Triangles

I haven't written here in over a week, and I haven't visited many of your blogs. I have, mainly, been out of sight. I was helping to take care of my uncle who had a bad fall and was recuperating in rehab and then my house. I was glad to do it as he's family and has been very good to us, but man oh man. Caregiver central. Fortunately, my father and cousin Philip came out this past week and helped me with all things caregiving, so I'm feeling a tad more sane. Here's my cousin Philip getting all the love from me. He is really more of a brother to me than cousin as he lived with my family for a number of years when his parents, my aunt and uncle died, and my parents became his guardians.

I sure do love him. I didn't get a good picture of me and my dad together, although I did get a good picture of my dad wearing a man purse, but I won't post it here. I'll tell you this much -- he looks good even in a bright orange cable sweater AND a man purse.

I went to Portland a week ago with my dear writer friend, Tanya Ward Goodman. She sprang me from the confines of home and caregiving, got us a fabulous hotel room and coaxed me to not only do some writing of the goddamn book but to walk over 12,000 steps on both days we were there! We went to see the glorious Pam Houston, Lidia Yuknavitch and Cheryl Strayed celebrate the recent publication of Pam's new memoir Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country. I haven't yet read it, but I heard her read parts of it, and it sounds beyond beautiful.

I was called up on stage that night with Pam, not because I'm a writer or because I am about to finish my goddamn book, or even because she knows me, but because she was playing Truth or Dare with Cheryl and Lidia, and one of the truths was that she was in a sorority, and one of the dares was for her to sing a sorority song. She was up on stage and turned to the audience to ask whether anyone else was in this particular sorority, and I don't know what came over me, but I revealed that I was (Reader, you might not be aware that I was in a sorority, and it's not something that I talk about nor will I, but even though it's sort of embarrassing in this day and age, I actually found beautiful lifelong friendships and had a smattering of fun back in the day -- plus, you know, Pam Houston was one, too), and there was an enormous roar in the place and I fainted dead away. Just kidding. I raised my hand, and because this was in PORTLAND and everyone there was a Lidia, Pam or Cheryl acolyte, no one else in the entire place (and there were hundreds of women in there) owned up to being in this particular sorority, EXCEPT FOR YOURS TRULY. So, yeah. Pam called me up on stage, and everyone around me yelled at me to GO! so I went. Pam sang and I pretended to sing one of our sorority's stupid songs, and it was actually kind of fun if you like singing with a famous author in front of two other famous authors and an auditorium full of Portlanders. Here's the still photo from the video that Tanya took:

And here I've gone and revealed it to more people. Holy shitoly. Now you know everything about me. Just so you won't hate me, here's a photo of me back in the day at a party. I was not drunk but I was wearing a wig for some reason, and that blue shirt is actually a dress that I tucked into a pair of tuxedo pants. It was 1983, for god's sake, and I was thin.

Sigh.

Here's another one.

How about that clown collar? Underneath was a black velvet dress with a jewel neck. The collar buttoned on. A few drinks later, here I am:

So, there you go, Reader. I showed you what I was doing back last week and then way, way back to when.

What's happening with you?

Re-Cap

I sort of panicked when I logged in to the old blog and saw that I hadn't written a post in over a week. I don't know what's happening to me, but I'm finding it difficult to get the words down and out. I feel a sort of pressure to write well here -- to write something meaningful, to exercise the muscle for the offline writing, but that takes so much out of me. I used to come here and just gab on some days, and I kind of miss that. Do you? I feel that we have a whole lot of gab to deal with nearly every single moment in the clusterfuck that is our country right now. Why should I add to it?

Here's some gab: Henry was home for nearly a month and is already gone and back to college. It was wonderful to have him home and weird, to tell you the truth. It was like he never left. The fighting with his brother, the piles of clothes on his floor, the empty cereal bowls and crusty spoons left out, the boxers on the floor of the bathroom -- shall I go on? But left he did indeed -- back in August and now again, last week. I actually remember what that experience was like -- to leave for college and then to come home. To have your parents still -- your parents. I cringe at how I probably was insufferable then. Not that Henry was insufferable -- to the contrary. There's a certain amount of angst, though, that comes with the age. We live in weird times and seem so much closer to our children than we were with our own parents. At least I think.

In other news, I did a reading on Sunday with a couple of dear writer friends. We were part of Diane McDaniel's Backyard Literary Salon and read from works-in-progress. I had done a podcast with Diane a few months ago, and she invited the incomparable Chris Rice and Tanya Ward Goodman (who also did podcasts with Diane) to read, too, along with her own writing. We had a really great turn-out of about sixty people, got over our jitters and stood up there and rocked it. I think the others would agree that it was glorious. There's something awesome about expressing yourself in amazing company -- I felt galvanized to keep at it -- to finish up MGDB*.

I so rarely like to post photos of myself all alone, but the inimitable Carl Jackson, Bird Photographer Extraordinaire and love of my life (!) took these and I actually like them. I'm trying to shed some vanity in 2018 and get over my snaggle tooth, my chins and roundnesses. I'm trying to consume less and create more.

Hold me to it.

*My Goddamn Book

and she shouted, "Bravo!"

Girl on the Flying Trapeze, 1936 Julia Thecla

her ethereal and sensuous portrayal of dreams, fairytales, and planetary realms were extraordinary explorations of alternative social orders.

DePaul University Art Museum, describing Julia Thecla 

I watched Wings of Desire the other night on a bed in a dark hotel room for the thousandth time, had forgotten the black and white film turning to color every now and then. We are black and white yet both see color, now and then, but this was after and one of us dreamt (him) and the other knew every word (her). Now and then. The German faces, the wide smile, the tilted head, the closed eyes. There's something spiritual in the library's murmurs, the way the angels walk among books, heads bowed over them. Wings on a bronze statue, a wall that divides Berlin. An angel lays his head on the man's shoulder, yet the man jumps over anyway and the angel screams. The desire for life. The woman on the flying trapeze, how later she shrugs out of her robe, her back, sinuous. The desire for love, to love. Even before I swung above the crowd myself, then, I was told you've an amazing back. I've a memory like a trap. I remember every word. You've an amazing back, he said. Now. Twice I've been told, then and now.

This morning Sophie groaned in her sleep before dawn, and I ran into her while she seized. It was a violent one and I was smacked in the face by one of her arms. I bent over her, gathering the limbs, what flies. I've walked the rope and swung on the trapeze, so many little people below. My back is strong. It never hurts. I don't feel gentle toward the situation in some moments. I don't feel gentle toward her. It's where I leave off and she begins and there's a space there filled with nothing. When I gathered her in my arms, limp now (then), a pieta, I did cry. And cry. And cry. And cry. She was spent and it cost me tears which are, in comparison, nothing.

The dog barked once and a package was thrown through the slot of the front door, made a thump. I left Sophie to go and pick it up, a small but heavy box from Seattle. Inside, a heavy book, The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova, translated by Judith Hemschemeyer. A pink Post-it over the crook of the poet's nose:

Dearest Adorable --
Reach for this
volume when
you most need
to counteract
the crazy.

❤️️  Leslie  xo

Yes, I took it as sign.
The signified and the signifier.

I seem to myself, as in a dream,
An accidental guest in this dreadful body. (Anna Akhmatova)

Several hours later, with no prompt from me, I received a picture of a painting on my phone, a girl on a trapeze, awkward yet strong.

I am thinking of you, she said (Tanya, my friend, not the girl). I asked her (Tanya, not the girl), Who painted this? 

Julia Thecla, Tanya said, I love her. 

Thecla is a forgotten Chicago painter of the 1930s and 1940s, in the school of magical realism. I did not know her.

Magical realism, a literary genre to which I have been drawn (then) -- Marquez, Borgia, Allende -- is also a genre of art, I learn (now). There are details (Sophie's groan, her bed, the seizure, her arms, my back, my tears, her limp body) that are real and then something strange, unbelievable  (the thump, the package, the Akhmatova, the note, the painting, the girl on the trapeze, ), through a hole in the door, via air.

I fly through the air with the greatest of ease

Threads, Bits and Pieces of Gratitude and Exercise

Santa Cruz, CA

I'm reading a children's book called Cloth Lullaby The Woven Life of Louise Bourgeois. I have a weakness for children's books, have quite a collection that I keep adding to, and this one complements a recent exhibit I saw downtown of Bourgeois' work. Really, it's so beautiful I could cry:

With the remaining fabric of her life, Louise wove together a cloth lullaby. She wove the river that raised her -- maternal pinks, blues in watery hues. She wove a mother sewing in the sun, a girl falling asleep beneath the stars and everything she'd ever loved.












Speaking of tears, last night I shed some. Unbloggable. Oliver came home late after a Dodgers game and brought in a package that had been left outside the house by the mailman. It was addressed to me in beautiful handwriting and wrapped in the prettiest paper, but I couldn't figure out who had sent it. Honestly, I was feeling not a little anxious and unsettled from the unbloggable, so when I opened the package up and found a pound of artisanal coffee, a mermaid sticker and a beautiful note written by a long-time reader of this blog, I really did start crying. I am moved to action and advocacy by your writing, she said. I won't "out" the kind and generous person who sent me this gift, but I am filled with gratitude for her and for this community and for -- let's face it -- the bountiful universe. As my friend Carrie says, There are no accidents.

Last weekend, I was in Santa Cruz with my dear friend Tanya Ward Goodman (whose book Leaving Tinkertown is a must read) and Kari O'Driscoll, whom some of you might know and all of you should know as the writer of The Writing Life. We rented a little house near the ocean and spent two and a half days walking, eating, writing and talking. Mostly writing. On one of our walks, Tanya and I discussed the tyranny of gratitude -- how there's a whole business dependent on the concept of gratitude and how it's unrealistic and often depressing to be or feel grateful. I compared it to the tyranny of exercise, but that's because I hate to do it and Tanya had pressured me to get out of bed, a place I vastly prefer, and go on these long walks along the coast. I think Tanya believes walking and writing go hand in hand, and given her output I guess I'm going to have to surrender to that tyranny. What did happen is that I began the reconfiguration of MGDB*, and I think I've finally found the key, the flow, the whole shebang.

I'm going to surrender to gratitude as well as exercise because it's filled me up to overflowing.

*MGDB stands for my goddamn book which I know is an ugly, ugly thing to say and hardly grateful, but it's good isn't it?

Hedgebrook, Day Twenty

It's the twentieth day. I have yet to see an owl and am resigned to making meaning out of that -- that I've never seen an owl.

The writing is going well, although I am stumped on how to wrap things up with the book. I talked for a long time to one of my best writer friends and comrades yesterday, and she had some good advice.

Where are you? she asked, and she wasn't talking about place. I sat in the window seat with a pen and a notebook and tried to answer it, got up and typed a bit and around.

Where are you? is going to lead me to the end, I think.

Here's a poem by Leonard Cohen:

These Heroics

If I had a shining head
and people turned to stare at me
in the streetcars;
and I could stretch my body
through the bright water
and keep abreast of fish and water snakes;
if I could ruin my feathers
in flight before the sun;
do you think that I would remain in this room,
reciting poems to you,
and making outrageous dreams
with the smallest movements of your mouth?

A Night Out for Poetry and Prose at Stories in Echo Park

I hope to see some of ya'll there!

Please Come

I think if you click on that picture, it will enlarge and you can read the fine print. Tanya Ward Goodman, the author of Leaving Tinkertown, should have been listed first with stars around her name, but she's ridiculously humble. If you haven't read her book, yet, please do. You'll never forget it. Helena is the other reader, a beautiful, beautiful poet who I've had the privilege of listening to in our little Tuesday writing group.

It's going to be fun, and I hope to see some of you there!

Oh! There's also this:

Ya'll come on out.

Spread the word.

Let me know if you're coming!

Spreading the LA Love In a Messy Way

Obviously I didn't take the above photo of Los Angeles, but there have been plenty of days that I've looked east and seen that exact view and subsequently marveled over this piece of crowded land that I call home. I'll be honest and say that I almost never agree with my friends who really don't like living here. The complaints are always about the traffic, about the nasty entertainment industry, about the crowds and the many ugly neighborhoods, about the tackiness, about the culture and the plastic surgery and the bad schools and the excessive privilege. I'm moving back to the midwest, eventually, one friend always tells me. I would never want to grow old here. Friends who have also lived in New York say that there's no comparison, that they miss the grit and the darkness and the chic and effortlessly cool people, the walking and the honesty of that city. I, too, adore New York and feel as if the almost nine years that I lived there were among the greatest of my life. I don't think a day went by that I didn't think God, I love this place! and less so, but still frequently, God, I hate it here! I see my fair share of the grotesque here in Los Angeles -- even at my son's benign high school in the San Fernando Valley, you might rub elbows with Larry King and his eighth wife, Sylvester Stallone picking up his kid in a gold Bentley, and a veritable freak show of eighty year old men with trophy wives and teenage kids. But you'll also see the California boys and girls of your imagination, golden skinned water polo players with tousled, stiff chlorine-tinted blonde hair, towels around their waists, jumping into jeeps with surfboards on the top. I won't go into Los Angeles' weather, because you might up and leave, if you haven't already, but what might surprise you is that the culture here -- the sheer size of the city and the incredible diversity -- rivals that of any other city in the world, I think, and you only have to drive

a

bit

to take advantage of it.

Last night, I had the pleasure of listening to my great friend, Tanya Ward Goodman, read from her new memoir, Leaving Tinkertown. She read a bit and then her brother, a tattoo artist and incredible musician with a gorgeous voice, sang songs that he'd written to accompany her. The performance was at a Masonic Lodge in the famous Hollywood Cemetery -- yes, a famous cemetery -- and it was filled with old people, hipsters, artists, attorneys, NPR folks, screen and television writers.  I met an attorney who works with families of kids with disabilities, and it turned out that she reads my blog daily and also knows of the organization that helps kids in the foster care system that I also work for!

Today, I finished a cake for a young girl's sixteenth birthday, and now I'm off to type for an hour at a performance art thingamajig going on at USC. I'll be pecking away at John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, part of a typing pool, and as soon as I find the announcement about it, I'll post it. Maybe I'll even get a photo.

Here's the cake in process:

I don't mind getting old in Los Angeles, by the way, as long as I have these things to do, the sun still shines year round, and I'm able to make a living doing the things I love.

First Lines

Tanya Ward Goodman

First lines of novels can either make you stand there in the bookstore, lie there on your bed, grab you so that you don't so much as read but slither into a story and get lost, or they can make you sigh and put them down. Even if I hadn't already read parts of Leaving Tinkertown, by Tanya Ward Goodman, my dear friend and writer extraordinaire, I would be floored by it. The memoir just arrived in my mail yesterday, and I'm nearly halfway through. Here's the first line:

I was conceived in a pickup camper on the New Mexico State Fair Grounds when my parents were on the road with the carnival.

You all need to hop on over to your local bookstore and order it, or go to Amazon and buy it. Right now. This moment. Today. Leaving Tinkertown is about a woman and her father, a beloved and eccentric artist who died too young of Alzheimer's disease.

I'm so excited for the world to finally read Tanya's story, I can't stand it!

Here's another excerpt:

Although they had stopped traveling with the carnival full time, Dad still packed up his brush box and hit the road a dozen times or more each year to work as a showpainter. Sometimes he painted brand new rides like the Sea Dragon and the Flying Bobs in a factory in Wichita, Kansas, but most of the time he headed out to one dusty lot after the next to slap color on rides that had been kicking around the road season after season. Carny folks call this being "with it," which means that even if you're not on the road, the road is always with you.



Watch the video.
Buy the book!

Leaving Tinkertown

Tanya Ward Goodman, one of my dearest writer friends who I've sat with for literally hours and hours, talking about writing and reading and parenting and husbands and food and movies and plays and everything else under the sun -- who I've read my own words aloud to, thousands and thousands of words, and most importantly of all, whose own story I've read in bits and pieces over the years is now going to be a PUBLISHED AUTHOR of a book. It's so exciting that I can hardly stand it, and I know that you will all love Leaving Tinkertown. Go and order it, now. It'll be August before you know it, and the memoir will be the best book you've read all year. I absolutely guarantee it.

Order it HERE.