Lamy Llamas & Falling Stars

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Yesterday we took a little drive down the road to explore and enjoy the pretty day. There’s a town nearby called Lamy we’d been meaning to see. Not a whole lot there, but this llama seemed quite proud of his domain.

Last Friday, I wrote a post about popularity and how I was a dorky child. My mom worries when I write posts like these, because she thinks it means she was a bad mother. For the record: she was and is a wonderful mother. From cross-comparing with other people, I suspect I drew one of the best mothers out there. It’s probably because she’s such a good mother that she worries about it.

At any rate, she asked me why I never talked to her about feeling like I was such a dork. I said that my great dorkiness seemed so self-evident that it wasn’t worth discussing. It would have been like saying “I have a nose.”

More – I think that the world of children tends to be a place adults can’t quite access.

Literary Agent Nathan Bransford wrote a blog post about dead or absent parents in children’s literature. As he notes, there are sometimes complaints that to have a child or young person’s parents be dead or absent is lazy writing. It allows the writer to skip huge chunks of family dynamics. Bransford argues that it exposes the young person to the world and forces them to be their own hero. He has an interesting point.

But I think it’s more than that.

Just as in the Peanuts cartoons, where the adult voices were a series of nonsensical wah-wah-wah burbles, the world of children excludes adults. Not deliberately, but because what matters to children and what matters to adults diverges wildly. No young person explains to their parents the complex and volatile politics of the playground, largely because it makes no sense in any other context. The small resonance of a lunch shared or stolen means nothing to people dealing with corporate takeovers.

Children’s literature simply creates the analogy by removing the parents. The echoing, insular world of children is replicated emotionally by having the adults be absent or even cruel. Then, when mentors appear, they take on even greater stature, for being the only figure in an empty landscape.

Our parents want to protect us from the cruelties of the world, which is their job. And, as parents, we want to believe we know our children and what they face. But the truth is, we all ultimately face our demons alone. For all the love, the advice and support, the mentoring, it still comes down to the face in the mirror.

Stories simply relate that truth.

Catch a Falling Star and Put It in Your Pocket

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We sit up on a hill, with Galisteo Basin and the densest part of Santa Fe below us. The dramatic reverse of heavy rain after weeks of baking sun, leads to fog the following morning. It flowed in rose-tinted waves at sunrise, up and out, back into the vast sky that brought it.

Apparently I’m in a poetic mood this morning.

I get that way sometimes, where I feel an upwelling of something inside, something sweet and bubbly, and I want to send it out into the world. It can take an odd form, depending on where I’m at.

I remember when I was young – maybe 8 or 9? – and we were on a field trip for school. This makes me think I was 8, because in 3rd grade I was in this experimental class where we spent a whole bunch of time traveling around Colorado learning history. I think it was intended to give us hands on stimulation. That was a strange time for me, because there were only two other 3rd graders in this class, a few 4th graders and a whole slew of 5th & 6th graders. We’d all been flagged as gifted or talented or perhaps just oddball. On bus trips, our teachers would have long division contests and kids who got the right answers received prizes. I always put up my hand and guessed answers, even though I had yet to learn multiplication tables, much less division. I always figured I had a shot of getting it right which, of course, I never did. This practice had the additional bonus of annoying the other kids, making me more of a social outcast than ever. In an odd way, though I knew this, it didn’t really bother me.

But that’s all beside the point.

On this particular trip, the teacher announced that this particular girl – older, pretty, very popular – was moving away. Tomorrow would be her last day at the school and we should all be sure to say good-bye and wish her well. She was one of those people who are inexplicably liked by everyone, as if she carried a bit of sunshine with her and people just liked to bask in it. She was likely 11 or 12, but to my 8, she looks like Bo Derek or Farrah Fawcett in my memory.

I went home from school, put Perry Como on my 8-track player (which would cycle endlessly) and set up my little folding table. I made clay animals for this girl whose name I can’t remember. I made probably a dozen of them. Into each one, I poured my admiration for this girl everyone liked so much.

I dried them in the oven, painted them and put them in a little box to take to school the next day. When my mom asked who they were for and I told her, she said she’d never heard this girl’s name before and didn’t know she was my friend.

My mother clearly didn’t understand that a young goddess like this wouldn’t be my actual friend.

You can imagine the scene. I marched up to her at school and gave her this fairly extravagant gift of a box full of little clay animals. I was reasonably good at it and she was surprised that I’d made them. That I’d made them for her. I still remember the surprise and confusion on her face. The discomfort, because what I’d done was clearly weird. But she was a nice person and thanked me.

Still, I understood that this had been over the line.

Looking back, I think what I was giving her was more of a tribute. Perhaps I hoped for some of her charm to rain on me. Frankly, I hadn’t really noticed her much until I saw everyone gathered around her to say how sad they were to see her go. I wanted that in a way I hadn’t known to before.

I still admire those with the gift of popularity. I can see how their natural charm, their sunny attractiveness draw people to them. Sometimes I try to emulate it. But I still have enough of that weird kid in me, the one who can listen to the same favorite soundtrack twenty times in a row, that I can’t quite get there.

(A boyfriend once cited the same tape loop in my car as one of the reasons for break-up – I’m not kidding. I mean, I would have changed it if he’d asked. It just happened to be my favorite album at the time and I wasn’t done obsessing over it and, well, yeah…)

Ultimately it comes back to that I’m still the one who will put up her hand and ask the uncomfortable question. Sometimes I impulsively give gifts that are too much. too out of the blue. I’m very bad about saying things I shouldn’t. Every once in a while, I envy those with the crowds of admirers. I think it must be pretty neat.

I remember that embarrassed girl, with her box of clay animals. I’m still her.

And that’s okay.

Corn Moon

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I know a lot of people are calling this the Super Harvest Moon, but it’s traditionally the Corn Moon in September.

This full moon coincided with the autumn equinox, with the moon rising as the sun set – thus the “super” part. I’m not sure who coined that term. It smacks a bit of “super-size-me,” and I kind of doubt the Native Americans of North America, who coined the full-moon names had the concept of “super,” but I could be wrong.

“Ho, Little Elk, did the Great Spirit reward your hunting?”

“Yes, Red Eagle, the Great Spirit sent me a Super-buck deer. We shall eat well tonight.”

See what I mean?

At any rate, this photo of the corn moon is not from last night, but from the night before. We were reliably forecast for rain to come in yesterday, to the tune of 80%. The forecasting types could apparently see this one coming from a long ways off – a long chain of heavy-bellied clouds working like a conveyor belt to bring gulf moisture up to us.

So I took the photo the night before, just in case. Which was a good thing because we had pouring rain all afternoon and night. We never saw the sun, much less the set and the moonrise.

Which was perfectly fine because we hadn’t had any moisture for weeks and weeks. Everything had become dusty, cracking dry.

The calendar shows the full moon on one day, but really it’s full for about three days. Depending on how far off of full, you might see it slightly gibbous, with a slight shaving off of one side. It’s not always easy to pinpoint, that exact moment of perfect fullness, when the waxing stops and the waning starts. We’re back to my pendulum now.

I take comfort in that concept, that nothing in nature is ever a fixed point. Instead, our universe is a dynamic system, in constant change.

What appears to be still is simply a snapshot.

Look at This!

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I’m a pretty upbeat person.

No, really, I am! I believe in positive thinking, in realizing your dreams, in doing whatever it takes for any of us to make our lives the most wonderful and fulfilling as they can be. I believe doing what I can to support other people in their efforts.

But I just hate inspirational shit.

You know what I mean. The kind of thing some determinedly cheerful person would slap on the photo above that’s meant to draw our attention to beauty and joy and the angels singing.

No no no.

This is possibly tied up with my issues about being nice. I’ve just never been very good at it. At the same time, lately people have been telling me how helpful I’ve been to them. I can see that, because sometimes being helpful means that you can’t be nice. The Taoists say that you have to be very careful about helping people because it’s difficult to know what people really need. Sometimes people need something really terrible to happen to wake them up to their real dreams. Like the proverbial story of the business man who ignores all but his career until the devastating event, after which he quits his job, sells everything and becomes a painter.

None of us wants to be the devastating event. Fortunately the universe generally takes care of that.

So, most people resort to the cheerleader method of helping. The rah rah, you can do it! variety of helping. It’s innocuous. You can’t really lead anyone astray doing that, not like saying “you should really quit your job, sell everything and become a painter.” We all love hearing our supporters cheer us on and it feels good to cheer for other people. It’s all good until someone decides to start making money off it.

This is where the life-coach types come in.

Yeah, the life-coach types bug me like inspirational posters bug me. And lately they’re infiltrating twitter. It’s like a termite invasion, where first you see one, then two, then the walls are covered with them.

Clearly someone pointed out to the life-coach types that twitter is a great place to market themselves. They can post pithy 140-character inspirational sayings (along with a link to their site). They can RT each other and convince us we need them. There’s more of them, too, as people seek careers that will bring income without being dependent on a corporate structure.

What bugs me most – and obviously I have issues here – is that they use command language. Think about this! Be happy and productive! Where you or I might slap the gorgeous sunset pic on twitter and say “gorgeous sunset in Santa Fe last night” they’ll say, Look up more often! See what you are missing??

Oh yeah, I unfollow them. But then people I do follow retweet them, because they think it’s just a happy, positive thing.

It should be a happy, positive thing, but somehow it’s not. It smacks of intrusiveness to me. Of manipulation. At worst, of playing god in other people’s lives. Nobody else can “coach” us into following the path we need to follow. That’s part of the deal: we have to find it for ourselves.

The best we can do is give other people help when they ask for it.

And cheering. Lots of cheering.

Equinox

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There’s this woman who works at the gym we go to. She’s there pretty much every morning starting at 5. Every once in a while someone else is working, but it’s usually this gal. She’s in her 60s, most likely, and looks great with it.

And she’s a talker. She loves noise.

Full disclosure: while I’m a reasonably social person under most circumstances, I’m not so much at 6 in the morning. My brain isn’t firing all neurons yet – only those needed to get me out of bed and to the gym. When I’m lifting weights, I like to concentrate on that. I don’t want to chat.

She does.

I know a lot of people do like to socialize at the gym. I see them standing around and talking for 1/2 hour or more. Me – I want to be there and gone in 1/2 hour.

I’m grumpy that way.

I’m grumpy enough that if she comes over to where I’m working out, I won’t really engage in her conversational gambits. I’ll smile, nod, give her the huh, go figure. David, being much nicer, will talk to her, which just encourages her. Then he grumbles to me later.

Today she went over to where a client was working with a personal trainer, saying something about dancing at nightclubs. I heard the client gal say in a joking voice “hey, you’re distracting my trainer – go away!”

Nicely done, I thought.

But then Chatty Sue came over to us, where David and I were working on neighboring machines.

“Today is the last day of summer!” she announced.

David said, “Oh, is it?”

“Yes! Isn’t that terrible!”

I couldn’t help myself. “It’s the autumnal equinox,” I said, “it’s a day of balance.”

“Yeah – I hate to see summer go,” she complained. And proceeded to tell us about her tomatoes which, incidentally, she’d told us about before.

I didn’t try again.

To think of today as the last day of summer is silly to me. For some of us, the weather lingers hot, for others, snow has already fallen and summer is long gone. The division of the seasons is a mark on the calendar. But the equinox is about the balance of light and dark. Exactly poised. It’s a moment of equilibrium, the pause, the imperceptible hesitation of the pendulum before it swings back the other direction.

It’s a day of possibility.

Continuous Partial Attention

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This is a Colorado short-horned walking stick.

It lives in New Mexico, however. They normally stay camouflaged during the day and move around at night. This one was on our glass front door on Saturday morning. It never moved, even when we transferred it to a piece of paper. It embodies still stick-ness. Even looking at it in real life, it looks like a twig and not an animal.

So many variations in the world.

This weekend I cranked on The Body Gift. I managed to get myself in a bit of a bind: I’d queried a new agent on Friday, just to keep the ball rolling, and she emailed me back within the hour to request the full manuscript.

See, that just never happens.

Okay, clearly not “never,” but very rarely. Usually they ask for something like the first 30 pages or the first three chapters or, if they’re really interested, the first 100 pages. And really, no one else has answered me that fast.

So, while The Body Gift is finished (or I never would have queried otherwise, since it’s a real no-no to query a book that isn’t finished, since finishing a novel is never to be assumed), I was in the midst of rewriting the middle section. My work obviously cut out for me, I spent the weekend writing about 40 pages (a little over 8,000 words).

No, I don’t think I could do this every day.

Well – maybe I could, if I wasn’t working full-time. It would be interesting to see.

At any rate, my online community rallied ’round, sending me Facebook Mojo (which seems to work equally well for writing output as for white-blood cell count). Kerry was fortunately available to read for me as I went and Marcella, also revising, helped me brainstorm through some sticky spots. I pretty much parked myself under the grape arbor all weekend.

When my mom asked me, via instant messenger, how it was going, I said that just then Marcella was helping me brainstorm. My mom asked where she was. I said on her sailboat, but parked in the harbor, or she wouldn’t have internet. My mom thought maybe Marcella was sailing and talking to me on the phone.

Absurd thought.

No, we don’t talk on the phone. We’re all about non-simultaneous conversations, which allows us to have continuous partial attention. My mom was terribly amused and requested that be today’s blog post.

I live to serve.

And no, I didn’t make up that phrase. Someone else did and I thought for sure I’d blogged about it before. But I looked through the blog and I can’t find it. Turns out a casual Google search shows quite a few hits, so I’ll let you do your own research, if you’re fired up. Really, I think “they” all view it as a bad thing, because one never puts their full attention on one thing. For me it means that I have tools at hand that allow me to dip in and out of resources as I need to.

In return, I can be more easily “dipped into,” because helping someone else doesn’t require that I drop what I’m doing.

I realize this way of operating sounds appalling to some people. It has its benefits and drawbacks.

So many variations in the world.

Face vs. Ass

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Yeah, this is me, from my sorority pic in college. You know – the array of photos that shows all the gals in the sorority. It’s called a composite, in case that’s a detail you ever need.

And yes, that’s my natural hair color.

I started to clean it up, but I need to be writing, not photo-shopping. And I just wanted to show it to you, my dear blog-gobblers, because of how young I look.

I’ve reached the age where photographs of my younger self look distinctly different than my self of today. That wasn’t true for a very long time. Suddenly I’m noticing that dewy complexion and perfectly taut skin that just isn’t quite so much so these days. Not that I think I look old by any stretch.

But I don’t look dewy, either.

I don’t know if it’s apocryphal or not, but there’s supposedly a French saying that as a woman ages she must choose between her face and her ass.

This is a succinct way of saying that you either get to be skinny or have a youthful face, not both. That’s because subcutaneous fat – that luscious layer under the skin – is what makes us look young. In some ways I like my face of today better, because I always minded the chubbiness of my cheeks then. Suddenly I have cheekbones. And yet I weigh overall, significantly more than I did then.

Ah, to reclaim my 20-year old behind.

It how we age, that we lose fat in our faces first. A woman who viciously diets to maintain that tiny posterior raids the fat in her face. You wonder why the Hollywood actresses are forever getting “plumpers” (lips, cheeks, foreheads), while you’re thinking that plumping injections would be about #50 on your plastic surgery wish list? That’s why. They’ve worked so hard to have the super-skinny, no-fat bodies, that their faces get that weird, dry look. It’s really just skin over bone at that point.

Not a youthful look.

So my point, and I do have one, is that choosing the face isn’t such a bad thing. After all, there’s lots of ways to drape the ass. When I occasionally fret that I’m not as skinny as I could be, I give thanks for the elasticity of my skin, for the fat under my skin that keeps it smooth and vital.

It might not be dewy, but it’s not parchment either. I’ll take it.

We Photograph Light

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If I was organized, I’d keep a list of which photos I’ve used on the blog before.

In fact, feeling a surge of organizational enthusiasm, I just started a spreadsheet to track them. I know you’re relieved. Though we walk through the Valley of Chaos, we fear no disorganization, for Excel is by my side.

Okay, yeah, I had fun at the photography class last night.

After I reluctantly dragged myself to it. Working from home, I’ve developed a disconcerting tendency to not want to leave the house. Not to mention in the evening, after a full day of writing and day job. Somehow it feels like so much effort.

Which I know is lame and pathetic.

Fabulous class, really. One thing I should remember about myself is that I’m an auditory learner. My reading comprehension is decent, but there’s nothing like having someone EXPLAIN something to me. Also this guy, Steven Walenta, clearly teaches this Digital Photography class for the Continuing Education end of Santa Fe Community College quite a lot. He had clear, informative slides, took his time and showed patience for all questions.

One of my favorite things he said: We photograph light.

Of course, we kind of know this already, right? We only “see” objects because of the photons bouncing off of them and back to our eyes. So we don’t photograph the rain chain, for example, but rather the light bouncing off the rain chain. This changes how you make decisions about your camera settings.

Suddenly it all makes sense to me.

Oddly, I was the youngest person in the class, with the possible exception of a woman with some kind of Scandinavian accent. She also had gorgeous Scandinavian skin, so I’m not positive of her age bracket. The rest of the ladies – yes, all women taking this class – were more in their 50s and 60s. Do the younger people all understand their cameras already? One of my twitter friends, Chudney, suggested that many people don’t pursue their interests until later in life and I’m ahead of the game. Which is a lovely spin.

But why no men in the class?

In my previous snarky literary circles, and yes, they were famous for being snarky – that’s how you could tell they were literary – authors would bitch about “all the middle-aged ladies” taking writing workshops. Oh, I’ve seen and heard the most disdainful remarks about how these women have money and nothing to do with themselves. Some of these “vacation-type” writers workshops you see now and again that look obscenely expensive? Yes, targeting this type of student.

The implication, of course, is that these are lesser humans, who will never achieve what the teacher has. But we’ll take their money, anyway.

Instead, I find them admirable. They’re dragging themselves out to an evening class to learn something new and intimidating. I think I’m overwhelmed by my new camera? How about the lady in her late 60s/early 70s who’s never downloaded a photograph to a computer?

I watched Steven move around the room, helping people find the settings on their cameras. Never impatient, never disdainful, even though he must have explained pixels ten-thousand times before, he showed a gift for teaching what he knew. And a pleasure in his subject.

The literary snarks could learn something from this.

Being

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What are you going to be for Halloween?

A friend of mine mentioned on Twitter the other day that it was already time to start thinking about Halloween costumes. I knew she meant for her daughter, but she and I have been friends since 1st grade. So, I replied, “What are you going to be for Halloween this year?”

The question echoes through all our years of growing up. There was a time in all our lives when that was a crucial question. A major decision. Should I be a cat or a witch?

Once you made your choice for the year, you had to live with it. It defined that time. That was the year I was a Hula Girl. Remember the year I wanted to be a hatching chick and Leo made me the papier-mache egg costume?

Of course, school made it a big deal, what with the parades and parties. Halloween night in Denver tended to be a bit of a bust, since it usually snowed, forcing us to cover our costumes with parkas and scarves. But we were better off than some places who didn’t allow trick-or-treating at all.

I recall how reluctantly we gave up the costumes and the childhood attachment to what we would “be.” In middle school our parents informed us we were too old to go trick-or-treating. Sure we could have parties, but costumes were often out. A new sense had emerged that dressing up for Halloween was uncool. Costumes were silly. Even today, there are adults who flatly refuse to wear costumes for anything at all. Too much effort. Too embarrassing. Inside them, I know there must be children who pondered with enthusiasm and excitement just which fabulous creature to be for Halloween.

The question was an echo, also, of the one every adult asked us: What are you going to be when you grow up?

To which we were often handed a pre-established list of choices. The eternal round of doctor, fireman, teacher, nurse. The Halloween question we asked each other and the answers were infinite. Never mind how many Mutant Ninja Turtles there were in the heyday. Every princess became a unique snowflake. Every pirate had a particular style. In our imaginations, we became beautiful and valiant, terrifying and strong.

We became more than what we were.

What would it be like, I wonder, if we carried that tradition all our lives? I would love to hear adults turning to each other in September and asking, what will you be for Halloween? Recall the childhood rules: you can’t repeat a costume, cuz that’s lame. You can’t be the same thing as your sister or your friend, unless it’s a group theme.

Most important: have fun and let your imagination run wild.

The Sparks Fly Upward

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Hi all – Please welcome my dear friend, Laura Bickle to today’s blog!

I’m privileged to host the debut of her second book in the Anya Kalinczyk series: SPARKS. Anya is an arson investigator with a most unusual familiar.

Let me tell you, you’ll never think about fire salamanders in the same way.

Please welcome Laura and make her feel at home. I just love the post she wrote for us today. As a special treat, I’m giving my own copy of Sparks to a random commenter who says what being in love means to them.

Welcome Laura!


Writing a book is a lot like being in love – good and bad.

Initially, there’s infatuation. The flush and excitement of a new idea. This is the easy part – words flow effortlessly. I can spend hours researching or daydreaming about how fabulous the idea is. I make notes, sketches, maps, cut clippings from magazines – I’ve met my characters, and am deliriously in love with everything they say. The project is, I believe, invincible.

It brings me flowers. I glow.

Then, somewhere around the 30,000 word mark, the infatuation fades. I begin to see the flaws, the inconsistencies, the cracks in the foundation of plot. I’m rolling over in the morning and staring at a book with bad breath that snores. It chews with its mouth open and forgets to say “excuse me” when it farts. It doesn’t bring me flowers anymore. It’s comfortable. Maybe too comfortable.

I sit in bed, staring at the book, wondering what to do. Should I abandon it for a newer, sexier idea? They’re always dancing around in my periphery, seductively whispering: “Choose me.”

But I know that it would be the same. I can choose another idea, but in a few weeks, I’ll be at the same place, the shiny newness and rose petals replaced by snores and scratching.

At this time, I’ve got to decide to be committed to the project, to see it through — even though my story is showing me its scraggly, unwashed underbelly. The challenge is to fall into a routine of writing that isn’t new or exhilarating — it’s to focus on the entirety of the work, good and bad, and love it enough to finish.

There are moments that test my patience. A character proves utterly useless around 50,000 words and is savagely eliminated. A timeline problem emerges that requires my heroine to be in two places at once. A loose plot thread dangles with no end in sight. But we get through it.

There are moments that are sublime. Keystrokes fly by through the last chapter. Edits clean the story up nicely, and all of a sudden, my story is standing before me. It’s shaved, holding a bouquet of flowers.

I feel the old love for it again. Not the infatuation of the beginning. But deep affection, knowing that we’ve weathered the writing process and have come out the other side of it victorious.

I straighten its tie, kiss it on the cheek, and send it out into the world. I hope that others will love it as much as I do.

-Laura Bickle has worked in the unholy trinity of politics, criminology, and technology for several years. She and her chief muse live in the Midwest, owned by four mostly-reformed feral cats. More information on her urban fantasy novels is available at www.salamanderstales.com.