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One Year Ago Tonight

By on September 19, 2012 in mindfulness, true story

It’s been one year since I packed one more box, bought one last sandwich, and drank one more cup of coffee on the Jersey Shore.

My dad and I ate breakfast at a chrome-slicked diner. I asked for jalapeños in my omelet and the waitress to take our picture.

My mom and I met at Dunkin Donuts.  My sister, who works behind the counter and triggered my habit years ago, gave me her signature Vanilla Spice, perfectly tempered with sugar and cream.

We sat by the window and looked out at the sea and didn’t say much (for once). A postcard family in a donut shop. I was about to ruin the picture.

But even eleventh hour nerves could not cloud the impatience of  long-distance love. The moment had been a long time coming. The time, I knew, was now.

I drove away slowly and felt my heart heave.

For hours I sang under my coffee breath. Southern Crossing, a mix CD: it took my mind off tears. I listened to songs I’d known long ago and watched the mileage climb.

Gray skies and rain across PA, down the spine of West Virginia. The clouds looked like they do today: blurry backslashes floating through trees.

I came into Charlottesville after night fell. I got twisted around, turned a U in a lot. When I found my development, the storm had passed; I slipped up a hill toward a back row of houses. My new numbers hung on featureless siding, bronze digits shining beneath a wet porch lamp.

I parked in a spot intended for residents. My bag grew weightier as I climbed the stairs. I stood at the door and paused a moment, inhaling slowly, tasting in the air.

Three hundred miles from life as I knew it, shivering trees shucked rain off their leaves. Families moved behind closed windows. Mountains hunched in looming darkness. And light spilled out beneath my new doorway: a puddle, a promise, around my feet.

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Happy Vernal Equinox!

By on March 19, 2012 in mindfulness, true story

Foto from Flickr’s 55laney69.

In yoga this morning, our instructor (a sweet-voiced woman named Blossom) informed us that today is the last day of winter. An equinox names the period when day and night are equal—yin and yang, push and pull, the light-bound tilt from one season to another. We stretched and flexed, reached and inverted, to honor what Blossom called “the deepest truth, which exists inside our bodies.”
I sweated and swayed as I thought about this. I stood in mountain pose and felt my diaphragm concave and convex, lung floor surging down and up with every passing breath. Inhale, exhale, in and out. I dove to the floor, peaked in downward dog, and sayonara pranayama. Winter weight’s been hard on girlfriend and now she’s panting hard.
The moment itself, the slide from day to night, passed at 1:26PM. At 1:27 we moved into spring, the wood season, according to Blossom, associated with growth and renewal and perseverance. The recommended poses are still, flat, restful. In other words, lie down and honor your chi.
Sounds like a plan to me!
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Even My Fortune Cookie Wants Me to Be Happy

By on March 13, 2012 in mindfulness, true story

Darn tootin’.
Here in Pleasantville Charlottesville it’s a balmy 79 degrees.
Apparently it is March 13th, but the heat and the extra hour of sunlight indicate otherwise.

My brain keeps screaming SUMMER! OMG SUMMER!
I even got a farmer’s tan.

A bonus beyond vitamin D: all this sunshine soothes my soul. It reminds me that perfectly legitimate outdoor activities include, but are not limited to:
- reading a book for hours on end
- napping in a field while storm clouds brew overhead
- walking through centuries-old woods
- articulating hopes and dreams while drinking a soy latte
- starting that art project you thought about 5 months ago
- smelling unspent rain on breezy night air
- coming home and pausing outside the front door—one extra breath, one glance at the stars—to savor the taste of these sweet final hours, the delicate finish of another delicious day.
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Free Clinic Fridays: Design Seeds, Zen Habits and 8″ Heels

By on February 17, 2012 in art, design, humor, mindfulness
What’s up, kiddies? Enjoying the weather? After a week of waxing poetic for short stories, bios, letters, websites, Valentine’s gifts, and why the mail should be sent on Sunday, I am ready for a break. I think some sort of crafty art project is in order. Or just eating more brownie batter.
But first I am proud to present my finds from another week of trolling the internet!

Free Clinic Friday
What do you need to do?
LAUGH

Image courtesy of Hyperbole and a Half.
The creative folks at NaNoWriMo have teamed up with The Book Doctors to offer this year’s WriMo paticipants a lottery of sorts: anybody who submits a book pitch has a 1 in x thousand chance of being drawn, randomly, for a free consult with professional book polishers. It’s sort of like The Hunger Games except everybody wants to die.
Anyway, I plan to use this lottery as motivation to undertake the Writing of My Book Pitch. Since I’ve written something of Ye Olde Adventure Storye, I might just take the tone of this epic literary work by Mr. Mike Lacher:
“In Which I Fix my Girlfriend’s Grandparents’ WiFi and Am Hailed as a Conquering Hero”
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/in-which-i-fix-my-girlfriends-grandparents-wifi-and-am-hailed-as-a-conquering-hero
PANIC

Stop it, you weirdo designers!
Christian Louboutin created these 8″ ballerina-inspired heels for the English National Ballet’s summer party last year. They were auctioned off to the craziest person in the house.
Now I’m going to have rosin-fueled nightmares about those two years I took pointe classes. To say nothing of the four or five times I actually made it onto my toes.
ESCAPE
Image courtesy of the Cool Hunter.
I could spend the next week of my life writing the story of that man on the steps.
IMAGINE
Images from Design Seeds.
As Boyfriend and I have been painting the bedroom, I’ve found myself lost in a sea of paint samples. Colorful chicklets on the walls. I’m not sure if this site helps or hinders my natural obsession, but if you share my affinity for mixed media art, moods boards or color, you’re going to love Design Seeds.

Seriously, go there, like, now.

OM

Image from A Boy In Mid Air.
Not to get all Mindfulness Project on you, but article from Zen Habits is simple, sane advice for everybody on the planet. Myself included.
Have a great weekend everybody!
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Snowflakes and Sunshine

By on January 18, 2012 in mindfulness, quarter-life crisis, true story

We’ll learn fear might not mean ‘stop’; I’ve come to believe fear usually means ‘go.’
— Frances Moore Lappé
Tuesday morning opens with snowfall.
I sit at my desk and watch little flurries salt the trees, scraggly branches reaching incredulously upward. Yesterday the air was balmy, a tropical 60 in our mountainous suburbs. Now white sweeps down like a stage-length curtain, paving the backyard with pixilated ice.
A fresh start.
Isn’t that what we expect when we vow to change our lives? We gaze onto a barren landscape and imagine a future that’s wild, invigorating and white as a page. Blood churns and fingers tingle at the thought of phantom frost.
I stare into the gathering cold and hum Bon Iver in the back of my throat. I can’t find my snowshoes; I can’t seem to mush. With every useless moment passing, I sink deeper into drifts of lassitude, soaked with muddy self-loathing. I’ve become a shifting weather pattern, confused and confusing, scattering Canadian geese to all points of the compass.
Our dog meanders into the room and sits heavily at my feet. Her brown eyes ask me to make it stop snowing.
Out there in the great big world, I know other people are complaining. They’re sucking their teeth and refueling with coffee and lamenting another day in the office. Not long ago I was one of them, anxious to flee the press and grind, propelled by my conviction that I would suffocate without new air. Now I envy their routine, certain endings to certain days, and fear the vastness stretched before me.
Maybe this is the truth of change, the thing our fallible minds reject. Excitement is a cresting wave, the rush of cumulus toward the heart of the storm. All this energy, this certainty and power, serves to push us just so far. We ride high enough the see the shore, the sunshine above the clouds; then we are unceremoniously dumped to earth, falling like snowflakes or sea foam toward the earth.
The aftermath crushes. We must learn to breathe again.
Now we stand up shakily, slowly. The tundra looks different from here; the cold and damp are real. We lack much of the proper training, and we have needy dogs in tow. It’s a long hike to our dreamed-of fields.
But even the fearful body remembers that once we rode high as kings, alight like stars burning across the sky. Once in those highest, clearest moments, we saw where our lives were waiting.
I sit at my desk and open my computer. Outside, bits of white fall more thickly. Then something heavenward shifts, parting the pockets of gray, and the air is pierced by golden angles, shafts of smoking light. In the sudden illumination, I find my blank page and lift my fingers to the keys. I will write of all these changes, the lift and the crash and halcyon dreams. I will venture forward and carry my fear, leaving footfalls on the face of the world, wearing skin brightened by snowflakes and sunshine.

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Writing: A Whiner’s Defense

By on January 17, 2012 in art, creative writing, mindfulness
I’ve been reading a lot about writing lately, and one theme that comes up a lot is how writing is really hard and how normal people with normal goals don’t appreciate how hard writing is, even when writers tell them about it over and over and over again. As a neighbor points out to critic/novelist Annie Dillard in her book The Writing Life, “That’s like a factory employee going to work every day even though he hates it. Why do you do it?”

Dear reader, this is the worst question you could ever ask a writer. If you yourself are a writer, you’re nodding. If you’re not, please heed my advice and do not ask it ever (or ever again). It’s like pouring salt on a slug and expecting the poor thing to dance.

Anywho. Haphazard gastropod analogies notwithstanding, I’m glad that other writers feel the same way I do. For many years I assumed I was a big baby with my “poor me”s and “mental anguish”es and “oh, the trials of the mind simply fell me!”isms. While this may still be true, I feel vindicated by this funny, insightful article from author Michael Cunningham.

As a novelist, I learned long ago that my interest in talking about how very difficult it is to write fiction exceeds almost everybody’s interest in hearing about it. I rarely bring the subject up, any more than I expect, in old age, to go on at length about my joint pains or the fact that everything and everyone used to be better than they are now. Every writer I know, however, is obsessed by the subject, and often when we’re alone together we do, in fact, with a sense of guilty abandon, spend a certain amount of time buzzing about how unbelievably, monumentally difficult writing actually is; what fools we are for having taken it up in the first place; and how often we contemplate abandoning the pursuit altogether and going into another line of work, though most of us are too old for go-go dancing and too inept for carpentry.

To learn more about the writing underground or revel in how justified your whining is, click here. Happy reading!


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The Novel Project: 50,000 WORDS!

By on December 1, 2011 in creative writing, mindfulness, true story

This is totally going on my sidebar.
November 30th, Day of Reckoning.
When I pulled up to Writer House last night, I clicked into warrior mode. Like a samurai poised for battle, I wore black; like Rocky, Eye of the Tiger played in my head. I kicked open the front door and laid fierce claim to a desk chair and table, arming myself with my 2009 Mac WhiteBook and four tracks of Death Cab for Cutie.
I was so ready to type my last 1700 words. At that point, 2K felt like child’s play, easier to destroy than a box of double-chocolate Milanos labeled ‘Fair Game’. Over the course of this month, I learned that it really ain’t that hard to churn out epic word counts, provided you have the pressure of the internet and no day job to distract you. I was gonna crush it.
Inside, the enthusiasm was contagious, verbosity flooding the House like the scent of fresh Papa John’s. Incidentally, the kitchen was full of pizza, but I, not to be deterred, stuck to my tried-and-true regimen of Coke and Cheez-balls. Settling back in my thinly-padded chair, I began pounding at the keyboard.
The hour flew by. I’d finished a monster battle scene the day before, and now the living was easy; in moments of distress, I simply employed the handy ‘glib dialogue’ technique. Plot propulsion, here we come!
As I wrote I knew I was drawing toward the end. My characters laughed, my characters cried. My characters taunted me with the fact that even though I’d written 1/20th of a million words, they still had so much more to say. Before I knew it, the threshold was crossed, and a beam of brilliant light shot down through the ceiling as the crowd burst into cheers.
So thank you, thank you, and let me just say that I was so impressed by everyone else who did this project. From apartment foreclosures to hospital trips to Thanksgiving dinners, these writers endured almost everything during their 30 days. Two people finished 50K by November 15th, and someone wrote their entire word count in just 11 days. I even heard the story of a stay-at-home mom who, despite the presence of small, presumably screaming tots, wrote 100,000 words in our allotted time.
Whaaaaaaaaaat.
Despite the absence of insurmountable roadblocks in my path to verbose glory, I am proud of my 50,000 words. (Or if you want to Times New Roman and double-space and it, 171 pages!!) Way back in April, when I took a novel writing course at NYU, I vowed to finish a draft of my book by the end of 2011. A very busy spring, summer and fall had my unspoken goal looking less and less attainable, but now I see how truly possible it is.
I might not be finished with my story yet, but this experience allowed me to see that I can do anything if I just stick with it. It gives me hope, it renews my faith, and it reminds me, as I hope it can remind you, that no matter what we do or where we are, any moment can be the one to start something big.
So 30 days later, the Novel Project continues. I’ll keep you posted from time to time, but allow me to stress, for both you and for me: the best is yet to come.
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Six Word Story Every Day

By on November 11, 2011 in art, creative writing, inspiration, mindfulness
Happy 11/11/11!

Ever since I was the sort of inquisitive child who asked such delightful questions as “what’s the best color?” and “what’s your favorite number?”, I have been obsessed with 11. Love the symmetry, love the fact that it’s just a composition of 1s (arguably every ego-maniacal writer’s favorite digit), love the fact that if numbers were people, 1 would be the tall, skinny underdog who always comes out on top (and probably wears glasses, right?). LOVE IT!

To celebrate this single-century 1 day, make a wish.

Also check out the inspiring brevity of artists and designers at Six Word Story Every Day.

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The Body at Work

By on October 20, 2011 in inspiration, mindfulness, true story
Image from Kellie Petersen on Pintrest.

Blind with sweat, I grind my jaw against the pain and puff like a woman in labor. A combination of resistance, repetition, and cardio short-windedness has caused my kettlebell to swell from ten to five hundred pounds, and as my triceps flex and elbows bow I swear muscle fibers will lash out of my skin.

Then it’s over. I drop the bell and head between my knees. Breathing. Hard.

My heart rate subsides. In the time it takes to position for lunges, that chipper fistful of muscle is ready for more. When the music starts, my heart leaps with glee, sprinting after the challenge like a dog chasing squirrels. Surfing waves of cortisol complex, my body tenses and bends and eventually trembles, building fortitude as well as heat, humming with effort, buzzing with joy.

What the hell? my mind mutters. What does this look like, a picnic?

As brain and body bicker and struggle, I sneak a bilateral grin. Every moment longer is one moment less, and when we get to the end of this one hour class we will be red-faced, victorious, a perfect union of self and physical sphere.

This, for me, is the single best reason to work out. Diabetes and heart attacks and insidious marbling of organs aside, the acts of walking or running or rhythmic air-punching prevent the loss of history, the unraveling of self.

Here’s the thing: we spend hours and days avoiding our bodies, absorbed by LCD screens and flavor chemicals. If you over-think as much as I do, you know that our minds are incredibly selfish, egomanical with wolfish appetites. Attention, diversions, feed me, Seymour—demanding it all is what the mind does.

It’s easy to forget our bodies are here. Their language is different, a sort of incomprehensible Esperanto. Our mistranslations cause us to eat fast food when we’re thirsty, to drink while hungry for touch. If we take the time to listen closely, we begin to understand bits and pieces; we feel the difference between right and wrong, yes and no, good and bad. Body-speak requires attention, but through it we can link to our genetic landscape, the scope of our primitive bodies.

So I stretch and squat despite myself. I flood my limbs with air and blood like the princess spinning gold. My body responds; my body speaks up, and lo and behold, my mind starts to think in concert. A witness to oneness of the whole, she encourages instead of antagonizes, and now my brain gives way. A self determined, just a few seconds more, followed by rocketing pleasure: my primeval connection to every human that ever stalked an animal, that fled across a plain, and once again I feel Darwin’s great chain settle inside me.

So when I leave, flushed and shining, I won’t forget what I am: body and mind woven as one, indebted to everything, to everywhere we come from. I am kettlebells and verdant plains, cackling monkeys and yoga instructors, too many thoughts and too many expletives and so much sweat and still, for many days, I will feel the ache in my muscle fibers and remember it all.
*     *     *
Now, for your viewing pleasure, I present a TED talk from Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues. I was floored by her power, the grace of her poetry, and her description of new connection with her body—once alien, isolated, lost—now stronger than a thousand currents of mind. 
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Indian Summer Landscapes

By on October 18, 2011 in inspiration, mindfulness
Things I hate: fruit flies, the cold.
Things I love: triumphing over fruit flies, Indian summer.

All photos courtesy of The Cool Hunter’s “Getting Back to Nature.”
I’m working on the former while in the midst of the latter, and I can’t shake the desire to run through the sun-spangled streets to some wide park where I will lie on the grass and read and give myself to dreaming.
My desire is urgent for two reasons: our local weatherwoman warned us that tomorrow will bring cold fronts and windy rains, and the system may well sweep the last traces of summer from this mountain town.

Charlottesville is known for it’s gorgeous autumn foliage, and I’ve noticed the sleepy-headed maples turning shades of ochre and gold. I am livid with the injustice that passing years will turn my hair the color of dull dimes instead of this fiery swan song.
Now I’ll have to dye my hair this color.
When Nature steps up her game, we have an obligation to admire it. She’s shooting off every aesthetic firework she can manage, and in a year of natural disasters, we owe it to ourselves to appreciate her wild beauty. If you can, get out there, even for a 5-minute stint between coffees. If you can’t, maybe this video will help.

In the meantime, I think I’ll take my own advice. Summer doesn’t last forever; nor will this spectacular fall; nor, indeed, will the fruit flies.
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