Process

I've been working on Ghost Story recently. It came out of nowhere, but that little piece I wrote in workshop struck something deep, and so I've been trying to do something with it.

I made a little headway. But I was doing something I often find myself doing: I'm great at setting the scene, the atmosphere, but when it comes to writing what happens, I suck. It's almost like I want to write stories with no plot. I just want readers to infer the plot. I kept asking myself, "What's this story about?" "What happens?" And every answer feels wrong and contrived.

Then it hit me. I'm writing around the story. There's something really scary about actually writing the story...the real one...the one that's asking to be written. It's about stuff I don't even like to think about. That I've told no one. And I guess I don't want anyone to be hurt by it when it's written down.

But now that I know what the problem is, I've decided to write the story, and perhaps I'll never show it to anyone. Maybe I will. Who knows. But at least it will be written.

How I love Jane Kenyon

This poem says it all. If I've been delayed with responding to your e-mail or phone call, now you know why...I'm stuck under the rubble.

Indolence in Early Winter

A letter arrives from friends. . . .
Let them all divorce, remarry
and divorce again!
Forgive me if I doze off in my chair.

I should have stoked the stove
an hour ago. The house
will go cold as stone. Wonderful!
I won't have to go on
balancing my checkbook.

Unanswered mail piles up
in drifts, precarious,
and the cat sets everything sliding
when she comes to see me.

I am still here in my chair,
buried under the rubble
of failed marriages, magazine
subscription renewal forms, bills,
lapsed friendships. . . .

This kind of thinking is caused
by the sun. It leaves the sky earlier
every day, and goes off somewhere,
like a troubled husband,
or like a melancholy wife.

--Jane Kenyon

On blogging

It's curious...the things that get commented on, and the things that don't. Most of what I post here is poems, bits of writing from my writing practice, drafts of stories, and I don't get many comments on those. I'm not sure why. Maybe because people don't feel comfortable for some reason. (Or my worst fear is that I'm boring the crap out of you.) I get lots of comments on my rants, which is fun.

I've wondered about those bloggers who get double-digit comments on a single post. What does that mean? Do I have to go out and comment on other people's blogs to get comments on mine--like--is it a communal thing? Do I have to start up blog relationships? Or do I just have to write about more scandalous things, like excrement? (Not to knock it...for a good, fun, raunchy blog-romp, don't miss Gone Feral.)

Maybe I will. A completely new and inappropriate direction for Tchotchka Palace. Stay tuned...

Five things I could write about but I'm too tired to take the time

1. My obsession with making pumpkin muffins.
2. T's obsession with his new cell phone.
3. The dream I had last night where I was trying to fly to Mexico but forgot to renew my passport.
4. The rain.
5. The election.

Everyone laughed at the second sentence

Just four walls at the top of a long stairway. The perfect attic turret for a madwoman to pace before she throws herself down the stairs. Window panes radiate the chill of the night inward. Condensation runs down the glass to hunch on the sill. Brown, heavy curtains can't decide whether to open or shut. They hang uncertain of their future, their purpose.

The light is bright--too bright--it exposes every crack and flaw, every seam and joint. It beats down relentlessly and drowns out the soft sounds of traffic. It sits up in the corners of the ceiling, watching, waiting for something to happen.

A poem for you on the eve of the election

Let My Country Awake
Where the mind is without fear and the head held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening thought and action;
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

-Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)

E. said I should document my life

And it was a good reason to blog everyday, I agree. Except when I have days like today. I began the day with the worst conversation I've ever had with my mother in my entire life.

Should I even go into the details? The short of it, is that she's known for some time that T's dad was at the courthouse with us when we got hitched. Although I asked him to keep quiet about it, dad-in-law apparently blabbed on and on about it to my parents, making my mom felt excluded and unimportant.

Granted, I umderstand why she feels this way. It's because she has a traditional notion of weddings. You get married in front of your family. It's a family affair, and if you don't have family there, well then it must mean that you don't like your family.

I feel even more strongly about it than I did then, that a wedding...our wedding and our marriage...is too personal and intimate to have observers. I don't regret not having her there. All I regret now is that we didn't wait to do it until T's dad went home. I just let it all happen and I should have known better than to rely on the "it was coincidence" excuse.

I'm just pissed that now, my marriage, is about her. About my excluding her. I'm pissed that I'm feeling guilty about it, and fearful that I'm some sort of freak show who has emotional issues, and I'm pissed that here I am again for the umpteenth time in my life asked to put her needs ahead of my own. I'm pissed that I'm constantly asked to live up to someone else's standards, even though they are not my own. Goddam, and I'm pissed at T's dad for not having the sense to keep his mouth shut.

I heard about this guy...this American Arab...not sure if he's a citizen or not but he's been in the US for a long time (yes...this relates, I assure you). And some how he got on the terriorist watch list. Not just extra security checks, but major restrictions on his life. At least for a while. Until he decided to document the daily minutia of his life online. He's made his life publicly transparent. Now, the government leaves him alone.

It's a genius solution on his part, but disturbing at the same time. No privacy. Nothing you can keep to yourself. Is it the American mentality? Or human nature that the masses don't like individual secrets? I feel like Winston Smith from 1984, where I'm struggling to keep that one, small thing to myself. Just a thought, a feeling that I hold alone. Have you ever tried to keep a secret, or ask someone to keep a secret for you? How long did that last before they outed you, or you felt compelled to come clean? Or someone finds out and it becomes a huge insult to them, even though you never intended it to be one. Maybe not even a secret...just something you didn't want discussed. You just want it to be without sharing it? That's how I feel about T. My truest, deepest feelings about him are not to be discussed. They are for me alone.

48 Things You Could Care Less About

Aw man...I already failed this NaBloPoMo thing by missimg a day. Oh well. I didn't have much to say anyway. I'm going to eek through today by lifting a meme from E.

1. FIRST NAME? Kablammie

2. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? I've always wished for a good story to tell, but alas, no.

3. WHEN DID YOU LAST CRY? Two weeks ago in the middle of my writing group. I was reading a short piece I had written out loud, and all the sudden foumd myself crying out of control. It was as if one person wrote the piece, and another totally different person was reading it. What I mean is that while I was writing it, I didn't feel emotional at all about it.

4. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING? If I have the right pen, yes.

5. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCHMEAT? Ewww.

6. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU? I ask myself that all the time. Maybe, but I'd think I was a pain in the ass.

7. DO YOU HAVE A JOURNAL? Yep.

8. DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS? Yes.

9. WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP? I think I would.

10. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL? I used to love Golden Grahams as a kid. I have trouble eating cereal now. It makes my tummy unhappy.

11. DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF? Sometimes. But it takes too much time.

12. DO YOU THINK YOU ARE STRONG? I call T. to open pickle jars.

13. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM FLAVOR? Come on! Chocolate.

14. SHOE SIZE? 8.

5. RED OR PINK? Huh?

16. WHAT IS THE LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF? My obsessive self-doubt.

17. WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST? E., D., my bro, S.

18. DO YOU WANT EVERYONE TO SEND THIS BACK TO YOU? Steal if you must.

19. WHAT COLOR PANTS, SHIRT AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING? I'm in my pjs right now.

20. LAST THING YOU ATE? Pumpkin pie and champagne.

21. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW? The last thing I downloaded on iTunes was a Nike running mix. 45 uninteruptted minutes of beats. The other day, I listened to a CD of ghost stories from Art Bell's radio show.

22. IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE? Aquamarine.

23. FAVORITE SMELL? Pine needles on the forest floor.

24. WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE? T.

25. THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE YOU ARE ATTRACTED TO? Rebelliousness, height,.

26. DO YOU LIKE THE PERSON you stole THIS from? Love her!

27. FAVORITE DRINK? Non-alcoholic: Irish breakfast tea with milk and sugar. Alcoholic: fruity/sour concoctions.

28. FAVORITE SPORT? Triathlons

29. EYE COLOR? Blue/gray

30. HAT SIZE? Big. I have no idea.

31. DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS? Glasses.

32. FAVORITE FOOD? Right now, I'm hot on middle eastern foods like hummus and tabouli.

33. SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS? These questions are getting silly.

35. SUMMER OR WINTER? I'm more energetic in winter. It's the scandinavian in me.

36. HUGS OR KISSES? Depends who is giving them. Mostly hugs.

37. FAVORITE DESSERT? Chocolate chip cookies.

38. WHO IS MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND? Dunno

39. LEAST LIKELY TO RESPOND? Don't know...

40. WHAT BOOKS ARE YOU READING? Crescent, by Diana Abu-Jaber and The Poetics of Space by some french dude.

41. WHAT'S ON YOUR MOUSE Pad? A black bump for resting your wrist.

42. WHAT DID YOU WATCH LAST NIGHT ON TV? Lucky me...I didn't. I wne to a fun party instead. But I'm obsessed with DVDs of All Creatures Great and Small right now.

43. FAVORITE SOUNDS? Rivers and streams, cats purring

44. ROLLING STONE OR BEATLES? Beatles

45. THE FURTHEST YOU'VE BEEN FROM HOME? Barcelona

46. WHAT'S YOUR SPECIAL TALENT? I've got a green thumb and animals like me

47. WHERE WERE YOU BORN? DuPage, Illinois

48. WHO SENT THIS TO YOU? Stole it from E.

One a day

It's NaBloPoMo...national blog posting month. (When I told T. he asked "Who decides these things?" I dunno. This person did. Some blogger somewhere decided it and it spread like a virus.) It's sort of a take off on NaNoPoMo where people try to write a novel in a month, but instead, you write a post every day.

Not sure whether I'm committed or not to posting everyday. Maybe I'll make like an Oregonian and commit now, but flake out later. (Ha. That's supposed to be a funny.)

Ghost story

I am upstairs, alone in my room, alone in this whole big house. My window looks out over the back yard toward a stand of glittering trees caught in the moonlight. It's light is so bright it x-rays the whole house and makes the walls dissapear. I am a toy-sized doll spotlit on the second floor, my fear transparent.

This house makes me do things I know are crazy. I run up the stairs away from nothing. I sleep with a crucifix under my pillow. I leave the light on all night long.

I talk to her. "I don't want to see you," I say inside my head. I don't need to say it out loud.

I think about her sometimes--my stepbrothers' mother who died in this house. I think she is here. I know it, and I imagine she sits at the edge of her sons' beds and watches them sleep.

But they aren't here now, so she has nothing to do but stand outside in the hallway and watch me. She looks at me and wonders what I'm doing there in that room and makes me think twice about crossing the hall to the bathroom.

That's where she is. In the stairways and the halls. She stands at the threshold and never crosses over.

My whole time, I hardly remember any one else in that house. I know they were there, but what I recall are rooms without people. I knew the contents of every drawer and box because I spent my time searching through them. I cataloged the whole house--the linens, the candles, the old clothes, the heavy box of coins in my stepfather's drawer. I went through them and then back through them looking for what I might have missed, what had not appeared before.

And it makes me think now that she was sending me where she couldn't go. Placing in me the desire to open up closets and dig through to satifsy her own curiosity. How much of her was still there, how much was gone?

I surprised myself

I surprised myself by bursting into tears as I read this to my writers’ group last night.

I love to brush my dog. It’s instant satisfaction. She rolls over and stretches out her white belly and straightens her long hind legs and points her toes. If I could keep brushing her forever, she’d stay that way—give up food and walks just to feel the brush’s bristles over her skin.

If she were a painting, she would have great whorls like a fingerprint in her fur where the brush left a path behind. She’s a map—a topography of shoulder blades and hip bones. Brushing her, I walk a landscape away from messy human details toward what’s really important: simple warmth, touch, softness, pleasure.

I wonder at our world’s hard surfaces. How buildings are made from steel and glass instead of round earth. Gleaming cars drive across rough concrete and I wonder, where is the soft water? The gentle wind? The warm sun? We’d be better off walking through tall grass. Why do we make the world this way when what we really want is to be cradled?

At night, my dog nestles into sleep on a soft pillow near the foot of my bed. She circles once or twice. It’s a comfort to hear her steps on the fabric. To hear her sigh as she settles in. All is right with the world. She is safe, I am safe. We can all rest for the night, dreaming next to one another.

Things I know about love

(An early draft.)

1.
Dear God,
let me be damned a little longer, a little while.
I've read all about nirvana and the books say
you don't get reborn, but I'm not ready.

Turn me into a cow, a fish, a blood-sucking leech,
but let me come back, yet imperfect to this imperfect place.
Let me taste the muddy water, crawl up on shore
into the frigid air, burrow into the river bank
pack myself in mud for the long winter.
Keep my gills moist and my body warm.
It's better than nothing.

I'll take it. It's a bargain if in spring the slanted sun
begins to thaw my side, beats my heart with salty, slow blood,
blinks my eyes open just in time to catch the dew dissapear
from the grass.

2.
Your name has all the markings of a church.
It's a sacred space.
A word I can't say out loud.
I keep it in a little box,
set it up where I can just see it,
use other names instead.
Like God's name, it's only to be
spoken in drastic circumstances.

Glass, fall, river, ring

He lost his ring in the river. His platinum wedding band. It was there somewhere between the bridge and the falls, but that was a long stretch.

Who would have thought his hands would shrink in the cold water. It was there when he started, and suddenly he noticed it was gone. She'd never forgive him. He needed a plan.

He would hire a team of divers to search the river! Every muddy wallow and algae-covered rock. Though he wasn't sure they'd ever find it he had to try. She'd kill him if she didn't think he'd done everything in his power. He'd drain the river if he could.

They had only been married a few short months. Thinking about their wedding day, it seemed he was just an observer watching the scene from above. He watched himself shower and dress. He watched himself walking down the aisle before it all began, bridesmaids and groomsmen wheeling around him. He was out of control--at their mercy. Stand there. Smile. Say this.

They were married in her church, a modern building of angles and glass. Her priest a small little man who was too fond of red wine. Going to church to these people was like putting on a hat--a Sunday bonnet of wisps and trim, nothing to keep his head warm. It had been years since he had been in a church. But he remembered the dark wood, the smell of the oil they used to polish the pews, the way the darkness in the room forced his eyes toward the ceiling in search of light. Here, in this church, fluorescent lights ensured he could see his neighbor's brand names, their glassy stares.

He's taken this trip on a Sunday too. It was almost impossible to get her to let him go. She didn't much see the value in floating down the river with his buddies and a six pack each when the good lord called. He he argued it was just one Sunday and he would be back in church next week and maybe he'd even think about going to that progressive dinner she'd been talking about.

This was a punishment. A sign. Maybe he should just go tell her that. Forget the divers. He would say he had a moment with God right there on the river and he understood the importance of church now. It would be better than weathering her anger.

Learning about sex

I
My Sunday school teacher is Larry. He is a gray, long man without children of his own. On Sundays, he teaches us about the Bible while all the grown-ups are in church. There's me, my best friend Ann, a girl named Candy who's the daughter of the minister, and some boys.

Larry about talking about Jesus's mom, Mary. He keeps calling her, "the virgin Mary."

"What's a virgin?" I ask.

The room stops. Everyone is looking at Larry who is now a shade of pink.He looks at me for a moment before he answers.

"It's when a woman has never had intercourse."

"Oh." I nod. I don't know what intercourse is either, but somehow I know I should not ask. Larry has moved on to something new and eveyone's eyes are locked down on to their Sunday school books.

II
My cousin Shelly and I play Barbies. We set up a whole Barbie house--making coffee tables from ashtrays and beds from the little boxes my mom gets her checks in. We spend more time setting up the house and dressing Barbie than playing with her.

Shelly is three years older and knows more than I do. Like one time I told her about meeting some boy by the creek and one of them pulled his pants down and showed me his penis, but she told me I must have been egging them on. She listens to Van Halen. She has one of their tapes with an angel smoking a cigarette on the cover. If I had that tape, I would hide it, but Shelly just leaves it out for her mom to see.

She tells me we have to undress Barbie because Ken is coming over. She makes them lie together on the check box. She makes noises for them.

"MMMM. Ah. Smack."

Shelly calls this "making love."

When she leaves I keep setting up the Barbie house, and now it's hardly worth it to dress her because I just have to undress her for Ken. Making love is the only thing she really does besides sit next to her coffee table.

I start asking my mom to buy me records. I want Oliva Newton John's Physical. I ask for a 45 of Survivor's "I've Been Waiting." Then I take my records over to Ann's house and we listen to them on her Mickey Mouse record player.

Harvest time

I found myself waiting to dig through the moistest earth, where I knew the most potatoes would be, like a child waits to eat her most favorite kind of candy last. I've never grown potatoes before. Once I started digging, I found dozens, lying under the earth like treasures.














I love this time of year. The watering is done. There's nothing more to tend to, except the harvest.

Oh yeah...and making jars upon jars of pasta sauce with all the tomatoes.

You're telling me about energy?

It's like I am a dog--my body turned slightly away from him and I do not make direct eye contact. I see he is wearing a plaid shirt, and that the pitbull is in the doorway and another man in dreadlocks stands behind the pitbull, but I do not know the color of the first man's shirt. He is saying things at me, things about positive energy and how animals can sense your energy, and he understands--stereotypes and all--but it's all about staying cool, you know?

The pitbull is in the doorway but it wasn't just moments ago. It was muscling its body toward me silently. I saw it and yelled.

"Hey! Hey! Your dog!"

And the man in the plaid shirt came running yelling "Vicious! Vicious! Get inside!" He was slapping and pulling at her.

I just want to get away. It is a dark night and it is too late but he is lecturing me as his precious Vicious hovers just inside the house.

The most important thing I have to do today: a book meme

Via Elizabeth:

1. One book that changed your life: Writing Down the Bones, by Natalie Goldberg.

2. One book that you've read more than once: The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton.

3. One book you'd want on a desert island: His Dark Materials trilogy, by Phillip Pullman (it's technically three books, but oh well)

4. One book that made you laugh: High Fidelity, by Nick Hornby.

5. One book that made you cry: The Color Purple, by Alice Walker .

6. One book that you wish had been written: The book that I will write someday. But if it were already written, I'd just have to write another one.

7. One book you wish had never been written: The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand

8. One book you're currently reading: Undaunted Courage, by Stephen Ambrose

9. One book you've been meaning to read: Other Electricities, by Ander Monson

Two things I thought of today

1. A co-worker of mine recently lost her older brother. Her parents were both long passed away, and this left her with only one surviving family member, also a brother. It occured to me what that must feel like...only one other person in the world who shares that special family bond. Who knows exactly how you grew up and those certain things your parents used to do. How, in the midst of that loss it might make you feel closer to those that are left.

I still have both parents, my brother; the people who have known me for my whole life are still here. I just saw S. and when he was here, I couldn't help thinking about that scar he used to have on the bridge of his nose. It's gone now (my mother--semi-obsessed with erasing physical flaws--had a doctor sand it down). I'm one of the few people that remembers that scar. We share a similar mental topography. The same corridors, kitchens and basements line our memory.

But, what I thought today, is that I wonder if the knowledge that they are still alive makes me free to travel the world, to live far away, to wander in my thoughts away from my family. Will I feel more tied, more relucant to put so much space between us when some of us are gone.

2. I was reading Cary Tennis' column in Salon, Since You Asked, and learned that there is an unspoken "tradition" among men in communal bathrooms. Men leave reading material for the men that visit after them. I asked T. if this was true, and he said "Yeah...I guess so." What's up with that? How is it that men get indoctrinated into this tradition, but it doesn't carry on with women? What does it mean, exactly? It's rather intimate, actually. It's like "Hey, I read this while I pooped. Now you can read it while you poop."

Rambling tchotchka

I was driving home from work this evening listening to one of my favorite books about writing--If You Want to Write, by Brenda Ueland. E taped it for me, maybe more than a year ago. I listened to it then, and then recently rediscovered it in the pocket on the driver's side door. I love Ueland because she encourages me to be dreamy, and resist stereotypical ideas of what good writing is, and how good writing gets done. She's like an encouraging grandma, who says "just be you...everyone will love you for who you are," and for a moment you believe her.

Anyway, she's talking about being authentic in your writing, and never lying...always writing down your true experience and I'm thinking "Okay...my experience right now. The traffic keeps stopping for no reason. We're traveling at 60 miles an hour and suddenly it stops in front of me. Why? My throat hurts. It feels like someone excavated a hole somewhere near my nasal cavity, and I know that's how I usually feel after work...like someone's scraped out the inside of my head with the edge of a blade. I keep dreaming in excel templates...because that's what I do all day and so it's infecting my dreams. My dreams are orderly and stacked, and I think it's impacting my creative life. Uh. there's a giant brown dumpster outside that house. I wonder what's going on. T will be gone tonight. Should I knit? Write? Swim? Clean?"

Anyway...I'm hoping to spend a little more time in the upcoming weeks being dreamy. I committed myself to too many real things this summer. I should know better. Triathlon training takes up much of my free time, so does gardening and all the while the half-poem about the elephant funeral sits in my journal unworked on.

But speaking of lying...it's not that I've been lying on this blog, but I've been concealing the truth. I started out wanting to be courageous and tell the truth...no matter what the cost. What did I say "go for the venom"? I have not done that. I've been scared. I am scared. So what should I do? Pick one thing a week that I'm scared to death of writing down and just do it?

Iraqi signmaker

He has put his colored ink away.
Black is the color of the day.
No one orders a bright funeral sign.
He traces out the curving letters
naming lost uncles, brothers,
wives and daughters--in memoriam.
Not writing who killed them, how they died,
death squads close in his mind.
Timid customers choose the smallest size,
their tribute will be in flames by sunrise.