The View from the Window

Last weekend was Emily Dickinson's birthday, and the Emily Dickinson Museum hosted a party where visitors were given bright pink and orange-yellow roses, hot cider, and cake and cookies made from Dickinson's recipes. The atmosphere was festive and crowded as guests of all ages wandered through the parlors and sitting rooms to the sound of live fiddle and hammered dulcimer music. Upstairs, volunteers led children and adults in making ornaments out of paper reproductions of Dickinson's manuscripts.

The poet's bedroom maintained a peaceful atmosphere despite the bustle. Yellow winter light washed through the large windows and the white walls and bedding gave it all back. In a corner near the front windows stood Dickinson's writing table and lamp. Although the poet would have seen fields instead of buildings across the street, the street itself has been there for centuries and she watched everything and everyone that passed there. "Twice she saw the circus pass by," a volunteer told me. "The Barnum circus with all the elephants and everything. They got off the train and came up Main Street on their way to the Amherst Common."

In contrast, the house across town (no longer standing) where Dickinson spent a portion of her childhood faced a cemetery, which must have brought different musings than her view of Main Street. I've been lucky in my house and in my last apartment to have a writing room of my own, and my last one looked down Pleasant Street, one of the main streets in Easthampton, and across at a funeral home. I valued seeing people gather in mourning or celebration of life. It was a reminder of what is often ignored in daily life, the edge and moment that are always hovering invisibly nearby all of us.

Now my writing window shows me a tiny sliver of Mount Tom visible between houses and trees. More prominent is the plain white siding of the neighbor's house and the inside of our 6-foot wooden fence. The fence is old enough that most of it is patched, tied, or staked in some way, waiting for spring to allow us to replace it. The post in front of my window is ingloriously wrapped with a large amount of white rope, holding the fence pickets haphazardly in place. It reminds me of all that is imperfect in life, the jerry-rigging and the compromises, that I have to accept, at least on some level, in order to keep moving forward.

What do you see out of your window?

The NaNoWriMo Finish Line

I successfully concluded my first National Novel Writing Month with 50,000-plus words of Greek goddesses frolicking in Northampton (and copulating with mortals), lovers dealing with memory loss, and other adventures. Thanks to friends and family members, I also raised $182 for the Office of Letters and Light. A huge thank-you to everyone who cheered me on! My first novel is now well underway.

Boston Business Litigation Haiku

That's right, you just read the words "litigation" and "haiku" in the same headline. A friend of my mine who is a lawyer forwarded me a weekly email that summarizes newly filed business law complaints in the Boston area. This week the summaries were written as haiku. Those clever lawyers!

Judge Woodlock orders
Patent case filed as new action.
Facebook, Inc. complies.

Shareholders complain
One billion from Oracle
Not nearly enough.

Inappropriate
Sexual comments from boss.
One-Fifty-One B.

Bank's money flies off
Because of check kiting scheme.
Suit on policy.

Busted bottle caps
Customer cancels contract
Is Hood's claim covered?

Fast food franchisee
Defaults and leaves guarantors
Liable for rent.

Corporate raiders
Who cause contract terminus
Must the piper pay.

Junk facsimiles
So Twentieth Century
And illegal too.

Welch loses big trial
Ads for juice found misleading.
Coverage denied.

Planet Fitness gyms
Owe millions to their lender.
Repossession sought.

In the actual email (meant for actual lawyers) there was additional information (useful to lawyers) such as the attorney's name and a link to the complaint. But we're just concerned with the words here at Dragon's Meow. Thanks to the folks at Yurko, Salvesen & Remz, PC for writing these.

Calculus Notebooks and Baby Clothes

My grandmother's house has an attic full of memories: boxes of innumerable letters, notebooks, photographs, and baby clothes from three generations. Watching my mother go through these items over the past few months has been an education in memory and attachment. With each box, she relives a moment or a year or a decade. Everything that gets thrown away must first be exclaimed over and/or mourned. Some things, like the letters Gram wrote to my parents before I was born, Mom has passed on to me, so now I've started my own memory collection in my attic.

Going through old things has weird effects on the space/time continuum. It's hard for me to imagine my mother as a teenager struggling through chemistry and calculus, yet there are the notebooks to prove it. Actually, it's not that I can't imagine her as a teenager--I can't really believe she was once a teenager.

It's different for her--she can't imagine not being that teenager anymore, alive in the pages of those old notebooks. As she tears the pages from their spiral bindings and adds them to the recycling bin, she says, "I feel like I'm tearing apart my life." And yet it needs to be done.

My baby clothes--most of which are musty and stained and not worth giving to a thrift store--are still vivid and colorful in her mind as she holds them up, saying, "I loved you in this dress ... you looked so beautiful in this color." Me? She can't be talking about me, 5'10" tall and 31 years old. I was never small enough to fit into that. And how could I have lain on that embroidered blanket or worn that handmade flannel nightgown if I don't remember it? How was that me?

In the boxes of the baby clothes--most of which were either bought at Sears or sewn by my grandmother (who was quite talented, although her designs were essentially practical, and usually made of flannel since as a baby I lived in Maine)--were a few items from an earlier era: finely worked crocheted bibs with colorful decorations, and dresses with lace collars and hems. These, according to my mother, must have been made by my great-grandmother. A professional dressmaker, she took the concept of handmade to an entirely different level.

My idea of a thoughtful baby gift is taking the time to go to Target and pick out something in a color the kid (or parent) likes. Handmade dresses or clothes like the ones my great-grandmother made would probably cost a hundred dollars--more than I'd spend on a dress for myself! So much has shifted in how we spend our time, money, and labors--individually and globally as well. My idea of green or budget conscious involves shopping at a thrift store, recycling someone else's best guess at a good buy from Target.

There were many more baby-girl pink items in the baby clothes boxes than I've worn in the 30 years since then. By the time I was old enough to verbalize my desires, I tended more toward red and blue. We also found among the baby clothes my first-ever pair of shoes (these resulted in many exclamations). For some reason I was relieved that they were cute and maroon. I'd wear them now, if only they were the right size.

National Novel Writing Month

This November, the nonprofit Office of Letters and Light will host National Novel Writing Month. It's a global writing challenge for which I'll spend November (and portions of my sanity!) writing a 50,000-word book in just 30 days.

In addition to my writerly duties, I'm raising money to help the Office of Letters and Light continue to put on free creative writing programs for kids and adults in classrooms, communities, and libraries around the world.

Every dollar I raise will keep my spirits high as I write my way towards the realization of my creative dreams. More importantly, contributions will help National Novel Writing Month and its Young Writers Program build a more engaged and inspiring world.

Thank you so much for your support of my writing! Support in spirit from my fellow low-income writers is much appreciated as well.

~

Some things I'll be keeping in mind this month:

"Every word on your blog is a word not in your book." - Sherman Alexie

"You do, or you do not. There is no 'try'." - Yoda

"Our ability to achieve is proportionate to our inner will, and we never know what is possible until we experience the impossible!" - Heidi Thomson

Joyce Carol Oates Kicks Interview Butt

From the pulpit of a downtown church during the recent Boston Book Festival, keynote presenter Joyce Carol Oates read a soft, complex story of loneliness and violence. In contrast, the interview that followed was comedic and farcical. The audience gasped and laughed and nearly booed as the interviewer asked one ridiculous question after another. Oates gracefully sidestepped the too-personal ones and boldly confronted the too-simple ones.

Even though she wasn’t the greatest reader, the piece Oates read from her recent book, Sourland, was gorgeous and chilling in its emotional subtlety. Especially compared to her interviewer, who seemed to have been selected as a foil to Oates’ intelligent and nuanced speech, she presented compassionate, transcendent perceptions of the human condition. What follows are selected quotes and summaries based on notes.

Your stories have a lot of violence in them. Why do you write so much about violence?

“Writers don’t write about violence. Writers write about people.” A work of art has its own trajectory, Oates said, its own inevitable ending. She added that writers don’t think in terms of happy endings but in terms of the integrity of the piece of writing.

Have you experienced violence in your own life?

“Why is there this tendency to ask women writers this question? … It’s not like I invented violence.”

Do you believe in God?

“Do you?”

Are you a Catholic? An atheist?

“I don’t call myself anything … Calling oneself an atheist would be too aggressive … Most people have a sense of religion that honors their family and community, and they just follow that … It’s not fruitful to discuss whether I believe in God.”

Do you know when you sit down to write if you’re working on a short story or a novel?

“Of course! I wouldn’t be a good writer if I didn’t.”

Sign Language: Maine

"Tread Carefully"



"Lilliputian Landscape"



"No, It Didn't Say That"



"Neighborhood Effort"