Writing Friends…

I am lucky enough to have several friends who are accomplished writers. Over the Thanksgiving break, I’m going to be taking a look at some of their works on this blog. But before I start looking at the individual works, I wanted to take a moment to just talk about what it has meant to have these writers as friends.

Writing is a lot of work. Some of the work is apparent; it takes place at the keyboard and produces a growing (and then shrinking) number of pages toward a completed work. It is easy, during this part of the process, to say to friends and loved one, “Sorry, I can’t do that right now, I’m working.” Much of the work, though, is less apparent. It might be done sitting on the back porch, staring out over the grape arbor, trying to puzzle out a specific memory that is needed in an essay but which you can’t quite pull up in adequate detail. It may involve laying on the living room floor playing an old Patti Smith album that triggers the sense memories of your college dorm room to adequately capture the smells of bong water and old laundry in your writing. Or, and for some reason it seems every writer I know has this experience, working may mean standing in the shower thinking over some plot element or structural problem while using up the last of the hot water.

Your loved ones may not be able to tell that you are working, and this may make you come to doubt that you are working. Your writer friends can reassure you that this does indeed count as “productive time” and that you aren’t being an unreasonably selfish person to find the hours of quietude you need. They may, though, if they are thoughtful writer friends with families of their own, suggest that you shower after everyone else who shares your hot water tank.

Writing is also scary work. What if you aren’t any good? Worse yet, what if you are genuinely bad… so bad, for instance, that you some day become known as the Rod McKuen of your day, or find your work being compared negatively with those paintings of big-eyed children from the sixties? What if you are both this bad and somehow still able to be published?

Your writer friends will tell you if something isn’t ready to send. They care about you, and they also don’t want to discover they’ve published a story that wasn’t yet ready to be out in the world.

Of course, this means finding writer friends you trust. There are, indeed, writers who are awful human beings and will find fault with your work just for the joy of feeling superior. Do not make these people your friends! Think charitably of them, be kind to them, but keep them at arm’s length. Work can ALWAYS be better. A good writer, though, is as good at pointing out what is working as she is at pointing out what is not. And you want the opinions of good writers, don’t you?

I am blessed to have as friends many wonderful writers, and during the upcoming week I will be sharing some of their work with you. Because this is also part of being a good writer friend: share your audience, your connections, your insights. The writers I’m going to share have been generous with their time, energy, and resources and helped me immeasurably. But that isn’t why I’m sharing them with you. I am sharing them because they are good writers, and you will be happy to have read their work.

Liquor is Quicker…

 

Stadium Spirits, Huntington WV

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am spending most of my semester break working with my father in a liquor store in my home town.  The reasons for this vary by audience.  My father thinks I need the money.  My husband believes that I’m just trying to help out my father.  Both are right, of course, although both would deny needing my help so have to frame things the way that they have.  

The work is simple; aside from stocking shelves a few bottles at a time because I am not strong enough to lift the cases of liquor, I mostly dust or stand behind the counter watching yet another CSI or Law and Order marathon on cable.  Some days, I barely earn the minimum wage this job pays.  

Still, there are complexities.  I bristle at being spoken to rudely by underaged would-be customers; I want to say “Hey, kiddo, in real life I’m one of your instructors.”  (Although, of course, I’m not.  They go to Marshall; I am at WVU.)  A few old friends have come in to buy wine, and I find myself explaining, right off the bat, that I am here to help my father–completely leaving out the and we could use the extra money bit.  I walk a fine line with my father’s boss.  I am aware that I shouldn’t be too “uppity,” but it’s been a long time since I played the game of Yes, Boss.  I’m not good at it, and I am afraid it will reflect badly on my father, that it will seem like I’ve gotten above my raising.

I am uncomfortable selling blunt wraps–pre-rolled papers in flavors like Wet Mango, Purple Haze, and Krypto (this last, I think, is for rolling marijuana-flavored marijuana)– to the students and younger townies.  I want to lecture them, instead, on the both the dangers of drugs in general and the travesty of hiding the taste of good weed behind Jolly Rancher flavored papers.  I do neither.  Instead, I smile at everyone, make eye contact, call customers “sir” and “ma’am” even when they are young enough to be my children, and keep my tongue-clucking to myself.  

Most of the lessons I’ve had to learn this year have been about keeping my big mouth shut.  This is just another of those.  The Universe is not a subtle teacher, and I think it’s finally starting to sink in.

Backpack Jack

The outlet mall at Flatwoods, WV isn’t very exciting.  The stores aren’t great—Tommy Hilfiger, whose clothes I won’t buy, is the only designer with a presence.  It is a good place to look for Christmas presents for newly apartmented, college freshman nieces and gadget-addicted (I’m sorry, I mean tool and I don’t mean addicted) husbands.  Plus, there is one of those Amish Bulk Foods stores that, I don’t think, have much to do with the Amish but do have lots of wonderful, bad-for-you sorts of things like bread-and-butter pickled beets and caramel-covered marshmallows.  So, I stopped yesterday on my way home from Thanksgiving in Huntington.

 

I got out of my car and heard someone barking at the top of his lungs, “…and all you God-damned Republicans are going to get what’s coming to you, all you fat fuck Jesus-freaks with your jacked-up pick-up trucks and…” Shit, I thought.  This is going to be someone I know. 

 

And it was.  Backpack Jack, who I met the first night I worked at Bartlett House back in the late 80s and who has been wandering in and out of my life ever since.  But then again, that’s what he does.  He wanders.  He labels himself a hobo and, if there is anything noble left in the call, he embodies it.

 

It seemed a civic duty to offer Jack a ride back to Morgantown; I’m a big fan of free speech, but I also think people should be able to bring their children to public places without being confronted by someone yelling obscenities.  Jack isn’t crazy, just bored and a little too in love with the idea of himself as an outlaw.  And, he told me, he had figured he wouldn’t get a ride to Morgantown that day and thought he’d just stand there yelling until the cops offered him a free place to spend the night.  Flatwoods doesn’t have a homeless shelter, and Jack says he prefers jail—fewer rules and no one who thinks they can save you.

 

The hour-and-a-half trip was like the world’s longest panhandle.  I guess Jack’s shtick is all he has left, because he kept it up long after I’d given him the five bucks he’d asked for and made it clear he wasn’t getting any more out of me.  That makes me sad.  Jack used to be more interesting.

 

We reminisced a little about his old running gang:  Cat Eyes, Big Al, and Steve who never did get a colorful nickname.  They’re all still on the road, although Jack says Steve was married for a while and is only just now de-trailered and single again.  We talked about the winter I had to cut through the duct-tape Cat Eyes used to keep his boots on to check for frostbite, and how sad it was that Big Al had ripped off a local shop-owner who is usually kind to the homeless and, as a result, wasn’t welcome in town by anyone these days.  It was a little like running into an old friend and a little like going back to a job I was no longer suited for, but mostly it made my car smell like unwashed man and wood smoke.

 

Still, it’s nice to live in a world small enough that I know the hobos on the road; when to stop, and when to keep driving.  The alternative—to always have to keep driving—seems both lonely and wrong.  I may be done letting homeless men live in my basement, but hopefully I will never have to stop offering them rides back to town.

Miracle Fruit

 

I am a complete fool for culinary curiosities.  The are  three jars of candied olives, a bottle of truffle oil, two different kinds of black rice, and several packets of instant pho in my kitchen cabinets right now.  For a few months, my friends Kevin and Sara had to avoid coming to dinner because I kept threatening to make chicken with truffles I had bought at TJ Maxx.  (When I finally opened the jar, they were dry, gritty things and I threw them away. I’m a sucker, but a picky one.)  

But Miracle Fruit is by far the strangest and coolest thing I’ve tried in a long time.  It’s a berry that (and this is just such a strange idea) has something called miraculin in it that bonds to your taste buds and temporarily keeps you from tasting the sourness of things.  

I bought my Miracle Fruit in tablet form on Ebay.  So, yes, just to clarify–I bought strange pills from an unknown person and let one dissolve on my tongue.  If you think this is the first time I’ve ever done that, you’re clearly a stranger who has just wandered over here from someplace a little more sheltered.  But anyway…  So, I let the pill dissolve on my tongue and then waited two minutes, as instructed by the few English directions on the box.  After two minutes, I took a giant swig of cranberry juice and almost spit it out because it was so sweet!  There was no bitterness it all.  So I tried orange juice.  Same thing.  Tastes like Sunny-D.  (So, yeah, gross.)  

“Well,” I thought, because I am prone thinking these sorts of things, “so what if it can make orange juice taste like Sunny-D?  Can it make lemon juice taste good?  I bet not!”  And then I liberally squeezed the plastic lemon until I had a good mouthful of juice.  (Maybe proof that all this dissolving-tabs-from-strangers stuff has been less than a great idea.)  And it wasn’t sour at all!  It tasted like those candied lemon wedges that sat on my great-grandmother’s coffee table.  (Again, not really a taste I’d go looking for, but you get the point.)

If you know me, you are probably going to get a box of these for Christmas, and maybe a few grapefruit or kumquats.  And you won’t believe me that it works as well as it does until you squeeze juice from your own plastic lemon onto your tongue

Changed

I feel like I’ve died and gone to America.

–composer Barry Franklin

I can’t stop crying.  I have been crying for five days now.  Every time someone says something to me that includes the words “President Obama,” I well up.  Jessie Jackson, Will Smith, and Oprah Winfrey cry, and I’m snot-nosed and red-eyed right along with them.  Colin Powell cries and–defends his right to cry–and I weep.  

Intellectually, I understand why I have been so invested in the Obama campaign, but until he won, I didn’t know myself how emotionally invested I was–not in his campaign, but in a dream of America that I pretended to stop dreaming some time during the Reagan years.  Or maybe it was after the The Cosby Show was cancelled and Cops debuted.  I can’t put my finger on it.  But it died when I was young enough that dreams were dying off by the dozens, and I don’t remember taking particular notice of it then.  

Now, in its triumphant return, I begin to wonder what other dreams I put aside that, instead, I should have worked toward.  It’s a scary, brilliant moment.  I am glad to have been here for it, and I hope I am up to the things it will ask of me in the coming months and years.  

 

The Revolution Wants Candy…

 

Hope comes knocking and asking for candy...

Last night, we had three Barack Obamas at our house.  The first was the teenage girl next door.  The second was the ten year old boy from down the block.  The third was someone’s father.

There were no John McCains, no Sarah Palins, and no George Bushes.  And we’re supposed to be a red state.

I will wait with the rest of you for the results of the election.  But I have seen the results of the primary:  two children, years away from voting,  dressed up on Halloween as the black man who, according to the poles, is most likely our next President.  

These children will grow up to be people who do not say, as people my age said for a very long time, “He’s a great candidate, but I don’t think even the Democrats will elect a black man as their Presidential nominee.”  They won’t say, as people I love have said as recently as last week, “It’s a shame, but this country isn’t ready for a black president.  He can’t win.”

They will have always known a black man can be president.  

The revolution has come.    Last night, it knocked on my door, along with a gaggle of Hannah Montanas and Darth Vaders, and held out its pillowcase for candy.

And then we were three…

The homeless guy in our basement is gone. He made a brief trip to the regional jail for an old, stupid thing and now, as far as we know, is staying with a loose group of friends, possibly out of doors. We’d asked him to move out before the incident; after two years, he was no closer to being able to live on his own than when we’d first taken him in, and it was clear to us that he needed the case management services that he could only get by living in the homeless shelter. No one was pleased with the solution, but no one–not even the guy in the basement–argued against it. If any good was going to come of his being here, it seemed likely it would have come in those first two years.

Scotti, Lucy, and I live in the house alone for the first time since our marriage. My niece lived with us for a while, and a Korean psychiatrist who was here as part of an international exchange program. For a few weeks last summer, there was a second homeless man on the back porch.

I love you, I really do, but don’t ask to stay with me while you look for a new apartment or decide if you’re going to leave your husband. I’m sorry, but the guest room is full of Scotti’s papers and, as soon as I’ve put a fresh coat of paint on the walls, the basement bedroom is going to be full of mine. I am not a person who can safely have empty rooms–I fill them up with people too easily–so we are naming each room in our house something other than “the guest room” or “the extra bedroom.” We will have Scotti’s study, and my study, and maybe even a dining room again.

Wordle…

I’m addicted to Wordle.  I think every writer should play with it now and again… it is a surprising and effective exercise to the see the “word clouds” that are generated.

Also, it’s one of those great writing-but-not-writing time sinks… for those days when I want to feel like I’m accomplishing something but, really, I’m lucky to have managed to get out of bed and down to the computer at all.

Pawpaw Chutney

The man behind us has a small grove of pawpaw trees, and has given me permission to pick a few off the ground so I can gather the seeds and try to start a few trees of my own.  This will be tricky.  Pawpaws are finicky trees.  The seed will have to be kept in refridgerator for at least 90, but not more than 120, days.  Each seedling will have to start out in a pot, and we don’t have a greenhouse.  But I am set on following through with the directions provided by The Calofornia Rare Fruit Growers.

Because all I need are the seeds, I have a lot of pawpaw flesh left over.  It has a taste somewhere between a banana and a mango, so I’m trying it in a mildly hot chutney made with vinegar, cloves, star anice, tumeric, Indian chilis, and jaggery.  It seems to have come out well, although it’s still cooling.  If it is good enough, I’ll make samosas.  If not, we’ll eat it with kofta curry.  Either way, there is something a little more magical about a meal made with wild foods.

My Pet Dead Rat…

I saw it, dying, for the first time a month ago.  It had curled itself into a ball against a neighbor’s stone wall.  The dogs and I passed within inches of it, but the animals did not pay each other any mind.  The way it looked in the rain, cowered against the wall, was more o’possum than rat.  I thought then that is what it was, but I don’t remember thinking about it much at the time.  Only seeing it, thinking that it did not belong there no matter what it was, and hoping it would be gone the next time we walked this patch of sidewalk.

I saw it again a few days later; stiff and swollen with death in the little patch of grass between sidewalk and curb in front of a neighbor’s house.  This time the dogs noticed it alright, pulling hard towards the stench so they could roll around in it.  It was an effort to drag them across the street.  We walked only on the other side for a week.

Now it comes and goes, disappearing into tall grass and dead leaves for a few days and then somehow back on the sidewalk again.  I almost always notice it before the dogs get too close, although today Max was about to chomp off its head before I realized I needed to reign him in. 

I think about this rat a lot right now.  About how it must mean something, although I can’t think of what.  The dead rat has too much physicality to disappear into language.  Maybe next month, when the last of its fur is gone and it’s only bone chip and tooth, it will give itself up to metaphor.  But for now it stubbornly insists on its own right to be literal.  Real.

I know I should go and get the corpse and throw it somewhere that the dogs can’t get at it–but where?  Not in the garbage, certainly… the smell is still too strong and the garbagemen came yesterday, so it would fester for a week.  (How can so little flesh left on such dry bones still stink that way?)  Not in the garden, because it is a rat.  Had it been the possum I first took it to be, I’d have dumped it in the compost heap weeks ago. 

Poor rat.  Too much a pariah even to be fertilizer.  Too real for metaphor.

I have named him Habakkuk.