Okay, hear me out...

Eh...

After spending Monday through Thursday of last week at my sister Becky's house, I hopped a plane Friday morning and found myself in Memphis, TN. In a plan that was conceived and born in less than 48 hours, Katie's fiancee (the ever-generous Gary) bought me a plane ticket so I could keep my sister and the little chub-nugget Savvy J. company while he piloted a last-minute international flight that took him away for a few days. Busy and important as ever, I was able to clear my schedule.

Most Notable meal: Gus' famous spicy fried chicken with baked beans and slaw. Also, fried pickles and fried green tomatoes. Coconut pie for dessert. (Shocking that I lived to write this entry.)

Most Notable Bonding Moment With Niece: After two days of baby back-up, Savvy chose to have epic baby blow-out while in my arms as I was rocking her to sleep. Did you know that stuff goes right up the back and through their onesies (and on to innocent aunties)?

Second Most Notable Bonding Moment: Going on a walk in the Memphis sun (no snow here!) with Savvy strapped to me via modern ergonomic papoose and having her fall asleep with her little faced nuzzled into my belly while I stroked her soft hair. (Could almost...almost...make me want one. This, despite getting the aforementioned blow-out on my hands.)

The trip has been fab and I head back to NH and to my own bed (!) tomorrow. (The crazies have started acting up---maybe due to lack of sleep---and I found myself up half the night worrying about the mere 30 minutes I have to catch the plane from Detroit---where I stop---to Manchester. I so don't want to miss this flight. Plus, Katie told me once about having to stay in Detroit and how she was put up in a hotel room full of roaches. I'd prefer an airport bathroom floor, thank you very much.)

As far as the Melliterary Spew goes:

I haven't worked on The Bookish one bit since last Monday. Let's hope December 1 comes late this year.

Ribs today!

Lovers and their loving love

Battle scars.

I’m having a bad day. Nobody (besides Joe Lantana) is dying, I’m not getting evicted, and my car (cross your goddamned fingers!) is running, often dependably. Still a bad day. When Dan left for work this morning we were in a fight. No phones were thrown (this time), we weren’t evening yelling, but there was an unhappiness that sat between us even as we hugged goodbye. The uneasiness about this is only compounded by the fact that I am sleeping away from home for the next three nights. (Religious retreat.) (Not really.) With Bec and husband Jeff away in California for work, I am playing the role of responsible adult and will be getting Molly fed, bathed and to and from school until Thursday night when they get home. (I stay there versus having her at my place because they’re 45 minutes away and I question my ability to get Molly to school on time---or at all---from here.) So it’s not like there’s really time to make up if you know what I’m saying. (Really I just mean make up, the non-italicized way.)

I won’t get into the specifics of the fight (except to say that I was right) and I am confident that the whole to-do will be to-done by lunchtime. In fact, I already called him to say, I love you and let’s move on. Can you say bigger (GIANTER , MAMMOUTHIER) person? But despite having made peace for the sake of making peace, I’m still a bit troubled by the whole thing.

The only reason I write about it here is because, well, I’m thinking about it. I arrived here today wondering if I would talk about how I’m being brainwashed by The Secret, or my love for all things Suze Orman, or how yesterday I listened to the Yankees game on the radio with Dan while playing John Madden (whom I kept calling Steve Madden) football on X-Box and think I should be nominated for some type of best wife award, or about how Dan and I replaced my windshield wipers and now I’m feeling ready to open our own garage, or that the winter clothes are officially unpacked and hanging in the closet, or how I’m wondering about getting an IUD, or about how I’m falling off the gluten-free wagon and gained three pounds in one weekend, or how I’m wondering how to nonchalantly slip the IUD thing into conversation on this blog.

I arrived here thinking I would just Spew some randomness in an effort to post something (the creative process of the world’s finest artists, I’m sure) but I’m not feeling like being all tangent-y. I’m in a bad mood and I’m pouting and that’s all I’m capable of on this particular Monday morning.

Usually I would leave this stuff out. I’ve depicted plenty of lovely, tender moments Dan and I have shared because they really happen and it’s nice to capture them. But it seems a bit false to portray a seemingly perfect union when the truth is that sometimes Dan is a douche and I am a (GIANTER, MAMMOUTHIER) bitch. That’s what I was thinking about when I sat down to write this morning. I readied myself to feign insightfulness or humor or irreverence when really all I had to offer was cranky. I can’t get in the habit of faking it. (So. Many. Jokes: 1) That’s what she said 2) Like I did with Dan all weekend or 3) I guess there weren’t that many.) Really though, I can’t write about being all honest, blah, blah, blah, and then skip the hard parts. I didn’t want to write a screw-the-gas-bill-I’m-turning-on-the-heat filler piece. I wasn’t ready to move on from my state of general crappiness.

Now I am.

Melliterary Spew:

I got stuck in six-hours of Columbus Day Weekend traffic on Friday, that’s why I’m late. I’m still working on The Bookish, that’s wazzup. I missed some writing days last week due to a two-day visit (and a three-day hangover) with GBFFE Mattie and sister Dirty Chirl, but it was worth it.

Also notable is that Dan and I saw Steve Martin play the banjo with The Steep Canyon Rangers in Boston last week. (Hoping to write more on this.) The neat part for me was that writer Dave Barry opened up the show. As a kid, I used to seek out his syndicated humor column in the Providence Journal every Sunday morning. I would grab the newspaper off the porch (the Issues and Ideas section, was it?) and sit next to the heater on the kitchen floor where I’d drink my coffee (if the in utero consumption doesn’t count, I’ve been on the stuff since about 11-years-old) and laugh my face off. The real treat though was when my family would travel to my grandmother’s house in Miami and I could read his column in the actual newspaper (I think his picture was in color!) for which he wrote, The Miami Herald. I loved his writing, still do, but more than that I couldn’t believe that this was his job; that this was a job. Funny essays? Once a week? Tiny picture next to it which could not possibly show my thighs? Sold. I used to try to emulate his writing style and, thinking about it now, I realize what an effect the guy had on my writing. (Sorry, Dave.)

Even though his opening ended up being mostly a funny question and answer period with Steve Martin, it was a neat surprise to see him in the flesh. (I had no idea until the day of the show that he would be there.)

I can’t help but think it fits into all the hero talk I’ve been doing lately. That's Melliteray Motivation.

Maybe I can self-publish The Bookish too.

I wrote the article which follows on the Joyce Maynard reading last week. Normally when one wants to pitch an article to a newspaper, it should be done prior to the event. I wasn't sure if I wanted to live the experience or write about it, so I decided not to pitch it beforehand. During the discussion I took a few notes and a couple of pictures and knew I could throw something together. Then, two days after the reading, I pitched it. This is not how someone gets something published in a daily newspaper. Based on my timing, I knew it wouldn't sell but I decided to write and finish the article anyway, just to keep the skill honed.

I have to thank Mrs. Meyer, my 12th grade Journalism teacher, for teaching me enough to carry me through a freelance gig at a newspaper. Her teachings were basic: Tell the entire truth, be objective, and tell the entire truth. This, coupled with an ability to replicate the tone of newspaper writing, got me my first steady paycheck for writing. The editor I worked for gave me enough news to keep me busy and paid and I delivered and, gasp, never missed a deadline. (I only miss my own personal deadlines.) My work was clean, he said, and I realized I knew more than I thought about this type of writing. (Thanks again, Mrs. Meyer.)

I quit writing for the newspaper almost two years ago because I realized that if I covered another town meeting (where the steady freelance money seemed to be) I would be sprinkling Parmesan cheese and freshly grated pepper on my soul for the devil's enjoyment. Even when I started working mainly on features, I was so turned off by the whole experience that it was easy to walk away.

Now I'm thinking of going back. When I sent the late pitch to the editor whom I had written for before, he said to let him know if I was interested in doing any more freelance work. Besides being pretty validating (I had felt I did a good job and left on a high note and this confirmed that), the offer is tempting. Being paid to write, even adding another gig to my writing life, would ultimately be good for me. It would boost my self esteem and probably help me with time management. If I want to make a living writing, I need to take advantage of opportunities to be paid to write. The thing is, I am making a living watching Molly, so money isn't my motivation right now; the work is. So, I would potentially be taking time away from my own work to do work that pays, in addition to being otherwise employed.

Then again, I like writing features and always have. There is something pretty awesome about going to a cool event (like a play, concert or book signing) and then being paid to write about it. It's sort of the dream. Plus, all my favorite writers have some background in either newspaper or magazine writing. It can only help me as long as I set good healthy boundaries. One of these would be no more straight news stories. I lacked boundaries last time I held the newspaper gig. Since it was my first writing job and I had very little experience, I thought it my duty to say yes to every event sent my way, feeling I was lucky to have been offered the various beats. I have never given anything less than my best at any job I've ever worked and for me that included saying no very little. In the end, I had no time for my own work. Now I realize the point of being a freelance writer is to be free. I can take as much or as little work on as I want. If, in the end, they don't need me for features work or don't need me because I'm not willing to write 5-10 articles a week as I was before, then that's okay.

So, I'm thinking about it.

One of the last conversation I remember having with this former editor had him explaining to me, as best he could without going against his fiscal responsibilities at the newspaper, how to negotiate for higher pay. He said he wanted a story (a story I had that could have yielded several articles) and that I should "wave the carrot" in front of him to receive greater compensation. The whole thing made me uncomfortable. Can't you just give me what you think I deserve (and pour my drink like you hate your boss)? I did the best I could but I'm not the negotiating type. I'd have to work on that if I were to go back.

Lots of life lessons in this little freelance gig. Boundaries, fear, opportunity. Rich stuff.

Anyway, here's the article that never ran. And, let's be clear, there is definitely a little bias in this article. (Sorry Patsi.)


Local author returns 'home' for reading of new, NH-based novel



If Dan Brown is the face of current New Hampshire authors, Joyce Maynard is the heart. On Tuesday night, Maynard, a best-selling author who grew up in Durham and later raised her own family in Keene, greeted the standing-room-only crowd which showed up at the RiverRun Bookstore for a reading of her latest work, Labor Day, like she was talking to old friends as, in many cases, she was.

The evening, which included a reading followed by a question and answer period and book signing, was the last stop on Maynard’s New England book tour.

“I can’t think of a nicer way than to end it with you all,” said Maynard, who splits her time now between California and Guatemala.

The author is best known for her 1999 memoir At Home In The World and the controversy it stirred up due to her admission of an affair with famous author and notorious recluse J.D. Salinger when he was 53 and Maynard was just 18.

“I never wrote a book about J.D. Salinger. I wrote a book about me,” Maynard said of the memoir which spans her entire life, from her early struggles with an eating disorder and an alcoholic parent to adulthood and her painful divorce from the father of her three children.

Maynard said she still considers the Granite State home and credits small-town NH life with providing much creative material. This is further evidenced by the fact that Labor Day, the intriguing story of events that befall a 13-year-boy and his single-mother when a stranger comes to stay with them over a life-changing Labor Day weekend in 1987, is set in the fictitious town of Holton Mills, NH.

Maynard said it was the fear of having three driving teenagers out on the winter roads of NH that ultimately pushed her west; a worry any NH parent could understand. And Maynard, despite successes such as being first published in the New York Times Magazine at age 18, having had a novel, To Die For, made into a movie starring Nicole Kidman, and a best-selling memoir under her belt, is still a warm and relatable NH parent.

Fitting then, that Labor Day was conceived and born at the MacDowell Colony, an artist residency program, located in Peterborough, NH. Having taken six weeks of the two-month residency to write another as yet unpublished memoir, Maynard was not sure how she would spend the last 12 days of the program. Not wanting to waste the opportunity and such an ideal writing environment, the author explained how she said a prayer for a story to come, went to bed, and woke up with the voice of Henry, Labor Day’s 13-year-old narrator, in her head as well as the idea for the story. She finished the novel in 10 days.

“I wrote it fast because I couldn't wait to see how the story was going to turn out,” Maynard said, adding that the book was a gift New Hampshire gave to her.

Though Adele, the narrator’s mother in the novel, and Maynard have similarities including, as the author explained, being a single parent in a small NH town, a mother of sons, an incurable romantic, and someone who does not always follow the rules, Maynard said the character is not a self-portrait. A comfort to hear considering the novel is based around Adele’s decision to house an escaped convict over the long holiday weekend. Maynard also explained that though the premise may sound like a thriller of the blood and guts variety, it is actually more of a love story.

“It’s probably the most hopeful book I ever wrote,” she said.

Someone with less tenacity than Maynard might have lost her own hope when it came time to get the Labor Day published. Despite having five novels and four nonfiction works to her credit, Maynard had difficulty getting the publishing world to take on this latest work.

Maynard said “the literary world was not waiting with bated breath” for her next book since in the 10 years since At Home In The World came out, Maynard wrote two novels which were unable to garner encouraging sales figures. The question of whether these poor sales had to do with the quality of the work or the huge backlash she received in response to At Home In The World is something the author herself seems unsure of, though she expressed pride in both works of fiction as well as her memoir.

Many criticized the author for writing her account of what seemed a painful and emotionally abusive relationship with Salinger, whose writing and iconic status is somewhat revered in the literary world. There was more than one head shaking in Maynard’s audience when the writer told the story of getting up to speak at a literary event and having the entire front row of famous male authors walk out.

But the author said it was her daughter’s turning 18, the same age she was when her affair with Salinger began, which compelled her to break the silence she had maintained at her own expense out of misguided sense of obligation. She wanted to speak to the subjects of secret-keeping and shame and the responses and letters she received from readers afterwards affirmed this goal. Though she admits it made her career decidedly harder.

“It was pretty widely condemned,” Maynard said of her memoir. “My name was mud in certain circles.”

This, in addition to the weak sales figures from her last two novels led to rejection when she initially sought publication for Labor Day. After being advised to do so by someone who liked the novel but feared that Maynard’s name would get in the way, the author was pushed to submit the novel to publishers anonymously. Maynard admitted that it was hard advice to hear at age 54, having been writing and building professional credibility since the age of 18, though it ultimately proved to be an extremely validating experience.

“It actually became a very hot property,” Maynard said, explaining how a gossip column in a New York City paper was abuzz with news about a new and mysterious young male author to whom they were giving credit for Labor Day.

Maynard said at some point a rumor was circulating that actor James Franco had written this new novel that everyone was talking about. She said that it came as a surprise to many when she turned out to be the writer behind the voice of her young male narrator.

“But it was too late. They admitted that they liked it,” Maynard laughingly said, adding that she ended up being paid more for Labor Day than any of her previous works.

The novel, which was released in late July, has already been optioned for the movies. Oscar nominated Director Jason Reitman, known for mega-hit “Juno” and the soon-to-be released “Up In The Air” starring George Clooney, has already taken on the project of writing the screenplay and directing a big-screen version of Labor Day.

This must be particularly gratifying for Maynard who took the long way to this success and whose character was attacked along the way as a cost for her honesty and personal and artistic integrity.

“I don’t mind telling you that it came out of some sort of dark times,” Maynard said of her novel.

As At Home in the World recounts and Maynard reiterated during the book discussion, in telling her truth, she has moved into the light. Seeing Maynard’s comfort and lightheartedness with the audience at the reading, there seemed to be no trace of that darkness or the shame she held onto most of her life.

As the author read from a segment of Labor Day dealing with 13-year-old Henry’s discomfort with certain anatomical conversations with his mother, the crowd erupted in laughter.

“I’m so glad you laugh,” she told the audience, to whom she was visibly endeared. “Some crowds don’t understand.”

Indeed, Maynard knows something about being misunderstood.

What was I going to write about?

Oh, now I remember.

I've had many oh-I-should-blog-about-that moments this week, though as I sit down now to write I'm having trouble coming up with even one.

I'll have to ramble for a while.

First of all, I'm cold. I'm sitting here in sweatpants (cropped 'cuz that's hot), a long sleeve t-shirt, a sweatshirt, one of those puffy vests, a wool hat, socks and slippers and still my nose and fingertips are like ice. My favorite thing to do when my hands are like this, as they always are, is to sneak them up Dan's shirt and press them against his skin like I am branding him with my coldness. (He doesn't totally love this and there is a possibility that I could get punched some day, but it's worth it.) I'm being stubborn about turning the heat on. I did it for a minute this morning but I'm just not sure that I'm ready to embrace the season of $200 gas bills. I don't feeeeel like it. But I won't last too much longer in a 65 degree apartment.

I shouldn't complain, this is my favorite time of year. Yesterday Dan and I went to the Farmer's Market that runs along a little street beside a river here in Exeter. It's as quaint and beautiful as it sounds especially now with the reds and oranges of the trees reflecting on the river. We bought cider doughnuts (there's no gluten in those, right?), end-of-season tomatoes, poblano and chili peppers, shallots, scallions and garlic, and even some Indian food---Chicken tikka masala and another spicier cashew dish---from a restaurant stand set up to advertise its opening. We also picked up a couple of acorn squashes and were planning to mix it into risotto tonight along with some pancetta, pine nuts and maybe some scallions or leeks but opted instead for pizza because neither of us feels like working that hard. (In fact, when I started that sentence I wrote "we are planning" but then decided that we aren't.) I have the feeling my coldness and sore throat are related so rather than get hijacked by illness I'm going to opt to relax tonight and avoid the work of cooking (and the drinking it requires).

I'm hoping to decorate for Halloween this weekend. That and 750 other things before GBFFE comes up to visit on Monday. Mattie hasn't been up to NH in years. The last time must have been when I first started dating Dan (eight years ago---really?) because I seem to remember Dan expressing some reservations about my sharing a bed with with this guy I called a best friend.

Lord I was born a ramblin' man.

Let's just get onto the Melliterary Spew so I can meet a goddamn deadline for once in my life and take a nap (or watch the new MTV Real World Challenge).

Melliterary Spew:

I met Joyce Maynard. 'Nuff said. Maynard is a favorite writer of mine whose memoir, At Home In The World, affected me so intensely that I felt compelled to write her a letter to thank her. I've never written to an author before. I've never seen a woman write more bravely or honestly (in her memoir and in other essays of hers that I've read) and my appreciation for her openness and her advocacy of a woman's right to tell her story is boundless. She tells the truth; her whole story, flaws and all. I know she cheated on her ex-husband and that he cheated on her as well. I know that she had breast enhancment surgery. I know that she had an abortion while married and a miscarriage after her divorce. I know that her shame was so deep that she's lucky to have found it and named it.

"I have come to believe that my greatest protection comes in self-disclosure," Maynard wrote in At Home In The World.

Her memoir was the first book I read that showed me, the first time I truly saw, the power of honesty. It tells the story of her entire life (up until 1999 when it was published) from her childhood in Durham, NH to the raising of her children in Keene, NH and her eventual move to California. It tells of her experience growing up with an alcoholic father and a mother so overbearing she once read her Joyce's diary and responded with a note she tucked into its pages. It tells of eating disorders that lasted from childhood into adulthood. It tells of a life built around pleasing others with her body and her words or by whatever resources she could draw upon. In later chapters it tells of a hard and love-weak marriage and an eventual divorce.

The main thing one would hear about the memoir though, is that it tells of her relationship with writer J.D. Salinger. Indeed, this was a significant part of Maynard's life. Any woman who had dropped out of college at age 18 to move in with a 53-year-old man would no doubt include this in her memoir as a significant event because no doubt such a thing would leave a mark on a life. The fact that it was J.D. Salinger only intensifies that mark, particularly since he is a famous man; particularly since Maynard is a writer. The relationship was emotionally abusive, if not sexually, and its effects were far-reaching and long-lasting. It is pertinent to her life story. Yet, Maynard was criticized and slammed at every turn for exploiting the great J.D. Salinger. Her reputation and character were accosted because in telling her own truth, she told the truth about a powerful and revered man.

She knew this was going to happen and she did it anyway. I dig that. She demonstrated the danger of secrets and shame. I dig that too.

I was first introduced to Joyce Maynard in 1999 but didn't remember or realize it until 2008. In January of 2008 I experienced a very long and painful miscarriage that pretty much changed me from the inside out (and might be a part of The Bookish). During that time I sought solace in a compilation of essays called About What Was Lost: Twenty Writers on Miscarriage, Healing and Hope which was born from editor Jessica Berger Gross. (The book was an incredible comfort to me and I now buy it for any friends or loved ones who are enduring this type of loss. If you've experienced a miscarriage, if you just want to understand the subject better, I recommend reading this book.)

One of the featured writers, the author of an essay which particularly resonated with me, was Joyce Maynard. Looking for more of her stuff online I came across her website and the At Home In The World Afterword. It was then that I realized I had heard of this writer before. I was a senior in high school in 1999 when Maynard's memoir came out. I remember having a discussion in my English class about whether this woman who had written a book about J.D. Salinger was exploiting the famous recluse. We talked about whether or not she had the right to disclose the contents of letters that Salinger wrote to her (when he first sought her out when she was a freshman at Yale, I later learned). I remember the words "kiss and tell" coming up. I don't remember hearing that she was only 18-years-old when the year-long affair began. I don't remember hearing how more stories of Salinger's relationships with much younger women were surfacing. I do remember that Salinger wrote about innocence and "phonies."

It was interesting to realize that this essayist I had just been introduced to and the author I heard about when I was only 18 myself were the same person. I was forced to reexamine the situation just as I've had to reevaluate many of the values I held and opinions I formed at that age. Reading her memoir, knowing what I do now about powerful men, I do not question Maynard's story in the least.

So I wrote Maynard a letter thanking her for writing such a book because really I am so very grateful. I heard back from her a week later. Then, a couple of weeks ago she e-mailed me to say that she remembered I live in Exeter and would be in Portsmouth, NH for a reading of her new novel, Labor Day (also wonderful, though completely different), and would be interested in meeting. So I listened to this beautiful woman read from her novel. I listened to her warmly and honestly answers people's questions about her books and life. And when we met during the signing she was gracious and kind to me as well. I told her again what At Home in the World meant to me. We talked about writing, truth, women. She wrote a lovely and insightful inscription in my copy of her memoir. We took a picture together and yet another one of those amazing moments in a life happened.

Dan said to me, "You draw your heroes into your life."

I think it was a strange coincidence, her promoting a new book in Portsmouth, NH so soon after I wrote. But coincidence or not, these are the affirming events in a life that let you know you're on the right track.

Now we're facebook friends if you can believe it. I think that's pretty good progress for one week.

Don't pee on my lotus tree and tell me it's raining.

Victory!

For some time (a few years, at least) I've thought about, tried, thought about trying and tried not to think about the idea of meditation. Once, I got close to even doing it. For one spring and part of a summer I established a weekly habit of listening to Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn's body scan.

Kabat-Zinn, a modern mind behind mindfulness, helped shepherd the concept into mainstream western culture and was the Founding Executive Director of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at UMASS Medical School. He also founded its Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Clinic. (Several times I've saved up in order to participate in this program but have wound up spending my savings otherwise every time.) He's written a bunch of books and also recorded some meditation practice guides including the body scan I listened to, which basically leads you into meditation limb by limb. It's like meditation for dummies which is what I need. Basically, he's the voice of my Jeebus.

I was introduced to him initially by my sheroe, Jodi, who has been my nurse practitioner (and would have been my midwife...and my real wife if she wanted) since I was 20 and finally worked up the stones to go in for my first pelvic exam. I'll save for a later entry---probably in a couple of weeks when I have my appointment---why it is that I so adore this woman and look forward with great delight to my yearly pap smear. For now she will just be the woman who introduced me to Kabat-Zinn (and for whom I shave and put on good-smelling body lotion which I haven't done for Dan in years). I bought his recordings (and then, of course, as synchronicity would have it, found one of his books on my shelf at home), and got started.

My favorite thing to do was to take a blanket to the park, feel the sun on my face and bliss out for 45 minutes to Kabat-Zinn's calming and steady voice. (His voice is that of a Jewish guy from New York, which he is, though I don't think he considers himself Jewish anymore. That sort of voice---almost like a sedated Woody Allen---may not sound fitting for these purposes, but so works for me.) It was among the most peaceful times in my life when I kept this practice up. Ultimately though, I let it go as good habits are much harder to keep than bad ones. Mostly though, I think it was the guilt that stopped me. As much as I could tell myself that this was an important thing for my mental and physical well-being, I couldn't help but feel guilt for taking 45 minutes out of my day to lay in the sun. Who wouldn't want to do that? Why should I be allowed?

Today I realize that anxiety---among the issues that meditation could help me with (though one need not have any "issues" to reap the benefits)---robs me of way more than 45 minutes a day. I know in my bones that cultivating the ability to quiet my mind (or at least have some level of control) would improve my productivity and general happiness. Plus, I think meditation, seeking connection, searching for peace are pretty much more important than anything else on my to-do list. (Though, my bathroom really needs cleaning.)

So this is all on my mind as I once again pony up for a round of "Quiet The Crazy." I've learned by now that change doesn't come like a tsunami, clearing a path for the establishment of new practices and ideas. It takes baby waves. A bubble. A fart in the bathtub, even.

Five minutes. That was my goal. Having woken up particularly nervous today, I decided it was a good time to start. (Nervous, versus stressed, is a little easier to work with, I think.) I had meant to get it done first thing in the morning but a few things got in the way and I had now been up for a few hours. Normally this---a failure from the start---would have set me back. I'll start first thing tomorrow, I'd think to myself. And then when I missed that, I would plan to start next week and so on.

Today, I chose otherwise. (Sometimes all it takes is a choice.) Five minutes with the sun rising or five minutes with it high in the sky, it doesn't matter. Sit down and do it. So I assumed the position and looked at the clock.

9:07. I had to make it to 9:12. I closed my eyes. 9:07. I wonder if it was 9:07 and three seconds or 9:07 and 58 seconds and I should really start at 9:08. If I do four minutes instead of five then I'll have come up short on yet another goal.

I looked at the clock. Still 9:07. It's probably almost 9:08 now, so I'll do it until 9:13 to get the full five minutes. I have to make it to 9:13. 9:13. How will I know if it's 9:13? Maybe I should set an alarm. That seems contradictory to what I'm trying to do here. What if I reach nirvana and then my alarm goes off---talk about a buzzkill. Shh!

My eyes were like those of a kid trying to pretend he's sleeping when his mom walks in the room after his bedtime. They kept drifting toward openness and I kept squeezing them shut.

Follow your breath. In and out. Hear the sounds around you, they are part of this moment. The buzz of the computer, the spray of the dishwasher. I wonder how much time has passed. At least I'm sitting still. Good for me, I've not even moved yet. I am so still. This is easy. Look how still I am.

Then, a voice. (The role of inner voice will be played by a wise and elderly black woman.) It said, "You are so not still, child."

She's right, I thought.

The events of the day started coming up but I led my brain back to my breath as all the books on meditation I have read (yeah, keep reading, that'll help) have told me to do. In and out. In and out.

I've heard and read a lot about mantras. In "Eat, Pray, Love" (my most sacred religious text, written by my (pretend) friend, Liz Gilbert) she uses "Ham-sa" for her mantra, which means "I am That" as opposed to "Om Namah Shivaya," which Gilbert calls the "'official'" mantra of the type of yoga she is practicing. I have trouble with mantras. In times past "Ham-sa" got me nowhere execpt hungry for a ham sandwich and my brain chose to sing "Om Namah Shivaya" to the tune of "We didn't start the fire."

I began thinking about this whole mantra thing--- wondering if I needed one, if that was the missing piece, and what was that word again, upa towna girla?---when the voice came back. (I know it's cliche. I know. But it's the truth. And it's not the first time thoughts that seem to be other than my own have come through.)

"I'm proud of you," it said.

So, with my eyes closed, my focus on my breath, I thought the words, "I'm proud of you," over and over and over.

Sure, other thoughts and voices crept in. (The loudest was that nasal wench telling me, "You have nothing to be proud of." I think she was the one who stopped me from going to the park.) But I kept pulling my brain back, following my breath and thinking, "I'm proud of you."

I did that for a while, until I forgot I was doing it.

When I remembered again, I figured it was time to stop. I knew the clock would say that only three minutes had passed, if that, but I was feeling compassionate and thinking I did the best I could.

I opened my eyes.

9:18

Huh?

At the ten-second mark I was feeling restless, there was no way I sat there for ten minutes. Then the screen saver on the computer went on. I had checked my e-mail right before I started meditating (pretty sure this is Buddhist tradition) so I looked at my computer screen properties and, sure enough, the screen saver goes on after 10 minutes of inactivity.

Ten minutes. Ten minutes! I made it ten minutes!

Now I know how a high school boy feels!

If I keep practicing, this could be the start of a real change. Maybe I wasn't "suddenly transported through the portal of the universe and taken to the center of God's palm," as Gilbert was, but I think maybe I felt his fart in the tub.

And isn't that what life's about?

It's not quite dirty talk, but...

yesterday we had breakfast in bed.

"You know what's better than midnight pie?" I asked Dan as we readied for bed on Saturday night. "Breakfast pie."

Despite having built the night around grocery shopping for the ingredients and making a raspberry pie together, we couldn't keep ourselves awake late enough to let it cool and have a slice. Badass as the Golden Girls we, apparently, are not.

So yesterday's rainy Sunday morning was spent eating pie and Breyers French Vanilla in bed, under the covers. We ate and talked and kept warm together and then we put our pie plates down, rolled over and started...reading. (Yeah, we read.) (We did, actually.) Pie and a couple of hours in bed with our books. A better Sunday morning, I couldn't imagine.

We've not had a weekend at home together since August and were dying for a little down/no family/no friends/no agenda time. We got it this weekend and ran with it.

My interest in pie-making was piqued by a book I'm reading (pie connoisseur Joyce Maynard's Labor Day) as well as my aunt's recounting of its therapeutic and meditative properties. I'm the type of person who needs to drink while cooking or baking (or meditating) to avoid getting overwhelmed, so Dan drank with me, we put on Frank Sinatra, and our little Saturday night pie-making date was a success.

We learned Sunday morning that the pie was an even sweeter success.

We bookended the day with another serving after dinner. This time we ate it on the floor of our darkened living room, by the light of a slide projector. Last week my dad sent me home with boxes and boxes of old slides so that, as the family documentarian, I could try to transfer them to my hard drive. I wasn't planning on getting to them for months but Dan surprised me with a borrowed projector. He took down some framed photos from the wall in order to have an empty space onto which he projected these dusty treasures. We moved from the floor to the couch, shifted from pie to a bottle of red, and had our own movie night in our dim living room watching slide after slide, pictures I had never before seen, of my family's life in the 70s and 80s. (I believe the most recent pictures were from 1981, assuming the baby I saw in a couple of the shots was indeed me and not one of my sisters, which only mom could ever say.) The slides were incredible.

I saw rare pictures from my mom and dad's elopement at The Cloisters in Northern Manhattan; pictures of the camper (to finally see the camper!)that they took on their famed cross-continent honeymoon; my dad fishing on some river's edge; my mom smiling in front of a gorgeous mountain view in Banff. Was my mom, that young kid with the long braids hanging over her shoulders ("They're a couple of smelly hippies, that's what they are," I joked to Dan), pregnant then? The trip ended when my mom's nausea got so bad that a camper was no longer an ideal environment. (Later, on my own cross-country honeymoon,---a trip inspired, no doubt, from a lifetime of hearing about my parents' months of travel---I had to rush us home too, due to a wicked and rapidly spreading case of poison ivy; another ailment not ideal for a road trip.)

I saw pictures of them when they became parents (mercifully, not the exact moment) and the joy on their faces as they ran through beach surf, taking pictures of each other and of their firstborn, my sister Tara who is 37 now. I've never thought about that time when it was just my parents and Tara because Becky, her Irish twin, came only 10 months later and there are few pictures of one without the other. There were pictures of Becky (I think it was she) in an incubator, which confused me as I thought Tara was the only one who had spent time in an incubator. Tara was born prematurely and was kept in the hospital for an entire month during which my mom, who still gets upset talking about it, was forbidden from holding her baby as a matter of hospital policy. Fortunately, my dad worked then at the Newport Hospital where Tara was born (and later gave birth to her own child), and was able to play the doctor card and hold her, giving their child the skin-to-skin contact that a newborn so requires.

There were shots of my dad in bell bottoms held up by a peace sign belt buckle and then later ones of him in the army after getting drafted; pictures of my mom's grandfather, a prominent Rhode Island lawyer and judge whom my father treated in his last days before he lost his life to cancer. (Family folklore tells that my father's treatment for my great-grandfather, though unconventional at the time---if not cutting edge at least in the western world---involved medicinal plants. As I said, smelly hippies.)

I looked at these pictures and saw the faces of people---my twenty-something mom and dad, my forty-something grandparents, my aunts as teenagers, my sisters as toddlers---whom I have heard stories about for years.

I looked at pictures of my mom and saw my own face; something I had never noticed before (despite her telling me this for years), and it gave me an odd sense of pride that caught me off guard.

Dan was as interested as I was to see pictures from all those years ago of the cast of characters he has come to know. I thanked him for giving me such a gift of these pictures up on our wall. I don't know when I would have gotten to them.

The night wasn't the stuff of dinner and dancing or sexy music. Instead, it was pie and pictures on a couch in the dark. The Soundtrack? The soft humming and satisfying click and switch of a slide projector. That, and good conversation. (Also, a little Jamie Cullum.)

It's been a long time since I've had this feeling on a Monday morning; this bittersweet nostalgia for something that happened only hours ago; the realization that I've just lived a couple days which I'll always remember as a couple of the best. When times are tough, I'll look back at this weekend for hope and nourishment.

This is what is on my mind as I sit down to start my week with a plan to write about things which are supposed to be other than this. So often I find myself recounting fights with Dan in my journals or worrying about the elements of our lives that need improvement. Writing about these things---my great delight and painful charge---tends to magnify things more than my already overactive mind does. It can change my mood or, worse, my perspective if I'm not careful.

I need to remember to magnify the sweet, harmonious moment, too. I guess that's why I'm telling this schlocky tale. My kids won't get to see the pictures from this past weekend on the walls of their future homes, but I'll be sure to tell 'em about it.

Well, there is this one...

Free Fall-ing

This is the view from the window where I sit and write every morning. This tree is the first to turn every year and I'm grateful for it because sometimes I need the reminder to go outside and watch fall happen.

Lately, when there are only a few minutes to grab, I gotta throw my whole body over them and hold 'em down. That's what I'm doing now, trying to cram an entry into a time slot that I would not usually consider "enough." Enough these days has to be whatever I can give.

Busy, yes. But the good kind of busy.

This reminds me of a Harry Chapin quote Dan sometimes recites to me. (It's actually Harry Chapin quoting his grandfather.)

"Harry, there's two kinds of tired. There's good tired and there's bad tired".

He said, "Ironically enough, bad tired can be a day that you won. But you won other people's battles, you lived other people's days, other people's agendas, other people's dreams, and when it's all over there was very little you in there. And when you hit the hay at night somehow you toss and turn, you don't settle easy."

He said, "Good tired, ironically enough, can be a day that you lost. But you won't even have to tell yourself, because you knew you fought your battles, you chased your dreams, you lived your days. And when you hit the hay at night, you settle easy, you sleep the sleep of the just, and you can say, 'Take me away'."

He said, "Harry, all my life I've wanted to be a painter and I've painted. God, I would have loved to have been more successful, but I've painted, and I've painted, and I am good tired, and they can take me away."

What kind of tired are you?

Sometimes I have to remind myself that I am good busy and good tired. (Dan's been bad tired lately which motivates me to appreciate the kind of tired I am.) Lately, I've had the feeling that I'm doing lots of different things and not one thing particularly well, but at least I'm pretty much fighting my own battles.

In bed last night I told Dan that I may need to "drop out" for a couple of months to get some real writing done. I suppose this brings us to the:

Melliterary Spew:

I'm struggling with my self-imposed December 1, 2009 rough draft deadline. (Clearly, I struggle with deadlines in general as evidenced by my being late with these Friday updates for two weeks in a row and barely making it the week before that. This, within the first four weeks of promising---mostly myself---that I would stick to this Friday thing.)

The good news is that despite having wanted to abandon The Bookish about a billion times, I am still working on it. I've been starting my workday at 6am in order to get as much done as I can before having to leave the apartment at 2pm to get Molly from school. Those hours are flying because I'm filling them with writing and organizing and brainstorming (in addition to 17 bathroom breaks, 13 trips to the kitchen, five Facebook scans, seven e-mail peeks and sometimes even exercise, showering and getting dressed). But the more I do, the further I realize I have to go. This is exciting. When it's not totally overwhelming and the work doesn't feel like utter and complete doodie that should be abandoned immediately, it's fun. I like discovering the different facets and challenges of a project of this scale. Plus, I'm sort of working on a children's book and, oh yeah, this blog. When I think about all of this (and I am having a good perspective day) I am positively giddy at the prospect of this being the busyness that makes up the rest of my life. I love the idea of juggling creative projects; going under for months at time and then coming up for air. I remember being a teenager, so sick of the daily grind of school, and thinking that alternating months (or years) of being a slave to my work and then having periods of total freedom was a much more appealing life schedule. (We'll save for later the how-to-make-a-living aspect of this particular dream.)

Shit guys, I think I'm getting close to living that schedule and I am totally enjoying the process. The problem is that if I want to make my deadline (or even come close)I have to fit more process into the day.

(And let's be honest, cultivating this ability to make and meet deadlines---of having an actual endpoint---is the link between the writing and the money-making. How can I even get to the submission and rejection part of this journey---can't wait!---without finishing something? I suppose that fear has a place in this discussion---maybe it's even why nothing ever feels finished---but, let's just not...I can't write one more word about fear right now. This whole entry was supposed to be a two-minute recap that ended up taking me hostage anyway.)

So, I'm going under. I'll start with a no phone call, Facebook or e-mail rule during the day. (Feel free to reprimand me if you see a status update---"Lola Mellowsky is drunk at noon"---in the middle of the day.) Also, I'll need to neglect Dan for a bit. He says he's okay with it. (Maybe the time I gain from not indulging in online ADD food will make it so that I only need to grab a few weeknights for writing.) I said to him, "If I was a lawyer trying to make partner, I would be working 80-hour weeks. I've given that kind of dedication to almost everything---particularly my jobs---and everyone else in my life, but I've never done it with writing."

He got it. No more gourmet meals on the table at 6pm, I'm afraid. No more ironed bedsheets. Whatever will he do without a wife who suddenly and without warning drapes herself over his lap rather than using words to ask for a back massage? Oh, the suffering...

Of course, all this hinges on my maintaining enough motivation and discipline to "stay on task," a directive I remember dismissing back in the school days. ("Inattentive in class" and "Does not work to potential" were the standard report card comments.) None of this---not a bit of this make your own schedule, earn your own living business---works if I don't finally get shit done.

I can blame Facebook, or the three to five-hour chunks that watching Molly after school takes from my day, or even Dan but the real responsibility will always be (and has always been) mine.

I will not miss my Friday deadline again.

(Probably.)