonics or two bottles of cheap wine in a night and live to tell the tale? Where is the bundle of energy who drove eight hundred miles in a day by herself, singing to U2 and smoking Parliament cigarettes and eating Burger King all the way?

Ah, well, I know where she is. She’s in the same place as the young person who was so often anxious on a daily basis because every situation was new. She’s with the woman who wouldn’t speak her mind because someone might not like it. She doesn’t drive a car across country anymore: instead she drives her mind into territory a lot farther than any odometer can measure. She tugs her cardigan into place, and then she plugs into her Radio Paradise or her Citysounds web radio or just cranks up Crystal Method on iTunes, and lives the life she has made for herself. In her slippers. With better wine and fine company and an inner life that never stops, not even in her sleep.

Time trip

My first real job was working for my parents in the New Orleans Shrimp House, the restaurant they created and ran in Tampa in the early 70’s. We converted an old house a couple blocks away from Tampa Bay into a little jewel of a place: white paint everywhere with black trim, three small and intimate dining rooms with wrought-iron chairs that my mom upholstered in burgundy or moss-green, mismatched fine china and silver that we found a flea markets. It was one of the very few places east of New Orleans you could get genuine Creole cuisine.

After my folks got out of the restaurant business, the property was taken over by Kojak’s House of Ribs, which is still there after all these years.
 


 

It doesn’t really look the same anymore, but you can at least get a notion of the setting, and imagine nearly 40 years ago. There was mostly grass and trees on either side of our narrow lot, and it was fenced all the way along. Patrons parked behind the building and then walked slowly in the heat up to the front veranda with the little wine bar at the end, where they could enjoy a champagne cocktail or a cassis cocktail or a glass of crisp chablis. Inside were tables for two by the fireplace in the Parlor, where Richard and John provided impeccable service and made everyone feel like they were the only people in the room; or tables for four in the Gallery, filled with vibrant local artwork and served by Danny who I’m sure was a street clown or a rock star in another life, and charmed everyone; or larger tables with benches in the Garden Room, which had two walls of windows that looked out into the back of the property at the old sleepy trees dripping in Spanish moss, and inside held a terrarium on every table and a plant in every corner, where Gary kept everyone laughing so hard they sometimes snorted cayenne pepper through their nose. That just seemed to make them laugh harder.

The restaurant was very hard on my folks. They both had full-time jobs and a child, and this was something they did — with their own hands and very little money — on top of it all. It was demanding and brutal sometimes. And it was also a beautiful thing. People came from all over the South to eat there, and even from New York City (which made us blink, you can bet). They spent their money on shrimp and champagne, they laughed under the dark blue Southern sky at midnight, and they felt special. Our restaurant made a lot of people feel like the world was a good place while they were there.

My parents and those I worked with know that I’m romanticizing, of course. But we’re all a long way from the hard reality of the place, and the enormous strain it put on all of us, and I hope no one minds that I remember it today from my child’s perspective as a kind of magic: my parents took an empty house and made it into something no one else had ever imagined. I had no idea people could… just do that. It was a great lesson for me that people make things happen. Money helps, but money doesn’t make magic. We do that.

My dad sent me this photo from early 1973. I’m filling bowls with spiced fruit, our standard appetizer. I’m wearing my “go out later and fill everyone’s water glass” dress. I am 12 years old. I am helping my parents run our restaurant, and I am happy.
 

Kelley 1973 crop
 

And here’s the full image. Please note the small kitchen in which our small incomparable crew laughed, fought, sang, cursed, and cooked 150 multi-course meals a night. Notice our state-of-the-art order management system (clothespins on a wire over the stove); our extensive wet-cooking area (the standard double-sink where I cleaned 50 pounds of shrimp a night); and of course the newest model dishwasher (that would be me).
 


photo by Larry Eskridge

Enjoy your day.

In league with the freeway

For many years I lived a life of which long-distance driving was an essential component. I drove my little red 5-speed Toyota between Chicago, Florida, Atlanta, North Carolina, Michigan. Many solitary miles of road and music and cigarettes and highway food eaten from my lap. The varied environmental hygiene and interesting graffiti of interstate rest stops. Soldiering in second gear up the mountain and riding the brakes all the way down on the hairpin curves.

On the road, life is externally simple and internally limitless. There is nothing to do but drive, and as long as one is driving well, there is plenty of headspace to think, to feel, to dream and plan and wonder. I would dream of a big life with big love and big choices and spaces always opening up within me. I would dream of a life stuffed to the brim and beyond with everyday joys. I would relish the long hours of never slowing down that were my only chance to stop rushing through my days.

I have little desire to actually go back out on the road that way now; it’s a different world out there, I think. And I have so many of the things that I dreamed of during all those miles. But sometimes when I’m very busy and the days vanish into weeks, I miss that feeling of the long journey with the certain destination where all I have to do is drive, and the days become time out of time.

Big Log
by Robert Plant, Jezz Woodroffe and Robbie Blunt

My love is in league with the freeway
Its passion will ride as the cities fly by
And the taillights dissolve in the coming of night
And the questions in thousands take flight
My love is the miles and the waiting
The eyes that just stare, and the glance at the clock
And the secret that burns, and the pain that won’t stop
And its fuel is the years
Leading me on
Leading me down the road
Driving me on, driving me down the road
My love is exceeding the limit
Red-eyed and fevered with the hum of the miles
Distance and longing, my thoughts do collide
Should I rest for a while at the side?
Your love is cradled in knowing
Eyes in the mirror still expecting they’ll come
Sensing too well when the journey is done
There is no turning back, no.
There is no turning back on the run.
My love is in league with the freeway
Oh, the freeway, and the coming of nighttime
My love, my love is in league with the freeway.

November: stop the madness

     — Oh my goodness, Martha, look! That Kelley Eskridge is back!
     — Why so she is, George! She looks a little worn around the edges.
     — She looks like she’s been rode hard and put away wet, is how she looks.
     — Now George, be nice.

Oh gosh, George, don’t bother, I know how I look. Fucking tired, is how I look.

Here are some stories of my November.

Our car has been leaking oil for a little while. Gosh, I thought, I’ll be responsible about this. Our car is a brilliant little 1992 Toyota which has always taken good care of us, you know? So I took it into the shop. Several hours and a truly vomit-inducing amount of money later, we had a new valve cover gasket, new distributor cap and wires, new rotor, new spark plugs, new front brakes, and a Stern Lecture from the mechanic about the state of the rear brakes and the tires.

I spent the time in the car shop lobby editing client manuscripts and listening to the radio. It was an alt-country station and the song I remember best had the chorus god is great, beer is good, and people are crazy. I heard it at least twice. I was there for a while.

A couple days later, we lost a hubcap. That’s okay, we have a whole set of KMart plastic-but-looks-like-chrome-if-the-car-is-going-fast-enough hubcaps in the attic. One morning I climbed up there, got a hubcap and a retainer ring out of the box, carefully and in an organized fashion put the box away (can you spot my first mistake?), climbed down, went out to the car and commenced to hubcaperate.

The plastic-not-chrome hubcap, being not exactly flexible, cracked.

Back to the attic. Time passes. Cut to: Kelley with new hubcap, hunkered down in the driveway pounding that sucker with a rubber mallet trying to get it to stay on — and the skies opened up. In 10 seconds we went from zero to pounding rain with just enough hail to make it more interesting. I was so wet that I thought, oh well, and just stayed out there until I got the damned thing on.

Two days later I pulled out of our driveway before 7 AM and headed for the gym, thinking What’s that funny noise?

Flat tire.

The one with the new hubcap.

At least it wasn’t raining. Yet. But it looked rainlike, and I’d just learned that particular lesson. So I went home and changed the tire ASAP. Nicola was still sleeping. I changed it very quietly, regarding the donut spare tire with deep suspicion because I always forget how little they are.

I went back to the car shop. Hey, you were just here! they said, and gave me a Stern Lecture about new tires. But they graciously repaired the flat and put it back on. I think they saw the white rings around my eyes at the idea of spending more money.

Two days ago… we lost another hubcap. Now seriously, isn’t this starting to sound like one of those movies where you want to yell at the characters not to do something stupid? Don’t answer the phone! Don’t go into the basement! DON’T TOUCH THAT TIRE!!!

This month, I have also spent at least 24 hours that I can never get back trying to undo the damage caused by Comcast Cable’s “customer service upgrade” to all-digital channels. I have been online with TiVo and on the phone with Comcast (and I know some of you out there share my pain right now). I have installed a digital adapter and re-wired the entire system and hacked TiVo. The net result of all this is that now our TiVo doesn’t work as well (because Comcast isn’t heavily invested in being TiVo-friendly) but at least we can get the fucking SciFi channel again to watch Stargate Universe. I love Robert Carlyle’s work, so right now it’s still marginally a win, but let me just take a moment to give an existential howl: Why does this shit have to change all the time?

This month, someone stole our mail at least once. Although we are in the city, our mailbox is practically in a different zip code (okay, it’s a block and a half away) because there are no sidewalks in our neighborhood and so all the mailboxes in the area huddle together in little clumps here and there, seemingly at random. But since it seems that there is Crime going on in the ‘hood (a number of burglaries recently as well — these things go in spates, and we’re in one right now), all of us in our little mailbox group got together and bought locking mailboxes, and our fabulous neighbors Ron and Kandi installed them for everyone. There was very little hassle for me, thanks to their hard work, but yeesh, what kind of asshole steals the mail?

November is the month when I go to the pharmacy and the prescriptions aren’t ready; when I forget one thing on the grocery list and have to go back; when Nicola’s monitor explodes or one of my programs crashes. When I have to take the screens off the windows and the sun umbrella off the deck, and admit that it’s winter. Bleh. It’s 4:15 and practically dark out, and I will be Very Glad Indeed in four weeks when at least I can tell myself that the days are getting longer again. I pulled a muscle working out and now I can’t go to the gym for a while, and I’m at a delicate black-box stage in my current screenplay story-development, and I am restless.

The interesting thing is that I’ve been oddly cheerful (or at least non-axe-wielding) about most of this. Lots of nice evenings with my sweetie and family and friends. I read the new Stephen King book! (Huge treat for me.) And I’ve been editing my socks off for Sterling Editing. Really enjoying it and, I believe, doing some good. I’m delighted with the response and the work that’s coming in. But you know, it’s a new job and a new business. So right now I’m pretty tired.

Anyway, that’s my month. I was There, but I’m Here now. December is nigh. How are you?