Tag: writing

Television

I have a quick fix for not having enough time to write or read: do not turn on the television.  We’re not bad in my house – we will go days without watching TV and on Sundays, it’s banned until after 5 PM. The rest of the week, we rarely turn it on before 7:00 and then, it’s me who’s the culprit, switching on the BBC to follow the latest international calamity. We have effectively bullied M into not watching much boob-tube when we’re home and if she does, it’s set so low, our deaf ears can barely hear it anyway. And canned laughter is forbidden. That works because she mostly watches CSI and medical mystery stuff. She recently pointed out that our favorite programs, John Stewart and Stephen Colbert have the same laughter tracks.  No, it’s a live audience, I pointed out.  But it sounds the same, she retorts. And it does. But the difference is, we’re laughing too, so it’s not irritating to us.  A benefit of the parental role is hypocrisy like this.

Anyway, once the idiot box is on, it’s hard to turn off. Let’s see what Lidia’s cooking tonight, then Jacques Pepin. Because we can record shows, we feel like we are efficient in our viewing – fast-forwarding through commercials cuts down on at least a third of the time.  True-confessions: we are American Idol fans. Embarrassing, I know.  I’m also addicted to whatever Masterpiece Theater show is out there, although I usually watch that alone and I’m way backed up. The Office is a family favorite and a new favorite is Parks and Rec.  That’s about it — but there you have it — the evening is shot, swallowed up by TV-land.

And the worst part is, television is completely soporific for me and I rarely stay awake beyond 9:00 PM. I can if I am reading or writing, but on the couch, in front of the television I just conk out. If Rob is there beside me and holding my feet as he sweetly does, I sleep to The Simpsons or Nova soundtracks (his favorites) until I can force open my eyes just wide enough to stumble upstairs. This image of myself reminds me of my father when I was growing up — always falling asleep on the floor in front of some mystery series or Columbo.  “Why don’t you go to bed, Dad?” we’d urge. Probably because we wanted to change the channel.  He’d rarely leave, instead rallying for a few more minutes after our harangue before his head would wobble down to the pillow, us kids cracking up at his snores.

Another Winter Day

I hesitate to write about the grueling winter, but it may be the only way forward for me, out of the paralysis I feel waking to leaden skies and polar temperatures. Every day of relentless cold, ice, snow – is depressing to the point of being debilitating, and I am curling farther into myself, physically, mentally and spiritually.  I feel pinched – as if I am collapsing into my chest.  I force myself to breathe deeply, shoulders back, stretch. Nothing to be done but carry on, feed the birds, cook, read and mark the days inching towards spring. February, at least, is a short month and the seed catalogues arrive almost daily.

The plows have piled more than 5 feet of snow on top of my strawberry plants – it’s hard to imagine they will survive – but they will and so will the purple sage and all the spring bulbs that bravely push through the last of the frosts. I try and always have a hyacinth or bunch of daffodils on the table as a fragrant reminder for what’s just around the corner. Really. And just for fun, I will inevitably over-order seeds to sow directly in only a few more months and maybe pre-order some heirloom tomato plant collections. The best seed deals and choices I’ve found are Pinetree Seeds of Vermont and Select Seeds from Connecticut.  While sometimes I am enticed by catalogues from Wisconsin or Oregon, it just seems to make sense to get seeds for my Connecticut garden from New England.

I cook.  A recent favorite is a recipe on one of my favorite food blogs, The Wednesday Chef: Zuni Cafe’s Chard and Onion Panade. It’s comfort food extraordinaire. I erred on the side of lots of stock but would use less next time in the hopes that the consistency wouldn’t be quite so soupy. And maybe add a little wine?  Definitely more greens rather than less.  Yum.

Also whipping through books.  David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, while exquisite reading was at first a little slow for me but is now a page turner and I’ll certainly finish this weekend. After reading last Sunday’s sobering review of memoirs in the New York Times Book Review, (“The Center of Attention: Taking stock of four new memoirs – and of the motives for adding to an already crowded genre.”) I read the title reviewer Neil Genzlinger did not pan: An Exclusive Love by Johanna Adorjan and agree with him. It’s beautiful. The author’s poignant exploration of her grandparents joint suicide is like watching a riveting Bergman film — vividly drawn scenes and characters. No surprise the author has written for theater. I was drawn to this, of course, because of the suicide – but while the suicide is certainly a theme driving the story and the damage-done apparent in the author being haunted enough to pursue her questions (it is the questions we survivors are left with), ultimately it is a beautiful love story. And we know the author/survivor, has found her peace.

Genzlinger writes at the end of his memoir reviews: “…what makes a good memoir – it’s not a regurgitation of ordinariness or ordeal, not a dart thrown desperately at a trendy topic, but a shared discovery. Maybe that’s a good rule of thumb: If you didn’t feel you were discovering something as you wrote your memoir, don’t publish it. Instead hit the delete key, and then go congratulate yourself for having lived a perfectly good, undistinguished life. There’s no shame in that.”  I’ve re-read this a few times over the past week – a challenge to myself.  I did not hit delete. It’s just a long, cold, winter – but spring is on the way.

When We Win the Lottery

Sometimes Rob and I indulge ourselves in the fantasy of what we would do with our millions if we won the lottery.  Sometimes, we even buy tickets – a quick pick and one with a mix of birthdays.  Lump sum – we want our winnings in one full swoop.  We think we’d keep this sweet little house but make it a little less, little.  From the pointiest part of our roof, I think we’d be able to see the Long Island Sound and that’s where I’d like my writing room to be.  Something closer to the water would be nice too, so maybe we’d get one of those mysterious, abandoned looking places out on the islands we kayak around in the summer.

Both of us say, we wouldn’t quit our jobs right away, but certainly would take time off. Mind you, I like my job – how can I not? It’s books I am selling. Still, I’d like more of those 40 hours a week for my own.  And that’s where our lottery fantasy really takes off for me – when I think about being able to structure my day-to-day life without the demands of a job.  Weekends (especially long ones) and my summer get-away-with-the-Studio 70 Sisters, offer a glimpse of what I would do.

Read. First I’d make my way through the piles of New Yorker Magazines.  Somehow, I actually thought I’d get around to reading this weekly and subscribed. I try to bring it in the car and read while waiting for M or for the morning manager to come and open the store, when I get there early.  If I get hooked on a story, I’ll read it over lunch – but back issues folded open to some half-read page have been abandoned in the back seat, and another stack is on the living room table.  For the first day or so in the Catskills last summer, I lay in the porch hammock and read through months of issues. In between napping, I got through them all.  If I won the lottery, I’d renew my subscription and read it weekly, as intended.

I’d tackle the piles of books around here.  Rob built me another bookcase and yesterday, I began almost-organizing my shelves, filling them with books I mostly haven’t read yet. And besides those crowded shelves, I have a NOOK – and my cyber library continues to grow.  Right now I am reading The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell and just the other day I bought Eden by Yael Hedaya – an Israeli author who was a guide at the United Nations at the same time as me.  Also on my virtual shelf are Franzen’s Freedom, The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson – and I have yet to read a page of them. I borrowed The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson thinking I’d indulge myself this weekend, and it sits like a big box of chocolates I’m afraid to open because I won’t be able to stop.  Time.

I bought the NOOK because I felt like I better embrace the party-line and now, sincerely do.  Yesterday, reading the New York Times (only weekend delivery and still hours added for reading that!) there was a piece about an author, David Vann who’s first book, Legend of a Suicide piqued my interest, and I was able to immediately find it on my NOOK.  I used some self-control and so far, only downloaded a sample although I think I am hooked on Vann’s writing and will have to go all the way on this one.  All of this, from the comfort of my couch.  Of course, to some extent, this is an oft discussed issue – is this cannibalization for the bookstore? But that’s a question for another blog entry — I’m planning my lottery-won time here, after all.

Travel. Lots of trips — although we’d still be constrained by M’s school schedule — we’d travel to warmth in the winter.  Sharing places I have been to and loved with my love, and bringing M to the town in Italy where she was born. Bali, Japan, China. New places -Argentina, Brazil, Vietnam, Thailand, Egypt, Israel, anywhere – everywhere. We’d visit friends around the world: Helene and Paul in South Africa, Jenny in Tasmania.

Garden. I’d build a much better fence to deter the creatures from eating everything. Plant more flowers and some fruit trees.  And get bees – although for this, we won’t wait for the lottery.  We decided against chickens although our neighbor’s fresh eggs were addicting. Birds just never really appealed to me as pets — I don’t want to touch them and I don’t think we could get away with that if we had chickens. Maybe a goat or two…

I recently finished an advance reader copy of And I Shall Have Some Peace There, a memoir by Margaret Roach, who, without winning the lottery, managed to choose the life she wanted. Roach clocked in many years in a high-powered job working for Martha Stewart and walked away to live the life she really loved, gardening, writing, and just being in the Hudson Valley.  Roach does not sugar-coat her new life, honestly sharing the pitfalls and struggles as well as the joys, in this compelling and inspiring read about what to do with one’s time.  Roach reminds us that our time here is limited so: carpe diem.

Write. With my new room (my own!) at the top of the house and a view of the Long Island Sound, I could disappear at any time to write.  I’d probably still stick to my morning regime when it feels like my subconscious is still boss.

Volunteer. I’d up my donations and time to the organizations I already love working with like Fairfield County First Book and The Bridgeport School Volunteers Association.  And I’d send lots of money to MSF (Doctors Without Borders).

What I would do if (when?) we win the lottery, is what I do anyway – but I’d do it more. And that’s the best part of periodically indulging in this fantasy – discovering we are already living the life we want.  It’s not more things we want — just more time.

A Year Later

Mostly Morning Musings remains an apt name for this blog, now just over a year old. It’s mostly in the morning when I ponder and write. These almost-weekly entries began when someone in publishing suggested that it is important to have an internet presence is. Letters from agents are still piling up in my cyber-reject file and my memoir has yet to find a home, but meanwhile, I am hooked on blogging.

For a fledgling writer like me, blogs are a great exercise in mustering the moxie to keep putting stuff out there. Finding this courage has been crucial to my writing and life. Writing my memoir (written first time around as a novel because it felt safer that way) helped me to process the crazy years of life with an addict and the shock of my husband’s suicide. Compulsively writing every morning before the sun rose, my story became a story instead of a dark shadow within me. The process was healing and cathartic but also my introduction to writing about what I love: nature, books, food, the seasons – this beautiful life.

Writing – thinking about writing, and actually doing it – helps me to step out of what can easily become a mundane march of day-to-day things to be done. In pausing, I really see the world around and within me and sometimes, even discover an insight to carry with me through the day. This is what I look for when I read and hopefully, you, my dear readers, find such pleasure here. I feel humbled and encouraged and thank you.

In-between

Waking on weekend mornings when I don’t have to go to the bookstore, it takes a few minutes for me to realize that the day is mine. I must veer my thoughts away from work-life: the calls I didn’t make, the tasks still waiting on my cluttered desk. Where I write from is so far away from that world and weekdays, while I try and rise early enough to have time to write, to exist in that internal place, there is never enough time. I need to be in almost a reverie when I work – best right out of sleep – my subconscious still primed from a night of dreams.  On work and school days, I have the finely tuned but harried, going-to-school and work rituals of making sandwiches, calling M to wake up, (again and again) before we bustle out of the door and roll into the dark morning towards our day-lives. But Saturdays and Sundays (two days in a row!) are precious – time to really look at things – within and without.

The dog still requires I venture outside and if I heed him early enough, the moon’s glow is still brighter than the sun’s. I revel in the magic between night and day, sleep and waking and these days, between the seasons. Over this past month, it is has gone from twilight to dark when I answer Tetley’s call for a quick morning walk down the street. This week, there were days when the weather was crazy-warm and as I made my way past the hedges, I heard the murmur of a summer insect, delightful and comforting.  An extension of the spirit of summer along with the weather.

There is a fleeting quality to these days. Autumn and spring pass quickly – the sweetness and drama between heat and cold and the melancholy of the brevity of this beauty is potent. So I pull myself out of the warmth of my bed, and for the time I have here in the now-cool mornings (we are reluctant to turn on the heat – as if waiting will keep the cold at bay) I do my best to pay attention.

Beyond Noise

From where I sit at the table by the window, lit by a slant of morning sun, the hum of the highway sounds louder than usual. Most of the time, the traffic is white noise, a whooshing punctuated by the louder roars of trucks, motorcycles. There are few places in Norwalk to escape the sound of automobiles. On the other side of town, the Meritt Parkway is another artery of noise. And in-between these two major roadways is the Post Road – a constant shifting gears as cars and buses crawl along between stop lights.

The best chance to escape is on the Long Island Sound, early in the morning or in the evening, and better on a weekday.  But even out on the water, there is rarely silence. Motor boats speed by, sending heaving waves into our boat. But worst is the hysterical motor-grinding of jet-skis around and around.  And of course, there are always airplanes, although the drone is so distant and quickly gone, they are easy to ignore.

Usually, I try not focus on man-made noises, instead tuning-in to sounds like summer insects. The volume of the Cicadas seems to change as the temperature does and at night, there is a different chorus of blaring bugs.  I notice the birds: the soft-drumming of a Downy Woodpecker on the stump of elm, the chirps of the Cardinal family, the weird, squawking Parrots (yes, Parrots!) swooping through to eye our trees. I let the dog out to bark at them, hoping to discourage nest-building intentions. Out by the butterfly bush, bees vibrate by and dragon-flys so close, I hear the extraordinary flutter of their wings.

Of course, I prefer these sounds of nature to the cacophony of man so try to cultivate a selective awareness.  There’s the key: of course my state-of- being affects my perceptions, and this week, I have been tightly wired and not particularly ‘conscious’. Triggered perhaps, by anticipating my daughter’s return from England and the always stressful trip to the airport to retrieve her.  She is home now, safe and sleeping upstairs, but the discombobulated feeling remains. Even the usually unobtrusive soundtrack of my daily life unsettles me.  After days of being irritated by everything around me, I admit to being the source of my own discomfort. I suspect it is because I have not been writing nor doing yoga – my anchors to peace.

Less than an hour ago, my focus was on what seemed the maddening noise of the highway. As my attention shifted, it was the birds I heard, the neighbor calling to her children, my fingers tapping on this keyboard, and finally, as I reel myself in closer to my elusive center, I find silence.

Balance

The sky is cloudless, the temperature is perfect and  I am torn between being in the dirt  planting vegetable seeds, tomato and jalapeno pepper plants – or writing.  Since I seem to only be able to write in solitude, when R leaves to run an errand, I drop my spade and dash inside to write, and when his car pulls in the driveway, I head back to pull weeds and water plants. And in this way, I find a kind of rhythm.

Here I am inside now – garden gloves abandoned in the dirt.  I have less than an hour before M is home from school.  A room of my own?  I imagine such a place for myself  and maybe, one day we can transform the crawl space – not quite an attic.   But if I could really disappear for hours on end to a cubby of my own, away from them and our shared life, would I? Certainly, if this was my ‘work’ but not now.  All moments beyond the hours spent at my job are carefully mined and  ultimately, it is the time I spend with these ones I love, that is most precious to me. But were I to win the lottery…

How to Start

“Whatever the story is about, it is something that is of interest to human beings because it amplifies some aspect of what it means to be living.” I lifted this sentence off of a website for writers (were I more adept at this, I’d provide the link here – one day!) and simple as it is, I find it a helpful beacon as I swim around trying to re-start my book.

Beginnings: how can I hook you, reader? What is my story? Why did I write it? What do I want the reader to take away from it?  Why am I so stumped on these questions when they are so fundamental and I have hundreds of pages of ‘book’?Are the answers in what I have written already? Or are they still to be answered? My brilliant sister gently guides me with these questions. For weeks I have been juggling different parts of already written chapters — to start here? or here? cutting and pasting in the hope that the new combination will make my story sing.  But it doesn’t yet. Not yet.

What began as an exorcism of anger and grief became a hopeful testimony of love and determination that my daughter’s life be better than mine, and that my life, be better than before.  And it is.  I could leave it at that, but after working in the book business for more than a decade, I might as well shoot for those dusty shelves myself.  And perhaps one day my tale will serve as someone else’s beacon of light.

Yesterday we spent the day cleaning up outside, working in our shirt sleeves, pausing to drink tea and eat lunch in the sun.  Glorious!  Four crocus in bloom – a set of purple on one side of the garden and yellow on the other.  By the time the sun retreated below the tree line, the yellow ones had tightened up into torpedos against the cold of night. There is a lot of work to be done – we beat a quick retreat indoors from winter. Broken birdhouses, flower pots, garden furniture and tools, half-done projects are strewn about, abandoned to the winter elements.

Yesterday, we raked leaves – a job we do not do in the autumn, preferring to mow them up into shreds for mulch. At least that’s our reasoning. But there are bags worth of leaves out there still, and my compost pile is full.  We cut back the butterfly bushes to  stubs and made trips to the dump. Our neighbors do this before winter sets in, but by the end of summer, we preferred to spend our free time kayaking and then, we just lost heart.  Closing down our favorite season makes us sad.  Now, fired up for spring just around the corner and glad to be in the sun, we attack these tasks with joy.

Also in the spirit of clean-up, I am back to my book for rewrites based on the good advice of a venerable agent. It’s been months since I’ve immersed myself in this story – my story – and while I feel inspired to make it stronger, I am also dragging my feet, reluctant to recollect those dark days again, like a return to winter. Perhaps I can pretend I am revising fiction – but then – what a different story I would tell.

Sleep, perchance to… sleep? And a rambling about books.

Sometimes I wake in the dark, early hours wanting to write about something. Go on, get up and write, I urge myself.  The bed is so warm and the air so frigid, I never do. In the light of morning, I have no recollection of what inspired me in the dark. Not surprising really, since these days, I never remember so much as a flash of a dream. Nights are delicious, nourishing voids.

Not that I don’t miss crazy escapades of the remembered subconscious, waking with a sense of  having had adventures -but only a little. In years past, I suffered so many sleepless nights worrying, that I savour this gift of solid sleep, these nights, slumped on the couch by 9:00 PM.

Most nights, I try and read before conking out completely, curled up under the quilt – what luxury.  The stacks of books-to-be-read continue to grow into teetering towers around the house.  Advanced Readers Copies picked up from work are on every table and stacked on shelves of already full bookcases.  Currently, I am hooked on The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson – a best seller that many friends and readers I share tastes with, have raved about.  I am half-way through and while crime thrillers are not my  usual reading taste, and the violence makes me wince, I  know I’ll need to read his next one too. Not exactly bedtime reading but I can’t put it down.  And still, no dreams (or nightmares!).

Borrowed from the store (a great benefit of my job) is Anticancer: A New Way of Life by David Servan-Schreiber, MD, PhD – a refreshingly, rare from an MD, holistic take on proactively dealing with this sucky disease. War of the cells and what we can do to stack the odds in our favor. Things we know, but I for one, need reminding of –  like layoff the white stuff – sugar, flour. Exercise. And drink red wine! Being positive and having friends – recently this attitude has taken a beating (by Barbara Ehrenreich of Nickled and Dimed fame for example)but I know what kind of person I prefer to be around and unless you’re really funny in your bleakness, I’ll choose the positive attitude any day.  Back to this book -it is interesting because the author is in this battle himself, and has survived past ‘the odds’ – something he poignantly addresses. This is the book I dip into between driving my teenager to and fro.

I even checked a book out of the library the other day – Pretty Birds a novel by NPR’s weekend edition, Scott Simon published in 2005, is my downstairs book.  I don’t know how I missed reading this since it is about Sarajevo during the war and I compulsively read anything on that time and place – whether fiction or non-fiction. The first few chapters of my memoir are set in Bosnia during the war so I can’t help reading other people’s work with a comparative eye. Of course, my story is more about the war of addiction and Sarajevo is the fitting (and true backdrop) for launching my story. I’ve only read a chapter but it’s already compelling.

Recent temperatures have been arctic and I long for spring – but I realize that when it comes, my reading time will shrink with the demand and draw of the garden and sun.  Maybe winter is not so terrible after all.

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