My Commies

A cupla days a month I volunteer at the library used book store. 

One of my regulars is a short, pregnant looking retired navy guy who marches in as if on a tight schedule, looking for VHS movies for himself and the wife. 

Something invariably distracts him mid-search, a movie title, an interesting item on Fox News last night, and he stays to rant about, “The Damn Commies... The ones here. Ruining America, the country so many fought and died for.” 

He gets rather spitty during the peak which is all facts and figures and proofs about the card carrying commies in our midst. 

I nod and smile.

By Commies in our midst I assume he meant my Great Auntie Rosie and Uncle Jack. She with the line of cleavage that started at her neck. He, a ringer for Popeye but with a fierce little rodent stance. 

They used to come stay with us in Detroit for a month every summer when I was a kid. Or perhaps it just seemed like a month. The only good part about their visit was that they treated my parents like kids. 

I remember one night when my parents got home Auntie Rosie met them at the front door with her fists on her hips.

“Vere vas you so late?” she demanded, making my utterly adult parents stammer excuses and squirm.

I’d never heard anyone speak to my parents like that. It was thrilling and horrifying. It put them on semi-equal footing with my brother and I, as Rosie criticized my mom’s house work and kitchen skills and Uncle Jack, a carpenter bossed my father around and dissed his work on household projects. 

      

Years later Mitch and I moved to California and visited Jack and Rosie in their tiny, upstairs apartment in the Fairfax district.  Jack was already ga-ga by then.  

He told us about how he and Lenin fought side by side in the old  country.

“Bah! Jackie! You vaz seven years old!” my aunt corrected. 

He jumped to his rickety old feet, dentures clicking wildly. “Shut up Rosie! You know nothing!”

Around that time I sold a piece about spring cleaning to the LA Times. I was over-the-moon excited and called to tell them to read it. 

My Auntie called back. “You have a chance to be in news pepper and you talk about cleaning? This is vat you have to say? Mit all the problems in the vorld? This is vat’s important to you?”

It was the early eighties. And since my Aunt didn’t drive, she caught the bus on Santa Monica Boulevard, which pre-and-early-AIDS was a hopping meat market of young male hookers.

“There’s no jobs!” she said. “All da boys stand around mit no vork! You don’t write about dis? About Regan and the mess he’s making?”

I was shamed by my commie aunt. 

Sometimes I still cringe about the fluff I produce for a living. And when kooks like my library ranter damn the commies, I get nostalgic. 

xo

Amy

Of Dogs and Books

Am staring down this novel, while vacuuming up the copious schmutz with which our new puppy covers all surfaces. 

His non-allergenic poodle fur doesn’t shed, so there is less fur to sweep.

BUT his curls act like Velcro for the crispy bits of twig, bark, leaves, and parched, withered death that this drought and I have created in the name of zero-scaping. 

His extremely effective dirt-delivery system, teamed with his enthusiastic interest in pinecones, shoes and paper products has effectively replaced the dirty dishes, wet towels, sticky wrappers, and smelly laundry with which my children filled the nest until quite recently. 

So, time-wise, I’m still cleaning.  

And writing? 

By way of encouragement, I tell my writing students that there is something learned by the completion of each book that makes it easier to write the fifteenth novel than the fifth... 

BUT I’m not entirely sure I believe that.  

In fact, if there is anything I am sure of, it is that each novel writes itself differently. 

You may learn the basics on the first one: How to carry it so you don’t bash its soft spot on every door jam. 

How to diaper it.

How to attach a car seat...  

BUT beyond that you must discover / re-invent on a per project (book / baby) basis.  

For example -- You could get Kid #1 to shut up by strapping it into that automatic swing, AKA the electric chair, and setting the timer for next Thursday.

BUT Kid #2 arches the back, goes ridged, and will have none of it. 

Novel #6 filled itself with jokes, whereas Novel #11 took itself very seriously.

And so I struggle against the encroaching squalidifying of my home, as much now with this filth-hound as I once battled the onslaught of Barbie shoes and lego.

And I wrestle the new novel as if I’d never attempted such a battle before.

Odd, ain’t it?

xo

Amy 

California Flambe’

As I sit sweltering at my desk, pretending to re-revise this pesky novel, the mind drifts like smoke back over my happy years living in a fire zone. I cast the eye about at the crispy kindling that is my zero-scaped yard and recall a couple years ago at this time, stuffing all fifty-two of my photo albums into my van in an attempt to save my past if not my future. 

We live in a narrow box canyon with only one road in, and no other way out -- that is, unless you are a fire, in which case you can reach us from all sides. 

One interesting thing about living in a canyon is that even if you live on the opposite side from the one that’s burning, you still feel very close and personally involved. I could, in fact hear the merry snap and camp-fire crackle from my kitchen. 

Everyone crept outside and drifted together in the street to watch our hillside burn. There was talk of who smelled what when, evacuation, and mild disagreement about whether deer or lizard or bobcat could out-run the flames, and whether anything could burrow to safety under them. 

The scene was bizarre not just because the neighbors were gathering, or because fire is alarming on a gut level, or because it smelled wrong, but because the scale seemed off.  Trees looked like bushes, firefighters in silhouette looked like brave little toys, helicopters circled like hawks, and when the smoke shifted, the flames were way too enormous to be credible. 

One old timer recalled our canyon ringed in fire in the 60’s when some guy, gambling on fate, made one-time-only, now-or-never offers to buy everyone’s houses. Ha! 

I called my kids and asked which two or three of their possessions they’d most like to see again. That could have made for a whole evening of interesting conversation but by then the ash was falling like snow and the air was making me dangerously nostalgic for my smoking days. We agreed on the harp and a few guitars. 

My husband came home to "help" me load van. "We" put our turtle in a soup pot, crammed the guinea pig and bunny into a small cage, and hoisted our big old dog up onto the seat. 

On the way out the door, we took a last look at the house and our stuff. I was sorry about leaving some of the art, but felt surprisingly indifferent to the rest of my earthly accumulation. 

We squeaked out just as they were blocking off the road. Any of our neighbors who came home after that had to leave their cars at the mouth of the canyon and hoof in to get pets, kids, papers, whatever. 

We spent the night at a friend’s house in Eco Park and returned in the morning to our intact home. The hillside was revealed to be shaped like an elephant's head, although no one admitted to seeing it but me. The elephant was stubbly with blackened stumps like a five day beard, he smelled like an ashtray and looked strangely raw for several months. 

This was an entirely unknown phenomena in Detroit where I grew up. Houses burned but just one at a time, mostly. Space heaters took several a year, Christmas trees, lightning, cigarettes and vandals took their share. Businesses burned as part of insurance scams, but it was rare that a Michigan arsonist got more than a few houses or apartments at a time. 

So, this seasonal occurrence of multiple miles of flame took some getting used to.   

Our modest little canyon fire burned maybe a square mile or less. A few weeks later a couple of miles north of us the Station Fire began it's two week rampage incinerating 251 square miles. That one made for fabulous on-going, high-drama viewing. Asthma or no, we’d park in the hospital lot with our fellow gawkers and sit on the roof of our cars, admiring the glorious billowing smoke patterns by day and the breathtaking flames by night. 

And just this week, we’ve kicked off this year’s fire season with the Cajun Pass Fire, standing now at 1,150 acres burnt, two homes lost. 

Wabbit season!  Duck Season!  Wabbit season!  FIRE SEASON!

xo

Amy

Sleepless in the Universe

This is the perfect opportunity, (4:24 am) to discuss one of the few topics about which I qualify as an expert, and that is INSOMNIA. 

Insomnia Type 1.) You brush the teeth, don the nightie and crawl into the bed, get comfy with blanket, pillow, white-noise-producing fan, dog, husband, and fall gently into a sweet, deep, sleep, just like the other diurnal creatures from the prairie to the forest. 

Until... you turn over to settle the hip, to cover the foot, to switch the pillow to the cool side, while ordering self:  DO NOT THINK! DO NOT THINK! THINK NOTHING! 

But a tiny, seemingly harmless thought slips through, a gateway speck of brain activity that mutates instantaneously into the cacophony of ceaseless inner chatter. Thoughts of things left undone, unsaid, begin their taunt. Mundane niggling details repeat and repeat like acid reflux. The night is lost.

Or, Insomnia Type 2.) After dragging through your day, hallucinating with sleep deprivation, you yawn through dinner, take the hot soothing bath, drink the warm milk, lay the weary head upon the pillow, close the blood-shot eyes.  
Ah, blissful rest! (two, three, four) Pop! The eyes are open.


You play possum, hold unnaturally still. But the foot must twitch. You are too hot, too cold. There is no comfortable position for any part of your body or soul. The dog’s toenails click across the floor. The husband snores. You hate them both. You seethe. You whimper, panic. If religious, you wail at the heavens, beseech the sleep gods. Tears of exhaustion and frustration seep.  

You try the couch but cannot escape the repeating lyrics of a bank commercial from your youth. 

You remember the tricks. Massage the face. Tense and relax various body parts. Snap on the light and read till the words blur, have the shot of whiskey or the addictive, hangover-producing magic white pill.  You re-paint the kitchen. Or write a blog about insomnia.

Things that aggravate symptoms. 
A. Working.
B. Not working.
C. Needing to get up in the morning.
D. Having said or done something cringe-worthy earlier in the day, or week, or lifetime. Or having had same said or done to you.
E. The future.
F. The Past.
G. Having children, a spouse, parents, siblings, co-workers, neighbors, friends, acquaintances, relatives, or none of the above.
H. Concerns about encroaching global stupidity, catastrophic weather anomalies, dust bunnies under the armoire, and the inevitability of death. 

Possible Side Effects

A. Sleeping on the inside while driving on the outside. 

B. Inappropriate weeping while wielding a machete. 

C. Divorce. 

D. Incarceration.

Treatment Methods 
A. Lobotomy 
B. Death

xo
Amy
P.S. This post is dedicated to my fellow sufferers. 

Mosaic and the Magic of Grout!

Some things that seem like they'd be the opposite of writing -- aren't. Like sleeping, or walking the dog, or sitting around with friends....

Your story can and will follow you there, tug on your sleeve, pretending it has come to buy the next round when really, it just wants to make sure you haven't forgotten it... for even a minute.

But mosaic is different. It uses a tunelessly humming, color / texture / messy / mud-play part of the brain that, at least for me, doesn't welcome words. And just as writing is pristine on the outside (human in chair, fingers tapping keys) while a rat's nest internally, tiling is all dust and sloppy glop and shattered stuff to the eye -- while the inside of the tiler is as sweet as a breeze.

And every step of the process is glorious.

1. Assemble things over time and sort them...

Satisfying already, right? Gathering objects, making little piles of buttons, stones, coins, toys, blue things, shiny things, round things, shells, tiles, bits of colored glass...

2. Smash them with a hammer (the appeal should be obvious.) 

3. Glue them to things. Tra la la. 

4. Smush muddy grout on it. *

5. Wait, but not too long.

6. Wipe away excess grout, revealing colors & shapes as you go -- like digging up buried treasure, or an archeological dig sped way way up.

* Ah Grout!  It takes disparate objects and unites them. Not in philosophy or lip-flapping theory but in reality. It embraces chips and jaggedy bits and cements them into one solid, smooth-faced, indivisible, immensely satisfying THING.
 
And it does so quickly, simply and without words!  If only more aspects of life could be grouted.

xo
Amy

Remember when TWO Truman Capote movies came out at once????

Well, I gotta say, this has been a professionally repulsive week. 

In an act of kindness however, I will not enumerate the horrors. Allow me instead, since our heads are already in the bowl, to mention the vomit-inducing R collection.

One "R" word is Remaindering.

This, for the uninitiated, is when the money guys at your publishing house decide to stand all the characters in your book on the slippery edge of a pit. Then, in cool legalese, they send a note informing you of their intention to gun down everyone of those characters. P.S. Kindly offering to send you any sweepings of salvageable blindfolds or body parts at a Thanks for everything! Your call is important to us! Have a Nice Day! discount.  

This can happen after the book has been in print for decades, or mere moments after a book's release. But still, in the context of these Rs, remaindering is The Happy R! because at least remaindered characters had a chance, however brief, to live.

The next R word, Rejection, needs no introduction.

As wretched feelings go, the rejection of your novel is way up there with shingles. But no rejection is necessarily the last word. There always exists the hope that the next editor to read your story will get it. So even this R is a bit happy-ish.

But meet #3. Realization of a Repugnant Reality.

This grim set of Rs refers to the discovery that a book very very close in concept, nature, subject and possibly even style to the book you've been wrestling with for years... was recently published in a unique circle of hell, by a newbie on a unicycle.

Unlike being remaindered, your characters never had their chance in the world.

Unlike being rejected, no future opportunity for acceptance or even for further rejection exists.

Again, all your characters, their world, every scene and situation teeter at the edge of the maw, not after a long or short life with readers, but after no life at all.  

The world forever denied your MOBY RICK.

xo

Amy 

  

Fair Judgement!

It's no sweat picking the winners of kid-lit writing contests when I'm the only judge. I read through the submissions, make a pile of the ones I hate least, worrying that I'll have to eenie-meenie-miney-moe for my Gold, Silver and Bronze... Until oh good!  I find one I hardly hate at all!  Then some I actually like -- sometimes even love.

I always agree entirely with my own taste, so the winner is clearly The Winner to me. This makes it easy to believe every cliche’ about artistic justice -- Cream rising to the top, Good writing and hard work telling out in the end...                  

Many years ago I was on a huge panel of judges, judging books that were already published. In that case my dissenting vote was soooo far out weighed by the majority that I might as well have not even read all those enormous boxes of books. 

                                                            

But recently I served on a panel of just THREE judges, judging the unpublished work of  grant hopefuls.     

We read through the fifty submissions and each came up with a list of our favorites. Then we compared lists. Two lists had overlaps. One, (mine) did not.  Hmmm. 

I’d heard of awards committees who, unable to reach consensus, settled on a winner which was no one’s favorite, making the winners into losers and crowning mediocracy with glory. The gold going not to the book anyone loved, but to the one no one hated.

But I always thought that was an urban myth. Sort of the baby in the microwave of writing competitions. But then.... here we three were with unmatched lists.  

So, how does a well intentioned, mild-mannered panel reach a fair agreement if they don’t in fact agree? 

Enter a bit of lobbying, negotiating, amicable compromise. 

No one offered or accepted bribes, or made threats or pulled rank. Our solution was give the top award to the entry my fellow judges both had on their lists... although it wasn’t at the tip top of either. Second place went to my favorite, and honorable mentions to the manuscripts they'd each liked best. 

None of us sacrificed inordinately, and all were more or less satisfied. But in truth we arrived at our top choices almost arbitrarily, led by a unanimous wish to avoid unpleasantness and return to our regular programing. 

The winners and losers of the contest didn't know that, though. Their reactions to our decision would not take our ambivalence into consideration. They'd either feel like winners or losers, as if my fellow judges and I knew anything at all about anything. 

Which of course we do... and don’t. 

This calls for a tiny cringe.   

But that doesn't mean the contestants should discount our results. Reading is so utterly subjective that perhaps this jury's random method of selection was as pure and righteous as any, and stands as a fair microcosm of the whole submission / selection / rejection process. 

Maybe that’s why so many of us drink.

xo

amy