The Big Read

I stole this from Tara.

The Big Read thinks the average adult has only read six of the top 100 books they've printed below.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE. (Well, I can't figure out how to underline on here, so I'm going to star the ones I LOVE).
4) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them.


1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - was supposed to in high school, but didn't.
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling
*5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible (I want to read all the major books of the world's religions).
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - ehhh, same as #1. I couldn't get into it, which I KNOW is blasphemy among many people I know, but there were like a few pages that I really dug, but yeah, it was high school, I blew it off and read something else instead I'm sure.
*8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare - another sin of blasphemy, I'm not a big fan.
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (the first one)
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (isn't this redundant after #33??)
*****37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (this book just rocks my fucking world it's so good)
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
*42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (the first one)
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
*58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
*64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
*73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
*76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
*83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert - again, see #1, though this one, the parts I read I actively vehemently disliked. I remember reading every other chapter, then every third, then skimming and eventually just saying, fuck it).
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte's Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo


So, there you have it. I'd also like to make a little addendum, adding some books I think should be on there:

The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
Angela's Ashes - Frank McCourt
A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle
Beloved - Toni Morrison
The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
The Secret Life of Bees - Sue Monk Kidd
White Oleander - Janet Fitch

I hereby bold these and award them all multitudes of stars.

So, people, pass it on, make your lists!


Currently Listening:
"Here, In My Head" - Tori Amos - she says it's one of her favorite B-sides, and it's also one of mine. I LOVE that the "album" it's on in my iTunes is Forgotten Earthquakes, because that is soooo appropriate, though sometimes I can't believe it was from the Little Earthquakes era, it seems somehow wiser, like it's from an older Tori. I love it so much that it's hard to pick out specific lines like usual, so I'm giving the whole song here:

Here, In My Head
Tori Amos

In my head
I found you there and
Running around and following me
But you don't, oh, dare, now
But I find that I have now
More than I ever wanted to

So maybe Thomas Jefferson wasn't born in your backyard
Like you have said, and
Maybe I'm just the horizon you run to when
She has left
You there

You are
Here in my head
And running around and calling me,
"Come back, I'll show you the roses
and brush off the snow
And open their petals again and again"
You know that apple green ice cream can melt in your hands
I can't, so...

I held your hand at the fair and
Even forgot what time it was
And even Thomas Jefferson wasn't born in your backyard
Like you have said, and
Maybe I'm just the horizon you run to when
She has left you and me here
Alone on the floor
You're counting my feathers as the bells toll
You see the bow and the belt
And the girl from the South
All favorites of mine
You know them all well

Spring brings fresh little puddles
That makes it all clear
Makes it all...
Hey, do you know?
Hey, do you know?
Mmmm, what this is doing to me?
Oh, here...
Here...
Here...
Here in my head

In Search of Censored Paragraphs

Last month, I updated my link list. I've continued to add more sites. It's fun for me because I use it as a launching place to go exploring all kinds of things I'm interested in.

When I first added Diana Abu-Jaber's website, I noticed something on there about a school in Texas banning her book Crescent and a link to the offending paragraphs. At the time, on my linking spree, I didn't stop to read more. Crescent was a great book, but it's been years since I read it and I couldn't think what would be offensive about it. It's a story featuring Iraqi-Americans and so I thought maybe it had something to do with that - this probably will expose my own ignorance but it wasn't until reading Crescent that I realized that the US continued to bomb Iraq between the Gulf Wars. Mostly though, Crescent is a love story, rich with myth and story and family, faraway homelands, poetry and cooking. Reading that book will make your mouth water for certain.

Years ago, Diana Abu-Jaber came to Orcas for a signing/reading at our local bookstore, and I didn't find out about it until afterward. Neither did my friend who'd loaned me But Crescent. We were disappointed we'd missed her. Last week, I was pointing out Crescent to Leo and looked at some of her other books and ended up picking up her first novel, Arabian Jazz and just started reading it the other day.

It got me thinking about Crescent, and curious. I wanted to find the censored section. I'm fascinated by book censorship, though completely diametrically opposed to it. I've often found that if something is censored, it's probably excellent literature. I mean just looking at banned book lists is like looking at a delicious menu of literary treats. But now it's not there on her site anymore! I've tried googling it and haven't found it, grrrr.

I did find this though, and I think it's pretty cool. There's a blog called As If! Authors Support Intellectual Freedom. There is some really fascinating reading in there. Some of it is disheartening and just goes to show how narrow and fearful some people are. Really great reading on that blog though, and I encourage everyone to go over there and check it out. And of course, in the blog posts, there are lots of interesting sounding books to check out!

And then there's the post about Diana Abu-Jaber which made it come up on my google search. In it, I learned that a Texas schoolteacher wrote to her and asked her if she'd be okay blacking out the supposedly offensive paragraphs. Here is a link to the full post about the issue: As If! blog entry on the censorship of the four paragraphs. I highly recommend reading the whole thing, and reading Crescent.

Here is the part of the blog I liked the most, Diana Abu-Jaber's response to the inquiry. I'll excerpt it here:

"Thanks so much for your thoughtful and insightful email. I've spent several days considering your question.

Ultimately, I find that I can't condone your principal's offer to censor my novel in order to make it more acceptable. That said, you do have my permission, to do what you think is right for your students.

In a strange way, I suppose, I think this discussion is an encouraging thing. I find it fascinating that, in our culture of war, macabre violence, and shocking cinema, a literary novel could still carry enough of an impact as to make someone want to silence it.

My husband pointed out that censors are always with us, determining the limits of morality and conventions, in every source of art and information, from books to film to music. He argues, along with you, that it’s better to allow students to read some of a book—indeed most of a book—rather than none at all.

Even though I see the excellent sense of this argument, I couldn’t find a way to feel right about crossing out text. I became a writer in large part because I felt like I couldn’t otherwise make my voice heard. To agree to blackening out such passages feels like colluding in my own silencing.

I once had a debate with a student from Saudi Arabia. I’d complained to him that the problem with America was that nothing was sacred. He’d laughed at me and said, on the contrary, that the great thing about America was that nothing was sacred.

I worry, though, that the American problem is that the wrong things are sacred.

I won’t belabor pointing out the obvious irony of blacking out scenes of love-making in a book that’s concerned with the depiction and the violence of unjust wars and dictatorship. We all already know this—in America, love gets bleeped, the violence stays. The two main characters in Crescent are in love, the few sexual passages in the book are far from graphic. Indeed, the scenes in which they cook and eat together are nearly just as suggestive as the contested passages.

But a friend, upon hearing about this debate, postulated that the real reason the students’ parents are upset is because the book gives a human face to Arab Muslim people.

That might be the part of this that unnerves me the most – and like so many forms of subtle discrimination and racism, we’ll never really know if that’s the case or not. The people who want the book banned may not even be entirely conscious of it themselves.

So I thank you for giving me the chance to think out loud a little about such an important issue. If you decide to proceed with blacking out the passages, I'll be happy to post the offending text on my website, so those students who might be curious, can decide for themselves if they'd like to see what the fuss is about.

Please feel free to share my response with your principal, the parents, and even with your students. It’s a wonderful object lesson in the free and open exchange of ideas vs. book banning, especially during this, Banned Books Week."


It's really interesting to think about what our culture censors and what it doesn't. I think it could be argued that sometimes the opposite is true, that sometimes the sex is allowed and real depictions of real violence are censored. I vaguely remember there being some issue around the music videos for Metallica's "One" and Alice in Chains' "Rooster," which both had war images. I know "Rooster" a lot more, a song about Jerry Cantrell's father's experiences in Vietnam. And what about recent media censorship, arguments about whether it's allowable for them to show anything related to soldiers who've died in Iraq. I mean, I think there are some way mixed-up priorities. I mean, personally I'm about as anti-censorship and pro free speech as imaginably possible. It's almost like, in our culture, gratuitous violence or sex is okay (in different venues maybe), but actual meaningful portrayals of either is not. It's fucked up. I agree with what Diana Abu-Jaber said, that maybe "the wrong things are sacred."

I'm still searching for those paragraphs though. I want to reread Crescent too. Sometimes that's the thing with reading a lot, so much can slip through with the years passed. I remember parts of the book, but too much is lost.


Currently Listening:
"Heartfist" - Chris Cornell - one of my favorite Cornell b-sides. Gotta love a song that starts out, "Love me to death cuz I need the sleep/I've been wired awake..." Love it.

Floored by Rejections (in a writerly way)

I take it as a distinctly good sign that the rejections I receive as a writer are getting more and more flattering. It's just got to be good.

A few months ago I entered three things into the Pacific Northwest Writers Association (PNWA) contest. I didn't place in any of the three categories, but did receive two critiques on each piece, which offered some suggestions and things to think about, as well as some positive feedback.

The first thing I sent in was a story called "Lead Us Not Into Temptation," which I entered in the Children's Short Story category, though I wasn't sure it really belonged there. I wrote it for a creative writing class I took in college in Arizona, with one of my favorite college professors ever, Dr. Allen Woodman. He was hilarious and inspirational, and I wrote two stories out of that class that I still love to this day and would love to see in print. This was the second story I wrote for his class, and when we had our conference about it, he told me it was his favorite in the class. I'll never forget that. Funny story, sometime last year I was at our local writer's roundtable, a monthly meeting at the library, and they passed out a story for us to read, and it was a story by Dr. Woodman! Talk about small world! Anyway, this story was a fictional tale of some young kids with a mean Sunday School teacher who tells them a scary story about what might happen if they misbehave, and how the children test that story. So it's a story about children, but I wrote it partly as a story of religious hypocrisy in adults, and actually changed it some to try to fit it better into the category.

I got some great feedback on it, including some suggestions of possibly changing the ages of the kids (which has been something I struggled with myself, and am still not sure where I sit on that fence), but overall good comments (although one of the reviewers thought maybe children shouldn't be learning about adults lying and that maybe it wasn't a good moral to the story, hmmmm. Well, that part of it, I'm not going to change.

The next story was called "Dark As Roses," and is dearest to my heart. It was the first story I wrote for the aforementioned class. I remember starting it on spring break, visiting my friend Kelly's front lawn while she was at work. I was just brainstorming then, something about a girl who sees auras, I knew her name would be Iris, after a song by Sinead O'Connor called "What Doesn't Belong to Me" which had really affected me that January. Also, Iris was the goddess of the rainbow, and one of my favorite flowers. That's all I started out with, her name and the fact that she saw auras. In the brainstorming, I realized she wrote an advice column for her college newspaper By the time I got back to Flagstaff, I only had a few days before the rough draft was due and I wrote like a woman possessed. It was one of those magical experiences as a writer, where I sat down to write and a story spilled out almost fully formed. I didn't know any of the details until I wrote them, and there were so many. The story had layers, which is something I love as a reader, so I liked that. I had also just finished reading Angela's Ashes during that same spring break week, and felt that some bit of Frank McCourt's styles or sensibilities (in very subtle ways) had seeped into the story. Just in certain phrasings or expressions.

All in all, longhand, I wrote thirty pages. Then I had to type it up in a matter of hours to turn it in on time. I sat the notebook in front of my face and typed away, never once looking at the screen. Well, needless to say I think, after typing that many pages that fast, it was a grammatical natural disaster full of typos and mistakes, but I just didn't have enough time to fix it all, so I printed out that way and turned it in. And it was okay. In class we laughed about it all and I explained myself. My classmates loved the story. I felt really awesome about it. One guy in our class, a boy with shaggy hair, wrote his email address on his critique when he gave it to me, which was cool, the closest I ever got to "getting a guy's number" or whatever, lol. I have always really, really loved this story.

In the feedback from PNWA, again there were some great suggestions that made some things clear that I haven't seen in the seven years since writing it. They pointed out some inconsistencies and extraneous details, which gives me some new insight that I think will help me make the story better. I also got this comment:

"This story has a wonderfully inventive plot. I don't think I've read anything this original in a long time." This, written by someone who has probably read dozens of stories for this contest. I don't think any compliment could really warm my heart so much as that one. Isn't that what every artist of every type really strives for, deep down, to be unquestionably original? It felt really fucking good to read that.


The last thing I submitted to the contest was my book. They asked for a synopsis and first few chapters, totalling 28 pages. So I sent just that, and in both of these critiques, there was very little suggestion or critique at all, and the ones there were were so minor. It really made my day to read these, even though I didn't place in the contest. Here are some snippets: "Imagery through metaphor is especially strong and insightful." "Beautiful title and deeply symbolic." "This is courageous and honest writing with painful memories, but described with painful beauty." "WOW! What a wondrous mix of teenage angst and original experience." And my favorite, "This is a work of art and a pleasure to read."

Yeah, like I said, I'm just floored. Reveling in rejection.


Currently listening:
"The Kite Runner, Disc 9, Track 8" - Khaled Hosseini - OMG I can't say how much I love this book, I had to get the audiobook, read by the author. Usually I just listen on my iPod on the way to work and back (and I'm almost done, only a disc or two to go), but just now when this track came up on iTunes, I let it play through. I love this part, Amir's fight with Assef, one of the most violent scenes of the book (though definitely not the most devastating), but oh so satisfying in its healing redemption.

Lonelily

This was going to be my Currently Listening for the last post, but it got kind of long, and I really wanted to post the whole song.

"Lonelily" - Damien Rice

I love this song. It's a sad song for sure, but also sort of cathartic to yell along with the chorus when he yells it at the end. And, to boot, Leo turned me on to Damien Rice, many years ago, and his music has been with me in so many times and places in the years to come.

While she was here, I showed Leo the house I used to rent a room in, way out at the edge of town, where I first met Mr O. I took her on the long walk there from town, past the ocean, and told her about blustery winter nights of howling wind and pounding rains, when I used to walk home from town to that house, to Mr O and all that excitement (this was in the beginning, back when we were flirting and fooling around and sleeping together and I was all psyched out over him), and how I'd walk to that house in that crazy weather, singing Damien Rice songs in my head. I also used to stand in my tiny room in that house, getting dressed for the day, feeling hotter than I ever had before, with Damien Rice in my head.

It's funny how music, though it means so much more than a simple backdrop, is such a soundtrack for all the memorable moments. Back then though, I had never yet heard this particular song. Now, it is the most played song on my iTunes (it constantly battles with Fiona Apple's "Tymps (The Sick in the Head Song) for that position).


Here are the words:

"I gave me away
I coulda knocked off the evening
But I lonelily landed my wants in her hands
In a way
I felt you were leaving me
And I was sure I wouldn't find you at home

And you let me down
You coulda knocked off the evening
But you lonelily let him push under your bones
You let me down
There's no use deceiving
Neither of us want to be alone

And you're coming home
You're coming home
You're coming home
You're coming home

I gave me away
I coulda knocked off the evening
But I was lonelily looking for someone to hold
In a way
I lost all I believed in
And I never found myself so alone

Then you let me down
You coulda called if you needed
But you lonelily got yourself locked in instead
You let me down
Well, it's one thing being cheated
But you took him all the way through your bed

And now you're coming home
I'm trying to forgive
You're coming home
I'm trying to forget
You're coming home
I'm trying to move on
You're coming home
You haven't called
But you haven't called
You're coming home
(x2 - this is where it's fun to yell along)

You're coming home

I gave me away
I coulda knocked off the evening
But I lonelily loomed her into my bones
You let me down
There's no use deceiving
Neither of us want to be alone"

A Totally Transformative Solstice Week

This week, my friend Leo came to visit. She left this morning. I am sad that she's gone, and at the same time, just so glad we had this time together. It was the best. Leo and I have had some wild times over the last eight years of knowing each other - shared concert experiences, drunken debauchery at her house with friends, trips to Seattle, trips to the Gorge, a "porn hotel room" (it had a hot tub, and the doors or windows or whatever between the hot tub and the rest of the room wouldn't stay shut), rituals of feminine spirituality, trips to Philly with her kids to the science museum, discussions about books and politics and the meaning of life, commiseration over unrequited love. I saw my first Tool concert with her. I used to call her in the mornings, when Mr. O still lived with me and things were horrible and I was careening in desperation, and whisper all my troubles to her. She once took the craziest trip ever (including buses, trains and an insane ride with a friend's younger brother) to come see me at my parents house in NJ when I was visiting. We've turned each other on to music, to authors, to concepts, to spiritual principles, to philosophies, to movies, and on and on and on. This really only scratches the surface of what we've shared.

And this past week, or rather, five days really, was the most time we spent one on one. She came here, away from kids, just us. As everything always seems to be with us, getting here was a complicated journey. After driving to the airport, flying cross-country via a connecting flight, getting on a shuttle to the ferry terminal and then taking the ferry to the island, she rode on the bus for the camp I work for (they were picking up some of our international summer staff at the same time), and so came to where I work, saw me in my stupid work uniform and got to eat some premium (really) camp food. And then we walked all the way to my apartment. It was cool, because earlier this spring I went through another decorating, rearranging and purging phase and feel like the apartment is really me now. So it was awesome to have a friend see that.

My boss gave me extra time off, without me even asking for it, which rocked, and we had a blast, non-stop, sun-up to sun-down. We took the ferry to Sidney, BC. I have lived on Orcas for over five years (and lived in Seattle for a few months before that), and in all this time, I have never been to western Canada, ever. I had a passport that had laid dormant for two years. Well, a few days ago, Leo and I got our passports stamped in Canada. It was really cool, the ferry goes right there, then we took a bus, totally winged it, found a hostel, visited a castle, went on a ghost tour, hung out in the hostel lounge drinking, reading tarot and eating samosas. The next morning, we took the bus back to the ferry terminal and began our trek back to american soil. We had to stop in Friday Harbor, and as we are prone to do, spent the whole time we were there in their used bookstore, Serendipity.

We did a fair amount of shopping. In Canada, we bought matching journals and I got some sage. On Orcas we visited the bookstore and both gave in to our insatiable addiction to buying books. It was an awesome experience, being in the bookstore together, because we kept looking at books together, recommending books, talking about this author who references that author, whose book reminds us of this other book, making connections and just feeding each other's hunger for stories and knowledge and literature. I have a handful of friends I can be that way with, really, really, be that way, and Leo's one of them. I realized for like the millionth time this year, that the books I'm drawn to almost all take place in other cultures. It's interesting, when Mr. O and I were together, and this goes along with all that soul-squelching stuff I wrote about in my last entry, I barely read. That is not like me, at all, and it's almost like now I'm trying to make up for all that lost time. Even during Leo's visit, whether on the ferry, in the mornings or at night before bed, I was always reading (right now my book of the moment is The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver). I'm lapping up words and stories knowing there probably aren't enough days in ten lifetimes to read everything I thirst to read.

So what else did Leo and I do? Well the one surprising thing is that the one thing we didn't do was listen to music. We were too busy talking. Or playing with tarot cards. Or dissecting and discussing our lives, our troubles, our dreams (literal and figurative). Or looking through Victoria's Secret catalogs (which is a bit funny or unexpected for both of us). We went clothes shopping together and got a few hot items each. We did spells with tarot cards, intentions and releases on the night of the Full Moon in Sagittarius. We each went for some energy healing sessions with my healer friend Elynn and had transformative experiences. We looked through a journal that has been passed around in a group we belong to, a journal I've had for two years (!!!) and couldn't think of anything to contribute to. As we were perusing it together, reading through others' entries, I was finally struck with inspiration, and it's funny, because in a way, the idea that came to me is, in a way, turning all the anguish I wrote about in my last entry, into a strange form of art. So, that's cool. I made Leo laugh as I pretended I was going to write obscenely sexual things (I'm a dirty minded girl for sure, but anyone who read that piece in Shark Reef can't be surprised by that) to someone we know, and we reflected on how different I was from when she first met me (I was really painfully shy then, especially about that sort of stuff), and how we both had grown and changed in the last few years. We sort of individually, independently, in different ways, at different times in the week, let go of old things, massively, and simultaneously accepted ourselves for what we haven't let go of, what we still carry, and I think we both totally came to a place of peace with that.

It was a week of growth, of change, of deep internal changes. I feel stronger. Really. I feel invigorated. I feel excited about life again, and trust me when I say I needed that. I've been in a major funk for months. A funk that has changed shape and tone over the last few years even, and has been especially heavy in the last few months, as I think is somewhat apparent here. I think I'm emerging somewhat, and that it doesn't come easy, especially when there's been a lot of dimming of the soul. Today I had to go back to work, and say goodbye to Leo before I left, but you know, I actually felt pretty good at work, even physically, which is a first in a looooong time, a radical turnaround from even a week ago.

Part of it, I think, is because I feel some direction about what I want to do. As a lot of you know, I've been considering going back to school, and put it off a year because of financial reasons. I'm really glad I did that, because as this voracious reader in me has reawakened, I've realized some things. I'm not so sure that Emerson College is the place for me. It's still hard for me to say that - I had the BEST time there last November, was just bursting with joy on that campus and on Boston Common and riding the T. I still think the school has the best writing program out of any I've looked at, for my particular interests. They offer a lot of classes in a lot of genres, including screenwriting, writing for TV and film, the regular fiction, poetry and non-fiction (with possible concentrations in any of the above), and even offer classes in comedy writing (including a class on writing for stand-up comdedy that culminates in actually doing a five-minute bit at a comedy club). I so would have taken all those classes. I have not found any other school that offers that same wide array of writing classes.

The problem though, is that I hunger for so much more. I want to study everything - world religions (which tops my list as one of the most fascinating things ever in this universe), international affairs, anthropology, philosophy, political science, psychology, other cultures. And I want to be able to study abroad. It's not that Emerson has no opportunities in these other areas, just that I feel it's somewhat limited. That's not to say Emerson is off my list, that writing program is still enticing and I had such a good feel from the school, just that it's wavering. I read somewhere that they have some exchange thing with Suffolk, where you can take some classes through that school, and if that's still true (I read it ina college guidebook that was a few years old), that might help. Suffolk also offers a prison literature class that I'm just plain dying to take.

So in the meantime, contemplating all this, marinating as I called it before on here, another idea popped up that I've been exploring, and that is Fairhaven College in Bellingham. It's part of Western Washington University, except that in this college, students design their own interdisciplinary majors. Which is exactly what I need. My brain is split right-brain left-brain, I'm right in the middle, and I wavered a lot on my major when I was in school, because if I was doing humanities type stuff I missed math and science and when I did that I missed the other things. So interdisciplinary classes and majors sounds hot to me. Plus there's the option of taking any of the classes that Western offers in any department, so there's a lot to choose from to make my own major. And they have this exchange thing with a few other schools in the country that also have experimental learning setups, and that attracts me too. So does something called the Adventure Learning Grant, which is all about spending time in a culture very different from one's own.

And that's what I want - variety, the whole wide world of learning, travel opportunities, adventure. That sounds like a great education to me, and like it'll be awesome in the meantime. I want to be living the dream, and this sounds like a way to do that and get a degree and really stretch myself intellectually at the same time.

Oh yeah, and a big bonus is that it's in my state, and a state school, which reduces cost so dramatically, which is always good. It's funny, I've done many tarot readings about different schools and they've always been a bit ambivalent, and I did one about going to Fairhaven while riding on the ferry with Leo, and it came out so overwhelmingly positive it almost blew my mind. So we'll see, my thoughts may shift and my needs may change, but I'm very seriously considering this option.

And it feels good. Just talking to Leo about it got me all excited to make it all happen, to spread my wings and take flight on new journeys. I feel long overdue.

A Dark Night of the Soul

This was originally written on June 1st, in the wee hours of the morning:

I'm having a rough night. I'm also a bit drunk. It was karaoke night tonight at the local tavern, which is a fun event for going out with all the people I work with and I was totally psyched to go, and then when I was there I just felt really kind of left out. I mean, not like anyone intentionally left me out, I just felt like I didn't belong. Sometimes, I'm around people and I just wonder if I'm from a different species (in fact a few days ago while walking home I just started thinking about what if I'm an alien, not like for serious, but just feeling that degree of outsiderness). I've been a bit melancholic lately anyway.

So I was there at karaoke and I just started feeling terrible. I watched everyone else kinda being all huggy and touchy, sitting on each other and so forth and I just felt like, wow, I am so not part of this and I never will be. And the night before, I sort of felt the exact same way at a local dance. It's amazing to me, and I couldn't stop thinking about this at the bar tonight, how like, I'm ten years removed from the worst horrors of high school, yet in some ways I'm still there. Still the girl who sits alone, not out of choice, but because no one will sit with me. Still an outcast albino freak after all these years.

And it just made me wonder, when do those feelings end? Sometimes I feel like I never really get over anything. Does anyone? I can remember sitting with two friends during the end of my senior year of high school, hanging out in my room, reading over old notes we'd written to each other and laughing hysterically. I was pretty fresh from a breakkup and my friend Annmarie made me an award for getting over it so quickly, since we were all being so joyous and so carefree, unaffected by failed love. Even then, in between fits of giggles over those old notes we were reading, and in the midst of being proud of Annmarie's award and feeling like yeah, woo hoo, I'm over it, I'm moving on, some part of me knew I wasn't. I can just as easily recall when he wrote to me, "I don't love you anymore." Those words are hard to get over. And there are so many memories just as hard, if not harder. All the teasing, day in and day out, some of which I wrote about in that piece in Shark Reef, but you know, in that piece, I was aiming for the everyday stuff, so even that, as horrible as it was to write about, avoided some of the more extreme events. Like the time some kids stole the books from my locker and set them on fire. I didn't just feel left out then, I felt actively hated.

I just find it hard to put it behind me. I sometimes want so badly to be accepted, to be thought of as normal, as like other people, as belonging, and it's really hard with these memories still lingering somewhere underneath the surface of my skin. I take things really hard and I know it, what I don't know is how to forget, how to bounce back, how to live as if those things never happened, because all they do is make me want to shut down. There was one summer that I worked with this boy and totally had a thing for him, and we hung out all the time and had so much fun together and then when we got back to school in the fall he wouldn't even talk to me, and when a friend of mine told him that I liked him, he screamed "Ewwww!" Like I was a leper or something. How does a person, even years later, fully live as if something like that never happened? I haven't figured that out yet. And so far, down the line, any attempt at romance has kind of gone the same way.

For most of my early twenties I was in love with someone from the internet - it was a ridiculous situation in many ways and I feel kind of embarrassed about it now, but the feelings I had at the time were very real. I loved him with all my heart and I shared parts of myself with him that I had never shared with anyone and totally felt like he completely understood me, even the darker, heavier stuff, which was such an amazing feeling I hadn't really quite experienced before, and I just felt more connected to him than I ever had with anyone. I felt like I was totally seen and appreciated for who I really was, and that was new, and sacred. And in the end, he told me I wasn't his type, that he didn't love me (there's that line coming up again), and that he had gotten all sexual with some totally superficial girls we both knew.

Years have passed since all that, and I've tried six ways to Sunday to get past it all, and just this morning writing in my journal I realized the truth is, I'm just not. Even though I feel pretty removed from it all, every once in awhile I still wake up thinking about him. I wish I knew how to turn that switch off because every time it happens, I feel like an idiot. And it makes me sort of yearn for something I never really had anyway. Which in itself is pretty sad.

And then there was Mr. O - a legacy of hurt so thick I sometimes think I will never stop treading water trying to swim out of it. It was a weird situation where we ended up living together, in my apartment, and not having sex ever and not even sleeping together and never talking about our relationship or lack thereof and I used to wonder if he was messing around with someone else, and he always looked at porn online whenever I left the house and I felt more alone than I ever had felt by myself. I wish either of us had talked about things with the other. Thinking about it is making me cry pretty hard, I guess because it was like putting my soul through some sort of wringer, feeling constantly rejected, never knowing how to get out of this horrible pattern with him. I cried myself to sleep more often than not towards the end of things. But I didn't know how to say anything, for many reasons. And so not only did I feel abandoned and rejected by him, but more importantly, I was abandoning myself by not taking care of myself in the situation, and just continuing to stay in such horrible miserable circumstances.

Honestly when I think about it, my body still feels beyond exhausted just from holding all of that inside. I feel this is somehow "wrong" to say, but what bugged me the most was the sexual rejection and the lack of physical affection and closeness. Even as the months stretched on, it felt fresh every day. He would talk about every fucking girl on TV and make all these sexual comments and then sleep on my couch instead of in his bed with me. We were together for a year and a half, and this went on through most of it. You read and hear sometimes about couples who've been together forever and no longer get it on and I don't know how people do it. I mean, I think it could easily drive a person to madness. Sometimes I don't think there is any good way to describe in words how fucking painful it was, day in and day out, to love and want someone and want to be close to him and constantly be denied. It definitely had an effect on my self-esteem, on how I felt about myself as a woman. And I just didn't understand what the fuck happened, you know? He'd tell me he loved me, and then sleep on the floor. He'd talk to other girls on my phone, and I'd overhear comments like, "You want to marry me now, don't you?" joking, but still. Or one time I heard him tell one of his female friends that he was in love with another female friend's MySpace picture and go on and on about how hot it was. Sometimes he'd start fooling around with me, and get me all hot and bothered, and then go to bed, on the couch of course. That could incite a person to murder, let me tell you. I actually sort of wish it had. I mean not literally of course, but I wish I had gotten angry, but at the time all I could think was, "What? WHAT? What is it? What am I doing wrong?" and I'd go cry myself to sleep, alone, because I just couldn't figure any of it out. Sometimes he'd want to watch porn together and I wanted to ask him if he'd ask a starving person to watch a cooking show.

It felt like compounding interest, like all the feelings of sexual rejection and just being totally deprived of physical affection of any sort - it wasn't necessarily that I just wanted sex, but that I wanted something. Hand-holding, sitting together, cuddling, hugging, sleeping together, any sort of physical intimacy and closeness - just compounded and built up and got me at my core. It got to the point where I would consider something a good day if he was nice to me at all, if he didn't call those girls, if he came home drunk and semi-flirted with me (like, called me darling or something) or if we had a nice conversation about something, or one time we watched a movie together and our feet touched for a little bit, even though every day ended the same way, with us going to sleep separately, in different rooms. That's a definite sign of deprivation in a relationship, when horribly mediocre days seem so good in comparison to everything else. That relationship was like a mountain of hurt sitting on my heart, growing in mass with each new day. Like a cancerous tumor, metastasizing to my bloodstream and circulating through my veins.

I don't think I'm the same person I was before that relationship. Of course, hopefully, I've learned some things, but I mean on a deeper level. During so much of the time, I felt used. Mr O would talk me into going to the store to buy him beer or whatever, all the time, and I was taking care of all the bills, taking the dog on long walks so Mr O could be alone (and of course look at internet porn while I was out), shut myself up about my own opinions if I thought (or knew) he'd make fun of me for them, stopped doing the things I really loved, like reading and writing voraciously, because at its most basic, I just wasn't myself anymore.

The thing I feel the worst about in all that is that I stayed. For so long. I mean, what the fuck? What was I thinking? I guess I just wanted him to love me, or thought that if I could be more open and more affectionate, maybe things would get better. I totally thought it was my fault. I was convinced I had seriously disappointed him in bed and that's why all this shit ensued. I still kind of grapple with that feeling. I mean he was the first (and so far only) person I ever did have sex with. I also think I partly stayed because part of me thought there might not be anyone else. Mr O had been the first person to show interest in me in years and it was like, well shit, it may not come along again so might as well keep this one even if it's the most self-destructive thing I've ever done in my life.

I don't know if I had a point exactly in all of this, and if I did I've certainly lost it. I guess it's just that I've experienced what I'd consider some extreme wounding in the social and romantic arenas, and that all makes it that much harder to try to fit in, even now as an adult. I mean, it's like, I don't know how to sit with the fact that a kid once came towards me with a lighter and said, "I wonder if albinos burn like the rest of us," and then try to be normal in normal social situations now, even though it's years later. It's like those feelings of old are still in me.

I'm actually (surprise! surprise!) reminded of an episode of House from earlier this season. The patient was a kid with a very odd-looking face who's about to undergo surgery to change it and House says to him, "You can change your face, but you can't change who your face made you." And philosophically I could look at that statement and think about how maybe in some ways that's good, makes a person really unique. As a writer friend used to say, "Only the wounded are whole." And most of my favorite people (whether real life, fictional characters, famous people) are wounded in some way, kindred folk of some sort, and I can see how fucking special they are because of it, how sometimes going through something difficult or dealing with struggle can sometimes make a person more beautiful (and sometimes the opposite). So maybe in a twisted way there's some good to it. But man, it also sucks.

And tonight, being at karaoke just sort of brought it all home and for whatever reason, reminded me of high school dances, which is also how I felt last night at the local dance. I guess since I felt it in two places with different people, it's probably a lot more about me than the places or people. For whatever reason, this issue is surfacing for me. It's funny how the body can hold these feelings so strongly. I felt so socially awkward tonight, grotesquely different somehow. I know I'm not like other people, that I'm not typical, and a lot of times I like that. Other times, it's just really difficult. I just don't know how to fit in with all these touchy, flirty people, because I'm not really like that. It's like a language I can't speak. I feel like I'm darker somehow. A line I use often in my book is about feeling more "different on the inside" than I am on the outside. I mean, I had a really fucked up childhood and am pretty estranged from my family. There's sexual abuse in my history, I mean shit, that's fucking heavy! ometimes I think I picture everyone else as having a white picket fence life with perfectly functional families (which of course isn't the case) and I'm like the girl who lives in the sewer or something.

Actually, one of my favorite characters, Astrid from White Oleander, says it really well. I've had this page (and a few others) bookmarked for years (and am just now realizing some of the similarities in this passage I'm about to quote to the character of House): "I finished out the ninth grade at Madison Junior High, limping from class to class on my cane. My fractured hip was mending, but it was the slowest thing to heal. My shoulder was already functional, and even the chest wound that cracked my rib had stopped hurting every time I straightened or bent. But the hip was slow. I was always late to class. My days passed in a haze of Percodan. Bells and desks, shuffling to the next class. The teachers' mouths opened and butterflies flew out, too fast to capture. I liked the shifting colors of groups on the courtyard, but could not distinguish one student from the next. They were too young and undamaged, sure of themselves. To them, pain was a country they had heard of, maybe seen a show about on TV, but one whose stamp had not yet been made in their passports. Where could I find a place where my world connected to theirs?"

On a related note, I'd much rather get into a deep conversation about something, or read a book by myself, or devour knowledge on a wide array of subjects, or write in a journal or just sit around and space out and contemplate. It's funny because I can distinctly remember being eleven or so, laying in my bedroom at home (and thinking over math puzzles and books I'd read, memorizing things in my mind before bed and having lots of feelings about everything) that being smart and thinking a lot and feeling things really intensely might alienate me a lot. It's hard to know how to reconcile that, how to not like, pretend to be someone else (puke) in attempts to make people see me as "normal" or just embrace the alienation. That was another thing I struggled with HARD in my relationship with Mr O - this is retarded and I can't believe I'm even going to admit this, but when he and I used to watch Jeopardy together, I would fake not knowing the answers sometimes (and I'm no whiz at the show or anything) because if I got too many right he'd start putting me down. That felt really shitty. I'm never doing that again.

My friend Emily walked home with me from the bar and we talked a lot and I told her some of what I wrote on here and it was really good to have a friend to listen and understand. It's just that sometimes I get all weirded out by being in groups and feeling somehow like I'm sitting on the outside. For whatever reason, I'm really getting triggered into the past in the last few days.

It also made me consider, again, how my life right now isn't really working for me. I work at a job where pretty much everyone is seasonal. I have watched so many people come and go. And because I work in the kitchen, I'm separated from the environmental ed staff to a degree, which only increases that feeling of wow they're all bonded and close and I'm not part of it, that outsiderness I'm so weary from. It makes it really hard to make good connections with people around my age. I have some friends from here I will treasure forever, but for the most part people just always come and go all the time. So there's a lot of loss, getting to know people just before they leave, wishing I got to know people better beforehand, missed bonding opportunities, getting to know people and really like them and then saying goodbye, etc. I wish Emily (and some others) weren't leaving in two weeks.

I have to say though, that the thought of going back to school, moving to a new place, being around a whole bunch of nineteen-year-olds, really scares the shit out of me. I have a hard enough time fitting in with older people closer to my age. I sort of never flet like I really was nineteen or any of those ages, even when I was, so I can't really imagine trying to relate now. But I definitely do need to figure out something in the tangible, physical world, as I continue to try to let go of these old hurts in the emotional plane or assimilate them or come to terms or find some peace or whateverthefuck might help, because I feel kind of clearer every day that my life as it is right now isn't working for me and that I want to make some changes and move off the island (which is socially isolating in itself, big time) and venture out some.

After writing all that, I am essentially sober. And ready for bed.


Currently listening:
"Eon Blue Apocalypse/The Patient" - Tool - Okay, this is a little weird. I have almost 4000 songs on my iTunes/iPod, and tonight while walking home from work, this song (a live recording from a Tool show I saw in Seattle with Mr O) came on, and now here I am at my computer at home and the same song, out of all 4000, comes up again. There must be some cosmic message to the synchronicity, though I'm not sure what. A lot of times, I've kind of listened to this song to calm me, especially the repeating part, "I must keep reminding myself of this," which just started playing this very second. Maybe the only thing to remind myself of is another repeating lyric of the song, "Be patient." Hmmm.

Err on the Side of Audacity

Today I was perusing Sue Monk Kidd's website (and discovered that The Secret Life of Bees is being made into a movie and will be out in October), and came across this little tidbit she posted in a list of advice she'd give to writers. Here was number seven:

"Err on the side of audacity.

One day it occurred to me that most writers, myself included, erred on the side of being too careful in their writing. I made a pact with myself that I would quit playing it safe when what the story really wanted... what my heart really wanted, was to take a big chance. The best writing requires some daring-- a little literary skydiving. Look at your idea and ask yourself: how can I make this larger? The novelist E. M. Forster once said that a novel should deliver a series of small astonishments. After I finish each chapter, I read it with an eye toward figuring out where I’ve played it safe, where I backed off, where the small astonishment was lost."

It rings true for me. As a writer, it's much easier to play it safe. It's something I've definitely struggled with in my manuscript, especially on the first round. I mean, I thought it was pretty out there, scary, revealing. But then some of my readers pointed out how I avoided the darkness, avoided really talking about albinism, skimmed other issues, and that it would be better to really dig in. In rereading and rewriting, I realized how much I had sugarcoated or glossed over. It's hard not to sometimes, out of habit. Not that it's a writing habit, but a life habit - making things sound somehow easier to swallow than they are, filling in details that aren't always really there, sidestepping the really deep territory. I mean, the deeper and darker territories are hard to go into. And yet I also think in some ways, they're the richest.

As a reader, I hate it when I feel a story doesn't go to its own depths. I mean, in that case, really, why tell the story? It's frustrating as a reader, somehow empty and not quite totally satisfying, and if I'm going to spend my time reading a book, I want it to go to the depths, and not just hover on the surface. Some examples come to mind. One was this book, I think it was called Find Me or Finding Me, by Rosie O'Donnell. A friend loaned it to me years ago. I knew just about nothing about the woman, as I often feel like I grew up in a virtual pop culture vacuum, having almost zero exposure to those sorts of things. So I just read it like any other memoir or novel, and in it she talks about basically meeting someone with multiple personalities. Which is something that completely fascinates me to no end (I like the unusual, and that's like the cream of the abnormal psychology crop), but every time she wrote about this woman (whose name I can't remember) or her reactions to it, she'd write something like (and I'm completely paraphrasing, this was probably four years ago now), "Well this is getting pretty weird so let me tell you about something else," and every time she wrote something of that nature, I felt ripped off. Like no, give me the real experience. Stop distracting me (or yourself) by constantly changing the subject, and let's dig into it. It was really frustrating as a reader, scattered, unsatisfying. In the end a potentially really rich and interesting story was just sort of sprinkled in bits and pieces.

And there have been other times and other books where I feel the author has sort of cheated me as reader out of the full experience. It sucks. Still, as a writer, it can sometimes be hard to avoid. It's hard not to write with the ghosts or memories or expectations of everyone you know sitting on your shoulder. At least it can be for me. I mean I usually feel relatively free when writing something, but there are those habits I mentioned earlier, which I think mostly manifest themselves subconsciously. For me it's in the editing and the thinking of making something public that all those ghhosts come up. Sometimes I cringe at my own difficult material, thinking about how it will come across, how I might be judged, who might get mad at me, what society at large might think, and all other assorted forms of bullshit that lead to self-oppression.

So it's good to remember, I think, to err on the side of audacity. A passage I marked off in Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird goes like this, "If something inside you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Don't worry about appearing sentimental. Worry about being unavailable; worry about being absent or fraudulent. Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it. If you're a writer, you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act--truth is always subversive."

I do worry a bit about my manuscript, that maybe there are still places where I'm a bit absent. It's hard to know though, because there are other places that, like I said, make me cringe with how vulnerable and revealing they are. Places where some part of me still wants to pull back. I almost feel like reading through my book yet again, but honestly, I'm pretty sick of it. I'm planning on sending out my proposal to some agents, like, tomorrow, so I'm just going to put it out there, and remember to err on the side of audacity in all my writing.

Speaking of that, I wrote a blog post last Saturday night, and it was pretty difficult, pretty personal. In the morning I woke up sort of panicked about it and took it down. I liked it. It was honest. It was just sort of rocky territory, deep shit, and I'm a bit afraid of what some of my readers would think if they knew the darker side of me (though honestly my book itself goes into some darkness so maybe it's worth it), and I worried that some people might be mad if they read it (b/c I alluded to them, even without giving any identifying info about them). Maybe it's worth being unliked. Maybe I'll repost it. Still feeling a bit tentative.

Edited to add: After sitting on said blog post for two weeks or so, I read it over and decided I really liked it, it was candid, and candor is so rare sometimes, and I liked the writing, it came from somewhere deep and real, even though I was drunk when I wrote it, and some of it came out pretty, despite the sadness. And I think, why not tell the truth about my own life? If people don't like it, fuck 'em. So that's that.


On a totally, completely unrelated note, I've been kind of thinking of audacity in other ways lately. I'm really bored with my life. I do think I want to go back to school next year, and a lot of my efforts right now are geared towards saving money for that and really taking the time to find the right place for me. And yet I feel like if I don't do something exciting in the meantime, I might go a bit crazy (crazier?). I am really itching to leave the country. Starting to feel kind of handicapped by my lack of foreign experience. I have tons of time off in the winter. Last year I went to Hawaii. If I'm really good with money, I keep thinking I'll go somewhere foreign this winter. I'm hoping I could do it without dipping into the allotted amount I set aside every month for college. We'll see. My top pipe dream choice would be to go to Egypt on some sort of spiritual journey. A close second would be Ireland. Who knows...I've been known to make wild ideas into reality, so I don't count anything out just now.


Currently Listening:
Okay I am totally embarrassed here, but since I just wrote all that stuff about being real, I might as well admit it, "Bless the Broken Road" - Rascal Flatts - not the typical music I'd listen to AT ALL (and it has all this god stuff in it that I have to just sort of ignore). I heard someone sing this song at our local Orcas Idol contest last year (actually the guy who ended up winning), and I loved his performance, so, there you have it, I like this song and I love to sing along at the top of my lungs. Oh, but I do think the guy who sang it at Orcas Idol actually sang it better.