The Grass, Softer and Greener. . .

me, a few, brief years ago. . . 

I look at this photo and I think: wow, look how much younger, sexier, bolder, skinnier, more entertaining I was.

I crave her. I miss her.

I wonder how she drifted.

I forget that she was also depressed,
anxious,
lost,
wanting, waiting, wishing, and, um,
not eating much.

I forget how she stumbled through the dark house trying simply to hold onto things.

My life since then is happier,

less on edge,

more content.

And, this is a good thing.

But sometimes, I look back on her -- that me from a few short years ago -- with longing.

me, the other day, shorter hair,
more shadows and lines,
a bit less longing,
and yet. . . 

Maybe that's just how I am.

Maybe I am made up of longing.

So that, if I'm not longing someone,

or something,

I am just longing for that old me.

Maybe it's a writer thing. Maybe we must keep scratching at the surface, picking, turning over emotions, until we hit raw nerves.

Maybe we're afraid we'll be stale and staid (boring) if we're not in some glorious state of pain.

And the truth is, it's not hard to get there -- stay there -- wanting,  wishing,

fretting,

longing.

Life obliges,

makes it easy to feel unsettled,

by making it all so tenuous and fleeting.

Face it.

In front of you, it's all a blur,

whooshing by faster than you can catch your breath.

So, behind,

back there,

you,

then,

"ago"

seems stretched out,

heightened,

nearly gilded.

The grass back there is softer, somehow,

isn't it?

Younger,

and greener.

gae

*post script: this blog post has been resonating with friends -- both on my facebook page and in my email -- it made me remember this other post of similar theme, with this beautiful  "green" poem by my friend, and poet and artist, Lori Landau. You can see it HERE.

Paperback Party, complete with essential footnotes. . .

me, begging pleady eyes.

This is me, close up, in your face.

Are you sick of me yet?

(please say no, please say no, please say no...)

It's okay, sometimes I'm sick of me too.

Still, it's a dog eat dog world out there, and sometimes writers just have to promote themselves.*fn1

So, once again, here I go.

If you prefer not to read any further blatant self author book promotion, here's a lovely place to sit, instead,

looking out over my father's gardens. Feel free to stay here and relax:

Nice, right?

(Are you still here?)

If you are still reading, guess what?

Square Fish did a fabulous job with the new cover!

My paperback is out! Well, the official release date is February 5, but the ship date is 1/17 which means boxes and boxes of the The Pull of Gravity in paperback are now circulating all over the country. *fn2

Meaning this: It would make me really happy if:

a) you buy one for yourself;

b) you buy one for a beloved tween or teen;

c) you already read it and loved it and now told two friends to a) buy one for themselves or b) buy one for a beloved tween or teen they know.

also, it doesn't hurt *fn3 if you put up a review on Amazon.

But what would make me happiest -- at least if you are local -- is d) if you come and join me to celebrate the paperback release on 2/10 at the wonderful Huntington Public Library (it's a Friends of the Library fundraiser). If you want to read more about the launch party, you may do so HERE or HERE (you must register to come!).

If you don't come, be warned. You will be missing:

a) monkeys *fn4;

b) jugglers *fn5;

c) flame-throwers *fn6;

d) delicious cupcakes *fn7; and

e) a live, bravura performance by an internationally-acclaimed musician! *fn8.

Plus, clearly, I will be doing the entire reading standing in a pool. *fn9

So, see, in the end, this isn't really about me and my blatant self promotion.

This is about YOU, reading a good book, telling your friends about a good book, and having an awesome Sunday afternoon in February with live cupcakes and live music. *fn10

Also, there's a Writer's Workshop and Publishing Q&A beforehand, if that's your cup of tea. *fn11

So, that's it. I love my readers and need my readers and I'm grateful if you spread the word.

Speaking of which, my next book, still unnamed but referred to as Frankie Sky, comes soon from Algonquin Young Readers. They've launched their Fall 2103 line of galleys into the Universe and have gone live on Twitter (@AlgonquinYR) and facebook. If you're either place, you should check them out and follow them. I'm sure there are monkeys and jugglers galore! *fn13

Thanks for reading.

xo gae

footnotes:

*fn1: did you skip over that link? Because seriously, at least if you're a writer, it is one of the funniest things I've ever read. Just in case, I'll give you the link again. Hell is My Own Book Tour.

*fn2: this may be a slight exaggeration.

*fn3: it actually helps -- some Amazon algorithm that does something to do something.

*fn4: lie, no monkeys.

*fn5: lie, no jugglers.

*fn 6: lie, no flame throwers

*fn7: all completely true!

*fn8: I promise "David and David" are talented, plus, we must have some relatives in another country somewhere who will vouch for them...

*fn9: hey, I will if the Huntington Library will let me! :)

*fn10: okay fine, no such thing as live cupcakes, you say? What if I put spirulina *fn12 in them?!

*fn11: my cup of tea lately is Tazo Zen Tea (I mean, come on! Lemongrass and Spearmint?!). I'd be genuinely curious what yours is, if you want to tell me. I'm an excellent listener that way. :)

*fn12: i promise not to put spirulina in them.

*fn13: has no idea if there are monkeys and jugglers. You'll have to buy the books and open the pages to see. . . :)

reflect and renew and a few wishes - hello 2013

kissing goodbye 2012... for better and worse...

I've been on a tear to finish a manuscript which means long days and nights at the computer in between anything else I might be doing.

And I've had a head cold (doesn't that sound old fashioned?) for weeks. A two week + head cold.

And, of course, there was the little matter of the holidays.

Which is my way of saying that my thoughts are disorganized and discombobulated and I feel unready to make my usual resolutions.

Yet, I feel the year end is an important time -- an opportunity to reflect, and a clean slate to renew.

So, I thought I'd at least take a few minutes to reflect on a very few of the highlights of my year (honestly, there have been MANY)

and to renew my determination in a few of the areas I didn't quiet live up to my own hopes and expectations this year (honestly, there have been MANY).

Happy Reflection:

Highlights (these are MY personal highlights, not those of my children - that their highlights are my greatest joy should go without saying):

• selling my next novel to an amazing editor at Algoquin;

• attending my first big book festival as a published author;

look, I even got my own star... :)

• completing a five mile open water swim;

the title page of the script.

• holding a movie script for The Pull of Gravity in my hands --

-- and (yes, it's still totally pie-in-the-sky at this point, so the truth is, I'm not so much "excited" as I am flattered and enjoying the fun of it).




Of course, there were other wonderful highlights too,

a school visit in Pennsylvania, and a few in NYC, as well as a bunch of Skype visits to classrooms around the country giving me a chance to connect directly with my readers;

the day to day humor and joy of connecting with my friends -- both virtual and in person;

and the blessing of living near the water, and extending our open water season to nearly seven months of regular daily swims...

West Neck Beach where I frolic with the Pod

 

to name a few.

But there are places where I've failed miserably and hope to do better this year.

Renewed Commitment:

• More writing, less facebook. Sad, but true. I love my shiny facebook friends, but I need to be more focused and less distracted from my writing. I had hoped to have my "next hopeful" manuscript [working title In Sight of Stars] revised by the end of the summer, and have a new one I started that I was liking in rough draft by year's end. Instead, I am still trying to finalize the former and haven't touched the other. It's nobody's fault but my own.

Not to mention that I hoped to revise Swim Back to Me, and maybe send it out there once again.

Yes, I've done some good writing, and had revisions due to my editor in between, but the lampost and I both know I've procrastinated a great deal, and I'm not getting any younger.

• More yoga. Less almost going to yoga.

• Less talk, more action. Helping people. Contributing to the larger world.

• More reading, less mindless TV;

                                                                                and, dare I say,

• I've got a few bigger swims to tackle...

Well, I've got a lot more where that came from: disappointments that I want to turn to opportunity and personal improvement, but the bewitching hour of my headcold is getting the best of me.

I can't end 2012 without making a few wishes:

• gun control
• a kinder gentler nation for my kids,
• and that you all have a year without suffering.

Happy New Year to all!

Please don't drink and drive. Pretty please, with a cherry on top. <3 p="p">
xox gae

where water and wonder meet

i love artistic people.

i love the creative spirit.

i love when i connect with someone's work so deeply that I try to inhale it, internalize it, make it seep in through my pores.

(although it simultaneously pains me that i can't possess it wholly, wrap myself in it, make it happen through my fingers, or my lens).

no, i am not above coveting.

speaking of which,

this is lori.

photo credit: lori landau

she is where water and wonder meet.

she is, among other things, a poet, an artist, a friend.

i have known her since i am 15.

as teens and college students, we wrote poetry together as we pined for boys, made sense of the world, yearned for more. i have always coveted her words.

now, i also covet her art.

i admit this. oh, how i do.

last night, i was lucky enough to attend the closing of her show Works in a Series at the New York Open Center  (a meshing of her work from Elemental Soul and Nature of Mind). Did I mention the photographs are all of water?

Truth is Nameless, archival print
credit: lori landau


that was one of the many that made me hyperventilate. . .

you can imagine how i was mesmerized. . .

this is also lori

At the end of the show, lori spoke a bit about her creative process and what moves her as an artist and a photographer:

"Every photograph, every painting, and every drawing I do starts from the same place: that small, nameless force inside that seeks connection to myself and the world around me. . .

Art making is not an act of doing—it is a way of being in the world, a way of filtering all of those ordinary moments we all have—of being mindful about the little things: the way the light touches the top of the mountain when the sun is coming up. . . the sound of the ocean when you realize that it is breathing just like you are."

the audience listened, rapt, as she continued:



Breath of Light, archival print
credit: lori landau

"I don’t think you need to make art to get this. You just need to open to the experience.  

Both making art and viewing it are acts of deep listening, of deep feeling.
I know that you get this . . . 

We are all vulnerable. We all want to understand a little more about mystery.

We want to touch it. We want to be it.

We all want to matter."


when you look at lori's photographs,

you feel,

you connect,

but moreso, there is a certain tranquility, coupled with a stirring,

that allows you to open yourself, breathless,

to be moved.

in this way, her art matters.

***

If her photographs are tranquil, her paintings demand a bit more,

they pull and push,

they promise comfort, but house pain.

they evoke our own discomfort

but offer a path to calm.

top left Yama; top right: Dharana
middle left: Vyadhi; middle right: Tapasya
bottm left: dhyana; bottom right: Samadhi
4 x 5 paintings acrylic on canvas

credit: lori landau

". . . my desire is to do something with my feelings, to rise above them, to transform them, to transcribe my own interior. I consider my camera, pen & brush an extension of my hands, a translator of the “everyday me” a way to evoke the idealized part of myself. . . The photographs and paintings here rain into my heart and my hands from somewhere other than self, but I recognize myself more clearly when they arrive."


This particular show of Lori's closes today, but there will be more, trust me, and when there are,

you should go see them.

connect,

reflect,

be moved.

"Photography and art remind me that

like water,

everything is constantly changing. . . 

(they) are a visual documentation of where I have been,

the only way,

other than memory,

to hold on to something. "

 

 

- gae

---------------

More about Lori:
 

Writer, artist and photographer Lori Landau’s work explores the intimate connection between meditative and creative states. As a certified yoga and meditation teacher, Landau is deeply inspired by the Buddhist concept of interconnectedness. A spiritual nomad at heart, her work
symbolizes her exploration of sacred mystery.

Her articles and poetry have been published in a wide range of magazines, books and blogs; most recently, in the upcoming An Anthology of Babes: 26 (or 30) Women Give Motherhood a Voice." In addition, Landau is a visual artist, whose work has been exhibited in several group and solo shows. Her concept-driven and interdisciplinary art spans a range of mediums, including photography, drawing and painting. Landau regularly uses her art and words as a platform to raise consciousness about both global and meta issues.

You can find more of her work on her own blog,

www.consciousnesscreativity.com, as well as the women’s section of
Technorati.com.

Finally, her new monthly column for iPinion will debut this Sunday! 

 

Missing Loehmann's

The good Loehmann's used to be in Huntington, a solid half hour west from my parents' house, where I grew up in Smithtown.

If you don't know Loehmann's, you are not a Jewish girl from Long Island.

If you don't know Loehmann's, you are not your Jewish-from-Long-Island mother's daughter.

Loehmann's was a dream maker: the place you could spend hours trying on, crying, laughing, until you found that perfect item or six that made you feel pretty, presentable, ready to face the world with your new wardrobe. The place you shopped for something to wear on your first date. The place you wept over braces, glasses, thunder thighs, too-big-boobs, unruly shopping hair, or the dilemma of finding something that would nicely mask the mild curvature in your spine that would require you to wear a scoliosis brace.

Loehmann's was the place that patient men -- fathers, husbands, unwitting boyfriends -- sat waiting, lined up and uncomfortable, in the hard plastic penalty chairs by the door, as the women they "represented" disappeared for painful hours into the bowels of the dressing room, only to reappear occasionally wearing the same item in a different color, or a size up or down, to ask the dreaded questions, "What do you think? This one, or this one? Does this look good on me?"

mom and me, undoubtably that sweat suit was my
80s idea of high fashion, but the sneakers are cute, no?

Remember, these were the days before iPhones and iPads. How my heart bleeds for those men...

Now, I say there was a good Loehmann's. . .

Several years after we started frequenting the far west (wonderful, wish-fulfilling) Loehmann's, a new Loehmann's opened east of us, a mere ten minutes or so from my mom's.

We were excited at first, but it quickly became evident that there was no comparison between the old Loehmann's (good!) and the new one: Bad. It was as if they were two different stores.

Disappointment, but no matter. We were troopers.
We would just have to continue to travel a half hour in the wrong direction to the good one.

There was this one time, however. . .

I was home for the weekend visiting (I was fresh out of college and, well, did I mention I could be an uber-bitch when I was younger?)

My mom and I donned proper shopping attire and off we went.

To the good Loehmann's.

The usual excitement popped and crackled in the air.

Our brains swam with images of hand knit sweaters.

That new-tag smell permeated the air.

Three-quarters of the way there, we got in an argument. Who remembers about what? Something stupid, don't ask me.

(total lie, I remember. . . oh, how I remember!)

Suffice it to say, things quickly decompensated. I mean things in the car got ugly.

My mother veered off the road into some other shopping center, and turned the car around.

We drove in silence toward home. Which was better than the prior screaming.

At the exit to our house, my mother kept going, the tension still thick in the car.

Tentative, afraid (was she dropping me off far from home where I'd have to hitch a ride back to the city?), I whispered, "where are we going?"

She turned and glared at me, the fury shining in her eyes.

"The bad Loehmann's," my mother spat at me.


And so we did.

We bought nothing.

A fine punishment, indeed.

This Sunday morning, driving home from dropping my son at Driver's Ed, I passed the old good Loehmann's, a sense of intense longing permeating my soul.

I mean, I know the store has been long empty. . .

But this time, as I passed, it had suddenly morphed into a mega Tool store.

A mega-fucking tool store.

Don't the Gods of all things good know that tools are the farthest thing from fashion?

There was something so bracing about seeing that tool store there. It left me feeling lost and old and forlorn.

I miss Loehmann's.

I love my mother.

Thank goodness for Annie Sez.

email exchange with my mom this a.m.
 

- gae

of space stations, and emails with my mother, and time that is fleeting

sometimes I can barely stay afloat.

sometimes I can barely stand how very fleeting it is.


- gae

Post-Hurricane Lamentations and Thankfulness

Bodies of water nearly merged where once they were separate
West Neck Beach, Long Island
Photo: The Water-blog, Carol Moore

Hurricane Sandy blew through here, razing homes, yanking down power lines, changing the shoreline forever.

Our power was out for 11 cold days (house down to 46 degrees by the end of the second dark week), and, yet, we were so very lucky compared to so many others.

Despite the downed trees lying across roads like so many dead bodies left to decay, lost of any of their once-magestic magnificence, and one hatcheted school vacation, there is little evidence of the utter destruction it left in its wake.

Go a few towns over, and that is not the case.

We haven't spoken in over twenty years, but I keep wondering after my high school boyfriend who I know has a family in Lindenhurst.

Here, things have gone pretty much back to normal.



Me, out front, getting an endorphin rush the other day,
with a few friends from the West Neck Pod. Photo, Carol Moore.

But for the occasional effort to donate non-perishables, warm clothes and blankets, my life has returned to its usual mix of parenting, writing, swimming, and entertaining my falsely-perceived masses on facebook.

Of fretting over how gray my hair has gotten (very), or how much more my knees can possibly continue to sag (hopefully, not much more).

And, over larger things, too, like the departure of my first child, in less than a year, to the cruel hard world of college.

How will he fare?

How will I fare without him?

Over my younger son's self esteem, having gotten cut from the high school basketball team. And, no, that Michael Jordan story holds no magic for anyone anymore.

And, yes, over which quinoa recipe I should make for this year's Thanksgiving Table.



My three boys at last year's Thanksgiving table.

I'm going with a fig, arugula, orange and goat cheese quinoa, drizzled balsamic reduction. I may toss in some pomegranate seeds -- a symbol of renewal -- for good measure.

I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving this year. Especially this year, though it's always been my favorite holiday.

I have a good, easy life of which I am endlessly cognizant, grateful.

For which I am eternally thankful.

Well, except for the sagging knees.

- gae

p.s. A very happy Thanksgiving to all my readers. I am so appreciative that you stop by here.