Later, by the Ringed-Round Hill

Just last night my husband rolled his eyes at Glee, and its pretentious mourning of Whitney Houston, and I scolded him, and told him remember when Steve Irwin died? Because he knows good and well that we sat up late and cried together, watching the Crocodile Hunter's funeral. At which point Noah's adam's apple grew very jumpy, and he cleared his throat and said he didn't want to talk about it anymore, but that Steve Irwin was such a wonderful person.

So full of life.

Just last night, and then this morning I find myself crying over coffee grounds, heart sick and sad to hear that the world has lost Maurice Sendak. Through my own tears I am baffled by this, our human proclivity to mourn the deaths of people we have never met. Then I think that the human soul is like God. I believe that the Divine presence is an actual thing in our world, very real, and that because it is real, any person can feel it and know it, no matter where they are born, or what religion they are raised in.

The power of art is similar to this; invisible maybe, but real. Through a person's art we have known a bit of their soul. Because I didn't know Sendak personally I may not know which part, exactly, of his soul that I have known, but I have known it all the same. It haven't known the personality, but I have felt the touch of another soul through that soul's art, a touch just as real as coffee grounds and orange peels and Tuesday mornings and the Divine. When we mourn artists we never knew, Heath Ledger or Georgia O'Keeffe or Whitney Houston or Maurice Sendak, we mourn the part of them that reached out bright speaking through their art and named us, and knew us, and left us changed. Our spirit knows this, and so it mourns. This is why we have to keep making art, all of us, whatever our form. Because this is how we connect, this is how we know each other, when the exquisite, orgasmic friction of soul on soul is too much. Art becomes the medium that makes connection so intense it is painful, possible.

Possible for us to look into each other's eyes, and not die or turn to salt or stone.

My dad used to read it to me, Outside Over There, Ida with her wonder horn and her serious mistake, her frenzied jig that made sailors wild beneath the ocean moon. And I read it to my girls, that and Wild Things and Bumbleardy and We Are All in the Dumps With Jack and Guy. All his work so deeply rooted in the subconscious, so powerful for it. I've been told before, but I remember now, that we must write to our favorite artists and tell them what their work means to us before it is too late. We can't assume they know.

So, then, here are the lines, the ending, which always makes me cry:

I'll be home one day, and my brave, bright little Ida must watch the baby and her mama, for her papa, who loves her always.


Which is just what Ida did.

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)

La Belle-y

It was during my first yoga class that my active mind slipped away and I was suddenly and wonderfully aware that there were two of me in here. I knew that I was not, in fact, my mind.

Inside this body were two unique halves. Never before had I felt them quite so intimately. One was caught up in all the trivialities of the day, worrying about how it looked and whether or not it was doing this--this class, this day, this life--correctly. The other me was the deeper one, the true spirit, blissfully unaware of it's surroundings and circumstances. It was smiling with every part.

But I've gotten ahead of myself.

The night before I'd been up late, padding around the house, when I was unexpectedly brought face-to-button with my belly. I was svelte once, in college, (put that on a t-shirt) but I haven't seen that body since I got pregnant at twenty-two. The body my husband fell in love with was pale and freckled and wore a size 8. Even then I took that body for granted, feeding it pizza and wishing it would be a 6. This body, eight years later, isn't one I choose to see often. I dress quickly. I don't even own a mirror that reflects my lower half. That night, in the bathroom, it jumped out at me like a monster from behind a corner.

I beheld my belly and told it I hated it.

The awareness of the two of me came during a particularly challenging pose. My body was quivering all over with the effort to hold itself in the form I had asked of it. My muscles were burning and my mind was self-conscious, but as I continued to hold, and to quiver, all that mind clutter slipped away and a deeper voice proclaimed clearly: I love this.

It was my spirit. That quiet, knowing part. It was, I believe, the spark where the divine rests in all of us. And that part of me was having the time of its life. Underneath all my cares is the deeper self that is gazing at this life in wondrous adoration and isn't worried at all.

We ended the class by laying on our backs in what I believe is called the Shavasana Asana, and it was then that my belly began to speak to me. Throughout class, as I had asked my body to bend and twist and withstand, my spirit had been whispering to this soft, freckled space how much it loved it.

And my body had spoken back. In warrior pose, it told me I was powerful. Doing cat-and-cow, and a particularly bendy combination of poses that requires one to both torque and expand, my body felt sensuous and strong.

Now as I lay there, I could hear that my stomach was bruised. The night before, I had looked in the mirror and hated it for not being flat and taut, for the stretch marks that will grace it like pumpkin flesh, always and forever. In my mind, I made war on my body, telling it things that were ugly and cruel.

But this body has done so much for me. This belly, that has stretched beyond its capacity, beyond endurance, to shelter the spirits and flesh of two children. This entire body, that did what I asked of it, that withstood until I shook all over, until I felt I was about to collapse from exhaustion, and then withstood some more.

I lay there in Shavasana Asana and I apologized to my belly. I told this soft part of me, this part that refuses to conform to all Western standards of beauty, that I have punished with words and loathing and Spanx--that I loved it. I was so proud of it. I thanked it for doing so much for me.

A few days later I would find myself again in front of that same mirror, in a degree of undress. This time I beheld my beautiful body, this thriving, healthy gift. I was, I realized, everything I had experienced myself as in yoga. Sun-burnt and moon-pale. Rolling and lush. Wildly curvacious and sensuous and strong.

My spirit said something like: va-va-voom.

And later, as is the way of things, my husband did too.

**Painting: La Belle Rafaela, Tamara de Lempicka. 1927.

That's Enough, Iris

I get very emotional in spring, which leads me to conclude that, basically, I am very emotional.

But Spring Me is much better than Winter Me, who is existential and occasionally morose. Winter Me belongs in a Parisian cafe, wearing a beret, smoking a cigarette and churlishly lowering my heavily-lined eyes before the camera. (Why is there always a camera on me in my fantasies? Probably because I was brought up by circus people theater people. See? If you try hard enough, you can blame your parents for EVERYTHING.)

Spring Me either belongs in an elaborate musical number, with parasols and chiffon, or in an asylum.

Spring Me (Spring I?) is apt to do things like drive to the grocery store, take one look around the parking lot, and steer two delighted children to the ice cream store instead. Spring Me (can we call her Iris?) also tends to get teary over the fact that a) buckwheat is good for your garden soil and that b) the bees love the buckwheat and c) the bees also help the gardens, so therefore d) Oh my god, Mr. V, do you see, it's the circle of life! It's so beautiful-hul-hul! (Disclaimer: the above statements should not be taken as confirmation that I did, in fact, weep those words to Mr. V over coffee and toast with honey).

Oh, shut up Iris.

Just take a look.

What we did:

I cleaned their rooms for them, which lead to this magic moment:

A not-great picture of my beautiful top bar hive, made by a man in Boulder. The bees will draw their comb down from those top bars. The entrance is at the bottom. It's very small.

What we ate:

(Yup, again.)

What we watched:

A South Korean film directed by Joon-Ho Bong. It's won a ton of awards. It's streaming on Netflix. It was pretty amazing.

What I read:

My introduction to Jeanette Winterson. I've only just started it. I reserve judgement.

Signing out with this picture of Indy, who cut the tops and tips off old stockings to make arm warmers for Dr. Seuss Day, and felt all awesome about it:

xoxo

Iris V

Beekeeper

Today at work a man approached me and asked if we had any copies of the Anarchist's Cookbook.

Is it a real cookbook? I asked.

No, he said. Or maybe any copies of The Book of Revenge?

Now here's the thing. Customers bring all manner of things through the queue, and I do not bat an eye. I pride myself on not batting an eye. I don't care if they're buying nudie mags, or books about sex with robots (true story), or the biographies of Glenn Beck or my arch nemesis Tim Tebow. I don't believe in censorship, and I don't believe it's my business what people choose to look at or read. I'm just happy they're buying it and not sneaking it into the men's restroom (often true story).

So when this gentlemen asked for these materials, I said, without any inflection: Is it about anarchy?

Because I was starting to get a feeling, but I honestly wasn't sure. Are we talking about bombs, or baking? Sometimes you just don't know.

This is when a co-worker chimed in and helped me. She told the aspiring Anarchist that we hadn't seen those books in in awhile. He thanked us and left, and a few minutes, while working with another customer, I replayed the conversation in my head and began to laugh hysterically.

"Is it a real cookbook?" I had asked him. What the hell was I thinking? What would they teach in the Anarchist's Cookbook? How to bake cookies without measuring precise cups of flour--because you know, down with the rules, and all that? Tips for using barbecue grills illegally? All the things a young anarchist needs to know about roasting a chicken without government interference? Don't measure out the vanilla extract, it might say. Just go ahead and pour in as much as you feel. Freedom from state! IS IT A REAL COOKBOOK, I asked him??


We have these customers, at Borders. One old farmer in a worn hat. It took me awhile to realize that he wasn't coming in for books on woodworking or metallurgy. He was coming in to have a chat. Once I wised up, I made a point of small talk. How's the table coming. How you handling the heat? You seen our new stuff on ship-in-a-bottle-building? He'd go away for an hour. Then he'd return.

We'd chat again.

I never asked if he had a wife. I don't think he did.

I worry about him, and the others like him. Widowers or old bachelors with no one at home. Borders is the only gig in town. Where are these folks going to go? Will someone remember to set aside the magazines on Will and Kate for the old ladies? The Linda Lael Miller McKettrick series that are supposed to be sent back? Will the people at the other stores know the difference between the need for a book, and the need for human connection?

Will the old men do their crosswords alone?

*********

I learned today that Mercury is in retrograde and really, that explains it all. Don't worry, my mom taught me how astrology is the devil's work, but here's the deal: You know how attached I am to my Gemini sign (married a Gemini. BFF is a Gemini. I always get along with Geminis, and you know we're the Twins, right?) and if you were a fly on our wall these last few weeks you'd have witnessed the effects of Mercury getting all down with its retro self for sure. Things are topsy-turvy. I spoke harshly to Mr. V THROUGH THE INTERNETS which I've never done before. We can blame the heat too, ok? Let's blame that. I know this much is true: I've been working out, I've been taking my B vitamins, I've been eating healthy and avoiding sweets and my stress levels are still through the roof.

Add to that the fact that my computer froze up twice today and we've got ourselves a case of Old School Mercury. No doubts about it.

Here is what I want: to keep bees. I can't think of a better thing on any level. Metaphorically, spiritually, environmentally. The honey bees are dying. If you start to cry apocalypse I will hold on to reason for awhile but eventually I will give in and fret. I don't want the honey bees to die. I don't want the world to end, because I'm a big fan of this place and call me crazy, but the apocalypse doesn't sound like a kickin' good time. There's a high chance of pestilence, and a low chance of Dean Winchester.

I like the community of the lives of bees. The female leadership. The precise, miraculous proportions of the hive, both in structure and population. It is mystical to me. How do the bees know? Bees do what they were made to do without asking why. Their yield is both beautiful and sweet. I think I could learn from the bees.

I would like to keep bees to help the earth. Because bees in the ancient world linked this world to the next. I would like to keep bees as a meditation for my soul. To learn to take something I've been afraid of in my life, and coax it sweet.

Did you know you have to talk to your bees? Neil Gaiman knows. Beekeepers say that if you don't tell the bees the news, they'll leave. They'll want to be informed of births or deaths. They want to know if you've fallen in love. There were earthquakes all over today and I can't help thinking that someone ought to alert the bees.

There are so many things we still don't know.

****

"I dreamt--marvelous error!--that I had a beehive here inside my heart. And the golden bees were making white combs and sweet honey from my old failures."-Antonio Machado.

I don't know. I think that says it all.

What Could Be Better Than This?

Ayla rides the firetruck

I was feeling really brave on Friday night and took the girls to Longmont's Downtown Artwalk.

There really are no words for how proud I was of myself or how absolutely smug I was about it. I guess there is a tragic phenomena out there of dads who won't take care of their own damn kids by their lonesome for more than thirty minutes. Their wives go months without a coffee date or a good long six hour internet browsing sesh. Truly, no one should be deprived of these things. No woman should be forced to go more than a week without relaxing into a good old fashioned "Jensen Ackles" google image search. I judge these men harshly even though I shouldn't because I am one of them. In our house, it's the mister who takes the kids on all the outings--to Elitch's, to the pool, to see Tangled or Rio or whatever, and down to the Fidelity Fiduciary to visit Mr. Banks. (Feed the birds, baby.)

So on Friday night, when Mr. V had to go to work, I nearly called it off in favor of my go-to parenting strategy, which is called "Mommies need wine and children need Rugrats or whatever the hell else they click on on Netflix and no that isn't for kids,honey, most of manga is animated porn."

But I didn't.

And boy, was I glad I didn't, once I got there. We headed for gelato first because in this house we have our priorities straight. I handed Ayla the camera and told her to take pictures of whatever she liked. She was thrilled. She snapped some pictures of the gelato that were rather good, and also a picture of me eating the gelato which will never see the light of day. The camera adds a second head growing out of your belly, right?


picture by Ayla


picture by Ayla

There was a booth for god knows what, a chiropractor or mad scientist, or something, and they had a model of bones out on display. Predictably, Ayla wanted to see the bones. The mad scientists were tickled by the skinny mini photog all enamored of anatomy, and delightedly--and then bemusedly--and then with forced and terse politeness--held the model up while Ayla took twenty minutes to set up her shot.

I couldn't take any pictures of Ayla taking the pictures, but I wish I could have because she looked so great. A skinny-shouldered, long-legged six year old with dirt under her nails and smudged across her pale cheek. On her back is the blue backpack she insisted bringing, slung around her neck is the red canvas Trader Joe's bag that I swore ten times I wouldn't carry for her and ended up carrying the rest of the night. Later I would find in it: a long length of twine, a ziploc baggy full of bottlecaps, a pair of scissors, a Mead notebook and one of my pens, a model horse, a woven bracelet, a stuffed teddy bear, a bag of chips, and a framed picture of her cousin Eisley.She is slight and maybe awkward but has forgotten herself in her fierce concentration. Her green eyes are focused, she cocks one stork leg, she carries her tension around her mouth like her mother.





She's amazing.

After the bones booth we hit the art booths for the kids, and Ayla entered a state of bliss. She lost herself stamping and inking, pasting and painting. Indy played along for a while but we were only about one booth in when she started demanding balloon animals. Other kids had been spotted with them. Ayla had gone nearly ecstatic and could not be lured away from creating, even from the booth where they gave the kids a bunch of mark-down dollar store stickers and told them to put them on paper and call it a book mark. Ayla shredded the stickers and played with patterns.

Indy began to yell, "Now can get get my STUPIT balloon!" (That's how she pronounces it.)

"Ayla wants to see the art galleries."

"I want to get a STUPIT balloon!"

"Hey, Indy, let's take a ride on the firetruck!"

"I SAID, I want my STUPIT--ok."




We rode a firetruck. We waited in line for forty minutes for a balloon that I was calling a lot worse than "stupid" in my head. Indy asked for a flower. Ayla requested the alien. It had a funny alien face and came with a clear balloon for a space helmet. The girls were joyous. Giddy. "Are you glad we got your stupit balloon?" I asked Indy.

"Mom," she scolded. "It's not stupit!"


Not five minutes later, Ayla, who will by then be in the state known as 'bouncing off the walls' and not listening to me, will brush the alien's space helmet against the brick exterior of the library, pop the helmet, and burst into bitter tears. In her grief, she will excoriate both the day and the balloon as 'the dumbest ever'. She will ask the age old questions: why, why now, why her balloon and not Indy's. She will feel the terrible regret of 'if only'.


But for those four minutes, after art and gelato, after firetrucks and balloon aliens, before the bursting--man, was I one smug mother.

And don't worry, Ayla recovered. We put on Narnia and she climbed across the couch to reach me. She kissed me on the lips. "That was really fun," she said quietly.

"Funner than watching me browse the internet?"

"No."



Ayla makes her alien face


Indy makes her alien face. Just kidding, Indy.

Happiness Is A Stupid Hobby

A few days ago my sister started nagging me to join a new website. She's always nagging me to do something, like make lemon bars or decoupage my toilet, and usually I ignore her because the things she's good at just set me up for total failure. Like singing, and decorating, and being a Lutheran. I mean, if there is one faith that should be fail-safe, it's Lutheranism. You must be a total dummy or a black-hearted heathen if you fail at that one.

At first I played dumb like I didn't know what she was talking about. I could see the website had something to do with posting pictures found on all corners of the internets, and I pretended like I thought you had to draw the photos yourself--something I could never do, which you know if you saw my post yesterday. She was not amused--she usually isn't--and she persisted, and my mom persisted, and then my brother-in-law made a comment about how I shouldn't join because he hadn't seen her in hours, he couldn't get her off the site, and for some reason that pushed me over the edge, rather than frightened me off like it would have a sane person who doesn't want to live their life staring at a computer screen.

So I have joined pinterest, and not even 24 hours later I have begun to think and dream in pinboards. This must be how my husband feels when he gets a new videogame. Cloudy headed and like a crack addict. On Facebook, my mom was like "yay!" and I was like, "damnit!" and also like,"I fell asleep thinking about pins. I don't remember what Indy looks like."

I'm not kidding, I really don't remember what Indy looks like. Tell me if you see her. I may or may not need rehab.

I have a tendency to get completely absorbed in things like this. You could call them obsessive periods, but personally I find that ungenerous. I prefer to call them passionate periods. We are all artists here. I saw a Tori Amos concert and spent the next maybe six months (ok maybe more) listening solely to Tori and downloading bootlegs and watching her youtube videos and reading her memoir and studying her lyrics. I spent so much time on this that I now find it difficult to have thoughts that aren't Tori Amos quotes. Why do I crucify myself? Maybe I'm a mermaid. I did it again with Firefly, and then with Battlestar Galactica.

And once, perhaps the most glorious time, I believed I was the first person to create a myspace account for Harry Potter. I had recently finished the fifth Harry Potter book, I had spent hours and hours on fan websites, and pretending to be Harry Potter to delusional teenage girls on the internet seemed the next logical step. Honestly, I only started it to kind of tease Carlton and Lucy, who were young at the time, and because I thought it would be fun to be myspace friends with Harry Potter. Only later would I discover that what I was doing is called "rp'ing" (which is short for role-playing, not raping), and that by engaging in it, I had transcended to a new level of pathetic from which there would be no return.

No. Actually, it was awesome. Those were wonderful times.

I won't tell you how far I took this Harry Potter thing, only that I met the person whom I call my comedic soul mate late one night at a myspace 'party'. We spotted each other across the comments section and sparks flew. Within minutes, her Tom Riddle and my Harry had them all in stitches. We killed that room. We avada kedavra'd it. I do not find it shameful that being so hilarious at this party on the comments boards with strangers is the highlight of my life to date. I find it fantastic.

(Tommy and I are still internets friends to this day. You should know that everyone who rp's Hermione is kind of a whore. I don't know why, this is just the law of the universe. Stick with the Ginny's. They're good stock.)

I suppose I could feel guilty about these things, but I don't. When I look back at these times in my life, I see that they were some of my happiest periods. I was so completely absorbed by something that I spent less time worrying about anything. Although they do leave me in a kind of torpor, once they go. For instance, every Friday night at 10:01 pm, Supernatural ends and I forget my reason to live.

I'm reading Gretchen Rubin's "The Happiness Project", and she talks about the importance of finding time for play. Also the importance of doing things you are passionate and enthusiastic about. Also the importance of making off-color jokes about Harry and Tom and their "Chamber of Secrets". My point is this: if you don't hear from me in awhile, if my kids call you saying there's an unwashed woman on their couch who keeps squinting at them and saying "Who are you? Who is that there?", please drive to my home and pry my fingers off lover laptop and pretty pinterest.

In the mean time, I'm going to be pretty content.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go post my children's pictures on pinterest. They're so quiet there, and smiling. Pinterest children never complain.

Pretty, pretty pinterest children.

You Want To Read This Book

If you are at all interested in Hemingway.

Or the Lost Generation.

Or Paris.

Or the roaring 20's as viewed from abroad.

If you are into literary history.

Or if stories about the lives of people whom history has generally overlooked interest you.



THE PARIS WIFE is the story of Hadley Richardson Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway's first wife. I'd read a little bit about her in Hemingway's own "A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition", which I also loved. McLain starts the book in Oak Park, Illinois, when Hemingway was just a young buck, injured and dashing and damaged from the war, and Hadley was practically an old maid in those days, unmarried at 29. The story is fiction, of course, but McLain draws heavily from "A Moveable Feast", and also from "The Sun Also Rises", imagining that book as a highly autobiographical account of Hemingway's own life in Europe in the 20's, and I don't know but maybe it was.

It would have been easy for a writer to make old Ernest look like a self-absorbed, misogynistic monster, but that doesn't happen here. I imagine McLain is a fan of Hemingway, while at the same time realizing that the guy did cheat on his wife and went on to have three more. One of those three was journalist Martha Gellhorn, who was rather more than Hemmy bargained for. Famous during World War II, it was easy for old Hem to get a press pass to go cover stories overseas. He refused to help cub journalist Martha get one--"Are you a war correspondent or a wife in my bed?", he wrote her--and she subsequently found passage on a ship loaded with explosives. When she arrived in war-torn London, she promptly dumped him. Seriously, Hem. Get a girl a press pass, can't you?

I like that story.

And did you know that even though Hem was having an affair while finishing up "The Sun Also Rises", he gave Hadley all the royalties for that work--forever. The royalties from the 1957 movie version of the book also went to Hadley. These things are never black and white.

But the book isn't about any of that, it's about Hadley, and a young ambitious writer desperate to make history, and a generation of people tattered and bruised by war, trying their best to live the champagne and oysters life in Paris and Switzerland and Italy. F. Scott and Zelda make appearances, along with old Gertrude and Alice. Hadley makes a charming, engaging character as told by McLain--absolutely smitten with Hemingway, but gently and quietly unwilling to compromise herself. It was just delicious all the way through, and when we got to the end, I cried.

So there you have it.

I am Vesuvius and I'm a wife at war and a correspondent in bed.

PS--We are at mom-ology today.

Best Books of 2010

Here's the deal: These are the best books I read in 2010, not the best books published in 2010. I feel like I didn't read much this year, but the truth is I just didn't read much that was very good. There are only a few knock-your-socks-off books out there, you know? Whenever I hand people a copy of Time Traveler's Wife or The Book Thief or The Road, I warn them: I will not be able to recommend you other books as good as these. Because there just aren't any. Many.

Full disclosure: I may or may not have actually read these books in 2010.

In no particular order:

The Reapers Are the Angels, Alden Bell.

This title just wormed its way into my brain and wouldn't leave. I was right ticked that someone else had come up with this beautiful, haunting phrase and not me. I wanted to write a book just to fit this title. Then one night I was reading about angels on wikipedia. And I clicked on a link to a parable. And it turns out, Alden Bell didn't coin this phrase. Jesus did. So at least I don't have to feel too bad for not being as good as, you know. Jesus.

If Cormac McCarthy and Joss Wedon teamed up to write a book about zombies, this would be that book. I'm always up for a good yarn about an apocalypse.

You know you are a Joss Whedon fan when: You refer to it as AN apocalypse, not THE apocalypse.

The Book Thief, Mark Zusak



Another book that found me. Death observes humanity during the terrors of World War II. Observes us with deep tenderness and awe. Liesel restores your faith in humanity. Papa was like an accordion. This book might change you.

The Jacqueline Carey Kushiel Novels.

I loved them. I don't recommend them to most of you who read this blog. They are very sensual. The first fantasy I have ever read that was written directly for the female eye, if you get my drift. Phedre kicks ass and takes names. Joscelin (a dude with an unfortunate moniker) challenges Waldemar Skelig to the holmgang and I had one of my 'spells'.

(If you read these books, and enjoy them, you're going to be too embarrassed to ask for more like them. Anne Bishop is the closest thing I've found, though hers are considerably darker. You're on your own from there.)

The Painted Drum, Louise Erdrich

I think this is Erdrich's most approchable novel, if you will forgive me for using that term on my blog. Her writing is so thoughtful and tender. My dad didn't like it, but he's only into lad lit these days. (Yes I do call DeLillo and McGuane lad lit, dad. Bite me.)


Faithful Place, Tana French

This was my favorite book of the year. It's technically a 'mystery', don't let that scare you off. I don't suffer Patterson, either. One seriously dysfunctional Irish family has a dark secret or two. Tana French's characters are so real to me. For weeks after reading this book I'd be chopping carrots and find myself wondering why Frank never comes round for dinner anymore.

Frank is the main character in the book.

Delicate, Edible Birds, Lauren Groff

I absolutely did not read this book in 2010. Lauren Groff's words are delicate and edible. Like birds. I'm a motherfraking lyrical genius. Motherfriggin wordsmith.



When The Heart Waits, Sue Monk Kidd, and Traveling With Pomegranates by Sue Monk Kidd and Anne Kidd Taylor. Good old Sue's approach to Christianity just works for me. One day last spring I was wondering around a bookstore feeling lost and empty. When The Heart Waits literally fell off the shelf and landed in front of me. It was exactly what I needed. Traveling With Pomegranates is a mother-daughter memoir about several trips they took to visit sacred sites around the world. Sue Monk Kidd delights me because she is so darn different from me. She is deeply introspective and contemplative and is capable of finding deep meaning out of things like glass pomegranates in a window display or a bee on her shoulder. Some of my happiest moments this year were spent reading this book and considering things deeply the way Sue and her daughter do. Also commendable for its frank look at depression and the complications of mother-daughter relationships. I recommend this one highly. (Sidenote: I couldn't finish The Secret Life of Bees. Just in case you couldn't either.)

Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins. The world needs much more Katniss and much less Bella. If you haven't read them, you are a sorry sonofabitch. Apologies. I'm feeling feisty today.

Books I'm most looking forward to reading in 2011:


1) The Reapers are The Angels (I just can't stop saying it). Temple is my favorite character since Buffy. Who was my favorite character since Starbuck. Who was my favorite character since Katniss. It all started for me in about 1989 with a feisty redhead named Anne. With the 'e'.

2)The Orange Eats Creeps, Grace Krilanovich. It's about vampires. I was over vampires before they began. I read Anne Rice in 1991, ok? But someone on NPR's book reviews said "the book feels written in a fever. It is breathless, scary, and like nothing I've ever read before. As critic Steve Erickson wrote, 'If a new literature is at hand then it might as well begin here'. Krilanovich's work will make you believe that new ways of storytelling are still emerging from the margins." Sold.

3)
My Mother, She Killed Me, My Father, He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales. Francine Prose, Karen Joy Fowler, Neil Gaiman, Joyce Carol Oates all have entries here. I'm into new-spun fairy tales right now. If the title didn't sell you, I don't want to be your friend.

4) Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls, Alissa Nutting. I think it's another sort of dark magic-realism deal. On the cover is a naked woman holding a fish.



5)Temperance, Cathy Malkasian. This was from some other list on NPR. It's a graphic novel and I have yet to finish a graphic novel. I'm not highly visual. I get the characters confused.

6) YA lit. It's a brave new world. In YA, if you don't write like 2010's Hemingway, it's a-ok. I dig the elbow room.


Final thoughts on books of 2010: I don't like anything by Kate Morton, but for some reason I wish I did. When will Oprah pick a book written by a woman? Freedom was just not up my alley. Martha Beck, I like your style. You sly, sly minx. I've started Kingsolver's The Lacuna three times now but haven't finished. J.V. Jones, please get your groove back. Jordan/Sanderson, foot-stamping and braid-pulling does not a character make. That's enough, World War II books. The Book Thief is the only one anyone needs to read. How many days 'til Tana French has a new book?

Weak End

We've been trying to settle into a routine here in Longmont, but fate keeps thwarting our attempts.

It's Mr. V's job now to get Ayla Bird ready for school and most days he does a really great job. Only once so far have I gone to pick her up and found her bangs hanging in her eyes. Also once she was wearing shorts size 3T but we won't mention that here.

I get two hours a day to myself now. In related news, I blow through my Starbucks allowance for two weeks in five days. The second week I have to suck it up and drink tea and iced Via at home.

Sigh.

I found two cans of beer and pipe tobacco in the backpack Mr. V takes to work and I asked him if he'd lost his job.

"Honey, got to go to 'work' now."

I thought that was kinda funny.

Every once in a while I think about what I dramatically refer to as 'my old life'. Last year this time I was the one getting Ayla ready for school, pushing her and Indy to Bradley Elementary, pushing the girls on the swings (because we were always early), dropping Ayla at class. Then I'd push Indy to Sunflower Market where we'd buy pumpkin bread and salt water taffy and spiced chai.

Ayla is learning to read and drawing the best pictures in her class.

Seriously, though. They were told to draw 'space' without any direction. Most kids scrawled blobs of green and gray. My kid drew freaking Jupiter. With the striated colors and everything.

Indy is learning to say the boom-chicak-rocka-chicka-rocka-chika-boom song and I don't know what else.

I forgot to tell you how when we went camping and I took her to the outhouses she plugged her nose and said "I think a stinky little person lives here. From stinky town."

I do not make this stuff up.

We are looking forward to Zach and Susie's wedding here. We get to fly to Vegas without the kids and party like Buster Bluth on too many juice boxes.

I texted Zach and told him I couldn't come to his wedding because I had to do something that day that was a little vulgar. Zach said he had to wash his brain out now and if you know Zach, you know that was a triumph.

I am hoping for a few hours of laying by the pool next to Mr. V.

I am also looking forward to: wings, football, sweater weather, autumn walks, autumn leaves, pumpkin bread, caramel macchiatos, Ayla's birthday, my dad's birthday, Halloween, Halloween candy, sausages and sauer kraut, cider, apples in season, more Hatch chilies, and all that other stuff.

Have a happy weekend.



Indy sick and not milking it at all.



The girls helping daddy carry the slain beast.