On the Today Show

So, remember that reading I did in NYC in November? The woman who organized and put that together, Kim Brittingham, has done another reading at the same place, The Bowery Poetry Club, and she is being interviewed on The Today Show about an essay she wrote (and I believe, the essay she read at the subsequent show). It's going to be on Weds morning, from 10-11am. Sadly, I will miss it, because I'll be in the car with my friend Tallie, on our way to the SeaTac airport for our flight to Hawaii. I'm really bummed to miss it, because this woman is really awesome. It was really great to meet her in November.

For those here who were at the reading, this is the woman who read about regularly playing hooky and taking clandestine trips to NYC. I think she's just such an excellent writer, and person. She's also extremely innovative, always coming up with ideas to help writers. She is the brainstorming queen.

So, if you can, watch it!

Kim's MySpace

And here are some links to some of her blogs that rock:
A Writer's Life
The essay and the Fallout
Whatcha Thinkin, Houdini?
Party Pooper
A Writer's Life Continues

And the chapter Kim read at the Best Memoirists Pageant Ever
Hooky


Currently Listening:
"On the Steps of the Cathedral" - Mark Lanegan

Adding Imagery

Okay, so here are some pictures to go along with my last post about living at camp and how magical it was. I thought the visual imagery might help create the full picture.







Here is the road going into camp.








This was my view from the Dispensary.








This is the mythical Dispensary. I wish I had pictures of the inside.






This gives a more full view of the shoreline at Camp. Just look how freakin' lush it is.



Here, my friend Leo and I are walking in the woods where I used to walk all the time when I lived there.


All these pictures are taken by Diane Richter, rock photographer extraordinaire.


Currently Listening:
"Mary" - Tori Amos - Very appropriate in a way, because the winter before the one I wrote about, which I also spent living in the Dispensary, this song was very significant to me. I can't remember if I heard this song just before or just after reading The Da Vinci Code. I got real excited when I heard the line "Even the wind cries your name," and realized it was a Jimi Hendrix reference. Then I read the liner notes of the album this is from (Tales of a Librarian), where Tori has every song categorized, like in the Dewey Decimal system, and this one was filed under "Abuse of the Earth" and "Mary Magdalene." It was like everything coming together and connecting in a way that made total sense to me. Leo and I even formed a "Mary Club of the Sacred Feminine," lol. Now I am really tripping down memory lane.

Some lyrics from "Mary,"
"We got her armed as we buy and sell
Her rivers of milk running dry
Can't you hear the dolphin's cry?"

On not writing (Or, Of Fear and Fond Memories)

A few winters ago, I lived with my friend Tracy in a house at camp, and I've probably written about this winter before, and I'm sure I will write about it a million more times because I was so freakin' happy that winter.

The house at camp where I lived (called The Dispensary because in the summer, the medical staff lived there) looked like a cabin, with wood walls and this real "old" feeling to it, like living there was actually a time warp, in a nice way, back to something ancient, even though we did have modern conveniences there. I also loved the lights, they had a soft glow that on the wood walls just somehow reminded me of something primal. It actually had a feel that brought to mind my grandmother's house, probably the only other house I've loved as much as I love the Dispensary. Something about that house was just like IV nutrition for my soul.

It was winter when we were there, which meant there wasn't a lot going on at camp, so it was quiet and expansive. Camp has almost 300 acres of some of the most beautiful land I've ever known. I remember laying in bed in my room in the Dispensary, listening to owls calling and cedar trees creaking as I fell asleep. During the day, I took loooooong walks over acres of forests and shoreline. I had a favorite (huge) tree stump to sit on and think. I had a favorite path to walk out to this back road that wound around. It is my belief that that kind of connection to nature does wonders for the mind, the heart and the soul that nothing else does quite as well. I felt really at peace in some ways, even when I was full of despair (I mean, Bush had just been re-elected, for fuck's sake) or going through some tough stuff, I still felt connected to the world.

I started feeling more and more like an atheist, in the middle of feeling overcome with deep spiritual connection and a sense of the sacred. It was like who needs any kind of God or supernatural force when I have THIS? That's not to say I didn't believe in any supernatural things (though I definitely did not believe in the traditional idea of God and hadn't for years), but it just seemed like it was much more right in front of me than something "out there" and distant. It was glorious, everything about it. I remember walking under trees at night, figuring out where the path was without a flashlight by looking up and seeing where I could see sky (and winter stars on clear nights) between the branches. Or watching the moon reflected on the ocean. Going skinny-dipping by myself on one of those moonlit ocean nights, in inky blue water that was ice cold. Walking in the woods and feeling like I had a keen sense of the numinous, the magical, the sacred, the ancient. I have loved A LOT of places in my life, but I don't think I have ever loved any as fervently.

There are so many images from that time that are tattooed on my mind for all time. It was one of the simplest times of my life. So many nights, Tracy and I just sat around reading, reading tarot cards, eating really hearty and natural soups and breads that Tracy made, talking about the world, having deep conversations about everything imaginable. There were a lot of times we'd sit in silence, Tracy knitting, me writing. I could go on and on about how fucking awesome that winter was. Like how along with everything serious we also listened to David Cross and David Sedaris and laughed hysterically. It was like we could go from talking about what was deeply wrong with the world and feeling it so completely, or talking about the sacred feminine and the phases of the moon, to cracking up over something in The Onion's book Our Dumb Century. The way I've always thought of it was that humor was our way to deal with the sadness of the world without collapsing under it, a way to still have the capacity to care.

Part of what made that time so special was that there were lots of times we'd be reading individually, quietly, and then one of us would look up and share some thought about what we'd just read, and that could spark a whole conversation. I remember Tracy reading me Rumi's The Guest House, and how we discussed that. We both read Mists of Avalon and had all these conversations about that book (which still to this day is one of my favorites, and I always think of it as a winter book) and about the priestesses in the book and the natural magic they used.

It was that winter that, thanks to Tracy, I started reading Derrick Jensen, who I just fucking adore. He has such a great sensibility in the way he writes which is hard for me to describe. He has a very analytical mind and yet brings suuuuuch a depth of passion and emotion when he writes about the horrors that civilization is wreaking on the world, he gets to the heart, and he's also side-splittingly funny (anyone who can write about atrocities so unrelentingly and then actually make me laugh later on, is unquestioningly awesome in my book). A certain comment about porn and wanting to hit on a girl by talking about the unsustainability of the infrastructure of Las Vegas comes to mind. That was one of the moments that I stopped reading, laughed, and then read it aloud to Tracy.

Our living room was just littered with books - on history, on the occult, on politics, on the environment, memoirs, novels, poetry, graphic novels. I felt like I was always learning something, developing ideas in the discussions, connecting ideas together, exploring. But it wasn't all intellectual, what I loved is that it wasn't all abstract, I felt like the conversations also really encompassed the HEART of things too, the caring, the depth, the empathy (even if it was something difficult, and often it was). We also talked tons about boys, life, family issues, people we knew, our job, and everything else, but somehow always with that same kind of real depth and realness. Oh and we had music, always music.

In so many ways it was idyllic, my un-American American Dream - to live in a homey little place that looks like a cabin, on LOTS of land and feel the total contentment that comes with feeling so connected to the natural world, and have someone who's deep and smart and funny and REAL to share it with (though in my daydream of a future, said person would, along with those other attributes, be a gorgeous guy, lol). I feel like my words are not justifying how truly happy and satisfied I felt at that time in my life. And not just in a self-absorbed sort of way either, there was too much caring for the world to feel that.

Since that time, I haven't really felt that kind of fulfillment, in fact in some ways I have sort of shied away from a lot of that and haven't felt quite myself - and me being me, I've tried to analyze the why behind that shift. Is it that I don't have anyone to share it with, which makes these things a lot harder and more difficult to hold? Is it because I'm not so connected to nature now that I live off camp in my apartment (which I do love, let me say)? Is it because I routinely abandoned myself, my real feelings, my real interests, my self-worth, and etc. ad nauseum in my relationship with Mr. O? Is it because the state of the world just continues to get worse and there's only so much one person can handle thinking about when there's no one to share that with? Is it because I had to focus too much on survival, making sure my heat didn't get turned off and that I had enough money to eat and the dog was fed and everyone was happy? Is it because I got TV? In all likelihood, it's all of the above and then some more.

Whatever it is, I have felt kinda distant from myself for awhile, it's something I've struggled back and forth with in my journal for about the last ten months, because I feel like I'm on avoidance mode sometimes. And I know it, I see it, I have so many entries sporadically throughout the last year, where I try to figure out what I'm avoiding and why, hoping that'll do the trick, and yet I keep avoiding. I sit up at night watching mini-marathons of Without a Trace instead of writing, writing scares me. I hate that I feel that way. I mean sure, I've edited stuff, worked on it, but generating new writing scares me, even writing in my journal. There was even a while back in late summer and fall where I really didn't feel like myself at all. I wasn't even listening to music, which for anyone who knows me, is a red flag for "Chrys' brain might have been taken over by aliens." I also haven't been doing much reading in the last few years, which also is pretty unlike me. That's not to say all was for naught, I think I've grown a lot in the last few years, sometimes through very miserable experiences, and I think I've had positive changes too, it's just that I feel a certain something is missing. It really bothers me that I'm not writing. It's not that I feel blocked, more like I have an allergy to sitting down to write anything.

I do feel like things have been swinging back around in the last few months. I've made some really good friends who are just great, deep, feeling people who I can really share with, saw some old friends who are the same way, on my trip. I have this theory that people can either encourage you to be more yourself or less yourself, and I've been spending more time with people on the "more" side of that, which is just great. I've also felt a little inspired spiritually. Now that my apartment is all organized and set up the way I want it, I've been thinking more about decorating, bringing my own style out, which was partly sparked by something my friend Leo sent me for my birthday. I also started reading again on the day before Christmas Eve. One of my favorite people, a woman from my writing group who is just so awesome and real and all the good things, was staying over here and I slept on my couch and decided to read before bed and am now on my third book, so in that way, and a few others, I'm starting to really feel like myself again. The writing will probably come in time.

I have a writing residency coming up in a few weeks, and it'll basically be a retreat of sorts, at a B&B where I'll really have all day to write and do nothing else, and I hope that will jump start me.

I'm also going to HAWAII a week from today, with an awesome friend, to see some awesome friends, and I think that could definitely spark some creative juices. I often think of travel as a really good way to get clarity about current life, so I'm looking forward to that too.

I also became an alternative delegate for Obama, which should put me back into the political realm. Thats not exactly my ultimate goal of what I'd like to be doing to help the world, but it's a start, and I have to start somewhere.

Last night, I met some friends at the bar for drinks, and we ended up in this big discussion about books and ideas and about the origins of civilization and religion and how affected a society is by how it gets its food, which led to all kinds of tangents, and bringing up other books. It was fucking awesome. It was like, my soul soooooooo needed that, being around people who are passionate and active and intelligent. It was so great. Then we went and smoked pot on the roof of the organic food store, lol. It was fun.

I just keep trying to tell myself that the writing will come. A friend has the book Writing Alone and With Others, and the first part of that really struck me. It's about fear. Pat Schneider says:

"The first and greatest fear that blocks us as writers is the fear of the truth we might discover. The world, dressed in our habitual interpretations, is familiar to us. It may not be exactly safe, but we know how to walk in it. We can get from sunrise to sunset."

and later:

"The act of writing is a tremendous adventure into the unknown, always fraught with danger. But the deeper you go and the longer you work at your art, the greater will be your treasure."

I believe that. I have seen it as true many times on my writing journeys, and I sometimes sense that I'm on the brink of a pretty big one, digging deep into that unconscious, and in theory, the idea actually excites me massively, the adventure, I mean in a way it's the most basic mythological story, going on that journey for something meaningful and slaying the dragons along the way, or at least facing them. So maybe I just need to be a warrior and kick some ass and sit down and start writing. I think there has to be a point where you think, okay fear and resistance and procrastination and housework and whatever else are always going to be there, might as well walk into the darkness anyway and embark on that adventure of the innermost heart.


Currently Listening:
"Self Evident" - Ani DiFranco, a very contraversial spoken word piece she wrote in response to 9/11 with some real zinger lines. One that struck me as I was listening and typing this was, "Give back the night, its distant whistle/Give the darkness back its soul/Give the oil companies the finger, finally, and re-learn how to rock and roll." You have to love a song that starts off, "Us people, we're just poems/We're 90% metaphor/With a leanness of meaning approaching hyper-distillation/And once upon a time we were moonshine..."

Getting Older

On Monday, I turned 27, which somehow feels a lot older than 26, but not in a bad way. I was sort of always eager to grow up in some ways, I think because I always felt like I was treated as soooo much younger at home that it just felt so incredibly claustrophobic. Even just thinking about it and remembering is making me tense up, like that feeling of claustrophobia is still stored in muscle memory.

I don't know if it's because of my albinism - perhaps paleness makes people think of innocence - or because of my disability, or because I sometimes have trouble standing up for myself, but for whatever reason, I get that a lot. One time I was at the Seattle airport, my first time there, and I couldn't find my gate, and so I asked for help, and so this woman led me to my gate, and at some point during the conversation she asked me about high school, and I told her I was in college, and she told me she thought I was fifteen. I was soooo insulted! Another time, Mr. O told me that he thought of me as seventeen or eighteen, and I was soooooooooo upset. I mean, this was someone who knew me well, often told me how independent I was. I was beyond pissed and hurt. Sometimes I even get it from friends, where I feel dismissed or bossed around, and it just makes me nuts.

In a lot of ways, I have always felt older, even as a little kid and a teenager. I wanted to think for myself, make my own decisions, be treated as an equal. I usually tended to get along better with adults, and even now, most of my friends are older. Sometimes I think that social isolation I experienced growing up forced me to look inward more, really get in touch with that inner landscape and contemplate things on a deep level at an early age. It was either that or all the reading I did. It has often made me feel like a stranger to my age.

Which has sometimes made it hard. In a way in all this lusting for adulthood and independence, I never got to be a kid. Or, to put it another way, I got the crap parts of being treated like a kid - treated like I couldn't make my own decisions, told what to do at every point, got my opinions dismissed at every turn, had rules and restrictions that would have applied better if I was five to ten years younger, and just generally disregarded - and missed out on some of the more pleasant things that traditionally come with being a kid. And in some ways, though I hate to admit it, I am young for my age, mostly socially, though I'm working on that. That's sort of what I wrote about in that piece that's in The Sun.


So though I know I should be happy when people think I'm younger (isn't that what every woman wants?), I'm usually not. It just doesn't register for me that way at all.

As an independent person, I so vehemently hated being treated as younger, and I guess always had the idea that if I was older people might treat me better and wouldn't be able to get away with treating me like a kid, so I actually feel a new measure of relief from that old claustrophobia every time I circle around the sun again. So I'm glad to be 27, and that it feels, for some strange reason, a lot older than 26.

It's like, who can mess with 27?


Currently Listening:
"Fix You Up" - Tegan & Sara

Why Do I Love House? - Part Two, Breaking the Rules

So, I wanted to continue this little dissection of my favorite show and why I love it, and I wanted to get to it earlier, but I've been working so much that it felt like I woke up, got ready, left, then came home and fell asleep. I'm still working but the hours have shifted for the next few days.

So, House as a show breaks all kinds of rules, and I love that. It's different. It turns things on their heads. The main character is not the good guy. The good guy if there is one, is Wilson. House on the other hand is a pill-popping Vicodin addict who says the most un-PC things imaginable, who regularly jokes about internet porn (it doesn't download itself!), says the rudest things to his boss (my favorite being, "Good morning Dr. Cuddy. LOVE that outfit. It says, 'I'm professional but I'm still a woman.' Actually it sort of yells that last part," which really is among the tamer examples I could have chosen), he is crass, and there are tons of crazy sex references. It's like the anti-appropriate show, not at all for the feint of heart or the easily offended, what with a patient who uses strawberry jam as birth control jelly, another who tries to circumsize himself, House being found with over 600 vicodin pills, and the general irreverence towards any code of ethics.

House as a character also breaks all the rules (and sometimes the equipment) in his search for answers to the medical mysteries. He lies to patients, disobeys his boss, steals his ex's therapy notes, and does whatever most outrageous thing to get to his diagnosis. There's an episode where he thinks a girl has a tick causing her symptoms, and she's near dying, no one else thinks he's right, they tell him to stop the tick search, and the girl has to get rushed to the ICU. House somehow manuevers his way onto the elevator with the patient, presses the emergency stop button and searches for the tick as her vitals drop. I love it because the pressure is so on, everyone's against him, he couldn't be in more danger of getting in huge trouble, and he does it anyway, because he knows it's right.

There are zillions of examples like that. He breaks into Cuddy's office and computer, skips out on clinic hours, harasses Foreman, treats patients before tests confirm the diagnosis, publicly fucking up a speech he was strong-armed into giving by the new evil billionaire board director (and in doing so, telling the truth about pharmaceutical markups) and much, much more. Sometimes, it's almost painful to watch, and yet at the same time, so satisfying, to see someone so blatantly disregard social constraints, orders and expectations, and seemingly fearlessly.

I like it all because it feels like a gust of fresh air, something so different from anything goody-goody, and it addresses the fact that most people are lying, hiding, keeping secrets, which of course he usually figures out. I love that the show goes against anything that you'd expect, and destroys any sort of social expectations, and presents a character and a show that represent a lot that most people might judge, but presents it and him in a more sympathetic light. I love rooting for the anti-hero hero. And I love the general attitude of irreverence, the way House will do what's right instead of what everyone else wants him to, the way he is never afraid of getting in trouble, even when he should be.

I want a little of that for myself.


Currently Listening:
"Rootless Tree" - Damien Rice

I'm PUBLISHED! In The Sun!

HOLY FUCKING MOTHER OF GOD!

I'm so excited I can hardly type!

So, over this summer, I told myself I was going to send out a submission a week, and that plan lasted for, well, a week. The one thing I sent out was a submission to The Sun's Readers Write section. There are topics listed in each issue, and I just picked the one with the closest deadline, which was "Parties" and did some freewriting, typed it, printed it and put it in the mail.

Just after returning from my trip, I got some certified mail from The Sun, saying my piece might be included, but they couldn't be sure, as things do get cut or rearranged closer to publication, so I didn't want to say anything in case it never happened.

And today, it did! I checked my mail and the moment I saw a thick envelope in there, I knew exactly what it was. I got a few complimentary copies and will be getting a six-month subscription to the magazine!

The funny thing is, I'm kind of embarrassed about what I wrote. I mean, it was only six months ago, but I think, if given the topic today, I'd write something different. Funny how things can change so fast.

It's funny, years ago I went to The Sun's writing weekend, which was unbelievably awesome, and I still remember this conversation I had with this woman in the hot tubs. I was sort of fascinated by her - she had spent 25 years in jail for something she didn't do - and we were in the hot tubs around dusk, and the hot tubs were clothing optional so we were naked and I don't think there was anyone else there, and we hadn't really spoken before, and somehow we got in a conversation and she told me I should submit things to the Readers Write section. I told her I would and we ended up having a pretty lengthy discussion about it. Then as the retreat ended and people were leaving, she said to me, "I better see you in Readers Write by the next retreat."

Well, I never made it to the next two retreats, and it took me two years to even send something in, but when I did, I made it! My name is IN PRINT now!

I think today must be a literarily charmed day for me. A year ago today I got my second Rolling Stone piece named as a finalist.

I feel like dancing around my apartment!

HOLY FUCKING SHIT x100 - I just actually opened the magazine and the feature interview is by Derrick Jensen, who I just mentioned a few posts ago. HOLY FUCKING SHIT I am in the same magazine as one of my heroes. I think this is the happiest day of my life. I just walked into my bedroom and fell on my bed in pure stupefication. I think I will go die now, since I'm already in literary heaven.


Currently Listening:
"Lonelily" - Damien Rice - Another favorite of his demos. It's a pretty sad song, but also glorious to sing along to at the top of lungs.

The Parable of the Comforter

So, I got a gift certificate to Kohl's for Christmas, and I knew immediately that I would put it towards a new comforter. The one I have now is a twin, and I have a double bed, so it's not all that warm, and it's lumpy and worn.

I went looking around at Kohl's online, and quickly came across one I loved - a deep red with pink and green flowers. It was a little bold for me, I was used to more timid colors, softer pinks and greens mostly, and this bold red one just grabbed my eye immediately. The sale was incredible, about a third the list price, but I waited, a little afraid it was too bold, and the sale passed.

Finally I decided I had to go into the store to look at it in person. It turned out that a co-worker of mine and her husband were going off-island so I went with them. They dropped me off at Kohl's and said they'd pick me up in two hours. Well, it took me almost that long to make my decision. I found my luxurious comforter quickly, as well as a green one, kind of a darkish pale green with exquisite flower detail.

And I just couldn't decide. The green one was more what I was used to. It also was thinner. Still it felt more comfortable, safer, more what would naturally fit in my room.

The red one was cool, warm, thick, gorgeous-looking in its texture. It had its drawbacks, though. The green and pink flowers were more muted than they were in the picture online, the pink especially, which was so rich and lovely, was more like a gold. And the bedskirt was a golden color, and I'm not that into gold. The sheets that came with it felt really nice, but they were white, and I can't stand white. God I sound so picky, it's just this artistic color thing, I want my bedroom to look inviting to me, and white looks so sterile and so absent and so blinding in its nothingness.

I kept going back and forth. The red one still held my heart's desire despite some of the in-person surprises. The red was so gorgeous, so artistically pleasing in its detail, and if the flowers were just pinker, it'd be so perfect. It had gorgeous detail around the edges. The green comforter was a little tame in comparison, but had less flaws. I could match it with more different sheets.

I went with the green one. I took it home. And I couldn't like it. I tried, but I just couldn't. It was kind of a darker pale green than anything else in my bedroom, and contrasted with those other things, it looked kinda pukey-colored. I waited until the morning, looked at in daylight, and tried again to like it, but couldn't. A day or two later, I took it off my bed, put my old twin one back on, and felt immeasurably better. I decided that the green one was going back, that it was too much to spend on something I didn't absolutely love, gift card or no. I wanted something quality I could keep for a few decades to come. I wanted the freakin' red one.

Yesterday, I went off-island by myself, made my way around Mt. Vernon and Burlington by walking (a story for another blog). They had one red one left, and it was the wrong size. I returned the original green one, deciding to order the red one on the internet with the return money.

And tonight, wouldn't ya know? The red one was on sale, the lowest I've seen it since the day after Christmas. Yesterday, it was more than a hundred dollars more. It was also clear from the available sizes left, that supplies were dwindling (and at the store they'd told me the pattern was getting discontinued). I pounced on it and ordered it at a great price. It should be here in a week or two.

The moral of the story though, is when you're faced with a head vs. heart decision, even if it's just about something as trivial as a comforter, listen to the heart, even if what your heart wants has more flaws. Logic has all its reasons, its rationality, and a lot of times, is very wise, but if you go only with that one, you could end up looking at something that looks pukey-colored for the next thirty years. wondering the what ifs of the other choice. Never settle. It's not worth it. Go for what that heart really wants. Go after what you really love. Bold is beautiful.

I hope I still feel that way when it actually arrives!


Currently Listening:
"Use Me" - Fiona Apple - It's a cover of Bill Withers, and I feel like there's something wrong with the fact that I LOOOOOOOOOOVE this song, the lyrics are kinda demeaning, "I wanna spread the news/That if it feels this good gettin' used/You keep on usin' me/Until you use me up," it's like glorifying something horrible, but man the way Fiona Apple sings it makes the song sound so lustrous and sexy and glorious. I love it.