NaNoWriMo day 10, 15,400 words

Again, I come bearing news that this is all going rather well. I'm liking this mettle my main character is showing of late. She's not just parts of me but is more complex, someone I'd like to get to know. I'm still on track wordcount wise, with 15,000 words written that I didn't have two weeks ago. Ten days ago. I had started a version of this story but had gotten sidetracked by a memoir project that now feels like a lot of rehearsal for what I am working on this month. I might have to mine some of what I already wrote someday when I'm struggling to keep up with my recommended daily requirement, as I think of it now. So far, though, I must say the pace is working with my life and habits. Keeps me off the streets, as I often say about writing and used to say about watching films for the BIFF selection committee.

NaNoWriMo, day 6, 10,000 words

Oh, rats. The dreidl song was out of my head for a while....

I just blew past the 10,000-word mark. Yippee skippee! I am enjoying reading what I'm creating. It is good stuff. I'm not holding back. I'm liking my main character's seesawing. She meets this nice lady early on and maybe you think, oh, no, is this going to be all nicey-nice all the way through? A parade of wise crones leading her to her own inner wisdom? But then the next person who says she'll help her is not so nice at all. And there are many more interesting reversals coming up for me to look forward to as the author -- heh, heh. Then a bit of a precipice. Beyond a certain point in my story, I don't have anything plotted. I'm just going to see where she goes from there. I have a feeling she will know exactly where to go.

Sleep well, y'all. I sure will, unlike my poor main character in the scene I just stopped in the midst of so I'll have lots of momentum when I pick it up again tomorrow, which is definitely one of the best writing tips I ever heard.

NaNoWriMo, day 6, 8400 words

I confess, when I think of my current writing group, one voice tends to chime out over the top of the others. When her voice said one day, "It's all good material!" after I had checked in about an impossible situation that I had drawn myself into, I felt a permission to use my own raw material that I hadn't even noticed I hadn't given myself yet. So that little nugget of commentary and advice turned out to be a gift, for which I am grateful especially because it has allowed me to unbarricade a particularly dark and awful corner and allowed me to face up to some facts I'd been avoiding for a while. More material, yippee! [with only the merest hint of sarcasm]

And Nanowrimo, the National Novel Writing Month, bless its pointy little head, is giving me a fun place to put all this. I even have some totems, some people I think of sometimes while writing. There's my mother and oldest sister, and now there are these wonderful constellations and planets shining in my sky: my writing groups, current and past, and Angela Shelton, who is a joyful example of someone standing up for herself and other victims of abuse. She too is taking some long looks at how we make abusers in our culture. There is the author of The Sociopath Next Door, Martha Stout, Ph.D., who gave me another key to a dark room whose door I can now fling wide open. I am loving working all of this memoir and information into the fabric of this story of a woman getting out from under an ugly, sad situation with an abuser at its core, who must begin the task of making good choices for herself. I confess I feel a little like I'm attempting to climb up there too by telling this story, which I hope can become another bright glow in a constellation that will illuminate more than just my path.



Exercise: Fill in the blanks: "_____s will be _____s!"

What phrase did you pick? One of my novel's themes is the expectations we project onto people because of how we identify them, how we sort each other into categories. Also interesting to me is how often we are right about the character of the person, but wrong about the specific details.

Plus it's a road story.

Beyond reframing: Deframing

In a story from today's New York Times about changes in The Museum of Modern Art's modernist art collections, I just read a great thing. MoMA decided to change the display of some of these paintings by removing their frames. I love this quote: “'Now these strokes explode off the canvas,' she said happily.”

Isn't that great? It's so simple – remove the frame and you've got a whole different painting on your wall. And you get an artwork that is in the state in which the artist first experienced it. I don't imagine most painters think as they're working on their latest artwork, “I'd better make something that matches that really rococo gold frame in the corner.”

And it's such a simple exercise, elegant like that last thought Byron Katie has you do: Can you picture this differently? Can you see this picture differently? In this case the answer seems to be an emphatic yes. (The whole question about pictures and frames makes me wonder about the history of picture frames. How did we come to accept flowery, flourish-filled ornatities around our paintings in the first place?)

I love the exercise, the mental leap you can take away from this. How could you remove a frame from a problem you can't see your way out of? How could you recontextualize your problem and change your view of it?

Review: David Carr's The Night of the Gun

Despite what my blog might have you believe and as much as I love making food for my family, I am more interested these days in memoir, in questioning my past and some of the assumptions I have lived with for many years. So it was with interest that I picked up a memoir that at first glance looked like it could have been written by my father and began to read.

Within a couple of days I had finished reading David Carr's memoir The Night of the Gun. I found it interesting because he was so messed up -- for a guy born with only one kidney, he played fast and loose with his mental and physical health, hoovering up enough drugs (I'd guess) to get an inner-city high school high on crack for days. Yet he was determined as hell to make something of his time every minute he was lucid enough to do something about his work. I found Carr's determination inspiring and fascinating (and so did he, examining it like it had just crept in from outdoors and draped itself over his neck [quotes mine, not Carr's]: "Say, what's this? How does it work? Can I use it for my own advantage? Yes!" I found Carr's backslides at least as interesting as his original transgressions against nature. Then he turns around and like Clark Kent emerging from the phonebooth, instantaneously swinging a great red cape, almost always gets treated as a veritable god in his work life, barely capable of doing any wrong. He gets the stories, interviewing people his peers believe can't be had, and he gets the stories right (almost always). But he eventually succumbs to the conceit that he can just slip under the radar as a garden-variety "suburban drunk," buzzing home on the train after work. Naturally, Carr gets out of control in a hurry once he follows that logical vapor trail. Perhaps this book is best read as Carr's love letter to his frontal lobe, which eventually gains the capacity to last inform his decisionmaking processes in an age- and responsibility-appropriate fashion over time. Time will tell if the reversal is permanent or if the old patterns are too ingrained, the old triggers too easy to trip.

Carr questions his thoroughly researched memoir enterprise all along and he is right to do so. That is an enterprise that can quickly get narcissistic. In fact here, he forces himself to be narcissistic. He says, I never excavated this belly button, and here is every shred of lint and many interviews to establish which piece of lint arrived when. But he is one of the lucky ones for whom his children did give him meaning and inspire him to change his entire way of life. Not too long after I tired of descriptions of the vortex of badness into which his life had devolved, I came to admire his dedication on behalf of his kids, his resoluteness to do right in their presences. Incredibly, according to his painstakingly researched and documented personal history, Carr successfully forswore crack around his "babies" but only backslid on this commitment when he was abusing alcohol (but surprisingly not cocaine or methamphetamines).

Reading his story, I even let myself wallow in a little jealousy of his twin girls, who had each other through it all and who as a result had no idea what their father had a checkered past until he told them about his bad self. I wonder if that came as a bigger shock to them than he expected. But he'd prepared them for it -- they'd hung out with ex-drunks and trying-to-recover junkies throughout their childhoods, as well as a cast of truly supporting characters who helped them get through many a tight spot.

Whatever talent he had, competition and winning was a prime motivator. Hardly a month out of rehab, Carr was already refining his story about having picked himself up and dusted himself off after getting dragged down by "the Life." He was already angling for a Best Comeback award. When a friend said he was applying for a job Carr wanted, back in the days when he was still using drugs, Carr held silent. Everyone later said he should have told his friend he'd been gunning for the same position. But no, he said nothing, and guess who got the job: David Carr did. By the accounts of the people he interviews in his memoir, as an editor he did well; some of the folks who worked with him disagree about how much good he did. But his gift for coming out on top in a competition has clearly served him well: he worked his way up to reporter for the New York Times.

I'm impressed someone that screwed up can truly have that much good in him. He says he always thought of himself as a good man with a bad habit. He gives credit to AA for placing his addiction and the rest of the physical and spiritual world in their proper perspectives in his life. I also noted that Carr returned to his Catholic roots. Catholics always seemed to have the most straightforward program for atoning for sins of anyone ("Take two Hail Marys and you're good to go"). There's a religion that doesn't drag you through the muck but lets you get on with your life, and this guy had some lost time to make up, so that served him well, too.

But Carr doesn't take any of the easy ways out, but rather takes a fearless moral inventory of himself. I think I would have regarded this as just another narcissistic James Frey-type junkie odyssey but for the part when his daughters are about four and he tries to get close to some women, but the women he's choosing are not what he wants for himself or his girls and he does something because he knows something's wrong but can't quite identify what it is. He talks to someone who helps him understand what he wants for himself and his daughters and what he has to change to make that happen. Then he up and changes. It's impressive.

Perhaps Carr is an unusually determined and competitive recovering junkie and drunk. I appreciate the object lesson he offers in his memoir. If someone like that can make that much of himself, and singlehandedly raise twin daughters, what the heck do I have to whine about?

Signs of fall: Canning concord grapes

I made jam twice this week and the second batch was the best ever. Three words: Pomona's Universal Pectin. Happy happy joy joy at that discovery. My jelly had five cups of grape juice, five cups of sugar, and jelled beautifully. I can hardly wait to try another kind of fruit. Pluot jam, anyone?

In case Miley Cyrus needs a little extra songwriting help

This is pretty terrible, most likely, but I gave myself the writing assignment to write a Hannah-Montana worthy song lyric:

Let's Go, Baby

I'll be a rock star
Gonna go far
You said you loved me so
Said you would never know
Said you just had to go
Here I am on the hill
Standing so still and
Waiting for you to
Catch up
Catch on
Catch on to it

(refrain)
Let's go, baby,
Up where we belong
Down into our groove
To make a new sound now
To make a new sound now, yeah

Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah!

Say you don't know
Say it can't show
It's just your clingy fears,
trying to bring you tears
Throw 'em out on their ears
Here I am on the hill
Standing so still and
Waiting for you to
Catch up
Catch on
Catch on to it

Let's go, baby,
Up where we belong
Down into our groove
To make a new sound now
To make a new sound now, yeah

I'm a rock star
Gonna go far
Now you are so far away
You were all I dreamed one day
Now I'm here to stay

So let's go, baby,
Up where we belong
Down into our groove
To make a new sound now
To make a new sound now, yeah

Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah!


Ok, time to boil jars for jam. Whatta life.

Separation bites

It's been a heckuva year so far.

Here's but one example of what in the rear-view mirror looks like a major trend.

The outcome of recent events has left me feeling like an ass to some of my family. On the other hand, I don't feel obligated to get into it with these people just because I'm from the same fucked-up family. I keep coming back to this fundamental reality for me: I don't want the kind of drama that swirls around them in my life any more. I still believe it doesn't need to be that way, and years of experience are bearing this out handily.

Since living closer to these folks, I've picked out some family: my husband and child and mother and best friend. With them I've found another love and acceptance that is sweeter and truer and more direct in a way there's never room for in the crises or the utter absences of the characters in my nuclear family. Sure, I miss that chance with my family of origin to connect and overcome our differences to find out what we have in common. Yet every darned time, the cost seems so terribly high.

I did find it exciting to clear out some massive swaths of space earlier this year. Made a big, overwhelming task shrink way smaller in one fell swoop. It was a fun demonstration of what could be done in a day.

But what little I have to offer never feels like enough. Especially if you start talking about compensating for a certain kind of parenting lacking any valuing of emotional intelligence and growth nor any acceptable physical reality except looking good.

Gee whiz, I'm a tough audience.

And about the drama: I know, I know, I'm the one who threw the shitfit at the end. Look, that was a bit of sleight of hand (and I was pissed at the way something was done with me). Plus: things the rest of the family did not know nor was it any of my business to share were going down at the same time. I threw a wall up to try and help with that.

I've gotten pretty good at getting the biggest bang for my travel bucks and got us a great deal and the right number of rooms. One of my family was amazing, relentless: wheedled for our locations and commitments and forced me to declare out loud that I didn't want to stay "with the others." That one wanted every detail under their control, everyone in place at all the right times.

Thing is, I stew about this murky stuff of origin, but mostly I find it preferable to not go into it with them, not stir it up. I feel sad about that in turn because I do know what I'm giving up. I know we won't have many more opportunities to reminisce about people we have known and places we have been, relatives we share. I know I'm sacrificing our communal desire to reclaim shared memories. But I find I have to let go of my need to share that journey toward an old age in which the more we age, the more we recall the older stories. But at the end of the argument I keep coming around to that small still voice in my gut telling me yes or in this case no no no not that way don't.

And yet, I'm reconnecting with others in my family, and putting one foot in front of the other, and continuing to work on my stories. They're all I have, except for the vast, buoying love of my current family, my family of choice.

You know what? It's true: love hurts. But separation bites.

Thanks for listening.

My kid's class has too many kids!

*Edit 9/6/09* I've been remiss in not updating you. Good news! They made a new class for our grade. As soon as I sent the letter below, I got a reply from the superintendent saying that I should talk to our principal. There was a letter from him in my child's classwork folder saying they were creating another class. Hooray!

***

This is what I wrote this morning.

Open letter to Dr. Chris King, Superintendent of Boulder Valley Schools, and the Boulder Valley School District Board of Education:

As a parent of a child attending third grade at Crest View Elementary this year, I am acutely aware of the difficulties you face: in particular those of balancing the Boulder Valley School District's budgetary concerns with the vast need for the rich resources the Boulder Valley School District has to offer. We in Boulder have set a high bar in the educational community, and in the problems we continually join to
address and correct in our schools. As a parent at a large elementary school that seems to be growing every day, I am grateful for the wide range of expertise and enrichment my daughter has been able to receive at Crest View. Crest View has proved a great resource for our family. Our daughter has an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) and nearly every teacher she has encountered at Crest View has supported her education and enrichment.

Now that my child's class roster contains 32 children, however, I am concerned that my child, who has special needs (sensory integration and vision issues, along with difficulty tuning out distractions) will find having so many kids in one room an obstacle to being able to pay attention in the classroom. One day this past week, her homework was to list a few wishes about school. She wrote, "I wish I could sit next to someone quieter" (she's at a cluster of six desks) and "I wish we had no squeaky doors."

Parents and teachers have told me Ms. Baxter is considered a part-time addition to the third-grade teaching staff, and so the ratio per teacher is considered by the district to be 25-to-1, but I fear that statistic does not reflect the reality of keeping 32 kids at once moving in a steady stream through the study, work, eating, and playing that fill their 6.5 hours at school each day. Only a subset of their time involves
the children being pulled out into smaller groups. Each third-grade classroom has 31 or 32 kids; the fact is, it takes more time to get 32 kids to wash their hands before snack and lunch. When it's snowy, out of 32 kids, more are going to need help with boots and jackets. Of course, these class sizes will demand far more from the teacher at conference times. And more children need that one-on-one time with their primary teacher every day, something for which there is no substitute. Some kids are fine -- you can just see they know how to get their needs met and get their work done. But my child has benefited so much more from her classroom time when she has had that one-on-one time and been able to develop a relationship with her teacher. I don't want her and the other kids to lose their access to their teachers; the kids are at an age when their teachers' understanding and encouragement may make all the difference in whether they become more or less engaged in their schooling in the future.

Dr. King, I urge you and the Board of Education to consider add another third-grade classroom at Crest View immediately. Our neighborhood is growing, and will continue to grow as new families move or relocate from other neighborhoods into the new houses being built near the existing Four Mile Creek development at 47th and Jay Road. As the economy rebounds, more families with young children will be able to afford housing in the neighborhoods surrounding Crest View, which will drive further infill in the area as well.

We are only going to continue to need more teaching and other resources at Crest View, yet I believe our community is prepared to do what they can to support their school. One of the reasons we chose to stay at our neighborhood school was the high caliber and tremendous commitment of the community toward Crest View. I am still impressed. I contribute time in the classroom with the kids and additional volunteer work on the Garden to Table program, and am certain I'm not the only parent or community member who relishes these opportunities to give back. I also believe this means you could ask us, the Crest View community, and we would be there for you with our energy and expertise to help you find and implement solutions to these problems. We are all talented and smart people who have a huge stake in our school. I hope we can all work together on finding the most creative ways to maximize our limited resources, and I hope we can act quickly for the sake of relieving the children and their teachers from the pressures they are facing every day.

Scraped: They paved it and put in a parking spot

Busy, busy! We're all back! The kid's back in school, and everyone's back at work. Me at home, and with my writing, which is going like gangbusters out of the gate already. I'm three days into this novel I keep thinking I could write really fast. It's a story about a woman who escapes her abusive husband on a Vespa, and I even have a working title for it and people and situations. There's even a research component coming right up, but I promise not to let that get in the way of the storytelling.

What I haven't thought of is a new name for my character, as she'll have to switch. It's holding me up a little. I'll have to put it in my head and shake it up at dance class, which is in 20 minutes.

So I was just dropping in to say hello to whomever is out there still. I'm glad to be home and back into the writing, and we have projects and things a comin' 'round the pike, so stay tuned.

Oh, and they finally scraped the little house at 1227-1/2 High Street away. My tree is still there, though. It's two parking spaces now. Nothing left standing but the trees that had stood on either side of the tiny house. All gone.