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Goodbye (for now)

2011-04-06T12:03:00.001-07:00

http://www.dufflynsblog.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=396&action=edit&message=6

New post!

2011-03-21T12:59:00.001-07:00

http://www.dufflynsblog.com/2011/03/20/better/

The Gospel According to Jewal Dean

2011-02-28T19:58:00.000-08:00

The Gospel According to Jewal Dean

Is Oscar Cursed?

2011-02-06T09:06:00.001-08:00

http://www.dufflynsblog.com/2011/02/06/is-oscar-cursed/

REVENGE OF THE NERDS: Is Aaron Sorkin the Sexiest Man Alive?

2011-01-17T13:42:00.000-08:00

TO JOIN THE NEW BLOG GO TO WWW.DUFFLYNSBLOG.COM AND CLICK ON FOLLOW!

The first computer I remember is two miles long. Slate grey metal above and below, to my left and to my right. Every step an echo. I look back at the open door leading to the foothills. Another step and then a sound like the water heater in our old apartments. I stand transfixed before a hallway without end. Over my shoulder black components click and pulse, stacked one atop the next.

“How far does it go?” I ask.

“Too far.” Russell says. This is my father’s friend whom we have come to visit and he does not want me running off. “Stay where I can see you,” he says.

Even now, I wonder if that tunnel of light so many people say they’ve seen in near-death experiences looks anything like the inside of Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.

As it turns out SLAC is not really a computer, but a multipurpose laboratory for the study of things like antimatter and photons and galaxies and other far-out stuff I do not now nor will I ever even partly understand. But there were plenty of computers in my future. My hometown, Palo Alto, is also the birthplace of Apple, IBM, and now Facebook.

The first boy on our block to have a computer was a studios sort my friend and I christened “Lowly Worm.” We were not impressed. We were much more concerned with hair, ours and his. We were thirteen and we were very short sighted.

It would be another 8 years before I had one of my own: a laptop PC on which I typed out my college entrance essays and then paper after paper on 19th Century novels and French Literature and poem after poem after poem. Sadly, an alarming number of these poems were about some boy or other and I in my haste failed to note what poem went with which boy.

Later I bought a desktop after my third car accident and began writing my first memoir. That was fifteen years ago. I am still writing my first memoir. But it isn’t the desktop’s fault. As it turns out, writing of that sort is best done by hand. By then the Internet had come along and again I was fascinated by the tunnel of light before me; endless, enchanting and mutating.

As I watched THE SOCIAL NETWORK I couldn’t help but squeal (out loud, in the theatre) when I saw the Eichler that the young entrepreneurs shack up in while creating the “monolith” that sucks away so much of my time these days. And now, as I sit typing this blog post on my new MacBook Air I’m thrilled to see Aaron Sorkin accept a well-deserved Golden Globe for best screenplay. Smart Girls have more fun, he says. His daughter is watching. And all I can think is wow, great hair.

TO JOIN THE NEW BLOG GO TO WWW.DUFFLYNSBLOG.COM AND CLICK ON FOLLOW!

Is it time to quit?

2011-01-09T23:10:00.000-08:00

Is it time to quit?

New Blog! go to www.dufflynsblog.com

2011-01-09T15:13:00.000-08:00

Dear friends,

If you have not yet clicked over to see the new blog check out my new post!

click here: DUFFLYN'S NEW BLOG or go to www.dufflynsblog.com

Should I quit writing? Should I jump off a bridge? Should I win a pulitzer?

Thank you for following and Happy New Year!

NEW BLOG POST: I RESOLVE

2010-12-30T23:40:00.000-08:00

Dear Friends,

I have moved the blog to: http://www.dufflynsblog.com/2010/12/31/i-resolve/ please click and come see what I've done with the place!

Happy New Year

Dufflyn

SEE IT ANOTHER WAY

2010-12-17T16:21:00.000-08:00

This blog will be moving soon, this is my last post here. If you'd like to continue to follow just click HERE or go to www.dufflynsb.og.com In the spirit of the move from Blogger to Wordpress, I am posting my first revision. I am working with a new writing coach (Heather Sellers), whose memoir "You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know," has made Oprah's reading list. Ms. Sellers gave me this assignment: First set a timer and meditate for five minutes. Imagine the room where a scene you have written takes place. See the floor, the furniture, the walls, the people. Now, set the timer again for five more minutes and draw a schematic of the room. Then, write out what you have seen. See what the new point of view gets you. Below is my revision, the new bits are in bold italics.

I am eye-level with the hooks screwed into the underbelly of the bar where the ladies hang their bags in a row. There are all color bags: brown and black and red even, one is red. Mama doesn’t hang her purse. I wonder if she sees the hooks. She is talking to the man next to her with the long black ponytail and the sideways smile. The man doesn’t say much but I can tell by how straight he is standing that he is mad. He doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t even look at Mama.

“I’ll make sure you all get paid don’t’ you worry about that.” She says to him, and then to the man behind the bar, “Vodka martini, two olives.”

My feet are slippery in my patent leather shoes so I squiggle around on the rug like ice-skating. The floor of the bar has some gum mushed into the carpet. I squat down to try and pick the gum out. It smells like the ocean and I look up and someone is walking toward me and the door shuts behind them and through the squares of glass in the door I can see the lights of the hills across the valley like It’s A Small World. When the man walks past I run to Mama’s legs. She smells like Jergens and corn on the cob and there is a stairwell behind me and I think it will be fun to bump down the stairs and I start to go over there—

“Duffi Jo stay right here,” Mama says.

“Mama…” I point at the stairs.

“Just stay right here a minute,” She says.

So I float there in the bar like a little secret and she hands me a matchbook to play with. Then I open the matchbook and I scrape it along the bar like I’ve seen Mama do with the lid of a shoebox to get the seeds out.

Then she says to the man, “I wish you would just keep that to yourself, you know?”

And he doesn’t say a thing. His long wavy black hair doesn’t even move when he takes his drink from the bar.

Mama bends down to lift me into a tall leather chair in front of the bar. I sit twisting it and trying to make it go all the way in a circle but it only goes halfway and halfway the other direction so I just go back and forth until I get dizzy.

I can see some people at a table on the other side of the room and they are looking at me. I stretch out my feet and look at my white Mary Janes and then I look at them again and they wave. And I turn to Mama and I touch her dress but she is talking to the man.

“You can have my olive,” she says, and she hands it to me.

It tastes sharp and not like any other olive. I like it.

She takes something out of her purse, an envelope, and she hands that to him and he leaves with it. Then she takes a tissue from her purse and blows her nose.

“Do you want a Shirley Temple?” The bartender says.

I nod my head a little.

He pulls a snake tube out from his sink and out comes bubbly water and then he turns over a red bottle and a jigger of syrup comes out and then he puts a cherry on top. He slides it to me. It has a straw. I like a straw. I am going to have to stand up in my chair to reach it. I shift around and hold onto the arm part so I can get my feet under me and my whole chair tips a little. And I think maybe if I just get on my knees it will work.

STICKY ICKY ICKY

2010-12-03T13:14:00.000-08:00

We always had weed. We would go to buy more before we ran out and we would usually get high while we were there with whomever we bought from—that’s probably in the stoner’s bill of rights if there is one. And we usually had good weed. We had been to the Cannabis Cup, after all. In Amsterdam. Anyone can be a judge, mind you, you just have to have your wits about you enough to sign up and show up. This is harder than it sounds, given the industrial strength product one is dealing with once one has arrived in Amsterdam.

Harry and I had met in New York and flown over to Amsterdam together. We hadn’t seen each other in almost a year. I got a terrible cold the day before I left so I spent most of my time in the (teensy tiny) hotel room.

We went to each of the coffeehouses on the “menu” and tried all the entries for the Cannabis Cup. We chatted with the other foreigners. Everyone spoke English. We met one guy who told us that someone had stolen a bag of weed from him in the square. He called out to a nearby policeman who chased the thief down and made him give it back. It was a relief for once not to be breaking the law.

One night, we went out to walk through the red light district. We walked past tulips in their buckets and windows full of little gnomes and chocolatiers until we saw the unmistakable fiery glow.

We walked the length of the district once. There were all sorts of women, black, white, Asian, in all sizes. They mostly wore lingerie or "fantasy" outfits and heels. They were just standing around inside a window that was lined with red neon on the outer corner. Not a whole lot of action. The red did make their skin sort of vibrate. It looked warm. Delicious. Like a candied apple.

“That was sort of anticlimactic,” I said.

I don’t know what I had expected. Something more aggressive, I think. Although, to tell the truth I was afraid to stand too long gazing at any one window for fear they would invite us in.

“Should we walk back through?” Harry said.

“Sure,” I said. Although I felt threatened already.

Most of the women were passably attractive. Not that great, I thought, as we strolled by again. But there was one beauty. She was a tall brunette with long wavy hair past her waist. She had an Italian look, a kind of poor man’s Sophia Loren. I glanced back at Harry’s face and saw him smile at her. I turned back at her just in time to see her smile in return. Something was exchanged, a small intimate moment in which I was only an observer.

I was so sick I had to stay in the next night and miss the closing gala. Harry went by himself. I had an uneasy feeling. I waited up. When he got back we smoked a joint and he showed me the photos he’d taken. There were drummers. There were crowds. There was a woman in a bikini dancing on stage. I had a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach but I just kept getting high and tried to ignore it.

By the time Harry and I moved to Los Angeles, several years later, I had been getting high almost every day for eight years. It had become a habit, not just the ritual of the drug, but having a feeling, an intuition about something, and choking it with bong hits or a big fat blunt. Pot took from me many things, not the least of which was my sanity.

Gratitude List For Reals

2010-11-26T22:57:00.000-08:00

Thank you for Black Friday because, dammit, I like half off, especially when I’m shopping for someone else.

Thank you for brutal honesty because you should tell the truth at Christmas.

Thanks for Miracle of 34^th Street, and Love Actually, and Elf, and The Holiday.

Thank you for that ridiculous news story about the imposter Taliban man because it really just proves that my father is right and the government has no idea what it’s doing and this might mean he’ll have a Merry five minutes. At least until the discussion turns to health care.

Thank you for the music, the songs I'm singing.

Thank you especially for and for Elvis’ “Blue Christmas,” and for that Dolly Parton one about the “Heart Candy Christmas” and Robert Downey Jr.’s version of “I wish I Had a River” because I like a sad Christmas song. It’s fucking romantic.

Thanks also for Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas,” and for “It Must Have Been Ol Santa Claus,” by Harry Connick Jr. because, really, who can stay sad at Christmas?

Thank you, Lauren Conrad, for sharing your mom’s recipe for Eggnog in People Magazine. I never thought I’d say this but, you were right, they are pretty kickin'.

Thank you for giving us all somewhere to go.

Thank you for the friends, old and new.

Thank you for the family, old and young.

Thank you for poetry that doesn’t rhyme.

Thank you for all that bellyaching food!

Thank you for Rudolph and Frosty and the Grinch and Santa Claus and the Abominable Snow Man and the Island of Misfit Toys, to which I will now retire.

Thank you, and Goodnight.

SINGLE LIFE: WHO KNEW IT WOULD LAST THIS LONG?

2010-11-18T20:55:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine just broke up with her fella a few months ago. She was devastated, even though it was she who ended it. She’s getting over it now, but she has moments of doubt. Mostly because, like a lot of people, she doesn’t want to end up alone. I can relate to that feeling. I’ve written poem after poem about that feeling, actually.

I did a one-woman performance piece last Friday about dating and relationships that included not only poems, but also monologues and a healthy serving of self-depreciating comedy. Because lets face it, if I’m not laughing about it, I’m crying about it.

I’d rather be laughing. (see photo at right).

I invite you to laugh with me.

The truth is I’ve been single, for the most part, for the last eight years. Sure, I’ve dated, maybe even I’ve thought a few times that I was falling in love, but I haven’t called anyone my “boyfriend.” Sometimes it’s me who walks away, sometimes it’s them. In truth I’ve enjoyed dating all kinds of men. I like men. Older ones, younger ones, chubby ones, fit ones, artsy fartsy ones and super smart ones too. But the point is, ya get tired of waiting for “THE one” to come along. And at times I’ve railed at the powers that be insisting that I’ve been waiting my whole life. But really, this is the longest I’ve been single since I was old enough to date. (In my world that is fourteen).

It’s not that I’ve given up hope, it’s just that I’ve given up the idea that I require a romantic relationship to be a complete human being—to be a happy and fulfilled human being. I’ve done things in these last eight years that I doubt I would’ve done had I been happily married; My trip to Paris last June-all by myself-wandering about talking to strangers, for one…

…finishing the memoir, because honestly, I don’t write nearly as much when I’m having sex. And sex is awesome, but I have done that. I haven’t written a book. (until now). Mentoring kids at the Young Storytellers Foundation and my trip to Hawaii, touring colleges with my poetry show and working with the LAPD’s Detective Training Unit and going to the Kentucky Women Writer’s Conference, and attending my high school reunion (I skipped the 10 year because my then-boyfriend wouldn’t go with me!).

I could go on…but the point is, I love my life. Yeah, I’d like to share it with a partner. And I have faith that I will. And when I do, I will know who I am and what I like, because I've been given the time to find out. But for now, I’m single and I’m happier than I’ve ever been. Which means I have overcome one of my greatest fears: I no longer fear being alone. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a great relief.

BLACKIE

2010-11-14T18:50:00.000-08:00

There was this apartment building on the other side of a chain-link fence at the end of my street where huge puddles were left standing every time it rained. Me and my neighbor Lisa liked to climb over the fence and wade through them.

“Come on its not that cold,” I told her. We were standing in my driveway next to the vomit green Valiant my Dad called 'the Chartreuse Goose' and we could see our breath. Forty degrees was actually pretty cold in Palo Alto and we weren’t dressed for it.

“I’ll get in trouble,” Lisa said. Her mom was always around to make sure she didn’t get into more trouble than the average twelve-year-old girl was allowed. Mrs. G didn't know about the time we had gotten busted shoplifting at Midtown Pharmacy. She probably didn't know about the old guy at the gas station that would give you a quarter if you'd kiss him. Or that the 7-11 would sell us clove cigarettes. I figured there were a lot of things she didn't know.

"Say you're staying over at my house," I said.

"I can't stay over on a school night," she said.

The sky had rained for a week straight, which was weird even for November. And I don’t mean drizzling. It had rained with force. She lived at the end of a cul-de-sac which branched off from my street. There was a creek behind Lisa’s house. That creek was now a screaming rapids. You could hear it when you went by, even in the car with the window rolled up.

"Dude, come on. I'd go with you." I begged.

“I have to get my gloves first,” Lisa said.

We crept down the street like we were Nancy Drew looking for the clue of the dancing puppet. I waited outside Lisa's house shifting my knees while she ran in to get the gloves. I had on a sweatshirt with the neck cut out like Jennifer Beals in Flashdance and my shoulder was cold where it kept falling down. Lisa's little black poodle, Pookie, barked at me the whole time.

“Pookie, shhhhh, it’s just me,” I said, bouncing slightly, which only made him bark louder.

“Pookie come here!” Lisa’s mom called from the bedroom, and the dog shut off like spigot.

Lisa carefully shut the door behind her. "You are so lame," she said, standing there.

"What?" I started to walk to the end of the driveway.

"Whatever," she said, following. "If I get busted I'm totally blaming you," and we walked back to the chain-link fence.

Somebody had cut it so that you could pull the fence aside like a curtain and slip through. You just had to be careful not to scratch yourself on the jagged hem. The fence screeched when Lisa pulled it back and I ducked through. I held it open from the inside.

"That's not enough room," she said.

When I let go it swung back and she pulled the fence up again and maneuvered through. She looked like she was doing the limbo.

Inside, we turned to see one huge puddle in the middle of the driveway between the two car ports. Under the water was asphalt. Black. It made the water look like oil. There were no streetlights there, just the moon hanging in the sky like a roulette wheel. When you looked down at the puddle there was no reflection, no bottom, no nothing. We watched for cars, people, a light going on in a window.

Nobody.

I took my shoes off.

“I wonder how deep it goes,” I said, rolling up my pant legs.

“Lets call it Blackie, that way when we talk about it no one will know,” she said.

Blackie was the name of our favorite soap opera character.

“Ok,” I said, and I walked out into the water. It felt good how the cold bit into me. I stood there like that for a while and Lisa stomped in a few of the smaller puddles with her boots like how her brother had shown her to make a big splash. But that got boring pretty quick.

“Okay, lets go home now,” Lisa said.

“Look it’s not even that deep,” I said, water chewing around my ankles.

“I'm so sure. You’re gonna get sick,” she said.

“I don’t care…” I don’t remember now what was going on. Something about a boy or my mother.

"Just come on," she said.

"If you get busted don't narc on me," I said, looking up at the clouds. They look like scabs on the moon, I thought.

“Ok, fine but I'm leaving. Call me when you get home. Just let it ring once and hang up,” Lisa said over her shoulder.

I stood there in that puddle wishing I had a rope I could loop around my neck. My skin crawled with goose bumps. There was a crazy inside me fathoms deep, like a hollow weight I couldn’t shrug off or fill up or make go away. And that was when it started to rain again.

EXERCISE: Write a scene placing two characters in this very fundamental conflict: one wants something that the other does not want to give. The something may be anything--money, respect, jewelry, sex, information--but be sure to focus on that one desire and how it puts the two characters at odds.

BAR FLY AGE 4

2010-11-07T09:55:00.000-08:00

“I’ll make sure you all get paid don’t’ you worry about that.” She says to him, and then to the man behind the bar, “Brandy Manhattan please.”

My feet are slippery in my patent leather shoes so I squiggle around on the rug like ice-skating. I saw the Ice Capades last time. I want to be like that I think, and then the door opens and the ocean air comes and separates the smell of the bar. Outside are city lights far away like it’s a small world and the door shuts again and the hooks are there looking like the mouth of a big bird that wants to say something and I reach out to tell Mama and her skirt smells like the kitchen and corn on the cob and there is a stairwell behind me and I think it will be fun to bump down the stairs like a ride and I start to go over there—

“Duffi Jo stay right here,” Mama says.

“Mama…” I point at the stairs.

“Just stay right here a minute,” She says.

So I float there in the bar like a little secret and she hands me a matchbook to play with. She picks me up and sets me in a chair at the bar that rocks in a half-circle and that is fun until I get dizzy. Then I open the matchbook and I scrape it along the bar like I’ve seen Mama do with the lid of a shoebox to get the seeds out.

“Do you want a Shirley Temple?” The bartender says.

I nod my head a little.

He pulls a snake tube out from his sink and out comes bubbly water and then he turns over a red bottle and a jigger of syrup comes out and then he puts a cherry on top. Pretty please with a cherry on top, my sisters say. He slides it to me. It has a straw. I like a straw. I am going to have to stand up in the chair maybe. I shift around and hold onto the arm part so I can get my feet under me and my whole chair tips a little.

EXERCISE: I combined two here. First, write out some words and phrases that you can use as "triggers," things that will get you thinking. Tear them into separate sheets and wad them up and put them in a jar. Pull one out and then write a list of words in response to that word or phrase. Now, write a scene that puts a character in conflict with a setting. Imagine a character who misunderstands the nature of the place, or over looks something important, or is oblivious of the danger suggested by certain details. Use the words from the first half of the exercise in the scene you write.

WHAT MAKES ME A REAL GIANTS FAN?

2010-11-02T12:23:00.000-07:00

You decide. My top ten favorite games:

10. The first time I saw Tim Lincecum pitch. Magic. He reminded me that baseball is like poetry—it is a metaphor for life.

9. Watching the Giants beat the Padres. In San Diego!

8. My first memory of a Giants game is shivering, wrapped in a blanket, following my Dad around Candlestick Park looking for our car. My hands were sticky with mustard from a hot dog. I was probably 5.

7. Kevin Mithcell will always be my favorite Giant. I was there the day he caught a would-be home run ball at the back of center field with his bare hand. Magnificent.

6. Once I went to a game at Candlestick with a girlfriend and sat in the cheap seats and got rip-roaring drunk and hollered at the outfield with the rest of the deadbeat reprobates.

5. When I was 22 I went to see a Giants game with my Mom and my Dad. That’s the only time I recall seeing a game with both of them. I wore a (rather revealing) black one-piece swimsuit with orange workout shorts and my Giants cap. Boys were handing me their phone numbers. Mama was proud. Dad? Not so much.

4. Watching the Giants beat the Dodgers. In Los Angeles!

3. 1989 World Series. I was with the man I was dating at the time and my Dad who were both telling me how to drive when the road flipped up in front of us like a carpet. We got there, went inside, and were sent home due to an earthquake. We had warm beer and salad at Hamburger Mary’s instead.

2. My first time at AT&T park. The stadium is beautiful, fanciful, almost like a theme park for baseball lovers. We sat behind home plate and Dad caught a foul ball. When he gave it to me I felt 5 all over again.

1. World Series Championship 2010! I watched this one from Casa Vega in Sherman Oaks with a bunch of strangers and cried on the phone with my Dad when we won. What a game. What a team. What a year.

HALLOWEEN 1992: Patron Saint of Oktoberfest

2010-10-26T11:50:00.000-07:00

With a light sprinkle of snow dusted across their rooftops the buildings at Sarah Lawrence looked even more like something out of the book of Grimm’s Fairy Tales my mother had given me. I felt like I had been transported not only from California to New York, but to another dimension where I might just be able to break the limb off of a tree and eat it like a candy cane, or there would be, around the next corner, a woman with an eye in her forehead that never slept; or maybe I would grow wings and fly away.

Also, we could drink until 4am, instead of 2am, and none of the bars asked for I.D. and this was truly magical. On Fridays there were dances in Bates auditorium. Outside the Cafeteria’s high square windows glistened with frost in the moonlight, but inside there were sweaty students dancing in the dark. At the back of the auditorium a doorway led to the area usually reserved only for faculty dining. Now, it was the beer room, where every Friday there was a keg with free beer. I preferred wine, but I couldn’t really turn down free beer. It was like that old bluegrass song..."with a lake of gin we can both jump in and buzzing bees in the cigarette trees, lemonade springs where the bluebird sings on the Big Rock Candy Mountains." It was heaven.

Following a path that led through the grass, or in winter the snow, I would cross Westlands lawn and cut through the lobby where red oriental carpets lay over the hardwood floors, and the light was always lowish, as if it were a drawing room in a Jane Austen book. As if Mr. Darcy were going to arrive at any moment and we had better keep our voices down. There was a broad wooden staircase, also carpeted, that led up to the faculty offices. And then another set of double doors in front, leading to another expanse of lawn or snow and another path past the theatre, the pub, under the wisteria-laden trellis-lined walkway and finally down to Mead Way which led into Bronxville.

On this night, I had dressed as a St. Pauli Girl for Halloween. Not Sleeping Beauty, or Little Three-Eyes, or Elizabeth Bennett, but a beer maiden. I even had a six-pack of St. Pauli Girl Beer with me, and I poured it into the Steins I had found at the Bargain Box in town, and offered it to the cutest boy in the room. After all, Harry had officially broken up with me, I was free to flirt with whomever I chose. Harry had come to the party early to help set up the table he had built. I was impressed that he knew how to build a table. I had never known anyone else who could build a table. I ran my fingers over the table, hating it. I hated this dorm too because it was where he had met HER. And yet here I was at HER Halloween party like a frigging ninny, pretending I didn’t care.

“You look so cute,” SHE said, with a shy demeanor I couldn’t imagine was honest.

“You too,” I told her. She was dressed as a ghost with a sheet over her.

I was sure Harry was coming back to her room later, but he had left when he saw me. Like he ought to. It wasn’t HER fault. He was my boyfriend, she was just an acquaintance, I reasoned. She had no loyalty to me.

“Do you want a beer?” I asked her.

“No, I’ve got some punch. Do you want some punch?” She said.

I was probably going to regret it but I took the punch. Wine and beer don’t mix well, but I couldn’t say no. When I turned around, punch in one hand, stein in the other, Dan was standing there looking like the answer to my prayers in a costume that looked vaguely Shakespearian. If I could catch a guy who I thought was better looking than Harry, who I thought was more talented, or more popular than Harry, I thought it would make me feel better. I thought it would indeed make me better.

“Hey, can I offer you some St. Pauli Girl,” I said, holding the stein up next to my overflowing cleavage.

He laughed. “Sure.”

I handed him the beer and then I saw April and some foreign girl whose name I don’t remember walk in wearing pumpkins on their heads. All eyes turned to them. They had carved two pumpkins clean with jagged eyes, mouth, and nose cut into the face and were wearing them with black suits like the rider in Sleepy Hollow. Good idea. Damn them.

The party went on, more people came and went and I didn’t talk to Dan again, although I observed that he still had my stein. When there was no one else left except me and HER and the two pumpkin heads, I set out across the lawn, following a path through the icy grass and piles of dead leaves.

“Dufflyn…” I heard him before I saw him.

At the bottom of the stairs leading down to the auditorium Dan stood swaying and calling my name. He was still holding the stein.

“I belive you have my cup,” I slurred, and I skittered down the steps, one hand on the rail, one hand still grasping the other stein, barreling toward him.

He laughed and stretched out a hand for me to steady myself with. I liked that he was amused by me. I couldn’t see how pathetic I was, standing there not wanting to release his huge calloused hand from mine, some awful Madonna re-mix thumping through the Bates walls.

“Do you want to dance? “ I said, “Lets go dance.”

“We can dance right here,” he said, putting his arms around me and leaning his tall skinny frame over to rest his chin in the cradle of my neck, each of us gripping a stein behind the other’s back. He was drunk, I thought. He had to be drunk.

And we stood like that, swaying to whatever song came on for a long long time, not minding the beat, nearly asleep as the dawn broke over our shoulders.

EXERCISE: 1) write a detailed description of a place from your childhood that has a resonance for you. Include all the senses with special attention to setting. 2) Now, set a scene in that place. In the scene someone should be in denial and trying to break through. Use dialogue, action, and thoughts of at least one of the characters.

RAVEN: coming to a theater near you!

2010-10-19T13:34:00.000-07:00

I couldn't sleep Saturday night. I woke up at about 2am and had a very long and animated conversation with myself. How did I get so worked up?

It started six years ago when I got a part in a film by Juan Azulay. Since then, I have booked a few roles in television, toured all over the country doing spoken word, produced a poetry slam, and am nearing completion on my memoir. When Juan was casting another film about a year ago, we got back in touch. I told him I was writing monologues based on my memoir and I sent him a few. I wanted to know if he was interested in directing me, my plan was to make shorts to augment the electronic version of my book.

What I have always loved about film is the collaboration between various artistic disciplines. I realized this was a natural way to combine my interests and my skills-- I could finally put it all together. In addition, I'd get to layer that with the talent of others--the director, the set decorator, the wardrobe designer, the other actors, the editor, the composer--and the result would be a richer experience for the audience. But I knew it was risky.

Years ago when I was a reporter in Savannah, GA I interviewed Director Robert Altman who told me that he owed his success to having put together the right team. As I began this adventure, I kept thinking about that, and the magic I had seen on-set when Altman was recording The Gingerbread Man. So many times over the last couple months, I wanted to throw in the towel. The permits! The insurance! The SAG paperwork! Oy. But once I had put the project in motion, an extraordinary team appeared, like a band of angels to carry me along.

An acting coach once told me that my "myth," the lesson I am here to work out in this lifetime, is about risk. It made sense. Not only the risks I do take (some of them inadvisable) but the ones I can't or don't, the little moments where I want to say something and I hold my tongue, the other moments where I say something I wish I hadn't.

Saturday night, after our first day of filming, I found myself caught up in one of those moments: did I take the risk of speaking up? did I take the risk of trusting? did I have a point to make or was I just being a crazy actress? I went back to sleep about 4:30am and when I got up at 6 I decided that the right thing was to show up and kick ass and that everything else would work itself out. If I wasn't happy with my own performance, there was only one person who could change that: me. I had to risk trusting the team I had invested in.

I am happy to say that I made the right decision. It's amazing what making art will teach you about life, about relationships, and about who you really are. I guess it's true what they say: "leap and the net will appear." Cheesy, yes, but true as it turns out. Very true.

2010-10-11T17:48:00.000-07:00

This is my 50th post. So, what have I learnt by blogging?

1. In the cyber world you are nobody until you're somebody, but it's not so hard to become somebody.

2. My mother is still my biggest fan.

3. People actually read my blog, people I didn't think even LIKED me. In fact, they may NOT like me, but they like my writing. And that is good enough for me.

4. Blogging is essential to any writer's toolbox.

5. Through blogging, I have found my "voice." And hey, it was about time. Not that I had lost it. I think it was just, shall we say, misplaced.

6. In my blog I really can be forever 21.

7. I don't want to be forever 21.

8. People like lists. Which is great, because I like lists. I LOVE lists. Lists are lifelines in an otherwise chaotic world.

9. There are no remainders in blogging. One less fish to fry.

10. It's time to move to wordpress.org!

WILL THE CIRCLE BE UNBROKEN

2010-10-01T21:12:00.000-07:00

BIG FISH is a movie about a man whose father tells tall tales. The man, played by Billy Crudup (pre-break-up with Mary Louise, back when we liked him) is plagued by his father's stories. The man, now grown, doesn't know what is true and what is not. His wife, played by the then-unknown French actress Marion Cotillard, wants to have a baby. But the man can't move into his role as an adult until he comes to terms with who his father is. When I saw this movie I related to the man's feelings, only for me, it is my mother who is the teller of tall tales.

When I was growing up, Mama told her stories in letters, on the phone, and in songs. She wasn't around a lot so I guess she figured she had to be larger than life long-distance. That, and she was a writer of country songs, a largely narrative tradition. It's clear to anyone who listens that when it comes to country music, tall tales are like milk and eggs: a staple. From Patsy Cline to Carrie Underwood, if you look closely at the lyrics I'm willing to bet there's a story there; one that's been stretched and polished and made, well, larger than life.

And people need stories. We use them to help us cope with the world. Stories are how we create meaning, how we answer questions both personal and eternal. They tell us we are not alone, and how we live, and occasionally, why. And last but not least, they unify us. So the stories my mother fed me kept me connected to her, as if she had been there to make me breakfast every day. It was the way she left her mark on me. And let it not go unsaid, my Mama makes the best biscuits, with the stamp of her bent fingers punched into each one.

It's a funny thing though. At the end of BIG FISH, the man discovers his father

wasn't quite as full of it as he'd thought. Sure, he'd maybe bragged about a fish

he never caught. But it turned out he really had run away with the circus. He really had saved a whole town once. He really had wooed his sweetheart with an ocean of Daffodils. It's a fairy tale in true Tim Burton fashion. There's even a giant.

But life is no fairy tale. I was skeptical when I got an email from my Mama recently. The email said she'd gotten a call from a fellow at N. Carolina State University who wanted to interview her about a music festival she and my father put on in 1973 just after the "Will The Circle Be Unbroken" album was recorded. I've heard all about this festival. It's a legend in our family. And I know it happened, but it was far from a success. My parents lost all their money and ended up divorced. And here was my Mama telling me she had assembled a festival of the greatest Bluegreass musicians ever, although she hadn't known it at the time. Mama sent me a copy of the schedule (courtesy of UNC Chapel Hill). I read it over. Now, I know enough about Bluegrass to realize it is a list of the best of the best. Wouldn't you know it? Some tall tales turn out to be true, even if they don't start out that way.

TOP 10 STORES MY MAMA LIKES TO TELL

2010-09-25T18:24:00.000-07:00

The one about the time the FBI came to arrest her drug dealer boyfriend and she had a loaf of cornbread in the oven.
The one about how Johnny Carson told her she looked “medicinal.”
The one about how she met my Daddy when he came to repossess her car.
The one about how she was hired to be a blackjack dealer in Vegas but when the day came to go she just didn't show up.
The one about going to The Nutcracker when I was two and how I ran down to look in the Orchestra pit.
The one about getting high with Bill Clinton.
The one about how Waylon Jennings proposed to her.
The one about LBJ and Melvin Belli helping her get her kids back.
The one about how I rode around our living room on my tricycle taking orders for McDonalds and when one guest asked for a Big Mac, one Filet O Fish, a Quarter Pounder and French Fries, an icy Coke, one thick shake, a sundae and an apple pie I rode around and came back and handed him an imaginary bag and he said “What’s this?” And I said “It’s what you ordered stupid.”
The one about how she killed an alligator.

TO TELL THE TRUTH (2010)

2010-09-21T08:51:00.000-07:00

Years ago my Grandma and I used to watch a game show called “To Tell The Truth.” At the opening of the show, three people stride on-stage to the beat of the show’s theme song and line up side-by-side. An announcer asks each person in turn, what is your name please? To which question each answers with the same name. Then the host reads a description, for example: Jane Doe is a mother of three, a retired schoolteacher, and the barrel-racing champion of Colorado. A panel of celebrity guests have to determine, based on answers to a limited number of questions, which person is the real Jane Doe. Writing a memoir sometimes

feels like this, only I am both a panelist and Jane Doe.

At the recent KY women writers conference I met a woman who has something called “face blindness,” or prosopagnosia. She is the writer/teacher Heather Sellers whose memoir “You Don’t Look Like Anyone I Know” comes out Oct. 4th. Here is a person who cannot remember her own face. And yet, this has propelled her toward identifying others by attributes equally as unique: their gait, their outline, their voices. The way she remembers others, identifies others, is a part of who she is and how she operates in the world. I think this is true of most of us, albeit in less obvious ways. How we remember each other, our lives and our relationships, defines who we are in the world and who we are to each other.

As a memoirist my job is to be true to what is in my memory and this also means being willing to accept that my memory is sometimes fallible. I had dinner with a friend the other night whom I have known for over 20 years. Once, in a land far far away, we were roomates. At that time she was dating a man who would become the father of her child. I do not remember ever meeting this man, although, my friend assures me, not only did I meet him; I have seen him in the buff. Don’t get any big ideas people, this was at a nude hippie beach in San Diego. But still, I have no recollection of that day or any of the several occasions on which she insists I met this man.

What I do remember is that I didn’t like him much. She found a pair of stray underwear that didn’t belong to her in his apartment once. He wouldn’t let her sleep in the bed next to him. He made her cry. A lot. And although he may be a brilliant musician, he has never met his daughter. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not walking around hating on this guy, in fact I haven't thought of the man in years. She was and is the one I care about. She was the friend I had skulked around the mall with, sang along to Casey Casem’s top 40 with, went to umpteen girls volleyball games with.

My point is: to tell the truth we have to be willing to reveal ourselves—when I tell you what I remember and how I remember it, I am telling you what I care about. I am telling you who I am. Am I up to the challenge? You betcha.

COMING HOME

2010-09-14T08:24:00.000-07:00

I have a new stone in my pocket. This one is a dirty white, shaped like a candy orange wedge, and smells not unlike the shell of a peanut. This one came from the yard outside of the home where Margaret Mitchell wrote part of Gone With the Wind in Kentucky (pictured at right). GWTW is the only book I have ever read all the way through, twice. All 1,024 pages. It was my mother who sent me the paperback. I think I hoped to discover her secrets by discovering Scarlett's. Little did I know at thirteen that I would one day write my own book, and that only then would I come to know the woman who gave me life.

I pick up a stone in every new place I go and bring it home with me. It is a way of remembering. A souvenir that cobbles together a bit of the energy of each patch of earth I have passed over. As if there will someday grow a whole from these parts, I pile them together in incense dishes—there is the one from Stonehenge and the one from Bath, the one from the Catacombs in Paris, a hunk of Redwood from Big Sur, a sea-worn chunk of shell from Waikiki, a sunset orange stone from that time I drove across the country and stopped in Albuquerque, a drop of silver with the word FRIEND carved into it given me by someone who I called by that name, a blue marble from my Ex, some stones I can no longer identify. But there is no stone from Savannah and no stone from Palo Alto. These places are such a part of me, that I am the stone.

I went to Margaret Mitchell’s former home on the Kentucky River because I was there for the Kentucky Women Writer’s conference. During my trip I got to re-connect with an old friend who asked me what my book is about. I told her: it is about my mother who is selfish, and addicted and mendacious and wounded and insane and brilliant and fragile and larger than life and a great storyteller and beautiful and supportive and gifted and who has taught me the greatest lesson: You must let others love you the way they love you, rather than the way you wish they would love you.

As I was headed home today, I thought about how that unconditional love is what is so comforting about home. Old friends know who we are and they accept us and love us in spite of our flaws. In fact, I have one friend who likes to say that the things we think people love us in spite of are actually the things people love us for, and the things we think people love us for are actually the things they love us in spite of.

In my pile of stones there is a peach pit my mother sent me not too long ago. It is a different kind of stone. The stone of a fruit. Literally, it is the seed of re-birth. Couldn’t tell you why she sent it. But every time I look at it I think of her.

I believe I have always been searching for home: a place where I feel safe and warm and seen. Writing this book has helped me to find it. And if I forget there is a little pile of stones and shells and one odd seed to remind me where I came from.

ALONE IN A CROWDED ROOM

2010-09-07T08:55:00.000-07:00

I like to stand in front of the speaker so I can feel the music. It's loud so I hold my hands over my ears. This time it's crowded in front of the stage because people are dancing in their fancy clothes. Tonight is New Year's eve. The people go around and around and they sing the words of the song and even though you can't hear them you can see their mouths moving the words.

My back is against the speaker. I close my eyes. The people are laughing and I can hear the fiddle and Peggy singing and feet stepping and the smell of the people and the perfume is all there. I feel the speaker on my back like my heartbeat.

I stand there against the monitor with my hands over my ears and my eyes closed, smiling. No one knows where I am. I'm like a balloon going into the clouds.

Then the band stops and I open my eyes and the people stop and they all turn to face the stage and I see all their faces smooshed together like that, hands slapping and Tom says into the microphone: "We're Back In The Saddle, thank you and goodnight!" Which makes the people clap louder and whistle and yell. Now comes a sound like someone beating down the door. Where is the sound? I think that I should find my Daddy now. I don't see him. He is not dancing. He is not at the sound guy. I see all the feet stomping together. The crowd is like one big horse with a lot of feet. I don't know if they see me, I am only half of the size of them.

There is a room behind the stage at The Great American Music Hall where I took a nap during the sound check and I think maybe Daddy is there. I run up the stairs onto the stage where there is a big curtain that goes all the way up and I have my hands on the curtain and I'm trying to find a way to open it when the band starts coming back out from the curtain.

Tom puts a hand on my head when he passes by me. He walks to the mic and he starts the song Alligator Man. This is my favorite song! Tom is dancing the alligator dance and he looks at me and I dance with him because I know this one. I kick my feet like he kicks his feet and I spin and spin and he plays his fiddle and he is singing and dancing and the light is very bright here until the song ends and Daddy comes out on the stage and picks me up and puts me on his shoulder and the crowd cheers even more then and their faces look very small up here, they are half of my size now, maybe less.

EXERCISE: Imagine a crowded, overwhelming scene (a rock concert, a political rally, the mall, an accident, a big city emergency room, a theme park, a Wall Street trading floor, etc.). Use sensory details to convey this particular experience. Don't TELL how your character feels about this scene; instead, use significant details to suggest his emotional state. When writing your scene, consider reasons your character has an atypical response: for example, a paramedic who is either energized or bored by an accident scene.

CHRISTMAS IN SAVANNAH

2010-08-31T10:40:00.000-07:00

It was Christmas 1983. I had cut my hair short for the first time ever and I hated it. I was in the seventh grade, which made my bad haircut that much more humiliating.

That day, me and Mama went into Savannah to see some sights and shop. She wanted to take me to Forsyth Park, she said. She pulled up past the corner of Drayton and Gaston Streets and pointed to a three story brownstone.

"See that house there? That was where we lived when I was in grade school. That basement apartment there, you see it?"

"I see it," I said, turning as we passed to get a better look at the bars on the windows.

"I used to go over to the Historical Society there and just read as many books as I could get my hands on. I'd stay in there for hours just reading," she said, as she pulled over to park.

I zipped up my down coat from Express. I had never been to Georgia in winter before. Usually it was summer when I came to see Mama but last summer I hadn't come. I was surprised at the cold. I should have bought gloves.

We walked across Drayton and into the Park. I drove my fists into my pockets as deep as they would go. I could feel my nose turning cold. Nobody else was out walking around in this weather. There was a eerie quiet there, like we were lost in a kind of time warp. Savannah didn't look like it had changed much since the fifties. Huge Oaks hung over us trailing Spanish Moss between them like spiderwebs keeping the rest of the world out.

"Lets walk around this way," She said. "I want to show you something."

"I'm cold Mom," I told her. And I'm bored and there are not going to be any cute boys in this park and I would rather be at the movies. "My hands are cold."

"It won't take long," she said, walking a little faster. "Here take my gloves," she said, and she pulled the brown gloves off her hands and thrust them in my direction without slowing her pace.

I pulled a face at the gloves, oh my god I thought, they are so old lady gloves, but I took them from her anyway. They were still warm when I put them on. I followed her up the sidewalk that was four squares deep. Weird, I thought, for a sidewalk. I was looking down at the cracks when she turned to back-track into the center of the park.

"Oh Duffi, look..."

At the center of a wide opening where the cement pathway spread out and cut through the grass was a fountain surrounded by Azelea bushes and a short wrought iron fence. As we stepped closer I saw the white marble merman--five of them--each spouting a stream of water frozen in an arc between their lips and the pool of water at their feet. The entire thing shimmered. It was so white. The fountain burst with light. For a moment neither of us spoke, mesmeriz

ed by the mermen, watching our breath turn to ice in the air.

EXERCISE: Write a flashback, a scene involving one of your characters that took place before the opening of the story. Your goal is to reveal who that character used to be. The flashback should help explain or illuminate the main story. You might want to base this flashback on something that actually happened to you, or to someone you know, in order to give the flashback an air of authority.

ONLY CONNECT

2010-08-24T10:21:00.001-07:00

Someone asked me the other day if I still write poetry. I do. But what I said sounded so darn amateur. I said, "I do, but it's more just for myself these days." Now, I've heard a lot of people say this. Why should it bother me? Who do I think I am?

I've begun to think of my memoir as publishable, which is a good thing. But I've also begun to think of my poetry as private. What I'm realizing as I write this is that for some people there is a public life and a private life and the two do not mix. And for others (and I think I may be one of these) there is just the one life you are leading one day at a time trusting that what you put out into the world might touch somebody else, that somebody out there might say-- "I felt just like that too!" And you can take some satisfaction in that. Because you are an artist and that is what you do. You are not your art. Your art is something you create; you build connections, like bridges, that are not just for you, but for everyone. And so with that, here is a poem:

PARK THE CAR IN HARVARD YARD

I love the way you move your mouth. I have a thing

about the way people move their mouths. It's very specific--

the shapes each mouth makes.

You'll see what I mean if you listen to someone

and then try to make your lips match their lips.

President Obama, for example,

very interesting bottom lip.

But I like your mouth even when it isn't moving.

Especially when it isn't moving. The way you hold it,

like there is a key inside. Your mouth is like a hexagon-shaped box

on Christmas morning. What the hell is in THAT box?

It might just be a pair of socks in a hexagon shaped box,

but I bet its something wonderful. I bet it's something

like a dragon. I want to stick my fingers in there and pop it open.

I wonder if it tastes like it smells, all clean and slippery and nutmeg.

This started off PG enough, but when it comes to your mouth

I can't promise I'll be polite. I might be tempted

to knock a tooth out just to taste your blood.

Wow, now I'm getting violent. I don't want to hurt you,

but don't think I haven't noticed how you are always hurting yourself:

There's your mouth twisting around the word Chiropractor.

There's your mouth like a hot circle of glass.

But really you weren't even talking to me.

And then when you do, you say my name

and I see how you have to open your mouth wide to say it.

And I like that.

I like that very much.

2010-08-17T09:44:00.000-07:00

It was the first time I had lived with my mother in over twenty years. My brother’s room was empty, but my mother kept his clothes hung in the closet and his bed made as if she expected him home soon. I strung Christmas lights around the window that looked out onto the yard, folded up the old quilt and lay out my comforter, hung my clothes in the closet next to his.

At the time Mama was living in a cabin behind a house off of Hwy 119 in Guyton, GA. A little dirt road with grass sprouting up in the middle led around behind the big (unoccupied) house out front. There was a little bridge over a small (empty) creek that led to the cabin. It looked like someplace you would go for a weekend in the mountains—like the picture on a bottle of Maple syrup. Out back was a cornfield which at the time I moved in, it was the summer of 1995, had been plowed into submission by the owner and his John Deer tractor.

I would sleep in till noon most every day, which didn’t suit Mother one bit. I would get high most days as well, which she also openly disapproved of, even as she held in a toke and passed the pipe to me, wheezing as she let out a hit. We would stay up late watching movies on cable. She would tell stories about when she was a girl, or when I was a girl, and we would cry. Mama would nag me about taking out the garbage and helping with the bills. And I would talk to the boy I had left behind up North.

One weekend, the boy came to visit. We will call him Harry. I was madly in love with Harry and my mother knew this since I’d been writing letters to her for the last two years about him.

“He’ll sleep on the couch of course,” She said, emptying one of her ashtrays into the garbage. She was still smoking those Benson and Hedges menthols and I had pilfered a few since I’d moved in.

“Mom I’m twenty-five years old,” I told her, smiling. She knew very well I’d already been sleeping with Harry.

“This is my house, my rules,” she said, lighting another cigarette. “You want one?” She held out the package.

“You’re kidding, right?” I stood up, crossing kitchen to face her.

“No. You’re not married it wouldn’t be right,” she said with an almost theatrical bent, like she was reciting lines in a bad movie of the week. “And you’re going to have to start buying your own cigarettes or give me some money.”

“How the hell can you say that? You slept with Daddy before you were married.”

“Not under my Mama’s roof I didn’t,” she said, one hand on her hip, cigarette crammed between her lips, the other hand shaking a delicate finger at me.

“Mom, this is not the nineteen fifties, and he’s coming all the way from Philly, and it’s not as if you’ve respected the sanctity of marriage for crying out loud."

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She turned, billowing smoke as she went and flicked her ashes into the ashtray on the kitchen counter.

My mother knew very well that I was referring to her ongoing affair with a married man who lived across town.

“Forget it. Fine. We’ll go get a hotel.”

When the boy arrived he finally met the mother he had been so scared of he had missed my graduation ceremony. She was not so bad, he said. He was cute, she said. That night Mama cooked us dinner and we smoked a joint Harry had brought with him and it all seemed to be going okay. We were all sitting on the couch with our faces washed in the blue light of the television when I said something to piss her off. I can't for the life of me remember what that was. It's convenient isn't it, that I don't remember my own barbed words? Her response was to take out a letter I had written to her in my frustration with Harry.

“I bet you’d like to see this,” she said, waving the letter above her head.

“Mom!” I took it from her, seething, knowing how my angry words would hurt him.

I felt my whole body flush as if all of the blood were rushing to the surface. As I clutched the letter in my hand, the room inverted like a photograph drained of color so that we all became outlines of our former selves. I walked to my door and put my hand on the knob. I could see my hand shaking as I watched it pull the door open and shut it behind me.

Harry followed me.

I couldn’t look at his face. I sat on the bed with my arms wrapped around myself. Mama always had the a/c on so high it was glacial.

“I can’t believe she did that,” I said, trying to hide the tears that burned my face.

“I can,” He said, “after everything you’ve told me about her. Why would you expect anything different?”

“She just has no idea what is right or wrong," I said. I could still smell the pot roast she had cooked on my breath.

Harry sat down beside me and held me.

“She’s never going to be the mother you want her to be,” He said.

In the morning mama half-apologized for "climbing my ass" and said I should see a therapist. Harry and I drove into Savannah and got a hotel room for the night and when he left I started looking for an apartment in town.

EXERCISE: First, think of a period of time you remember well and can write about with authority. the memory could have to do with an occupation (summer job, internship, summer school), an activity (music lessons, sports practice, play rehearsal), a routine (what you always did after school, family traditions, what you and a certain boyfriend always did on Sunday mornings), or a condition (pregnancy, illness, addiction). Now, write a summary of a typical day during this period. Your summary should be generalized and habitual, yet specific and detailed. Finally, move to a specific moment. "One time..." Select this moment with care. It should be significant, introducing a conflict or representing a turning point. Create the scene. Use dialogue, significant details.

LAB TEST AT HOLLYWOOD AND WESTERN

2010-08-10T09:50:00.000-07:00

I took a walk through the neighborhood today without my cell phone.

I smiled at a few people before I got anyone to smile back. Then, a man at the corner of Hollywood and Western told me I had good energy when I smiled at him. We walked South toward Sunset in the crosswalk, "My name is Eddie," he said, "In case I see you again,” and he went into the subway.

I cross Western with a gang of Thai boys and continue South touching the leaves that lean down toward the sidewalk. In Orchard Supply Hardware “Only the Lonely” warbles from invisible speakers in the nursery and I hear a boy with an accent straight out of South Carolina say “Violence is a natural thang,” when I peek into the employee breakroom as I pick up a canister of poppy seeds. The whole place has this smell that reminds me of the South-- fertilizer and Jasmine and whatever Carolina boy is having for lunch.

Making my way back North on Western I pass a woman crushing cans. Her eyes are so deep in her head I have to really look for them. “Good evening,” she says, her African accent painting wings on her words. “God bless you,” she says. And I bless her back.

At the corner of Hollywood and Western I stand waiting for the sign to cross. A young man asks me what kind of plant do I have. “Hot and spicy Oregano,” I tell him, because that is what the label says. “Are you hot and spicy?” He asks me, which comment causes his buddy to look up from his Blackberry and find out for himself. Just then the light turns green and I laugh as I cross the street humming “Seventeen,” by Janis Ian.

I continue down Russell, smiling at the old Armenian man who sits in a lawn chair on his stoop. He is the first one in a while not to smile back. His face says he doesn't trust my smile. Either that or he needs glasses. On my corner there’s a dog party. One pug, and four little white pooches of various make and model rolling in the grass. It’s an orgy of butt sniffing and post peeing and maybe even a little humping, I can’t be sure. In the courtyard of my building Kevin is having his first communion party, which apparently means he gets to throw a hula hoop at the other kids and that he had to get a haircut. His mother says hello, she’s blasting Nicaraguan Polka music. Which is fantastic if you ask me.

I didn’t take any pictures of any of this. I didn’t tweet about it. If the phone rang, I didn’t answer. There is no record of this day except that I wrote it down to remind myself that life is beautiful. Even if I don’t get what I want. Life is beautiful and it doesn’t cost a thing to smile at a bunch of strangers.

DREAM A LITTLE DREAM

2010-08-05T08:11:00.000-07:00

I have stepped into my dream and I am giving directions. First, I hold up a hand to stop the car from crashing into me and Mama and Daddy. My hand shakes a little but the car stops anyway. I can see now the man behind the wheel has an immense handlebar moustache that looks as if it could fly away on its own. It almost makes him look friendly, like the announcer in the Barnum and Bailey circus Daddy takes me to every year. Then, the moustache flaps its wings and leaps off his face and into the sky. It is a bird after all, and not a moustache.

I turn to see Mama, her dress swimming around her as if a breeze is blowing. She's wearing that black Chiffon dress with the little red and yellow flowers that gathers at the waist and the wrists. There is only one button at the top of a little loop in the neck and it is left undone. Really, there is a river around her and her dress is caught in the current. "River," I say, "Go back to the mountain or the sea." And it goes. I tell her its okay now, she can stop crying and she wipes away her tears.

I look to Daddy, he squats down and holds out his arms and I run to him and he picks me up. He smells like Royal Spice and Noxzema. I put my arms around his neck to hold on when he stands up and we turn back to the two men in the car under the Fig tree. Now they are just two men with hats. I tell them it is time for them to go too. They back out of our driveway and roll away down Amarillo Street until their car falls off the end of the world.

Daddy puts his arm around Mama and I say, "Lets all go inside and have dinner." And that's what we do

EXERCISE: One way to test your skill in the use of concrete, significant detail is to create a reality that is convincing--and yet literally impossible. To begin, tell a story in which a single impossible event happens in the everyday world. (For ex: a dog tells fortunes, a secret message appears on a pizza, the radio announcer speaks in an ex-husband's voice--supermarket tabloids can be a good source of ideas.)First, focus on using detail to create the reality of both the normal world and the impossible event--the more believable the reality is, the more seamlessly readers will accept the magic.

THE LEGEND OF DUFFI JO LAMMERS

2010-07-29T08:53:00.000-07:00

ON THE DAY I WAS BORN, my parents were moving into a new house. My father did all the heavy lifting--or maybe they had movers. This was Portola Valley, still one of the most beautiful places on this earth.

My mother needed a break from the hard work of helping my father make decisions. She went down the road to Rosati's. We called it Rosati's but really it has another name. It's an old Saloon--old enough to have posts outside with which to tie up your horse. I think maybe I was shot here in a past life and came back to the scene of the crime. This would explain why I have always felt like I belonged in the wild wild west and why I felt compelled to raise hell for a good many years of my life.

Maybe it was a hot day. There is no asphalt in the parking lot at Rosati's even now. Mama's feet would have ground the gravel when she walked in the door, heavy with my body inside her. Maybe someone held the door for her, the screen slapping shut behind her. The jukebox in the corner is always playing but at least it's country. Mama don't rock and roll.

The doctor told her that if she walked around she was likely to go into labor. She wasn't due yet but, as hard as she had worked to have this baby, she was done carrying it around. The a/c must have felt good. Mama overheats in summer, her pale skin lets all the sun in, has no shield for light. All day moving and giving directions had worn her out. That, and a nagging sense of doubt. I think I knew she was going to leave me, even then.

Inside Rosati's there are stickers from radio stations and old photos and beer signs covering almost every inch of the walls. The pic-nic tables are whittled with names and symbols. The old man behind the counter (he would have been a young man then) is the owner. He makes the burgers and fries himself. In the corner there is a pool table. And this is where my mother went into labor--with a cheeseburger in one hand, and a pool cue in the other.

My father (where was he then?) doesn't like the idea. He says she must have gone into labor later at the house. This was only afternoon. They did not go to the hospital until nearly midnight. But my mother knows, Rosati's makes a better story.

This exercise from Janet Burroway's WRITING FICTION: A Guide to Narrative Craft. Think of a family anecdote that is particularly meaningful: it might reveal something about the nature of a specific individual or relationship, or perhaps some truth about families or relationships generally. (This doesn't have to be something you experienced or witnessed; it could be a story about your great-grandparents' courtship, or your mother's childhood.)

a. First, write the story in the form of a letter to someone close to you (if he already knows the story pretend he doesn't). Explain explicitly what you think the story reveals/means, and why. Try to convey why this story is so compelling to you.

b. Depict the story in scene. Instead of explicitly explaining your interpretation, try to suggest it through subtle hints.

note: (I then combined the two for this post).

BABY PILLOW

2010-07-25T08:24:00.000-07:00

The ceilings were low and it didn't get much light but it was my first room in my first adult apartment. I hadn't put anything on the walls yet, since we had just moved in. I didn't want to tape posters up like it was some kid's room. The closet had wood doors that folded open and shut with two tarnished brass knobs. I had all my clothes hung up in the closet except my panties and socks and bras, those were separated into three smaller plastic bins--pink and blue and white--that sat on the floor of the closet.

Against one wall I had three larger plastic bins that stacked together and I had put all my bills and papers in there. The phone was on the floor next to the bins sitting on that awful carpet--you know the kind they put in with every new tenant? It's cheap enough that they can do that. And it smells new like a new car, but a very cheap new car.

The only furniture in the room was a single bed on a metal frame. I had tacked up my old curtains-- bought with babysitting money-- into a canopy in place of a headboard. They were a pale cream color with a ruffle along the edge like the trim on a floor length dress. I hadn't quite made the bed but today I had at least made an attempt. There were two chintz pillows--also bought with babysitting money--one pink and one blue, that lay on top of my actual pillow. Under those there was a little white satin pillow, stained with mascara and dirt and god knows what else. It was patched in one spot where one of my Dad's girlfriends dog's had gotten at it. It was my baby pillow. I had rested my head on that pillow my first night on this earth.

Once, when I was maybe ten, Holly--the woman who took care of me for a while after Mama left--well, Holly came over to clean my room. Daddy might have paid her but she would have done it anyway. She was the one who had sewn the patch on the pillow. She left my room spic and span with my stuffed animals hanging from the ceiling on fishing wire so it was like "It's a Small World" in there. Only she had hidden my baby pillow. I carried that thing everywhere. It was my security blanket. Holly meant to break me of the habit. I cried for days and Daddy looked for it but couldn't find it. By the time I did find it I was broken of the habit, but even at 19 I slept with it in my bed.

(above photo of myself at 19. Please forgive the perm).

I needed a way to characterize myself in a scene I'm writing, so naturally, I turned to the chapter in my book Narrative Fiction, on character. And sure enough I found this exercise: Describe a character's bedroom using the setting to reveal the character. What does the furniture look like? What's on the walls? In the drawers? Underneath the bed? In the closet? Try to use all five senses. Finish your survey of the room by arriving at a single, especially important object that is connected to a secret your character has hidden from almost everyone. Tell us about the secret.

lie # 1

2010-07-17T20:45:00.000-07:00

I haven't ever been lonely. The reason is that I have four angels who follow me wherever I go. They are rather large and clumsy but I forgive them because they are good company. You would think they would be light on their feet what with the wings, but in fact their wings are quite cumbersome.

I have wings too. I think they think I am one of them. But I am no angel. I have dark brown hair for one thing and who has ever heard of an angel with dark brown hair? I have big dark eyes too. Angels do not have big dark eyes.

I was very surprised when the angels taught me to play cards. Chess they like also, but I have never actually seen them play.

These angels have been with me for a very long time now but they still look just the same--big white feet like a Clydesdale's appear now and then. You've seen them haven't you?

I thought maybe you had.

That day on the highway I wasn't really alone there in the car. And when Judy came they acted like they knew her. Maybe she is really one of them, I can't be sure--how else, really, could a woman show up to help me in the loneliest, scariest moment of my life and have my own mother's name? There on that far highway in the woods?

I think the angels must have brought her to me. I hope someone thanked her. In all the confusion I may have forgotten. I never have seen her again, although Mama--my real mama--seems to think she is a hairdresser who has a salon there near the fire station. And once, when I went to church with Grandma, I thought I saw her singing in the choir. But I didn't dare say anything. What could I have said? Really?

This post comes from an exercise out of WRITING FICTION; A Guide to Narrative Craft by Janet Burroway. (p334) This is a great one for memoirists. Try it yourself and let me know what you get: Write down a false statement about yourself, such as "I have a pet snake." Keep going, elaborating on the false statement, allowing the "I" character to develop. You are beginning to create a narrator who is not like you, which will give you more imaginative freedom than you might feel when writing about yourself as the "I" narrator.

5 WAYS NOT TO LOSE IT...

2010-07-13T14:18:00.001-07:00

...YOUR MIND? Nope, can't help you there. Mine is long gone. I'm talking about momentum. Keeping it going during the summer doldrums is a task worthy of the most dogged writers. So, here are some suggestions I need to follow myself:

1) Writer dates: meet a friend for coffee and a workshop session. You read ten pages of theirs, they read ten pages of yours, meet, discuss!

2) Read headlines; they can be quite inspiring. For example: STUDY, WHY OLDER WOMEN HAVE HIGHER SEX DRIVE.

3) Enter a contest. It gives you a deadline.

4) Go to a reading or lecture. If you listen long enough you're going to want to speak.

5) Travel--it breaks us out of our routines and gives us great settings for all kinds of adventure. And, it may inspire you to play with another medium, like photography or video. I've always found that when I PLAY in a medium where I lack expertise, I am returned to the realm of discovery. For example, the video below that I made of Paris. In the process I learned how to create, edit, and post a video and now I can bring that to my memoir process!

POSTCARD II: The true story of Van Gogh's ear

2010-07-08T08:26:00.000-07:00

I Liked this exercise so much I did it twice. The second time I actually sent myself this postcard from Paris after visiting Van Gough's Montmartre apartment.

Write a short story on a postcard (or three by five card). Notice that if you're going to manage conflict, crisis, and resolution in this small space, you'll have to introduce the conflict immediately.

Here is what I wrote:

He had gotten into a fight with his roommate. Gaugin always had a knife and this time he used it. Everyone was drunk on Rue Le pic that night. One of the dancers had even cracked her ankle knocking a hat off of some Parisian's head. "Il a un tete comme un boite," La Goulue gurgled when his head withstood the blow. Gaugin had laughed out loud and the blockhead punched him and sent him home drunk, hurt and angry to Van Gogh where he presently started a fight. When he drew blood he stepped back, "Mon Dieux!" He shouted, pointing and began to cry. The police were wagging up from the square and they both knew Gaugin would go to prison for sure this time so Van Gough, himself half-erased with absinthe, stuffed his severed earlobe into an envelope and sent it off to his whore in the South, a sure way to hide the evidence.

BEAR AT THE DOOR, Where are my fireworks?

2010-07-03T18:31:00.000-07:00

So my writing group is on hiatus until September. Oy. The question is, how to keep the momentum going? Where are my fireworks without Writers On Fire? Where do I find fabulous writing exercises like the ones my writing coach provides? And the answer...the answer is WRITING FICTION, A Guide to Narrative Craft by Janet Burroway and Elizabeth Stuckey-French. Chock full of great exercises like this one: "For this exercise you will create what Jerome Stern calls the 'Bear at the Door' scene. In this scene, your character must have an external problem. ('Honey, there's a bear at the door.') The problem should be significant. ('Honey, it's huge.') The problem should be pressing. ('Honey, I think it's trying to get in.') And the problem should force your character to act. ('Honey, do something!') Your character should have an internal conflict that affects his/her ability to deal with this problem--the bear within him/herself. I set my timer for ten minutes. This is what I wrote:

My mother is on the other side of the door and she is trying to kill herself.

"Why should I go on?" She invites me to save her.

I look around as if I will find some magic baton to twirl and make her alright. Or at least a key to unlock the door. "Mama, don't say that."

I lay my hand flat against the wood door--cool from the a/c which has been running now for days. Suddenly I worry about the bill she will have to pay after I leave. That's if she lives, I remind myself. I want to pound on the door and tell her she's stupid.

"Mama I love you," I say instead. I can hear her sobs.

"Just give me a few minutes," she says.

But I can hear a pill bottle, the rattle of capsules against the plastic shaking like a snake's tail on the other side of the abyss.

"Okay," I say. "Promise me you won't do anything."

No response.

I wonder where she keeps her gun. Being from the South she probably has one. I check her bedside table drawer, her purse--just a bunch of used Kleenex and lipstick. Under the bed?

Once, when I stayed with her in Georgia, a man came to the door in the night. He said he had a book of matches and was going to set the house on fire if she didn't let him in. All I remember is her telling me "Back up," and then aiming a huge shotgun at the door. Tonight she aims it at herself. Only I am on the other side of the door. And the gun? The gun is a bottle of pills or whiskey or whatever else she has in there with which to do herself harm.

The man went away eventually. Mama said she knew he was drunk. I fell asleep but she sat up all night with that shotgun across her knees listening for the sound of a match striking.

I smell cigarette smoke from under the bathroom door. I sit down with my back against the wall and stretch my legs out into the shag carpet. This is a good sign. If she is smoking--she isn't dying. I hear the ring on her finger tap against the plastic tub and I can almost see her in there, perched at the edge of the bath in her nightgown smoking a Menthol 100 and dabbing at her tears. And all I know is I hope that is never me.

IF MY HAIR WERE A CELEBRITY...

2010-06-30T20:00:00.000-07:00

... it would be Angelina Jolie in SALT. The rest of me doesn't know what to do with that.

I love my bangs. I don't know what got into me, maybe it was Paris, maybe it was summer, maybe I just finally grew a pair. It takes guts to really make a commitment to bangs. But if you're not quite sure you're ready to take the leap, you can try them out for a few weeks. Check this out: clip-on bangs! I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen some for myself. They actually look pretty good. Here are some from Jessica Simpson: http://www.nextag.com/hair-extension-clip-on-bangs/search-html

My mama's first job was as a hairdresser. Her Daddy was the chief barber at Ft. Stewart in Savannah, GA during WWII. Which is to say, a way with hair runs in the family. Of course, I'd never let my mother cut my bangs. Again. You'll have to wait for the memoir to read all about the first time, meanwhile, if you decide to get some bangs of your own, do yourself a favor and go to Lukaro salon. Everybody else does. Ask for Maggie: http://www.lukaro.com/

And of course in my continuous search for all things stylish in the hair department I have a few new products to suggest. First, the Glossing Cream from FEKKAI is wonderful! How did I not know about this sooner? Just a dab'll do ya, so it lasts forever. It smooths out the frizzies, increases manageability, and makes my hair so soft I can even use hotel shampoo! Find it at Sephora, Walgreens, and Bath and Body Works: http://www.bathandbodyworks.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3140173&CAWELAID=328581370

And, in the interest of defining my new layered bangs, I found the Light Elements Texturizing cream from AVEDA. It adds dimension and texture without the greasy look of pomade or the stiff stuff of the 1980's "hair band" era. I don't know about y'all but I do not need to go there.

http://www.aveda.com/product/CATEGORY10538/PROD15806/Hair_Care/Styling/index.tmpl

So, if your hair were a celebrity, who would it be?

TODAY I AM SINGING TO THE BONES

2010-06-27T20:05:00.000-07:00

Under the streets of Paris are buried 'THE INNOCENTS,' and a few other thousand who have lived in the city of light, and died here too.

I thought there would be a tour guide or something. At least a guard. But as I descend the twisted staircase 2 meters underground I am alone. Finally there is a gate, and after the gate, a sign. "You are now entering the empire of death." It's a little creepy, but this is what I expected, right?

Standing in front of the words are a mother, father, and daughter. When they speak I realize they're Swedish. The daughter shudders audibly and holds her shoulders. It is cold down here. I try to stay close to them, but not so close as to be a weirdo, as we move through the long corridors of dirt. I have to walk fast to keep up and my feet hurt from days of walking. I know we are moving toward the bones.

The Swedish father stops to read another inscription on the wall and I walk past. Up ahead there is another tourist taking a photo. When his camera flashes I see them--beneath the streets they are making hearts and rows and crosses and pathways to the other side--stacked femur upon femur, skull upon skull, lined up so evenly they look as if they have been shaved to fit together. They don't really have a smell. But the air has an erie texture, smooth, almost slippery. There are a few cement placards embedded in the bones with quotes from poets or philosophers. One that translates:

"Or is it death, always future or past, that it is already more."

And I stop long enough to photograph it, my flash lighting up the bones. Suddenly I am alone with them. I turn to move through the tunnel and I am walking faster now, but the bones seem to go on forever. I come around a corner and suddenly my right foot is cold and wet and I suck in a couple quick breaths. A man laughs. I look down. My sandal is all wet. It is the tourist from before. And a puddle. I look up. The gypsum is leaking. Dripping. Into this puddle and all over the footpath.

I continue on, embarrassed but no longer completely alone. I can see the tourist and his sweetheart up ahead. What were you laughing about? She asks him in French. Nothing, he says. A woman stepping in a puddle. But now I am taking a picture of the next placard, and the next. I can't read the French. I'll translate it later, I think.

And I snap and walk, and try to keep an eye on the ground. I'd hate to slip and fall into the bones. What a riot that would be. Hilarious. My heart is pounding. I start to pray. I repeat a simple prayer over and over. One that I know by heart. I am alone again. I don't know how I lost everyone. I hear a rustling. I keep walking. Rustling. Jesus. They are talking.

Fine. What do you want?

Cry for us.

Cry?

But what they mean is sing-- sing so that we may feel the lif

e in you-- sing Amazing Grace, sing Elvis, sing anything. And so I do. I start humming. I don't want any of those tourists to hear me. When I was a little girl, walking home in the dark sometimes, I would sing to keep from being scared. I tell myself it is like that. And then I sing the words. Deep beneath the city my voice echoes and I sound like I wish I always would. There is no one to hear me but the bones. I think, there is no better audience.

When I finally reach the exit, there is a man with a thick African accent who asks to check my bag. I hold it open.

"No bones. Thank you."

And I see two skulls set aside on a table, confiscated, apparently, from would-be skull-thieves. Who would dare? I think.

When I get home, I translate another of the headstones which reads:

Listen. Listen to the dry bones of the Lord, The Almighty God of our ancestors, whose breath created the world. Come back from the far reaches, you will have flesh, new skin will form on these bones, and you will live again.

THROW AWAY THE KEY

2010-06-20T10:31:00.000-07:00

"You must be waiting for you lover," he says, his head tilted to the side a bit, his moustache blowing in the wind.

"Not exactly..." I smile. He's not unattractive in that slightly dumpy ugly-sexy Harvey Keitel way.

"Whenever I see a woman alone on dis bridge, she is waiting for her lover. "

I just tilt my head back at him and frown slightly.

"Here, let me take your picture," He motions at the camera in my hand with his two fingers. It's a somewhat suggestive gesture.

And I'm a little worried as I hand him my camera.

"I'm a street photographer," He says. And he snaps a couple pictures. "People think this is the most romantic bridge in the world. They come here and they put the locks on the bridge and they srow the key in the water," he explains, as he hands the camera back to me and points to the chain-link railing on the Pont Des Artes.

I hadn't even noticed.

I was taken up by the view of Ile de la Cite and Notre Dame. But I look closer and I see them. All along this bridge there are locks of various colors and sizes.

"Oh my god!" I shout, so completely and unashamedly American in this moment that even the Accordian player has to laugh. "In that case, maybe I am waiting for someone," I say. "Who knows."

There are names carved into the locks the way we carved our names into the Redwood trees back home in Palo Alto when I was a kid. Mostly they are scratched into the metal or written in sharpie or nail polish, but a few are engraved with fancy lettering--some forethought went into that. One with an Hindu diety bulging out of it's gold facade has me mezmerized. I wonder whose lock is that? Every one of these locks has a story. A beginning, a middle, and an end.

I find myself imagining some poor soul clattering across the bridge in the dark with a bolt cutter. Still, he'll never get the key back. He'll get another lock, I tell myself. He'll find another key.

Just then it starts to rain the way it has been all week. And I thought Paris in June would be Sunny. Still, I think, as I wave goodbye to Bruno and fling my scarf over my head, there's even something romantic about that. Oh Paris, I do love you.

LA LIBERTE

2010-06-16T16:50:00.000-07:00

(atop La Tour Eiffel)

I am on the plane to Paris when I see a documentary about Chimpanzees. The narrator says “Bonita was clinging to her mother when they shot and killed her, she was then kept as a pet for a year before she was rescued.” The feeling that I will burst into sobs is so intense that I tear off my headphones and I don’t look at the screen again. I don’t look back at the big brown eyes of the little girl now clinging to her rescuers and worried that they, too, will abandon her.

I pull out my Paris guidebook and begin reading about the gardens of Luxembourg. I know that my friend Janet, who is a therapist, not my therapist, but a therapist, has said that one way to work through the pain when it comes up is to just dive into it--but not on the plane to Paris.

I have wanted to come here since I was a little girl. My mother said she would take me. I studied French for 6 years but we never went. So I am taking myself. Maybe this is the way it’s supposed to be. Maybe nobody ever rescues anybody else. We rescue ourselves. Because the truth is, you can take a girl to Paris, but if you really want her to go somewhere, teach her how to get there herself.

Best. Wedding. Ever.

2010-06-06T15:12:00.001-07:00

I went to a wedding on Friday that changed my life. I have known the bride and groom for years, but watching them stand up and declare their love for one another in the most authentic ceremony I have ever seen has inspired me. Not to get married, necessarily, but to be more honest--to be radically honest in my daily life.

And this means being more honest in my writing. For me, writing is making sense of life. Making sense of life heals me and allows me to leave the past where it belongs: behind me. As I continue on this journey to complete my first memoir I have become aware that this process is one of co-creation not only of a manuscript, but of a life; of a future that is liberated when the past is healed.

Well, "hot damn!" as my mother would say. Lets get this party started!

MEMORIAL DAY 1981

2010-05-31T17:08:00.000-07:00

"If our measure passes then girls would be drafted the same as boys," she said, watching me for a reaction.

"What's a draft?" I said.

She ran a hand through her mullet. "It's when the government calls you to join the military and fight for your country."

"Like a war?" I said.

"Yes, like a war." She reached to answer the phone ringing on her desk.

My father had donated a portion of our living room to two women who were campaigning for the Equal Rights Amendment. I had finally mustered up the courage to ask them what the heck they were doing in there and when I could turn on the T.V. I remember them as two stout middle-aged females, one with a distinctive short-in-front, long-in-back haircut that was a little ahead of its time in 1981.

She lay the handset back in the cradle and turned to me. "So would you vote for it?"

I wasn't sure what to say. I had seen "The Day After" recently and was haunted by the prospect of nuclear war. I looked out the window and imagined a mushroom-shaped cloud appearing above Neil Van Der Laan's house next door.

"You can tell me after school," she smiled.

I went off to my 6th grade class where Mr. Lindberg, the first person who I would allow to call me by my full name, was showing us Franco Zeferelli's "Romeo and Juliet." I cried silently in the dark. As soon as Mr. Lindberg brought the lights up I ran for the bathroom, hiding my snotty face. I was less afraid of war and of dying than I was of never being loved.

I went home and I told the Mullet: "I think girls are just as good as boys. If they're going to be drafted we should too. It's only fair."

EXERCISE

2010-05-25T22:48:00.000-07:00

When the waiter came over to take our order I tried to stop crying.

"I'll have the breakfast Buffet," Harry said.

"Me too," I whispered without looking up. I wanted to stab him with my butter knife.

He had already said he was sorry in the hotel room. I had already cried. We had already gone all the way to Amsterdam together. But it was on our way back to Savannah that he told me, at a Holiday Inn in Washington D.C.

"I don't see how I can be with you now," I said.

His face blanched. I imagine he expected me to take him back. I always had.

She loves me too much. She doesn't mean this. That girl was nothing to me. She has to know that.

The waiter, a tall polite man whose face I would never see, leaned in to place a pot of coffee and two empty plates on our table. I felt as raw and bleached as the napkin I stretched over my knees.

"Do you still want to see Lincoln?" Harry asked as he paid the bill and we stood to leave.

At the National Mall we walked side by side as if we belonged together, cherry blossoms breaking over the lawn like grief.

This excerpt comes from this exercise: Write a scene with two characters who are involved with each other (lovers, co-workers, master and slave, etc.) One wants to end the relationship, the other does not. The scene takes place in public and they are doing something active. One reveals to the other that they want to break up, and the other is surprised and tries to persuade the partner to stay. One of them leaves at the end. We set a timer for ten minutes.

THE RULE OF SAINT BENEDICT

2010-05-25T11:42:00.001-07:00

for Sister Pauline

You are looking at me like that again.

You have never not

been looking at me like that. You

and your awful

beautiful eyes.

Each one a tiny planet

smearing its edges toward God.

Each one with a force like the sea

and it has me.

You cannot know

how it has me.

I understand now what makes a woman

give her heart to Jesus.

The sisters knew something

I could not—but maybe

I know something too

how sweet the dirt is after rain—

how to answer a question with a question

how to live without you

and be happy.

I had the kind of crush you have when you’re seven and you don’t realize somebody’s your cousin.

2010-05-20T16:09:00.000-07:00

I thought he looked like the picture of Jesus from Grandma’s wall. And Jesus was hot.

One day he asked me if I wanted a ride in his Dunebuggy. He pulled back the tarp and I thought it didn’t look like it was finished. I could see the skeleton. There were no doors, no windows, no roof. I didn’t think it cold go very fast. Looked like it might fall apart.

He got behind the wheel and I just stood there like a puppet with nobody to pull her strings.

“What’s the matter you scared?” He said.

“No,” I said. And I climbed in.

That seatbelt was like a harness but that was all that held me in. I thought about getting out. But I wouldn’t let myself be a chicken. I mean, this was supposed to be fun, right? He started the engine and yelled something I couldn’t hear and off we went. The ground went by so close I could have reached out to touch it. I held my breath. Dust swirled up from the ground. We sped across the lot and spun in a circle.

My cousin rolled his car the following October. It was the same year Elvis died

If I had been there at the edge of that desert highway in my patent leather shoes and tights—the ones you made fun of—I would have held your hand and told you it would be alright. And I would have been wrong.

THE ANSWER

2010-05-10T23:48:00.000-07:00

I think it will be winter when he comes,

not that anyone can feel it in Los Angeles.

It will be winter and I will know this

because there will be less traffic

and everyone wears pants.

He will come from a long way off

but I will know him

by his shoulders, by his chin

by his shimmering.

He will smile when he sees me

the smile I knew so well once

that I inspired so many times

stretching across the years like a bandage.

We will open our arms

without thinking about what we have carried

for so long and it will drop from us. Spinning

like clouds into each other, we will make

something new.

2010-05-08T16:53:00.000-07:00

Shocking as it is, I did not know until recently that Mother's Day began as an act of defiance. The defiance of a woman unwilling to accept the conditions imposed upon her by war.

When Julia Ward Howe proposed "A Mother's Day For Peace," it was as an activist and a feminist. Below is her original proclamation. But her mission was co-opted and her daughter, Anna, later sued florists who "would undermine Mother's Day with their greed." She lost. And Mother's Day has blossomed into a billion dollar industry.

Today there is war. There are mothers without health care. Without jobs. Without education. Without the assistance that might support their considerable roles in the shaping of our nation.

As I have undertaken to write a memoir about my relationship with my own mother, I have begun to investigate her life. What I have discovered has enlightened me. There is so much I don't know. That I may never know. Like mother's day itself, she is revealed by her history.

Of course, she would have a regular hissy fit had I not sent a card and a gift. She would be hurt. Would feel left out. But I would tell her that I am for peace, lets not fight. Lets just talk. Tell me a story Mom. Tell me about your life.

Mother's Day Proclamation – 1870

-- Julia Ward Howe

Arise, all women who have hearts!

Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:

"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,

Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,

For caresses and applause.

Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn

All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.

We, the women of one country,

Will be too tender of those of another country

To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with

Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!

The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."

Blood does not wipe out dishonor,

Nor violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil

At the summons of war,

Let women now leave all that may be left of home

For a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means

Whereby the great human family can live in peace...

Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress,

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask

That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,

May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient

And the earliest period consistent with its objects,

To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,

The amicable settlement of international questions,

The great and general interests of peace.

Howe (1817-1919) was an abolitionist who also worked for disarmament and women’s rights. She was a published poet and co-publisher of the The Commonwealth, an anti-slavery newspaper.

OUT OF EFFINGHAM

2010-05-03T18:47:00.000-07:00

“Pull the car over Mom I think I’m going to be sick,” I say, with a measured force intended to communicate the intensity of my desire and yet keep me from hurling before she can pull the Taurus onto the grass. I swing the door open. I stumble out of the car and I have barely pulled most of my hair back with one hand when the first wave erupts violently. We are only yards from the airport parking lot.

My father steps out of the car now. I pull back the rest of my hair, a few strands wet with vomit but before I can even bend over the next wave comes. It rends me head to toe and I nearly topple from the force. My father puts his arms around my waist and holds on to me while I continue to puke onto the well-manicured shoulder. Mama stays behind the wheel. That minty sulfur fog from the Union Camp Paper Mill lurking in the air eggs me on. Savannah has always smelled slightly rotten to me.

“I’m okay,” I tell my Dad and move away from him. I stand there wiping the corners of my mouth and testing my resolve. I decide I am done. I get back in the passenger seat. I snap the seatbelt in place.

“Do you still want to get on the plane?” My Dad says, pulling his car door shut.

“Yeah,” I say, drained but relieved, “Go,” I say, looking at Mom who has yet to put her foot on the gas. She punches it and steers us back on course. My mother is an excellent driver.

If we weren’t running late to start with, we are now. I check my bags at the curb and hug them both goodbye, rushing to the gate.

“Call me when you get there baby,” Mama says, as if I am seventeen and I’m going off to college. As if she has ever been that kind of mother. She’s all weepy. She looks like she needs some background music but the only sound is a jet engine whining from the runway. Dad has

his arm around her and I admit I like seeing them like that as I walk away.

I hustle into my seat. I’m the last one to board. Right away my stomach begins to churn. I press the call button for a flight attendant. No way I’ll make it to the bathroom. I bend over the small space between my knees and the seat in front of me. All of my things are stowed safely away for takeoff. Shit. I tug the shopping bag I’m using as a carry-on out from its cubbyhole and pull my sweater and magazine out. I don’t want to soil the twenty-five most intriguing people of 1997.

“Sorry,” I say to the man who has the great misfortune of having been sat next to me, just before I heave into the now-empty shopping bag stinking up the cabin with the contents of my belly.

He presses his call button too.

A flight attendant hurries over with a vomit bag and I switch, handing her the shopping bag to dispose of. It goes on like this for a while before we are in the air and the man next to me can find another seat. I don’t even notice him leaving. I’ve never gotten sick on a plane before. I look around at the passengers near me feeling as if someone has pulled my pants down at school; like they’ve all just seen my ass. Whatever. There is no way I was missing this plane. Not for nothing. I don’t care if I’d puked up my toenails.

BOTH OF US

2010-04-24T12:01:00.000-07:00

In this dream

you have the rope

around your neck

I come to you

as to a lion

mad with hunger.

If you will trust

my hands on the rope

(Surely you see

I am naked before you,

as bare as the moon running

her hands through your hair,

dragging her great

thighs up to your cheekbones

knocking fruit from the vines,

wet with April and anticipation)

I will cut the rope away

and lie down

In the hard gleaming cavern

of your jaw, believing

you will not crush me.

It is as simple as that

And we are both free.

GET REAL

2010-04-21T23:18:00.000-07:00

Tonight I heard five witty, accomplished writers talk about reality television and I didn't hate them for it. See, I'm a little bit of a snob about so-called "reality" programming. But REALITY MATTERS, a new collection of personal essays edited by Anna David has accomplished the miraculous. Through the precise observations of writers from James Frey to Neil Strauss I have come to adopt a new perspective. Reality programming is not just about gossip and exploitation and, well, fame. It's also about us. All of us.

Wendy Merrill, one of the panelists reading tonight, is also a memoirist. In her essay How to Survive a Bachelor Party, about The Bachelor, she writes: "...I got all Barbara Walters on my ass and and decided to ask the really tough question: why do I love to hate this show so much? ...The answer was a tough one. I loved to hate this show, because these women were me." Merrill further commented in the Q&A that followed tonight's presentation, that in her book Falling Into Manholes: The Memoir of a Bad/Good Girl she also dealt with the complication of drunken blackouts. Even so, every writer chooses the best words and puts them in the best order. And in television, this is what a story editor does with pictures.

As the writer of a memoir, I have come to understand how memory works. I remember different moments than, say, my sister does. And I remember those moments with my own bias. So, everything I write is told through the filter of my lens. There is honesty, but there is no objectivity, much as I may strive for it. Even memoirs like Danzy Senna's Where Did You Sleep Last Night, which began as more of a family history, have a point of view. And that point of view dictates so much of the "reality" that is being communicated. In television, the point of view is that of the story editors, the producers, even the network.

Lets take it one step further. As I sat discussing The Hills and Hoarders with some of the smartest voices I've heard on the subject I realized something. What the authors of REALITY MATTERS showed me is that reality Television truly is in the eye of the beholder. The pleasure is only as guilty as the viewer.

2010-04-17T22:09:00.000-07:00

What is it about QVC that seduces my mother into thinking I would like six strands of purple amethysts to wear around my neck?

"It's a 'just because I love you gift," she says, like this is a thing between us.

"Thanks Mom," I say. I have decided that, although she has a marvelous sense of humor about herself, I don't need to tell her anymore if I don't like a gift she has given me. Primarily because she won't listen. After the hand towels with roses which I said I didn't like, she sent a quilt with roses, miniature teacups with roses, potpourri bags full of roses. All from QVC. Except for the potpourri bags, she makes those herself.

"Do you like it?"

"It's beautiful." I say, and the pigeon outside my window oodles as if to cast doubt--he can hear the lie in my voice.

"I bought them for myself but I don't have anywhere to wear them." She says.

Just then I hear the QVC announcer chattering about some special offer and then Head On! with Activon, Head On! with Activon, Head On-"Shit, I must've rolled over on the remote," she says. "Wait just a minute Duffi Jo."

Three months later she calls to tell me she is having portraits done.

"I was wondering if you could send me back those amethyst necklaces," she begins. "I know you'd tell me if you didn't like them..."

"Wait, what?" I'm confused. She has her teeth out or she's taken too many pain pills or she's just woken up or some combination of the three.

"Well I know you wouldn't tell me if you didn't like them," she says. I must have mis-heard her the first time. But now it's clear. My 'just because I love you' gift is being recalled.

DOG SPELLED BACKWARDS

2010-04-11T23:30:00.000-07:00

It is the week of Semana Santa in Taxco. I did not come to Mexico for this.

Walking back to my hotel through the crowds I'm exhausted. I've never been so thin in my life and I'm sure I have a parasite though the doctor assures me I do not. I push past a woman in black with a veil over her face. Her hands are the only part of her body I see--reaching out to two children whose hands she clutches. Her gnarled fingers are like bird claws. She won't let go of either of them and I circle around all three and continue up Alarcon.

I decide to turn up a side street. I've never been up this street but I can't fathom going back through the Zocalo where it seems the entire city has gathered to await the procession. The side street is narrow and damp and so steep I have to bend forward like the penitentes to keep my balance. After just a few yards I have to stop to catch my breath.

I hear a panting sound. At first I think it is my own heavy chest. But I can hear myself and the panting also--not quite in sync.

I look over my right shoulder and there is a dog. Under the incomplete first floor of a condo and behind a pile of broken concrete the dog lay against a foundation wall with its legs sprawled out. It was half in shadow and I could just make out its honey brown body in the dirt.

Most of the wild dogs that normally roam the city ran off when the crowds came for Good Friday. What was this one doing here? And why didn't it get up and growl or run?

I stepped closer and saw the blood smeared between the dog's back legs. Was it hurt? I looked at its eyes--unconcerned but alert. I turned to see two stragglers pass by without so much as a glance. Did no one see the dog but me? I looked back at the dog, its blood dripping into the dust. It lowered its head, still panting. I squatted down for a moment and our eyes met.

She pulled her jaw shut then and I held my breath too. I could smell Copal burning in the distance, streaming from great silver troughs the virgins carried through the procession. She flicked one ear forward and stretched her nose toward me, then bent to lick the blood from her thigh. I realized she was menstruating.

I stood up slowly then and moved away. I looked back once but she had been eclipsed by the cliff of construction.

If you are up for the challenge: Write a scene where your protagonist has a magical, spiritual or sacred experience with an animal. In the scene include a cave, catacomb or dungeon. (Bonus points if you can work in a Ukelele or a Glockenspiel).

HEAR ME OUT

2010-04-07T21:58:00.000-07:00

We are burning

with desire. The only

answer is to give

our hearts away.

I do not expect

you to agree.

There is more in this world

than we will ever know.

A man and a woman.

An ordinary life.

(She must admit she knows them,

she is one of them)

I think I am drawing near.

FROM MEXICO WITH LOVE

2010-04-04T21:35:00.000-07:00

This excerpt comes from an exercise where we wrote the scene of a fight between ourselves (or our narrators) and a lover. Drop into the middle of the fight. Use as much dialogue as possible.

"Did you fuck her?" I said.

He looked at me with his big blue eyes almost smiling.

"Don't smile, this isn't funny." I was shouting now and I didn't care who heard me.

"I had relations with her," he corrected.

"You fucking fucked her. You just had to have the stripper. Was it worth it?" I was sorry I'd asked the moment I said the words.

He wouldn't look at me now.

"Does she know I'm here?"

"I don't know. I don't think so. I haven't heard from her in weeks."

"Oh, are you sad? Was that hard for you? You fucking liar. I knew it. How dare you?" I banged out of the house, hot tears on my face, and kicked the fence with all I had. I kicked again and again until I heard a pop. I stopped, out of breath now, and peered at the latch which had come splintering out of the wood. How could I have been so stupid. Of course he had fucked her. He always did. He found them, flirted with them, dumped me, fucked them, and then came simpering back.

I had to go far enough away that he wouldn't follow. I had to get a fucking grip or I would go out of my mind.

He came outside. He stood behind me, waiting.

I faced him. "I'm leaving," I said.

"Are you coming back?"

"I don't know," I said. Because I didn't. I wanted to say no. I wanted to believe I would never let him touch me again. But I couldn't promise myself that.

When he said he would marry me I thought it would make a difference. I thought I'd found my independence in Mexico and I had my power back. But he didn't marry me. He fucked the neighbor with the Dolly Parton tits three years later and I ran to L.A. this time. He followed me. It seemed I had nowhere else to go but hell. So I went. Raven was there to guide me across the water.

THE PINK PEACOCK

2010-03-30T22:33:00.000-07:00

The following excerpt comes from an exercise where we were challenged to first write a portrait of a humorous relative and capture their essence, then to write a scene where that relative is having a fight with someone. I combined the two in this post.

“Well it looks like you get the prize for having the most ex husbands present,” Lou said.

“What present?” Mama looked up.

“No, here.”

“Who’s here?”

“Paul and Carroll’s here. I said you get the prize for having the most ex husbands present at Christmas dinner.” She was shouting so loud her wig had slipped back a little and you could see her hairnet underneath.

At this point, Ma, Uncle Donne, all sixteen cousins and both aforementioned ex husbands had caught on and were doing their best to find some wrapping paper that needed cleaning up or someone’s punch glass that needed re-filling.

“You’re just jealous,” Mama said, her chin punching out, her hands on her hips, her tits stretching the polyester of her Christmas sweatshirt with the Poinsettia appliqués.

“I ain’t jealous,” Lou went on. She mumbled and waddled across the room to where she’d left her drink and picked it up. My Aunt Lurene—the legally blind, alcoholic, narcoleptic sister whom my mother thinks of as the pretty one. Lou owned a bar in Savannah called The Pink Peacock where she served cocktails wearing a pink leotard and heels with peacock feathers taped to her ass. She did have nice legs.

“Lurene’s always been jealous of my men,” Mama told me.

“Mama I do not want any part of this here conversation,” I said, and turned around just as Lou headed back, her thick glasses magnifying her eyes right up under my nose and her drink squeaking out of her hand and splashing Mama’s Poinsettias with Brandy and Egg Nogg.

“Well there’s Egg on my face,” Mama said.

Adding Insult To Injury

2010-03-27T21:10:00.000-07:00

The best insults are creative and specific, like the best writing. Here are my top ten culled from a few choice pieces of literature, The Bulgarians, a fourth grade girl, and you.

10. You'll never be half the man your mother is. Oy.

9. Take a flying fuck at a rolling donut, sparky. From Mary Karr's memoir "Lit." God I love Texas.

8. Popasi me chmarne dlachitse. Serbian for: Graze on my ass hair.

7. Roses are red, violets are blue, trash gets dumped, and so are you.

6. Do you have to leave so soon? I was just about to poison the tea. Your grandmother used this a time or two. Sounds best with a southern accent.

5. Cao ni zu zong shi ba dai. Chinese for: Fuck the 18 generations of your ancestors. Seriously, does it get much better?

4. Thou craven elf-skinned beetle-headed reeling-ripe dew-berry. Take that Iago!

3. Elif air ab dinikh. A thousand dicks in your religion. Also your eye, your soup, etc. Leave it to the Arabs.

2. Yes but tomorrow I will be sober and you will still be ugly. A favorite of mature gentlemen everywhere. Of course this does give you something to live up to.

1. Afatottari. Or, if you are in Iceland: Grandfatherfucker.

2010-03-22T19:41:00.000-07:00

THE FOLLOWING EXCERPT COMES FROM AN IN-CLASS EXERCISE IN WHICH WE WERE CHALLENGED TO WRITE A SCENE WITH A SENSE OF HUMOR. . . A LITTLE HONEY TO GO WITH YOUR SALT?

“Are you kidding me?” I say, putting the car in park. I look up at the Easter egg pink and purple bricks. “Are you sure that’s the house?”

“Yeah. I mean, it used to be white,” my Dad says.

“Yeah I know that. I mean the paint—who would do that?” I imagine our old house occupied by tie-died hippies on acid with names like Hobo Joe and Sarafina Rainbow. “That is unfortunate.” I loose my seatbelt and crack the car door.

“You want to get out?” My Dad says, quietly, as if he’s afraid someone will hear him.

“I didn’t drive all the way out here to sit in the car,” I say.

“Well, let me put my jacket on,” he says, and he reaches into the back seat and I sigh, my hand still on the door. He struggles to get his arm in the sleeve.

“Dad. Your seatbelt.” I say, pressing the button to unlock it for him.

“Oh.

Then, I see a bright light whisk by like a Frisbee. I lean into the steering wheel to get a better look and mash the heel of my palm into the horn. The blast of it cracks across the hillside and every woodland creature within earshot trains its whiskers on us and marks us as the intruders we are.

“Jesus,” Dad looks at me like I have just farted.

“What?” I say, and I get out of the car.

2010-03-19T16:29:00.000-07:00

One of our challenges in writing Memoir is to look at our own lives with a kind of objectivity usually reserved for therapists, priests or philosophers. In class last June Rachel challenged us to write our own obituaries. However morose, this exercise helped me to add a measure of self-awareness to my efforts. I keep the original taped above the desk where I write to remind me who I am.

IF I DIED TODAY

Nobody thought she would live past twenty five.

Dufflyn Lammers was a reckless woman. Full of life,

like a sunflower in a field of daisies.

She was always driving too close to the edge

of the cliff. She lived like she meant it. Like she knew

she would die young.

She was a loyal friend. She was the only one who wasn't sure

she'd be a good mother. She was a good daughter.

She could be cruel if she had to. She was the one you wanted

next to you in a foxhole, or a cubicle, or a car torn half to bits.

She was brave. And wise. She was comfortable in her own skin.

She was independent, headstrong, and moody.

She liked anything new,

tried a lot of things once. She had a laugh that invited the world

to laugh with her--laughed with abandon--as if it would get her

closer to God.

One had the impression that she wanted to be closer to God,

even as she defied him. She loved her cat.

She loved many men. One who as good to her. One who broke

her heart. One who made her happy.

She would have said that regrets are a waste of time.

Then she would have offered to show you her collection.

2010-03-14T15:16:00.000-07:00

Flannery O'Connor writes in her book Mystery and Manners about an occasion when a local Oxford lady is supposed to have rushed up to Mr. William Faulkner, gushing that she has just bought his book. "Before I read it, I want you to tell me something: do you think I'll like it?" She says, and Faulkner is supposed to have said, "Yes, I think you'll like that book. It's trash."

Well, it wasn't trash and she probably hated it but there were some (many) who did. And if he was fortunate enough to find that some of those who did like his work were locals, they were an audience more desirable to him than all the critics in the world. Because they are reliable. They know the life he describes. And they are perhaps the only ones fit to evaluate his authenticity.

This is what I am reminding myself of today. I have to be honest with you, my readers, because you'll know if I'm full of shit. There will be those who will say I'm crazy or self-absorbed. I'll agree. Then I'll go on about my work.

Ms. O'Connor writes: "The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. HIs problem is to find that location."

So, where to?

EXERCISE 2/27/2010

2010-03-03T22:20:00.000-08:00

Ya know what I hate? How we have romanticized madness (in its many forms) to the point that it is thought to be the requisite state of the artist. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a cliche. I resisted writing about this part of my life because I do not want to become a cliche. And yet, you write what you know, n'est ce pas?

I would have left him then if I could have. It was not a choice. I went back to Georgia. The Oaks reached out for me like tentacles. I buckled under the pressure of the water in the air and I thought it was love. I did not know I would miss you.

I carried denial on my back like a wrecked semi. Everyone saw me coming. I knocked over houses, plowed down fields of flowers until I arrived again at that place. The drugs were the only thing I wanted more than him. The escape. I sucked the sulfer-laced white powder through my nose, my mouth, would have shot it into my viens if I had known how. My neck wrenched, my jaws clamped and my heart, my heart was nowhere. What heart?

One night, alone in my room with that sweet little package of magic I torture myself. No sleep, no food for days and when was the last time I had let him touch me?

He would leave again and I knew it but all I could do was wait and try to hurt myself so badly that his departure would be like an echo—a thing from my past. I am an Abyss where his call cannot reach me. I am the cliff I have jumped off of. I am a hollow scragg of rock. The promise of death.

I walk past the mirror and see a ragged doll whose hair stretches across its face, naked and boney-eyed, ruined and wasted. I turn away. When I turn back I know it is me.

Puss sprays from the holes the doctor has punched in my skin. It reeks of sulfur, rot, struggle. Worse than that I cannot bleed. I un-ravel right before my eyes. I scramble to catch myself but I am too heavy. I sink and rust and this would hurt if I could feel it.

I could not remember you then. If I had said your name, heard you sing? It would have killed me. The heart I never gave you would have burst.

MY HAIR WAS BLESSED BY HUMMINGBIRDS

2010-02-23T19:07:00.000-08:00

Part of what is tough about writing memoir is the subjectivity of memory. If I didn't have this picture for example, I don't know if I'd believe my mother when she told me that hummingbirds at the L.A. Zoo actually landed on my arms, picked up my hair, and drank from a Carnation in my ear. But there it is...

In my search for the truth I have come to discover that it is not the same as the facts. The facts are names and dates and evidence. The truth requires faith.

THE TEN BEST THINGS THAT HAVE BEEN WHISPERED IN MY EAR...

2010-02-11T01:42:00.000-08:00

Okay, so some of these were not whispered. But you get the point. These are 'lines' that were said to me by men whom I was in fact romantically involved with, flirting with, or considering flirting with. In honor of Valentine's Day, I submit them for your entertainment /ridicule /emulation (if you dare).

10. "Do u want 2 go 2 Paris?" Mmm. Yeah, who doesn't. Still, a nice invitation. Which I had to decline. Sigh. You just don't ask that in a text.

9. "I think you underestimate your charisma." You know this was said with sincerity, and that made it a double compliment. Charismatic and humble? Has he met me?

8. "Someday will you tell me what Stairway To Heaven means?" My high school crush wrote this in my yearbook. I was the only girl in Palo Alto who knew all the words. I did not, however, know what they meant.

7. "Jesus Dufflyn." I had just taken my shirt off.

6. "You seem comfortable in your own skin." I worked hard for that. Nice of you to notice.

5. "When we get married..." Yeah he stopped dead there. The look on his face--he was even more shocked than me at the words he'd just uttered. The one who (nevertheless) got away.

4. "Do you want to drive?" Yes. Pretty much always. But especially on that day. He had a Ferrari Testarosa. Red. Divine. And as it turned out, borrowed from Joe Montana.

3. "I want to know everything about you." Nice one. Don't say that unless you mean it though.

2. "I want to read you a story. It's Hemingway." I am a sucker for a man who will read to me.

1. "I'm going to kiss you now." I don't know about the rest of you, but I like it when a fella can take charge and still be polite about it.

And one last thing. "Do you want to take a walk?" Now this goes under the special heading of Most Romantic Thing A Man Ever Did For Me. On my 30th birthday my then-boyfriend had twelve dozen roses sent to our house. Next, he asked me this mysterious question. I love a walk, so naturally I said yes. After we strolled through the park there was a horse and carriage waiting to take us to the restaurant where we had dinner that night.

So that's my list. I've shown you mine. Now, you show me yours....comment below!

Toochis ofn tish, which means, literally, ass on the table.

2010-02-05T22:52:00.000-08:00

A few months ago, I started meditating for five minutes every morning. After a couple weeks I worked up to ten minutes. Now, I attempt to set aside another ten minutes every evening. I do not do it perfectly. But, as Chris Gardner (the subject of the film THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS) said; "It's okay to fail, it's not okay to quit."

Meditation has had a dramatic effect on my writing. It has empowered me to find my voice. Which is a paradox, because I think of meditation as listening. But the effect of listening in this way has been to create a clear channel through which my deepest creative impulses can travel, and eventually speak.

This all started because my writing coach (Rachel Resnick) pointed out how much stronger my voice was during in-class exercises, like the Ex Voto piece I posted last week. There was an authority there that would appear only sporadically in the pages I was turning in to workshop. She had suggested that I meditate before writing. Being the A Plus student that I am, I took her suggestion.

Cristia Cummings, an artist and healer, taught me what is called "loving kindness meditation" back in Savannah. I have tried Kundalini Yoga at Golden Bridge in Hollywood which I also found liberating. In Hawaii, I visited a Korean Temple (see photo) dedicated to Kuan Yin, the Goddess of Compassion, where I took a course in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Meditation but I had never found a meditation format I could stick with.

After talking with a friend I began using a mantra to focus my attention. This friend has been meditating for thirty minutes morning and evening every day for the last twenty-six years. I figured she was doing something right. I have also been checking in with her from time to time to keep track of my progress. It helps to be accountable to someone other than my cat.

My experience has been that meditating consistently is more important that how one goes about it. Not unlike writing. It might not be some white light experience every day, but if I just sit down and shut up, chances are I'll be listening when the muse speaks. As the old Yiddish saying goes toochis ofn tish, which means, literally, ass on the table.

"The Ex Voto" exercise

2010-02-01T19:46:00.000-08:00

At Writers On Fire we do in-class exercises at each session. Rachel Resnick, our fearless coach/snack goddess/role model provides these exercises to jump-start new pages. The urgency seems to help each writer abandon self-consciousness in her writing and just go for it. I've included the instructions on this one so you can try it yourself!

INSTRUCTIONS: Choose an object that inspires you. Write in the 2nd person (you). Your character is in a place of worship and has an object and is having a discussion with that object (or being). There is a yearning to connect. Your character asks the object to solve a problem. Halfway through there is a change in the weather. Find a way to incorporate Lilies or a Crocodile. The object responds, then fades. You have ten minutes.

(Below is my unedited writing from this in-class exercise.Really! Haven't touched a word. Not allowed! My "Ex Voto," or inspirational object--see bottom-- was a plaque of an old car).

You didn't know why you went out to the carport in your nightgown like that. It was cold. You could see your breath, it wasn't just the cigarettes.

You sat in the garden you had planted. Your first garden. Your only garden. Your Impatiens and your Iris and the one great Sunflower bowing to the moon. Your lighter snapped on in the dark and you pulled the fire into you through the long white cord of tobacco.

You did not know what to do next. Not only here, on this night, but for your life. What it wanted of you. You looked up for answers, hoping to find some sign written across the night sky but there was only silence.

It had been a hot day. Your Grandmother's old valiant creaked as it cooled and when you turned, hearing it's tin stretch toward you, the sky answered you with rain.

You stood, dropping the cigarette and laughing. But very quickly you were soaked. You stumbled into the car port and pulled the car door open.

Inside it stank of Lilies--an old scented paper flower still hanging from the rearview mirror. You reached to tip it and watched it swing there for a moment, bleeding dust into the air inside the car. Rain beat down on the roof lie a thousand little metronomes hypnotizing you.

You lay down on the blue vinyl seats, pulling your knees to your chest and closed your eyes.

The car radio crackled to life, searching for the right channel--news--sermon--amazing grace--once was lost but now I'm found--Yooooouuuu send me, I know yoooooouuuuu send me--Only yooooooou--You know and I know--In the end becomes the rooose.

When you opened your eyes the rain had stopped. You sat up and pressed the knob on the radio but it did not respond as if it had never been on at all.

An ex-voto is a votive offering to a saint or divinity. It is given in fulfillment of a vow (hence the Latin term, short for ex voto suscepto, "from the vow made") or in gratitude or devotion. Ex-votos are placed in a church or chapel where the worshipper seeks grace or wishes to give thanks. The destinations of pilgrimages often include shrines decorated with ex-votos.

Ex-votos can take a wide variety of forms. They are not only intended for the helping figure, but also as a testimony to later visitors of the received help. As such they may include texts explaining a miracle attributed to the helper, or symbols such as a painted or modeled reproduction of a miraculously healed body part, or a directly related item such as a crutch given by a person formerly lame.

My hair has always been my best feature --second only to my ass.

2010-01-25T20:03:00.000-08:00

Recently I workshopped a chapter about my first hair show (photo at left) which sparked a discussion on haircare among the girls. At Writers On Fire we work hard, and we look good doing it. Now it's true, certain qualities are genetic. Yet and still, there are tools. There are tips. There are techniques. I'm a woman's woman. (read: feminist). Point is; when I say equality, I mean it all the way down to my follicles. Can't we all have beautiful hair? Yes. We. Can!

TOOLS

The T3 Bespoke Tourmaline Ionic Ceramic professional blow dryer. Worth the investment. Every penny. Featherweight, dries hair faster, shine like you wouldn't believe. Discovered this in the Bliss catalog that came to my first Hollywood apartment. In someone else's name. Don't worry. I've got my own now.

BaByliss Ionic Ceramic hot rollers. For body. Just like Mama used.

Any Tourmaline curling iron. For control. We owe this one to Janet Jackson.

Alterna Caviar Anti-Aging Non-Aerosol Mousse. Definition, support, volume. Lasts forever. Protects your hair from the above-mentioned heat-producing tools. Bonus: UVA/UVB protection, No Parabens, No Gluten, No DEA, No TEA, No Mineral Oil, No PABA, No Paraffin, No Petrolatum, Recyclable Packaging and no Animal Testing. A friend who worked on Nip/Tuck stashed this little beauty into the gift bags we took home when we donated to charity for his birthday. A gay man is a girl's best friend. Trust.

Lavender Re-Moist Hydrating Mask from wen by Chaz Dean. Because Shea Butter tames the savage beast's tangled mane. God bless Chaz Dean and his Christmas guest list.

Bath And Body Works Aromatherapy Shampoo. Not too expensive, no buildup, great for everyday use. (Bath and Body works former CMO Anne Martin Vachon is now CEO of Lise Watier Cosmetiques, the popular Canadian retailer). We love women executives.

TIPS

Different hair requires a different brush. For finer hair a long-bristled natural fiber round brush will add body while blow-drying. For thicker hair a short-bristled ceramic/ionic round brush will smooth it out. For curly hair a short-bristled paddle brush will do the trick. (Years of actually listening to my hairstylists, one of whom also informed me that due to the Top Free movement a woman can go shirtless anywhere a man can in the state of New York).

Don't perm. That's so 1982.

Wear your hair up, especially in a ponytail, as often as possible if you want it to grow. This pulls on the follicle and promotes quicker growth. Now you know.

If you have long hair use a satin pillowcase to put an end to that rat's nest at the base of your neck once and for all. Sateen will not work in this case, although I have nothing against it personally. Just like I have nothing against chest hair. But I don't want any.

Vitamins E, A and D. Take them. Daily. Also good for your nails and skin. Seriously. A soap opera casting director suggested this to me. And I take direction very well.

Your big sister was right. It's best not to brush wet hair. If you have hair that tangles easily brush it out before you wash it and/or blow dry to damp before you begin styling.

TECHNIQUES

Wash your hair as little as possible. Hair's natural oil is the most precious product you can't buy. Use Tea Tree Oil shampoo if your head gets itchy easily. (This will also work for your boyfriend/husband's dandruffy beard).

I also keep a can of dry shampoo around for touch-ups between washes. I like Klorane's Shampooing sec extra-doux. Recommended to me by Maggie at Luke O'Connor's salon (the man behind Farrah's 'Angel' hair). Although I always wanted to be Kelly.

For casual curls grasp hair 2/3 of the way from scalp with curling iron and twirl toward scalp. Since the ends remain straightish the curl is natural and you also preserve ends which can dry easily. That one comes grace a Dana Patrick's (photographer) stylist.

Hairspray is your friend. If you are the granola-eating-yoga-doing type you don't have to suffer. I see you. Aveda makes a Non-Aerosol spray that smells wonderful and will not kill your mother. El Net by LOREAL is also cheap and, depending on your choice, strong hold or flexible. I read that in Marie Claire, right next to an article about the women of a native tribe in Papa New Guinea that, once a year, will gang rape any man who has the (mis)fortune to find himself on a certain footpath. Seriously. Of course the men of that native tribe show up on said footpath at that time of year with the express hope of being ravished. Sigh.

Backcombing rocks. Your mother did it. Your mother's mother did it. Now you can too. Find a fine-toothed comb, preferably one with a long pick at the end to help you isolate thin sections of hair. Next, secure a small section. While holding the section taut, comb from top to bottom, toward the scalp in short even strokes. Spray with strong hold hairspray. Repeat. Finally, smooth a few sections of hair over the back-combed portion when you have reached the desired height and spray into place. And you thought big hair was just for Texans and Victoria's Secret models. Ha!

postcard (an exercise)

2010-01-18T21:45:00.000-08:00

I am eight. Cousin Nae Nae is ten. We play spelling bee in her backyard. She is a know-it-all with her Minnie Mouse voice.

My Mama told me, “This is Georgia. You have to keep an eye on the ground.” I am worried about snakes.

Later, we ride bikes on the road in front of her house. It is all sand. I can’t keep up. We go inside to play with Nae Nae’s Barbies but she won’t share so I bite her.

I pretend to be sorry but really I am not.