HER ANGER: A short true story

Peekaboo
Originally uploaded by macwagen.

Her anger was like 30 days of bad weather, no sun in sight. Harnessed, it would have sent any number of freight trains slashing through the night. But as it was, the only thing it drove was her. And occasionally those she supervised.

She was always the first to arrive at work. A "captain", she took her job as seriously as a wartime general. If we had to come in at five for an early breakfast, she was there by four, hunched down in the depressing employee area near the dumpster, sucking on a cigarette and a tall French vanilla from Dunkin Donuts.

"Better punch in," she'd say, consulting her watch. "We've got to get that coffee break out by six."

Hesitate for a minute, pause to check your hair as you slung your jacket on a hook, or wonder if anyone had made coffee, and you'd jumpstart her dormant anger.

"Listen, you've got a good job here. You make fucking good money. You might not care if our customers get their coffee on time, but I do."

There was no way to deal with anger like this, but to follow it from a safe distance. And hope it didn't singe you too much in the process.

Her skin was as white and thin as the tissuey paper they used in old typewriters; she was missing teeth, and her upper arms flapped when she walked--or rather charged. I can see her now, head down and pushed forward, entering the dining room like a battlefield. Her musket shot words, silencing every objection a co-worker might make. Kaboom. She must have been in her late fifties, but she could stack more dinners on a tray and carry them, work longer hours without rest than anyone I've ever known.

In many ways, I admired her. Even liked her. Though she bullied and nitpicked, she was the first to tell you to go home if you had a sick child. Go ahead--get the fuck out of here! she'd say with a wave of her flappy arm. Then off she'd charge, ready to take on your work and hers. No problem.

And when a stray cat birthed kittens outside the dumpster, she railed at us about taking one home. "They're ours. It's our responsibility," she said, illogically passionate. "We're a family here, or we're nothing."

"Maybe we should call the MSPCA," a co-worker suggested sheepishly, setting off our general.

She raged into the back room and came back with a crate, which she thumped on the floor. "If you people don't care then, I'll take them," she said. "All of them."

And she did.

Illogical passion seemed to keep her motor humming, along with the anger. She cared more about the hotel where we worked than the invisible corporation that owned it ever did. A tablecloth that was slightly askew, a glass insufficiently iced, or a table set in the improper sequence--bread plate first, set precisely between each chair--could bring on a violent upbraiding about what a good job we had, how much fucking money we made.

Rumor had it that she was excessively generous with the people in her life. She was frequently carless because one of her kids had borrowed hers. She'd lost the home she worked for and lived in a rented house, full of her adult kids and their friends. Though she hollered at us for the slightest infractions, she never said much to them when they kept her up all night with their parties. Even when she had to be at work by four a.m.

But a train run on rage and cigarettes can only go so far. First her knees went, then like several of my former heavy smoking co-workers, she developed lung disease. She left work one day, and never came back. We didn't hear from her either, despite her frequent assertions that we were a family. And the place where she had slaved and raged and bullied her co-workers toward some wacky vision of perfection, ran pretty much the same as it always had.

INTERPRETATIONS WANTED

Mondrian Attitude
Originally uploaded by Ezu.

In his obituary, Paul Avrich, who died this week in New York, is described as a "historian of anarchism."

Among his favorite anarchists were George Bernard Shaw, James Joyce and Eugene O'Neill. A book he hoped to write about O'Neill was never completed.

He left behind the 20,000 documents he collected on the subject of anarchism and later donated to the library of congress, several books, and this quote:

"Every good person deep down is an anarchist."

I've been mulling it over ever since I read it. (Being sick, lying on the couch all day is an otherwise dispiriting experience, but it does allow ample opportunity for mulling.) There's something about the simplicity of the quote that really strikes me--though I'm not quite sure I understand what he meant.

So what do you think? Agree? Disagree? Care to expound?

HOT POTATO

what's-in-my-bag504
Originally uploaded by ahford.

Did you ever play that game "hot potato" when you were small? Well, in the past week, my family has been in the throes of a similar sport--except this time the spud in question is a particularly nasty virus.

Yesterday, when I took my eye off the wandering spud for a minute, the thing landed in my lap. Plunk! I've been relegated to the couch ever since, alternately whining that it's absolutely freezing in here, and then fulminating because someone cranked the heat so high. Do these people have any idea how high our gas bill is?

It was you, Mom, my son happily reminds me. Oh yeah. So okay, I'm not the best patient.

In my normal life, I always think it would be fun to spend a day or two on the couch--catch up on my reading, maybe even take in a guiltless hour or two of TV. But I'm here to say, resting your bones amid a nest of blankets and pillows is highly overrated--especially when every bone is an aching one.

But what really amazes me about this experience is the thin and highly permeable wall that separates health and sickness. Yesterday morning, I was practicing Bodokon, running errands, making long lists of things to do, and then (as I do every day) accomplishing about half of them. I was in possession of the world and all its possibilities. By three in the afternoon, I was imprisoned in my body.

And so--as much as I'd like to be reading my favorite blogs, or responding to intriguing comments, finding the right niche in my house to work on my next novel, booking plane tickets to Prague or Portland, or lurching toward the adventures that take place mostly in my mind, I think I'm going to head back to the couch and see what's on TV.

Thanks for listening.

THE BEST PLACE TO WRITE

home-working hard
Originally uploaded by phitar.

Probably like many of you out there, I've been searching for it for years. The perfectly verdant landscape or unsullied ocean view that will make my heart swell with inspiration, the mythical country -- or maybe just a town or a mysteriously shadowed street that offers the perfect balance of quiet and stimulation. If I could only find the right place to set up my computer, or just pull out those ancient artifacts known as pen and paper, all the words that have accumulated inside me, all the visions, the emotion, the stinging insights, would come pouring forth almost effortlessly. At least, that's how the theory goes.

To that end, I once considered moving back to the mother country, where undoubtedly the writerly impulse slipped into my genes as stealthily as my melancholic temperament or my fondness for black beer. Yes, I could go back to Ireland, the country my malnourished ancestors fled, rent a little cottage in the countryside, drink Guiness and wait for the golden river of prose to start flowing.

Then there was what my husband refers to as my "Montana phase". After reading about a writer who claimed that there was something about the big sky that set his words free, I became a woman obsessed. Not only did I read my way through every Montana novel ever written, I collected an impressive collection of travel brochures as well. Eventually, however, my local travel agent realized she was dealing with a professional daydreamer, and stopped taking my calls.

And don't think the news that a new literary community, similar to the one that nurtured Hemingway and Fitzgerald, not to mention Henry Miller and Anais Nin, was forming in Prague a few years ago passed me by. I even checked some foreign language
tapes out of the library. By day, I listened to them in the background as I struggled to write in my clearly uninspiring environment; and over dinner, I tried out a few of the exotic words I'd absorbed by osmosis on my long suffering family. After three months of "study," all I had to show for it was a huge fine at the library, and the ability to say, "Sorry, I don't speak Czech" with a very impressive accent. The day the librarian informed me that I had to either pay my fine or be shut off from my book supply, was the day the Prague phase ended.

Of course, I'm more mature now.When it comes to getting words on paper, I know that the answer to my resistance lies within myself. From experience, I've learned that the best place to write, like the best place to fall in love, or to pray, or to make a friend, is right where you are. Right now.

3 RIVERS: some thoughts I've been thinking

Silence from the Past
Originally uploaded by HaMeD!caL.

Been away for the weekend visiting the in-laws. It's quiet there. Quiet house. Quiet streets. Quiet towns.

In this quiet, I found myself thinking a lot about aging, and courage and life. And this is what I thought:

There are three rivers that flow through us in the course of our existence bringing beauty and strength and vibrant life: the first is hormones, the second is breath and the third, love. When the first wanes, the second two must increase. When the second also diminishes, the third must be highly developed enough to prevail.

If there is a test we all must pass or fail, it is this. Only this.

SPEAK SOFTLY, LIVE BRIGHT YELLOW

The day I met Marilyn
Originally uploaded by malidinapoli.

I consider myself to be a very quiet person. Shy. Introverted. Typical writer type. That's why I was surprised when a co-worker once informed me that you could hear my voice all over the hotel where we worked. Not only was I always talking--I was loud.

Hmmm. That gave me pause, but not quite long enough to actually--err, shut-up.

I'd like to say that I talk loudly because I come from a large family, and I had to speak up in order to be heard. But as an only child, I don't think that one would work. Maybe it's the writer thing. I don't get out much, and when I do, I want to talk.

But mostly I think I speak at an inflated volume when I'm feeling vehemently about something. And it seems I'm in the vehement mood quite often.

I can't tell you how many people my father and I scared away when we debated politics. As the passion rose, so did our voices until we were both screaming and purple. But what the scattered victims of our discussions didn't understand was that the hollaring had nothing to do with anger. It was just emotion--and probably a little showmanship thrown in, too. (We're talking two Leos here, for those who subscribe to astrology.) When we'd exhausted ourselves, we'd return to Mom's pot roast like nothing had occurred.

But after XX years of speaking to be HEARD, I decided to change. And as is often the case with my resolutions, the inspiration was an obituary. Edna Lewis--cook, dress designer, writer, and worker for social justice was remembered in Tuesday's New York Times in an obit I had to clip for my collection.

I loved the story of how this young talented black woman was fired after three hours from the only job she could find when she first arrived in New York City. The job was ironing, and this was a woman clearly not born to iron.

I also loved the sound of her famous recipe for shrimp and grits.
"It's just butter and shirimp, but it requires great butter and great shrimp, and a puddle of that over stoned ground grits," said John T. Edge, the director of the something called The Southern Foodways Alliance. "This pays homage to the frugal south, but it's also worthy of damask cloth." Now that's eating--though with the price of butter and shrimp, I'm not sure how frugal it is.

But it wasn't the recipe for shrimp that changed my life. It was the description of Lewis's manner:

"She just had a very quiet way of speaking and it really engaged you," chef Alice Waters remembered. "Because she was so soft-spoken, you had to listen carefully. There was a kind of intimacy you immediately had."

Well, those words struck a couple of days ago, and I've been practicing my softer tone ever since. Not sure how long it will last because I make resolutions all the time, and usually nature and years of habit quashes them within a week. But I've already learned a few things just from my experiment:

1. You really don't have to shout to be heard. I think I was afraid that if I didn't speak UP, no one would pay attention to what I had to say. Not true! They seem to be listening even more closely.

2. Speaking softly is about much more than talking. It's about courtesy, because if you speak in a low voice, you can't barge into the middle of someone else's sentence. You've got to wait. Thus, in two days, I've found myself becoming a better listener.

3.It's really hard to be curt or blustering or abrasive when speaking quietly.

4. A simple thing like adopting a quiet tone of voice effects changes far beyond itself.
Since I've started, I've felt more composed, more moderate in all things--simply calmer.

I'm telling you: there are some amazing lives recorded on the obituary pages. Some amazing lessons.

LIFE TAKES A SNOW DAY

This morning woke to a predicted blizzard. All plans cancelled. A day deferred. So I put my hands behind my head and stayed in bed, thinking about all kinds of crazy things. Like the book tour I may or may not be going on next year. Traveling to 10 cities in 10 days or 14 cities in 14 days seemed about the remotest thing I could imagine as I lay in my bed, the snow whirling outside my window, turning the world where things like book tours happen into a white blur.

Instinctively, my eyes drifted to my closet. Now I don't know much about what people wear on book tours, but I can tell you one thing--it's nothing included in that closet: a lifetime supply of waitressing shirts, some pilly sweaters, and a few dresses which that have been taking up space for a decade or two, waiting for an event worthy of playing "dress-up". (Not many have come along.) Clearly, I need to go shopping. (And from my last post, you all know how skilled I am at that.)

Then more serious issues intruded. Nevermind what I'd wear: how I would ever get to the airport on time? I've never traveled alone, and the one time I took a trip with two of my kids, we had to run breathlessly for the plane. Then there was the issue of sleeping. How does a world class insomniac, who can get so overstimulated by a shot of brandy and a really good conversation that she doesn't sleep for two days, ever catch any Zs travelling from city to city in 14 days? I imagined how I would look by the time I reached the last city, sleepless, bleary eyed, and wearing the last of my frayed waitress shirts...

I wanted to get up at that point, since clearly nothing good was happening inside my head, but first I had to face the ultimate book tour bugaboo: what would I do if no one showed up at my readings--or if a lot of people showed up and I stepped up to speak, opened my mouth, and nothing came out but a frog-like croak. I could almost envision my slack jawed self, in her unfashionable clothes, and the hair that has never once in XX years known the meaning of a "good hair day".

At that point, I leaped out of bed, eager to shovel snow or build giant snowmen with carrot noses or tunnels to China--anything but be left alone with my own ruminations. But by then I was too exhausted from something that had nothing to do with today, and may well never happen.

"What's for breakfast?" my son asked.

"Breakfast? Are you kidding me. I'm too worn out from my book tour."

At that point, my husband gently reminded me that most writers don't even get a book tour (only something like 15%, actually) and I should be so lucky to worry about frogs popping out of my mouth on the road.

Well, that knocked me back to reality. At least for a little while. (I'm a writer, remember. I never stay in reality for too long.)

But it was still a day off from life. There was time to lay around in my pjs, drinking my coffee and reading the paper. One article I read said that there were four basic personality types: the Explorer, the Builder, the Negotiator, and the Director. Didn't really feel that any one of them described me, so I went around my house taking one of my little surveys. (My family is used to my nonsense.) No one else seemed to see themselves fitting neatly in those categories either. Aren't we all a little of each at different times?

Of course, there were lots of other things in the newspaper, too. Scary predictions about the economy, the environment, the continuing furor over the Danish cartoon. Usually, I would have gotten myself into an uproar about some of them. I might have even followed a couple of unsuspecting family members around, reading aloud from the most disturbing bits of news until I had defused my anxiety by passing it along. But it was a snow day. That meant I got to coccoon and ignore the larger world.

I took blankets and pillows onto the couch with my college age daughter who was home for the weekend, each of us in our corner like a pajama party, and took in a guilty pleasure. Single White Female, a movie I'd never seen but always been a little intrigued by, was on TV. An on-line review described it as "gruesome and pointless," but that didn't deter me. When it comes to gruesome and pointless, everyone has their weakness. Now me--I don't care much for macho Bruce Willis style stuff, and the endless creativity of serial killers and the writers who think them up would never cause me to give up a couple hours of my life--even on a snow day. But give me a good story of psychological obsession and I'm hooked--especially about two women. Somehow the cartoonish violence and pathological identification almost seemed like a metaphor for the dark side of female friendship. Gruesome and pointless it may have been (and slightly pornographic, too, especially when watching with a daughter!) but if I enjoyed every wasted minute.

Jennifer Jason Leigh was wonderful as the deranged roommate. Even her lustreless hair managed to give off fumes from the asylum. (Actually, she looked a bit like my fearful imaginings of myself on a book tour.) Wondered idly what happened to her--and to Bridget Fonda, whose angular face and body were ubiquitous for a while, and then just seemed to disappear.

Later, we had wine, and homemade chicken soup and bread. We played with the dogs, and checked out the Olympics, considered the fate of Michelle Kwan (can someone really be called a dinosaur at 24) and cheered Shaun White's amazing half-pipe performance (not to mention his hair!) Then we cleaned up while the snow eddied around the house, locking us in--and giving us permission to do whatever we wanted.

Oh yeah, a day off from life is good every now and then. But tomorrow, I look forward to getting back to work.

SADIE JENKINS

theater of life
Originally uploaded by New York Observer.

LOOKING FOR SOMETHING SUBLIME AT THE MALL

My mother-in-law's birthday was coming so I went to the mall in search of a gift. Not the usual sweater set or household item, not even a book (which I always give her.) No this time, I wanted something that could make a difficult season more palatable, something that would momentarily lift her out of the house where the TV is both a constant drone and a solace, and where various medical appointments fill too many of her days; I wanted to make her smile from her toes up. Turns out they don't sell stuff like that at the mall--or at least, I couldn't find it on this particular day.

Frustrated, I turned to one of my favorite forms of solace--a latte and a stack of shiny magazines in the bookstore cafe. So admittedly, I'm in kind of a mood. I'm not a big shopper in any season; and at this time of year, there's something particularly depressing about the mall. With all the prices slashed and the stores deadly quiet, it's as if the essential emptiness of so much of what we think we want is tangible. You can almost hear it clicking on spike heels through the hollow space.

Then I opened a health magazine and the first thing I saw was an article called something like "Four things to do this month." And the four things were something (though not exactly) like this:

1. Splurge! Buy yourself a dozen roses.

2. Make a commitment to take a multi-vitamin every day this month.

3. Stop thinking about your flaws and focus on your assets.

4. Reevaluate your friendships, and terminate those that are not contributing to your
growth.

So, okay, none of this is particularly bad advice, but the trouble is it's all addressed to the ROYAL ME. And as we all know, the royal me is insatiable. Give her vitamins and roses, and next month she'll want diamonds and trips to the spa. The worst part is, the more you cater to the royal me, the more her discontent multiplies. How about, just for a change, the list went something like this:

1. Splurge! Buy a dozen roses, and keep one for yourself. Then distribute the other eleven to friends, family, or even strangers.

2. Make a commitment to give someone a verbal multi-vitamin every day, in the form of a sincere compliment, an encouraging note, a few minutes of deep listening, or even a smile.

3. Stop focusing on your flaws, and start focusing on everything that's amazing and good around you. You've only got so many thoughts to think in this lifetime. Chances are you've probably wasted enough of them up worrying that your nose is too long or that you're a total flop at cocktail conversation. Practice thought conservation!

4. Work to jettison any habit or pattern of thought that is preventing your growth. Who knows? Maybe some of the friends you thought of abandoning might even be inspired to do the same.


Now if anyone knows the perfect gift for a mother-in-law...

Has anybody seen...

Clouded vision
Originally uploaded by lapinfille.


A couple of things missing here this morning:

1. My blogroll. Hope it's coming back. Lots of good friends and thoughts to challenge your deepest suppositions, some great photography and artwork to make you leap and swirl lingering in that line up. How will I gather you all in once you've drifted into the blogosphere?

2. The post I worked on for an hour last night about my shopping trip to the mall in search of something sublime. Looks like the words have refused to cohere together in the orderly paragraphs, the strings of thought I sat down to create. Instead they broke apart like ill-formed planets and scattered their dust everywhere.

Oh well, sometimes things are just lost. Can I put up a poster? Offer a reward?

Words at large. Some dressed up in colorful party hats. Others suspected of crimes against the language. Known to behave erratically when cornered.

*Yay! Looks like my blogroll has been mysteriously returned with all of my happy links unharmed. If only all lost articles, fugitive thoughts, scattered selves could be reclaimed so easily...

WALKING THE WORLD: a new survey

wondering between an unknown sky
Originally uploaded by ricardo tavares.

It's funny how things work: one day you put on your old sneakers to take a walk to the store, and find out you're living in the wrong house on the wrong street in the wrong town.

Remember my infamous walk down the "big road" with the speeding SUVs driving me toward the guard rails? There were no sidewalks, no crosswalk when I traversed the four lane highway. Even the shopping center was geared toward hulking vehicles looking for a good parking place. Well, that did it.

Not that I haven't been having this thought for a while, a growing realization I live in a place that is out of synch with my philosophy of community and conservation--and just how human beings most optimally live on this earth.

Don't get me wrong; I'm grateful for my house. It's sheltered my family, given us the space to come together and to go off and dream our separate thoughts. People I love have grown up here; three beloved dogs have guarded this little patch of earth faithfully, and each summer we've eaten tomatoes and swiss chard grown from our little garden in the back.

But there's something wrong with developments like the one where I live, and this is it: the only thing here is houses. No stores to buy your daily milk, your toothpaste or broccoli. No little cafes where my neighbors could gather to get to know one another.

In a lot of ways, this is a neighborhood built for cars, not people. Or no, that's unfair--it's a neighborhood built for people who use their cars to go everywhere. Anyone who wants to walk or ride a bike and actually GO SOME PLACE while doing it, had better live elsewhere.

And since I believe in walking, or more specifically purposeful walking to get to work or run an errand, to visit your cousin, or to stop for a beer somewhere and chat, I've come to the conclusion that I'm living in the wrong place. God, why does it take me so long to figure this stuff out?

I want to live in the city where I can go to concerts and plays and ethnic restaurants. Or maybe I want to live in the country and raise chickens and grow lavendar and pumpkins. Then again, I might like a small town where I would live in a narrow house with flowers spilling from my window boxes, and anytime I wanted to, I would walk to the center of town to get my mail or visit the library. Actually, I'm XX years old, and I don't even know where the hell I want to live! I only know that I no longer want to live in a "development".

So here's my survey. Where do you think the best place to live is?

a) city

b) country

c) small town

And please, if you live somewhere you completely love, or if you just know the
perfect place for humans to thrive, don't be afraid to be specific!

ON THE BENEFITS OF TOUCH and other things I learned from the newspaper

Come live with me and be my love
Originally uploaded by pfong.

There's not a lot of good news in the newspaper. Most of what fills its pages is frankly discouraging, and some terrifying enough to ruin your whole day if you imbibe it with your morning coffee.

But if you search hard, there are some cheery bits to be found in the sea of black and white darkness.

Today, for instance, I read that it has been scientifically proven that holding hands is not only good for your health; it's potent enough to actually mitigate physical pain. What's more, the closer the relationship of the hand-holders, the stronger the medicine touch provides. Hand holding by strangers helps, too, but not nearly as much as the comforting pressure of a loved one's hand. Thus, in some way, we create our own "medicine" by the way we relate to others.

The study used married couples who had identified themselves as "close and loving." But when it comes to healing, it's "close and loving" that works the miracle, not the box you check to describe your marital status.

When I was done with the story about holding hands, I turned to the obits. And no, I don't find other people's loss and misery heartening. But I do find great encouragement and strength in a life well-lived--a life like Wendy Wasserstein's, the playwright who died yesterday in Manhattan.

I never met Wasserstein, but like my friends here in the blogosphere, she had made her way into my mind and my life with her words--words that were full of laughter, and questions, and her own brand of optimism.

To anyone who might be feeling a little despondent because they have no close, loving spouse around to hold their hands and massage their neurons, Wendy Wasserstein had this to say:

"No matter how lonely you get or how many birth announcements you receive, the trick is not to get frightened. There's nothing wrong with being alone."

Now substitute the words for whatever frightens you or presents an obstacle to your happiness for lonely and alone and recite those words alone in a loud voice.

There's no study to prove it yet, but I'm willing to wager your neurons will love you for it.

TAGGED!

she's still a kid
Originally uploaded by come-undone.

Katrina Denza has tagged me for a meme, in which I'm supposed to tell you ten things about myself. Anyone who has ever visited Katrina's blog probably knows that it is largely devoted to supporting the work of others. Her generous spirit illuminates every post she makes and comment she leaves. How can I possibly say no?

1. My favorite poet is Mary Oliver because her poems are more than beautiful words. They're beautiful words that can really teach something. For example, one line I read today:

Be ignited or be gone.

Can I tattoo that on my palm so I don't forget?

2. I wrote my first novel on paper bags when I was sixteen while working at Bradlee's, a now defunt department store. I can still remember the way the fluorescent lighting illuminated the brown paper as I wrote.

3. There are two ways of looking at existence: that it is a meaningless product of random chaos, or as Dante said, "It's love moves the sun and the other stars." I believe the latter.

4. At twenty-two, I was divorced with two children. We struggled financially, but joy permeates my memory of those years.

5. If I started a religion, one of the tenets would require believers to dance every day. Dispensations would only be given if someone had died.

6. My blogger friends know more about me than some co-workers who see me every day.

7. Two persistent habits I'm always trying to change: worrying too much and sleeping too late.
Progress is incremental.

8. If I had to live on two foods for the rest of my life, I would choose soup and bread. A nice hearty bean soup with lots of vegetables and a tomato base, and a crusty whole grain bread to be exact.

9. When I was five, I painted everything in the garage royal blue--my father's tools, an old refrigerator, spare tires--everything. At least once, I'd like to try it again, though maybe I'll choose red this time.

10. I have never lived in a house without animals in it--and books lying around everywhere like spirits unleashed. Never intend to either.

Almost forgot the fun part: Now I get to be the tagger. Not sure who does tags and who doesn't, but if any or all of the following would like to have a go at it, I'd love to hear your responses: MB, Rexroth's Daughter, Richard Lawrence Cohen, Colleen, my friend in Verona, Amishlaw and Diana...Apologies if you've already been there, done that.

So this is the kind of dork I am: I don't even know how to turn on the TV set. The last time I watched it with much regularity was back in the sixties when I was a kid and "Bewitched" was my favorite show. There were no remotes, no secret codes, no attached VCRs, DVD players, and Playstations to confuse the issue. You pressed the on button, and voila.

But even a dork has to watch TV every once in a while, which I did yesterday at 4 p.m. That's right. I tuned in to see Oprah's public excoriation of the memoirist, James Frey. It was literary news, I told my teenage son, as he set me up with the remote. But really, I was just taking my seat in the amphitheatre like everyone else. It's not a pretty thing to admit, but something about watching Oprah just makes me want to confess.

A lot has and will be said about the ethics involved: Frey's, the publishing industry, Oprah's and perhaps even the readers' own. But what really interested me was the psychology that was enacted on the show. Truthfully, I think that Frey's fans would have forgiven him anything but weakness. But I wondered how many who cheered on his badass persona through 400+ pages of macho posturing could accept the vulnerable, stammering man who sat opposite Oprah yesterday.

In many ways, I wanted to see the character "James Frey" jump up, and throw off the microphone, refusing to take any more bullshit, and stomp off the stage. That character would have continued to lie with angry flair about the incident at the dentist. (Medical records are confidential, right?) He would have pointed an irate finger at Oprah when she brought up Lily, and told her not to DARE question his veracity on this painful, personal issue.

He would have bluffed and raged like James Cagney or like the book's version of James Frey, maybe even kicking a table or two to prove his point. He wouldn't have just sat back and taken it; he would have attacked back: How honest was Oprah in inviting him on the show only to ambush him? How honest were the reality shows her network produced, or the news programs they presented every night at 6:30? If he lied, wasn't he a product of his culture, a response to what readers clearly wanted?

Would he have been right? Probably not--badasses usually aren't. But rectitude wasn't what people admired in Frey's "character"; toughness was. A lot of people would have seen through his bluster, but many more wouldn't have cared. The "essential truth" of the story would have remained intact--who readers believed Frey to be. As it was, even that crumbled.

One can only hope that at least one aspect of the memoir is true; and that Frey has reserves of strength and character to deal with the aftermath.

WALKING

walk this way, talk this way
Originally uploaded by fubuki.

For most of my life, I've been a walker. It wasn't really a choice. Unlike these crows, I couldn't fly; and I often drove unreliable vehicles that spent more time in the shop or broken down in the driveway than they did taking me where I wanted to go. There was one particular Volkswagen bug that had to be jumped every time I drove it, coming and going. It got to the point where my poor, beleaguered neighbors just saw me on the street and they ran for cover. It was usually easier to walk; and I did-- miles and miles, often dragging my two oldest kids with me. Pushing one in a stroller, the other clinging onto the side as we trucked our clothes to the laundromat may have felt tough at times, but it now provides me with some sweet memories

Then there was my job. In all my years of waitressing, I probably took enough steps to traverse a couple of continents. But the only place I ever arrived was tired out in my kitchen, sucking on a beer or a cup of hot chocolate as I counted out my tips at the end of the day. It was a good life in a lot of ways. I loved the motion of it, and the new faces that popped up every time I took a few steps in another direction. Even better, I could sneak greasy hors d'hoevres or leftover wedding cake till I dropped and never gain an ounce. Bemused, I watched diet fads come and go.

But in the past couple of months, my life has been different. I stopped being a walker and became a sitter. Instead of serving up coffee and soup to folks of all kinds, I sat at my computer and invented my own people. Like the ones I've met in restaurants, country clubs and wedding tents, some of the people in my stories are easier to get along with than others. In fact, some of them are so obnoxious, I wish I could walk away from them, slink off to the kitchen and vent with my co-workers like I used to. Did you see that character on page 6? What a jerk!

Now my only co-workers are my dogs; and they don't care a bit if I get fat, sitting around and snacking all day. In fact, they're all for it as long as I share the bounty. In two short months, I've become a world class sitter--and my "shrinking" jeans are beginning to reflect the consequences. I got all excited when I read a review of a book called The Sonoma Diet in Sunday's NY Times Book Review. So what if the reviewer pretty much trashed the book, saying its book length advice could fit onto two index cards? People are pretty thin in Sonoma, aren't they? (Not that I'd know. Like I said, most of my traveling has been on foot, and in circular patterns around various dining rooms.)

So today, with the temperature hovering preternaturally around 50 degrees and my daily writing finished, I committed a revolutionary act. I walked for no reason--not to get anywhere, or to earn a living, but just for the sake of walking. It wasn't a short walk either. I walked three miles to the local convenience store, congratulating myself on my new "exercise program" every step of the way, and three miles back, whining and wondering where I ever got this crazy idea.

I blamed my surroundings, the cars on the road, the damn hills that all were all of the up variety on the way home. Really, the area where I live is not all that conducive to walking for no reason, and would probably be even less friendly to anyone who actually needed to get somewhere. I walked a mile or two down a major road, with big SUVs and pickup trucks driving me closer to the guard rails. And you can't help noticing the way people look at you when you're walking on the road like that--as if they're probably wondering why you don't have a car. What's wrong with you. It's what Woody Guthrie (yes, I know I'm obsessed) called the "born to lose" look.

At home, the dogs were giving me their own look--one that said, I can't believe you went without us. But once I settled myself back in my study with the requisite snacks, all was forgiven.

The Sonoma Diet, huh? Maybe I'm going to have to check that out.

THE HOMELIEST GIRL I EVER SAW and other stories

Self-portrait
Originally uploaded by lapinfille.

My father wasn't much of a reader. He was passionate about the newspaper, especially the local news, but I only remember him reading one book. The book was Black Like Me, and actually, I don't remember him reading it. I remember him talking about it.

Talking was my father's art, and he did it with skill and style. At parties, my mother (the introverted one from whom I got my love of books) was often left alone while Dad worked the room. He had a natural curiosity about people. He was eager to know everyone he met, and he wanted them to know him back. As a result, parties or family gatherings usually found him in the center of a group, holding his "audience" rapt as he relayed a story, or listening with equal eagerness as future tales took shape in his mind.

A child with writing aspirations from the time she first held a pencil could--and did--learn a lot from watching and listening to him. His stories had hooks, flash characterizations, and intriguing plots. Above all, he gave his listeners a reason to pay attention. His talk was laced with humor and dramatic pauses, and a pay off that left his listeners wanting more. He could turn "my trip to the hardware store" into a story that kept you riveted.

He was quick to let you know that though a story was gleaned from chance encounters in his life as a truck driver and maintenance man, what you were about to hear was hardly ordinary. There was usually a superlative nestled in one of the opening sentences.

It was always a story about the homeliest girl I ever saw, or "the nicest guy I ever met," and of course, everything about his presentation was convincing enough that you had to know why. I can still see the raised eyebrows and wide open eyes, the teasing smile, and bright face he wore when he was talking.

I especially liked the one about the homely girl. Recalling it, makes me wonder how that word ever fell out of use, and became commonly replaced with the more strident ugly. There's something sweet about a homely girl, something that makes you want to root for her. An ugly girl, on the other hand, is just ugly.

There were plenty of dark stories in my father's life, stories about the poverty of his childhood, about the tragedies and unfulfilled hopes that afflict all families, about the war he'd fought at age nineteen. He never told those. He was from a generation that wanted to escape the darkness, not claim it as a special right to victimhood. We often joked that for a talker, his letters home from the war were terse and repetitious: Feeling fine and hope you are the same.

Only in his final years did the war stories come out; only then did we begin to understand why he had chased laughter and good times so hard, and why his stories did the same. As his memory frayed, he often told the same stories over and over. The grandchildren had a list of phrases you could never use in front of Papa, lest they trigger a repeat performance of the tales they knew by heart. But it was in the repetitions that I came to understand exactly how much of an art his storytelling really was. Almost like a rehearsed performance, he employed the same vocal inflections, the same gestures and pauses each time he retold one of his stock pieces.

I've been thinking of my father and his art form ever since the other night. My husband and I were having dinner in a funky little Italian restaurant when a woman approached the table.

"Excuse me," she said. "You're Jack's daughter, right?"

"No," I told her, certain she had confused me with someone else. "My father's name was Dick and he died five years ago."

"That's right. Dick was his name," she said, then explained she used to cut his hair.

I still wasn't convinced. As far as I knew, my father always went to a barber for his haircuts.

But the woman nodded insistently. "I really miss that guy. He made my day whenever he came into the shop."

I thanked her, and said he frequently made my day, too. But I still wasn't sure we were talking about the same person.

Not till she added, "He always told the best stories."

Oh yeah. That was the guy.

LEARNING HOW TO LIVE

Hwy 17
Originally uploaded by tearapen.

Bob Dylan said that you could learn to live by listening to Woody Guthrie songs. Those old folk songs may not be the first place I'd go to learn what I need to know about living, but they make great background music while you're reading your books of wisdom. And long after you close those books, you may find you're still humming along to one of Woody's anthems.

Despite the efforts of people like Dylan and Nanci Griffith, I wonder how many people listen to Woody at all anymore. No matter how many do, it's not enough. He never claimed to be a saint, and his wandering ways must have brought unhappiness to many of those near and dear to him. But the man knew things that a lot of people never get in their lifetimes.
Things we all need to be reminded of on a regular basis.

From riding boxcars and living in migrant camps during the Depression, he learned something about the human spirit that he never allowed success to take away: It resides in the poor and disdained as strongly as it does anywhere else. Maybe stronger. Or as Woody said it:

I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that.

It may seem like the simplest lesson of all, and of course, it's the basis for all the holy books, but it still looks like a rarity when it's truly lived.

Every now and then when I start feeling like a fancy pants, I go out and rent, Bound for Glory, the film version of Woody's autobiography. The other day I was feeling a little too impressed with my author self, so I decided it was time.

Artistically, it may not be the best movie ever made, but it never fails to move me. It brings home the Depression--and what it means to have no work--with heart wrenching clarity. What it means to travel to a distant place, hoping to work for below subsistence wages. What it means to live in grubby migrant camps, and still be able to sing and rejoice at the end of a day.

It's something most of us don't know much about, but Woody did, and he pretty much devoted his life to trying to make us understand how good these people are. How much like you and me.

I particularly love the end of the movie when he walks out of a glitzy hotel where his agent has got him a lucrative deal to play because he'd rather play in the camps for nothing. ..because he doesn't want to lose his connection to the people...because he knows that once you've lost that, you've lost everything.

It's the kind of common wisdom that's sadly uncommon.

AUTHOR PHOTO: PLEASE HELP!

I wanted to use the blog photo taken last year in pre-Katrina New Orleans, but I didn't think the hair across the face look quite cut it. My second choice was my high school year book photo, sans crows feet, and with my favorite Charlie's Angel hairstyle flouncing over my shoulders. If I recall, I didn't like that one much at the time either, but it sure looks good now. Unfortunately, I didn't think that would get by either.

So I went out and got my wild hair blown into submission and had a professional picture done just like real writers do. (At least, I think that's what they do, but what do I know?) I thought maybe I'd pose like Truman Capote did for his first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms, prone and provocative on a classy looking couch. Rumor has it that the photograph helped to make Capote the darling of New York society, and something of an overnight sensation. But there didn't seem to be any couches in the studio, and besides, it's too late for me to become the darling of anything, much less New York society.

"A standard head and shoulders shot?" the photographer asked.

"Um, sure," I said, putting aside my fantasy of the couch pose.

So anyway, here they are. When I thought I had settled on a final choice, my daughter pointed out that the quizzical expression reminded her of the family dog when she's looking for a treat. Thanks, dear. Maybe they'll take that old high school photo after all.

p.s. Extra points for anyone who can guess the doggy shot.

a)

b)

c)

d)

WHEN THE HOME ALTAR IS A TV

TV room
Originally uploaded by reddirtrose.

An article culled from Arts and Letters Daily caught my attention today and set me spinning off into weird habit #3, otherwise known as "ranting and raving". Once I get some abstruse point on my mind, I harangue everyone around me until they finally get it through my head THEY DON'T CARE, or I just wear myself out--whichever comes first.

This particular episode of ranting was triggered by the social conservative, Theodore Dalrymple. Though I am often at odds with Dalrymple, he rattled my bones and my equally brittle assumptions with this piece. Having gone through the files of dozens of Australian murder cases, he invokes a stunningly repetitious picture:

The homes in which the murders took place - and here I am speaking of what James Thurber might have called naive, domestic little murders - have, from the photographic evidence, a terrible similarity. There is the same narrow hallway, with the same detritus strewn in it.

Into the living-room through the door on the right: the same gas fire, but above all, and always, the prominence of the video machine, which is to the British home at the lower end of the social scale what the icon was in the Russian muzhiks izba: the focus of the household's spiritual life, if spiritual is quite the word I seek. A Martian visitor might take it as an object of religious veneration or propitiation, so dominant is it in the room.

Strewn on the floor, there are always several videotapes, probably just watched: these are the homes in which the television or video is never switched off so long as there is someone awake in the house. There are also many more videos on shelves in every room throughout the house, for images of a pseudo-reality mean more to the inhabitants than most of life as they actually live it.

Some wise person said that in every heart there is an altar, and similarly in every home, there is an area that is by its central location or its surrounding radiance, and the reverence with which it's looked upon, a focal point, an altar. In ancient times, it was quite simply a fire, a contained flame where you could look for hours and see survival, warmth, beauty. If the altar is a video screen that regularly flashes scenes of violence and lust, ego and passions, untempered by wisdom, then clearly the worshippers at this particular altar are in trouble.

And if a society is composed of rows and rows of houses on rows and rows of streets all worshipping at the same empty home altar, then that is an impoverished society, indeed, no matter what the GNP might say.

When I look back on all these murders and murderers, what do I feel? And do I remember the murderers as evil men, who joyfully did what they knew to be wrong and were prepared to take the consequences, even as they tried to avoid them? Did they all have black hearts upon which murder had been inscribed since birth?

No. I am overwhelmed by a sense of the unfitness for life of all the participants in these sordid dramas: their main problem was that they had not the faintest idea how to live and yet - this is the hallmark of modernity - they were plentifully supplied with ego.

They had received no guidance from religion, naturally enough, since God is dead for them, and never has been very much alive. As for social convention, it has not so much been destroyed as turned inside out. The poor who once prided themselves on such things as respectability, cleanliness, honesty, orderliness and thrift, often in the most difficult circumstances, now pride themselves on their bohemianism. Disorder and chaos are a metonym for freedom and authenticity. But they are bohemians without being artistic, and the result is a squalor scarcely credible in times of supposed prosperity.

There's an uncomfortable tinge of snobbery here. Surely, murders are committed in orderly homes with framed Matisses on the walls, as well as in the dumps inhabited by poor slobs who think they're bohemians. (And really are drunken slobs who call themselves 'bohemians' any more worhty just because they're artists? But I am particularly disconcerted by the prominence of the VCR and TV--partially, because it enjoys a pretty central location in my own home. Right where the fire would have been in an ancient hut.

In my previous post, I spoke of the best fiction as an exercise in revealing truth through metaphor. Similarly, whatever we exalt on our own personal home altar, must be capable of rendering truth and wisdom to those who gather around to venerate it. Religions of all kinds, whether you believe they are literally true or whether you see them as beautiful myths and metaphors have provided answers to every question the human heart can pose. Listened to with an open mind and without distortions, they calm and elevate the heart, and call the worshipper not to BECOME his passions, but to shape, use and ultimately transcend them.

The exceptions and there are tragically many, are those who have not heard the message they claim to exalt. Suicide bombers creating devastation in defense of a religion of peace. Christians who relegate people who are often kinder and in all ways better disciples than they are to "a lake of fire", simply because they haven't pronounced the right words.

And yet the great religions do not fail. People fail. Meanwhile, all the noble faiths keep their bargains with those who are willing to raise up an altar in the heart: When you need guidance, you will have it, when you seek mercy, it will be yours; when you are in pain, you will find comfort, and perhaps most important of all: when you are overwhelmed by the miserable delusion of your own importance, we will remind you how small you are. And how loved.

If we as a society, really think we can live without all that, we'd better find a better home altar than the television set or the VCR with its endless images of egos gone wild to replace it. (Or maybe I'm just getting old and cantankerous. Always a possibility when I start in on a good rant and rave.)

So to summarize today's rant: You better start believing in something higher than yourself, whether it's God or Socratic principles or the sanctity of nature, and whatever it is, you better teach your children to honor it. If you don't, you just may end up raising a pack of selfish morons. Who knows? You may even become one yourself. (Is there a test for this on one of those quiz sites?) (If so, I'm heading there immediately.)

WHY I WRITE FICTION

I què és la veritat?
Originally uploaded by florriebassingbourn.

One of the most disturbing thing about the whole James Frey brouhaha this week is that the book that sold 3.5 million copies was turned down by nearly every major publisher when it was offered as fiction.

Why? Because readers like you and me wouldn't buy it if it didn't have the imprimatur of TRUTH on it. At least, that's how the editors at 17 publishing houses saw it. I'd like to say they were wrong, that A Million Little Pieces would have sold just as well as a novel, but somehow I doubt it.

For the same reason that no one would watch a show about a bunch of college kids sitting around in their underwear whining or twenty-five women competing for a limp rose on THE BACHELOR if they thought (knew?) it was scripted, no one would have been willing to hold Frey's hand through 438 pages of vomit and bathos and teary redemption if they didn't believe it really happened.

As a fiction writer, I'm rather proud that a book with no claims to factual accuracy is held to a higher standard. If it's not "true," then it damn well better be well written--and believable. Kind of ironic, isn't it?

But in another way, I think that this new hunger for an ever more elusive "truth" insults fiction. Surely, many people who are flocking to memoirs and reality TV are missing the essential secret about fiction. It's truer than the truth.

Shakespeare may never have been a king, but he taught us more about power and betrayal than any memoirist ever could have. Why? Because he knew more than the narrow facts of his life allowed. More than most kings or scheming underlings or thwarted lovers who ever lived.

And Shakespeare wasn't the only one. All of us know more than we have experienced. In part, it seems we're born that way. Not blank slates, but small souls from who-knows-where, babies too young for language find a myriad of other ways of expressing what they know and what they want. Just look in their eyes. These people know things.

Other truth we learn just because we're human; and as such, we've tapped into the rich myths and archetypes of our species, that great history of the human heart in stories.

I may not have killed anyone or abandoned my children or spent a bitterly cold night in the street, but I know something about those things anyway, simply because I'm alive and feeling and empathetic. When I write fiction, I push myself further than I've ever gone--or in many cases, hope to go--in real life. I enter strange minds and hearts and learn the lay of the land. I get lost and desperately search for an exit. Then I tell you not just where I've been and what I've seen, but what I know.

Are my stories and novels factually true? Absolutely not. But in proudly calling them fiction, I connect my own humble creations to the stories that have told us who we are for as long as we've had the power of communication.