Wistful

Life is hard, but, then, tell you something you don't know.

And, yet, we still want it to go slower. We want to hold on to the good parts, savor them, make them stick in our minds. And, oh, how we cannot.

The first draft is just the beginning.
Today I made it through 40 pages that look like this. I had
hoped to make it through 100.

I spent the day in Barnes & Noble today, my mind a mishmash of manic thoughts. In a few months, my book will be there. Or, should be there, but may not be. I may need you to beg for it to be.

Still, on the B&N shelves or not, it will be out there in the world for sale. It took me a decade to get here - to being a published author. To having a book come out. And all I want to do is be grateful. But the publishing world has changed so much in the past five years, or maybe I just know too much now. What I understand now, is not only how bumpy the road to getting here is, but that getting here doesn't mean staying.

Still, ten years ago, I would have given almost anything to get here.

While I was sitting in B&N drinking my coffee and working on revisions for my hopefully-next book, a woman sat across from me with her small daughter. They read books, and chatted and shared cookies. Something I did weekly with my two boys, year after year, and it was one of my favorite things. And as I did those things with my sons, I tried to savor every moment, to not ever wish to be anywhere but right there with them as I was. Moreso, I tried to store images of them like snapshots in my brain, so I wouldn't forget a thing. But, still, it was elusive, and watching that woman with her young child, was suddenly almost too much to bear.

Even now, just typing this, eviscerates me.

I want those moments back. I want a hundred more years with my sons. I want to hold them, and play with them, and read to them, and have them look up at me with their big, brown intelligent eyes and promise me we have a lifetime still ahead of us together.

But we don't. They are 13 and 15, and they are almost gone.

So, here I am with my book coming out.
And I am grateful.
But ten years have flown by like a minute. Even though life is unbearably hard.

And I'd give almost anything to go back there.

-gae

Borrowed (Coveted) Poem

This is Lori. She is a poem.

In my email box this Sunday morning was a note from my dear friend Lori with a poem attached.

Lori and I have known each other since our teens, and we wrote together way back when. Her note this morning simply said she was in a winter-freeze funk and was sharing some writing in the hopes I would somehow offer some warmth and inspiration. What I got instead, was inspiration of my own.

As I read her words I was blown away, as I so often am, by the way she is able to balance the fluid with the succinct, the flowery with the direct, the ethereal with the solid -- and create a magnificent sense of angst and flight, hope and longing, that always seems to shine through her poetry.

I asked her if I might share the poem on my blog and she agreed. The artwork below that goes with it is also hers. Yeah, don't get me started. . .

Btw, you may also find her blog here, at ConsciousCreativity.

Lori made this; I want it. What else is new?*

Dream 4/dream for

Prelude to a dream:

Lens retracted, aerial view of snow gridded squares, boundaries etched in ink, black & white topography seen from glass iris of the camera. Land cut like fruit reveals a starry eye:

Dream 4:
is crowded. Friends from long ago roam the rooms of my past, bearing gifts and conversation. Someone gives me a straw hat stiched with knowledge, it hovers at the lip of the driveway. There is some kind of gathering. People spill inside: an old therapist, a friend from Herondale, a woman who Dream tells me is my spirit sister. Clinking of glasses, movement, open doorways. Details from my childhood float overhead like filmy ghosts: blue shag rug, crystal candlesticks. The air is palpable. Somewhere upstairs, we have packed up my son’s room. Nothing is left but the books in the shelves, and I turn to ask him what he wants to do with them and am sucked into a mysterious errand. Steep hill to climb to get there, but Starbucks is a beacon up top, inviting, its glass walls fogged golden with light and warmth, and I seem to know the way. It is snowing. Slushy streets below. No car can take this climb, so I run up the tilted face of the mountain. Arrive in time to kiss my father and three friends, who are arranged around him in triangular formation. Triangle: sacred symbol of the all-seeing eye, of alchemy, angels and anarchy. There’s a buzz here too, another gathering, but Dream tells me I need to get back to my kids who wait for me to take them to school. As if I’d been there before, I sense the hill isn’t the way back down. Zig-zag through side streets that unfold like a pop-up book into a toy-like town. Stores fling open glass doors displaying candly-like distractions: aromatic packages of coffee, bright sheer scarves that float on shelves like gossamer. Mid-dream, the phone rings in the dark room, urgently, dream flickers, recedes.
Dream Redux: light scatters and blurs. I am lying on a wood floor, dreaming a question about my son. Bear appears immediately upon inquiry, nodding his shaggy head yes, yes he’s sure, yes I am welcome. Somewhere in Dream I know it’s winter and Bear should be hibernating, but I have summoned him and he has come. Spirit guide of my son, he is Andarta and Artio, fierce defender of art, blender of intuition with instinct. Symbol of truth. autonomy. We have raised my son fiercely. Encouraged him to find his own way, then flinched when he faltered. “You cannot know what is true unless you know what isn’t true.” Bear tells me this with a human voice just before I wake to see the snow flowering everything to white


-lori landau

*if you click on the photo you can see her work in all its gorgeous detail.

Parenting by Example, Not for the Faint-Hearted

me, right side up, the way a mother belongs

To my friends and family who love me, I am known as a passer-outer. I'm not proud of it. It is, as they say, what it is. I faint when I get scared because I breath-hold or over-breathe and end up with what's known as a vasovagal response. (I know it's wikipedia, but trust me, it's close enough).

I know it's a mind over matter thing, and for a short while in my late teens, I was able to let my mind win out, but little since then, so I've mostly learned to deal with it. I bury my pride and ask to lie down when I have my eyes "touched" by anything that they shouldn't be touched by (IMHO this includes pretty much anything and everything except my own finger/contact lenses), or when I have blood drawn or any major medical work done. The fear isn't in my rational mind, but obviously it's there somewhere. I also get lightheaded if I think my family is in danger or there's a health scare.

I seriously couldn't even *look* at the photos
of real ears with needles sticking out. Oy.

Which leads me to yesterday and my son's appointment with an accupuncturist. And the part where I tried to demonstrate how simple and easy it was to get acupuncture by letting the guy stick needles in my ears first.

It wasn't just the needles, however, it was his lack of gentle delivery when he saw an "issue with your uterus" that I may have wanted to "get checked out."

Son watching. Mind racing to the "C" word, to the specialists I would have to see, to the teary videos I would leave for my children in an effort to say a proper farewell. And, of course, NEEDLES being poked in my EARS.*

Suffice it to say, it wasn't my best parenting moment, but we've learned that my son is very good in the face of an emergency which includes watching his mother turn an inhuman shade of green-white, as her eyes roll back in her head and her normal self disappears from conscious view.

Also suffice it to say, No, he did NOT choose to get acupuncture himself after that.

- gae

*and, yes, everything is fine, as far as I know, with my uterus. Turns out the dude was merely being awkward about asking if perhaps I was pregnant (no!) and/or had my period (bingo -- and kind of impressive that he could tell that from my ear).

The Three R's of 2011: Renew, Resolve, Relinquish

Ok, those may not be The three R's but they are my three R's for the New Year.

First of all, 2011 will be the fucking hugest year of my life in a long time (Yes I can, I can describe it that way if I want to), as I am finally mere months away from an effort that was a decade in the making coming to fruition: the debut of my first novel, The Pull of Gravity, due on bookstore shelves near you on or about May 10, 2011, but likely to make appearances sooner, if I am learning anything about this book business (which I may not be).

Second of all, after several years of what felt to me like nearly-insurmountable upheaval, my life seems to be returning to a calm and peaceful "normal." In most ways, this is a pure, good thing and I am grateful. But in some ways it worries me as I don't want life to become staid or lazy. I don't want to find myself blindsided by a life lived in a rut, that is something less than I thought it would be. Thus, I want to count my blessings, but not settle. I want to remember to make life happen, and be brave enough to do so.

Which brings me to my New Year's Resolutions. I tend not only to make new ones, generally a mix of the physical and the emotional, but also to renew old ones that have made my life richer, or me a better person, even if it's only been in the struggling to keep them.

As such, here are a few of my Renewals, Resolutions and Relinquishments for the New Year, gulp, 2011:

RENEWALS:

• take the stairs, up or down, for anything five flights or less (I made this resolution probably six or seven years ago and haven't broken it since except if there were no stairs to be found or if my arms were laden with heavy things);

• Swim regardless - if there is one thing I have learned it is this: no matter how hard it is to drag myself to and in the water at times, I am NEVER sorry I swam. Never.

• Be a good friend and confidante; do not share other's secrets nor say behind someone's back what you wouldn't say to their face - I am usually successful at these, and the few times I have failed, I have usually "reported" myself to the person on bended knee.

NEW RESOLUTIONS:

• Attempt (and make) a five mile open water swim;

• Burpees, every day. I don't know what it is about me and Burpees (they are my nemesis and I will beat them!) but I have decided they are the ANTI- ass-in-a-chair and I will do (X - number t/b/d) every day. If you don't understand why I think this, click on the word Burpees up there and do ten good ones and you will start to see;

• Be Brave. Whatever this entails. I presume I may have to do some travelling alone this year, get up in front of audiences, push myself beyond my comfort zone. I'll just have to feel the fear, and do it anyway.

And, last but not least,

RELINQUISHMENTS:

and by relinquish, I mean this more in a "let go of the things you cannot control" sort of way, rather than any connotation of giving up. Maybe the better word is ACCEPTANCE but it messed with my whole R thing.

• Age gracefully. No matter what I do, my face and body will age. Nope. Are aging. If you are not yet 46, you will be one day, and you, like me, will go, "holy fuck, how did I get here?" No matter how many crunches you do, your stomach will be softer; no matter how squats you do, your knees will sag at least slightly; no matter how many miles you swim, the skin around your shoulder muscles will be softer. There will be 40, and 50, and 60, and godwilling 70, and 80 and more. I will age. I am aging. I might as well try to accept it with grace. Or, if that is too hard for now, at least, focus on it less.

• Strive to do better without disregarding past efforts. I think I'll let that one stand on its own.

• Enjoy the Success and Let Go. And, as for my book, The Pull of Gravity, it will get out there. I may love the cover or hate it; it may get less marketing attention and dollars than I hoped for, or more. Some people will like it, some (yes, breathe) will not. And if I am lucky, a few will find it memorable.

          It will be whatever it will be, and it won't be what it won't be. But it's gone to print now, so I might as well enjoy the ride.

Happy new year.

-gae

p.s. Got resolutions? I'd love to hear, and cheer you on.

Missing the Ritual and the Open Water

The spring/summer/fall of 2010 will be remembered as one that brought my life a new source of inspiration: the challenge, beauty, and camaraderie of open water swimming.

It not only filled me with a renewed sense of energy and enthusiasm, but, for the first time in my life (since I was a gymnast at age 8 - 12 or so), at age 46, I actually felt physically powerful and capable.

As the winter slips in and I burrow more and more, I feel the glaring disparity between summer and winter even more than I have in the past. As someone who already suffers from a bit of seasonal affective disorder, this isn't the best thing. I already feel the winter sloth setting in. The lethargy. The 'everything aches and I don't want to go outside' blues.

Sure, I head to the pool on a tri-weekly (or more) basis, and the water fills me, but it just isn't the same.

I miss the open water.

I miss this:

and, this:

and, of course, this:

But, especially, I miss this:

Spring really can't return soon enough.

- gae





Of Bats and Beards

My lovely husband.

I have been married for hmmmmn-teen years now, and at times it has been great, and at times, um, maybe not so great. Through it all we have maintained a sense of humor (mostly) toward ourselves and each other and admired one another for our strengths and good qualities (truly), even if the lesser bad qualities were not doing it for us at the moment.

We've always said that the thing that has held our marriage together are our shared values and sense of humor. And if you asked me what I admired most about my husband, I would tell you that it is his humor, intellect, loyalty, and  quiet gentleness that move me.

Which is why it has me laughing for more than a week now, that when I conjure affection for him, I keep returning to the image of him leaving our house last week like The Terminator, a baseball bat gripped in each hand, on a day that he thought I needed some protection.

And, don't be fooled by his sweet face; he looked like he knew how to use them.

And it doesn't hurt that my usually clean-shaven man is now sporting a scruffy beard.

*swoons.*

Foolish of me? Perhaps. But, true, nonetheless. So, I confess.

Of course, I still admire him for his humor, intellect, gentleness and our shared values.

But, oh, the bats and the beard.

- gae

Reading is Exce(r)ptional

photo credit: Rick Kopstein

Oy, what a stretch that title was.

(Consider that for you, Mike Wood).

So, fine, sue me. I'm overdue for a blog post here.

I've been lavishing the attention on my YA-friendly blog lately because, well, because that's the only type of book I've sold so far. *waves two womens' fiction manuscripts wildly through the air.*

At any rate.

As usual, I've been reading three books at once, all too slowly: one classic (The Great Gatsby -- would have finished it sooner but I (ahem) lost it for a week and only re-found it last night in one of those "Alzheimery" places which we will not discuss), one YA (The Miles Between -- because I write it, I need to read it too, not to mention I like it) and one contemporary fiction (Tinkers by Paul Harding, which happened to win the Pultizer this year.) I'm not very far into it, but already I see hints of why it might have won, and decided to share an excerpt that I wish I wrote with you. There is nothing after it, because I feel it deserves to stand on its own.

At the outset of Tinkers, we meet George Washington Crosby who is dying in a hospital bed in the middle of his living room, and is seemingly in the hallucinatory throes of his final days:

     "Lack of exercise might have been the reason that, when he had his first radiation treatment for the cancer in his groin, his legs swelled up like two dead seals on a beach and then turned as hard as lumber. Before he was bedridden, he walked as if he were an amputee from a war that predated modern prosthetics; he tottered as if two hardwood legs hinged with iron pins were buckled to his waist. When his wife touched his legs at night in bed, through his pajamas, she thought of oak or maple and had to make herself think of something else in order not to imagine going down to his workshop in the basement and getting sandpaper and stain and sanding his legs and staining them with a brush, as if they belonged to a piece of furniture. Once, she snorted out loud, trying to stifle a laugh, when she thought, My husband, the table. She felt so bad afterward that she wept."

- gae