I'm not back yet
But I will be next month.
My mother's visit, followed by the kid's
illness, my trip away at the end of this
week, and the beginning of the school year
are conspiring to keep me from blogging.
Thank you for all your kind words on Zoe and
writing, and see you in September!
Images: Top, the Golden Gate bridge from the Marin Headlands. Bottom, trying out some doors at Battery Mendell in the Headlands, where they apparently paint to match the ocean.
Comments, comments and other weirdness
And my colors are all off -- at least for the moment. My apologies for the look of the blog.
Let the volley of comments begin.
;)
Mixed up muddled up shook up world
Now for the grouse-inpiring news: I have to match up each set of Haloscan comments with the proper post, which will mean that I have to go through almost two years worth of saved comments one by one. JS-Echo is still problematic--some people can't comment, there is no easy way for commenters to provide a link back to their web page, and most of my posts still have a double comment link at the bottom. The house needs to be cleaned for the house/pet-sitter. I still need to get a few Christmas presents for my father and stepmother (don't ask). I have been so wrapped up in the commenting problem that I haven't been stopping by many blogs. And even worse, I've barely had time to write or think, since the little brainspace I have has been devoted to blog trouble-shooting.
I hope to get another post out before we leave on Monday, something that will have nothing to do with colors or comments or cats (though I will return to cats). In the meantime, here's a little Kinks for you, the song that I stole a line from to title this post.
Image: Our front fence with plants.
Twenty-four hour party person
With the change, I also implemented a new commenting system, Disqus, in the hopes that some of the issues readers were having with the other system would go away. Unfortunately, it appeared as though the comments I imported into the system were not linking to my posts. I was also not thrilled with the location of the completed comments, which appeared down at the bottom of the page. So I've switched back to JS-Kit Echo, except that as of Monday night all of my old comments were floating around in cyberspace, unattached to the posts that prompted them. I apologize if one of your comments is out there, either from the brief reign of Disqus or the somewhat spotty ongoing commentship of JS-Kit Echo.
Everything else has changed, too though the language has stayed the same for the most part. Take a look around and leave a comment or email me to let me know if something works or doesn't work for you. You might also learn something new about me, discover another reason why I'm here.
So here you go. I hope you like it. I'm sure I'll be tweaking things over the coming weeks.
Image: Big Skully as angel, December 2009.
Edited 22 March to reflect change in commenting interface and to add all sorts of other stuff, too.
Can't comment? Let me know.
About a month ago,
Haloscan, the company that provided the
commenting interface for this blog, went
under and I switched to something call ECHO
by JS-Kit.
It isn't working very well. Some people have
been unable to comment, either because the
commenting box doesn't show up or because
they are told that their comments are too
long (even though they aren't). Sometimes the
comments don't load for a long time, which
slows the loading time of the blog.
Unfortunately, the blogging software I use is
only compatible with ECHO, but I am actively
looking for other platforms that might work.
In the meantime, if you would like to comment
but can't or have been having problems,
please let me know at
writingtosurvive(at)gmail.com or fill out
my contact me
form. I
apologize for the hassle and hope that I
can come up with a solution quickly, or
that the folks at JS-Kit can help.
Image: My mother and me on
a non-windy day in December at the Berkeley
Marina.
Knobby and the xylitol squirrels
You've got the wrong Jennifer Trinkle. Or you've got the wrong Fred. You've got the wrong both of us.
George "Knobby" Michael?
You can try to get to this
blog directly by searching on just my first
and last names, but Google won't send you
here. Despite the fact that writing to
survive is mine and I have the metadata to
prove it, most people who are looking for
Jennifer Trinkle arrive by way of my guest
post at La Belette
Rouge or via
PublicLiterature.Org.
At least Bing puts writing to survive on the
first page of results when you search for my
name. But the blog itself doesn't have enough
Internet power or back links or whatever it
takes to convince most search engines that
it's mine.
Some people who end up here via Google or
Yahoo are looking for information on
myelofibrosis. Although I did write a post
about Kevin's
death from the disease, I want
you to know that his ending was dramatic.
Atypical. He lived almost ten years after
his diagnosis, which is also very unusual
for someone who was diagnosed relatively
young. Kevin was waiting for a stem cell
transplant when things fell apart, which
may have saved him, but might have
hastened his death, too, if it hadn't been
too late anyway. Every time someone lands
here looking for information on the
disease I feel guilty, since the ending of
his story was so idiosyncratic and
terrible. It's not like this for everyone.
It isn't, really. There's hope.
But at least these searches make some sense,
are tied to a particular name or a disease
that I discuss in a bit of detail. And the
searches for writing
prompts or writing to
survive have led people to the
right place, though I think that the person
searching for writing prompt using a
toaster really needs to visit one
of koe's
blogs. Based on the keywords,
however, a lot of you who end up here
through an Internet search leave
disappointed. Writing to survive is a
friendly place. I want to answer your
questions, want to give you what you seek,
so once
again, I will attempt to
provide clarity, to transmit information.
Yes, this is not a squirrel blog.
Perhaps you were looking
for birching
stories, or variations on the
theme (victorian birching
stories, birch corporal punishment, bad boys
birching stories). Or you were looking for
information -- or something else --
about drunken teenage
hookups. One person arrived by
searching on the domain name
submissivelouise.com.
There are no birching stories here, though I
did once mention a neighbor's
birch tree, and while I took part
in more than one drunken teenage hookup
back when I was a drunken teenager, I
don't tend to write about such things, at
least not in the way you might hope. As
for submissive Louise, I wrote a brief
post about a dog with
that name who was not the dominant
type.
Some searches are from people looking for
answers to matter-of-fact questions:
Why is
George Michael's nickname Knobby?
(Beats
me.) Can stork bites
spread? (Not the birthmark
variety.) How do puffins survive
in the cold? (Sweaters and
booties.) Can one survive on
writing? (Not alone.)
Other queries get me wondering: How
did Duran Duran's John
Taylor cut his foot in
1984? Was he badly hurt? Was
the search on an interesting story
about me is i was 8 i was trapped inside of a
burning building. it was about 2:00 a.m. when
my father smelled smoke in the
kitchen a misplaced copy and paste
or was this person hoping that someone else
in the Interlands had written about his or
her private life story? Who
"gestures
and halts and falls"?
Footsie, neighbor?
I can tell you the good and bad about
xylitol. Bad: it can kill your
dog, though our dog
survived her small exposure. Good: it is
low in calories and oh so sweet. Will it
make your gerbil listless and
cold? Perhaps. But I don't
know a thing about xylitol
squirrels and this is definitely
not a squirrel
blog (Or a blog about
autodidacticism).
Google leads you here, seekers of
information. You are hungry for stories, for
hard facts, for the light of knowledge. But
once you get here, do you stay? Do you note
the address and come back and visit from time
to time? Not necessarily. I need better
keywords, need to provide the right
breadcrumb trail. I need better search engine
optimization.
I need clarity.
Confidential to
I'm in
love with a childhood
friend: Most of us have all
been through it. Examine your feelings
and figure out what's really going on.
If it is really love, fess up and get it
over with. Good things may happen. Maybe
you can become footsie
neighbors, or at the very
least, you can move on with your life.
Squirrel image from here.
Foot image from here.
Honestly?
The most neglected of these good people is Dori, who writes a fine expat blog A Yellow House in England. She has given writing to survive several awards, including the Neno Award, the Most Inspirational Blog Award, the Friendship Award, and the Butterfly Award. It's one thing that that Dori has received all of these awards herself, which is a sure sign of her writing prowess, but it's also another that she has taken the time to pass them on, which is a sure sign of her kindness. Thank you, Dori, and my apologies for letting these awards slip away.
One of the perils of not acknowledging these things immediately is that they disappear into the Great Internet Beyond and my own memory's sketchy storage system. So I remember that Svasti passed on an award. And Robert. I know I'm missing at least one other blogger. If you are out there reading, leave a comment and I will add your blog to the list.
Which brings me to the latest award. La Belette Rouge, memoirist, humorist, spot-on writer and all-around great blogger, has passed along the Honest Scrap Award. One of the fun things about this award is the requirement to list ten honest things about oneself. A daunting task. The award also requires that I pass it on to ten bloggers. Here is where I always fall down on the job. If you would like to take this award and run with it, on your own blog or in the comments section below, feel free.
So. Gulp. Here I go.
My parents, all
gussied up for the 1968 Senior Prom. Oh, if I
could only still hold you two responsible for
my neurotic ways! Instead, I will use you as
photographic filler.
1. I find this task
terrifying. Why? On one hand, I am pretty
boring. On the other, I have all these
worries that I am used to keeping mainly to
myself. I am neurotic, for lack of a better
term. So I find myself thinking of writing
things here like "I am pathetic and
antisocial." or "If you met me in the flesh,
you'd be questioning whether I was really the
person who writes this stuff." OK. Let's just
say I'm insecure.
2. To continue in the same
vein, now that it is possible that a lot of
people from my past, childhood friends, old
high school buddies, people who knew me in
college, read this blog, I wonder what they
think about these stories of mine. Did any of
them know this stuff already? Do they look
back at me with kindness or do they judge me?
I'll never know, so I think I'll go for the
kindness angle.
3. I will listen to a song over and over
again when I have it stuck in my mind. Recent
selections include Finish
What You Started, All
Come True, Funk
#49, and Hot
Sauce. Oh, and
Ball
and Biscuit.
4. While I am a good cook, some might even
say a great cook, the only things that my son
will eat in my presence are noodles with
butter and cheese, packaged macaroni and
cheese, grilled cheese sandwiches,
pizza crusts,
and rice and beans from Chipotle (yes, he
even refuses my rice and beans). Pasta with
cream sauce? No. Soothing, buttery polenta? I
don't think so. Anything with a green fleck
or two in it? You must be joking. This would
drive anyone crazy, but I had an epiphany the
other night about why it was driving
me murderously
crazy. I have
"meal issues," probably from a childhood
of bad
dinner table
experiences, from being made to
stand at the table as a three-year-old on
a regular basis, to being totally ignored
or berated by my former stepfather at
mealtime, to finally being rejected as a
dinner partner by my mother and Kevin when
I was fourteen. My son's unhappiness with
my food offerings felt, well, deeply
personal. Once I realized this, my
irritation level at his dietary
preferences went down several notches.
Though I still find them maddening.
5. You know that I don't
drive, right? But did you
also know that I don't bike, skateboard,
scoot or Segway? It's a wheel thing, I
suppose.
6.
I really should be working on my novel. On my
good (or is that "crazy"?) days, I have these
grandiose notions of the brilliance of my
writing. On my bad (or is that "realistic"?)
days, I think my writing will never amount to
anything. So blogging keeps me going while
also distracting me from the larger purpose.
7. I hold on to people in my
mind, keep crushes for
decades, never really forget a
friend, even if I haven’t spoken to them
directly since middle school or even
earlier. These attachments keep me plugged
into the world, gossamer threads from my
mind to yours. All it takes is a little
tug -- a photo, an email, a similar name
-- for me to conjure up the smells, the
meal, the pains and joys, that awkward
conversation we had fifteen years ago.
8. It could be that three cats, one dog, one
child, one husband, a two-story house, and a
backyard is too much. So I don't vacuum
nearly as often as I should, the toilet needs
scrubbing, and I finally stopped watering the
impatiens after six months of careful
attention.
9. My only regret is that I should have
kissed him when I had the chance. Just to get
it out of my head. This was years ago, when I
was so focused on doing the right thing, on
keeping a tenuous hold on my first marriage.
But that kiss will never happen and as time
goes by, the moment and its importance feel
more and more distant. Still, I think about
it sometimes and try to console myself with
the fact that it would have been destined to
end badly and my desire would have gone the
way of most, shot through with sadness and
regret.
10. I talk to my mother on
the phone almost every day. Sometimes more
than once a day. I worry about whether this
is healthy, not because of our conversations
or how I feel afterwards (I feel fine), but
mainly because I think it can stand in for
interactions with other people, like people
on this coast or friends I haven't spoken to
in ages. Maybe it gets in the way of
potential friendships. Maybe I should pick up
the phone and call my father every once in a
while. Or maybe I'm just neurotic and worry
too much.
There you go. Another morning of
novel-writing gone. But this was more
fun.
Faking it*
Surely there are hidden meanings everywhere,
waiting to be uncovered. This was my
hypothesis when I started my latest
self-improvement project “Barbara’s Weekly
Epiphany.” All I had to do was approach the
world with a childlike sense of wonder, to
keep my eyes and mind open, maybe even wear
my heart on my sleeve. All of that
information that has beaded off my
consciousness, repelled by my cynical
attitude and “been, there, done that” grubby
cliché-ridden approach was going to be
captured now, in a mind as open as my VW
sunroof on a light-pierced June afternoon.
I started a blog about the project, wanting
to share my insights with others:
epiphanyquota.blogspot.com.
First epiphany? You have to sell your ideas,
sell yourself, if you want to succeed. You
have to believe in you, or no one else will.
Second epiphany: fake it ‘til you make
it is more true than you think. Third
epiphany? In the middle of a crowded public
park, if you close your eyes and quiet your
thoughts, you will hear the vibration of the
world, the sound of its heartbeat.
The blog started getting a fan base, made up
mostly of earnest young men drawn by the
stock photo I’d put up that looked vaguely
like me fifteen years ago. They were drawn by
that and the supportive and slightly
flirtatious comments I’d left on their own
blogs, encouraging observations on the
quality of their writing, the strength of
narrative voice and character, how close I
felt to them though we’d never met. These
exchanges led to other epiphanies, ones that
I didn’t share on the blog: bullshit
actually works; the reality of the online
world both mirrors and denies the reality of
the solid world; men will believe anything.
One of them -- let's call him Brad, a name
that fits in its brevity and practicality,
that matches his corny, Hemingwayesque
writing style -- got a little too interested.
How was I supposed to know that he would take
my ego-stroking seriously? I thought I had
covered my tracks (always cover your tracks,
a too-late epiphany), but somehow he found my
phone number. I have an old habit of letting
the machine pick up and would stand over it,
listening to these silences injected with
anticipation, the light touch of breath, the
occasional throat-clearing. The messages
hovered in the air, sticky and thick, for
hours after the caller hung up. Brad
eventually told me he was responsible, in an
email where he attached a photo of someone, I
presume himself, in
flagrante. I immediately moved the
sordid pic to the trash, changed my number,
and blocked his emails. There are some sick
fucks out there.
I type this in my ratty old bathrobe, a mangy
Pomeranian on my lap. But I could be lying.
You never know.
*From a Round Robin prompt last
winter ("my latest epiphany"). Every word of
this is made up. Really. And I'm all for
positive thinking, have spent years faking it
and am on the cusp of making it.
Image: "Epiphany," Henry Ascensio. From
Tavistock Gallery.
Home is where the guest blogger post is or how La Belette Rouge coaxed me out of my blogging cave
She has also tempted me back to blogging by asking me to write a guest post for her August series on the concept of home. It's a rich topic and I gave it a very writing to survive twist.
My post, Home in objects, is here.
Hanging on a curtain
But that isn't the point of this post. I want
to apologize for being an absent presence in
the blogging world. I haven't been up to
visiting or commenting on blogs. Updating
this one has become increasingly
time-consuming. Because of the software I
use, every time I have a new post I must
export the entire blog and then upload it
onto a server, a process that take about half
an hour or more. It isn't simple or quick.
Writing the posts takes a long time, too,
sometimes five or six hours. I have limited
writing time and have to start pursuing
freelance work. There are a few reasons for
this, including the fact that my husband is
about to take the equivalent of an 8% salary
cut through 21 furlough days in the next
year. (Ahhh, California!) I would also like
to chip away at longer stories and to deepen
my writing which just isn't possible in the
blog format.
I'll be a more present online presence soon,
one way or another. In the meantime, please
don't take it personally that I haven't been
by. I'm trying to be present in my own life,
figuring out a way to get beyond the longing
to immerse myself in deep narrative. To move
beyond the longing, I have to leap in or give
up. I have no intention of giving up.
Image: Rainbow in Berkeley, June
2009.
Making it (slightly less) funky
I was tentative at first, hid myself behind
veils and a false
name. Over time, the veils
slipped away, I walked out from behind the
curtain, showed my face to the light,
revealed my name and purpose. And being
seen is ok. It's good. I want people to
know me for who I am, for who I was, to
keep the secrets from defining me.
Because the secrets don't define me. Even
better, after seeing the light of day, after
being transformed into stories, they have
become almost
irrelevant,
forming and transforming experiences,
important ones, but not the core of who I am.
Visitors to this Web page, however, may have
a different impression. In the interest of
shaping writing to
survive to better reflect reality
and also to bring a more professional feel to
the page, I have made a few changes. They're
subtle — a new tag line, slightly different
selections in Excerpts from
Life, a more complete look
to the food writing page, which I've
renamed Kitchen
Detour. Most of the old stuff
is still here, stories of angst, secrets
revealed, but you have to dig a little
deeper to find it.
Next post: Crumbling beneath the Formstone.
Or something along those lines, with a
departure from post titles derived from pop
music.
(Image: Mirror, Little House by
Jennifer Trinkle, 1986.)
Not that kind of blog
Back when I was into admiring my own legs.
Mirror, Little House, 1986?
I wonder if he (or she:
yeah, right!) was disappointed. From a little
box on Google or AOL or Yahoo, he
typed "she was drunk"
naked legs and somehow ended up at
writing to survive. Yeah, I've written the
sentence she was
drunk here once, in one of
my
short pieces of
fiction.
Check one. Certainly legs come up somewhere
on the blog, perhaps in that same piece, but
for sure in Heartbreaker
with the
line admiring my legs in
the dashboard light. Check two. And you
might notice a link to Robin Easton's
wonderful blog Naked in
Eden along the sidebar. Check
three.
But did this anonymous surfer, this seeker of
information on a drunken woman, perhaps one
with naked legs, leave happy?
I'll never know.
What about the Bertie Wooster fan who typed
in their hero's name but added an interesting
second search term: birching?
I have never written about this practice, a
form of corporal punishment that involves
hitting someone's bare skin (usually the
buttocks) with a birch rod, though I have
mentioned the Neighbornator's
birch tree. Google lumps the blameless tree
together with its not-so-innocent use.
Combine the search engine's folly with
my post on
a crush -- I had a nickname for
him, a code word really, so that I could
write it in my notebooks without fear of
discovery. Bertie Wooster.
-- and
another imprecise conclusion is reached.
There is always an answer, some reason why
writing to survive becomes a search result.
It's no mystery. You can look at the keywords
and the text to figure it out. Still, I have
to wonder why some people decide to click on
a link to this blog when there are better
sources of information out there. For
example, yes,
Happy Easter the hamster
may have been
in the early stages of rigor mortis when we
found his corpse in the basement, but this
doesn't mean that I know anything about the
actual process, what the body goes through
after death. Inevitably the people searching
on how long rigor
mortis gerbil and how long does it
take until rigor mortis disappears
had to move on
to more authoritative sources. And, sad soul
who turned to the internet to find out
whether hamster rat poison
survive,
I think that the two are a fatal combination,
though you have my deepest sympathy. I've
been there.
Google searchers, AllTheWeb seekers,
AltaVista clickers, I'll never know if you
found what you were looking for, if what you
sought was on this blog, because you probably
didn't leave a comment, just came and
skimmed. Most of you left in a hurry, though
a few clicked through a page or two. I'd like
to know, was it satisfying? Did you leave
happy, or did you still feel a yearning for
information you didn't receive?
There are stories behind every search. The
people who usually end up here are often led
by a sense of anxiety, fear, or worry. I'd
like to soothe, to provide reassurance. In
that spirit, I give you the below list,
question and answer, taken from the searches
that led people here.
can my
relationship survive if I am twenty years her
senior?
It
depends.
crush on married woman
I'm a married woman who is
prone to long term crushes
(though I
seem to stay away from married men even in
my fantasy life). I never expect anyone to
have a crush on me. Enjoy the unreality of
it all and don't go any further.
dysfunctional
families at easter dinner
What makes Easter dinner
different from any other dysfunctional family
dinner? It will be predictable, probably
unpleasant. Prepare yourself.
explain hangover
to parents
They've probably
experienced a hangover before and know the
symptoms, but you can always blame it on a
tummy bug. Chances are they will choose to
believe you. How old are you, anyway?
My striptease
saved my marriage
Is this a hope or a statement of fact? I am
doubtful of the ability of striptease to save
anyone's marriage.
Bad stepmother
blogs
Despite my
one post
complaining about her
(which no
longer feels relevant, but served a
purpose at the time), I love my stepmother
and would never claim that she is bad.
Still, I'm sure there are plenty of blogs
out there that discuss "bad" stepmothers.
This isn't one of them.
Just remember: someone knows what you've been
looking for, or at least they know the words
you've chosen in an attempt to find it.
Luckily, though, they don't know your name.
Not yet, anyway.
(For an earlier post on the same topic,
see How did
you get here?)
Baby, stick around
Thanks to washwords, Koe Whitton-Williams, tricia, Dori, Karen, Bobby Revell, Jennifer D., Melinda, Lorenzo, Candy, Ashe.Selah, lydia, timethief, SmallWorldReads, John Folk-Williams, and Jim for your encouraging words and comments. Your support makes the difference.
Here's a bit of writing inspired by the prompt "Alright, fine. Let's hear your explanation." Well, inspired by that and by reading my grandmother's burn notebooks, written during my grandfather's long hospitalization, where her anger over his vices and infidelities comes through, clear and Mercurochrome-bitter. I couldn't bring myself to change the names; they are too good to be fictional.
I just went to the track to look at the horses, to watch them ripple around the oval, to see their hooves beat the dust into red clouds. But once I got there, the action sucked me in. Before I knew what my feet were doing, I was standing in front of Les’s booth to place my bets. The air was heavy with money and I was feeling lucky. I’d win enough to pay off the rest of Atlee’s mortgage or maybe just enough to buy a smooth fifth of whiskey. Or even score a downpayment on a new washing machine for you, Vi.
Then I ran into Williard, who had a full flask and offered me a swig or three. Maybe the alcohol clouded my judgment. Maybe I couldn't see what an amateur that jockey was, but I think the race was rigged, that somebody paid him out to fall off the horse. Or maybe they slipped the little guy a Mickey, I don’t know. The end result is that I lost. The flask made a few more visits to my lips and I didn’t feel like going home just yet anyways.
You and the girls were at the cottage and I was planning on sleeping at the empty Tuxedo Park house, but then I remembered Molly. Molly with the blonde hair and long legs, Molly from the Tip Top Club in Salem, a nice easy-going girl. The Mustang knew the way from the track to the bar. It’s no coincidence that they call that car a Mustang. It has all the bucking power and smarts of a horse. It knows where to find the watering holes, knows the trail back home, too.
After I left the Tip Top, I was exhausted, so I took a snooze in my ride. That’s where I was last night, sleeping in the Mustang.
You can ask Molly if you don't believe me.
My Free Bird moment is coming
The auditions were on a muggy spring Saturday in 1981. I couldn’t sleep the night before. Nerves. My mother and I walked into a theater smelling of preadolescent sweat, each kid tingling with nervous energy, wondering how they would do on stage. Someone called my name in low, deep voice. I pushed myself up and wobbled down the aisle, a skinny eleven-year-old with long frizzy hair and a preternaturally serious demeanor. At that moment, my mind was dusty as chalk. Up on stage, though, I pulled it together and gave a sufficiently melodramatic reading from Beauty and the Beast. The fall before I'd played the female lead in a children's theater production.
"Beast! Beast! I love you, Beast!" Beauty cries over the dying brute. In the small theater production, the handsome high school boy who played the Beast was made up to look like a proper monster. His delicate Italian features were obscured by a greenish-yellow gelatinous substance, his hair a hawk’s nest of detritus. Whatever was on his cheeks stuck to my lips as I bestowed the chaste kiss that eventually returned him to his princely state. That boy wasn’t on stage with me for the audition, but I faked it well enough. I got my acceptance letter for drama camp six weeks later.
It was the summer I considered myself twelve, in between sixth and seventh grades. The camp was made up of ambitious 11–14 year olds. For two hot July weeks we took acting classes together on the campus of Goucher College, culminating in a production of Free to Be You and Me. Most of my memories are about the dorms, where I discovered a love of dark chocolate, developed an aversion to public showers, and shared giggles with the girl in the next room over. But the main flavor of those two weeks was an overwhelming feeling of awkwardness, a sense of being quiet and overly polite, to the strange boy who pursued me by the salad bar, to the other girls on my floor.
On our last night, the camp counselors put together a dance, the soundtrack heavy on 1970s rock lightly flavored with disco. The evening wrapped up with a final song: Free Bird by Lynyrd Skynyrd. It was the first time I'd heard it. The strange boy found me across the darkened dining hall and held out his hand. We danced close. I felt a longing for what wasn't quite over yet.
In about three weeks, the contract for writing to survive's web hosting is up for renewal. I have decided not to renew (though I am conflicted about this. Is it worth $100/year to keep this blog out there? I'd love your thoughts.) Leaving is scary. In the past year and a half, I've become friends with a few people scattered across the world. This place has been my virtual support system as I grappled with my past and figured out what it means to be a writer. I will miss the conversations with my blogging friends here, but hope to keep on commenting and interacting in the blogosphere. Just because the blog is disappearing doesn’t mean that I am, too.
I haven't quite decided what is next, but I know that I need to devote my energy to writing. That's scary, too, to take it on without the wonderful instant feedback, knowing I'll be alone, typing in my little room, writing stuff that maybe NO ONE WILL EVER READ! But I think that the words will grow in that environment, where it's just me and them, without worries about posting or commenting or dropping zillions of Entrecards.
My Free Bird moment is coming and I'm feeling a bit melancholy about it. Before the last dance however, I'll have a heap of appreciation for the people who have kept me afloat in the blogosphere. If you want to skip out now, that's fine, but I hope you stick around until the end.
March's blog: Dr. Bob's Nightmare
Gabby Hyman, of Dr. Bob's
Nightmare
For Ginsberg's was the syncopated flurry of Coltrane, a cool hipster rap sung in crowded bookstore reading rooms thick with tobacco smoke and a counterpoint of cheap Mexican weed. Bad Gerry was sung to Vivaldi played on a sturdy hi-fi set as you gazed out a dormer window across the Monongahela River where black sparrows alit like a puff of factory smoke in a tree laid nude by winter.
-- Gabby Hyman on poet Gerald Stern.
To find out what it means, you have to go back in time, not too far, just to early December of last year. There’s the first post of Gabby Hyman’s unusually-titled blog, Dr. Bob’s Nightmare: So, Why Not Me? Well, maybe the explanation isn’t spelled out for you here, either, in this short piece on Robert Holbrook Smith, aka Dr. Bob, one of the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, but it gives you a clue, a trail of words to follow. You can reach your own conclusions.
Gabby Hyman is a writer, plain and simple. He’s been a journalist, a professor of English, and a creator of content for various websites. He edits, he ghostwrites. You can download a copy of his book, Knives and Forks and other stories from Literary Road. But Gabby also writes a fantastic blog, a place for stories from aching memory, sometimes wryly funny, always lyrical.
These tales are told with a grace and a stretching language, all metaphor and rich description, but they also keep you going, wondering what happens next. That night that Gabby walks onstage as the Spirit of Christmas Present, does it go as planned? The final analysis may not be what you think. Who is Myoko Sakatani and how did she save his life? Enigmatic titles pull the reader in -- Last of the Mic-Mic Men? -- but Gabby’s fine writing does the rest: "The Beast was the gangsta-earthmother of the drive-by smile. In fact, she changed everything." The Beast? How did she change everything? You must read on.
Some of the stories are about a world about to be transformed, portraits of life in Southern California before the sixties were in full swing, when the bread man still delivered and milk came to box outside your front door. Others are about the immediate aftermath, the awkward mid-70s (Gabby's trip to the 1976 Democratic convention, for example), or his time as a graduate student in Alabama, where football was king. These pieces aren't necessarily nostalgic, but give a sense of the author presenting the past, remembering and working it over in his mind.
Good writing often leaves you with questions, with blanks to fill in. After reading several of Gabby's essays, I want to know more, to figure out how his circuitous path, which included stints in Alaska, Illinois, and Washington state, transpired, whether there was a plan or a pull or if those seemingly peripatetic days were a matter of controlled drifting, a person trying to find his place in the world. I don't mind these lacunae, these mysteries. The questions only make it more interesting.
So go. Read. Let the words pull you in, get you thinking. You'll be glad for it.
While I'm out ...
While I'm away, you might want to check out the back catalog with some of my best work. You wouldn't want to miss stories like All that jazz, Louise Peevish, or Heathen can wait, would you?
Until March (though you might be seeing me around here and there),
Jennifer
February's blog: Revellian Dot Com
Revellian Dot Com: Reader Beware. Some of the
time.
I
can’t do it.
I can’t possibly sum up Revellian.Com.
Even its tag line,
Psycho-Linguistical Dialectology: From the
Edge, while
pithy and funny and in a sense descriptive,
doesn’t do blogger Bobby
Revell’s work
justice.
I could say that one of the hallmarks of
Bobby’s blog is his transgressional
fiction, dark
tales with vivid descriptions and
on-the-brink characters oozing bodily
fluids and squinting through a lucid haze.
These stories may not be for everyone. As
I write, the latest post on Revellian.Com
is "The
Demon Witch: Sexual
Psychotropic," with
lines like "Undulating intentions as she
oozed, sticky slime slug melting atop as
we engrafted–merging fluidic flesh. She
hungered for my warmth and I for iced
mucous–malignant sludge folding into one.
Suckling human lozenge."
Perhaps this
is not your cup of tea (and you have been
warned). But even a squeamish
type–like me, for
example–can see the
humor and surreal eloquence in Bobby’s
fiction.
To call Revellian.Com a horror fiction blog
would be misleading. Balancing out the
fiction are articles on blogging, with
content that
delivers. Bobby
picks apart the world of money-making blogs
and cuts right to the chase on
Entrecard, arguing
that while it helps raise stats, the quality
of the Entrecard traffic is generally low,
with most participants staying just long
enough to drop. He also takes on the "holy
trinity" of
Twitter, Facebook, and
StumbleUpon.
Just when you think you've gotten this blog
figured out, that it's a little
transgressional fiction mixed in with
informative blogging tips, Bobby gets
personal, writing about his struggles
with
depression. He
discusses
philosophy. And to
lighten things up, there’s
twisted humor as well!
Revell has been writing most of his life. He
is also (among many other things) a guitarist
and a student of several martial arts and the
practice of Zen, interested in "the mysteries
of human thought and everything in between."
He believes "in truth, not mythology." And
his platform, Revellian.Com is definitely
worth a closer look, no matter your
predilections.
So real you can taste it
Let’s look at the facts as revealed here: I’m a stay-at-home mom with a preschool-aged son. A former librarian, I went to culinary school and from there decided to be a writer. My family is relatively new to Northern California, having moved from the East Coast almost two years ago. I’ve told you my name. Given my birthday (oh, those worries about aging, forcing me to seek comfort on the web).
And if you’ve been here for a while, you know about the defining story of my life, the lifeless premature baby I gave birth to at home when I was sixteen.
But what do you really know?
Jennifer recovering from a late night, 1988?
Or another photo to continue the
ruse?
How would you feel if I was
actually a 25-year-old male advertising
copywriter from Peoria? What if I really
lived in Buffalo, NY? Or if I was pushing 70,
mother to a multitude of now middle aged
children, grandmother to teenagers, a Brit
using the blog to flesh out a character? This
"Jennifer" person you think you've been
reading could be someone I’ve been keeping in
my back pocket for years. writing to survive
might be some kind of grand fictional
experiment, an attempt to create a flesh and
bones person out of ethereal imagination.
And my stories? What if these were figments,
scraps from my mind, absolute fiction
masquerading as angst-ridden past? It could
be that you've been reading full-blown
literary lies à la
Margaret B. Jones, the wannabe memoirist who
made up a gangland childhood. Turns out my
parents have been married for forever, I
waited until marriage (or at least love) to
have sex, and I’ve never touched a drop of
alcohol. Oh, and that isn’t my son, he’s a
nephew (never mind that I have no nephew).
Would you feel betrayed?
Don't worry. I don’t have it in me to lie
like that, though you'll mainly have to take
my word for it and trust your gut.
There were
times in high
school and college when I was a serial liar,
self-serving and hidden. My mother believed
the stories about my solo nights, even when
my boyfriend's car was parked right outside
the Little
House ("Oh, the car? Dirk
leaves it there when he goes to the
Cassady's. Sometimes he's had too much to
drink, so he stays at their place for the
night." "That's exactly what I thought,
Jenna.") Later, I hid my unfaithfulness
from my college boyfriends, created a
protective distance by pursuing empty
hopes with relative strangers.
Living a life of lies is a dirty business. I
was becoming unrecognizable, murky,
untrustworthy, a bad friend. So I stopped
lying and regained a hold on fidelity. And
while those old kinds of lies are no longer
tempting, I still struggle with my tendency
to exaggerate minor facts or to deny my
feelings. Attempting to be good is a
life-long process.
There is a difference between making things
up to avoid punishment and creating stories
to entertain. Stories aren't lies (and
sometimes the lies we
tell in our life stories
aren't fibs
either). If the blog tale is well-told,
the characters believable, the created
world tangible, so real you can taste it,
does it matter if it actually happened?
How would you know if it did?
We’re taking it all on faith in this blogging
world, want to believe that everyone is who
they present themselves to be. For the most
part, I think people are genuine. Yes, we
have plenty of time to shape our online
selves, but we’re generally real. Still …
There must be bloggers, perhaps ones you read
every day, who have created fiction under the
guise of truth. Their blogs are ostensibly
about their day to day existence, may even
include some pieces of fiction or poetry or
personal essay, but some of the facts have
been turned inside out.
Maybe the writer doesn’t want to be
identified, or is playing, having fun being
someone else. The character that demanded
life is finally born in a blog, fully
realized, solid, interactive (the fresh-eyed
college graduate moving back to her hometown;
the landlocked fly fisherman reminiscing
about his days of streams and trout; the
tech-savvy doting grandma with an herbal tea
obsession, a minor character in a SAHM's
life). Or they add a totally fictional
detail, erase a husband, gain a Weimaraner,
make a virtual move from Asheville to Albany.
And what of it? Readers are entertained, the
writer has an enthusiastic, satisfied
audience. These are tenuous connections we
have, the lengths of spider's silk stretching
across the ether from blogger to blogger.
Many of us have never even spoken. In these
circumstances, does the truth matter?
I'm still trying to figure that one
out.
The end of anonymity
In the beginning, there was
Anonmomous.
Then it was simply Jennifer. But there were
slip-ups. The PublicLiterature.Org stories
with my full name. The e-mails I sent to
others from my personal gmail account. The
few blogging awards that went to Jennifer
Fullname instead of to just Jennifer.
My father found the blog. I accidentally sent
an e-mail to my ex-husband from the writing
to survive account and I'm pretty sure he's
been here. I have a sneaking suspicion that
my brother-in-law has visited at least once.
A friend from elementary school found me
here. For a while the first hit on a Google
search of my name (yeah, I google my own
name. I'm not the only one, right?) was the
blog, for reasons that are somewhat
mysterious. Until today, the two weren't
directly connected.
It's one thing to write to complete
strangers. It's quite another to realize that
people who may be a part of my story are
reading. Or that casual friends might come
upon this and find out more than they ever
wanted to know about me. But as I kept on
leaving the door ajar, I realized that I want
to be open, needed it. What's there to hide?
Just me.
So.
Here I am.
Jennifer Trinkle.
All other names have been
changed to protect the innocent. In most
cases.
December's blog: Inside Candy
— from Clarity, a poem by Candy Tothill
Candy Tothill of Inside Candy
I am officially jealous.
Well, not exactly jealous, just dumbstruck
with admiration. South African blogger Candy
Tothill is a business owner, a mother to
three, and one hell of a writer (who in her
spare time is working on a
book).
Her blog, Inside
Candy, is an enticing
combination of poetry,
rant, and keen observation.
Candy’s writing is evocative. Her poems dance
around sadness and loss as she captures the
elusive nature of a moment or a fleeting
thought, the glimpse into someone else's
window, a view into another way of being. In
between the poems, she mixes it up with
critiques on South African politics and
thoughts about life.
And while there's a lot of good stuff on her
blog, she's written for several
publications, too.
So, what are you waiting for? As Candy says,
"Be not afraid. It will only offend readers
to whom life itself is offensive."
What haven't I told you?
I let
the first
U.S. punk compilation
slip out of
my hands. Album cover from
Rate Your Music.
Jean of
Jean’s
Musings – a lovely blog that I
recommend highly – has passed a meme my
way, a request to list five things that
you might not know about me. Given how
much I’ve revealed here, that’s a tall
order, but I think I can dredge up some
obscure facts.
*I once had a Secret
security
clearance. The think tank I
worked for did a lot of work for the
defense department and the library was
responsible for the classified document
collection. Getting the clearance was
nerve-wracking, as was the proximity to
potential national secrets. It was a
relief to leave it behind.
*Although we do have a television, I don't
watch it (this despite the fact that we've
had mysterious cable access in our last two
houses).
*Punk music was the soundtrack of my life for
a long time. I knew my now-husband was a good
match after we watched a movie that included
the song Viva Las Vegas. As we were leaving
the theater I told him “Every time I hear
that song I …” He finished the sentence,
“think of the Dead
Kennedys version?” That’s right.
Ahh, love.
*I got my license at 25 (or was that 26?),
but I don’t
drive. You wouldn’t want me
to. Trust me.
*Despite a lifelong allergy to cats, I have
never lived without at least one kitty,
except for a brief pet-free period in college
and graduate school. They are worth the
asthma, the itchy eyes, the mounds of
tissues.
An extra fact: I’ve got some recipes in the
Nov/Dec issue of Vegetarian
Times, along with a short
profile in the contributers column. Go to
your newsstand or local library and take a
look. I'll be putting up more information
on the Food
Writing section eventually.
If you have your own five facts, I'd love to
read them.
And for your listening pleasure, Viva Las
Vegas!
The kindness of other bloggers
And if all this weren’t wonderful enough, Ken Armstrong of Ken's Writing Stuff gave me a copy of his recently published play, “The Moon Cut Like a Sickle,” after I correctly answered the question “What lady links ‘Mack the Knife’ with ‘From Russia with Love’"? Even though I cheated and used Google instead of actual knowledge, he was kind enough to send me a copy, all the way from Ireland to the far reaches of the continental U.S. Ken’s blog is a mix of movie reviews and stories, infused with optimism and humor. It's on my Google reader and it should be on yours, too.
Finally, the awards (and if I’ve missed one, I apologize. Please let me know). I am so happy that such a great group of writers and thinkers like what I am doing here. This time I'm passing each award on to another blogger who can do with it what they wish. Of course, the blogs below are only an example of the good stuff out there in the blogosphere and there are many that I read regularly and love that I haven't listed here.
Thank you, Geoffrey and Lidian! I'm passing this one on to Candy of Inside Candy.
Thank you, Lidian and Maitri! I'm passing this one on to Just Bob of the Essence of Bobness.
Thank you Lidian, Maitri, and Dori! I'm passing this one on to Karen of The Pitfalls of Life and Five Little Kids Named Larrow.
Thank you, Candy! I'm passing this one on to Koe at The Half-Life of Linoleum.
Thank you, Maitri! I can't single out any one blog here without feeling like I'm missing someone, so I officially pass this on to any blog on my blogroll.
Thank you, Judy! I am passing this one on to Lydia of Writerquake.
Next post: Is there anything I haven't told you?
November's blog: The Virtual Dime Museum
This month's featured blog,
the Virtual
Dime Museum, is a shift from
personal history -- October’s
Melindaville
-- to
popular history, offering a change of pace
for November.
The Virtual Dime Museum provides a peek at
advertisements, news stories, and sundry
entertainments from the mid-1800s into the
early 20th century. It is full of oddities
and bizarre medical concoctions, sideshows
and haunted houses. Writer Lidian, born and
raised in New York City and now living in
Canada, has created an entertaining and
well-written three-ring circus of pop
history, Brooklyn and New York history, and
Victorian pop culture.
Whether it’s digging up an 1896 item about a skeleton hand found in Flatbush or profiling Victorian fascinations such as the animated bust, Lidian brings a sense of humor to the Virtual Dime Museum. Her interests in genealogy and history combined with her mad research and writing skills results in a diverting and dryly funny read. And if you like your pop history a little more recent, check out her other blog of kitsch and camp, Kitchen Retro.
October's blog: Melindaville
What could life be like
after recovery from hardcore drug addiction?
Today Melinda Roberts Tyler is a successful
and award-winning professor of psychology,
happily married to her soulmate, full of
warmth and gratitude for life. Over fifteen
years ago, however, she was a heroin and
cocaine addict living on the streets of San
Francisco, at rock bottom with very little
will to live.
Melindaville
chronicles
her journey from hardcore addict to honors
student and professor. It is a
fascinating, though often harrowing,
story. After moving to San Francisco to
pursue an acting career in the early
1980s, Melinda gets involved in the
burgeoning punk scene and performs as part
of the band Wild Women of Borneo. Along
the way she becomes an exotic dancer and
high-priced call girl, as well as
demonstrates an entrepreneurial spirit by
starting “the world’s first fantasy phone
service,” Julie’s Hotline. As her
dependency on drugs intensifies, her life
begins to fall apart. It takes twelve
years of addiction before she begins to
put it back together again.
The blog contains excerpts from her memoir in
progress (working title: Lost and Found: A
Journey) as well as
consciousness-raising posts on the nature of
addiction as a health, not moral, issue, with
underlying causes and more sophisticated
solutions than “just say no.”
Melinda’s ultimate goal is to use the
proceeds of her eventual book sales to fund a
foundation for sex workers. Drug addiction
and the sex industry are intertwined. Many
sex workers choose that path after suffering
childhoods of abuse. Maybe they start working
in the business to support an existing habit
or begin using just to get through the
workday. Drugs like heroin or cocaine provide
compelling comfort in a small package, a way
to numb the pain of the past and present.
Melinda plans to fund treatment and higher
education for these men and women who are so
often invisible and voiceless. I can think of
no better champion.
You guys are great!
About a month back, a new blogging friend, Melinda, wrote about saying her gratefuls. That’s what I’d like to do today, focusing specifically on this strange and wondrous virtual universe, the blogosphere: I am eternally grateful for the recognition and support of my fellow bloggers.
Last week, Karen of The Pitfalls of Life passed two awards my way.
and
Karen has another
blog, Five Little Kids Named
Larrow, where she writes
stories about a very difficult childhood
with an amazing clear-headedness,
capturing the child’s innocent point of
view. I think she's courageous, too, as
well as a fine writer and photographer.
Through the struggles of the past and
present, she always finds a way to rise
above. Thank you, Karen. You really are a
good friend.
Also last week, Dori of A Yellow House in
England passed the I Love Your
Blog award along. Dori’s blog is about her
adventures as an American expat married to
a Brit. Written in a breezy conversational
style with tales of little towns she
visits and other stories from her life, A
Yellow House is a fun read with some nice
photography as well.
Finally, Susan Helene Gottfried of
West of Mars
not only
received a bunch of awards (no shock
there!), but she also gave a shout-out to
blogs she enjoys reading, including
writing to survive. Go to her blog to read
her always-engrossing fiction, to peruse
book reviews, or just to join in on the
conversation.
I’ve been in a bit of a blogging slump
lately, not feeling creative or chatty enough
to leave comments. I’m getting tired of
dropping my Entrecard all over the place. I
haven't had much to post about. Even in my
current ennui, I recognize that this virtual
universe has helped bring me back to life.
Blogging and the support of fellow bloggers
can take a large part of the credit for
connecting me with the world again, not only
after a hard year in a strange place, but
also after many years of keeping most people
at a polite distance, years of sitting on my
secrets and keeping my mouth shut.
This wasn't even the point of starting a blog
for me initially. Building a community was
far from my mind. I just needed an impetus to
start writing. In that sense blogging has
helped me connect back to myself, has helped
the words flow.
I’m not sure where I’ll be going with this
space. Starting next month, I will be taking
a writing course in which will entail writing
every day, including holidays and weekends. I
hope this little push will not only help me
find a local community but will also propel
my writing forward. It doesn’t mean I’ll stop
blogging or commenting, but it does mean that
I will have to cut back. Or maybe I'll bring
you all along with me on this new venture
with updates and postings of my half-baked
work. I don't know exactly how it will work.
What I do know is that I am grateful for my
blogging friends. You have supported me on my
journey and I look forward to having you
along for the rest of the ride.
Thank you.
How did you get here?
I had no idea as I blithely googled my friends and neighbors and looked up various topics on the Web that anyone would be keeping track of my searches. But then I started this blog, became interested in the statistics, wanted to know how many people were coming, what they clicked on, etc., and discovered that these searches were logged. Google doesn't tell me who has been searching (thank goodness!), but it does list the search terms used to get here.
Some of the searches are from people who are struggling, for example: “why keep trying to survive in this world” or “writing to survive life’s struggles.” Did they find the answer here? I don't know. Most people don’t go beyond the first page. I wish I could hold out a hand for them, help them along the narrow and rocky path.
Then there are the more bizarre queries. Yes, the term bloodworms and marine do come up in close proximity in this blog, but probably not in a combination that the searcher was expecting. So, in the interest of lightening things up around here, I've listed some of the more interesting searches below.
- Hangover existential angst
- Underwater handstand
- How to survive traveling with a crazy boyfriend
- Brain nubbin
- Capricious father
- We have nothing in common but love – can our marriage survive
- Flim flan recipe
- Marine bloodworms
- Submissive Louise
- Teen girls baptized in diapers
What were these folks thinking as they read my blog? Hopefully they left entertained in some way.
Next post: acknowledging awards from two wonderful bloggers, Karen and Dori.
The wonderful, the not so good, and the unknown
Then, the unknown: my father found this blog. This is not a shocking development, since there is at least one link out there with my full name that points to writing to survive. What does it mean? I don’t know. I hope it means an open line of communication. And that’s all I’ll be saying about it here. Some things are meant to be – yes – private.
Finally, happily, the wonderful: two fine bloggers gave awards to writing to survive in the past week.
John of Storied Mind
passed along
the Brilliant Blog Award, which is quite
an honor from someone who I think has a
brilliant blog! The premise behind Storied
Mind is that writing and creating stories
about one’s experience with depression can
help break through its deadening
effects. Storied Mind
also aims to
create a community, a place where people
can gather and discuss their experiences
with depression. All of this is
beautifully done, with thought-provoking
posts that dive deep into the experience
of mood-related disorders and what may
work to reach clarity. Thank you, John. I
am truly honored.
Kimmy of
The Eagle The Lion and The
Dove passed another award my
way, the I Love Your Blog award. Kimmy’s
blog is all about focusing on the light in
darkness, seeking the beauty in the world
and ourselves, knowing that none of us is
perfect. It’s a great dose of daily
inspiration. Thank you, Kimmy – I’m so
happy we found each other via Entrecard!
As a way to share the love and highlight some
outstanding blogs that are part of my daily
reading, I am planning to have monthly
reviews, with a feature on my sidebar linking
to the Blog of the Month. Stay tuned for the
October selection.
Missing comments
Thanks for being such a supportive, thoughtful group of readers. Your input is vital and has helped take this blog to places I never anticipated.
Excellent Blog Award
Writing to survive has been
recognized by two wonderful bloggers this
week.
Kathleen Maher of Diary of a
Heretic was the first one to
pass along the Excellent Blog Award. A
warning: once you visit Kathleen’s blog,
you won’t be able to stop reading! You can
also find more of her fiction in
The View from
Here.
Then Bobbi of My Muse and Me
passed the
same award my way. I’ve recently come upon
Bobbi’s blog and have been enjoying the
mix of fiction, poetry, and discussions of
everyday life.
Thank you both very much for the honor!
Early on, I decided that I wasn’t going to
pass on memes or awards. Initially, it was
because I didn’t want to trouble people with
meme postings, and then it became difficult
to decide who to pass on awards to: so many
choices! The downside to my approach is that
I never spread the love. I’m trying to think
of a way to recognize some of the wonderful
blogs I read on a regular basis, maybe by
writing the ocassional review or by coming up
with my own award.
Next week: a return to writing about writing?
More about my mother’s visit?
I won’t know until I start typing.
From the inside
Part of what unsettled me was the link back to my own words (which I’ve changed to better reflect my feelings). The “why” of writing to survive was initially a rather bleak description of what life was like for me for the first two years of my son’s existence. This was a difficult time with many struggles to maintain eveness. I lost a lot of myself, my marriage changed, and I’d have to say there was some depression tossed into the mix, too, though I was never treated.
So. I love my son. I am lucky to stay home with him. He makes me laugh. We dance and sing and talk and read together. He has also been an impetus for change, a reminder to slow down and enjoy. With him I am able to remake my own childhood, borrowing the good bits and discarding the bad. I am lucky to be able to do this AND write.
Which brings me to my husband, an amazing man who is my biggest supporter. When I need reassuring about my parenting skills, he is quick to soothe. He loves to read my work. He gets take-out when I am tired of cooking. He understands when I use naptime (when naptime happens) to write instead of clean. We are truly a team. I love you, H.
There are nuances to this angst, and as I’ve been writing here and privately, the angst shifts and dissipates. The words have saved me.
This is writing to survive.
Seven facts
Instead of passing it along, I offer it up to anyone who would like to participate.
7 FACTS about
Jennifer
1 - WORK: I was a reference
librarian for about ten years, first for a
state legislative agency, then for a
Washington, DC think tank, and finally for
the "world's greatest deliberative body."
Four years of working 40-50 hour weeks in a
basement paging through Congressional
Records, locating report language, and
watching C-SPAN with my colleagues for the
laughs led to disillusionment and burnout.
(Note: There is really much more to the job
than that, but an exhaustive listing of what
we did would bore most readers). I quit to go
to culinary school.
Took a detour to be a stay-at-home mother and
freelance writer.
2 - EDUCATION:
After one false start, I received a bachelors
in philosophy, a masters in library science,
and a certificate from a culinary school. My
first college experience was about drinking;
my second, about thinking, my third, about
getting a job, and my fourth about taking a
chance while I still could.
3 - FRIENDSHIP: When I do make a friend, it
is generally for life (even when I am not
good at keeping in touch). I’m still figuring
out how to make connections as a reserved
person without a traditional working life in
a place I don’t know very well, since we’re
still fairly new to Northern Californa. It
isn’t easy, but I am getting there. I don’t
need a posse, just a few confidants.
4 - RELATIONSHIPS: My second husband and I
have been married five years as of last
Saturday, and have been together for ten.
After a tough 2007, we’re in a good place
now. Happy belated anniversary, honey!
5 - WWW: The Internet was just taking off
when I was in graduate school. I remember
becoming quite engrossed in the usenet
groups. Gopher -- a kind of menu-driven WWW
-- was the hot technology during my first
library job. It’s a totally different world
now. Completely addictive, too, especially
now that I am blogging.
6 - FITNESS: Run 3x a week when I can, other
exercise on the off days, walk almost
everywhere. I’ve been mainly vegetarian (some
fish) for 13 years and don’t see going back
to eating meat.
7 - DREAMS: One basic dream: that I make an
authentic life as a writer. A better way to
put it: I am living an authentic life as a
writer, making the dream a reality. (Thank
you to The Fearless
Blog for cheerleading
the idea that we must think something to
make it so.)
Kick-Ass Blogger Award
According to Angel, A Kick-Ass Blogger is a blogger who can grab your attention and give you something to chew over for the rest of the day and in doing so, entices you back for more. A Kick-Ass Blogger is someone who is witty, articulate, and informative. I was introduced to Here and Now via Entrecard, and I am continually impressed at how direct Angel is in dealing with some difficult issues, sometimes through poetry, other times by just writing out her thoughts for the day. Thank you, Angel. I am honored.
Arte y Pico Award
Marlene of
The Fearless
Blog has presented me with
the Arte y Pico
award, which
is given to bloggers who inspire others
with their writing or artwork. If you need
inspiration and a dose of motivation,
Marlene's blog is a good place to start.
For a wonderful example of her work, take
a look at Straddling Between Two
Worlds on the
PublicLiterature.Org
website.
Thank you, Marlene! I am honored.
In the beginning ...
When I started this blog in late December of last year, I wasn't in a good place. All the things I've been writing about since then were burbling just below the surface, barely suppressed, waiting to be given form and shaped into a story. I used a pseudonym -- Anonmomous -- and wrote pretty freely about my angst at the time, my desperation, the stifled creativity that I blamed on my daily mundane existence mixed in with a childhood hangover.
I had no creative outlet, but a strong desire to write and figured that starting a blog would force me to do it on a regular basis. Maybe I would find others out there like me, or attract an audience (even an audience of one would have been wonderful). But nobody reads a blog if they don't know about it. I started using my real first name, joined blogcatalog, and things started to look up.
Most of my early posts are gone, but I recently found an interesting one from right before I "came out." I've reproduced it below.
Thanks to Geoffrey for asking some questions that got me thinking about the early days and how the process of self-expression has actually changed the story I've created for myself.
I also have to thank The Fearless Blog for her kind profile of writing to survive, and her words of encouragement. As usual, she got me thinking about how a positive attitude can change the equation entirely.
Manufacturing interest
18 February 2008
As I was thinking about whether I would post tonight, not sure if I had anything to say, I decided I would manufacture something of interest to write about: the manufacturing of interest in what I am writing here.
I have no idea how you arrived at this blog, whether you find it entertaining, or relevant, or worth five minutes of your time. I could probably come out of the closet, quit being anonymous, and invite people I know to read it, or at the very least passively put up the address in my facebook profile and e-mail signature. Perhaps then the blog would spread like a benevolent virus across cyberspace, e-mailed here and there: you simply HAVE to read this.
Would more people read? Maybe. Would it affect what I write here? Most definitely. In a good way? I am not sure. Currently, I can write corny or stupid or revealing stuff here without worrying about hurting anyone's feelings or worrying about looking corny or stupid. I would probably remove anything non-writing related, which may be the cleaner and kinder way to go. I still have much mulling to do on the topic.
H and I took advantage of our holiday Monday babysitter to go into the city. We wandered around North Beach, did some vintage shopping, had lunch. We ended up at City Lights and I was suddenly overwhelmed by all that fiction, non-fiction, poetry, ecology, etc etc, titles and authors I have never heard of and will probably never read.
What a crazy idea it is to write when there are so many talented people out there who can barely sell a book.
But I can't worry about that now, can I?
Seven songs: another meme
List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring summer. Post these instructions in your blog along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they’re listening to.
Although I can't say that there are seven songs that are shaping my summer season, I can list seven songs that I've listened to lately, almost all while dancing around with the kid. And we don't listen to a lot of current stuff, apparently, so I apologize in advance to the youngins.
Belle & Sebastian: The State I Am In
Reminds me of a different summer, but I still listen to it and the kid has been listening to Belle & Sebastian since birth.
Robyn Hitchcock: Belltown Ramble
My husband and I recently attended a Nick Lowe/Robyn Hitchcock show at the Fillmore. Robyn played this tune, H bought the CD, and we are now hooked. My son asks for the Bell song, and we move around the room, swaying our arms.
White Stripes: Seven Nation Army
Good stomping music.
Sonic Youth: Bull in the Heather
Don't know how to explain this one, but we likes distortion.
Prince: Dance, Music, Sex, Romance
We had a morning of dance. I was thinking of my old college roommate, who was a Prince fan, and there you have it.
Kenny Loggins: House at Pooh Corner
I wrote about this recently. Now the kid sings it, too, though he doesn't catch all the words. It's cute.
Cassandra Wilson: Children of the Night
This song brings me back to a different time in my life, in a bittersweet way.
Instead of passing this on to seven bloggers, I invite anyone who would like to participate to post their own seven songs.
In six words: a meme
OK. I am up for the challenge.
Who would
have thought: me, here?
There have been a few
surprising turns in my life. Spending five
years in the midwest? Never would have
anticipated it. Cooking school in New York?
No way. Being a stay-at-home-mom in Berkeley,
California? Oh, but I would never leave the
East Coast again ...
And most surprising of all: tell my secrets
to the world (well, to a small group of loyal
readers) on a "blog"? You must be joking.
So now I pass it along to the following
bloggers, if they wish to participate:
Clinically
Clueless
The Pitfalls of
Life
Geoffrey's
Farrago
Shiv's
Brain
The Essence of
Bobness
The lost weekend
Reminder to self: be more careful. Read the manual. Back everything up. Test out the web page in different browsers.
And pay more attention to Timethief. She knows what she’s talking about.
Next week: more recipe development for Vegetarian Times.
Um, Hello?
Welcome to my not-quite-fully-baked web page.
I've spent the last 24 hours trying to recreate my deleted blog entries. Got most of them, though the early stuff is missing. Just figured out that I can't get a working redirect from blogger (that darn 'www' in my web address makes that difficult, apparently), so I am starting from scratch.
I still have lots of content to create. Not sure if I'm happy with my descriptions (too melodramatic? not enough information? do I want to be a melodramatic woman of mystery? does my profile picture negate the idea that I am a melodramatic woman of mystery?). I also have to enter what I've written so far of "A Prolonged Illness" and "A Shifting Scar." I don't think they worked well in the blog format.
I'm curious how the look of the page will affect the feel of the words. Even typing into the little box I now have for blog entries feels completely different. Funny how a change in layout or type alters the whole experience.
Anyway, hope you like it.
Watch this space
The hours were long and being exposed to the inner workings of the legislative branch got old. There was micromanagement. Basement darkness. So I quit and went to cooking school. Finished cooking school and had a baby. And when part of me slowly reawakened, I began writing.
One of the things I miss about the working world is creating things for the Web (another thing that might have my old colleagues scratching their heads). Although I'm not sure how many people read or use the web pages I created, I am still proud of them, though I've deleted links to them. This document has been edited now that I'm out of the closet.
I'm in the middle of redesigning this blog and putting together an Internet site using Rapidweaver. It's kind of like the old days, except I have more control and no technical support. I'm limping my way through and it's slow going. Hopefully it will be up in a week or so, but until it is I may not be posting as much or checking in with my friends.
See you soon.
Bloggers Unite for Human Rights
I really didn't want
to think about this one.
Why? Because I feel helpless. Human rights abuses happen in far away places to people I can't touch, look in the eye, or help in any concrete way.
Right?
Maybe not. For example, Guantanamo Bay was created by my own government, a government in which I presumably have a voice. I could participate in international pressure against the Myanmar junta, which could get supplies to people who are dying. There are tons of examples from across the globe -- violence against women, the horror in Darfur, LGBT human rights, etc. etc. Once you start to read about human rights abuses, you realize that the idea of human rights isn't universal. And even nations who tout the cause violate it.
Get involved. If enough people try, maybe, just maybe, the world will change . . . I hope. OK, I'm still a little cynical. But I won't let that stop me from trying. It takes so little to try.