Reading List 2013 (So Far)

Ooooooooo!

This morning my husband burst through the front door, yanked the tiny earphones out of his ears and, flushed from his post-run endorphin rush, declared: The Death Of Bees, we must own it!

The Death Of Bees, by Lisa O’Donnell (check out NPR for an interview with the author). Help, Thanks, Wow: Three Essential Prayers, by Anne Lamott. And Where’d You Go, Bernadette, by Maria Semple. I just happened to stumble across Semple’s book through a little madcap Amazon link-clicking episode. Know what I mean? I wish I’d stumbled across the book literally (and it would have been literally, just ask my son) in the Topanga Canyon mall Barnes & Noble, but it’s closing. Dammit.

Currently reading on the kindle: Easy To Love, Difficult To Discipline: The Seven Basic Skills For Turning Conflict. You know how sometimes you ask for a certain kind of help from a certain kind of book and suddenly the book not only arrives but is so timely it makes you sit up and pay attention like never before? I don’t like time outs. I don’t want to make him sit in a corner. I don’t want to battle or (heaven forbid) break his magnificent spirit. I do want to talk to him, with him, not at him. Thank you, Becky A. Bailey, for writing this book. Teaching is learning. So true. What I’m learning, I hope to teach well.

Still reading Bel Canto, Ann Patchett, probably giving up on Hologram For The King, Dave Eggers (don’t hate me), gave away Bossy Pants, Tina Fey, without completing the read (don’t hate me–or, you know, go ahead), and three quarters finished with—what the he** is it called. You know. That really important, amazingly beautifully written book that became a classic the second it was published…Oh, PB…Really?…hang on…Am tired mother!…do dee do dee do…just keep swimming, just keep swimming…The Known World, Edward P. Jones, of course…blrrrrrrrgh…

Also looking forward to second books from the YA Muses. Happy 2013, Muses!

Happy reading to you this year! Feel free to leave recommendations at any time in the comments section. And maybe check my “Library” page if you fancy more suggestions–fiction, YA and MG.

Yours in February poetry readings, future unicycle rides and quiet time alone with a book,

P (juggling 3 oranges) B.

2013: Resolute

1. Stand taller.

2. Be wiser.

3. Mother better.

4. Honor date nights.
4a. find a babysitter after 5 years of not
       4b. either more or less caffeine @8pm any Friday night—search for successful eye-propping balance! Ha ha! Fun!

5. Learn to ride the unicycle you just ordered on Amazon by February 22nd. Or else.
5a. drink wheatgrass smoothies?
        5b. buy helmet from Target

6. Honor everything writing related that is challenging and must be improved and expanded upon and created and indulged and researched and acquired and never, never, never, never give up, even when you feel like the slings and arrows you’re launching are cotton balls instead of crude metals and stones and you’re saying ouch regarding your metaphors and similes and your writing angst is biting you in the a** about 50 times a day…
6a. blrrrrrrgh

7. Keep exercising using the mantra: tracyandersonmattworkoutyouaremybff
7a. enter 911 on speedial
         7b. blrrrrrgh

8. Continue Paleo Diet exploration, i.e. put everything on lettuce instead of bread…

9. Remember to scoot resolution #6 to #1 slot regularly—or at least slot #2, but never to slot #10.

10. Stop growling at horrible Los Angeles drivers and tend your own doorstep
10a. sweep doorstep often
          10b. sweep well
          10c. sit on swept doorstep with faintly chilled glass of Sunstone Chardonnay and marvel over world’s wonders, like the house finch colony in your front trees, how the Boxwood Christmas wreath that hung on the house is still lying in the geranium plot months after Christmas is over and still retaining its festive shape; your son, the cats and the dog running to meet your husband as he pulls into the driveway; honestly, your great, great fortune, PB. Abundance. Look to the sea, PB. Never turn your back on it.

Holidaze

Fa la la la–zzzzz…

Seabiscuit. I’m working backwards—Seabiscuit with a cheesecake glopped in cognac whipped cream. Also called Vital Precedence due to a greed it’s important (vitally so) to indulge this time of year. A dozen kids galloping around our yard, dogs weaving between (or dodging) Ninja moves and soccer kicks and instant monkeys (no accidents, no tears—I barely had time to marvel over this). I was given books and bookstore gift certificates and a picture of my son from my son. A festive, reddish rug with a plumed rooster emblazoned on it appeared in the mini-foyer of my home. Somehow it enhanced the twinkle lights and faintly glittering wreaths (none of them real, all of them well-appled). When the garlands and lights and triangle-tree disappear, it will be as if the Madonna Inn came and went and we will want to follow it, like traveling circus addicts. I had a list on the pantry cupboard that was meant to guide helpfully. I never looked at it once. I recall running (flat out runs) from the back of the house to the kitchen, searching for my camera as masterpieces were swiftly built and destroyed in my son’s room. I’m fairly certain there’s a new sake set (boxed bottles with cups) somewhere in the house. Also a Farmer’s Almanac cookbook I’d like to browse. And once again I walk the dog in winter, at night, just me and the big galumph, because certain houses beam outdoor Christmas displays visible from Space, standing in for the streetlamps that don’t exist here and I. Feel. Safe.

Quote For The Weekend: Christmas Poem Edition

Full Howling Moon

Southern California’s brittle December 24^th:
swells, surfboards, fire-skin, a holiday bbq
by a slide-dunked swimming pool blooming
algae, all palms standing by–city logo,
city tattoos.

The Hollywood Hills Gelson’s Market evacuates
delicacies when a parking lot palm tree’s head
explodes, ignited by a derelict power line.
From bland foothills, precarious beneath a faux-
Mediterranean portico, juggling my Christmas scotch
and emergency binoculars, I can tell you

it resembles a single birthday candle, lit.

Hello, New England? Hello, DC? Hello, Dear Baltic.
LA calling. Keep your troikas and furs and ploughs, but send all bells
and much of your ice. The trees are on fire. The palm trees
are on fire. It’s December the 24^th. I am…

O my longing, my

                                                                                             longing.

Cataract-riddled eye rising
over shuffling Pacific. We carol
(rote, stoned, irreverent) in shorts
and flip flops from Hollywood
to the post-eutrophic canals
of Venice Beach, the Santa Ana
twisting in from desert, snuffing
candles in wide open windows
(O frankincense, O myrrh),
rippling rum punch
in the communal wassail bowl.
We fear nothing, coasting
through our toasty season.
We enjoy our shade of blonde,
our token brown, dancing strangers
lit by hard-boiled moon (pitted sad-sack
belly-up over fuss: O dead thing).

Stars bloom.

On lawn stumped by foothills
a coyote waits with her hunger,
not a howl to her name. I toss
her scrapped fat and she’s off. Swallow
after swallow I toast the Christmas scotch
(sunburn for lungs) and soon (or not)
the hills press their simmered silence
upon my house, the moon  a casualty
swarmed by wriggly city lights down
there—overcome.
Meanwhile,

Finland rises. The continental ice sheet melts.
Baltic Sea stagnates, plumbed with oil spills,
Estonian run-off, Latvian grunge, Polish sewage,
Russian waste. Water doesn’t freeze like it used to.
Midnight.

On the Eastern bank,

the waltzy white wolf.

Opposite: the poacher,  gun swallowed by the hole

                                    formed when his boot punched ice.

His fate is the moon’s secret

gaily spotlighting the duel.

The poacher raises his red fists, the wolf

                                                her fine, fine snout

                                                to the call.

Mother Nature Wins

Really sorry.

Around here, the skies are flannel and pursed. We can wear sweaters and scarves, for once, as we bring in our trash barrels from alleys.

Pulling in the second recycling barrel, enjoying the feel of my silly polka-dot rain boots I never get to wear, I thought I heard hints of that flock of wild parrots winging by our house at any old time, flapping crazily, all members screeching competitively. Odd, I thought. Sounds like 1 parrot, not a flock, why not a flock, they’re always—huh.

As I tugged the barrel across the lawn, something clicked in my brain: Distress. And I looked up just in time to see a hawk leaving our potato vine tree thing, not a wild parrot (or a small child, if you’ve been viewing that FB clip of the golden eagle attempting to make off with the babe), but a house finch in its talons.

I flashed on, A Cry In The Dark, Thumbelina, Frodo and Sam (even though that was a good abduction). And I yelled.

We have three trees candlesticking our front yard. They are taller than the house and their branches expound, are elegant flourishes accentuated by berries (small, black, catch-in-your-hair berries). A colony of house finches lives in these trees. Around 6am they start talking and an hour or so later move to the back yard and the potato vine trees things. When it’s twilight, they form a cloud and return to the front yard trees. You can time them. They are predictable. There are hundreds of them. So no wonder the hawk picked us.

But I am not rational when it comes to Mother Nature’s scythe of death.

I ran to the potato vine tree thing with a gibberish shout representing outrage. A sense of possession overwhelmed me–my finches, my finches!I scanned the treetops visible beyond our yard’s wall. If I had seen the hawk in a distant tree with the house finch, what would I have done? Called 911? Set out on foot? Ordered the thief to return my finch? AWOFGLOJHAK! I sputtered, wild with rage, and my preschooler came outside in his socks, clutching his blue apatosaurus. What’s wrong, Mama?

1 silly polka-dot rain boot was coming off. My hands were muddy from tripping when I ran to the tree. My fist was raised at the sky. I saw myself. With humbling clarity.

PB, I thought. You forget yourself. I’m—weeding. Darn weeds! They aren’t good for our grass. Ha ha! Weeds. Go away weeds. I brushed myself off and turned to my son. What’s up, Lovecup? I said.

He squinted at me as though I was vanishing and scratched his bottom. Is it dinnertime yet? he asked. Yes, I said enthusiastically, marching to him with a limp and a huge smile on my face to distract him from my dislodged rainboot. Let’s eat!

Beads, Snowflakes, Hopeful Friends

But you can only stay fused to your child’s side for so long.

And there are a million poems to read in dark times—and then there are simply no poems, no words. None.

A friend realized this and went to Newtown, CT. She sat in a bead shop for a bit with the owner and others and they made things and talked and didn’t talk and just sat and did busywork or just sat and felt, felt, felt. When my friend was ready to go, she left gifts for the families. The shop owner assured my friend they would be distributed. Some gifts my friend had brought with her on her trek to Newtown, some she had made that day in the shop. When she arrived home, she posted about her experience on Facebook. She posted about the sitting, the beadwork, the tearful moments, the silence, the talk, all of which left her with a sense of–well, this: When I left, my heart had shifted as I felt the families, though ruined beyond pale, will be held up completely by their community. I felt less terrified for them (though no less saddened). 

My friend’s post is, for me, a gift. It overshadowed all the terribly inappropriate FB posts on December 14th (see previous blog post). I don’t expect my friend’s post to change anyone, but I like it out in the world, belonging.

If you’d like to know exactly where she went, it’s here: A Bead Of Roses

My porch light is on.

Quote For The Weekend: Seriously, WTF

I was going to publish a post 2 days ago, but after returning home with my preschooler from his Christmas/holiday/everything party, I heard about Newtown, CT. And then I made the mistake of logging onto Facebook and reading posts from “friends” and their “friends” and so on that made anything I had been planning to publish seem alien. As my son ate his lunch, I ducked into the garage and silent-screamed and sobbed for 5 minutes. And then I pulled myself together and fused myself to my child’s side.

“good grief. gun control. do not take away my right to bear arms because somebody else breaks the law.”

“According to the FBI, more people are killed from baseball bats than anything else, including guns.  So, I say, LET’S OUTLAW BASEBALL.”

“Barbara Boxer should mandate boxing classes for all high-school kids. It would give them a non-lethal way to settle differences of opinion regarding who baddest.”

“If more kids had guns or if teachers had guns and self-defense classes then 1 shooter would have been taken care of.”

“Virginia Tech was bragging about how it was a gun-free zone prior to that shooting a few years ago that took out 33 people.  If 5% of the people on that campus had had guns,  a lot of lives would have been saved.”

And today other FB “friends” posted the (supposedly) Morgan Freeman piece, which is a nice piece, until the ending, which says don’t support gun control, but mental health reform. Alarums, alarums.

I offer this bit of information:

In the 18 years before the law, Australia suffered 13 mass shootings — but not one in the 14 years after the law took full effect. The murder rate with firearms has dropped by more than 40 percent, according to data compiled by the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, and the suicide rate with firearms has dropped by more than half.
—Nicholas D. Kristof

You can read the article, Do We Have The Courage To Stop This, and about that law here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/opinion/sunday/kristof-do-we-have-the-courage-to-stop-this.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

Then go to the blackboard. Write Kristof’s above quote 100 times. Write it 100 more.

Shhhhhhh…No. Comments.

Quote For The Weekend: Squirrel Edition Via Eliot

Such a handsome fox squirrel. No chasing allowed! sob, sob

If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heartbeat, and we should die of that roar, which is the other side of silence.
—George Eliot

We lived in a city condo until our son was 10 months old. The lot next to us was recent, huge, and, when it rained, so full of water Canadian geese mistook it for a lake and stopped in. Far across the lot was a pole. Just your average, tall, abandoned wooden pole candle-sticking earth. And one extremely early morning as I bounced our son in my arms and gazed blearily out the living room’s picture window, I watched two squirrels chase each other up that pole in quick, frantic circles and, when they reached the top, one squirrel fall.

I ran into the bedroom and woke my husband. SQUIRREL DOWN, WE HAVE A SQUIRREL DOWN, I whisper-hissed so as not to traumatize our son, and yet convey intense urgency. 10 minutes later, our son cooing in the Bjorn, we went to investigate.

There was the squirrel. Bad, it was bad. We returned home, me repeating over and over in a sing-song voice that would never traumatize a 10 month old, how I just couldn’t understand how a squirrel, A SQUIRREL, could fall from a pole, as my husband phoned animal control. SHE came right over. My husband went down to meet her and from the picture window I watched them cross the lot, get the squirrel into a container, move to the center of the lot, set the container down and keep chatting, at which point I left the window because I thought it was all over, squirrel going to shelter, done.

BANG. BANG. BANGBANGBANG.

Returning to the window, heart in my throat, surpressing outraged sounds because my son was finally asleep in my arms and who would want to traumatize a sleeping child, I thought this: WTF. And, actually, this: RUF***INGKIDDINGME. And something resembling: CAN’T THERE JUST BE PEACE FOR 1 F***ING MINUTE! Etc.

My husband vaulted up the outside stairs and into the condo. I pointed to our comatose son and he whispered:

She had to shoot it, babe, it was horribly hurt and suffering, but she missed with the first shot and then she said SCHEISE, she was German, babe, and kept on shooting and saying SCHEISE because she kept missing and then she asked me, VY EM I MISSINK EET? and she was crying, babe, she didn’t want to kill the squirrel, but she said it was better as the lineup for euthanasia at the shelter was super slow and squirrel would have suffered for a long time–

I pressed my hand to his mouth. We went into the bedroom and lay down with our snoozing son. We held found a way to hold hands and link arms with our little boy between us. It was only 8:00 a.m. and we’d been through an eon.

We live in leafy suburbs now. There are more trees here than poles. The squirrels keep their footing, although they do chase each other, taunt our cats and scold me daily from the fluffy pines. I just wave. And scatter our property with endless bread crusts.

Quote For The Weekend (Super Late Edition)

She likes red Tootsie Rolls

This time of year is also, always, about how against all humanly odds, there was enough oil to keep the Menorah lit after the temple in Jerusalem was sacked. And how–well, you know the pitch: let there be light, and let it begin with me; i.e. the fourth great prayer, Help me not be such an asshat, just for the next day or so.

—Anne Lamott (from her Facebook page)

I’m looking forward to reading Anne Lamott’s newest book, Help, Thanks, Wow, which is now number 2 on the NY Times Hardcover Advice & Misc. bestseller list, 1 below Ina Garten, 3 above the Smitten Kitchen cookbook (4 weeks and counting, good for her!), 6 above Huckabee’s book, 7 above Deepak Chopra and about 9 above I Could Pee On This, but I have trouble counting properly. While I wait for the book to arrive (via Amazon, as usual, as all the bookstores in our vicinity have closed and the Topanga Canyon Barnes & Noble is too far away, displays way too many tempting toys—distracting certain 5 year olds mommies would rather have looking at books, not toys, not toys in a bookstore, no, no—and, although the kid’s reading nook is lovely, is consistently the mommy-will-scream-shortly sort of crowded most of the time, which is good news for B&N, but maybe not mommies not on solo outings, oh let’s face it–I’m addicted to Amazon), I enjoy Anne Lamott’s Facebook posts, which are long-ish, self-effacing, witty and fun to read. Also, in the meantime, I continue inching my way through The Known World, inching as I’m a wuss–anytime a child is mentioned my eyes flit ahead, scanning for tragedy. If I detect none, I carry on–but I’m not always correct in my assumptions. Story of my life. And, in the meantime, revising, revising, revising. And exercising my a** away before Christmas. I did just write that, but only because it’s late for a mommy recovering from staying out too late on a Saturday night (i.e. past 9 p.m.), something that almost never happens. Hence the fatigue. And my burgeoning a**, tempting, scrumptious bites and bite-sized creampuffs constantly put before me last night—until I ate them and went back for more edible delights, putting them before me, and so on…

Yours in good nighttime reading and cream puffs (preferably reading with creampuffs on a pretty blue china plate next to you on the bed—not on the nightstand, but right next to you, not on the comforter, but on the sheet, so close the plate pushes into your side),

PB

Gopher Genius

Today, over on Nebula, writer Beth Hull’s

A happy follower of Colonel Shifty

website, Colonel Shifty offers up some vital, handy-dandy definitions  of publishing terms. Secretly (or not) I am hoping that Colonel Shifty’s next post will be to announce the launch of his gopher T-shirt line–perhaps similar to the Downton line, only (somehow and rightly so) classier. Thank you, Shifty! And perhaps refrain from long distance jogging with your biographers.

Sincerely,

P (would rather not have gophers in her yard, but loves them just the same) B

Quote For The Weekend (The After The Turkey Edition With Cats & Corn Pudding)

Al bathes Rudy. This happens a lot. Then someone throws up.

What greater gift than the love of a cat.

—Charles Dickens

We returned to find the dummy comforter on our bed upchucked on, the real bedding beneath saved (mwahaha!), a puddle of cat pee under the slopsink in the laundry room (slopsink is next to kitty boxes filled with fresh sand), but no cat pee in the rest of our home, nor by the front door. We praised and petted them, gave them ample amounts of wet food and obliged their requests to go outside, only to have them all banging on the front door an hour later. I let them in. They stared at us, allowed us to scratch heads and rumps, then inspected beds, rooms, certain corners. Were they were surprised we were home so early? Had they expected us to be gone a hell of a lot longer, hence only a couple of defilements v peeing and gakking all over the whole house? Al curled up on the couch for an evening nap. Diggory clearly wanted to be in the backyard—I made this happen. Rudy drank from the bathroom faucet, then sat on the toilet’s closed lid, gazing at me through yellowy slits and purring. I left him to it. Husband and little boy passed out in the little boy’s room after storytime, I crawled into bed with The Known World. In the middle of the part near the beginning when Henry dies, Rudy appeared and meowed delicately. Hi, I said. Be with you in a sec. And then I heard a trickling sound. The dummy comforter was turning merrily in the dryer. Rudy was getting the good stuff. I was relieved my shriek did not wake up husband or son, but part of me ached to run into the yard, toss a swing in frustration and appeal to the sky like Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters, bellowing: WHAT IS IT WHAT IS IT WHAT IS IT. I plunked Rudy in the cat box, shoved  the comforter into the washer—cold cycle—and poured myself a glass of wine…Luckily there was leftover corn pudding in the fridge…

And May All Your Turkeys Be Bright

Just stay alive! I will find you!

It is 197-something and there are cats on the kitchen counter pulling apart the cooked bird with their claws and fangs. It is 199-something and a slobbery Rottweiler mix has hold of a turkey leg and the entire baking pan with turkey in it is heading closer to the counter’s edge. It is every single Thanksgiving and someone is pulling the bag of giblets from the cooked turkey’s cavity and saying (every single Thanksgiving): It wasn’t there before. It is the 21st century and I’ve made baked smashed yams with apples and I’ve made a parsnip/onion/kale saute and I don’t have to check the turkey’s cavity this year or worry about animals scavenging kitchens. The cold is clearing from my head, my son is not so picky anymore that he won’t eat turkey, we are driving north to be with family, there are no bombs raining down on our little portion of world. We are massively thankful types. We care, we care, we care. May you enjoy the day, may you eat well, may you be blessed with firelight (unless you’re still having a heatwave) and more than a few laughs and may you find your pretty birds whole and shiny and hot when you go to serve them instead of devoured by pets and may you pull apart the wishbone favorably. And may all your turkeys—vegan, human, jokes, some cars, situations you’d really rather forget, old boyfriends, poems, certain side dishes made with parsnips—may all your turkeys, made-up or otherwise, be…

Quote For The Weekend (Strickland Speaking–W/Swedish Au Pair)

“Adam had ‘em.”

You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be –
I had a Mother who read to me.

–Strickland Gillilan

Who read to me: Mother, great-grandmother, grandmothers, godmother, great aunt and uncle, don’t remember The Pater reading, but babysitters, mothers of friends, teachers, of course, my own sisters and Au Pairs. I was extremely critical of the Au Pair reading technique—because how could an Au Pair ever take the place of a mother’s reading, especially when you might be lucky to get any Au Pair reading at all when the mother was off with The Pater touring the Loire Valley and drinking good wine and eating cow brains and practicing her high school French while you and your sisters were left with–that particular Au Pair era–the 18 year old Swedish live-in who hated books but loved bikers, a pack of bikers, in fact, that she invited back to your hushed-suburban home for a party that raged so alarmingly the neighbors almost called the police and you didn’t sleep, jealous of your older sister who was allowed to walk among the melee you peeked at through the banisters at the top of the stairs until the crowd and its music–Rod Stewart, mostly, but also Bob Dylan in the phase when Britain hated him–migrated upstairs and doors banged and bikers guffawed like Santa Claus and you were kind of freaked, but intrigued and the next thing you knew you and your sisters were waving goodbye to the Swedish Au Pair, who vaguely resembled Cinderella-pre-prince, as she ducked into the taxi your parents summoned that fateful day in the quaint neighborhood,  zooming that teenager and her limited read-aloud talents and her taste for giants in leather away from you forever…making way, sadly–O Parents! What the he** were you thinking!–for the next Au Pair, an early-twenties-something terrified Parisian who wore a wooden crucifix and saw ghosts…Saw. Heard. Despised us. Despised children in general. Despised children’s books…Sigh…

Writing Advice

Arriving via Amazon tomorrow. Happy reading!

Just when I think I’ve read it all (which usually means it’s time to read more), the YA Muses post this. Loads of advice from debut authors. In fact, all week the Muses have been posting helpful writing advice from the newly published. Also, William Alexander won the National Book Award for his children’s book, Goblin Secrets, his FIRST book. Right on!

Yours in advice and encouraging news,

P (writing/reading) B

Space Aliens Blow Up Fast Food Joints

Discussing strategy.

Or: Writing In Increments (daylight edition)

Between the post-workout shower and the trip to Redbox to return movies you suddenly noticed on the bookshelf as you craned your neck to see if your leg was straight as it pulsed to the ceiling for the 50th time per instructions meted by the tiny pouty blonde woman on your TV who never sweats and whose long curled locks never move as she twists and crunches and plies like they do in a Bob Fosse musical (wid attitude) and puts you through an arm workout leaving you armless for up to 5 hours and mentally screaming for your bottled water to get its plastic a** out of your refrigerator and into your hands before you D.I.E. Between the post-workout shower and the trip to Redbox (grocery store, Party City, Starbucks for solace and Arco): 45 (hard-won) minutes, not including breaks to fuss over the giant Baby Huey kitten.

Between his nap and the hustle to wake him up, dress him in his gi and drive safely yet swiftly to the karate center where, as your child punches red dummies, that one chatty mom tells you, yet again, how thankful she is for Happy Meals, never asking if you go to McDonald’s, which is lucky because your son is about to turn 5 and has never been to McDonald’s and you have no intention of taking him there for a Happy Meal, ever, unless it’s over your dead body, haven’t told that woman your little family will eat dirt (preferably organic) v. going to McDonald’s and buying crap food for a new, precious, growing life and parents who need to stay healthy for the next 100 years so as to witness possible grandchildren, great-granchildren and the opening and continued success of the dolphin rescue center a certain son is destined to found and what is it with wrecking things, you wonder, as the woman carries on and you counteract being judgmental and awful by wishing McDonald’s would just get seriously zapped by alien spaceships, all McDonald’s, all over the world—and then, across all streets, the Burger Kings. Between his nap and the karate hustle: 62 minutes (not bad at all)

Between steaming vegetables, baking apple chips, whipping up the pancake batter for the next morning, food processing spinach and spices and carrot puree into a mush you will sneak into your homemade organic tomato sauce, feeding the cats wet food for the 3rd time in one day so they won’t pee in your closet, vacuuming up dog hair, singing a love song to the parakeet and drenching plants shocked by the summer that never ends, not even in November—between relentless domesticity and retrieving the boy from school: 37 (right on!) mins.

Hello tiny pouty blonde lady. Hello endless sunshine. Hello hot, garage-mouth wind. Hello giant Baby Huey kitten with your passionate purring. Shh. An increment has arrived. I am inspired.

And There Is A Storm And Here Is A Cat

Meow.

Locust

After the midnight bell, the battered
book closed, flame of the inherited
candle snuffed, we recover

from stifling night, erasing radical
dream-dyes we will never share
(though not because we are secretive)

and we remember I’ve just returned
from my coveted north where, I confess,
I met a locust on the beach.

Who told you (you ask), meaning
who accompanied me
as I would not know a locust

if it hit me in the face.
My sister (I confess) con-
firmed it. Silence.

We know, you and I
(sheer books warn us),
my sister is a Sybil, simply

ancient and (because you have seen
for yourself) we are in awe
of her layered visions. Locust

(I say). Buzzing up from grey sand.
Deserted beach. Deadbeat ocean. Bug.
My scream…Now that (you say)

I can imagine. You refer
to the small garden spider
high on our bedroom’s

most viewed wall, once, cupped
by me with a see-through plastic con-
tainer it bashed its tiny hideous dark

body against, panel
to panel, quick and hard
as I screamed, watching

my finest methods destroy
life. Perhaps you held me
afterwards and I’ve forgotten.

Perhaps the locust on ghastly
beach was not affirmed
by our Sybil as a sign

and we know why we lie un-
der things, shaded and ravenous—
lost to time.

Good Morning Boo

Wails, moans, boo, etc.

I know it’s a grand revising day when I sit down at the computer to check email, but end up obsessed with the Word document on the desktop instead, until my son reminds me it’s time to brush his teeth so we can head for the pumpkin festival, at which point I flee the computer, get us ready, out the witch-emblazoned front door and into the minivan (with snacks and sports drink bottle thing). When he’s jumping in the spooky bouncehouse with his friend and scream-laughing, it’s then I remember I neglected to check email, Facebook, the YA Muses, Weelicious, Louise Hay, my ocean tides link, Pinterest, any latest postings by those I subscribe to, The Pioneer Woman, hulu,  lowes.com/playsets, my Amazon wishlist, and Goodreads.

Oh—a VERY good morning.

“No pushing,” I cheerfully remind all those bouncing in the spooky bouncehouse. I glance at my son’s friend’s mom, my friend. She looks pleased, relieved, at ease. We are out in the world with our children, mired in gorgeous October sunshine. I nudge her and declare I am making a coffee run. She nods, pleased, relieved, at ease. As I purchase 2 coffees and a loaf of festival whole wheat honey bread, part of me is back at the computer, obsessed.

I live in 2 worlds.

Right on, PB. Keep at it.

Quote For The Weekend (Batman Edition)

The Joker: No, nooooo. I don’t want to go back to jail, Batman!
Batman (in remarkably, even slightly eerily calm voice): I know. But—you’re the bad guy.
The Joker: Yeah, I know. I’m the bad guy! But—but—AHHHHH! (repeated screams)
Batman: Robin? Let’s go to the water park.
Robin: Oh man, Batman, all right! Check OUT it! Let’s go!
Batman: Great. Okay. You get the towels. I’ll get the Bat Boat. Good work. I’m proud of you, Robin. Let’s go.
Robin: Wheeeeeee!

—My Almost 5 Year Old, Playing (overheard as I spiked his pizza sauce with carrot puree, super finely chopped broccoli, and flaxseed oil—while stifling laughter)

Da Bat(Man)

 

Quote For The Weekend (About Ends Edition)

I really don’t think life is about the I-could-have-beens.  Life is only about the I-tried-to-do. I don’t mind the failure but I can’t  imagine that I’d forgive myself if I didn’t try.
—Nikki Giovanni

Recently Write Naked posted this quote on her website and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head. Also this from Nikki Giovanni’s poem Choices: if I can’t have/ what i want…then/my job is to want/what i’ve got/and be satisfied/that at least there/is something more to want

Read the poem in its entirety here. I especially love the ending. Endings are difficult. Knuckle-whitening. The shade of white my knuckles turn when airplanes carrying me take off or land. It’s helpful to read endings nailed by their authors:

The eyes and the faces all turned themselves toward me, and guiding myself by them, as by a magical thread, I stepped into the room.
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

It’s the magical thread bit that gets me, the salve to the evisceration one receives from reading this outstanding novel.

Before she could lose her neve, or change her mind again, she ran towards the kitchen. She stared at the harmless-looking wall telephone for a second, took a final deep breath and picked up the receiver.
Alison Lurie, The Truth About Lorin Jones

I love this ending because it portends a happy ending after everything Lorin Jones experiences—and I love the prolific Alison Lurie, anyway. Forever. Bias is always at work amongst artists and their followers/aspirational types. You know?

But what if it prove that I am no harper?
That I lied for your love more monstrously?
Why, then, I’ll teach you to play and sing,
For I dearly love a good harp, said she.
Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

The best ‘adult’ fairytale ever written. My copy has marginalia, is battered from traveling everywhere I did for the last 20-something years, and signed. A talisman.

But this post could last forever and I am a mother with an early rising Pre-K-er. Shh, PB! What is bookmarked on your nightstand? The Winter Of Our Discontent. Introduction (Susan Shillinglaw). Page XV. About the angst of history possibly being lost if not written about immediately, but how? About common plateaus unaddressed, writers avoiding looking at the future, giving in to laziness, fear, or wot, wot? And Steinbeck on the brink of becoming a science fiction writer–or was he waiting for science to catch up to his fiction? Fascinating s***! Shh vs. Sleep. Wow–Monday is pretty much here…

Zzzzzzz…

Nebula

Horsehead nebula. So pretty. I could gaze at nebulas all day long. Alllll day…

As I work insanely on revising and getting used to my new progressive reading glasses (gah!), I urge you to pop over to Beth Hull’s website and read what she has to say about pitching agents and matters of that nature. Beth also has a post up at my daily stop: the YA Muses. There you can read about querying and related maddening multi-facets and absorb Beth’s exciting discovery. That’s right—absorb. Here’s to talented, thoughtful, generous writers taking the time to share advice, experiences and discoveries. I am very grateful.

Yours in revision, sequels and Blue Bottle coffee (no, not flies–coffeeeee),
PB

Notes From Around Town

As I idled at a red light, MacArthur Park and Alvarado, a spry, elderly woman entered the crosswalk, head down, waving her arms. She wore a crossing guard’s vest, jeans, running shoes. After she passed my car (of course she had my full attention), I saw she had taped a little saying in easy-to-read block letters to the back of the vest:

PLEASE DONT GO
TO HELL BELIEVE
IN JESUS

I couldn’t take my eyes off the word please, surprised she had included it. The light turned green, but she hadn’t finished her arms-waving crossing. We waited. No honking. Just. Waited. It was 5p.m.-ish. Pretty sure we were all, each clogged lane of us, weary.

*

Echo Park: deep in the throes of gentrification, but still a bit creepy. Trash in the gutters. Stray, emaciated dogs (how, why, how, why). Iron-barred windows. Ugly, offensive graffiti, but also lush, eclectic wall murals. On a fairly sad corner, a man had a hibachi going. He cooked meat, right there, and people were buying it. A few blocks deeper into EP, I parked at Chango and waited in line for coffee like I used to when I lived up the street. The waiters were each their own unique version of the Illustrated Man, only not creepy. They joked, or tried to, with customers, shouted out orders just to shout as they were the ones making everything, constantly smiled. The young man in front of me ordered two espressos with bulls shots. Instantly I saw two black bulls in a Spanish ring being shot by matadors holding rifles dripping with roses. I am old, I thought as the young man turned—I choked on a gasp—he was so pale, obviously coming down from some big thing. I am really old.

*

I moved my office from my bed to the living room couch so as to be right under the open windows and feeling the cool morning before we rocket up to 90 something again. House finches bicker in my yard’s trees. The dog snores, his nails tapping the Pergo as he twitches from dreams. Through the large windows looking out on the back yard, I am startled by how happy the rose bushes are in this heat, all deep green and blooming. Hard to believe the A/C will be on by noon. In October. As it has been since, it seems like, last March. Kids on bikes pass my house. I’ll f***ing kick your f***ing a** f***ing a**wipe-o-f***ing-holic! one yells, followed by scream-laughs fading. I sip my coffee.

It’s really time to move to the sea.

Office.

Note From The Writing House

Fit for a pharoah…

As I write, a fountain bubbles outside remarkable windows. It was bubbling when we arrived. No note was left instructing me to turn it, or the fountain outside the guest bedroom off, and I wasn’t about to go hunting for control panels or plugs. Both fountains—one lion-mouthed, the other fit for a popular pharaoh–bubble on into purpling evening. Whether doors/windows are open or shut, I hear water.

This consistency of sound is comforting.

I don’t need comforting, but do give me a constant outside of anything I’m used to as I recline in a borrowed house, worn from a day of solo-parenting and—oh. Listen:

1. An animal just skittered across the roof.
2. My son slumbers in the guest room, blanket pulled to his fair chin. Earlier? I threw him into nature, my aim so exact he melted down from glory. But there is a bathtub in this house–deep and claw-footed with silver taps completely unlike ours at home and perfect for dangling small, cheaply caped, plastic heroes from. Miracle bath for the wonder boy…Calm prevailed.
3. The doors here are mirrored—3 panels of mirrors to a door, any door—closet or dividing or otherwise–my image broken wherever I turn. Never seeing the real me is unsettling and a relief.
4. Glancing up from the keyboard—my face in a third of door-mirror, my head backed by pleated lampshade backed by bookcases loaded with titles provoking the novelist in me. Tortureblisstorturebliss…
5. Pretty sure we’re staying in the house of the ghost from Pottery Barn past (is there any other kind). Thank you for paisley patterns with birds mixed in. Thank you for jacquard and haiku-inspiring peacocks emblazoning cushions, tapestries, carpeting, life. Thank you for weathered wood far more aesthetically appealing than any wooden items currently occupying my living room (probably because my wood is weathered from cat scratches or cat pee scent removal solutions instead of The Aesthetic Brigade, who obviously know what they’re doing).
6. And, at last, (or at least since last March when the rainclouds went on strike) we’re only 75 miles from my heated valley, yet we’re cool—25 to 30 degrees cooler here at any severely pinpointed minute. This is what a little extra driving on a Friday in rush-hour, dredged gumption and energy previously classified as untappable get me: my sweater. And a sweetly, deeply sleeping, hopefully-sweet-dreaming son. Those thrills. O. Heaven…

There’s a poem in this house. It skittered through my hair and down my back (no, not creepy). Unraveling.

Quote For The Weekend (The Let’s Pretend It’s Still Saturday Edition)

If you prick us, do we not bleat?

Quote potpourri! Quote jambalaya! Quote papier mache! Quote mixed bean salad (with balsamic vinaigrette and BPA-free writing instruments)!

There is no need for a writer to eat a whole sheep to be able to tell what mutton tastes like. It is enough if he eats a cutlet.

—Somerset Maughm

How vain is it to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live!

—Henry David Thoreau (Or, I might add, tasted a mutton cutlet!)

I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.

—George Bernard Shaw (Don’t quote him on this! He was eating a hunk of mutton at the time…Spicy mutton…)

Writers talk too much.

—Dorothy Parker (Wise and true on so many levels. What? Oh, sorry. Shhhhh! Mutton, mutton…)

We romantic writers are there to make people feel and not think.

Barbara Cartland (Bring on the beef, Barbara! I mean: mutton)

All writing is pigshit. People who come out of nowhere to try to put into words any part of what goes on in their minds are pigs.

—Antonin Artaud (Really, AA—obvious mutton deficiency in your mad, mad life–but since you were mad, I forgive you. Baa.)

Mediocrity is more dangerous in a critic than in a writer.

—Eugene Ionesco (I could say the same about mutton!)

Right. Enough (mutton & quotations) already. Here’s to a fabulous week of revisions and creativity. Go forth and publish! And don’t forget the movie rights! Don’t forget to go to the movies. And perhaps a little gander into Veganism?

Once Upon A Time In Gloomy Oxford

1970-something, bookstore, downtown Oxford, England. Cloudy, moody late afternoon (there were so many, which makes the memories of sunny days–sky a blue to gasp over, cottonball clouds, Radcliffe Camera’s dome sunsparked, even musty old Carfax Tower rinsed and bright—stand out all the more). The bookstore, my favorite haunt in all of Oxford, smelled like tea (PG Tips) and paper. My mother was somewhere nearby, but I always felt deliciously alone when turned loose in the middle grade fiction section of this store, browsing for books I could really, hopelessly get lost in. That day: a booksigning, possibly the first I’d ever attended. The authors: a woman, whose name I can’t remember, probably because I do remember her novel wasn’t one of my favorites, although I was still excited to have her sign my copy, which I’d brought with me. Signing next to her, a man whose works I knew well and loved. Somehow, I didn’t realize he was also signing that day. Perhaps because there was such a crowd around him, perhaps my mother had told me, but my mind was in a book at the time, perhaps she didn’t know, either. I queued up eagerly. When it was my turn, I handed him the freshly signed woman author’s book and asked for his signature. I think I almost killed him. Oh, no, he said, passionately. This isn’t my book. I can’t. That he couldn’t had not occured to me. I was on the younger side of the middle grade market. Just a voraciously-book-reading-baby, really. Horrified, my eyes flooded with tears. I must have looked as devastated as I felt because he hastily flipped to the back page and, with conciliatory mutters, scribbled his name. When he handed the book to me, I clutched it to my chest in a protective manner and thanked him, all smiles. And stayed where I was, gazing, until the bookstore owner ushered me out of the way so the next child could have their book signed. I remember he was gaunt, a tower even when sitting down, wearing a blazer and although his demeanor was possibly terrifying, his voice was kind (even when panicked) and he looked children right in their eyes. Not so many years later, when I realized what had happened, what I’d asked of him, whenever I thought about it, I blushed.

Ican’trememberIcan’trememberIcan’tremember forgive me (as I try to forgive myself—and my mother, who has no recollection of the event—why didn’t she document it? We had cameras back then!), but I’m 99% memoretically* positive the author who looked me right in my eyes was Roald Dahl.

I can’t remember, but I will never forget.

*What do you mean you don’t know this word? Get back on the planet!

The After 9/11/2001 Post

Photo by Miss B

Last year I posted this piece on 9/11/11, the crux of which is:

One morning, as my boss and I walked across campus after a 9/11 tribute during which she’d read a poem to hundreds gathered at the special ceremony, we came across two young male students sitting in lawn chairs. The sign next to them said “Free Hugs”. The second we stopped, they leapt to their feet and threw open their arms, huge smiles on their faces. My boss and I looked at each other, nodded, and stepped straight into the embraces of strangers. For me, it was one of the most comforting hugs I’ve ever experienced. It filled me with gratefulness. And hope.

This year, I am sharing Miss MOL’s post instead of contributing one of my own. Her account of visiting Ground Zero a few weeks after 9/11/2001 gives me goosebumps, especially the ending. I highly recommend the read. You’ll be glad you stopped by.