(Poem) "Hope is that stubborn thing"

“Hope is that stubborn thing,” he started, 

And I missed the rest, 
Thinking of the other metaphors for hope.
Feathers.  Beacons.  Trees.
The trees kept me for a bit, and I kept hope in the branches:
Hope as tenuous strength;
Hope as wide-flung web;
Hope as blinding light--
A tall oak; 
A sleepy willow;
A flaming maple, respectively.
If hope is the sturdiness, agility, and color of a growing thing, 
Standing without announcement,
Then what is its stubborn start or counterpart?
A heath?  The trash if a photo were taken or a painting rendered?
The one trunk with bandy enough roots
To look ugly daily
But stubborn enough to hang onto, and to save a life in a flood
Of muddy water
Rising?

(Photo courtesy A.N. Erlandson, arborsmith.com)

That Song From West Side Story, or, Wish You Were Here

First, memories.

When I first moved to the California in July of 2004, I was acutely homesick for Springfield, Missouri.  I didn't so much miss the people (at that point my best days in Missouri were over--I had graduated college and the only people left in my circles were trying to "save" me) as I missed knowing where everything was.  My first few days in California my brother took me everywhere in the Bay Area to show me the wonders of the place to where I had moved--Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Francisco.  I marveled in them all, and, clichéed, dipped my feet in the Pacific Ocean for the first time.  I showed the proper amount of wonder.

I had hoped, in the weeks to come, that I would learn where everything was.  This was more difficult to do in Sunnyvale, where we lived, than I imagined it would be.  Streets didn't run straight, they changed names, and traffic laws were crazy to begin with...and THEN other people broke them continuously.  More and more I got on foot when I could, and learned, through the joy of the internet that I found in cafes on my laptop covered with travel stickers, that mass transit was all around me.  I started "learning" the ins and outs of Caltrain, Muni, SamTrans, VTA.  I found the Bay Area on foot.

At night, I dreamed of streets in Springfield.  I dreamed of green, of rain, of square city blocks, of fall leaves.

Two years later, I moved to San Francisco.  For my entire time there, I never, NOT ONCE, took my residence there for granted.  I could criticize or praise San Francisco, I had the license, because I lived there.  I didn't necessarily love the people; like Springfield, there were a few kind people, and the rest were in their own world.  I didn't have a husband (nor was I likely to find one there of all places) or kids, my friends were in and out of my life, and I accepted the fact that my "family" was my beloved City, with its Giants and its food and its ethnicity that I had never known until then.  I found San Francisco on foot.  Even now, eight months after leaving, I can tell you how to get around by the naming of an intersection.

I dream in color when I dream of San Francisco.  Not of its people, necessarily, although sometimes they sneak in.  Still, of place.

Here in Carlsbad I live with family, and I often feel (although they've tried to reassure me otherwise) that I am in the way.  I don't fit in with Carlsbad as a place, either.  True, they aren't trying to save me here; they're ambivalent, actually.  In many ways Carlsbad The People is exactly like San Francisco The People.  But San Francisco had ethnicity of greater variance, and parks, and art everywhere, and architecture everywhere.  San Francisco was expensive but had good and cheap/free events somewhere every weekend.

San Diego still might.  But San Diego is as far away as Sunnyvale from San Francisco, and the train to San Diego doesn't run half as much as Caltrain.

Here I am.

True, there are moments when I've hated Carlsbad.  True, I still dream of San Francisco.  But somewhere in the last month I've learned to let Carlsbad go.  My ambivalence equals that of a local.  Place no longer has the role of husband/child/friend in my life.  I find joy in slices:  the ocean, a curious snout of a puppy that meets me along the beach, a child at the library learning to read at the table behind me, the breeze when it finally switches and blows over the balcony, writing in my favorite coffee shop. What place used to hold, absolutely, is now held by time to tell a story on the page.  I knew Ohio, Missouri, and San Francisco.  Carlsbad is where I will know the map of me.

I'm sure Carlsbad has plenty to offer.  I'll let someone else find it--someone with a surfboard, SUV, and cell phone.

Onward, dear reader.

P.S. - This song is the inspiration for today's edition of Life for Rent.  A time, and a place.

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.

Junior, Revisited

Back in May I was sitting in the car with my sis-in-love and listening to a developing story out of a neighborhood just to our north, Oceanside, and learning that a local sports hero had taken his own life in his residence.  I was a little shocked by this--as I always am when I hear of sports heroes who take their own lives--but the media had nothing to unveil of any real substance about why he had done it.  Not that he owed anyone a reason why.

When it comes to that choice, it is a solo one.

This past Saturday the family and I went exploring throughout the region; we drove up to San Clemente to see the pier and walk around seaside.  It was the first time I had been out of San Diego County in six months.  There was a time that I wouldn't have left the City and County of San Francisco, but the cloistering to San Diego County is more of one of necessity than of love.  San Clemente was refreshing (although I got all kinds of warnings about "Orange County," I wore an San Francisco t-shirt anyway, politics be damned), cozy, and a subtle escape.

On our way back down the coastline we spotted Oceanside's annual Samoan Cultural Celebration, and pulled off the main road to park and watch the festivities.  Saturday's ceremony included a tribute to that local sports hero from May, Junior Seau.  Friends and family stood up and gave testimony of how Junior loved Oceanside, loved his home and his childhood, loved his family, and how it was all reciprocated.

I don't think I breathed again until they were done speaking.

After Seau's dedication, there was one dance after another from Samoa, Hawaii, and Tahiti.  The dances were a relief, and I got the feeling if Seau's spirit wandered amongst us, he showed up specifically for this part.  If he wanted to be celebrated, here's where the celebration lie...in form following music and individuality following community.  There was the tribute, awkward enough, and then music and dancing, a chance to thaw in the summer sun with energy in dance and smiles and slaps in Samoan song.  Everything seemed genuinely happy at the point, including me, more so after the name-dropping was done.

Onward, dear reader.

That Song by Brandi Carlile, or, Plotlines

Tell me a story, riddle me this.


Tell me a story with a happy ending.


Tell me a story I'll believe.


Tell me a story I'll want to listen to.


Tell me a compelling lie.

*****

I follow a lot of stories lately.  On Twitter I follow the stories of baseball games, usually involving the casts of men from San Francisco, Oakland, Tampa Bay, D.C., and Texas.  I follow the journey of a young gay poet from Harlem who recently sold his possessions and is traveling the world.  I follow the success of a Oregonian who walked for three months straight in 1995 and lived to write about it.

On Google Reader I follow the continued adventures of a baseball fan who has found a delightful amount of fantasy in the California flora.

On Facebook I follow the uplifting adventures of a fellow artist from way back as she bench-presses.  Dead-lift?  She brings it to life.  I follow the continuing story of one of my favorite authors as he leaves the City we both love and lets go, goes on.  I follow a friend I met twice who lives on the other side of the world, the land of this year's Olympians, and takes photos of rings without color, giving them clarity.  I follow a former teacher as he writes the final sentence in a chapter of his life.

I'm from Missouri.  You've got to "Show Me."

And they do.  Stories like this are my lifeline, the bubbles back into what is at times my own flat soda.  I follow them for so many reasons the character motivation becomes murky, at best, but primarily they keep me afloat.  They are not stories with happy endings.  They have no ending at all, bless 'em.  As to happy...bittersweet.  Bittersweet is better, bittersweet is easier to believe, bittersweet shows me that they are human instead of "perfect."  I am wary of "perfect."  Bittersweet has a rounded flavor, a richness..."Your cat exploded?  Make good art," says Neil Gaiman, a bittersweet statement if there ever was one.  Every one of these people has a setback or challenge to get past, whether it takes up an hour, a day, or years.  The poet from Twitter is afraid of the Phoenix airport.  The Giants have two struggling pitchers.  The Nats have a nark.  The hiker wants us to be brave, regardless.

The triffids may get us all someday, but wouldn't it be better to walk on the wild side?

Ah, sweet friends...tell me a story.

Tell it well.  Onward, dear reader.

P.S. - This song is the inspiration by today's installment of Life For Rent.  "Lines across my face," lines across my palm, same thing.

Just Ray

There’s a novel by Dennis Lehane--and maybe you’ve heard of it--called “Mystic River.”  In the book Lehane introduces a character by the name of “Just Ray” Harris, a man named because all of the other gangster “_______ Ray” names were taken in Boston.

I don’t know why, but I thought of that when I heard that Ray Bradbury had passed way Tuesday night.  Maybe it was because when I hear the name Ray I don’t think of Ramono or my cousin’s husband or “Field of Dreams” first.  I think of Ray Bradbury.  I haven’t read his books in decades, but I can tell you when I did read them and how they affected me.

To ignore that influence would be like removing one of my senses.  It’s more than amputation.  It’s more than a lost tooth.  It would be a denial of my own skin.

*****

Somewhere in the storage unit in Missouri or in a wicker hamper under my childhood bed in Ohio is a pink, loose-leaf binder, a little bit bigger than an iPhone.  In that notebook are scrawlings of my experiences in a special school program called T.A.G.  Once I briefly explain what T.A.G. was--no, it wasn’t the playground game, or what you do to people in photos now on the social networks--you’re going to accuse me of tooting my own horn.  The best part was, I didn’t toot that horn, then or now.  I was God-awful at grade school; when I was in first grade I was so sluggish that I kept all of my homework assignments rather than turn them in half-finished, and on the last day of the school year had to stay in a classroom with a teacher’s aid to finish them while everyone else went to another location to watch a movie.  I looked to be doomed academically--I did way too much staring out of windows.

(My mother got on to me for that at first.  Years later she had to explain it to my best friend.  “That’s where her stories come from--it’s best to just leave her alone when she does that.”)

Ok...T.A.G.

T.A.G. stood for Talented And Gifted.  Not many kids were asked to be in this program; I think in my class there were four of us.  (I won’t name names--that’s their horn.)  I honestly can’t tell you how we were selected, but I do know this--my parents learned something from this program, and not just me.  The program had a county fair kind of thing at one of the schools so that all of the students could mingle and the parents could watch us in action and talk to the county coordinators.  My mother met the director of T.A.G. and made some sort of self-deprecating statement about how she couldn’t figure out how her kids could be chosen for this program.  “Mrs. Schlosser,” he responded, “You must have done something right.  If only three kids in Williams County could be in T.A.G., two of them would be yours.”

So, yes, my brother was in T.A.G., too.  Which is also pretty remarkable considering his early years, but I’ll let him tell that story.

I don’t begrudgingly state that my brother was in this program and shouldn’t have been.  I state that because for a long time I felt I shouldn’t be in T.A.G.  For a long time I felt that my brother deserved to be in and that I was just piggybacking on my genius brother’s reputation.  (He’s still smarter and more gifted than I am.  Just saying.)  I wrote about my frustration in the little pink notebook.  Because I was known for my love of words, that’s what the program was trying to develop in me, so I had to turn in that notebook occasionally for the teacher to review and guide my writing.  She read my fears and wrote a small note next to them in the margins:  “Your mother has a great story from meeting the director about this.  Ask her about it sometime.”  I did.  She shared the story with me.  I stayed where I belonged, and played with my words in essays and poetry.

The program believed in pushing us outside of our comfort zone, and one way they did that was having us read stuff we wouldn’t get to read in the standard curriculum.  To this day I couldn’t tell you if the rest of my classmates ever got to read “The Martian Chronicles” or “Fahrenheit 451,” or if they had to wait for high school or maybe a literature class in college to get it.  (By my senior year of high school I was reading Dorothy Parker, so I’m grateful for Mr. Friend, my journalism/English teacher at the time, for believing in my literary development enough to handle her at 18.)  I was not a fan of science fiction, and while the “The Martian Chronicles” were satisfying they were slow-going (even for my daydreaming).  But “Fahrenheit 451” was mind-blowing--the writing, the suggestions, the idea that life could be found and preserved in very fragile, very flammable dead trees.  (To this day I am still working on a short story that plays on the virtual/ebook counterpart of "Fahrenheit" and just realized it writing this.)

If I fell in love with Ray in middle school, and then in college the infatuation grew worse.  I was at a Barnes and Noble in Springfield, Missouri, poring over the section of writing how-to books, and stumbled into a familiar name with what for me was a new title:

“Zen in the Art of Writing,” by Ray Bradbury.

I’m willing to bet that whoever finds that compact pink notebook will find, nestled next to it, “Zen.”

*****

According to sources, Bradbury took exception to being called a science fiction writer.  He thought of “Fahrenheit 451” as his only science fiction work, and the rest of his fiction was fantasy.  I can see that, somewhat.  I always thought of his work as literature, though.  Just literature.

Like the detective stories of Mr. Lehane.  Just literature.

Just Ray.  Just right.

Post Script--The evening after writing the first draft of this post I asked my brother if he remembered T.A.G.  “Sure,” he said, a little tight-lipped.  Did he remember reading Ray Bradbury?  “Some of it,” he answered, a bit uncomfortably.  “I remembered reading ‘The Martian Chronicles’ and ‘Fahrenheit 451’--I still have ‘Fahrenheit 451’ in my bookshelf in there--and what’s the one with the guy with words all over his body?”  The “Illustrated Man?”  “Yeah, that’s it.  But I only remember the first two.”  (I had forgotten about “The Illustrated Man,” so it was all the same to me as well.)  He paused.  “That’s when I stopped reading for fun.”  With Ray?  “No, they assigned ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ right after ‘Fahrenheit 451.’  I hated ‘The Diary of Anne Frank,’ but we had to read it.  So I just shut down and read it, and then ‘The Illustrated Man.’  I didn’t read anything else or didn’t remember any other required reading for ten years after that.  I didn’t enjoy reading again until you sent me ‘A Fool’s Progress.’”

Huh.  So I wasn’t the only one to struggle with T.A.G.  Or hang on to “Fahrenheit,” one way or another.

I'm Following Along As You Read Aloud

Most of the hip cats have a phrase for "I understand":  "I smell what you're steppin' in."  My lax version of "I understand" is "I'm following along as you read aloud."

Yes, I'm under the realization that this reference goes all the way back to kindergarten and the books with the records and headphones that played a "tone" when you were supposed to turn the pages.

That's the way things work in my world of flashback quotients.

*****

I come from a long line of discussion about reading aloud and being read to.  Here is the short list of memory:

• My mother reading to me before kindergarten (children's books were her favorite)
• My father reading the Reader's Digest issues to my mother while she made dinner
• My mother confessing to me while I was studying literature in college that she hated her literature classes in college because the professor read everything out loud (Mom?  Have you mentioned this to Dad?)
• Going to prose and poetry readings in college at the university during English Week at MSU
• Listening to Garrison Keillor read poetry on the Writer's Almanac
• Reading "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" to my mother the last two weeks of her life (You sure, Mom?  You wouldn't prefer music or, say, a book without dialect?)
• Selected Shorts
• Readings by the authors at LitQuake

All center me.

*****

"Writers write so that readers can read.  Let someone else read it."

~ "Finding Forrester"

During the two writing classes that I've taken in a college setting in my lifetime (one in Missouri, one at Berkeley), I was unable to read my work out loud.  I can read other's work really well (and make it sound better if needed), but mine is a problem.  Psychologically, it's on par with handing someone a magnifying glass and telling them to look very closely at my complexion.  Why would I want to put anyone through that?

I also have a hard time with audio books and/or lengthy podcasts.  The last audio book I listened to was when I lived back in Missouri eight years ago, and I didn't finish it.  I have a tendency to fall asleep when I try.  When it comes to podcasts like The New Yorker Fiction podcast, Selected Shorts, or This American Life, I usually end up breaking them off into bite-sized segments or listening to them more than once.  I have attributed this to an ever-decreasing attention span and a deep-seated fight with being read to.  Do I love it?  Do I hate it?

Did my mother know either?

*****

I haven't reached out enough when things look good.  Let's change that for a paragraph or two.

Whenever I'm going through a difficult moment (dental work, nausea, having to be present for others' arguments, etc) I touch my college class ring and my mother's wedding band and try to channel her and my strength, my composition.

Yesterday I found myself interlacing my fingers for a different reason:  sharing.

My sis-in-love volunteers for the local library here in Carlsbad, and yesterday was their appreciation "tea" at the Carlsbad Senior Center.  She asked me to go with her about a month ago when she received the invitation, and I, curious about volunteer opportunities and always looking for new ways to bond, said yes.  As frosting on the cake, the event promised a visit from a San Diego group called Write Out Loud, a troupe that "performs" short stories.  

The members of Write Out Loud do not write, or, if they do, they certainly don't read what they write.  Instead, they read obscure pieces from local or famous writers that fit into a theme, loose or clearly defined.  Yesterday they performed three stories, somewhat about marriage but about more, too.  The first performer, a woman, read a story of Twain's about a woman trying to marry a man who was continually maimed the night before his wedding day.  The second selection was a duet between the same woman and a man about a debutant who marries a man bound for Death Row and gets him acquitted, and the last selection was the same man alone, reading a selection about a father who refused to drive for the majority of his life.

When people perform stories, it's different than just reading them.  There's a love there, a lyric, a poetry to the prose.  Pauses are made, words are tasted and then released into the air like soap bubbles.  I sat there, getting more than a full effect, revolving my rings and thinking of my mother.  Mom, listen to this...

Maybe she did.  The dialect wasn't that far off.

Read on, dear reader.  Or listen, too.

Flight Without Instrumentation

Yes, I'm grounded
Got my wings clipped
I'm surrounded
All this pavement
Guess I'll circle while I'm waiting for my fuse to dry...
Someday I'll fly, someday I'll soar... 
~ J. Mayer

Back in the States, when I had just moved from Ohio to Missouri, some friends of mine suggested that I read an author by the name of Richard Bach.  You might remember Bach from the book "Jonathan Livingston Seagull," but I was recommended Bach's "The Bridge Across Forever."  By association, I came across "Illusions:  The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah" at a bookstore in Manistee, Michigan on a vacation with my parents just a few months later.  I read "Illusions" in a day and reread it every year until 2004, when I came to California and the book went into storage in Missouri.  In the book Bach plays on his nomadic experience as a biplane barnstormer to describe a fictional account of meeting another barnstormer named Don in the "hills of Northeast Indiana" who wants to join Bach for a time on his travels.  Bach is uncomfortable with Don; Don performs little miracles like stopping a plane without enough runway distance, "lifting" the bugs off of the cloth body and visors in the cockpits so that the creatures can live again, and performing routine maintenance without ever greasing the engine.  Bach knows at some point this kind of behavior will produce a mob of followers (this was before Facebook and other social media, so think "followers" in a Biblical context), but Don insists that the powers he possesses can be attained by anyone.  I'll let you discover the ending, if you want it.
The book opens with an account of what kind of parable Don might tell if he were to relate a modern-day "Sermon on the Mount," and the story goes something like this:  there was once a creature that lived along the bottom of a fast-moving river.  The creatures could breathe underwater, but they struggled on the river-bottom all the same, getting beat by the current against the rocks.  One day one of them posed the question:  "What would happen if we just let go of the river-bottom?"
"Are you crazy?" asked another.  "You'll be smashed upon the rocks and die!"
The first creature wanted to take the chance anyway, and he released himself into the current.  At first he was dashed upon the rocks, and then he began to drift away from the rocks and rose up in the river, floating with the current, seeing amazing things, like other rivers...lakes...oceans.  The rocks occasionally bruised him when he came to new terrain, and yet, he knew they wouldn't end the adventure.  They were a part of the freedom for him.
I was thinking about that passage the other day when I caught AMC's airing of the 1997 movie "Contact."  In one scene Jodie Foster's character is questioning the building of a restrictive chair in the spacecraft, a chair that is not mentioned in the schematics that the "aliens" have transmitted to Earth.  Later, secured in the chair, she suffers all kinds of jarring and turbulence; it takes watching a piece of jewelry that she was wearing float in front of her to trust her instincts and leave the "safety" of the chair.  As she floats quietly in the cabin, the chair breaks away from the spacecraft and slams into the top of the cabin, where a moment more of thinking safely might have broken something on Foster.
Like, say, a hand or arm.
*****
Around the time I got the Bach recommendation I was friends with the first of two pilots in my life.  He was a student at the College of the Ozarks, studying airplane mechanics and working part-time at the same luggage store that I worked for in Branson, Missouri.  Occasionally, if the conditions were right, he would take me flying.  As I remember it the planes were mostly Cessnas; I trusted him enough not to get airsick.  Most of my motion sickness is psychological, so the trust part was crucial.
I don't remember if we ever flew completely without instrumentation--I remember taking sunset pictures and I remember a floating trick where he placed a hat on the dashboard (is it called a dashboard in a Cessna?) and then dropped the nose of the plane so that the hat "floated."  Lucky hat, I thought, laughing out loud, every time the pilot did that.  Lucky hat, to be set free from the rocky river bottom.
*****
"What do you need, Pete?"
"Glider practice."
~ "Always," 1989

Visibility.  Wikipedia calls it the most important aspect of flight.  Most of the time, flying, you're high enough to have visual perspective--if there's no cloud cover you can gauge the geography.  If there's cloud cover you can very often get above them and gauge the horizon and distance.
Over the weekend I read a fantastic short story by Colum McCann about early transcontinental flight pioneers.  McCann is well-versed in historical fiction; his novel "Let the Great World Spin" intricately covered the Twin Towers from their early days to their last ones, and he leaves no detail unturned with the story "TransAtlantic."  (You can look it up online for the April 16th issue, but if you aren't a subscriber you might do well to sit down with a copy at the library.)  In the story two friends fly from America to Ireland overnight in a modified Vickers Vimy.  At one point three failures occur:  the weather forecast (it was supposed to be clear), the exhaust manifold (a failure that creates a loud, steady white noise that threatens to put the aviators to sleep), and the electrical system (killing the heat and the instrument panel).  The pilot hesitates to drop below the clouds or try to climb above them; in the cloud cover, with no instruments, there is literally no way to determine which way is up.
With no perspective, would it be best to give up?  Should our heroes let go of the safety and just let the plane fall?  Or should they trust the thin air in front of them, and hope that somewhere, somehow, a horizon will emerge?  Let go, or go on?
Perhaps letting go is a form of going on.
*****
I can't stand to fly
I'm not that naive
I'm just out to find
The better part of me...
~ "Superman" Five For Fighting

I have no instruments for conventional flying.  I possess no pilot's license, for VFR, IMC, or otherwise.  I have been a passenger only all of my life, trusting the pilot.
Conversely, I have never spent significant amounts of time on an actual river-bottom, or in a spacecraft bound for a replication of Pensacola.  I do not possess those instruments, either.  I'll have to take the current for granted, or the dreams of Carl Sagan.
Still, I possess certain instruments that allow me to fly.  My little boat of thoughts floats in the vast ocean, my little glider of dreams graces the skies with instruments of vast and billowing communication.  I find possibility in job boards, publishers' Twitter accounts, and ties with friends following my plume.  I skim over nothing.  I have picked up every detail on my dashboard--dials and gauges called Monster, LinkedIn, Google, Facebook, email--for a year now.
Four months ago, all of the instruments worked.  My little glider may have been grounded, but I could still gain access to to the skies.
And then I moved to another land.  One after another, the instruments either failed forever or were disabled.  I had to grab the stick, stare at the cloud cover, and either let go or go on.  I picked up a pen, some paper--these are my throttle, steering.  I let go of the instruments that wouldn't work (strange freedom!), like rocks on the river-bottom, and held on to my little vessel with just a pen and paper.  I wrote my way out of the paper bag.  Back to square one...and sooner or later I spotted Ireland.  I landed without hitch.  Bless the person who repaired my little vessel, Lord, and here's the ground, and there's the plane, ready for me.

I'm on my way up again.

And the arms of the ocean are carrying me,
And all this devotion was rushing out of me...
Never let me go never let me go...
~ Florence + The Machine

Kinkade

I don’t drift into the religious or spiritual very often, particularly in public writings.  Unitarianism tend to produce solitary situations for me, and when I do drift into one of the other religions for a few minutes I tend to have stepped in too far.

I couldn’t help but notice, however, that a man who a decade ago was so publicly Christian (in the Protestant sense), passed away on Friday, Good Friday, under somewhat of a cloud of mystery.

The man I’m referring to, of course, was Thomas Kinkade.

*****

When I lived in Missouri, I faced a lot of potential salvation sessions, particularly after my mother passed.  “Don’t you want to see her again?” people kept asking me, they meant well with that creepy and abrasive question, I’m sure.  Still, I considered other options to the point where I bought a Bible that I could call my own.  Funeral homes give the immediate family a Bible, but I passed on that one...I wanted one that I’d treasure.  Or try to.

Right around Easter of that year (2002 or 2003), Barnes and Noble had a display of Easter books and Bibles.  There I found a devotional Bible (specifically tailored for women) with Kinkade’s prints and notes from his wife laced throughout.  For a Bible, this book was incredibly pastoral; I’m used to Bibles having either no illustrations at all or glossy plates of Christ throughout.  The choice seemed clear.

I also had a small history of admiring Kinkade.  I had couch throws and cross-stitch embroidery and notecards and calendars and journals with him work on them.  He wasn’t my favorite “artist” (go ahead, laugh)--that distinction belonged to St. Louis illustrator Mary Englebreit at that time--but his work mostly soothed me.

I have to admit one thing, however--his depictions of houses at twilight always felt a little off.  He seemed to have the concept of light down in his painting with one important distinction that I didn’t realize until I read the description years later in a New Yorker profile:  “all the windows are painted to look like a house afire.”  Yes.  Too much light.

*****

After I moved to California I forgot about Kinkade until one afternoon’s trip to Santa Cruz.  My brother was fishing on the Santa Cruz pier  and I was exploring downtown, as I was wont to do.  There, in downtown Santa Cruz and not far from a chocolate cafe, was a Kinkade gallery.

If you really want to test your passion for artwork, by a specific artist, go see it in person.  The first time I saw Frida Kahlo’s pieces I was surprised; some of them aren’t much bigger than the postcard versions of them.  In Kinkade’s case I was blown away going the other direction--the “originals” (turns out they’re all reprints, but...) are huge to hang behind couches and over mantles.

Either I had been without my accessories too long, or those huge versions scared me witless.

*****

In the ten years since I purchased that devotional Bible, apparently a lot has changed for Mr. Kinkade.  I have to admit that reading his obituary in the LA Times over the weekend that I’m glad I lost track of him.

I’m also glad I didn’t make any changes to my religion based on that particular Bible.

Had Kinkade not died on Friday, I might have gone on forgetting him, occasionally remembering him when I pull out my Bible (once? twice yearly?) for reference.  But die he did, and I have to wonder, will have have the same resurrection as say Whitney Houston from his death?  Will there be buying, en masse, of all things Kinkade?

Onward, dear reader, in sunshine and in shadow.

Somewhere Ages and Ages Hence, or, What I Have Been Doing Lately

A little over a year ago a self-important man asked me where my head was.  I told him my head was wondering what he had in mind for me within his organization, then and in the never-to-happen future.

He never answered my question.

I answered his.

******

A little over a week ago a very busy man received my resignation.  I told him that I couldn't afford to work for footing expenses up front, I sent him months of free research, and voiced the hope that we could stay in touch in the event that my financial situation changed.

I haven't heard from him since.

I got my answer again.

*****

From time to time, you know, I like to send out what I've been doing lately.  (Ah, the lyrical lines of the Jamaica Kincaid story start to trip through my memory like a spring...)  Looking at my Twitter and Facebook feeds, one might get the impression that I do nothing but watch movies, read books, and surf the internet.  Much of my down time is spent doing those things--Carlsbad is not the bustling metropolis that San Francisco was, and provides me with fresh air and that's about it.  (Peace?  No--noisy neighbors.  Quiet?  See previous.)  Sometimes, though, all I need is the air that I breathe.  I'll take this barrel bottom.  It's round and sturdy.

So, for those who are curious, here's my days...

Monday through Thursday:

• Job searches
• Workouts (running to the ocean, core work)
• Working on the novel, Draft Two
• Working on short stories, and where to sell them
• Finding things to clean, to contribute to in the house (animal husbandry, home engineering, culinary arts)

Friday through Sunday:

• Reading
• Movies
• Fishing with my brother, if he's not working and the weather likes us
• Visiting the farmer's market, when in session
• More of the culinary arts

Please note:  I can't afford bon-bons and too much television makes me grumpy.  The most television I watch is on Sunday nights--one hour of "Frozen Planet" and one hour of "Mad Men"--and the rest is reading in the room while the brother and sis-in-love watch tv, or Netflix.

But baseball starts Thursday here in San Diego County, so all things are prone to change.

Go Padres.

And there's your answer.

*****

Where's my head right now?  I'm not hopeless, most of the time.  Most of the time I'm just working on creating life where there is little of it.  Do I think I'll be employed anytime soon?  No, but it's not making me panic or depressed, for I've learned how fruitless those actions and emotions are.  I've lost a lot, but I've been given a huge swath of time to learn, to surgically remove regret (and not the source of regret that you the reader might think).  I've learned to appreciate some of the corniest things.  I've learned to shut up and back out when I know I'm not needed or wanted.

My head, my heart, my actions...I'm grateful.  That's where I am, Rick.

Onward, dear reader.

P.S. - This poem is the inspiration for today's title of Life for Rent.  That's made all the difference.

Photo courtesy of M. Schlosser, en route to the Bay Area from Fresno, March 31st, 2012.

For Your Consideration...

Open Letter to the Patrons of the Carlsbad City Library Wednesday Evening "Movie Nights"

Dear Gents and Ladies:

Please be open-minded and patient with the art before you.  You may be older, but I don't watch movies from your youth and deconstruct them.  To me, "Casablanca" is just as rich as "Midnight In Paris."

History works both ways, folks.

God bless you in your continued quest for great cinema,

The Patron in the Fourth Row, On the Left

The Long Answer On Yelp

When I was a kid my favorite pen for writing in my Hello Kitty journal was a blue PaperMate.  They sold them in either all blue casings, or white with a blue cap.  They were ballpoints, but I didn’t know any better.

I hated Bics.  Still do.

If there were no PaperMates to be found I would write with Crayola markers.  This was back before my calligraphy class, so my handwriting was shit--I wrote more to play with words rather than to draw them.  I miss those days.

Ballpoints and markers stayed with me through college.  I had a brief stint with calligraphy in the sixth and seventh grades, but that was the tedious calligraphy with a nib, a jar of India ink, and no reservoir.  You dip, you pull off the excess on the lip of the ink jar, you write two or three words, you repeat.  Slow going, even for me.

During my university education I discovered an art supply store on National Avenue in Springfield, Missouri, just up the street from my classes.  (In this regard, Springfield is more cultured than my current town of Carlsbad, and the irony never ceases to strike me.)  That store got me started on Zebra gel-writing pens, and later I ventured to Office Max and had a whole color-cased collection of Dr. Grip pens (pink, pearl, purple, blue, green, and aquamarine, all with black ink).  I even managed to have my father write with the Dr. Grip pens, his in black.

And then I came to California.

By the time I hit California I was playing with a cheap (and leaky) Sheaffer fountain pen, one of those sets that comes boxed in a blister-pack with a collection of three nibs (bold,  medium, and fine) and five ink cartridges.  Natalie Goldberg was right--that pen was visceral, and not so flighty and disconnected as a marker.  But I also feel for other gel-writers, in so many colors, which I gobbled up from Patrick’s in San Francisco.

Once I moved to San Francisco from the South Bay, I found Flax, which is akin to finding the summit of Mount Everest for a mountain climber.  Flax has more pens and pen accessories (inks, rests, wax embossers and seals, papers, blotters, cases, nibs, etc) than anywhere I’ve ever experienced.  So, going into the creative drought of art supply stores and their pen supplies in Southern California, I give you the list of what I love to play with.

Gel-writers, disposable:

• Pentel Slicci pens, 0.8 grade, in every color but pink, from Paper Source
• Y&C Xtremes, 0.7 grade, in natural colors, from Blick
• My favorite of the disposables, Stabilo pointVisco style, fine 0.5 grade, in any damn color I can get them, from Blick, who only keeps them in blue, red, and black, but I don’t care for red ink pens

Gel-writers, refillable (but not in SoCal...probably an online venture...):

• Retro Tornado, twist retraction
• Montblanc Meisterstuck retractable, with the ballpoint cartridge pulled and replaced with a rollerball cartridge in black (I got that one as a graduation gift for college)
• Pierre Belvedere capped, with screw cap that also screws on the end of the pen for storage while writing, in blue ink
• Taccia capped, with screw cap, usually in black ink

Fountains, refillable:

• Sheaffer medium nib, which requires one of two cartridges built for Sheaffer, and the easiest to find of the cartridges at Blick or some Office Max locations
• Retro Tornado medium nib, which requires International cartridges, which aren’t to be found in San Diego County (I’m afraid to try L.A. on this stuff, but maybe someday I’ll get brave)
• A Faber Castell medium nib wooden fountain, which also requires the pesky Internationals, or, for added mess, I can research how to fill the reservoir option, which may be next
• A cheap Japanese medium point retractable fountain with a cap that is my secret favorite of the collection.  That thing cost me 12.95 and never hiccups or leaks.  Unfortunately, it also takes the blessed International cartridge
• A Visconti medium nib Homo Sapien style pen, complete with the vacuum reservoir and volcanic rock housing.  By far the most expensive at $600 (that was a consolation purchase after a bad week/month/year at my workplace), the pen writes with no pressure at all (you drag it across the page instead), and refills with bottled ink.  Since I have bottled ink coming out of my ears, that pen gets the most use.  It is also the most high maintenance of the pens--it’s a mess to reload, and I usually end up with ink  on my right hand like a 16th century playwright.  I save that one for home writing; I don’t want the damn thing stolen, and I don’t want to be covered with ink at the cafe or library

Recently I was asked on Yelp, after reviewing an art supply store in San Diego called Artist and Craftsman Supply, if I had missed their extensive calligraphy section when I visited there in vain hope of pen supplies.  No, I answered the curious reader, I hadn’t missed the calligraphy section.  I saw it, and sighed, wishing it were more than just calligraphy.  Calligraphy nibs are used for short bursts of text, like wedding invitations or announcements.  I discovered last week on Fresh Air that they can also be used for old school comic strip artists; Barry Blitt, cartoonist with the New Yorker, still uses them, as he has no patience for creating his art on the computer.  A guy after my own art, but more his art than mine.  I can’t use a calligraphy nib with the dipping every third word.  I already have to refill the Visconti once a page, the fountain cartridges once every fourth page, and the disposable gel-writers in a week.  It’s been suggested that I write with those seven year pens, which are ballpoints.  Writing with a ballpoint is like writing on paper with a bar of soap.

I write a LOT, on a daily basis.  It’s important to me to have an instrument that keeps up with my pace and fills me with inspiration.  It’s important to have a bridge to some measure of happiness in the process, and pens and paper, in the right choice, lead me me to the point of accomplishment.

The "Workplace"

I was raised in a house of tiptoe-ing--my father is a grumpy man sensitive to noise, and my mother was accommodating.  Surprisingly, despite hating this sensitivity in my childhood, I’ve ended up with the same condition as an adult.  (Yep, it’s a psychological condition called misophonia.)

I first saw it emerging when I was in college--if someone had a cold or allergies on exam day, you could bet my jaw ached from grinding my teeth by the end of the class period.  Since then it’s become terrifically acute, sharpened by noises emitted from the homeless and cell phone owners of San Francisco.  Here in Carlsbad it feeds itself on my sis-in-love’s enjoyment of coffee or tea and our neighbor’s abuse of her sound system.

My iPod has always served as a refuge (save for the tea slurping, which I usually have to endure).  Since I work independently on writing and educational software consulting, there’s a certain measure of sanity to be gained from working in a noise-free/noise-controlled environment.  If you were to search for a business or organization that should grant you some form of quiet work environment, what location would you think of first?  A cafe?  A bar?

Or would you go with a time-tried tradition of the local library?

Anymore, the cafe or the bar might be quieter.

Mind you, I am surprisingly not talking about children in libraries.  Remarkably, in all three branches of the Carlsbad City Library, the children are the most often shushed and the quietest of the patrons, and, remarkably too, the ones I not only can handle but enjoy listening to.  (I have this habit of attending children’s movies in the theatre so I can hang out with kids.  The movie is just a bonus.)

The children walk into the libraries hushed, reverent.  They probably have been waiting a whole two days since the last visit on story hour to come back and check out something else, to peek at another world.  They are a joy to watch.  Being a regular myself, I love seeing regular visits from the kids.  Even the teenagers that start to stream in for study groups after three o’clock are mindful of being quiet.

Senior citizens are comfortably silent as well.  I have gotten a routine picture of the woman who shops the dollar books for sale on Mondays, the man who stacks his hold selections gently on the corner of my table, the books and media covered in typing paper bearing his name and bound in rubber bands, and another gentleman, who looks like an East Indian version of Spencer Tracy, who methodically works through all of the newspaper subscriptions.  When they all go the way of virtuality--the dollar books, the hold selections, the newspapers--I hope God takes these gentle souls to a place where paper is still dreamed.

The young, the old, the bookends, if you will, of a life.  They respect the holiness of the this place.

Sadly, there’s a wide span of the population left that couldn’t give a rat’s patoot about the quality of sound (or striving for absence of it).  They sit with each other as though at a cafe, sometimes not even using their “inside voices.”  They talk on their cell phones.  They eat three-course meals from noisy Taco Bell bags.  They strike up forty-five minute whine and cheese festivals with the librarians, who vent right back.  At one point, I overheard a patron approach a librarian and ask her to “shush” another noisier patron.  For twenty seconds, I was grateful to my fellow patron, until I heard the librarian’s response:  “Oh, libraries don’t work that way anymore.”

Apparently, the quiet library is going the way of dollar books, selections on hold, and paper newspapers.

*****

Carlsbad Library didn’t always have this atmosphere.  As recently as last August I found myself sitting in San Francisco Libraries wishing, homesick for the quieter and better-behaved Carlsbad counterpart.  The only way to escape noise at a San Francisco Library branch was to find one with study or conference rooms and sign up or schedule them.  Again, the big culprits of noise were adults between college age and retirement.  Not that anyone got shushed there, either.  San Francisco is supposed to be progressive.

But as recently as Thanksgiving I started seeing a change in Carlsbad as well.  Now I go to the last known refuge--the genealogy floor of Georgina Cole Branch.  There you get dirty looks for the sniffles.  There are a lot of senior citizens up there.  I often move up there after starting out somewhere else in the building--it’s not the world’s fault that I have this condition, and I try to keep it out of the conversation that pops up in the world.

I do miss the children, though, and their occasional whisperings of wonder between the cracks of intrusive racket the adults throw around.

That Song by Snow Patrol, Or, Playing in Traffic

I’m currently reading a book by William Least Heat-Moon (his best known work is “Blue Highways”) called “PrairyErth (A Deep Map).”  Without giving away the gripping tale too much (I’m joking, actually; unless you love history, Least Heat-Moon’s meandering way with words, or the States, you’ll hate this book.  I got lucky), this book is a recount of Bill’s study of Chase County, Kansas.  His study included some poring over of the written records, some quotes from historical figures, and a lot of walking the county on foot and speaking to people he met along the way.  One local provided him with this experience:

I was walking, and now and then a pickup rolled past, driver staring, rarely waving.  When I stopped once...a fellow pulled up and said, Trouble? by which he meant Are you trouble? and I said I was heading to Matfield, and to indict me he said, Ain’t many to walk this road, and that was something I knew:  walking  here is eccentric; even when the citizens take an outing in the hills they go by truck, and to walk along a road is to suggest poverty or peculiarity.

Thoreau would be proud, for I found Bill’s predicament, right here in my own backyard.

*****

Most tourists to Carlsbad or the San Diego area either rent a car or get accommodations along the sea.  I’ve all kinds of reactions to my critique of Carlsbad in its lack of sidewalks.  Yes, I too love its really cute downtown and ocean proximity, where you can walk around without walking in the street.  In outlying areas of Carlsbad, out by the lagoons and in the newly developed sprawl, there are no sidewalks.  Street parking is common, double-parking is allowed--all actions that would get you honked at in downtown Carlsbad or near the ocean.  If you have ever tried to walk around a double-parked car when there are no sidewalks in a drop-off gravel shoulder on a backroad with more traffic crawling around you than you think would be necessary, you understand why I raise an eyebrow.  Word has it they don’t want to destroy nature.  Ah, yes.  The “nature” of the suburban sprawl?  Or the “nature” of me wearing a track in someone’s lawn?

Surprisingly, the locals have not only adapted well to this, but don’t seem to mind putting the burden back on the drivers.  They go out running, oblivious with earbuds in, down the middle of the road, and maybe move over if the car doesn’t show signs of drifting in the other lane to go around them.  Stunning.  That’s a lot of trust in modern drivers who often break the law to pull through the few crosswalks that occur and to look up from their illegal cell phone usage to see a pedestrian.  When I lived in San Francisco I often walked the sidewalks comfortable in wearing my iPod (deters most of those tripping on drugs), with few exceptions.  When I walk here, I leave the iPod in my backpack, for fear I won’t hear the cars, as though I could stop them from hitting me.

I guess if they did hit me that would be one way to reward my brother for taking me in--a nice hefty lawsuit on my behalf of my passing.

*****

My commute, twice a week for the past two weeks, has been a two-mile hike from the Cove to the Carlsbad Library branch on Carlsbad Village Drive.  Beginning Monday I plan to up the detail to three days a week; I was keeping it to two days a week to give my sis-in-love a better exercise schedule (she doesn’t like to walk/workout alone), but I’m not getting any work done when I go twice a week.  This will hopefully put me in shape faster myself.  You may say, “Two miles isn’t bad; didn’t you used to do three and a half one way daily to the ocean?”  Yes, but this two miles goes uphill for the first mile.  After that my sidewalk disappears, but at least it’s flat.

Each trip I pack my laptop, writings, and a book (even though I never seem to have time to read it), as well as water and food (thanks again, Tina).  I set out around 10:30 am and make the hike back at 4:30 pm, or about the time the sis-in-love starts to ask via text if I’m alive.  The first time I did the commute was nerve-wracking and exhausting, but now I’m getting the hang of it to the point where the ocean is damn beautiful to look at stretched out on my western side, and I can admire some of the architecture.  (Not all; most of these homes look pre-fab.)  The trip takes me forty minutes at a good clip but longer coming home due to fatigue and increased traffic.  So far I’ve never done it in the rain.

Last Thursday’s trip was slightly different--I stopped at Rite Aid for something medical.  The clerk behind the counter saw the dark patches of sweat on my shirt under my backpack straps and said, “Hot out there, huh?”  

I shrugged.  “It’s not too bad.  I’m on foot, so...”

Her jaw dropped.  “You don’t have a CAR???”

“No.”  I looked up from fishing for change and met her gaze.

“I don’t get it.”

They won’t.  I counted out nickels and dimes to pay for my purchase, and thought of Least Heat-Moon, hiking.  I must look like poverty in a car culture such as this.  

I wish I could have made that clerk feel better, and cared about her estimation of me.  But here I am.  Trouble.

Onward, dear reader. 

P.S. - The inspiration of today’s post of Life For Rent can be found here.  We’ll do it all, everything, on our own...just forget the world... 

New Gig

Put on your analyzation cap, for I'm about to disclose what I do for a living, now.

There's a new on-line company out of Fresno that offered me a contract position at the beginning of January to sell their software to colleges, trade schools, career service centers, and even Native American reservations.  The software basically gives the graduating student or placement candidate the tools to get a job with exercises in interviews, resume creation, dressing and speaking to impress, etc.  I won't go into too many details because I'm saving my schpeel for the customers.

The position is pure commission, which means that I don't have a salary.  I like this because I own the progress of it, and, because the company is a new start-up, I have the entire country to transition to this stuff.  Basically what I do is contact career centers for colleges and speak to them about preparing their students for the real world.  I'm very excited.

My brother and sis-in-love know the guy who runs this company, which I'm not sure is a good thing or a challenging thing.  I'm just taking it one day at a time and learning new things every day, and I'm too broke to care what the job is as long as I don't have to spend money to do the job.  (So far, I don't.)

Yes, it's a sales position.  That's the neat boxed-in description.  But I like the idea of working and networking around in education again.

As Tom Hanks's character says in "Cast Away," "You breathe in and breathe out.  Then one day the tide comes in, and brings you a sail."

Onward, dear reader.

Branded

Back in the States, when I had finished my first two years of college, Ozarks Technical Community College was kind enough to present me with an Associate of Arts.  Two weeks after graduation I moved in with my parents, thinking I would get my Bachelor of Arts at Toledo University, live closer to my parents, and spend the rest of my days writing in Ohio.

Eight months later I realized why I had left Ohio to begin with, and moved back to my beloved Missouri to look into a Bachelor of Arts at what was then Southwest Missouri State University (and what is now Missouri State University).  When I was sitting in the advisor’s office I was presented with three courses of study:

• Bachelor of Arts in Literature
• Bachelor of Arts in Writing
• Bachelor of Science in Education

The second one was prep for journalism, creative writing, teaching at the adult level, or law.  The third one was prep for teaching at any level.  The first one, so far, has been a bit useless in the “real” world, from personal experience.  You can guess by now which one I picked.

Oh, I had my reasons.  I didn’t trust writing teachers at the beginning--I wanted to learn to write from the masters.  I was double-majoring in history and literature at first because they seemed to pair well, and both were a passion.  I knew a lot of literature from my Associate’s program and from independent study.  And that last option up there involved more psych courses than English courses.

Back then, if anyone would have had foresight, they would have added another:

• Bachelor of Science in Marketing

I probably would have turned that down, too.

*****

I have a pretty unhealthy addiction right now to the social networks due to the amount of marketing I’m “supposed” to do of my talents, writing or otherwise.  The newest trend displays an alarming blurring of the lines between “friendship” and “read my stuff, Friend/Follower 141.”  I have enough blogs and feeds on my Google Reader to choke a horse, and most days I read one of them.  (To be fair, I do read other blogs, but they don’t post every day.)  I don’t read daily one out of a sense of duty.  I read it because the writer is entertaining.

As I said, there are others that are entertaining, but they don’t blog every day.

I honestly couldn’t tell you if I’m an entertaining writer; I’m of the same belief as Murphy Jones in the movie “Murphy’s Romance” when it comes to my writing (“Sure I like myself.  I just don’t expect it to be contagious”) or Liz Gilbert from “Eat Pray Love” (“I’m not everyone’s cup of tea”).  I don’t get many comments, and even fewer compliments.  (Not fishing.  Just stating fact.)  All I know is this:  I write the kind of stuff I want to read.  If you write stuff that serves to impress the trend or to preach intellectual, you’re probably not going to have me for a reader very long.  If you write with no sense of humor, I won’t stick around, either.  I’m just here chronicling my journey.  I love it when others do too, and have fun with it.

But when it comes to selling--and here’s where I’ll sink--I stink.  When it comes to the captions for the blog on the social networks, I throw up a little in my mouth trying to “sell” my blog.  Do I realize, others say, that that revulsion will be my end?  Yes.  I’m constantly working on how to get around it.  I make my blog a character I talk to.  I’m glib about it.

But if I’m good at marketing, then why did I become a writer?  Marketing would pay better, and would apply to so much more than just writing.

Here’s the biggest point that I can’t get past--if everyone is clamoring to be “read” and to “sell” themselves, instead of writing authentically to connect, then don’t we all start sounding alike?  A million young voices, screamin’ out their words...maybe someday those words will be heard, sings John Mellencamp in “Check It Out.”  It strikes me that if I’m trying to be read, my goal is wrong.  I’m trying to connect.  I’m not going to connect with people who don’t read.  I’m not going to connect to people who don’t like my kind of writing.  I’m not going to connect with people who resent the hell out of having to read me because they know me, but wouldn’t read my writing otherwise.  That’s just the truth.  My objective isn’t to sell my voice to those who don’t want it.  My objective is to put the light on the basket for those who want it to find.

That’s the challenge.  Not the bending of my voice, but the finding of like voices.

*****

Ah, the social networks.  Everyone’s burnt out on them.  Moi, aussi.

If you were to look at me as a brand, a week ago, you would have seen City Girl, a tame Carrie Bradshaw without the shoe obsession.  It was my weapon against the folks who kept breaking my heart with how great their husband/wife/kids were, when I desperately wanted those things.  “But you have the City!” my sis-in-love told me, so I guess that defined me.  In the movie “Out of Africa” Isak Dinesen was speaking with her lover, Denys Finch-Hatten, about her inability to have children, she said, “The farm.  That’s what I am now.”

I had an apartment in San Francisco, at the foot of the seven hills.

Now, I don’t.  No petty impressions left.  Just a writer, living in North San Diego County.  I have no wonderful spouse or kids.  I have no Golden Gate Bridge.

My branding clock is up.  This brand is bland to eyes of social networking trends.  I wish I could mourn it.  But I’m either too helpless or too liberated by my own challenging situation to care.  Nothing, and I mean nothing sets the record straight on what’s important like being reduced to penniless.

Remarkably, three social networks haven’t worn out their welcome.  Meetup, through hundreds of people that I mentored and wrote with this year, brought me two writing partners (one in my old neighborhood and one in Leeds, England) who have restored my faith in communities of artists.  Google Reader brings me a daily mentor of baseball and botany.  And GoodReads introduces me to people who understand why I pick up the books that I do, even a chance to swap thoughts about those books (bless you, Meredith).  In small doses, I believe in connection.  I can’t help but believe in connection.

I’ll leave the trending “image” to the dancing hamsters and Old Spice men.

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed writing and re-reading this post.

(P.S. - The photo comes from the “brand” I got from repeatedly tripping over the trailer hitch on the UHaul during the transition.  Some fools never learn.)