Last Chance to Write Dangerously!

I hope you'll enter my giveaway and get a chance to receive Barbara Abercrombie's new book A Year of Writing Dangerously. All you have to do is leave a comment -- some writing advice -- at the original post. or here. I'll pick my favorite tidbit and announce the winner tomorrow! Readers, this is a really wonderful book -- filled with quotes and guidance for every day of the year. There's not a cliche in it and so much inspiration that if you're stuck in your writing you'd find something to help you ignite that creativity. Here's an example:

20. Naked in the Hallway


I have a friend who has a large photograph of herself hanging in her downstairs hallway, and she's stark naked in it. There's also one of her husband. And these are not young people. The photographs were taken by a student from a nearby art college who wanted to photograph older people nude and who told my friend not to hold her stomach in, to just be herself. These are the bravest photographs I've ever seen, and beautiful too. Sure they reveal, well, everything, but --- because of the lighting, the art involved --- there's mystery to them.


I love to think of these photographs whenever I get all snarled up with the idea of exposing too much in my writing. As Tennessee Williams once said, "All good art is indiscretion."

I'm very relaxed about privacy because there is none left....John Perry Barlow, a former lyricist with the Grateful Dead....says the only way to have privacy [is to] expose it all and you have nothing to hide.

                                                                                   ---LEONARD KLEINROCK

On being persnickety, brain worms and epilepsy

Persnickety:

adj -
1. excessively precise and attentive to detail; fussy; also, having the characteristics of a snob
2. (of a task) requiring close attention; exacting

[originally Scottish; of unknown origin]

This post will make no sense unless you're me and you've just read a story about brain worms and epilepsy, a story that took you back nearly ten years ago when you sat up one night, cruising the internet trying to find a reason for your daughter's unexplained weight loss and increase in seizures because no one else, including your neurologist at the time and the head of gastroenterology at one of the city's greatest hospitals didn't seem to care and somehow found yourself at three am on a site detailing the hideous effects of tapeworms that after being ingested made their torturous way to the brain where they wreaked havoc. You remembered that the dog was new and the dog had fleas and tapeworms came from fleas and were instantly convinced that that was it -- the weight loss, the increased seizures (pay no mind to the ten years before of unremitting and unexplained seizures) -- this was it -- and the next day you called your pediatrician and told him your secret discovery and even though he wanted to laugh he said that he would do a stool test just to be sure and you thought bless him for humoring me because I'm insane -- and then when the test came back negative, you thought shit, it's come to this: no one knows, no one knows, no one knows.

Intersections

Venice Blvd, mid-city, Los Angeles

There are people upside-down in that giant armed creature, screaming wildly, faces stretched against gravity.  I sat at the light, two moons away, inside a cage of steel, staring at the carnival, set up in urban blight, a mirage of color and light and popcorn smells. People in cinder block houses step outside, into neon and thrill, into rooms of steel and arms that enclose and swing up and away into blackness, where fear and happiness meet for an instant. I might have stepped out and into it, climbed up and let go instead of squinting my eye against glass, holding it one outstretched arm away.

















If your Nerve, deny you -
Go above your Nerve -
He can lean against the Grave,
If he fear to swerve -


That's a steady posture -
Never any bend
Held of those Brass arms -
Best Giant made -


If your Soul seesaw -
Lift the Flesh door -
The Poltroon wants Oxygen -
Nothing more -


Emily Dickinson, c. 1861

A Walk Away

We live a world away here on the edge of the sweltering country, breeze ruffling hair and golden sun warming the sidewalks. Sophie is barefoot in her wheelchair, and when I pull her up and out of it we sit under a tree and listen to the ruffling. I'd refuse heaven for this, the yellow jacket's ruffle as it squirms on clover, Sophie's curled up toe, the bit of hardened callus from a slanting gait, the bits of grass stuck to my ankle where it digs in the dirt. I read a book in two hours this morning called By The Iowa Sea: A Memoir of Disaster and Love, and there is no telling in a re-telling, a book that pulled me down and back up, horizontal meandering, up and over, softly ruffled -- sweltering heat, a refusal of heaven, a walk away.

My Big O

The Big O is back from camp, and I'm so very, very happy!

A Year of Writing Dangerously

Isn't that a great title for a book about writing? My dear friend and writing mentor, Barbara Abercrombie, is one of those teachers who you never forget. She's the person who led a workshop I attended at UCLA many years ago and inspired me to begin writing again after ten years. An impeccable editor, she encouraged me to keep writing and still inspires me today with her own prodigious output and commitment to the writer process.This is what she says about her new book:

If you want to be a writer, or if you're thinking of keeping a journal or writing a blog or an autobiography for your family, this is the book to get you started. If you're already a writer, this is the book to keep you going with 365 daily anecdotes, commiseration and funny stories from some rock star writers.

You are lucky today because I'm the pimp to what those in the book business like to call The Marketing Whore, and I have a signed copy of A Year of Writing Dangerously to give away. All you have to do is leave a comment with a bit of writing advice of your own! It can be silly, funny, inspiring or illicit. The pimp (me) will decide on her favorite comment/advice and pick a winner on July 15th --

So, live and write dangerously! Leave a comment! Win a book! Go buy the book! Write!

Oh, and watch this:

Road Trip

I'm leaving this morning to go pick up that boy of mine from camp. I'm traveling alone, driving up north for hours and hours. If you see me, honk!

How We Do It, Part XIII in a series

Sophie and I walked outside yesterday and down the path toward the driveway of our friends' house in the Hollywood Hills. She, Henry and I had come to an annual Fourth of July get-together, a family party that I look forward to each year for the great company, amazing food and a view of fireworks that stretch all across the Valley. Oliver is still at camp, and the The Husband was with The Mistress, so I had resigned myself to being Sophie's sole caretaker at the party -- not a job that I love as it entails either holding her hand  and walking around to calm her or sitting her in her wheelchair while the many children run back and forth and all around, seemingly oblivious. There were new children at this year's party, and when they'd arrived they had done the usual not-rude-but-entirely-understandable-curiosity-staring and when introduced, said polite hellos and then ran off. As Sophie has grown older, the disparity between her and others has only magnified, and while I have historically done nearly everything in an attempt to "include" her, I've grown tired of it, frankly, and perhaps shut down that part of myself that yearns for friendships for her. As we walked toward the large driveway, I pointed out some of the beautiful trees and flowers that lay along the pathway and only noticed the children jumping on the trampoline in my peripheral vision until one of them shouted, Does she want to come and jump on the trampoline with us? I looked up and saw a young girl, maybe nine or ten years old, in a blue and white striped skirt, a white tee-shirt and a large red flower in her shiny black hair, standing at the opening of the trampoline. Well, there's a lot of kids on the trampoline, so it would be hard for her, I think, but thank you for including her! I shouted back. How old are you? the girl directed her question at Sophie. She's seventeen, I said, and she can't talk because she has a problem in her brain. But she can understand you! The girl spoke again, directly to Sophie. I'm sorry about that! But you can come jump with us! My whole body thrilled to this exchange, and I told the girl that I wouldn't be able to lift Sophie up that high, that the ladder was too difficult for her to use, but that I really appreciated her invitation. We stood there for a few minutes and watched the girls jumping, their free bodies soaring not so high as my own heart, beating steadily through the hands that linked Sophie and me.

Girl on a Swing on the Fourth of July

Happy Fourth

Learning to Love America


because it has no pure products


because the Pacific Ocean sweeps along the coastline
because the water of the ocean is cold
and because land is better than ocean


because I say we rather than they




because I live in California
I have eaten fresh artichokes
and jacaranda bloom in April and May


because my senses have caught up with my body
my breath with the air it swallows
my hunger with my mouth


because I walk barefoot in my house


because I have nursed my son at my breast
because he is a strong American boy
because I have seen his eyes redden when he is asked who he is
because he answers I don't know


because to have a son is to have a country
because my son will bury me here
because countries are in our blood and we bleed them


because it is late and too late to change my mind
because it is time


Shirley Geok-lin Lim
via Poetry Foundation

There's something cool happening in Texas,

and by "cool," I don't mean the weather, although I hear it's pretty hot down there, too. Despite the fact that my best friend in the world is from Texas and I know that there are plenty of good folk that live in the lone star state, they seem to have serious problems with just about every area of what makes a place civilized -- at least to a gal with liberal leanings. I'm perfectly aware that California has its share of crazies, but that's not what this post is about -- nor is it about Texas, really. Or Wal-Mart -- except that there are an awful lot of Wal-Marts in Texas, and I do love a good Wal-Mart bashing post. Insults aside, I was just reeling you in to tell you about this article I read about a former Wal-Mart being bought by the city of McAllen in southern Texas and turned into a library! A fantastic looking library at that -- check it out here.

Oh, and I just remembered -- some very wealthy guy in San Antonio built the world's first adaptive amusement park for his disabled daughter and others like her a while back. That was something good coming out of Texas, too.

Texas Reader, tell me more good stuff.

"A friend to all...big and small"

When we walked into the church this morning to celebrate Gus' life, this was the card that some kind person placed into our hands, and the tears began to fall and continued to fall, off and on throughout the entire mass. Gus' graceful parents told the hundreds of bereft people in the church that even when they lost their composure around their son as he lay sick, he would always reassure them, Smile, I'm fine, he'd say.  I sat with Henry in the church for the first time in a few years, and despite my own disconnection to it, to that symbolic Catholic faith that so many present felt, I am sure, in the most authentic of ways, I felt the presence of Love. Through twinges of anger, of loneliness, of even boredom (the kind that comes when words are said over and over, years upon years, signifying nothing), I felt the presence of Love pushing up against me. My shoulders hunched against it, this Love, at first and then they dropped as love bent its way around and over and under, Love that guides and comforts and sustains despite everything.

May we feel grateful to have shared a bit of that Love through Gus. May beautiful Gus rest in peace. May his dear parents feel Love every day for the rest of their lives.

Malibu

Yesterday, I drove Henry, his friend P and Sophie up to Zuma Beach in Malibu on a spectacularly beautiful day. We met one of my best friends, her husband and daughter at the very end of Zuma -- a glorious place with surfers to watch and rolling waves and warm sand. I feel almost guilty posting this as my parents swelter in Atlanta, Georgia and one of my sisters swelters and emerges from the hideous storms in D.C. The lack of heat and humidity out here is one of the main reasons that I live so far from family -- and while going to the beach can be sort of a hassle, when I'm there I always think why don't I do this more often?

There must be a better title for this Medscape article

Here are the newly published articles in your area(s) of interest for June 29, 2012: Epilepsy Reason for Optimism in Epilepsy? Medscape Neurology   ADD MORE TOPICS »   And for those of you who take things quite literally, I'm aware that there might be a treatment on the horizon that gives those who deal with the scourge hope, but as a minor wordsmith and lover of the embellished, I'd rather the title of the academic paper was: Reason for Not Killing Yourself Over Your Child's Refractory Epilepsy.