kellementology

life according to me

Tag: Writing

  • And so I begin again.

     

    In the last many days, I’ve had time to think about this space in my life and its accumulation of nearly two years of what passes for me these days — me in writing, that is.  Whenever I run through the archives and skim the content,  so many thoughts come to mind about when the piece was written — the season, the weather on a given day, what I was preoccupied with or annoyed about.  It’s been more and more difficult to write here and so the frequency has decreased and I’ve found myself adjusting to that, but not particularly enjoying it.  I’ve taken the time on my occasional walks to make mental plans where I’d whip myself into writerly shape working on one project at this point in the day and another later on, somehow fitting it all in.

    The implementation lasted one day.

    One.

    I’d decided to do some admin work related to my sites and busied myself in all that it entails, which is a lot when one might consider that I currently qualify for the old dog aspect of the whole can’t teach new tricks classification.  Bound and determined to prove it wrong, I spent ridiculous amounts of time reading codex and phoning and thinking and whining to get everything moved and it just never worked.

    With every piece I had nearly worked out, another arose and on a computer screen it looks like two window open with several tabs to access in each one.  My head spun with angst over root directories and files, php and FTPs, domains and DNS.  Having much experience in the area of reading research, I can tell you that when content is dense, even proficient readers default to subvocalizing in order to digest and comprehend new information.  It helps — but only if one is also willing to repeat the process over and over with little or no distraction.

    Ahem.

    I Twittered much.  I wallowed in Bubble Bazinganess.  I bonded with Facebook finally, and satisfied my creative spirit cooking, shooting photos of what I’d cooked, editing those photos, and then finally writing about what I’d cooked.  *insert note regarding food obsession here* It only fills the hours, but it never quite fills the spot that this space fills and the longer it was unavailable to me, the more I realized that although I could live without it, I just didn’t want to.

    I thought about people who have lost posessions in a fire, or who have had property vandalized.  I morbidly recalled my trauma induced by the loss of my hard drive on my beloved MacBook and all the glorious photos of our trip to the UK and several years of my son’s boyhood.   I conjured up all the images of loss I could to add to my incessant mulling over of not having this space because I may have been careless.  And if I had, nothing could be done other than start again, because that’s what I do.  I’m good at it.

    So that’s what I was ready to do this morning when I sat down.  Start again.

    And metaphorically, that’s what I’ve decided to say I’ve done, because clearly my archives are in order and everything is up and running.  But I have perspective I didn’t have a week or so ago and need to put it to good use.

    It seemed appropriate to make a few visual changes to celebrate moving on with new purpose.

    Ahhh……

    If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.

    Be satisfied with what you have.

    Every cloud has a silver lining.

    Dude, make it a double.  That was a close call.

  • Making a plan for myself, maybe.

    Yesterday, I avoided coming up here to sit at the keyboard, to sort through emails, to sip my coffee while scrolling through the early morning cacophony that is Twitter.  I’ve been doing this for more time than I like to acknowledge.  Instead, I straightened things up around the kitchen and the rest of the house, started some laundry, and pulled a stool up to the kitchen counter to make a plan of sorts.  It was a scary concept, but I was armed with a pad of paper, stickies, and a sharp pencil.  It was going to happen, or else.

    I also silently vowed to get in the car to get groceries before noon — something I resist doing like one might resist jumping into an ice cold pool buck naked just because it was there.

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  • The Things We Keep

    Yesterday I tackled the garage, and although I’m far from being done, I’m satisfied with the progress I’ve made.  It’s  a jumble of items you’d expect to find in a garage: a fairly recent deposit of my kitchen overflow;  remnants of our recent construction;  boxes expelled of Christmas decorations waiting for their return;  and my son’s truly unbelievable collection of crap.

    Son's Crap

    Not exactly a glamorous way to spend the first day after the holidays home alone, but pleasant.  I popped the garage door open to let in the light and brisk air realizing that if I had an attic or basement, I wouldn’t be able to enjoy either of those or my less than friendly neighbors as they passed by on their morning walk, furtively avoiding my gaze and the greeting perched on my tongue, just waiting for an opportunity to be human.   Ever the optimist am I.

    I think the reason I avoid organizing our garage or anything else in my house that collects pieces of our lives over time, is that I’m forced to think about the memories attached to every item I handle.  It isn’t that I regret those memories — it’s more about having to accept the time it adds to the task, and the mood I’ll need to wallow in when I’m finished.

    My thoughts wandered from annoyance with my son for keeping what resembles a rat’s nest wherever he goes, to flippant defiance:  What if I printed our address in craigslist in the “free” section and just left the garage door open to  the inevitable riot?  Instead, what I’m left with this morning are what lies between, like thoughts about boys growing up who were never interested in playing sports, but did to indulge us.

    Old Trophies

     

     

    Old Toys

    Thoughts about school and career, and where all that knowledge and understanding goes when one is done with it.  Of an old house and all its poignant memories.   Of grandmothers and Martha, old friends I should call or write, and school kids I will never, ever forget.

    Beauty lost to function and sentimentality to practicality on many counts during my purge. Copper pieces that have gleamed in the morning sun and cast sparks of light on my dining room wall for years are in the discard pile.  Decorations for Valentines Day and Easter that used to liven up the house when the boys were little also ended up in the pile along with a huge bag of stuffed animals I haven’t opened in years.  If I see them, I’ll have to think about who owned which and at what point in life.  It’s sort of leaning against the discard pile, not quite a part of it, and not quite separate.  Is there a child’s stuffed animal heaven somewhere I haven’t heard of?

    Old Bunny

    But there are things I’ve not quite decided to let go of, and If they’re any indication of who I am or what I’ve been, then I’m as odd as I’ve always thought I’ve been.  As odd as the stack of Martha Stewart Living magazines that seem to be about much more than the paper they’re printed on.  What does one do with that many magazines sitting, collecting spiders and bugs with too many legs to count?  Do I get one out each week, leaf through it, cut out what strikes my fancy and toss it to get on with the next?  There’s something about a sharp pair of scissors cutting along a perfectly straight line and thinking through one’s life.

    Ferd, a giant bunny, sits in a corner on a stack of coolers.  It’s not a very dignified place for something that reminds me of how simple love can be if we allow it, and how easily life can be taken for granted, or lost if we’re not careful.

    And these bottles?  I dug them up in the washed out area of an old dump near one of the last places my grandmother lived.  It was in the middle of nowhere — one of those places people used to go and then forgot about after the freeway was built.  The bottles aren’t valuable, but I like their varying shapes and embossed surfaces, each a slightly different tint than the next.  She was like that.

    Junk Yard Bottles

    Or a bag I packed the day I left my job, nearly two years ago.  It’s moved from one side of the garage to the other, but I haven’t unpacked it yet.  But I might blow the dust off the silver bar that used to sit on my desk to remind me that others see us quite differently than we see ourselves.

    Career in a Bag

    I’ve done quite a bit of thinking since finishing my work yesterday, and realize that as much as I got some exercise and fresh air, I’ve only moved everything from one side of the garage to the other.  It’s more organized than it was, but it’s all still sitting there.

    It’s only been sifted.

  • Oh Look. Writing.

    Somehow, all the time I used to look forward to — all the time I spent thinking about what I might write here is gone.  The unfortunate aspect of this is that the writing voice I hear during the day has faded, its insistent prodding, its litany of opening lines, and reminders of possible topics have been pushed aside by life.  And what a small life it is.

    Sounds dramatic, doesn’t it?

    It should be, but I don’t have the time right now to make it that way.  Too much dust and food, and excuses.  It isn’t that I don’t want to write here.  Honestly.  It’s more about the type of writer I am.

    I have to use a food analogy.  Sorry.

    If you turn the burner on low and let the water simmer, then turn up the heat as the water approaches the boil, then that would be me.  There’s no turning me on high and cutting to the chase.  I could do that if I wanted, but what’s the point?

    Writing is a catharsis for me and if I can’t spend the time, then the words stay in my mind.  And I’m egotistical enough to know that once I’ve formed the perfect line of words to convey the just right thought, they’ll be forgotten unless I write them down.  It’s sad.

    I do get credit for:

    1) working on a cookbook for a friend which entailed making most of the recipes and snapping photos, right?

    2) spending more time than I wanted –surprisingly — looking at products for our home renovation.

    3)  getting ready to visit several blogging friends for a week!

    4)  having to reposition myself in my home while contractors tear it to shreds and dust settles on every possible surface.

    Excuses.

    Sad, because so much has happened that I have thoughts about — some lovely, and others, not so much.  And all of which would have been written at one point in time.  But no.  And it’s horrible.

    The other problem is, even if I write here, everyone has either left the building, or has stopped writing, their bloggy wonderfulness seemingly forever ended, their words and photos, just sitting, no longer collecting comments.  *sigh*

    What to do?

    Sign up for that writing class at UCSD extension so I’ll actually write?  Continue to wallow through this strange new life of mine?

    What?

  • Middle Aged Anomaly Tucks in Ass Each Morning

    I click “Write” on my WordPress dashboard, waiting for the spinning wheel that is my brain to slow knowing that it won’t and that focusing on a single stream of steady thought on any one idea will seem impossible.

    No, be impossible.

    In 20 minute’s time, I’ve gone from thinking about working out a recipe for apple cinnamon nut ice cream, to worrying about the huge bowl of bread dough I have fermenting in the fridge, then mulling over tonight’s debate between Palin and Biden before reading through most of this Slate article and being completely distracted by a list linked inside that article. Or maybe it was somewhere else on the page…can’t remember.

    I don’t normally spend my time reading these types of articles, but once in a while, one will catch my eye because the writing is good and it actually feels as if there’s a person behind that writing. Quite a concept, yes?  Aspects of it will get me thinking, of course, and the entire time, somewhere hovering above it all (at least today) are Natalie Goldberg’s words about writers I scanned over this morning in the bathroom:

    Writers live twice.  They go along with their regular life, are as fast as anyone in the grocery store, crossing the street, getting dressed for work in the morning.  But there’s another part of them that they have been training.  The one that lives everything a second time.  That sits down and sees their life again and goes over it.  Looks at the texture and details.

    Okay, so Natalie, I haven’t been “training” because that would imply that this living twice business is something I choose to do.  You don’t choose it.  “It” chooses you.  For example, not only have I thought about what I’ve described just now, but I’ve thought about it many times since, and am now thinking about it again.  And yet again when revising this paragraph.  Still thinking…

    I do this all day long.

    It’s like watching myself live my life and even though it’s odd, it provides me quite a bit of time to think about how and why I do what I do.  As much as I can say there’s a soothing (insane) aspect to it, unfortunately it doesn’t lend itself to improving my productivity.  Bills are sitting in front of me, there are quite a few piles of recipes I’ve torn from magazines ready to be recycled sitting in the middle of my family room floor (where they’ve migrated after being on the kitchen counter for several days), and I need to get off my derrier to go for a walk today.

    But I’ve arrived at the conclusion that the bloggosphere can be quite the brutal place — at times, what I imagine it would feel like to go through a carwash without my car, each spray of water or rotating brush pushing me first one way, and then another and never quite making it to the end.

    I’m tired of it but have no one to blame but myself.  I think much of it stems from the fact that who I am and what I have to say here doesn’t exactly fit anywhere.  This conclusion isn’t earth-shattering, nor is it meant to be accompanied by a whine. I don’t whine.  I have been known to climb up on a soapbox and metaphorically flip the world the bird, however — just not as much as I used to.

    *sigh*

    I am a middle-aged woman.  That I enjoy who I am at this particular point in my life doesn’t really change the fact that I’m somewhat of an oddity in the Bloggosphere.  Sometimes, it’s overwhelming to be surrounded by twenty and thirty somethings with toddlers, techies with jargon I never completely understand, snarling, snarking political junkies, celeb gossip mongers, and the increasingly less than attractive you-too-can-make-money-at-home crowd.

    I’m an anomaly.  And I guess that’s the most annoying part of this since I always have been, so why should my persona here be less so?  One would think I’d get used to being reminded that I’ve always been a square peg.

    I have no stories to tell about my toddlers, my Satanical boss, my commute, my gigabytes, and there is no way in hell I could ever sit down here and try to be funny every freaking day because people want a cheap laugh.  But I’m also not going to wallow in the bathos of my life (liar, liar, pants on fire…), lamenting about mistakes and missed opportunities. No, really.

    What I will do is continue to look in the mirror each day, and after taking more than the normal minute or so to scan my body and realize it doesn’t exactly look like it used to even five years ago, suck in my stomach, tuck in my ass, smile and know that I am me.  Still.

    Sounds like a warning, doesn’t it?

    Heh.

  • Learning from Writers

    I’ve been reading portions of William Zinsser’s Inventing the Truth, a collection of pieces by talented writers on The Art and Craft of Memoir. It lays open in a place that I’ll see it throughout the day so that I can noncommittally pick it up and think about what the writers have to say about their respective experiences writing memoir.

    One of the pieces,”Points of Departure,” by  Jill Ker Conway discusses so many different things worth my consideration.  But what I can’t get past is the sheer magnitude of her life — and that I’ve never heard of her before.  How does that happen, and why, after learning of it all, do I not feel insignificant?

    Most likely because I’ve never suffered from being or feeling insignificant.  Of course, everything is relative, so it’s easy to say that I’ve been significant to my family, or good friends, or a student here and there.  Perhaps even to birds I’ve trapped inside and released before they hurt themselves crashing against a window to get out.  Definitely the IRS since they can depend on us for tax dollars. But I’m not talking about any of that.  It’s so much larger than the tiny details that we essentially are.

    I wander through my day and think, “What does it mean?”

    I’ve learned that Anne Lamott’s KFKD will play, relentlessly telling me all things non-constructive — anything to keep me from actually writing something relevant.

    Anything.

    At least if I continue to read Conway, I’ll write, but I’ll want to write about what distracts me, such as her opinion about women being “lodged in family networks [being] very attractive to the political right because it provides a good reason for keeping [them] from establishing a strong independent identity of their own.”

    That’s a few good days of writing all by itself.

    Instead, I’ll think more about what she has to say about memories and their separation from the emotion they so readily evoke.

    I’ll also think about her question, “Why did it happen that way?”

    In the meantime, I’ll write, too.

    It’s easier to take on.

    Girls are certainly different now, aren't they?

  • Wordle and Other Excellent Friday Distractions

    Have you spent time with wordle yet?

    It’s fun if you don’t have anything better to do. In fact, it’s perfect if you do have things to do, but just can’t seem to motivate yourself to do them.

    Cleaning the house seems more attractive by comparison considering the dark mood I was in after spending some time pencil writing last evening. I actually accomplished something while sitting in the late afternoon sun, thinking, remembering, questioning. And then my neighbor came home and wandered over to talk.  This would be the neighbor who feigns neighborliness until one’s out of earshot.  The one who puts his trash out on Sunday morning to sit for an entire day so the rest of the neighborhood can enjoy its loveliness.  The one who who seizes any moment to mention that our dog barks when she doesn’t.  And who lets the spindly trees that are supposed to be a hedge grow without trimming them.  Robert Frost had something to say about good fences making good neighbors, didn’t he?

    Sometimes, I like to think that things happen for a reason, and the exercise was enough to make me really wonder about whether some aspects of our lives need to be put down on paper — even if they’re fictionalized. And if they actually happened, then why the need to fictionalize?

    I’m just not sure.

    But my mood was with me through the night, and it wasn’t until after I returned from my early walk with my friend that I realized the mood was gone, my spirits lifted.

    That’s what exercise, non-stop blathering about everything under the sun, and laughter will do.

    Of course, finding more interesting ways to distract myself also works.  I haven’t been able to decide whether I look best in Mucha,

    Modigliani,

    or Botticelli, 

    but I’m leaning toward the latter since we saw La Primavera, The Birth of Venus, and other beautiful works while we were in Italy.

    Well, and the eyebrows are right.  Nonexistent. Or very nearly.

    In my next life, I will have eyebrows.

    Perhaps I will write about that.

  • Finding a place to begin

    Finding a place to begin

    Nike was smart when they launched their campaign admonishing those of us who sit far too long on our ever-expanding rear ends to “Just do It.”  But when you’re someone who is more inclined to first think, then talk about what you are thinking about — like writing — then think about writing before you actually write anything,  clearly those words have no effect.  None.

    I haven’t “Done It” yet.  In other words, I’m still getting warmed up to the idea of possibly thinking about wanting to write something.  Not just anything, but the piece I am supposed to write.

    The problem is twofold.  On second thought, it’s got quite a few more folds than two. Tenfold might be more accurate.  I have no excuse for this.  It’s pathetic.

    And so when I find myself in this particular situation, I review what I know.  I mull over every detail and experience much like one might sort through an old recipe box, thinking about what is on each card instead of pulling one out, and actually cooking and serving it for dinner.

    I could go back through the books I’ve used in the past whose authors have helped me sort out my thoughts.  People like Zinsser and Lamott, or Goldberg or E.B. White, because they force me to think about what I’m not doing. But I’d have to have something, anything, to work with before I’m compelled to pick up one of those books again.  Otherwise, it’s no different than reading travelogues and never traveling, or buying yet another cookbook when never intending to cook.

    Somehow in my wandering today, I came across Vonnegut and his take on style.  I’d not seen it before, and I read it through several times acknowledging his advice, but thinking more about his writing.  I read parts of it aloud, as I often do when something is written just right, needing to hear the cadence of words as each works with another.  Then I considered the advice.

    One thing was missing.

    Find a place to begin.  And therein lies the rub.

    Since it’s not a dark and stormy night, I’m taking myself out into the sun that has finally decided to grace us with its presence to sit and read something well-written, take a few notes, and find a place to begin while I’m distracted by green bugs in the vicinity.

  • Books, Brioche, and…Boredom

    Finally, finally, all things Italy are done.  The planning, the packing, the photos, the writing.  And when you’ve spent the time that I have getting ready for a trip like this, there’s a kind of void after it’s over.  A huge void.  Kind of like the Grand Canyon.

    I just might be…

    …and I’m not quite certain…

    …but thinking perhaps that…

    I’m bored.

    Wait.

    I’m never bored.

    Ever.

    I’m not quite sure what to do about this feeling.

    And even more strange?

    Because I’ve been up to my ears with all things flickr, Photoshop, iPhoto, and Blurb,  I’m not in the mood to sit here, either.  It’s Friday and the whole weekend is yawning ahead.  It is Friday, isn’t it?

    I thought so.

    I’ve got three cookbooks opened to some very nice brioche recipes all requiring overnight refrigeration, (I can’t decide if I want plain or chocolate…) and I’m wondering whether the MoH would like to go down to the water tonight to sit and stare at the horizon with a bit of food and something nice to drink.  Or maybe go see Mama Mia…

    But there are other things to consider as well:

    • Like how to get my doggo to stop her incessant scratching and my cat’s interminable yeowling. The fleas are beyond nasty this year, and although I’ve sprayed, and vacuumed, and washed, brushed, combed and yes, finally broke down and bought some Frontline (disgusting poison…), it doesn’t seem to have put a dent in them.  I.  Hate.  Fleas.  Which is why I hate carpeting.  And whomever conducted that study that reported simple vacuuming daily will eliminate up to 99% of the fleas because it destroys their shells?  What-ever, dood.  Sounds good, but no cigar.  Well, not around here, anyway.  My cat is the world’s greatest fleabus.  It doesn’t make sense to me.  We have almost NO dirt anywhere.  There are flagstones, and concrete, a few flowerbeds that are predominantly damp, a patch of damp grass…WHAT GIVES?
    • I need a new book. I loved Such a Pretty Fat by Jen Lancaster (laughed my ass off…well…not quite since my scale still insists upon telling me the gawd awful truth).  It lambastes Jenny Craig and the whole concept of a weight-loss plan that includes packaged food AND has the greatest kiss-off line I’ve heard in a long time.  Click the link and watch the video.   I also just finished The Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Pachett, one of my favorite authors.  It was her first novel, and I’m letting it stew a bit before I say what I need to say about it.  But her books have that effect on me.  And since I’m on a “thinking about writing seriously” kick (again) and still have 8 gazillion books here I haven’t read that can inspire me from one perspective or another and keep me from actually doing my own writing, Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is next up.  It looks to prove that when you want to write a book, you can write whatever you want, and sometimes, people notice.  Yes, even people like myself, who notice, then let it sit on their bookshelf for, oh, about five or six years.
    • I need to sign up for a photography class and a writing class (you know, because sometimes, homework is a good thing…) through one of the university extensions here.  I seem to have recovered from my post traumatic distress syndrome over all things “school,” and both of these classes will occupy my time, feed my creativity, and give me yet another excuse to not actually start my own real writing. Okay, so writing somewhere other than this blog.
    • I have to make a fix-it list for this house. I know I used to joke quite a bit about it, but jeez.  I’m tired of putting money into having the carpet cleaned and want to rip it out of the house and heave it out the windows.  I need a painter to even out the walls where boys incapable of standing up without hanging onto the walls have left smudges that can no longer be wiped.  And the fence on the patio needs replacing (along with the neighbor it shields us from), along with the drip sprayers and lights.  Then there are the screens the cats wrecked (and the one I totaled while we were trying to break into our house last night after swimming because we were locked out….) because the extra key wasn’t in it’s normal place… and…yes, things need to be fixed.  I checked.  There is a Handyman section in the Yellow Pages.  My fingers will be walking.  Soon.  They will be walking miles.
    • And last but not least, try not to feel so wistful about this blog. It’s sort of crawling along while my food blog is roaring.  Okay, so, not like the Internet Market type roar, but everything’s relative, yes?  As much as I enjoy both of them, this one is special because it’s just about whatever comes to mind.  It’s me.  And sure, so is the other one, but it’s about my food, which isn’t necessarily me, even though they say, “You are what you eat.”  Um, thank-you.  Next?  But the crickets have been chirping loudly here lately, and I’m trying to adjust to the idea that it’s okay and that I didn’t set out to write here to do anything other than expend energy and get back into the habit of writing.  From that perspective, it’s all been worth it.  One step leads to another, right?

    Right.

    So shut up and write.

    On to the brioche…

  • Nobody likes orange.

    Finally.  A new, peaceful theme.

    IMG_1047.JPG

    I wasn’t truly loving the orange in my last digs, but something odd has happened as a result of that recent having to live with it for as long as I did and survive.  When I’m out and about, all things orange catch my eye.  And I have been doing a bit of shopping since our vacation is looming…

    …in twelve days.

    So why am I messing around with my blog theme, you ask?

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