Saul Good and Co.

Island Fever

Right. Well. Hi. It's almost island time and though I'm already there mentally, I'm way behind in my typical brand of furious preparation. Is my relative mellowness a side-effect of living through pandemic time? Possibly. Is there a guarantee that I won't go full tilt once I put my head down and start the real work of packing later this afternoon? Nope. All I know is, I'm in a happy place and it's fixing to get happier. 

Between my recent bedroom overhaul and getting permanent AC units set up in our house, we've been taking the opportunity to clear out and organize and pare down all our things. I have given away so much in the last month, and it's a drop in the bucket. Still, how freeing. I honestly think I won't be happy until my possessions are whittled down to a capsule wardrobe of clothing, useful kitchen tools, photographs and books. No ephemera, junk or knick-knacks. My kid is less on board with making this happen, and I can't blame him but I've got the itch to keep clearing out and my goal is to do it, slowly but surely. 

In the meantime, I'm about to spend the next month accumulating nothing but miles on my running shoes, sand in my creases and hugs from people I haven't seen for way too long. Time to go fill my coffers now, time for writing about it all at a later date TBD. 

 

 

 

 

Lemons

My heart has obviously not been into writing lately. My brain melted. Summer is too summery, and that's a half good/half pukey situation. Anyway. I did something careless and stupid and it stopped my writerly heart for a full five seconds. 

I accidentally deleted my desktop folder with the most recent draft of my novel, notes for the second, and my exhaustively researched spreadsheet for agents to query. It's gone, and I know it's gone. Here's a thing about me, you'd never know it to look at my house, but I am anal retentive and a bit of a control freak about some things, and the big thing is what I call "mental clutter." I need a clean desktop on my computer in order to focus. I need my inbox to be at zero. I'm ruthless about clearing away the things I don't need, and I got into the habit of emptying my trash bin. Somehow I swept that all-important folder into my recycle bin and emptied it. I don't know when, but it's definitely what happened. I discovered this when I went to find my manuscript to send to someone and it was just gone. In my zeal to create laptop zen, I FMLd.

Ok not entirely Fd. I have an earlier draft so it's not like my novel is vapor. It's just not its best-best. I know I could probably take the computer to Geek Squad or something and we could find it but I decided to go a different way. In addition to being more conscientious about backing up my most presh files, I'm going to go with the old wisdom that is that writing only gets better, stronger, when you have to start over. So my project now is to do another full draft, from start to finish. I missed my characters anyway, so it's a good opportunity to revisit them with rested eyes. Everything that's gone is gone and that's a shame, but it's mainly inconvenience at this point. In a sick way it's almost what I need to make any progress, but then again I'm a known sicko. 

I plan to make the most of this boneheadery and use my mistake to improve myself (metaphor alert!) but I honestly I wouldn't recommend doing as I do in this situation. 

Happy July! Maybe I'll blog again this month, maybe not. I am a Scorpio and therefore a woman of mystery. 

Bang a Gong

This past weekend I had a reunion of sorts with my immediate family. Now that we're all vaccinated, we had a chance to be together for the first time in a LONG time, and it was perfect. Our weekly zoom happy hours helped get us through this pandemic, but truly there is nothing like being in the same room with the people you love. One of the much-awaited activities of the weekend was a viewing of the now-legendary "Gong Show" productions put on in our community in the early 1980s. Back in the days when my sister Danielle was sick, after she passed, actually, my parents banded together with some friends and family members and other parents of kids with cancer (as you may know there were a disproportionate amount for our small town during this era) and formed a fundraising organization to help with these families' medical expenses. The group only lasted for a few years, but in that time their big benefit event was "The Gong Show," based on the wacky TV talent show. Once a year for a couple of nights the high school auditorium was taken over by a roster of local "talent" as well as a panel of nutty characters, including one played by my mom. My dad was the host. It always sold out, and I have such fond memories of the excitement and fun of the show, the buzz of activity backstage, even being in a few acts. I hadn't seen the show in decades, and I was very much looking forward to our planned viewing (my brother--who was born after the Gong Show's run--is in the process converting the VHS tapes to DVD so he is the keeper of this particular treasure). I expected to laugh and cringe and reminisce. I did not expect my own emotional reaction. 

Yes, it was a lot of fun to see our parents and aunts and uncles and their friends a babies (my mom was in her late 20s, my dad just in his 30s), just letting loose and hamming it up. It was good to see people who are no longer alive, and to realize that I remember every bit of choreography from some routines, even ones I wasn't part of. The lyrics. The behind-the-scenes detail. That was all great, and our collective spouses got to experience a surreal WTF panorama of their father-in-law with a perm and waltzing with a guy in a busted Cookie Monster costume. It was a whole lot, and what I didn't share with anyone was that I was fighting back tears much of the time. It was a whole lot for me to plunge into that particular section of my past. It turns out that these are the years, on the back of my sister's death, when something broke inside me and it didn't heal right, and I guess I've been trying to make up for that in some way ever since. It was fun, in the moment, to make jokes and revel in the bonkers-ness of it all with the people who love me, but I was so taken aback by the wave of grief and the accompanying confusion of other complicated emotions that hit me, I had to keep it to myself a little more. That part was too big, too raw, to share, even though these are the people I should feel safest to share with. Yada yada yada, therapy this week was a doozy. 

I have no regrets about watching the show with my fam. I kinda want to watch it again, now that I am aware what it brings out in me, to sit with that and appreciate the long process of becoming a whole person while I get an eyeful of  my mom in a nurse's get up administering fake enemas to audience members and teenagers twirling fire batons and my own tiny self in a dyed yellow pillowcase, doing interpretive dance to "Pac-Man Fever." Yes I still know the moves by heart. Yes it's worth it to revisit the pain because it makes my heart muscles stronger. All these years later I'm still trying but I'm not giving up. It still knocks me over, how life is full of hurt and injustice, devastation and rage, but joy and humor and the circling wagons of care and love, too. It's all right there on the stage. Overall I'd still give it a 10. 

A-Twitter

I'm fascinated by writers who can do all the things concurrently, like do their writing jobs plus keep blogs (esp. some amazing, selfless ones that are very helpful to other writers) plus be funny and smart and amazing on social media. I am not that kind of writer. I'm a heat-seeking word missile, focused on one target at a time. Manuscript when it's manuscript time. Blog when it's blog time. Social media... sporadically and mainly in picture form. I like to think that if I had the chance to be a writer as a paying gig, I could maybe mentally organize myself enough to do more than one thing at once. I can generally adapt to what's expected of me in a job, all those years of being Ms. School weren't for nothing. Today, though, I'm feeling the ways that I'm out of my depth. I was going to write a blog post and then I found out about a pitch event on twitter (for non-aspiring author types, this is when you tweet a description of your unpublished novel and see if you get any bites by agents) and my brain energy is there now. Never mind that I'm not a twitter person in general, I mean, I follow a lot of people and get news from my curated news sources and I also use it to "promote" my "blog" or whatever, but I'm not a person who tweets. Succinct bon mots are not my strength, and I have not been so great at growing an online community (I have like 7 followers) so it could be a big fail but hey, no risk, no reward. I made myself write it all up in here just to generate some thinking heat to work on my pitches, so thanks for following this far if you did. Nothing came of it last time I did one of these things, but it just made me hungrier. I'll let you know how it goes, if indeed it goes, and if you have any tips I'd be grateful if you send them my way.

Happy June, Happy Pride Month, Happy Do-One-Thing-a-Day-to-Dismantle-White-Supremacy Life!

 

Teaser Pleaser Rocker Shocker Spocker

Hi babes. I am in the full throes of spring fever but also my wheels are spinning on the writing front so that's always cause for celebration. I've been brainstorming like crazy about future blog posts, and I'm going to plug them in here in order to shame myself into making good on writing them before long. Questionable methodology, but you can't argue with past results. So in no established order, the roster includes:

 

1) a return to my special brand of music writing (purely as a fan, devoid of aptitude or terminology), kicked off by Funkadelic's "Maggot Brain"

 

2) love languages - mine, yours, those of the people around me and how they can shed light on relationships

 

3) racism and my long overdue "come get your people" manifesto

 

4) five things I hope to accomplish before I turn 50

 

5) what it's like to be a person who needs a lot of alone time

 

6) my old academic blog and the regrets I have about some of the things I wrote about in there (probably not the things you would think)

 

7) raising a boy child on the cusp of puberty and how I'm not even totally panicking about that at all. 

 

Right now I've got some other things to get to, including a shift in my actual office (!) but maybe check back before the seasons change again. 

 

Rut Busters

Life, am I right? It's been happening around me in so many intense ways lately, and I don't feel like writing about any of them, so I won't. Ok then, that felt good.

It's like this when I go so long between posts, like, where do I start? So I put it off and put it off and nothing ever gets written and I know from way too much experience that if I ever intend to get back to it, the best way to start is to close my eyes and jump into the nothingness. I don't need to do any recaps or offer explanations, just pick up and go. It's like deleting an entire overwhelming inbox - some information might go missing, but it feels like freedom. In blogging, you've gotta conquer the white space, just fill it with ANYTHING. I don't know why but it makes it easier the next time. 

I haven't been disciplined with writing at all lately. I've been unapologetically lazy. I know it's ramping up again though, even if it's just putting the pedal to the metal in my quest for publication. My fellow writing people know the deal, it's classic codependency. Writing always pulls you back in. The goal is to make something of it when it does, and we'll just see about that.

HR has been back to school almost a month and has taken to it way better than expected, so that's a happy happening. The sun is shining, all manner of purple flowers are popping, the Sox are playing at Fenway and I'm this close to seeing my family whenever I want. The country and the world are, as ever, an overwhelming 24/7  hellfire cavalcade, but if I can do one thing every day in service of making it less so, in any way, I consider it a decent day.

Onward. Forward.   

All in All is All We Are

Where were you when you got the news that Kurt Cobain died? Most people in my generation can't remember what we had for dinner last night but we can recreate that moment for you in a word-picture so detailed you'd think it had been commissioned for a million dollars. I was a freshman in college, in the pre-internet days when news traveled at its own pace. I didn't have cable tv in my room, and as I went about that business that beautiful spring morning, I noticed that the TV in the common area, which was often tuned to MTV, was playing the Unplugged version of "All Apologies" every time I passed through the lobby. It's not like it was a new release at the time, so when I finally got curious enough to slow down and watch for a few seconds, I saw the news of his suicide scrolling across the screen. There were a few other young women gathered at that point, and we all stood in silent shock, as it sunk in. 

The truth is, though I was a Nirvana fan, I wasn't rabid. It was sad news, but it didn't rip my heart out like it did for a lot of people. It's just such a galvanizing cultural moment. Where were you? Who were you with? How did the news break? Today makes 27 years that we found out he was gone, exactly the amount of time he was alive. Pain is pain, and enough pain can make death look like a better option. I'm extremely lucky to never have gotten to a point where I can identify with this feeling, but anyone who does certainly has my sympathy. That's the overwhelming takeaway of the loss of a human, any human, regardless of the number of lives he may have touched. 

Back to it from the standpoint of cultural impact, though, if you have read or heard anything about the novel I wrote (even just the title), you're aware that Cobain/Nirvana has something to do with it. That's because coming of age in the grunge era, as I did, the band and their music becomes a touchpoint, a common reference whether or not you're a fan. Let's not leave out the clothing of the time, which I took to wholeheartedly about halfway through high school and didn't look back for another decade and a half. Seattle bands and, to an extent the hip-hop artists that I favored, ruined fashion for me, I mean, it didn't exactly ruin it because what's wrong with being comfortable, but it ruined my ability to properly gauge what fit me and I wore things two sizes too big for way too long. When I wear a 90s vintage piece now, I remember swimming in my clothes all the way through to my 30s and I enjoy the resurgence of fashion as a hobby. It's frivolous, but it's an indelible marker of time.

You may have noticed that I lost the writing mojo I so smugly cultivated in the first few months of the pandemic, and I have lacked the motivation to force myself to recapture it. That's ok, we're all treading water in some way, but thinking about the significance of the date today made me want to sit in front of a computer and do something with it. The product is...errr. The point is not totally abandoning the practice. 

RIP Kurt, and flannel forever. 

So Tired, Tired of Waiting

Have you gotten the sense that joy has been on hold, if not outright cancelled in the past year? I've experienced good times, but always with my fingers crossed, trying to appreciate the moment but aware that in the background, something just isn't right. That's the pandemic, of course. That was also the election cycle. And that's gun violence and transphobia and racial injustice and... life. That's life and that's always been life, I realize, but something about the past year crystallized it all to the point where I put up a wall between me and my access to inhabiting life in a full way. I think I lost my ability to insist on carving out room for the good within the absolutely, piled-on bad. I don't want to live like that any more. Once and for all. I want to prioritize delight, not in a way that denies the strife all around, but defies it. Yeah, shit's shitty. It will be even in the barely-imaginable future where we've regained a semblance of control over our lives and at the minimum don't live in fear of being other people. Yeah, activism is necessary to make change and always will be and it occurs to me, finally, that I can infuse what is a lifelong commitment with a sense of positive purpose. I can take joy in fighting for what's right, even when it's painful. It doesn't have to feel like taking medicine, even as it is medicinal. Of course I'm still sorting out the hardest parts, but changing my mindset about it helps me feel less stuck and useless. This is more of a pep talk for me than a thought out bit of writing fit for publication, but fuck it, that's 70% of this blog isn't it? I'm tired of waiting on whatever it is I'm waiting on to give myself permission to experience my maximum happiness potential, whatever that is. 

Anyway, I think it's time to call a Goddess Week sometime in the near future. Join me!

 

Sharpen Yer Boot and Bludgeon Yer Eye

I promise I won't keep doing "this time one year ago" posts, but today marks a pretty significant date. It's been exactly one year since Mike got "furloughed" from his main gig, writing questions for a trivia company. Like so many things being thrown at us at the time, we had no idea what was going on or what we were going to do, and thankfully it turned out ok for us. The loss of that job changed our life, and strangely for the better, but when the news landed we were understandably buggin'. I know we've been very, very lucky in how we've fared over the course of this pandemic. I don't say that to brag. It's been hard in its own way, not even counting the loss of Mike's dad to COVID. I just look back on what I wrote a year ago today before we got the news about the trivia job and I don't know how exactly to feel about it. Good for me for being such a precious Molly Sunshine or whatever? Even if I did manage to capitalize on those positives I identified and managed to find many more on top of that, it still seems too soon to reflect meaningfully. In some ways we thrived. We forged new routines, got into a home-based groove that it's kind of hard to imagine giving up now.

There's no doubt I'm over the moon with joy anticipating seeing our friends and families again without fear, and at the same time, the idea of resuming "normal" is like, what? It feels as foreign as lockdown did to the before-version of us. Everyone in this country and in most of the world has been tested, and ruined in some way and here we still are, the fortunate ones anyway. There is much unresolved rage and heartbreak amid the gratitude, and I don't think that's going anywhere. The pandemic is not behind us yet. There's hope, but it's still happening and I guess it's OK to not have any wisdom to offer. I won't even speculate on the long-term effects on our psyches. Just let the days keep bleeding into each other, appreciate I woke up able-bodied, and look forward to the Friday afternoon transition into the sweatpants I've grown an unhealthy attachment to. All right it's not so rote and depressing as all that- there's plenty of big and small lights in the drudgery of everyday existence and today's is doing the same thing we did on this date last year, which is using St. Patrick's Day--plus now the anniversary of Mike's unemployment--as an excuse to drink some Guinness and irish whiskey and hang out. Slainte and all that. 

And She'll Never Never Be Any Good

I've been spending a fair bit of time with my old journals for this little instagram project (it's still fun, so I'm still doing it), and one thing that strikes me over and over is how much I just... left out. Specific memories. Traditions and rituals. Details that live only in my mind. For example, I'm several years into my chronicles at this point, and there is not a single mention of my grandfather, who I saw every single day and was one of my most beloved people. I know it's because I took his presence for granted at that time and I didn't need to remind myself that he was there, but if you only read my journals, you'd never know he existed. I know I've written about him a lot LOT in other venues, including my various blogs, and I have plenty of photographic proof of his presence in my life. There are so many other examples of this, and as I've gravitated toward memoir writing, it really hits home just how many pieces are needed to complete the puzzle of representing a human life. I'm not really even talking about myself here (for once), just in general about what goes into biographies and such. You can do your best to be thorough and rebuild from the ground up with whatever information is available, but at the end of the day, nobody can ever really knows anyone else's mind.  It's an obvious conclusion, but no less WHOA to me. That's my big think-piece for now, taking those baby steps back to bloggy productivity. 

 

It's incredibly warm in New England today, that kind of false spring that you know will only break your heart when it's 32 degrees the next day but you don't care in the moment, it's just enough to give you hope. People are getting vaccinated left and right. I'm finally ready to start sending out my book query. We're moving ahead, as a country. I'm trying to take this opportunity to stay vigilant and double down on the fights that still need fighting, but overall it's a cautiously good time. I never take smiling selfies because even though I think my smile is one of my defining features IRL, it looks goofy to me when I'm taking a pic. I gave it a try anyway because I'm a rebel like that.