Singing in the lane

After a co-worker and I worked a particularly difficult day we hung around for a few minutes talking, or rather bonding, over the significance of our efforts, or insignificance depending on which side of the paycheck you’re on. That’s when she admitted something quite personal about herself, something she said she has always hesitated to share with others. Since I’m not shy about sharing information, especially someone else’s, I’ll just come right out and reveal…she sings in the car. Not only does she sing but when she’s on a long road-trip and plays car tag, you know, passing and being passed as the miles pile on, she stops singing if the same car goes by, she doesn’t want the total strangers she will never see again, see her as back-up for Madonna or Celine.

I laughed, not because it was funny but because I used to do exactly the same thing. That was way back when AM was standard and FM an option; I was the fifth Beatle. Now… not so much; NPR does not inspire auto-dueting.

Our after work conversation went from…since you revealed something…it’s now my turn. I talk to myself, in my car.

Because I write I sometimes practice dialog, opening sentences or log lines. If a particular phrase seems stilted I speak it out loud until it sounds just right. But…here’s the interesting and kind of weird part, sometimes, I’m interviewed. On the way to work the ladies of The View might be asking the questions and on the way home, Diane Sawyer or Anderson Cooper. Yes, I actually practice questions and answers. Why?

I am comfortable talking in front of ten people or ten thousand; I was interviewed by Martha MacCallum on Fox News once, national studio in NYC, (they sent a limo for my five minutes of Andy Warhol fifteen minutes of fame), so amend that comfort level to millions. It really doesn’t make me nervous, if I am prepared.

Years ago I was invited to be the guest speaker for a group of writers in New London. Even though I had garnered some small success I didn’t have a clue what they’d ask or what I’d answer. So I practiced my speech alone, in the car on the way to work and on the way home, until I felt comfortable with my presentation and with answering just about any question I thought they would come up with. One afternoon, as I was stopped at light, jabbering on and on,  I looked at the car stopped in front of me, it was one of those big old station wagons with a third bench-seat seat facing backwards. Three young boys were staring at me while I was being interviewed by Walter Cronkite. I went mute, embarrassed by those three little boys staring at the whacked-woman flapping her gums in the car behind them. (This was before cell phones and Bluetooth because it looks like everybody is talking to themselves now.) One of the young boys pointed his index finger at his temple and drew small quick-circles, the universal sign for, “lady you are crazy”.

Glancing into the back seat of my car, I pretended to talk to a child in a car-seat; an action in its self which qualified me for the funny farm.

Now, I don’t care who sees me being interviewed by Morley Safer; they’ll just think I’m on the phone.

The next morning when I went to work my co-worker asked me, “So, on the way in this morning you were interviewed by...”

“Oprah,” I said, “and you sang with…”

“Aretha,” she said.

Leftovers

This time last week we were anticipating the wrath of a storm which we believed would be bad, awful even, but who thought it would irrevocably change the lives of millions and almost the entire coastline of New Jersey, New York and much of the Connecticut shoreline. Over a hundred lives lost from Sandy, the heartbreak and misery she wrought on one of the most densely populated areas of this nation will continue for a very long time. As one whose writing-gig is to find humor in difficult situations I have failed miserably on this one. I’ve heard only one joke: A new drink, ‘The Sandy’ a watered down Manhattan. I laughed, sort of, probably because I don’t drink and it’s a little too soon for jokes.

The stories I have heard, in person and on TV, break my heart, the generosity of strangers mends it. I’ve spoken to many folks, trying to find the humor angle, and other than family members and friends whose discordant personalities have no business sharing two hours over a resplendent Thanksgiving table of dead bird, let alone bunking together for a week, (when one is out of power and the other out of patience); I find absurdity but no humor. But I did discover something odd.

The morning after the storm, once my husband and son-in-law cleared the downed trees from our driveway and country road, my daughters and I decided to zigzag our way around town to check out the damage. Many roads were blocked, there was no power, and it was still early, which means there was no one to tell us to scram when we gawked in amazement at the damage.

One town over, and only few miles from where we live, there is a causeway. It’s less than a mile long, bordered by marsh and cove on one side, and Long Island Sound on the other. It’s a beautiful place and though it is vulnerable we hoped it survived. After we twisted our way through town to get there we were disappointed that it was barricaded. Huge trucks were parked at its mid-section, which meant to us, the causeway had been breached by the floodwaters. We were devastated. I parked. Walking around the barricades we approached the work area. Other than the workers we were the only people on the scene. It was comforting to see that the causeway was fine and that the crews and trucks were actually there to cut up and remove the dozens of whole-trees and piles of driftwood which had floated up onto the roadway during high tide at the height of the storm. The immensity of the task seemed daunting considering one of the pieces, scattered among the huge whole trees was a three foot thick slab of tree trunk, at least thirty-six inches across. The tree it had come from had to have been hundreds of years old.

We didn’t bother the DOT crew and they didn’t shoo us away. My daughters’ snapped pictures as we slowly walked the causeway surveying the scene. That’s when I noticed something odd. At first I didn’t mention anything but finally I had to.

“What’s with all the tampon applicators?”

“I noticed them too,” one of my daughters said. Pink and white plastic tubes were scattered everywhere in the sea grass and debris on the causeway. A while back the son of a friend of ours told us that where he lives on Cape Cod, they wash up on the beaches by the hundreds. I told my daughters, that though I thought ocean dumping has been stopped, they were probably from trash barges which dump city garbage way off shore. The rest of the trash must deteriorate but the plastic tubes do not. It was a bit disconcerting to imagine that the one thing which remains of our garbage, after many years in the ocean’s hostile and caustic environment is a bunch of tampon applicators.

As we proceeded to leave the causeway we noticed something else that was little strange; a black running shoe, bent and shriveled from being in the water a very long time. Nothing rather odd about a soaked and shrunken left shoe deposited in the detritus of one of this nation’s worst storms in history, except that next to it, only inches away was its mate, the right shoe. They were not tied together they just lay there, next to each other, as the pair they always had been.

Of the many images of utter destruction I have seen on TV, and damage I have witnessed in person, it is the pink and white plastic applicators which speak to me of human-kinds odd lasting impressions, and the amazement of a simple pair of side by side running shoes at the end of their race against tides and devastation. There’s a lesson there somewhere. I’m just not sure what it is.

           

           

Splish splash, spark in the dark

We just got power back.
Thank you Mary Mother of God and I'm not even Catholic. 

The quiet was unnerving at first but it was nice, and a pain in the ass to be part of the universal struggle to keep the frozen, frozen and cold, cold. I can handle any of it except not being able to flush. We filled the tubs, and we bailed to flush but really, I mean really, we are so accustomed to electricity to pump away the food our bodies rent.

All around my town houses are off foundations, walls washed away and lives forever changed, just like last year. They fixed then and they will fix again, the unfixable wrath of mother nature.

I stood on our town beach today and watched the waves pounding against the seawalls and foundations of the homes, the homes that were left. "The sea...she was angry".
It was beautiful and it was a message,"Treat me better," she says, "or else I'll do this to you all over again".

My husband and one of my my son-in-laws are off to deliver the extra ice and water we have left, to friends who are still in the dark. My youngest daughter and her new husband drove the ice and water here to us from Massachusetts, 2 1/2 hours away. They helped us cut the downed trees which blocked our driveway and our country road. My daughters and their husbands are amazing.

Soon a line will be forming outside my bathroom doors so friends can wash away the detritus of the last couple of days. My empty nest bedrooms will be full tonight, come on in, you're all welcome.

Gloria, in the dark for eight days.
Irene, in the dark for three days.
Sandy, 24 hours.
We were lucky this time, very, very lucky.

Remembering, what you forgot to forget

Childhood, a 100 yard dash to gone.

Heads up young parents, you think you get it but you don't. At least your kids' childhood is saved on a sim card. All we have is a box of old photos, a few VCR tapes and our own memories. No matter the volume, it's never enough.

http://www.divinecaroline.com/22106/132969-flight-remember

Spin baby spin

Every morning I check my horoscope on two websites. Hardly ever are they in sync and if they are it’s usually me drawing a distant parallel between the two so that the positive nature of the message may better form my day. 

I am a planner; I like to know what’s going to happen and this daily joke-book look into my future opens the curiosity door for a few minutes. It doesn’t pattern my day, like stepping on the scale once did, but it reminds me of the wonder of what we simply do not understand about ourselves.

Like, why do good people suffer and bastards win the lottery? How is it that there can be so many opinions about just one thing? Why is it that when somebody is really nice, I’m suspect of their motives; maybe they are just being nice? And, when our stomachs are full why do we ask for more?

I want more; I want everything, is that so bad? I’m humble enough to ask, why me and realistic enough to ask, why not me? Maybe what we are is nothing more than mice scrambling up the pegs of a roulette wheel while the gods take a spin. Some of us hold on to the same life-long peg and never let go and some of us jump from peg to peg thinking that movement discerns the outcome. I have come to realize that sitting still or scrambling has nothing to do with which number comes up; it’s the spin baby, it’s the ride around the circle that life is about. 

But I wonder when I click on my sign, for just a fleeting moment I think, this is the day. This is the day the heavens will open up, the angels will sing and the sweet syrup of dreams fulfilled will flow across my plate, for me, for my family and for mankind. 

Pancakes, now I’m in the mood for pancakes. What are you having for breakfast?

Jump back in

Yesterday, Sunday, was an amazing day, sunny, a bit windy yet calm by demeanor, if days have a demeanor. My husband went fishing early, the house was mine, and clean, so I didn’t have a long list of to-dos…I could do anything I wanted and what I wanted to do was write. 

All finished in my mind, and with little actually written, I had set aside my latest book. The decision of whether to continue has been rattling around in my head like a monotonous chorus and melody playing over and over in my mind; should I, or shouldn’t I? Because the ideas, to continue or quit, were so prevalent I knew not to dismiss either the pro or the con. A few days before, I read a comment from a writer I often see jumping in here and there as I wander from blog to blog. She suggested I reread my original post about the book and try to grasp that new-found enthusiasm. 

I did.

And on Sunday I recaptured all the characters and plot and ideas and gathered them at my kitchen table for a conference. With beautiful music playing in the background I began again. This time, I didn’t write what I thought someone else might want to read, I didn’t write ‘proper’, I wrote in a voice which is characteristically mine. Is the main character me, thank God no, but she sounds like me, she says fuck and shit, she laughs and she cries, just like I do.

I spent Sunday writing about her ‘discovery of place’ and as I did I cried because what she was going through was so tragic and heartbreaking…I couldn’t help but recall my own setbacks. Were the scenes overly sentimental, do they manipulate the reader’s heart, are they depressing, no they are none of those things because I don’t like to enter the heart of the reader just so I may break it later. I like to warm the heart, inform the mind in a wide-eyed way and make readers smile after the ugly-cry.  

Ten pages.

Doesn’t sound like much but what I did was rediscover the wonderful world handed to me by the little voices in my head, and the mysterious place from which stories come, during a ten minute ride in my car.

When the movie is made, J is invited to the screening. I never would have restarted if it weren’t for her.

Think of your last amazing day of creating another world and how good you felt while giving birth to it. Just think about it, you certainly don’t have to share it here. Remember the magic, than pass it on somewhere, so another writer teetering on the edge of the next ten pages, might use it as a platform for a high-dive to a realized dream.

Legacy in glass

Years ago I was a designer of stained glass windows.  There are only certain cuts you can make with glass; cuts create weakness, so the technical part of the craft has to be designed in as if no weaknesses exist. It’s a tricky art form because the limitations of the glass create artistic boundaries you must observe. These rules constrict artistic license, deviate from them and your work eventually destroys itself.  

Once the drawing was done, the project always felt finished in my mind. I saw it complete, back-lit, in all its glory. Then and only then did I have to plant ass in chair, take glass-cutter in hand and begin to build, cut, grind, wrap and solder. When complete it was always more beautiful than what had existed in my mind or in the drawing on my table. 

I’ve designed and built, glass pieces as diminutive as jewelry, and as massive as a series of eight themed windows for a church, each window 3 feet by 12 feet. Those windows were not only a challenge because of their size but also because of their theme. Everything within the design was symbolic. Fitting those symbols in, with the limitations presented, became a test for me, was I good enough, could I do it? I not only drew the ‘pretty-pictures’ I helped cut the glass and assemble. My designs worked. They are some of the grandest of my achievements. For generations to come I know people will sit in that church and during times of great personal turmoil they will be comforted by the blueprints which flowed from my heart. When the minister drones on and on they will study the glass because that’s what you do in church when you are bored and done with prayers. In the reflected colors of those windows they will weep in grief and joy and they will feel whole again because of their faith and because around them symbols in glass, and the tradition of their beliefs, washes their souls. My windows, my legacy, designed with respect for their God. 

Writing is like designing and building those windows. There are confines and rules and yet writing allows me to step outside my studio, to run my pencil off the page and think outside the sketch-pad.  In fact if I do not reach beyond that boundary the work destroys itself. When the story is in my mind I see it done and then it’s time to plant ass in chair and fingers on the keyboard and cut, grind, wrap and solder the words together until the project is finished. The monumental task of writing a book is like filling that church with colorful symbolic light and images. Only when the window of the last page is held vertical does the light shine through and the symbols and the colors of the story come to life.

Words are my legacy now. My art form is not limited to windows in walls, and when someone weeps or smiles or finds joy from something I have written, it is like a legacy in glass. What are your art forms, what is your legacy?