Driving With The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest

I will do my best to tie in The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest into my Lit.Life post tonight, but I think I shall fail spectacularly. (I am no Lisbeth Salander.) Having just moved from the "city" to the "country", I am both over and underwhelmed. OVER the chaos of boxes, paint, dust and demolition, UNDER the not-having-a-routine, the need-to-make-friends, etcetera. But therein lies the great adventure, hmmm?

Two mind bogglers pour moi today (besides Lisbeth Salander):

1) I walked my skippy daughter half a mile to camp, enjoying time with her listening to all of the different bird sounds, wondering at the different trees and flowers along the road, and excited at the prospect of meeting some other parents, building community, yes? Culture shock: ALL of the parents stayed in their cars and the counselors were in charge of getting their loved ones out of their car seats and escorting them to the gym! I think that's so awesome of the camp to do that for parents, but I couldn't help feeling disappointed as I walked back home, strangely bereft to be on the outside, with so many people on the inside . . . even though they were alone in their cars.


2) I DROVE a car. (The metaphors here are ENDLESS. I won't bore you with them, but this is where maybe I can tie in Lisbeth? I DID have the book next to me . . .)

"But you don't drive!" Many people said to me upon hearing that I was leaving the dirty streets for greener pastures.

"I'll just have to learn to say I DO," was my response. The husband is the seasoned driver in the family, hailing from North Dakota. I grew up in NYC, and only learned how to drive in Moab, Utah (yes, the setting for EDGES!) when I was 28 years old. But I was only there for a year, and then lived in cities where I didn't need to drive.

The boys needed to get to camp in Bedford Village, about fifteen minutes away. The husband was in the middle of helping the plumber pull up the kitchen floor.

If Lisbeth can have a dragon tattoo, play with fire and kick a hornet's nest, then I should certainly be able to drive my kids to camp on some country roads. We're not talking the Saw Mill, or 684 or anything crazy like that.

I grabbed the car keys, surprising myself and teasing the boys about their worried looks - "You're driving?" Oh, the shock! I had my laptop on the passenger seat with directions and I got us there lickety-split.

It was on the way home that I got turned around, calling the husband at one point to tell him not to worry, only of course he started worrying and I had to say with vehemence: "Let me figure this out myself!" He laughed. I found Katonah Village, and was able to pull into a parking spot and celebrated with a café au lait from the local coffee shop.

I ended up driving a lot more today. And reading about Lisbeth here and there. Where will I drive next? Where will you? (Oh golly, I guess I can't get away from using DRIVING as a metaphor, can I?)

Writing is Deer

There was just a deer in the backyard. If you look closely, she is a blurry figure in the lower middle . . . can you see her? This is how I feel about my writing at this moment. I know it is there, but I just can't make it out . . . can't focus as I wade through boxes, looking for sheets, towels, a toothbrush! (Make that 5) But I know that it will come back as I find my footsteps again, get some sleep and start feeling at "home", appreciating the moments in between . . . my daughter and I having breakfast outside, looking at this view and her telling me with wonder, "I feel like I'm in a story . . ."

"Tell me the story!" I encouraged.

"I need paper!" She insisted, and for the next while I searched for paper until she was distracted by something else, and unfortunately, I was too.

Oh, that deer! She'll be back. For both of us!

Farewell UWS, Farewell Again to Gran

Our last night as residents of the Upper West Side in New York City. And not just any Upper West Side, but a neighborhood that was passed down to me by my grandmother.

How, you may ask, can a neighborhood be passed down? How can a life?

We went to Henry's restaurant for dinner tonight, a TREAT and an ode to my Gran because it was her favorite place. It styles itself as a modern American Bistro, beautifully decorated with dark wood stains and Arts and Crafts lighting. It feels very masculine. It is on the Northwest corner of 105th and Broadway, in the same building as the Clebourne where my grandmother lived in a grand apartment on the ninth floor. Memories flooded through me. Going to Henry's was the high point of her day, week, month for years. She was able to bask in her celebrity, and not be lost in her inability to care for herself.

In the early days of Henry's, it was decorated with old French prints, such as the one above. This elephant was her favorite, and she constantly admired it. When the owners changed the decor, they presented her with this huge framed print. Was it the irony of an elephant, an animal of the wild, pimping for cigarettes that captivated her so? She thought that it looked like the elephant was laughing. Je ne fume que le nil . . . I only smoke le nil . . . was it a big cosmic joke?

I was shocked to remember that Henry's has only been open for the past ten years - it is the same age as my oldest son.

My grandmother represented community, family, the arts, and the place to be was the Upper West Side.

My parents met through her, when my father was chaplain at St Hilda's and St. Hugh's where my grandmother taught creative writing and my mother was a freshman at Smith College. I grew up in Chelsea at General Theological Seminary, but the UWS was never far, and my sister and I were often seen with her at the Cathedral Library, at V&T's Pizzeria, and the Hungarian Pastry Shop, all places that have longevity in a fickle market.

I went to Barnard College, and although I flitted from coast to coast, and sometimes another continent, I always found myself back on the UWS. As an adult, I chose to live near her Clebourne apartment, growing with my own family. Each apartment represents the addition of another child: 114th and Riverside, 106th and Columbus, and now we're leaving 106th and Broadway, now that my daughter is five, and the other two are eight and ten.

Now I think I get it: je ne fume que le nil, said with irony. Things change baby. Nothing stays the same. You can't step in the same river twice, blah, blah, blah. I can imagine Gran smiling, laughing. je ne fume que le nil. It's time to move on from the Upper West Side. Write your own life.

Here we come, Katonah!

Moving and Blogging

What day is it? Monday, nay, almost Tuesday already? I am floating in and out of that transitional state, with literally one foot in one place, and one in another. Moving from Manhattan, sixty miles up north to Katonah, boxes everywhere, and wondering how we're going to get everything done. Is it all worth it?

How are we going to move two adults, three kids, an elderly cat and four African water-frogs through physical and psycho-spiritual space?

And should I blog if I don't really have much to say? There is debate afoot about this - not me - but blogs in general. Is it good for everything to be instantaneous? Is it grand to be unedited? Questions to ponder as I go about blogging, because, what's the harm anyway? My blogging is not going to take away the value of anyone more worthy, or dare-we-say less. Those distinctions are meaningless. The internet is infinite, or at the very least HUMONGOUS, and people can get lost and found here too.

Is it worth it to try new things, to stretch yourself, to grow - as in moving, or blogging . . . I say yes! Yes.

Girls Write Now: ANTHOLOGY

Can't tell what I'm holding up? I'm so excited, I just had to post this anyway, even if I can't figure out how to do a reverse mirror image. I am holding up my copy of the Girls Write Now Anthology: Where We Live. It was for sale yesterday at the last GWN event of the 2009-2010 year, the final CHAPTERS reading.

We had a packed house last night. Meg and I got to the Center for Fiction on East 47th Street early, impressed with the oncoming slew of people. We were very happy to be there as audience members, having read our own piece at the May event. We could sit back and enjoy. Meg was effervescent and glowing - finished with her high school classes, her prom, voted as salutatorian at her graduation next week, and soon-to-be college-bound.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie read from her new collection of stories, The Thing Around Your Neck. Her West African accent was as musical and captivating as her prose. I could have listened to her all night, but I had to settle for buying her book. The mentee/mentor pieces were beautiful and thought-provoking. Inspiring.

I snuck downstairs to buy my books (whose proceeds will support GWN) and am still marveling at how well the Anthology is put together. I have a short memoir piece that apears near the beginning of the book, and Meg wrote A History of Widges, the pre-story to the piece we wrote for our reading in May. The only faux pas is in my bio, which I had written last summer, with the wrong pub date and the wrong title for EDGES!

Tomorrow is my birthday and father's day. I would like to have time to reflect on both, so hope to see you then!

Meeting The Publicist

She was waiting outside on the corner, looking at ease in the glamorous FlatIron District, home to modeling agencies and publishing houses, shopping and art. She was wearing a black pencil skirt with impossibly high heels and a light blue summer blouse. Pale skin, dark eyes and hair. Young.

"Jessica?" I asked. "Jessica Zimmerman?" Her eyes lit up and nodded. I was five minutes late, having rushed downtown from work to get there. We found a table inside the Ben Venuto Cafe and spent the next-almost-two-hours getting to know each other. She is new to Macmillan as of February, having come from St. Martin's Press.

"I'm an extrovert," I told her. "I'm willing to do almost anything. I love people." I know that authors have to do A TON of self-marketing and promoting. "Oh. But I might be shy talking about my book." Yeah, I have to get over that one!

There were no surprises, like "Oh yes, we are planning a HUGE book tour for you," or "Guess what - we sent Oprah the ARC and she wants to be your best friend!" But it's okay to dream big. If I didn't dream about being published after all, I never would be!

Mostly we talked about our lives and being passionate about what we do.

Then she talked about the "crossover" appeal of EDGES because it's not "fluffy", (meaning that adults will warm to it too.) Oh Jessica, I love you already! She wants to get magazine coverage for January issues, which come out mid-December. (If we go for December issues that come out in mid-November, people won't be able to by the book yet.) That would be crazy in the adult fiction world where buzz is king and the first week of release is crucial, but YA books "have longer legs."

Longer legs! I need me some of those to run down to meet Meg (my mentee) and get to the final CHAPTERS event for Girls Write Now! More on that tomorrow . . .

The Place Where We Are Right

What! Another blog post? Don't you have anything else to do with your life, lady? Aren't you supposed to be packing, moving . . .writing a novel . . .??? And what's with the silly pic of Einstein?

Well yes my friends, I do have a lot going on, but this is my writing for now. And my teens are writing their novellas so . . .

I am thinking more about my visit down to General Seminary with Heather the other day. We were talking about some of our insecurities in our choice to live an artist's life, about how it has taken us longer to accept who we are, comparing ourselves to others who are successful in a more conventional way. Is it the "right" way? As a child, teen, and young adult, I often felt "wrong" about so many things. But I didn't use language or approach the world in the same way the people around me did.

I think in abstracts and stare at things from peculiar angles. I've often looked at my ability to see all sides of a situation or an argument as a weakness, rather than a strength, because then I have a difficult time "winning".

But do I really want to "win"?

We were talking about how people who are CERTAIN that their point of view is "right", have intimidated us into thinking then, that our point of view must be "wrong".

That's on me, giving my power away, not on others taking it from me.

Heather shared a story about a famous argument between Einstein and Bohr that I haven't been able to stop thinking about, and she JUST sent me the source, prompting this post! It is from QUANTUM: Einstein, Bohr, and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality, By Manjit Kumar

In the late 1970s, I had the pleasure of talking with John Bell about the Bohr- Einstein debates during a train journey from Oxford to London. Every seat was taken, so we had to stand. Pressed against me by sullen commuters, Bell summarized his apparently reluctant conclusion as we pulled into Paddington station: “Bohr was inconsistent, unclear, willfully obscure and right. Einstein was consistent, clear, down-to-earth and wrong.


And then I think of the poem that my dad sent me when I was in a painful place: In the place where we are right, no flowers grow . . . and thanks to the internet, I've found the poem!

The Place Where We Are Right

by Yehuda Amichai

From the place where we are right
Flowers will never grow
In the spring.

The place where we are right
Is hard and trampled
Like a yard.

But doubts and loves
Dig up the world
Like a mole, a plow.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
Where the ruined
House once stood.

'Nuff said.

Oh wait! Heather, my wise friend, just sent me another jewel: Your task, is not to seek for love but merely to find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. Rumi

See you tomorrow, when I promise to blog about the meeting I'm having with my publicist after work!