Where I'm Going: Part II

Yesterday my sister called me to say a swarm of bees had arrived in her lilac bush and two hours later, she had hived that swarm.

I spent a good portion of today defending my own hive like a toothless man on a front porch, a spray bottle of syrup in one hand and a broom in the other, slaying yellow jackets and ants while dark thunderclouds approached from the west, the wind thick with the sweet scent of early summer. I have made myself a bee vigilante, and it will drive me crazy if I let it. I could, theoretically, sit there for ten hours a day, defending the hive.

At some point, I have to trust the bees.

The post I wrote yesterday rattled around in my brain all afternoon and evening. I went in to it intending to do one thing, and by the end of it I think I'd done another. I was unsettled and bothered, (but not in a good way). The line between sharing a story in a helpful way, and sharing it in an indulgent way, is a thin one and I'm still learning to walk it. I'll mess up, sometimes. I hope you'll know my intentions are good.

I tried to banish my bothers from my brain as I sang Indy to sleep, leaving off the last word of every line of "Sweet Baby James", which we sing "Sweet Baby Indy", and allowing her to fill it in. In Indy's version, the cowgirl thinks about "horseys" and glasses of beer, and closes her eyes as the doggies "are tired". (Ayla's version involves a young zombie who likes to eat brains, and begs the listener "please just don't eat baby James"). When I was finished, she put her hands on my cheeks and smashed her lips to mine in a full, lusty kiss. Indy, I said, when she pulled away. You haven't done that in a few years. You used to do that all the time. I spent the next five minutes being kissed in such manner by Indy and then Ayla. I'll tell you here, but don't repeat it: Indy is the better kisser.

The bees are beginning to die off and being replaced by the second generation. All this work they do, not for themselves, but for future generations of bees to survive a winter and into a spring they won't live to see. If I wanted to, I could get morose about the bees. But I've decided not to. The bees do as they were born to, and so must I.

Two weeks ago I wrote in my journal: I must learn to approach writing like the bees--not go into it until absolutely necessary, then work without all this worry, or desperation, or wondering why. 

This is how I want to live my life. I want to put good energy into my children, and let that good energy come back to me. I want to make honey with the faith that someone in the future will need it. I want to let go what needs to go and embrace what needs to come. I want to sail my seasons bravely, knowing that in each moment, we are laying the groundwork for what's coming next.

So we might as well make it sweet.

What I Do

Late last week I'd sat down to work, ready to input edits I'd made to my Very Pretentious Work of Fiction, when I plum started crying. I know it seems like I cry a lot, usually into food, and this is why I identify so strongly with Tina Fey and all the other crazy, hairy-legged artists. Thinking about  their glamorous mood disorders and anxiety medication, however, makes me sad, because I suspect deep down I'm not crazy enough to be brilliant. I'd love to be as hilarious as The Bloggess, but it turns out she struggles mightily with mood disorders and here I sit, not on a single anti-depressant whatsoever. That's only because I don't have the health insurance to procure them, but never mind that, never mind. For a creative person I am disturbingly sane. But that's not why I was crying, I cried because Tina Fey has been lurking around my yard again, hiding in the irises and putting her hand through the mail slot. I'm sorry, I just--it's very hard, and I get emotional. I wrote to my friend Nathan Fillion about it, asking if he'd show up in his Captain Tightpants outfit to scare her off, as he does every week for our house mother Rachel Maddow, but he wrote back saying please cease and desist, he didn't want to have to contact the police but he would. Which is how Nathan jokes, but I'm thinking of telling him it's sometimes hurtful.

He should know.

Anyway, there I was, crying this time over white sheets of writing and not over my tuna melt, which wasn't ready yet, and watching Tina Fey pull crab grass from my yard. I am getting the hang of talking myself off ledges. I am learning that I can't save lives other than my own. I have heard the answer to a question which troubled me for years, concerning purposes and plans and does the Divine choose to play my life like a chess board? I heard that it does not, that my essence loathes the idea of purpose and so the Divine is pleased not to bridle me with one. Armed with this knowledge, I have naturally begun to consider writing smutty novels. I have read this Shades of Grey nonsense and while I am glad that the world has offered something to please the female libido, for once, I couldn't believe how poorly it was written, how alienated our erotic heroine was from her own eroticism, and I think our Lady Gardens deserve better. Someone must tend them, and it must not be Brian McKnight. It can't be worse, after all, than writing pretentious fiction, and I rather like this idea of myself: a bottle-dyed redhead sitting in her garden with bees in her hair and amorous stories flowing veins to page (and back again, as you know if you've ever written Lady Porn).

I'm starting to hope you have.

I took two days' leave of absence from all writerly aspirations, and what I learned then was that 1) Malcolm Reynolds is one thing, but Fillion is unreliable at best, and 2) my dreams have begun to feel less like hope and more like a thing that weighs me down, and I'm tired of that. For so long I have focused all my energies into earning money, aplomb, a thing that could accurately be called a career to lack of eye-rolls at parties, and for what purpose? My identity  has become wrapped up in 'should' to a degree that drags my heart. It unmoors me deeply down, because so much trying to be removes me farther and farther from the truest bud of my real self, and my grittiest, most truthful self is the only power I'll ever really have.

I am so weary of having something to prove.

Writing is what I do, and I will always do it. So while I tell you artists to keep making your art, I do mean it so, but here is other half of that story, here is how the flower comes to full bloom: I will love you if you never make art again at all, if you earn not a dime, publish not a page. Go and make your art the way you have sex, because it pleases you, and for nothing more.


And so we must learn to love ourselves. I don't know it yet, but I hear this insistent voice whispering that to turn away from all measures of success and back to the joy of creating for it's own sake is the best thing I can do for myself, and thus the best I can offer the world.

So that's what I'm going to do. Now if you'll excuse me, it's just occurred to me that Tina Fey might be after my honey and I'm going to go take her back to look at the bees and see if that doesn't calm her down. Wish me luck because I think she is escalating.

xoxo
-La V

Milk and Honey

Things That Are Contagious:

1) Bees

Our landlord came over the other day with some college guys to aerate the lawn and get flustered because we use our back gate as a gate (apparently the hinged, swinging gate was intended to be more of a wall). A thought occurred to me and I said "You're not going to fertilize, are you?" The bees weren't there yet, but I know now that chemicals are killing off the bees and I didn't want them on my lawn. The landlord ignored me but the college boys took pity on me, a young and attractive and buxom housewife (just go with me, here, ok? It's been a week) and said they didn't have to, no. The landlord was mad that crab grass had overrun the front yard, which honestly confused me: what the hell were we supposed to do about it? I may not know anything about lawn care. Anyway, he argued that he'd have to put chemicals on the front yard, Noah and I exchanged heated words in our kitchen, Noah went back out to firmly ask the Lord of Land not to unleash a chemical holocaust upon our lawn, and he grudgingly acquiesced.

Since I posted about the bees on Tuesday, lots of people have emailed or texted or pulled me aside to ask about the bees and almost all of them tell me that they want to keep bees, too. I think this is wonderful. I have a dream of a beehive in every backyard and honey in every home. It occurred to me that if everyone did keep bees, maybe everyone, even the Chem Green fanatics, would finally see the dangers of pesticides and herbicides (a good sign that something is bad is if it has the root word 'cide' in it) and Round Up and stand up to their Lords of Land and HOA's, and maybe the bees and the cows and goats would thrive, the flowers would grow, and we would recreate the land of milk and honey.

2) Doubt

I felt bad after I posted about my doubtful slump last week. I had put something out there that wasn't helpful to others. Later that week, Blood Sister A and I had a conversation along the same demoralized lines of that blog, and I only know that it got us nowhere. I have hopeful thoughts to write, but I'm not ready to, yet. For now, suffice it to say I have doubts about the usefulness of doubts. All they've done is knocked me into a slump, which may be part of the natural rhythms of life, but it isn't best practices to encourage these doubts, or to voice them, or maybe to even hear them. I've done a lot of work the last few years at stopping certain negative tracks that I am given to playing on repeat in my mind, and I think these doubts may need to be added to the list of things my mind say that aren't true.

 I'm sorry if my doubt caused similar doubts in you. I want to try to offer more encouragement and hope. Maybe everyone can try, and maybe, like the bees, we can support one another's work and create a new community for artists, a happy hive. One that doesn't rate our work on how much money it can earn, press it can drum up, or copies it can sell. Maybe we can create a new place that has room and love for everyone's gifts, and maybe we can forge new ground. Milk and honey for the bees and for our souls. Let's do this together. Ok?

3)Bad Moods

Noah came home from work this morning while I was getting the girls ready for school. His shift started at 3 am, he was home to make some lunch before eight in the morning. I was not my best self. If I was Oprah, Gale would be shouting that I had lost my pleasing personality (really I love this coping strategy of theirs). Noah was in a good mood, but I was stressed and useless and feeling pathetic. I don't see my husband much these days, and my moodiness lasted the entirety of his visit. The opportunity to have a moment of peace and love, of complicity between us, was lost.

I have dreamed a hopeful vision for the bees, and for the artists who really, are so much like the bees, working and working all our lives to produce scant spoons of precious golden honey, so let me dream a vision for my husband and I: we can get ourselves out of this rut, this stretched-thin place. We can have Saturday mornings together again, and picnics in the sun. I will pack blankets and chocolate cake into the trunk and when my husband leaves before dawn and returns to me, sleepy and messy-haired in the morning light, offering a simple espresso, or a fresh-mown lawn or a breakfast of cantaloupe, I will sigh content and together, we will adore.

But, I swear it guys, one day we're going to do this in Paris.

So, J'adore.

PS: Let's be facebook friends, ok? I deleted my high school principal (weird) and I want to add you. Out with the old, in with the new.

https://www.facebook.com/b.e.tuttle

(if there's a better way to link to my facebook profile, I don't know it).

(After posting, this quote found me:


Doubt Not, Go Forward--If though doubt'st, The Beasts will tear thee piecemeal. ~ Tennyson)

Everything Is Illuminated

Last week I went in to Bookstore to turn in an application. I went kicking and screaming, against my own will, because--spoiler alert!--I don't want to go back to work. (Work away from home, whatever, you get my drift). I happened to get the manager. I mentioned that I had worked at Other Bookstore before and we had a chat. We had common acquaintances and co-workers, all good omens and signs. He gave me a sort of impromptu interview. Hours later, I was summoned for a real interview. Everything was swimming along just swimmingly. They needed someone to shelve books--my favorite thing, no joke--during the exact hours I wanted to work. Let me say: I present well in interviews, or at least, I think I do. I've never gone to an interview and not been offered a job. At first, I didn't entirely want the job, but by the interview's end, I did. I started to want it very badly. I want Noah to not have to work weekends anymore. He often works twelve or fourteen days in a row with no day off, did you know? He's getting tired.

Then a week passed and I was not offered a job. Instead I got a postcard informing me thatunfortunately Bookstore does not have a position to meet my qualifications at this time. I would like to blame the fact that I asked for an hourly pay rate that was above minimum wage.We pay our employees seven-fifty* an hour, they informed me. If I'd had coffee in my mouth, I wouldn't have spit it at them. I'd have taken my mug, walked across the room, and poured it over their heads. Seven dollars and fifty cents an hour. I'm not in prison. I am not sixteen. Neither is anyone who works there, how the hell do they do it? Full disclosure: I told them I could not work for less than $8.50 (I shame myself. It's a low stress job, ok? I'd asked for $9.50 on my app and they'd offered me bird seed, I had to capitulate some). I like to think this is why they didn't hire me. That or they had some friend apply. I hope you enjoy your seven bucks an hour, supervisor's bestie. I am unemployed but if we meet for coffee, it'll be my treat.

This is Bookstore we're talking about, and I did describe a time when I provided excellent customer service, so that might be what did me in.

Anyway, we had, in our minds, counted tiny chickens before they were worth more per hour than a 30-year-old freelance writer with a Bachelor's Degree and a passion for the job. I was bummed, and Noah was disappointed though valiant about it, all Mr. Fitzwilliams or whatever, saying "now now" and "there there" and "hail-fellow-well-met" and all that.

But we were discussing it after dinner, putting away the dishes and drinking free company beer and wondering what we are going to do now. And I realized that I still have this stupid idea that one day everything is going to work out. I thought I had moved beyond this fantasy after my financially disastrous 20's, but no. Despite all insurmountable evidence to the contrary, some stupid bird in my heart keeps chirping that one day, it will all come together. One day good fortune will smile and everything will be illuminated and my life will shine like sunny spots and copper pennies.

And I wonder when I'm going to wise up.

I'm not speaking out of depression or bitterness here, I'm just starting to wonder when brainless optimism runs its course. The ship does not always come in. Most people work very hard all their lives and I don't know why I think so highly of myself. Why I think I'll be the one to sell the book, strike the gold, win the millions, so to speak. Why should my ship come in when so very many ships don't? I'm not talking about Bookstore job, that is not a ship, but these dreams I have of making money off my writing. Of the two of us somehow making enough money to maybe keep some chickens and travel to Europe without me having to sell my soul to an office job. There are so very many writers who don't make money, and I don't know but these days I feel silly and stupid and gauche, pressing on with these ridiculous delusions about myself, the dreams of Paris and Spain, of book deals and raises, this idea that if I keep following my dreams one day I will catch them.

Don't worry. This is just a place I land sometimes. I probably won't be here tomorrow, but here I am today.

*corrections made to reflect Bookstore's actual pay grade

Full Bloom Days

Yesterday I sat at Starbucks so long the baristas offered me free sustenance. "We made a mistake, but you look like you could use this," said the young man singled out to approach me. He set a passion tea on my table and backed away slowly, like the wrong move might make me cry, off with his head. I wondered how I must look, pale skin, glazed wonder in my eyes. The laptop zombies, they drive me crazy. Mainly when when I can't find a place to sit because of them. But yesterday, I was one.

Maybe I will go back to school and be an English professor, I said to myself the other day. It was raining in L.A. but it was almost 80 here, making mockery of all my dreams. I was sitting in my backyard and reading a book about just that, about an English professor, about doctorates and discussions of love. That did it to me, that always does. I want bao and green tea ice cream, I'll say to Mr. V, and Mr. V knows I've been reading Lisa See.

So maybe I will do this instead, I said to the universe. She just smiled back. Go ahead and try, she said. I won't stop you.

But the truth we knew was this. I am not an English professor, or a magazine editor, or a 911 operator or any of the other occupations I entertain on warm spring days. I'm not a blogger either, something I realized when reading this post by you know who, my favorite blogger, who realizes she is not a writer of books, not now anyway. I am not a blogger, it is not my calling, it was a relief to recognize it.

Which does not mean I am going to quit blogging. But I had neglected my work, momentarily. Stopped editing, stopped writing, and so this week I've gone back to it, like I hope I always will. I am telling stories. I am struck by Ayla, who is seven. My mind recites the only times table it ever memorized: Seven, fourteen, twenty-one. I feel overwhelmed some days, driving from the grocery store, sitting at Starbucks and frightening the baristas, with happiness. There were times in my twenties when I was so unhappy, so restless, such a stranger in my life. 7, 14, 21, Ayla marches on and so do I, but I am so lucky, my sun-dappled life a thing of dreams, I am doing what I want, what I feel I am meant to do and some days I feel I'm getting younger. The days pass maybe not in straight lines but in circles, or moons, regressing, fulfilling, full bloom. My soul grows lighter.

The story moves on.

Spring Haze

I realized I might be in a bad way today when I found myself standing at the kitchen counter in my underwear eating cookies out of the package at 2:30 on a Tuesday afternoon.

I know most times I sound like Liz Lemon's real-life counterpart. In my defense, I was in my underwear because I'd just spilled coffee rather fantastically all over my laptop, my iPhone, and a brand new library book. I'm not an idiot, I didn't save the book first, and so the computer and iPhone turned out ok. The new book is ruined. I'm a tool. What other option did I have but to strip to my short clothes and eat chewy chocolate chips from the bag? It was a blessing, actually. Rarely are one's options in life so desperately clear.

The last time I remember feeling good was Sunday night. We were having drinks and delicious dinner with some parents of Ayla's classmates. Oblivious to the time change, I'd slept in that day until eleven. I had korma and naan and far too much wine. My cheeks were hot, my life was good. Then Monday came, daylight savings sucked my life force away, and everything since has been a blur. I'm in a spring haze. I feel pregnant with bees and a new book, and boy do I act like it. I wake slow-minded in golden afternoon light after writing in the hours around dawn. I pad bovine around the house, my energies all exerted from the magic of bringing into existence what did not exist before. I have pregnancy dreams, except now it's--Oh no, I've killed the bees! Or, oh no, my queen is deformed and I don't love her the way I feel I should! Or, oh no, Ryan Gosling is trying to kill me with a grenade launcher! Hey girl, I bet that's not what you meant when you asked me to make you scream. You see how deeply I'm disturbed. Our bodies and subconscious minds do work our waking brains cannot comprehend. This is how life appears out of the ether.

In a bad way: Last week I tried to explain to Noah about The Family Fang, about the two siblings who each suffer a career mishap and find themselves back with mom and dad. The brother, Buster, repeats often to himself that he is "in a bad way". We are in a bad way. As usual, I was unable to articulate in spoken word just why I loved that phrase the way Buster used it. Buster recognizes he is not his best self without any of the usual panic or flailing, the desperation to figure out why and to right himself again. I am in a bad way, states Buster, and then he just allows himself to be. He eats lunch with his sister and watches old movies on the couch. Nothing is consciously attempted to be fixed, and yet somehow at the end, everything is.

It's not that I'm actually in a bad way. The spilled coffee was a low point, but no. Spring haze, my official diagnosis. I like this dreamy phase. Half here, like new light. Golden green bursting in our shriveled winter hearts. Who knew we were capable of such bounty? It's beautiful, what we do. However you do it. Knit, write, paint, imagine, birth, boil, dream. Forgive me, I am sentimental. I believe we are all creators. I believe this is why we are here.

Honey From My Failures

At night I lie awake and think of the bees. I see them in my brain, in my belly, in my heart. Scurrying around and working their magic, gathering tiny bits of things we can't see, and together, working them over time into miraculous honey. I feel I am pregnant with bees. Like anyone on a new endeavor,a couple awaiting a baby, an artist collecting new inspiration, I am softer. Vulnerable in sweet places. I am brought easily to tears.

In November, I began to dream of the bees because they felt like a thing that could be done. Challenging, yes, but not an endeavor that relied on elusive approval. I was so frustrated, in November. So sure that all my work was for naught. I was made crazy by the nature of the publishing industry--that one may produce work, may even produce very good work for years and years, but all of that matters for nothing if you can't charm an agent. If you don't bewitch a publisher. If they don't look at you and see dollar signs, your work is rated not worthy.


I was drawn to the bees because they don't rate one's worth.

They don't question why, these girls. They emerge from their cells and minutes after their birth, get to work. They know exactly what to do, they never question their own instincts and in obeying them, accomplish marvelous feats. They labor tirelessly, these summer bees who will live just four weeks or so. They produce one-twelfth of one teaspoon of honey, and eventually they fly away to die. All of this to ensure the survival of future generations that they will never see.

I knew I had to help the bees. I knew somehow they would heal me.

And now this: after deciding to keep the bees, I realized that I could not place my happiness is other people's hands.

Nor stand around, hoping for approval. Toss my hair at agents, do my dance for publishers, no thank you. It made me miserable. It negated all the joy that came from the writing itself.

The delight at the prospect of keeping the bees showed me the delight in the possibility of self-publishing my book.

And so, I decided to do just that.

Because what matters is not approval, or attention, or money, or fame, but creating something and sharing it with others. What matters is connection.

Making this decision has set me free. I don't spend my days worrying what other people think. I let go of my ridiculous need to be the best at something, to prove myself to others. I sit down and write and it is what it was meant to be: a interaction between myself and a collective unconscious, a divine creator, a celebration of pure joy.

(You know, when writing goes well it goes very, very well and when it goes badly, we watch Oprah).


Life is sweet. The bees taught me this.

All I taste is honey.

***************


I have so many links to share today. Please take what you like and leave what you don't.

1)The title of this post was taken from the gorgeous poem by Antonio Machado.

2) Again, Elizabeth Gilbert's TED talk on creativity. I think this is invaluable to artists of any persuasion. And I cry every time I watch it.



3) Here is a link to the Beyond Pesticides website. These folks are working very hard to ban things that harm us and the bees. The U.S. still allows the use of many pesticides that have been banned in other countries (who have since seen their bee numbers increase). Some of these pesticides are even banned in the countries that make them and sell them to us. The pesticides still exist because corporations make billions off of them every year. Here you can sign a petition asking the EPA to ban the bee-killing clothiaidin.

4) This excerpt from Dan Savage on This American Life really moved me this week. In it, Dan describes being raised by his very Catholic mother, and his complex relationship with the church as an adult. The talk is very funny, and very touching. It was an excellent piece. (And it includes a good (and good natured)Lutheran joke, for all my Lutheran readers)

5) I am so excited about Miss Representation, a film that has finally taken all the frustrations with media representations of girls and women that I tend to grow inarticulate and frustrated over, and worked them eloquently into a movie that looks both educating and change-inspiring.

Newest Miss Representation Trailer (2011 Sundance Film Festival Official Selection) from Miss Representation on Vimeo.

Dear Elway: Tebow Goes Or I Do

Lately I have been enjoying myself by teasing Mr.V, stating frequently that I'm going to change teams.

(I don't know if that just made you think, Lesbian!, but that's not what I mean).

What I mean is that I dislike Tim Tebow. I don't like his politics, and I don't like his over-the-top and gaudy displays of devotion, but put those aside and what we have left is an Evangelical who can't play football. I understand there were a few games where Tebow ran it in at the last second and the Broncos won, but those games weren't won by Teeb Teebow. They were won in spite of the Teebs; they were won by our defense, by Matt Prater, by Marion Barber, by luck or chance, certainly not by Jesus, (ok, maybe by Jesus), and not by Tim Tebow. You know what else is that unlike, apparently, most of Denver, I watched the first three quarters of those games and Tebow can't complete passes. Yes, Virginia, there is a Jesus and maybe he cares about football in America, where we have nothing much to worry about other than who wins on Sunday night. But I can't think of any other profession in which a person would be allowed to perform a clown show their entire shift, do some spectacular pirouette (which was not, by the way, in the job description) in their last three minutes, and prance out on fancy feet and prayerful hands to great applause.

My point is that Tebow is ruining my Broncos for me, and so frequently these days I tell the Mr. V that I'm switching teams. "You can't just switch teams," he says, embarrassed and chagrined by what he views, I suspect, as my uniquely feminine irresolution, to which I just smile inwardly and reply, "Of course I can". I can do whatever I want, including declaring, "I'm a Vikings fan now," right after kickoff when Mr. V has just taken a bite of loaded nacho and watching him choke on his pinto beans. "You can't do that," he splutters, my earnest husband, who converted to the Broncos himself when he moved here from Raider Nation and met moi. "It doesn't work that way".

"It does now," I say, which makes me feel powerful and impervious to things like Conservatives and people who use the term "Tebow Time".

I lean toward the Vikings because, why not? Because I think they were my Uncle's team and that seems a place to start. Although sometimes I declare myself a Green Bay fan just to see how far Mr. V can sputter pilsner across the room. "Oh my god," he shouts, like Will Ferrell doing "angry", except he's dead sincere. "Oh god, why?"

I don't know, I admire the tradition: Lambeau field, the Lambeau Leap, the Chedder Headers, or whatever. Brett Favre was cute until he turned into Kim Kardashian, or not even her but one of the lesser, whinier K's, Khloe maybe, or Konstance or Kontinence, but he's gone so I don't have to worry anymore. I'll never be a Jets fan; they treat their female fans horribly, and although Pittsburgh has the highest percentage of female fans in the nation, their tradition, to me, reeks of poverty and despair. I mean, why else would you let rapists play for your team? That cold, industrial climate, it changes a person. I'll never go to another team in the AFC West, why would I want to? (I WOULD DIE FIRST). So Vikings or Packers it is; tell me, do I look better in purple or green?

"Here's what else," I say to my husband; it's almost coy, this dance we do. "I'm a Lakers fan now."

"No," he gasps, truly dismayed this time.

"Yes," I say. "It's my new thing."

"You can't do this. That's what all those stupid famous people do. They move to L.A and become Lakers fans just because it's cool, to have your picture taken courtside. Leonardo Dicaprio. You can only be a Lakers fan if you're actually from L.A."

"Nobody is actually from L.A.," I reply. "L.A. is a city you choose. Anyone who was actually born there has moved away." I know this to be true somehow without actually knowing it. "Also, I want a USC shirt."

At this point my husband just looks at the ground and shakes his head. His spirit leeches out of him while I hide my grin and fold the laundry. "That's not how it works. You went to CSU, you're a CSU fan."

"God no," I say, shuddering. "Green and gold?" Gag me.

"You don't have any connections to USC."

"Your grandpa went there," I say. "And it doesn't matter, anyway. I'm transforming myself. I'm like Madonna now. I can wear a USC shirt if I want. And I am a Lakers fan, so you'd better fucking like it."

It feels important. To celebrate myself and sing myself with the NFL Licensed Gear of my choosing. Fake it til you make it, and so, though right now I'm here, in the cold with Terb Rebow taking us to the playoffs, in my heart I'm in a city where it is warm, where the people are plastic, where team loyalty is a feeling you chose and where people reinvent themselves every day, every evening, every sunrise.

And so can I.

L.A. Lady

(Please forgive the image issues in this post. The HTC EVO phone I had on the trip makes everything--everything--impossible. This was the best I could do, let's just leave it at that.)

You know last time I flew some where it was kind of an ordeal.

But not this time. I Mele Kalikimake'd myself into a state of aviation bliss. By that I mean that I played the Bing Crosby song on repeat for almost the duration of the flight, easing myself into a Paradise State of Mind. I also ordered a glass of wine on the plane.

Best five bucks I've ever spent in my life.

I arrived at LAX and spent the next four hours there. I didn't mind, honestly. I had a new smart phone that hadn't yet proven itself to be an epic and grotesque technological failure. Southwest had lost my bag, my girlfriend's flight arrived an hour late. Whatever. I had things to tweet. If the tweeting didn't get done, who knows what might occur?

Long story short: we rode a shuttle bus to pick up a car, and while we were on the bus my girlfriend showed me Facebook's "check-in" feature. But why would I want to check-in where I actually was? That's boring, and it's not like LAX is giving you free drinks for it. So we checked in at Nudes, Nudes!! and later, at the Grilled Cheese invitational. I don't know. It seemed the thing to do. We drove the rental car twice around the LAX terminal before finding Southwest and my bag.

We drove to downtown Los Angeles.

It was lit up like El Dorado. The high rises and searchlights glittering in the night. Lights on palm trees, lights on Christmas trees.

I was in love.

There were homeless people sleeping in tents on the streets.

There were parking lots advertising cheaper rates for film crews.

There were stretch limos and doormen wearing long jackets and hats.

There were posters at the hotel displaying the movies filmed there.

We stayed at the Westin Bonaventure. Like "good adventure", I guess. All I know is that it decidedly was not named the "Westin Bonavart"--like, Bone of Art--as I told everyone ahead of time.

The lobby was a zen paradise. The beds were a dream, heavy white comforters, everything clean as a whistle. The views were stunning. The guts of the hotel were bare concrete and full of sad little "Japanese Steakhouses" and "Korean BBQ". The guts felt like someone had set up ethnic fast food in a parking garage and abandoned it.

We ordered mimosas in bed. We watched L.A working twenty stories below us, people draped in hats and scarves and thick coats for the 55 degree weather.

We ventured out late for lunch. It was L.A, it seemed the thing to do. People strutted past us in only the finest business wear, perfectly cut jackets and pressed, tailored pants. The homeless circled among them in strange harmony. It looked like a movie set. It felt like a movie set. The streets were clean. Everything was black and bare and glinting in the sun.

Our waitress was getting in to fashion design.

Two fish tacos were fourteen dollars. The burgers were sixteen. We drank Bloody Marys. We ordered off the "600 calories or less" menu.

A set bus drove by our window. Town cars in front of it. Lights and cameras mounted to the outside, facing in. Police cars behind.

"There went Nathan Fillion", I said.

Mark my words.

Hotel. Change clothes. Cocktail hour. Change again.

The doorman hails a cab. Asks us if we want to share with two gentlemen.

My Blood Sister A flirts smoothly the entire six minute trip to the Staples Center.

The gentlemen pick up the tab.

In through the VIP entrance (Thanks Blood Sister A).

How to fit this all in?

We sit at the bar, where we're told Jay-Z and Kanye won't be going on for at least two more hours. We open a tab. Eventually the crowd begins to surge behind us, elbowing for room at the bar, for the bartender's attention. My Blood Sister A chats everyone up. A girl in a fuzzy red vest who looks like a model turns out to actually be one. She was there to shoot the video for "You Know Who In Paris" that afternoon. She lets me snap her picture. We meet a man--"Are you gay?" says my Blood Sister. "Are you Latino?" Wrong on both counts.

He's Greek,I say.

He is. Persian-Greek. Scoffs when asked if he too is a model. He is an entrepreneur. We meet an aspiring web designer, see fashion disasters, stress out the barkeep.

I love L.A.

Everyone here has a dream.

I feel like I fit in. No need to apologize for trying to be something.

Everyone here is trying to be.

In Colorado, they are aspiring to have lovely homes and happy families and good recipes. So often, I feel foolish. Aspiring to be other.

I don't feel foolish in the City of Dreams.

The bar tab is outrageous. We can only laugh.

Jay-Z and Kanye take the stage. It is a spiritual experience. I believe there are many facets of the divine. I believe that a performer can become a vessel. Challenge a divine energy, make an entire venue--the massive Staples Center--thrum and pulse with it. With an energy that goes beyond the day-to-day range of human experience. This is why some rock stars burn out, overdose, fall to pieces. Die. They don't know what they're channeling. They think it's them. This is what I'm talking about when I say that a Tori Amos concert was the most spiritual experience of my life.

Tori knows what she's channeling.

So, it appears, do Jay-Z and Kanye.

They do the encore ten times. The audience is sweating, exhausted. The energy shifts, becomes bacchanal. Orgiastic without the sex. It is an out of body experience.

I love the City of Dreams.

After the show, I am completely wrung out. Empty. I collapse in bed.

The next day there is only time for coffee and curried chicken salad at Cafe Primo, which is bustling and full of sleek business people on lunch hour. A young woman--blonde, exquisite dress suit, beautiful--whom I fully expect to be a complete bitch, offers to share her table with us. She hates L.A, she says. She says, nobody talks to you.

But all we've done is talk to people, everywhere we go.

Even the girl running the counter casually chats me up.

She's saving up for film school.

The taciturn brown-skinned barista makes art in my coffee.

The dreams are hanging heavily in the air.

I can feel them. If I had a butterfly net, one swoop would capture hundreds. Thousands.

The city is alive with wish.

In Denver, people ask me what I do, and I stammer. The baristas at Starbucks want to know if I'm studying or working, and I, nervous and uncomfortable, quietly confess I am writing a book.

In L.A, I feel I could say it.

I'm trying to be a writer.

I'm trying to get into writing.

Like everyone in this cafe, I have a manuscript.

Like the doorman at my hotel, I have a screenplay.

Like everyone in this city, I have a dream.

Winter Fruit

December first. I wake to snow. I crave hot drink and solitude by a window where I can see the falling white and listen to my soul. Like a Christmas miracle, I am granted exactly that. I sit inside a warm, bright place and watch the barren earth drape itself in purity. Ridiculous, I think of Queen Elizabeth. Barren. White and bare.

I have pregnancy on the brain.

A misplaced desire, I tell my husband. Tell myself. Like the timing of everything in my life, the arrival of this strange want confounds me. I don't think I actually crave a baby. I think I crave the things it represents: joyful anticipation. A cherished arrival. A soft and holy hush. The earth appears unfruitful, but in this time it is waiting. In the cold, life is being knit together underneath. Too deep to see, too subtle yet to feel. Like an artist not deep in the work, but deep in the waiting. Gathering inspiration. Anticipating joy.

Everything appears dormant. One day it finally blooms.

All creation works like this.

What I crave is not a baby, but fruition. A fruit of my efforts, and peace. A soft and settled place. Not the frightful winds of autumn, not the rushed daze of spring. Like a child given a paper bird on a string, I twirl these two things between cold fingers. On one side, waiting. On the other side, harvest. I wait and know together, they can fly.

The miracle is, I feel it all. I can hold all this, and it is all right.

It is good.

A confused desire, I tell my husband, because my spirit likens my creative work to fertility. A book, like a baby, waits to be born. On the first of December, my creativity feels barren.

But all is not as it appears.

What I know is there is value in both these things: the quiet and the coming. One the comfort, the other joy.

Here is the promise in the depths of the dirt, beneath the earth frozen, beneath the solid snow: in the blackest, twisted forest, still things grow.

The barren world slow turns to blooming.

Out of darkness, light.

Comfort Me With Apples

image from here

You get to a point where you find yourself thinking, "Maybe I should make a roast". It's not that you care about the roast, it's just that you'd like to do something, any one thing, that you can see through from start to finish and plus, making roasts comes with a shiny foil sticker on it, the sticker of a good homemaker, the dinner offerings of a Good Mom.

But then you begin to think, not a roast, perhaps. Maybe an apple pie. You're pretty sure no one born after 1981 actually knows what a roast is. Your husband might take a bite, say "Mmm, good steak, honey," and then where would you be? You'd be a stupid woman with curled hair in an overly cheery vintage apron, something with cherries on it or fawns, still on your feet pulling potatoes and onions out of the oven and there, at the table, sits your husband in his work socks, distracted by sports blogs and calling your roast a steak. You don't know what this means, exactly, or signifies--a suburban complacency, a homey resignation that you never even wished for--you just know it isn't good. Plus, chefs make good roasts, and you're not going for "good chef". What you're looking for is something homier, something coated in tinsel and more difficult to describe.

So an apple pie, you think. That. Surely if something can be accomplished, it is a symphony of cinnamon and apples. A love letter wrapped in dough and painted in egg wash. Because there was so much that should have been done, and wasn't. The house that should have been decorated by now. The furniture you should have been able to buy. The dance and piano lessons, all the meals you should have cooked over the stove, working for hours and finished by five, instead of darting back and forth between boiling pasta and your computer, between bits of dialogue and gummy canned sauce. The stories were never the thing to trust. They can be finished, but not achieved.

How do you measure the success of a story? You sell it. It is read and admired, or misunderstood and ignored. Either way, it sits on a shelf, tangible evidence that you have done something, that all these hours haven't been for naught, that something that once did not exist now does and you are responsible for that. But none of that is up to you. None of that a thing you can control. You measure the success of a story by waiting for others to nod, to sneeze, to bless their agreement: here is a thing, and it is done.

How do you measure the success an apple pie? You finish it. You might burn the top. You might over sweeten the apples. It doesn't matter because in the end, a timer goes off--a buzzer, alas, and not a decision in your head, murky and intangible. Something that is up to minutes, clocks, to the ticking of the sun and not, for once, up to your own instinct and intuition. You cannot trust yourself, but a kitchen timer is a thing you can live by. The end of the path is clear, it is fragrant with the fruits of the earth and the bounties of your labor. Unlike stories, unlike wishes, the end here is succulent, toothsome, complete. The timer buzzes, it declares for you: you have formed a thing with your own hands. Your work is good.

Your work is done.

*The title of this post was taken from the book by Ruth Reichel.

The Whole Truth

I am not immune to certain superstitions.

Today I have fortified myself for work like going to battle. This battle requires not weapons and war paint, but spiritual armor. I wear Frida Kahlo at my neck and the Virgin of Guadalupe on my finger. For reasons that aren't entirely clear even to me, these are my girls. These are my women. Fierce little Frida, painting her odd paintings of macabre femininity. As for the Virgin of Stars, what can I say: the lady abides. No, I'm not Catholic (or Mormon or Lutheran), it's difficult to qualify what I am, but I do believe in symbols and these women represent to me the things I need: fierceness. Soulfulness. Honesty.

I have also armed myself with some AC/DC. That is where my spiritual frequency is found, today. American thighs shook me all night long, best damn woman that I've ever seen, and all that.

I believe in doses of bravery, whatever the source.

*****

I have a story in my head. A story about myself. In this story I have written, I am the best. I am the specialist little snowflake. I know it's not pretty, but it's true.

Think of it like the mirror of Erised. My dreams aren't innocent, like Dumbledore's or Potter's. My dreams are like Ron Weasley's. They involve glory, preferably public glory. They involve my version of winning. Not sports trophies or Best Mom in the World mugs. My dreams are of publishing. I've been working toward them for seven long years.

Years full of setbacks. Challenges.

Rejection.

I didn't imagine it would go this way. I imagined it all would come easily, that I would accomplish publishing the way I accomplished good grades in school. Naturally. Doing, after all, the only thing I'm really good at. And my ego needed it to come easily. I don't know why, it sounds so ridiculous looking at it now, but I wanted to appear to the world as if I had succeeded without ever really trying.

I wanted to be good. Worthy. A little bit impressive.

I didn't want to be honest about my journey. I think because I didn't want to appear to fail.

I had imagined myself so isolated. Like if I were to fail, I would be the only one.

As time goes on, my life feels less and less honest. I wanted to show the world the glory without the struggle. The sweetness without the sorrow. The accomplishment without all the accompanying pain and bleeding and sweating uphill in the mud with my armor tied around my waist.

Now I need to say it: this is not coming easily.

This is a tremendous struggle.

*****

Being a writer depends to a great degree on outside approval. You can write all you want, you can even call yourself a writer, but the world will not consider you one until you have bewitched the correct combinations of people: first an agent, then an editor. I write in a bubble, pretending no one is ever going to see it (because that is the only way I can write honestly), and then I take it to a world of people, in New York and LA, people who don't know me, who are busily wrapped in their own lives, who have heard it all before. I have to offer up my flawed creation, this thing that I have sweated and bled over, that is a reflection of my very soul, of my most private and deep beliefs, and wait for them to approve it.

It's hard.

But what's harder is not being honest about it. What's harder is hiding away in the dark, hoping not to show my many imperfections. Hoping that one day I can bound out shining a light so bright, you too will be bewitched. You too will miss all my weaknesses. And then I rob us both of the truth. I rob us both of the thing it is most important to name: the honesty of the story.

How happy is an ending, after all, if you haven't witnessed all the long trials that led up to it?

I have a sneaking suspicion it was already clear I'm not the best. No so impressive, maybe. But last night, I sat in a hot bath talking myself down off another ledge of another rejection. Revelation came, as it so often does, with a combination of hot water and tears: I wasn't going to do this publishing thing effortlessly. And in my ego's need to appear to achieve without effort, I was hurting the people around me.

And I was hurting my soul.

*****

So here I am. Fresh off the press of another confounding rejection letter. These agents, they are mystifying. They are the modern world's version of the Oracle of Delphi, only they make even less sense. This publishing thing, it might take years. Seven or seventy. Publishing is a long game. Once a day I want to give it up.

I'm not giving it up.

Forgive me for the indulgence, but I need to say this:

I'm back in black.

***

Either blogger isbuggy as heck today, or the universe conspires to illumine all my flaws. Forgive my text size discrepancies. I've spent ten minutes trying to fix them and frankly, I've got other stories to write.

xoxo

-V

In Which My Self-Imposed Exile Lasts Three Days

I am happy to know a lot of creative people.

I thought we might like this.

Permission to Suck's 'Manifesto for Creative Professionals'.

xoxo

-V

Wander Lust

In case you didn't know, the spring always wants to make me travel.

I typed it that way on purpose. It doesn't "make me want", it "wants to make" me, and I say that because the desire to pack up my bags and leave is palpable and unignorable in the spring. It's like April, the greening-up grass, the fragrant soil, is purposely releasing a chemical it knows works as a travel aphrodisiac to me. The month hooks its unfurling, viney claws--fertile tentacles, if you will--into my flesh and brains and bones, it pulls and aches and yearns; it's a terrible, terrible feeling and I don't wish it on anybody.

It makes me cranky and uneasy in my own skin. It's a hedged in, trapped feeling. It threatens to make the everyday routine feel less like a routine and more like a prison.

Then I think about my parents, who have never been to Europe, and how at least I've been twice--once in high school and once in college--and I think about people who can go whenever they want, who hop a jet to Paris like it's the A train to midtown, and sometimes that all just seems too painful, you know?

For a long time I was trying to figure out how to be grateful for what I had, and sometimes that felt like giving in. I felt like I had to be one or the other: grateful or yearning. But you know what? I'm both. I am grateful for what I have.

And I really, really want to go to Europe.

So there it is. It's a Thursday in April. Dewy and cool. The sky seems bluer than it did last month, doesn't it? The flowers coming up make my heart happy. This October I will plant bulbs, and next April I will watch my own flowers grow. And maybe I can plant the travel seeds now, too.

And maybe next spring, my travel-buds will blossom with the tulips.

You never know.

I am Vesuvius and will you forgive me for being sentimental in the spring?

Acedia and Vesuvius. Or Not.

//Acedia//: a state of listlessness or torpor, of not caring or not being concerned with one's position or condition in the world. It can lead to a state of being unable to perform one's duties in life. Its spiritual overtones make it related to but distinct from depression.[1] Acedia was originally noted as a problem among monks and other ascetics who maintained a solitary life. http://en.wikipedia.org.

I think it's what they call the doldrums. Stupefying my brain, sucking up all my energy. Or maybe I just feel overwhelmed by life, like I do by cleaning. When the house is a mess, I tend to walk helplessly in circles. I mean this literally. I shuffle from the kitchen to my room to the girls room to the bathroom, noting everything and doing nothing.

I want my life to be so vastly different from the way it is. There are so many things I want to change but they feel scary or impossible or just flat out boring (organizing closets? I'd rather take a bullet to the bicep.) There's so much ground to be covered. I become unable to take a single step.

This post was going to be about acedia--about the fact that I can't finish reading a book or work on my writing or enjoy anything right now--not even chocolate, not even Firefly, not even shopping---because inside I am listless. But forget acedia, acedia was five minutes ago. Now my post is about this: I know that part of (all of?) happiness means embracing what you have. Fully. And loving and being grateful for what you've been given. I get that philosophy, you find it in basically every religion and I'm behind that. I've got it's back.

But isn't there also a point where you say, enough is enough? I mean, if everybody throughout time had just embraced what was instead of working for what might be, wouldn't we still be, like, wearing deer skin and sacrificing first sons and claiming primae noctis and all that? All the good changes, all the progress, that didn't come from accepting what was. Right?


Or maybe both are true? Maybe the key is to hold a space for loving what is and working toward what could be, both at the same time?

It's this that keeps me up at night: I want things to be different. I don't know if I can make them so. I will not be comforted by pithy sayings nor out-of-context bible verses because I know that some people go all their lives struggling for a thing they never get. I question my own ability to tell the difference between goals that should be worked toward and delusional, insane fantasies.

So there it is. If you find my pluck,or my compass, would you call me? I miss them, and I've got this big lily liver clouding all my vision.

Suddenly it seems to me that pluck and direction go hand in hand.

I am Vesuvius and I have acedia and I don't care. Get it?

More on acedia here.

The Author Would Like To Thank Lactation

Someday, if I have a book published, I will have Ayla to thank.

Ayla's birth upheaved and confounded me in ways that I still fail to find adequate words for. The birth, and being a mother at 23, left me desperate to reclaim some territory for myself. I felt like when the baby came out, someone had dressed me in a 'Mother' costume. And now I was wearing something that wasn't me, but was supposed to be me. I couldn't get out of it. I was lost.

So then I started writing again.

It took me four years, but I wrote a book.

I am a little bit embarrassed to tell you who I wanted to write like, but I'll tell you anyway.

I wanted to write like JK Rowling. Not because she is a billionaire, I swear.

Ok, a little bit because she is a billionaire. But mostly because I love her books to the depths of my soul. And because the waves of emotion I experienced--suspension! thrilling joy! oh noes Harry might die! Mrs. Weasley said BITCH--stirred the dormant writer in me back to life.

I needed to claim something for myself. I needed to put a stake down in the ground of my being and say 'this is mine. this is not mother, nor wife, nor poor lady on medicaid with a screaming baby and leaking nipples at the grocery store'.

And all I had to do that with was my writing.

So I wrote. I gave myself a five year deadline to write and publish the book. Looking back now, this seems ridiculous and arbitrary. Did I really plan on giving up after five years? 'Well, I'm 28 now, and it's time to put these ridiculous dreams aside. What is fitting in our youth is unfitting in our later youth, and no one should ever attempt to write after they've hit not-yet-thirty'.

I think I was trying to protect myself, in some abstract way. Five years, and if you haven't achieved your dream, you can politely move on to a different endeavor. Like ladies switching from embroidery to the pianoforte in the drawing room.

After four years, I had a book.

It sounded a little bit like JK Rowling, and a little bit like me. Only a little bit. I was proud of myself that I had done it.

And then began the part that was so infinitely harder than writing a book. Which was writing a one paragraph Query.

The best way, most agree, to publish a book, is to procure an agent. No, I am afraid you do not wrap up your entire manuscript in brown paper and tie it with twine and stick a rose in there and send it off with a hope and a prayer directly to the publisher, who immediately recognizes its brilliance and sends you a letter that you take from the mailbox after gathering flowers in your white frock in the rain decrying your brilliance and begging you for the honor of publishing it.

To get an agent, you send a one page query. You spend one paragraph of your query describing your book.

You have spent four years writing 130,000 words (what was I THINKING), and these words, clumsy as they are, are the blood and the sacrament of your life, your force, your very spirit. And now you must distill your spirit down into a one sentence hook plus five or so other sentences.

Oh god, oh god, why hast thou forsaken writers?

It was torture. It took weeks. I did it. I mailed them out.

And then the rejections started coming.

The awesome thing about the times we live in is that now we can receive our rejections both by email AND by snail mail. Because some agents correspond by one and some prefer the other. This means that sometimes you can get as many as four different rejections by two different formats, all in one day!

I had known they would come. I had picked my top five, my dream agents, and queried them first.

No bites.

So I queried the next five. And then the next ten.

At this point, I felt like that scene in Harry Potter when letters from Hogwarts start flying down the chimney? Except they weren't invitations to a school of magic. They were letters from busy people in mostly New York, but some in LA, telling me that based on the one paragraph summary they had read of my book, they would not at all like to publish it.

I knew this was part of the bargain. I didn't flail and weep and gnash my teeth.

But I was most discouraged.

And then--a bite.

An agent had read the first five pages of my book and wanted to see the first fifty.

And after reading the first fifty--be still my soul--she wanted to see the whole thing.

So I sent it off.

And then I had to wait.


For tomorrow, Part II: In Which I Dirty My Petticoat, Muster Up My Courage, And Learn To Take Stiff Drink.