That Song by Alison Krauss, or, A Way With Words

Formal-ly

I go through cycles of music and podcasts when I head out on my walks to the ocean these days.  If all of the podcasts are spent, I switch to a playlist that drives me to pick up my feet.  If there are podcasts waiting, they get first priority, for walking allows my brain the only multi-task that receives the information.

I listen to all kinds of programs:

• "The Writer's Almanac" with Garrison Keillor;
• "The Rachel Maddow Show" with Rachel Maddow;
• "Here's the Thing" with Alec Baldwin (yes, THAT Alec Baldwin);
• "Selected Shorts" with various celebrities reading short works of fiction to an audience;
• "Alt.Latino" with Jasmine Garsd and Felix Contreras;
• "WTF" with Marc Maron;
• "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross;
• "A Way With Words" with Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett.

Notice a pattern?  No?  Well, then just remember the last one on the list.  That one will stick out--like a sore thumb, as the saying goes--later.

*****

I've been in love with words all the way back to pre-kindergarten days.  According to legend, I'd run around the house playing with words (I was a neat freak even at that age and playing with my toys often meant, well, organizing them) that I heard from my parents, my live-in grandmother, and rare glances at television.  My mother was a huge proponent of children's literature, particularly rhyme, and I would beat out a song of Seuss or Silverstein until I drove everyone crazy or concerned.  When my mother saw how hungry I was for words, she collaborated with my father and grandmother to mispronounce some things, out of fear that my using words like "compromise," "obliterate" (say that one for a second...it's like a KA-POW from a comic book), etc would get me all kinds of teasing from my schoolmates on the first day.  So they "corrected" me to call that long, thin pasta with the accent on the first syllable instead of the second ("SPAG-hetti") and that "compromise" word as an altered promise instead of its own saying.  

As you can imagine, I got laughed at anyway, for the wrong reason.  I learned to shut up, in other words, which I guess is the blessing one is looking for when one's child is running around the house audibly tasting words like "obliterate."

As a side effect, I also learned to (quietly) be even better at grammar, spelling, and usage than most kids, then most adolescents (that wasn't hard--have you ever listened to teenagers?), and then most adults.  I wouldn't correct people, but I would look up what they said later if it was questionable.  It usually was, but, again, I didn't question the person who uttered the word or phrase--I just used it as a learning experience of my own.  I loved entertainers who played with correct and incorrect usage, or language that leaned to one tone or another: a favorite was David Letterman ("I don't think there's a man, woman, or child alive today who doesn't enjoy a good beverage," spoken with an extra-thick layer of cheeeeez).  I listened to Garrison Keillor on "A Prairie Home Companion" and spoke like a Minnesotan for hours after; I listened to my dad tell a story and would ask people the next day what the "Sam Hill" they meant by something.  I learned what was "formally correct" and loved the rest, just as much as a good beverage.

Somewhere in there, though, my mother's fears were realized.  I was a freak when it came to language, and she even admitted to me that when I went to college she was afraid to write me for fear I would sit at the receiving end with a red pen the size of a sword and proof her letters.  I found this both stunning and not surprising.  Sure, I loved English (with passing crushes on Spanish, French, German, Italian and varying dialects of English), but didn't everyone else, too?  Come ON, the word is "obliterate."  Slowly, roll it off your tongue.  The word is packed with passion, no?

Eh, not so much, answered the world.

College didn't help the addiction; rather, it festered there.  My first class was Intro to Literature, and there I read Joyce's "Araby," with its "music" in "horse harnesses."  Now I was hearing the music of words and the music that I was supposed to hear from description, and God help us all.  I took a Shakespeare course and learned that back in the Bard's day you had one way of talking to your friends and one way of talking to people higher in the classes than you were or could hope to be.  That taught me more about formal and informal usage than my French classes ("tu," "vous;" it's all you) and my required grammar course.  I put that grammar course off until the very end, thinking it was going to be some woman wearing a tight bun with a ruler in her hand ready to smack me if I mixed "I" and "me" the wrong way.  Turns out, that class was about shifting trends in English over the years, etymology, and the nuances of formal and informal.  No rulers would be damaged in the participation of that class, and the gentle provocations of my professor taught me to think about language with even more love and devotion.

Doktor Enabler.

After college I wrote training manuals and kick-ass emails on a corporate path to what I thought would be something phenomenal--a big City.  San Francisco must be not only full of metropolitan, worldly-wise English-speakers, but I was looking forward to hearing other languages, which didn't happen much in Southwest Missouri outside of a college campus.  I showed up in the Bay Area and soaked up the music of Hindi, Spanish, Russian, Italian (umm-HMMM, that's what I'm talking about), Cantonese, Korean, Tagalog...no French except from a friend who spoke it as a second (maybe third) language.  But the English in San Francisco...I was so disappointed, and had a hard time hiding it.  A regret now is that I shared my cringing at, like, you know, the vast, like, people who, like, talk like, well, you know, this.  Argh, I growled to anyone who knew me, half those words can be, what's the word, OBLITERATED, and we could have...English.  Musical, Seuss-ical, English.  Or I could stand to listen to your conversation.  Your, like, hesitating, is, like, killing my writing and wordsmith's ear.

Worse than alienating people with my love of language was when they asked me to help them correct the issue and I discovered that most of them possessed a) no love of language, and/or b) a strong aversion to learning a love of it after grade school.  My first roommate in San Francisco asked me to proof her college papers for a comp class.  I did, returned them, and she took offense.  "My instructor said this sentence was fine, and he used to work for the New York Times."  I swallowed the urge to point out to her that he used to work for the New York Times.  I backed away, telling her that I was probably wrong, and that I wouldn't mess her up by proofing her pieces anymore.  She looked relieved.  I felt relieved myself, but a little lonelier for the confrontation.  Didn't she love words enough to play with them?  Didn't she respect herself enough to question the instructor?

Maybe, though, I thought in a scary supposition to myself, I had been in the City so long that I was mispronouncing spaghetti all over again.

*****

These days, unemployed, I see plenty of assaults on the English language by people who are supposed to guide the rest of us to success.  I see people who are gainfully employed getting paid to treat words like dollar bills at Magic Mike's.  I see entry-level, middle management, and top leadership communicating poorly.  And I'm expected to expect less.

I do.  Because, regrettably, in the last few years expecting more has cost me friendships, and, still not regrettably, brownie points with managers.  But privately, secretly, in the dark of night or on those morning walks to the ocean, if no one's around, I correct myself, or correct big shots in media (NBC Olympic commentators, mostly, or business leaders who had it in for me).  I never correct friends or my beloved baseball players that don't speak English so well...not because I couldn't, but because I don't speak Spanish so well and I have no desire to correct people I love.  I guess that's part of the problem.  I should have remembered that regarding correcting myself.

Obliterate.  Ok, Rainman, enough...

Back to my podcasts...for in them lies the most release if there is no music playing.  (Can I just say that the best song lyrics are better than the words I used to say wandering around the house as a toddler?)  The last podcast on that list, "A Way With Words," is one of the rare cultural gems of San Diego County.  The show is recorded and produced here, where people used to, as late as last year, speak in golden sentences and now talk, like, you know, San Franciscan, like, English.  This morning I listened to this week's podcast with relish.  I learned why the word "colonel" is said with an "r" sound.  And then a caller came on and asked why we couldn't just readily exchange "I" and "me" in a sentence, and why the heck all the rules, and blah, blah, blah.

I held my breath, hoping there were no rulers in the room.

The hosts, as gently as they could, sympathized with the caller.  They expressed the belief that people who felt the need to correct others should probably be selective about the time and place for the correction.  And then The Reason came in, and my loneliness in love of language was relieved for a moment.  The female host expressed the belief that there are different applications of language for different situations in our world...formal and informal.  While use of "me and my friends went to the movies" isn't incorrect, it's not as formal as "My friends and I went to the movies."  There's a time and place for "Me and my friends went to the movies," and there's a time and place for "My friends and I went to the movies."  Knowing the difference, she explained, is like dressing for the party.  One kind of party requires t-shirt and jeans.  Another kind of party requires a floor-length gown.  It dresses the speaker for the situation.  She also mentioned that knowing the difference and using the difference is a form of respect for others.  Fitting the language to the situation works to respect the other person not only in fitting in with the group, but, she said, in putting others first.  "If you say, 'My friends and I,'" she said, "the placement in the sentence is putting others--'my friends'--before myself."

Wow.

And that, dear reader, says it all for me.  Que milagro, as they would say just south of here.  And I'll say nothing at all again about the subject for a little while, again, now. 

P.S. - This song is the inspiration for today's rendition of Life For Rent.  Silence, and golden considerations.

That Song by Tony Bennett, Or, Home Game

Look, dear reader, at this long line of footprints in the sand.  It stretches all the way back to April 15th of this year, nine months ago in a week, long enough to give birth to another life.  If I would have known it was going to end up like this I can't say that I would have ever hunted for a job, but then, I would have missed out on getting glimpses into so many different lines of work in interviews.

Regret is a poison of any measure but particularly toxic on me; I tend to soak it up too quickly and steep in it before someone finds the antidote.  Regret was not what I was feeling last week, strangely enough, when I knew that my time in San Francisco was going to have to end in some way.  I didn't sit there and think, Gee, I should have never quit Grainger.  That wasn't the regret.  The regret was not spending more time with my writing.

I'm getting over that regret this week.

I had nine beautiful months with the love of my life, my City (as Carrie Bradshaw would tell you), mostly uninterrupted, and now my City and I have to part ways for a while.  I have to tell you that last week at this time I was torn between two choices, and you do not want to know what the other choice was.  So I am moving in with my brother to Southern California.  There maybe I can get in shape, write, and work on a telecommuting opportunity that will restore my hope in the world of education.

The responses from friends who have been told has been the following, paraphrased to protect us all:

• Look at this as an opportunity to start over;
• I'm so excited for you;
• I like Carlsbad better than San Francisco anyway;
• We'll be able to spot you right away in Petco because you'll be the one in Orange and Black;
• I'm not going to say goodbye, I'm going to say see you later.

That last one is from my writing group founder, whom I've worked with for four years, and it's my favorite of the collection.

To address the others:

• "Look at this as an opportunity to start over."  I did.  That logic kept me from choosing the other option last week.  When I come back here (and I will come back here) it will be strong, self-sufficient, and living independently;
• "I'm so excited for you."  I'm excited, too.  Trying to work it over to excited in a good way, but excited;
• "I like Carlsbad better than San Francisco anyway."  Umm...yeah.  I'll have to come back to this one in a minute;
• "We'll be able to spot you right away at Petco."  Not true but wonderful to imagine.  The last game that the Giants played at Petco there were more Giants fans than Padres fans.  The bonus is this:  if the Padres aren't playing the Giants, I have a Petco jersey to wear.  If the Padres ARE playing the Giants, then I will get to see my boyz play for about one quarter the price they would charge me at AT&T, and the seats would be warmer.

Now, back to that bit about Carlsbad being better than San Francisco.

I've lived in four places in my life:  Bryan, Ohio; Springfield, Missouri; San Francisco Bay Area, CA; and now Carlsbad, CA.  I don't take offense when people compare them, as people are wont to do.  But I can't compare them.  For me, that would be like asking which child you love best, or which songwriter in your iPod you would take on a deserted island with you.  Uh-uh.  No dice.  You are not going to sucker me into doing it.  Here are my kids, and my love for them:

• Bryan, Ohio:  The sensible eldest who went to medical school and married well, but who watches television every night;
• Springfield, Missouri:  The savvy middle kid who married well but changed careers a couple of times, with security, and coaches his kids and watches sports in a stadium he can drive to;
• San Francisco Bay Area, CA:  The artistic one that I have to worry about, but who doesn't know what tv is, and has season tickets at AT&T Park;
• Carlsbad, CA:  The youngest and most articulate of the crew.  He wants to be an artist, but the sun's out, and he's so damn conservative, and the barbecue is calling his name.

I hate the fact that in Bryan I could never be a writer.  I hate the fact that in Springfield I got booed for voting Democrat.  I hate the fact that you can't swing a cat in San Francisco with getting a crazed beggar in your face, or shitting on your stoop.  And I hate the fact that in Carlsbad everything is driving distance apart.

I love the fact that in Bryan my fear of the unknown is understood.  I love the fact that Springfield is rife with bluegrass, arts festivals, parks, the Mudhouse coffee shop, and my alma mater.  I love the fact that I can go anywhere and everywhere on foot in San Francisco.  And I love the fact that in Carlsbad, the young folks don't pepper their speech with "like" "like" "like."

(And all that said, if I ever have the wherewithal, I'd like to add another kid--New York City.)

At the end of the day, though, the kid that gets along best with me is San Francisco.  When I hate San Francisco I detest it (see homeless note, above), and when I love San Francisco I weep with joy (see Orange and Black note, above).  San Francisco should see me out of this world.

And it will.  But not today.

*****

There's a song that I'll always play getting off the plane at SFO to go back in the City, a song by Train.  For this Carlsbad bender, I played with the words a little.  If you know it, feel free to hum along.  If you don't, no worries.

I used to love the Tenderloin
Till I lost some tender coin
Then I met some fog from Marin
I took the highway to the 1
Down the coast to find the sun
It left me with these blisters on my skin


Don't know just what I had, but it took me down to Carlsbad
So I kept on going, going, going gone right there
I drove into the Grapevine range, stood up again and wrote my pain
Workin' to get right back home to you


I've been high, I've been low
I've been yes, and I've been Oh Hell No
I've been rock and roll and disco
Won't you save me San Francisco


Every day's so Prop 8-ed
I wish they were Golden Gated
Fillmore couldn't feel more miles away
So wrap me up return to sender
Let's forget this five year bender
Take me to my City by the Bay


I always knew just what I had
Now Alcatraz don't sound so bad
At least they'd have a hell of fine merlot
If I could wish upon a star
I would hitch a cable car 
TO THE PLACE THAT I COULD ALWAYS CALL MY OWN


To tell you the truth
I miss everything...everything
It's a wide, wide beautiful world
But there are wide-eyed boyz back there
And they mean everything, everything...


(The Prop 8 reference is an homage to the fact that I'm wandering back into the Red part of the state.  *Sigh*)


*****


One final note I should mention, since there were people I introduced on the pages of this blog in 2011 that I haven't talked about in a while.

The Airman and the Healer.

I've worn out my welcome with both of them, with a combination of being excited about connection and trying to keep them in the loop with this change.  The most ironic part of this story is this:  these two people were my biggest cheerleaders for leaving my job in April.  Don't misunderstand--they didn't make me do it.  But they thought this was a great idea, when everyone else thought it was nuts.

They were right, even though it's still nuts.

The twist to this story is that I sent a lot of people this news early so that they could be aware and not ask me about the City and/or understand what was happening.  Of the list that I sent it to, two people never responded.

Yes, you guessed it.

And so things change, and they stay the same.

Onward, dear reader.  And if you're going to jump, please don't.  I'm on your side.

P.S. - This song is the inspiration of tonight's edition of Life For Rent.  While I'm away I'll write home every day and send all my loving to you.  See you later, City.

That Song by Elton John, or, Litquake

I have been a little out of sorts over the past few weeks, floating just under the surface of a freshwater pond, looking out from under the water to the blue sky above and telling myself to maintain optimism.  I am happiest when I do that, and lately it's been a challenge, particularly with my writing, or the writing world in general.  Folks are lined up, on Twitter, on Facebook, in my Google Reader blog feed, with writing miseries and how I am to expect that the writing world sucks and will never change.

Yet, it's supposed to be worthy of writing about.

Where, I ask myself, holding my breath in the pond, is the hope of being a writer?  If all is screwed, then why make notes?  Why curve off some letters into thoughts?  I needed a Church of Hopeful Optimistic Writers, San Francisco Parish.  I needed a family of fellow scribes from all walks--poets, journalists, novelists, short story writers--to comfort me.  I didn't want the answers.  I just wanted hope.

I have lived in the Bay Area for seven years, and have always wanted to go to Litquake, the Bay Area literary festival held every year in October, but have never been able to go.  The reasons why are no longer important, but finally making there is.  I had my writing groups on Monday and Tuesday nights, an interview on Wednesday morning, and then Thursday came and the reasons for staying away were irrelevant at last.  I reviewed the rest of the week's events and found the following:

Thursday Evening, San Francisco Public Library's Main Branch

• Religious Renegades - Writing about religion in a secular city
• Literature as a Window to Iran - Self-explanatory
• Where News is Headed In the Bay Area - Partnering Technology with Getting the Story Out in the Bay Area

Saturday Afternoon, Z Space in the Mission District

• Short Story Writers Panel - Discussing their craft
• Novelists - Discussing their craft

Saturday Evening, Litcrawl

• Various venues in the Mission
• My destination was 826 Valencia, but they were full up before the "doors" opened, so I headed home

I required only one thing of myself:  to attend with no expectation of what I would hear.  I wanted hope, but if the panels were full of negativity like the internet, then I had the option to head home.  I didn't find what I wanted to see based on preconceived notions, like "Iranian literature...they're all going to talk about American stuff in Tehran," or "Nobody reads short stories, so why listen to the writers?"  None of the world outside of the pond surface came with me.  

By expecting nothing and shelving everyone else's negativity for the day, I found I could come up for air, even get out of the water.  Let me stress again, there were no answers given, no solutions established.  Writing doesn't work that way.  But there was hope in abundance.  One woman had written a novel about Hester Prynne's child, and she was from East India; she spoke of how people asked her at the time of the novel's release, "Are you supposed to be writing that story?"  She too saw the negativity, the giving up of others.  The panel joined her in saying that, given the choice between squashing the external force keeping you from writing and writing the thing everyone feels you have no authority to write, you should go for the thing you have no authority to write.  The others, they all agreed, can sit back there and complain about the world and hold its rules to gospel while you learn to fly.

We're not going to tell you how to fly, mind you, they said.  Just know that you can.  That you have your own answers, no matter "how the world works."

Play ball, and bless you, scribes.  

P.S. - This song is the inspiration of today's post of Life For Rent.  The video is choppy, yes.  I picked it because the lyrics fit for me and the courtesan's character seemed to represent the world above the surface, while the poet sings of hope, a bird insistent to rise out of the pond.  Oh, yeah, and "Moulin Rouge" is my and my brother's favorite Baz Luhrmann movie.  The French subtitles are free of charge.

That Song by Fleet Foxes, or, The Changing Face of Mentorship

When you walk away from an environment, it acutely changes your relationship to that environment in a way that's akin to grief or injury, even if you're the one who walked away. Like the Giants winning a game, I'm always shocked when friends or relatives drift back into my life after a time, and I try not to think about their motives. I also try not to think that they are there to stay--I love the stories of others which means I get needy enough to want to see all of the details and the ending. I've had to let a lot of endings go.

I'm sure that others have had to let my endings go, although I never think of myself as having disappeared from anyone's life unless that's what they want. The dynamic works a bit differently with mentors. With mentors I am of the constant fear that I'm going to smother the life out of them by continuing to revisit the well for guidance, which means I tend to have an even greater arm's length between myself and them. I guess this implies lack of trust on my part, but it really stems from working to not inconvenience anyone from childhood forward.

I've had two prominent mentors in my life--the Good Doctor and the Airman--but I'm learning to do two things as I watch them drive farther and farther away:

• I'm learning to regenerate their voices (sort of on the same premise as "What Would Jesus Do" kind of thing)
• I'm learning to find small slices of mentorship in strangers

The first one worked well for these first four months, because I could nearly conjure up the person. With the Airman it was a piece of cake because I am still in a year where at some point I received his guidance, and with the Good Doctor it was easy because iTunes has a series of his lectures on video for FREE (sacrilege) for me to watch anytime, and his message hasn't changed much since I graduated from college in 2000. This method for both gentlemen seemed to work well for the loneliness that sneaks up behind you and bites you when you take this path in your career, so it served as a security blanket of sorts.

I find I have to let the security blanket go. There's no reciprocation--and I tend to be broken-hearted when I don't have the same impact on others that they have on me. I am forever indebted to both of them for how they helped shape me, but at some point aren't I supposed to take the tools they gave me and propel myself forward, instead of borrowing their wheels all the time? So I'm moving on to the next stage--finding mentorship in listening to everyone and taking the guidance that I need in slices. My mentor can be an author, another blogger, an agent, a children's book critique book--heck, I've even gleaned from photographers and librarians recently, and not just for writing. What am I looking at and what do I lend? Well, anyone can help me if I just listen to them.

Gone are the days of following one person like a puppy--I'm sure that got old for them, too. But here are the days that they taught me to watch for, the people they taught me to watch for, the experiences they taught me to embrace.

*****

In Missouri I mentored a lot of folks at Bass Pro Shops and Alltel, which gave me some sense of satisfaction in the fact that mentorship is an aspect of teaching, which I will love and proclaim that I love like beating a dead horse through all of time. But when I reached California I suddenly felt that my ability to mentor went right out the window--most people didn't want to follow me, and those that did did so for reasons of looking good at reviews. In my last position at Grainger I was a fish out of water--and had a hard time managing without becoming mommy and, subsequently, resentful mommy. Let's put it this way--I wouldn't have wanted to lead anyone down my path.

But in the last few weeks, leading these writing groups and workshops, I've found that when people see I have another group meeting scheduled, they come to the session. There are, in fact, some new members that are following me to every session all over the City.

Maybe they're looking for a mentor in their quest for writing companionship. I have to say at this point--I'm ready and I want to share. Maybe that's the third bullet-point of the evolution.

Onward, dear reader.

P.S. - This song is where the inspiration for today's post of Life For Rent comes from. Save for the fact that I was never taught as a kid that I was unique. That I figured out later...thanks to a mentor or two.