The serial killer* who lived next door finally sold his house and moved out. It went on the market at $189,000 and the last I checked was down to $150,000. I’m guessing it went for less than that, which just goes to show you that, in this economy, people simply aren’t paying what they used to for neglect.
He left something for you on the porch in case you’re interested:
*I suppose, in the interest of dodging libel charges, he may not necessarily have been a serial killer. Let’s just say that if the new tenants happen to find surprises waiting for them in the crawl space, I won’t be the least bit surprised.
April 9th, 2009
On the summer writing fellowship at the Norman Mailer Writer’s Colony (or, as my husband has taken to calling it, The Mailer Academy.) But that’s okay, because we’re pretending like it doesn’t matter. Like it doesn’t matter at all.
April 8th, 2009
From Hyndland Primary School in Glasgow, Scotland, 1977:
Apparently, I only had four chums. I have no idea what happened to the last three, but the first — Deborah (whose name I, evidently, could not spell) — I’m still in touch with today. (In fact, I attended her wedding just last year in Scotland.)
April 7th, 2009
I was going to write a post yesterday about my Sunday excursion to Ikea. I was going to write about the lengths I went to in order to get my paws on a stock pot reduced from a dazzling $24.99 to $9.99. I may not be a big shopper, but I’m a big soup maker and that 11-quart baby had my name all over it. I was going to blog about how we got there too early but yet just in time to get our coupons for the pots before they ran out. About how we had to line up just to get into the store and how it was pure insanity but yet there was free breakfast. Free breakfast!
Then I saw this news yesterday — that The Ann Arbor News will cease publication in July — and I got completely sidetracked. I got that “end is nigh” feeling one gets. Or, at least, that this one gets.
I’m not naive. I know how bad things have been getting for newspapers in recent years. In fact, if anything, I have a glut of awareness about it. I suppose by some stretch of the imagination, I once qualified as a journalist. I am married to a journalist who is a refugee from the increasingly myopic and skeletal world of daily newspaper reporting. I’m lousy with friends — in this country and abroad — in the biz, many of them increasingly concerned with their own job prospects and all of them concerned about the future of their industry as a whole. I have absolutely nothing new or insightful to add on that front.
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March 24th, 2009
I think we all have those friends who were really, really important to us at one point in time, but then we lose touch, our good intentions falling by the wayside. Maybe you think of them a lot, meaning to get back in touch, half-heartedly Googling their names, expecting to see great things popping up and puzzling over why there’s nothing.
I had a strange set of occurences over the past few days involving one of my friends like that. I met G. my senior year of college in a writing workshop — and at a place in time — that was full of inspiration and influence on me, as writer. He was older than most of us in the workshop — meaning, he was 26 or 27 when we were all just 21. At that point in life, those extra few years were daunting. G. somehow made them seem even more so, having packed so much life and knowledge into that handful of years. Not only did he write like a fiend, but he read like one too, thought about writing, lived The Life. On top of it all, he was even married, his wife beautiful and lively. It was almost more than we could fathom.
G. was at the center of what became, for a few years, a very tight group of writers. In truth, as time wore on and people filtered in and out, we were really a more dedicated group of drinkers than just about anything else. We met on Tuesday nights at a pub called McClain’s in St. Louis and G. treated us poor types generously, buying rounds and pitchers and shots — and the occasional tray of nachos with which to line our stomachs — out of the tips he made tending bar at an upscale hotel downtown.
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March 18th, 2009
It’s gone. The application for the Norman Mailer Writers Colony has left the building. And not a moment too soon, I might add. I’m feeling kind of panicky, a little bit “Oh my God, what did I forget? I know! I forgot to write something good.”
It’s out of my hands now. And while it did cost me a bit more than just the cost of stamps — specifically, $30 in Fed Ex fees to ensure it arrives the day before deadline, plus a $10 app fee — I’m hoping it’s still worth it. Because what would it cost me not to have tried? Yeah, nothing. But whatever.
I’d like to thank those of you who helped kick me in the rear and make sure I gave this a shot. You know who you are. But just in case, I’ll tell you. You are: Julia M. (whose application should be hitting the Fed Ex boxes tomorrow, no?), Madeline and Kathi. Thanks for your support and encouragement.
I shall now begin the “wait and see” portion of events which everyone knows is my real strong suit….
March 6th, 2009
So says the old adage and it’s variant: you can’t succeed if you don’t try. Which is all well and good but it does bring up another argument, a perspective far more comfortable to my glass-half-wait-where’s-my-glass? mindset: you can’t fail if you don’t try.
This mode of thinking stops me from trying a million, zillion things. Last year, I was so afraid of losing I didn’t bother entering a small photo contest friends encouraged me to try. I was so certain everyone else’s photos would be far superior to mine. When they announced the winners, I was filled with immediate regret. The winning photos were fine, some even good. But I would have stood a really good chance of winning with the shots I had selected. Unfortunately, we’ll never know as I chose the comfort of catatonia instead.
I’m mentioning all of this because I’m trying to bring myself to apply for something. It’s this: a summer fellowship at the Norman Mailer’s Writers Colony in Provincetown, Mass. It’s an amazing opportunity. Twenty-eight days to focus on writing and, perhaps even more important for me at this point in time, to discuss writing and receive feedback on my work. It’s even a free ride. Applications are due March 10. One week from today.
The hitch? They pick seven writers for this session. And my mind’s already decided that I won’t be one of them. I’m already so sure that I won’t make the cut that I’m in the process of talking myself out of submitting an application. Yes, Dr. Freud, I know this is fear talking, but when it comes to writing, I have so much of it. It’s easier to stay in my little box and not give it a shot.
Sigh.
Why do I feel like this is a scene in a movie where triumphant, bass-pumping music will build in the background as I realize I’ve got to give it a shot? One shot. One opportunity. Yes, Eminem would be involved.
And why am I writing about this here? For one thing, just to get it off my chest. But, more importantly, because it’s been my experience that if I write something here, at least one or two of you reach out and keep me accountable. What I’m saying is, I’ll do it. I’m going to do it. I’m going to apply and I’m going to tell you that I’m going to apply, which means that if I don’t get in, I have to be willing to cop to that and deal with the ramifications of not being good enough and people knowing that I’m not.
Maybe it will all help me take one step closer to being someone who believes that trying is worth something all on its own.
Yeah. Maybe.
March 3rd, 2009
I’ve been trying to meditate lately, and I’m not very good at it. I know, I know. All the Zen types with whom I am acquainted insist there’s no such thing as being bad at meditation, but I do so like to think I am unique.
Why meditate? A number of reasons, mostly to do with stress and anxiety and the ensuing/causing monkey mind from which I suffer. As I’ve blogged here before, it plagues me to the point that falling asleep at night is a massive, painful undertaking. I want to learn how to quiet my mind, how not to be leaping to the next thing and the next thing and oh, that one thing I’ve forgotten. I want to remember how to be in this moment right now and, most importantly, to know that I’m okay there.
The thing about meditating is that I’m never quite sure I’m doing it right and I always feel, quite frankly, like a bit of a dork. I’ve been talking to as many people I can for whom meditation is a regular (or semi-regular) part of their life and I’m both encouraged and somewhat intimidated by the variety of approaches. Part of me thinks I’d be better off if someone just said, “There’s one way to meditate and this is it — steps 1, 2 and 3. Follow those.” And part of me knows that if someone told me that I’d probably tell them to shove it.
I have a friend who meditates only while walking by herself out in nature, simultaneously sending out a bunch of good thoughts into the universe. Several people I know attend meditation classes or groups on a regular basis, but that just sounds like, I don’t know, commitment. Another friend suggested a type of visual meditation, focusing on an image that really calms me and just practicing focusing on something other than my crazy thoughts.
So where am I with all of this? Sporadic, at best. Half-hearted and half-assed, at most. I’m trying sitting cross-legged because, I dunno, that’s how the Beatles did it, as well as everyone else you see on TV. I’ve tried it in the morning and in the afternoon. I’ve tried it using some made up mumbo-jumbo prayers as well as some meditations I remember from the olden days when I practiced Anusara yoga regularly. Speaking of which, I’m trying it while doing some basic yoga poses as that’s still one place I can remove myself somewhat successfully from the chaos of my mind and focus on my breathing and movement.
The jury’s still out. At this point, I’m just hoping that in meditation there are points for trying.
February 24th, 2009
A few weeks ago, my father forwarded to me an email that might otherwise easily have been mistaken for an internet scam. It was a notification that a distant relative had passed away without a will and that as one of her heirs, I was eligible for a share of her estate. The letter came from a solicitor’s office in Glasgow, where I was born, and the deceased in question was the sister of my paternal grandfather.
It wasn’t the notion of an unexpected windfall that shook me — the solicitor was quite clear that the estate was extremely modest and that, as one of 84 blood relatives, my share would be modest. It was the fact that I had this relative at all, about whom I knew absolutely nothing, that rattled me a bit.
A little background is required, I suppose, to appreciate my reaction. As I said, this woman was the sister of my mother’s father, a man I never met. I knew him only as a cautionary tale of alcoholism, abuse, familial abandonment and financial ruin. He was the source of tremendous pain for my grandmother, my mother and her brother. That was his place in the family legacy. He had run off long before I was born and, so the story went, the last time my mother laid eyes on him was an accidental encounter at a bus stop in Glasgow, the day before her wedding to my father.
My grandfather’s absence made him more intriguing to me than his presence probably ever could and while the rest of the family seemed content to write him off to history, I’ve always been exceptionally curious to know what happened to him. As far as we knew, he was dead. It didn’t seem likely that with his lifestyle, he’d lived long and prospered. Still, I remained curious about how and when he had died, where he lived before that, how he passed the years of his life.
After my mother died in the fall of 2003, I went to Glasgow for a memorial service in her honor. There I met my mother’s older brother, who I hadn’t seen since I was a very young girl. He had also done a bit of a vanishing act but had, curiously enough, sought out my mother just months before her sudden and unexpected death. It was the first time they’d spoken in more than 30 years and they were able to meet up with each for what would turn out to be the last time. What my uncle told me stunned me. He said that he had been in contact with his father — my grandfather – just over a year before. It was almost more than I could process. I’d lost my mother but discovered that her father was, in all likelihood, still alive. It seemed the cruelest of outcomes. What kind of world was it in which my mother, barely 60, died but her father, whose emotional abuse and abandonment trickled down to affect generations, had survived?
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February 4th, 2009
Some months ago, when I sheepishly embarked on the experiment to see if I have a novel in me, I did some research on word counts. I don’t remember where I read it, but a couple of sources seemed to suggest that 50,000 words was the minimum for bridging the gap between novel and novella. And it’s the count NaNoWriMo uses for their writers.
The longest short story I’d ever written was about 1/12th of that, so I really wasn’t sure I had it in me. But I figured it was a good benchmark, a good test to see if — regardless of quality — I was even capable of committing to such a project, producing that volume of writing.
As of yesterday, it turns out that I am. I did. After a week of pretty focused pushing-through, even when it felt like what I was hammering out was crap that wouldn’t survive the next draft, I crossed the threshold of 50,000 words.
Man. That felt like…something.
I don’t know quite where I’m going from here, but I’m working my way through the chapters in chronological order in the hopes of arriving at a coherent enough first draft that I can get it in front of some other people and start getting feedback. There is so much I still haven’t figured out, so much I’m not sure about, so many holes that need filled. But I’m feeling a little more capable than I did a few months ago. And I’ll take that for now.
January 30th, 2009
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