Some Time Off

I've been having some vision/eyestrain stuff going on, so have decided to take a blog/internet/dare I say it, book/ break until next week. I am trying books on tape, large print (which definitely makes me feel like an old lady, at forty-something), only responding to crucial e-mails, etc. I am going to try not to look at screens of any kind for more than about ten minutes a day. No X-Files, either. Aaaargh! On the upside, for my birthday am going to see A Midsummer Night's Dream performed by my all time fave acting company -- Shakespeare & Company, in Lenox MA. If you get a chance to go, do. Their productions are usually amazing. And I am going to eat a lot. Breakfast with my writing buddy Aimee at Amanouz in Northampton, unless it's the Miss Florence Diner in, naturally, Florence, MA. A late lunch at a great Vietnamese restaurant in Pittsfield, MA, called The Dragon. And probably some kind of pricey snack at Shakespeare & Co, while meandering around the extensive grounds, being regaled by Elizabethan sword-fights and lute-playing. So it won't be like Lent.
Although I'm pretty convinced that re-focusing from time to time is a good idea, especially if it is a re-focusing away from screens and towards real life. I suggest that for the next week, you recharge your visual batteries too, as much as you can. Take some time off from screens. Look at the real world, as much as is possible. And of course, write it, draw it. Have fun. I'll be back next week!

Perchance To Dream

I have been reading Stephen King, which is out of character for me. Usually it's Virginia Woolf, or Eudora Welty, or Charlotte Bronte, or Jane Austen, or Henry James, or Barbara Pym. The living writers I am stuck on are Annie Proulx, Louise Erdrich, Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Michael Cunningham. I await their books like an eager lover. But this Stephen King thing is new, and unanticipated, and, frankly, a little scary. Scary not because of his label as a horror writer, but because of the other subject matter he delves into, and does so incredibly well. Mainly, the scariness of being a writer at all. Even a writer of shlocky books. For even writers of shlocky beach-read best-sellers are tapping into something huge, and very much beyond us in our usual rounds of work and errands and drive-through McDonald's meals. Something that is lovely beyond belief, and also extremely frightening. He says in the book I'm reading now, Bag of Bones that the skin of the visible world is thin. And he is right. There is so much more beneath the surface, and it feels like a really real place, too.
For writers, the trance state we enter when we're in "the zone" leads us to that place. Even when we're writing stupid things, even when we're writing chick-lit, even when we're writing about bankers or IRS agents. And even when it's scary, we want to be there, maybe more than we want to be in the real world. I always think that really only my dogs keep me tethered here, instead of spinning both bright and very dark fictions in that trance forever. So, I am hooked on Stephen King because perhaps more than any writer, living or dead, he gets it right. How that is, to enter that bright and dark place, to want more than anything to stay there for awhile, maybe forever. And how things from that world break into this one, often around writers or artists.
Of course, that trance state is most analagous to dreaming, really is a kind of waking dream state. And it's the same in that sometimes you just don't want to wake up. If the dream is a good one, or if it's just so real it seems rude to leave it. Sometimes on waking it's this world that seems wrong, and we can't seem to shake that dream. So, start paying attention to them rather than trying to always slough them off. Keep a dream notebook by your bed, and on awakening, commit Acts of Attention to them. The funny ones, where you're knitting an office building, the ones where you're dancing with an old flame and don't want to ever wake up, even the scary ones where a huge lumberjack in a red flannel shirt is standing in your bedroom doorway, looming and terrifying you by having no face. Sometimes the only way to shake them is to face them. So if you Perchance To Dream, you know what to do.

Harvest

It's time for fairs and peach festivals and sweet corn and too many tomatoes and zucchini. Today I made salsa with some of the too many tomatoes and the corn, peach and blueberry crisp from fruit I picked in my Uncle's bounteous garden a few days ago, and I believe that zucchini and eggplant-roasting is also in my future. Sometimes it seems like just TOO MUCH. Too much all at once, too much lovely fresh food, too many events to pack in before the end of the summer, too much perfection. And yet, not enough stunningly hot days, followed by soft starry nights. Not even enough thunderstorms. The nights are cooler, now. So cool I am led to think of the blasting winter that will surely follow such glory as we've had this year. I want to get all the goodness out of this last bit of summer, can every tomato, lop off millions of corn kernels to freeze for the freeze ahead. I want to wring every last drop of fun out of every last day, go to the beach and lie in the sand, feel the hot sun on my skin. I want to eat fried dough with maple cream and huge grilled turkey legs (VT State Fair), and seafood chowder (Rochester Fair), and the best fish and chips ever outside of England & Ireland, bathed in malt vinegar (Heath Fair). I want to watch flowers of fireworks burst in the black night sky, and sweat a lot while running through Queen Anne's Lace in the fields with my happy dogs. I want to go to the gardens of stately homes and wander along in a white dress carrying a parasol, then have a decorous picnic on the intensely green lawn that rolls up to the huge behemoth, the white whale of a house. I want to ride horses through the forest, swooning at the smell of pine and hay-scented fern and horse sweat.
In other words, I want to live the Harvest, live the downswell of these days of summer's end. I want you to live them with me. Make yourself a list of Harvest desires. Do at least half of them, committing Acts of Attention all the while. Notice EVERYTHING. Then write, then draw.

Success

It's such a strange word, and an even stranger concept. I went to Melville's house on Sunday, and that led me to ponder the idea of success. Herman Melville is perhaps the most posthumously successful American writer. Moby Dick is always mentioned in every list of the five great American novels, and considered the absolute greatest by many English profs, literary critics, and just plain readers. So why did the writer of this masterpiece have to a) live off his wealthy in-laws for years, and b) then have to take a job as a customs agent in New York until he died in obscurity and relative poverty? Nobody's quite sure. But his novels and stories only gained popularity (by leaps and bounds) after his death.
Arrowhead, the house in which Melville wrote Moby Dick is in what is now the pricey edge of the smallish city of Pittsfield, Massachusetts. And although by our modern standards is a large, lovely Colonial farmhouse, it must have been pretty hellish to live in in the nineteenth century. I have lived in houses like it, idyllic houses in summer, with views of sunny field and lush forest, with wildflowers waving like a gentle sea. But in the winter, woe betide the misbegotten souls who have to haul firewood, trudge through howling storms to feed the animals, get in supplies to last for a month at a time, between days of decent weather. I feel somewhat akin to Melville, having lived like this myself for years, in the same pursuit , the pursuit of writing. And I wonder if he felt as I do, that even without what the world terms "success," (the word seems to me a combination of "suck" and "cesspool") he was happy in his study, or on his "piazza" (which was what they called the rather narrow and unpretentious porch) gazing at Mount Greylock, writing away. My measure of success, and possibly Melville's too, on good days, is the words on the page. The ideas and characters leaping to life. Possibly, someday, I will make a little money doing it, hey maybe a whole pantload of money, who knows? But will I have "succeeded?" In the eyes of the world, maybe. It will be a whole lot easier to find decent writing space, that's for sure, maybe even my very own house, and it's always nice to be able to pay the bills on time, buy nice food, give parties, purchase gifts and beautiful notebooks and state-of-the-art laptops. But it will really just be more of the same to me. The words on the page, the ones I'm happiest with, the ones I want to share = success.
What is your version of SUCCESS, the non-monetarily based kind? Is it the look on your child's sleeping, contented face after a day at the beach? Is it your dog's eyes gazing at you rapturously while you brush his silky coat? Is it a camping adventure where you remember everything and have a fine time cooking over a campfire, then everyone is gone to sleep and you get to have that last cup of cowboy coffee, admire the stars, and the last red embers of the fire like castles, and your amazing ability to rough it in style? Is it the huge dahlias in your garden, as big as platters? Is it, like me, the words you have written moving across a page? Whatever it may be, remember it, commit an Act of Attention to it. Write it, draw it.

Perseids

It is August. My favorite month. My birthday month. I am so pleased to have a summer birthday. Particularly a late August birthday, when the sun still beats on us, when the corn and tomatoes and squash bury us in abundance, when the green still surrounds us and nearly overwhelms us. The roads like cathedrals of trees, the lawns almost neon in the strong light of early evening. When the Perseids startle us with their silent fireworks, if we are lucky enough or smart enough to lie under them for awhile.
Here in the hills, where I used to live and Sparky still does, the nights are sometimes downright cold in August. It was 40 when we went to sleep last night. Sparky does not believe that this is the usual thing, having lived in California for so long. He cannot reconcile himself to the 80 degree days and the 40 degree nights. Sparky thinks something is not right, maybe it's global warming. But it is only the harbinger of winter in the midst of brilliant summer. I remember so many late summer nights, bundled in blankets watching Shakespeare plays or lying on the wet ground in my down jacket dug out for the purpose of watching the light show of the meteor showers in some field or other. Here, we bask in the heat of August during the days, make fires at night. That's the way of it. And if we embrace it, we are rewarded in astonishment. So I advise you to embrace the chill, embrace the night, to find astonishment. Find a field, take a blanket and a bottle of wine or a thermos of hot chocolate, and wait for the Perseids. Or look for an outdoor play or concert to go to. You can bring your happiness book (and a flashlight for the field). Make notes during intermission, or during a break in the meteor viewing, if you want. Or let it all overwhelm you, then write/draw after, in your house, sitting by the fire you might need, or by the air conditioner, depending.

Every Day

Why is it so difficult to love your life every day, never mind every moment? Oh, it's a question for the sages. But it's admirable, it's even courageous to try. And one is usually rewarded. Or at least often. For even in the most mundane moments lie happiness, ideas, interest. I say this again and again, to all you, to my writing students, even sometimes dare to say it to my relatives, my most unflinching critics.
Speaking of my writing class (which I do quite often these days as my students are often in my thoughts), I was watching them last night, writing away, working on an exercise. And I realized I had not done this before. Just watched them write. I for some reason didn't think it was polite. Or I was too busy doing my writing -- I usually do the exercises, too, so as to encourage them and be able to give them examples if they ask. But last night, for a goodly time, I just kind of surreptitiously watched them. And I was gratified and amazed and humbled. They were all so absorbed, each in their different ways. One was studious and poised. Another very workmanlike. Another lay back in her chair as if it were a recliner, looking dreamy as her pen moved across the page (which I understand completely, as Laz-Y-Boys are my desk chair of choice). They were lovely. They were inspiring. They were working on something that came out of my head. And that was the humbling part.
So those moments, when I watched them doing the fairly mundane activity of writing, became charged with interest, with caring, with happiness. It seemed like nothing special, but it was, because I was really PAYING ATTENTION. So I come back to this again and yet again:
to increase your happiness, to love your life, really pay attention EVERY DAY, for as many moments as you can. It helps to record your observations. Write it, draw it, make your happiness book in the most unlikely places, at the most mundane moments. Today, don't go anywhere special. Try not to. Do everything you usually do, but PAY ATTENTION, as much as you can, whenever you can. Write or draw your favorite moments, the bits that made you love your life.

Characters

I have been haranguing my writing students about finding and developing characters. I am trying to impress upon them that there are characters everywhere you look. And that writers need to have a continual curiosity about the world. I think they are beginning to believe me. Maybe. Sometimes they still look skeptical, though.
Really, what I want to say is that to be human and happy you need to have a continual curiosity about the world around you. Especially the people around you. Including yourself. You have the potential to be a character. Your spouse does, your mother, your baby, the spotty teenage boy working at the 7/11 where you buy your fuel, and the old guy who is always in there buying scratch tickets. All you have to do is observe. There are stories all around you, waiting to be seen, waiting to be cared for like a stray animal. And like a rescued dog, they may bite you, but mostly they will be grateful and love you and enrich your life. Especially when you write them down, which is the best way to care for them.
Mostly, good stories spring from characters, like Athena from the head of Zeus. So you want to watch people, listen to them, love the stories they tell. Even when they're mute stories. The big guy with tattoos on every discernible inch of his body, mowing the lawn for his tiny mother who is watering the flowers in her house dress as he plods behind the lawnmower. The old guy wearing a different jaunty Hawaiian shirt every day, shelving books in the library, always and forever, every time you are there thinking there couldn't be that many books in the world to shelve. They are everywhere. There are stories wherever there are characters.
So the exercise of the day is to find one or two Characters. You can find them anywhere. At work, at the supermarket, walking down the street, at home. Observe them for a bit. Notice what they wear, how they look, what they tell if you overhear them speaking. Then write/draw their story, or what you think their story may be. Make it up from their physical characteristics, their setting, their mannerisms. Or if you're brave, just ask. Sometimes that works, too.

Wherever You At, There You Be

This is a tough lesson for all of us time-travellers of the mind. We tend to think in terms of our past or future in our inner monologues. But as one of my favorite old Cajun musicians used to sing, "Wherever you at, there you be." So it helps not only to make the best of where we are at, but to really celebrate it and enjoy it. I am particularly ready to espouse this belief, as it is summer, and a fine one. That always makes right now seem wonderful, when the lilies are splendidly, yellowly blooming, when the big puffy cumulus clouds drift lazy through the blue bowl of sky, when I can feel the air on my skin, and snuff the smell of hay-scented ferns.
But then, it is not always easy. The last day or so, I've been wishing I was in Japan, where money seems literally to be falling from the sky, or showing up in random mailboxes all over. And right at this moment, I am in the library, and my usual cozy computer station was taken and I have to be out in the open at a big table, surrounded by children playing video games and a guy who always talks to himself about stuff not working. Or he mumbles about nothing being the same. But you know, that's OK. I have become much more flexible about change the last few years. I am no longer particularly upset by it, as the guy to my left seems to be. I am trying to be where I'm at, and the guy next to me is part of that. The construction on my road that makes the house shake is part of it, along with the lemon lilies and the blue sky of summer, along with my beautiful dogs panting in the backyard and licking the sunscreen off my legs as I try to write amidst the noise of trucks and big machines. And I do write, and I do drink the coldest of cold water, and I do sweat then the breeze comes over, and the light shimmers in the pool next door and I can imagine the beautiful coolness of the water, and in the beautiful coolness of my own mind I write of forest pools where deer come down to drink.
So, the exercise today is Wherever You At, There You Be. Pick up your notebook and pen, take it with you into another room, or in the car, and sometime, when you feel really present, write/draw whatever is before you. Try to stay right in it, describe everything you see, smell, hear, etc. Then love it all.