Category Archives: The Creative Life

The Natural Sequel of an Unnatural Beginning

09 Wednesday Sep 2015

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I’ve been thinking a lot about Jane Austen’s Persuasion. Over the past few weeks, the following line from the novel slipped through my mind as I’ve walked to work, made a cup of tea, and absently stared at my balcony’s potted plants (when I should have been doing work): “[Anne Elliot] had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.” 

The line refers to the life narrative of the novel’s main character, Anne Elliot. As a young woman of nineteen, her family persuaded her to reject the marriage proposal of Captain Wentworth, because he didn’t have a large enough fortune to provide a comfortable life for her. This was the prudence that she learned in her youth. Eight years later, she and Captain Wentworth meet again. He has made his fortune as a Naval officer in the Napoleonic Wars; she has rejected another suitor and learned to regret her earlier decision. They get a second chance, and this time, Anne, tempered by experience and wisdom, finally says yes to the dashing captain. As Jane notes, this is Anne’s “natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.” Most young people learn such lessons of love and coupling the other way around.

“The natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.” What a phrase. I think about it a lot, especially after turning thirty this summer. Looking back, I hardly recognize the person I was at twenty, and like Anne, I have learned a few life lessons in a backwards fashion. I have become less serious, less quiet, less wrapped up in the folds of my inner life this past decade. I often hid from my peers behind a book—or behind the words in a beautifully constructed paragraph—yet as the decade went forward, I relied less on books and more on the company and love and supportive energy of my life’s beloveds. A mode of being that many of my peers had engaged in since their parents dropped them off at kindergarten, but something I only learned as an adult, struggling with the demands and loneliness of a graduate school program. That is my natural sequel of an unnatural beginning. 

And yet, there was a sequel, to my life and to Anne’s, one that was not dictated by social expectations or some stock human narrative. Our narratives were formed through our choices and our willingness to examine and grow from them—and honestly, I prefer it that way.

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Late Summer Spiders

02 Wednesday Sep 2015

Posted by in Gardening, Pushpins (Daily Life), The Creative Life

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Sunbeams from the August sun slip their way through iron latticework and stretch themselves out onto my balcony’s floor. My foot treads over these morning pools of light, and I am happy for their pleasant warmth before the heat of the day. I am still bleary-eyed, half-listening to the voices of John Oliver and Andy Zalztman floating out of my phone and through my open bedroom door. I am not yet awake enough to comprehend their podcast’s creative bullshittery, but that will soon come. For now, I am awake enough to water my balcony’s container garden.

The plants, encircled by their neat little pots, seem to spread themselves out, stretching in the morning sun. Basil, nasturtium, watercress, thyme, dill, and lettuce—all swollen with the quiet voluptuousness of a late summer garden. As I tip my pitcher down to wet the soil, a sunbeam sparks in my periphery. I turn towards it. There, catching the edge of a lettuce leaf is a thread of spider silk, coruscating in the morning sun. It stretches out to the iron latticework at the balcony’s edge as its crystalline twin runs a similar path eight inches above it. In between these parallel lines spirals the ingenuity and nature of a spider.

I stare at the web. It’s lovely.

I like spiders. Well, I should say that I like them in a garden setting. I do not like spiders when they drop down from my kitchen ceiling and surprise me. That sort of behavior usually gets them put in a drinking glass and promptly taken out to the back garden or balcony: you know, places that happily play to their strengths. Places where their intricate webs trap the insects that eat young and vulnerable plants.

A breeze moves through the balcony space, ruffling the lettuce leaves. But this is not the mild-mannered breeze of a summer day, this is a stiff breeze, somewhat cool, somewhat hinting at the beginning of another season—one that is usually festooned with bright leaves and cinnamon-spiced beverages. The lettuce leaf shakes violently and the thread that adorned its edge is gone, leaving the web sagging and lopsided.

Then the spider appears. It carefully picks its way across the damaged web before jumping out into the empty space between web and leaf, trailing a long, silken tendril behind it. The spider lands on the corner of the table that holds the pots, and attaches the new thread. It then climbs the thread back to its web, and begins again the process of weaving.

I walk back into my bedroom to the sound of Andy beginning an epic punrun. I should leave the spider to its work. Yes spiders are wonderful garden companions, but I love spiders the most for their creativity and courage. I admire their ability to jump out into the unknown to weave new webs, especially in the wake of damaging, unexpected winds.

Saying Goodbye to Terry Pratchett

18 Wednesday Mar 2015

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Thursday, March 12, 2015, was a sad day for me. For it was the day that Sir Terry Pratchett, creator of Discworld, satirical-humanist extraordinaire, and recreational swordsmith, died.

Before leaving us at age 66, due to a rare form of Alzheimer’s Disease, Terry treated the world to more than 70 books, for young and old alike. After hearing the news, I wept, in sadness and in joy. For in losing Terry, I lost a beloved teacher. But in the wake of his loss, I also gained a sense of gratitude for exactly how much this white-bearded, epic-hat-wearing author influenced me as a human being and as a fledgling writer.

Terry was a gateway author for my 12 year-old soul, ushering me into a world where my small town life and my late middle school self were finally mirrored back to me. Through characters like Susan Sto Helit, Mort, Jeremy Clockson, The Abbot, Death, and The Sweeper, Terry gave me the courage to be weird. It was okay that I didn’t fit in with my peers, because there in Sir Pratchett’s novels were dreamers, philosophers, over-thinkers, humanists, people well-intentioned but socially awkward. You know, human beings that acted a lot like me. Through Good Omens, he introduced me to Neil Gaiman, whose work inspires me more than any other author. And it was the energy and crystalline precision of Terry’s sentences that first made me think: “Hm, maybe I’d like to spend more of my life writing. I’d love to create sentences like that.”

There is a question all this reflection brings up:  why haven’t I spoken about him more? When I was asked to name my major creative influences in a recent interview, Terry didn’t come up in my answer. Which was odd. I’m usually a person who is self-reflective and systematic about her writing. I can tell how and why a writer has had an impact of my craft and even show you examples. But why haven’t I ever mentioned Terry? I read him with just as much gusto and frequency as any of my other favorite authors. I think my previous silence about Terry was twofold—I was intimidated by him and I’m only now realizing the depth of his impact. This filters into one thing: his plot structure. God, the way he wrote plot intimidated me. It was full of scenes that popped and whizzed through your senses, making you laugh, cry, and ponder the mysteries of humanity. It felt frenzied, but the madness always breathlessly hung together with a careful precision.

No one plots novels like Terry. And to me, that’s what makes an artist—they create something that only they can create. His plots are so beautiful and personalized to him, that I don’t know if I could ever directly use his tactics in my work. Yet, thinking of writing scenes of varying length that carefully fit together instead of writing in well-measured chapters, is getting my first novel draft on the page. Who knows if this is how I will keep it. But Terry’s  writing style encourages me to think of the piece like a clock, to write it so that my character’s worlds and desires click and whirr together, freeing me from chapter quotas and keeping me ever mindful of how the larger project may end up fitting together.

Thank you Sir Terry for your wonderful stories. You truly were a writer uniquely your own. I shall deeply miss reading your new words and I am grateful for the continued guidance of your old ones.

Writer’s Block

04 Wednesday Mar 2015

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“Well…balls. Really big, hairy balls.”

I say this as I stare at a blank portion of screen in Microsoft Word. The sentences of past writing sessions stream before and after this space, for pages and pages, but I cannot marvel at their existence now. I must write 300 words in that blank space: 300 words that will tell me what will happen next, 300 words that will bring the beginning and end of a novel draft closer to completion.

I wrinkle my brow. It’s only 300 words. That’s not a lot. Though today it feels like a lot. Today, the thought of writing even 50 words feels painful and anxiety inducing.

Thanks, writer’s block. I have no idea what to say. I don’t know what direction to take my characters in. I don’t know how to continue the plot.

And that’s when I stop, walk into my kitchen, and make a pot of tea.

And as I pack tea leaves into a tea ball, my mind begins to wander: Why? Why don’t I know my characters’ directions? Why don’t I know how to continue the plot?

Asking “Why?” always helps my writer’s block.

The answer starts to present itself as I lower the tea ball into an empty teapot. I don’t know my characters’ directions, because I’m jealous of them. In their fictional lives, love and intimacy are just next door for them. They find it happily in friends and significant others who live out daily nothing’s with them. The people who are dearest to me are peppered about the United States and the world—marvelous, if you like to write letters and travel (which I do), but not so marvelous when you need a shoulder to sob into or someone to tell you about the trivial details of their day. My lack of words was my petty attempt not to face my jealousy.

I don’t know where the plot is going because it’s moving in directions beyond my life experience. My lack of words in this case is a symptom of my insecurity that a reader, a editor, a publisher, will notice that I am out of my league and make fun of me for it.

I carefully pour hot water into the teapot with the packed tea ball. Into this hollow, ceramic vessel flows water, which soon will be tea. And I think of that blank space that waits for me in Microsoft Word. It may not contain 300 words, but it is flowing with existential questions. Questions I must notice and answer as I write on. I’ll need more than 300 words to do that.

An Unmade Bed: Living the Messy Process

18 Wednesday Feb 2015

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About a month ago, my friend Kim wrote an excellent blog post about writing in the morning. I read it at the beginning of January, on a train ride from New York to New Haven. The post was full of luscious descriptions of gourmet oatmeal and the pure joy of putting together sentences. The whole piece was a pleasure to read, but one line stood out in particular to me: Kim wanted her readers to enjoy their morning drafts, to revel in their messiness, to take delight in slipping outlandish ideas and sentences into their work before their inner editor woke up. “Much of life” she wrote, “is messy process folks, not product.” This line made me laugh hysterically, startling the reveries of my fellow train passengers, but I didn’t care. I laughed because her words felt so damn true.

It turns out that my friend’s line was a prolific harbinger, giving shape to my next thirty days. My January was quite messy—full of chaos, lessons, and growth. It was a time that stretched my understanding of life, essay writing, librarianship, and human nature. And during that month, I was rarely able to make my bed. My mornings before work found me on my laptop, typing in a sea of blankets, before throwing on work clothes and running out the door. During the day, no bedspread calmed this unruly sea. The blankets stayed rumpled and exposed, with grammar and theology books hiding in their folds.

Not having time to make my bed felt odd. It’s one of those morning rituals that makes me feel like I have life in order. That I can be just as flawless and put together as a smooth bedspread and artistically placed pillows. But I wasn’t this past January and didn’t have the time to make believe that I was. There was nothing finished about January—I was in a process, growing and creating. And a made bed is a product. But a rumpled, unmade, bed is a space of possibility, a place to live into an ever changing life.
The right companion for a messy process.

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Urban Snowstorms and Sweet Ohio Red Wine

28 Wednesday Jan 2015

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The snow swirls and curls outside the window, I cock my head and watch it gracefully move in the late afternoon sun. Its presence is soft, muted, and gentle as it winnows through the straight streets and tall buildings of New York’s Upper East Side. By tomorrow morning, the city will be covered in a deep snow.

Being from the Snow Belt of Northeastern Ohio, snow is a winter inevitability—its manifestation involving salted roads and large expanses of forest and farmland, covered in a cold sea of solid white. But this is my first urban snowstorm. The first time I’ll seen snow embrace the busy, lived-in world of a big city.

I look away from the window and back to the laptop that sits on my lap. On a small side table to my left, is a hot cup of tea, Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth, and a glass of sweet Ohio red wine. I always bring back a few bottles of sweet Ohio red wine when I visit my family in the Midwest. I’ve yet to find a red wine that matches its tasty contradictions: light-bodied but rich, delicately sweet but sensuously grounded. But at this moment, I enjoy not for its contradictions, but for the sense of consistency its ruby presence gives me. Though buildings rather than trees tower outside my window, my snow rituals haven’t changed that much. In Northeastern Ohio, I too would weather out a snowy afternoon with a cup of tea, a good book, an interesting writing project, and a glass of sweet Ohio red wine.

Inspired, I hold my glass up to the window and absently swirl around its contents. The wine seems to be dancing with the snow. What a mismatched couple they seem to make:  Red and white, liquid and solid, town and country, all moving before my eyes. But are they really so poorly matched? For even in contradiction there is consistency. Won’t this snow melt, evaporate, and rain down upon the vineyards of the Hudson Valley, or even those of Northeastern Ohio, depending on the weather patterns? Won’t future clusters of grapes benefit from this snow’s liquid nurturance, and swell full of flavor and life? And won’t a Midwestern girl enjoy an afternoon of snow, even if her landscape is tall, squared buildings rather than expansive, rolling farmland?

The answer is yes, for even in contradiction there is consistency.

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An Old Orchard and a New Year

31 Wednesday Dec 2014

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My nose is cold, but every other part of my body is hot and sweaty. Morning runs in the winter-touched, Midwestern countryside will do that to you. With hands on my hips, I turn around and look back at my grandmother’s property. An apple orchard stands at attention on my right and on my left, creating a passageway of arching limbs. These trees were the guardians of my childhood. I played among them, hide behind them, and once, in a fit of teenage romanticism, longed to get married under them. They were already old when I was young, planted by turn of the century hands. Their roots have had a hundred years to expand and grow and thrive, embraced by the rich Ohio soil. And steadily anchored, their limbs, weathered and withered, reach out to one another and to the sky, touched by a century’s worth of wind and rain and sun. Sometimes, the touch was hash, and the grass between the two rows became a no man’s land of branches and bark.

In spite of such losses, they still stand, their branches stretching out before them, towards each other and to the sky. Receptive of whatever the elements will give them next. Yes, they lost branches and bark, and will most likely lose them again. But, they have roots, made strong by the years and the soil that nourishes them.

Twenty-nine is young, at least, that is what my older friends tell me. Yet twenty-nine doesn’t feel young to me. I’ve lived enough of life to know loss—the loss of a parent, of a self, of a significant other, of a much coveted career, of a best friend. And like a harsh wind tearing away a tree branch, the loss strips you, exposing you to the elements in new, unforeseen ways. There is pain and fear in that experience, but there is also power. For the exposed place becomes a surface of possibility. If your roots are deep and the soil you place yourself in is rich, new bark will grow, and your branches will once more reach out to others and to the world.

I do not feel old because I have suffered loss, I feel old because I have seen the other side of loss. That in its wake, come new possibilities and new chances to love. Loss levels, but after all is stripped away, you have the choice to create again. Perhaps that is my hope for you and for me in the New Year: that we become more like these trees, quietly standing to my left and to my right. Rooted in who we are so that we can be open to what we will become.

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Writing About Jane…Austen

17 Wednesday Dec 2014

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Yesterday was Jane Austen’s 239th birthday and it was a day I observed by joyfully rereading my favorite parts of Persuasion (um…Sophia Croft being a badass lady adventurer, the awesome debate Anne Elliot has with Captain Harville on whether men or women love the longest when all hope is gone, and Captain Wentworth’s letter of reconciliation to Anne…yeah, that book contains some intellectually and emotionally hot stuff. Also, the Regency Era British Royal Navy:  you know there are men of feeling with sideburns present.) and sought out Henry Tilney’s sassiest observations in Northanger Abbey (he really is the best).

Yet on a day when I reread Jane with gleeful abandon, I caught myself being introspective. As I met this fine author again in her sparkling stories, I realized why it is so hard for me to write directly about her in my own work. Jane is too close to me. She has influenced me more deeply than any other author, living or dead (though C.S. Lewis and Neil Gaiman are a close second and third to her magnificence). After all of my blathering about her brilliant narratives, outlandish characters, and smart social commentary, what truly draws me back to Jane again and again is the deep feeling of warmth, understanding, and safety her narrative voice gives me. Yet, though I know these feelings and I feel these feelings, I cannot articulate to you their particular natures.

As a writer, you need to have some distance to get anything done. I find it is much easier to write about things when you are on the outskirts, quietly observing the bustle and struggles of others. I could never have that distance with Jane. I’m too close. Jane is too dear. It was her Anne Elliot that helped a twelve-year-old me feel a little less lonely. It was her keen social observations that helped an awkward teenage and young adult me begin to understand the wonder and giddiness and awfulness of human nature. And it was her own confidence and commitment to her craft that still inspires me today.

No, I cannot have distance from Jane. I never will. Her stories have woven themselves far too deeply into my soul. But, I can have patience and allow time to help me figure out her influence upon me. For walking constantly with someone over time can be just as good as observing that someone from a distance.

Plus, it gives me an excuse to read her more often. Not that I ever needed one.

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Cleaning out the closet, I mean, the bookcases

28 Tuesday Oct 2014

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I went through my bookcases last weekend. I figured it was probably time since I had to step around a fort-like structure of bindings and dust to get to my desk.

So, with reusable bag in hand I went to work…and found out that my book keeping rational was very similar to the clothes keeping rational women with overflowing closets seem to possess. Just like that pair of jeans from high school, the study of Normative Ethics will never fit me again. There was a brief time in grad school when the ideas suited me, but now they just feel uncomfortable and outdated. And do I really need that commentary on Amos? Yes, the book is big, beautiful, and impressive—but I never use it. It just sits on the shelf gathering dust, like that overly shiny halter dress you bought to go clubbing in (and face it, you will never go clubbing).

IMG_0910Cleaning out my bookcases made me realize that when I have a disposable income, I waste it on books instead of clothing. In my youth, this habit made me quietly smug. I was not one of those shallow girls preoccupied with fashion and boys. Oh no, I was much better than that because I would buy books to read…and one day, I would impress some Austenesque fellow with my intellect and profound understanding of the world.

Book after book went into my reusable bag. These weighty tomes of Western thinking might as well have been outdated dresses and blouses. Yes, I bought books to improve my intellect, but I bought books that I didn’t need, that I wouldn’t read, that I would abandon the minute they lost popularity. My sin is just as bad as your average shopaholic.

There is room on my bookcases now. Let us hope that I’ve learned my lesson. Especially since I can order any book that I wish—for free—through our university’s library system.

When I was a Child, I slept like a Child…

22 Wednesday Oct 2014

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Over this past weekend, I put aside my tiny twin bed and got a proper, full-sized one. An event that fully slammed the door on my childhood. The twin bed, now wrapped in layers of plastic and living in the basement, had been my bed since I was a little girl. It was the place of solitude and quiet where I would go to daydream, read, write, and wistfully stare at pictures of a young George Harrison. It was sad to say goodbye.

But in the days after getting a proper adult bed, I’ve been acting more child-like than usual. My new bed is really big, and all that room makes me outlandishly giddy. I’ve jumped on it, taken naps on it at all angels (my favorite: the diagonal nap), burrowed under the covers and read a book with a flashlight. I’ve even let myself sleep in because, OMG, memory foam and my sleeping body really get along. The support is an irresistible combination of firm and soft. It’s like being cuddled by a muscly Scotsman as he whispers the most heartwarming C.S. Lewis quotes in your ear. Yeah. Solid bliss, right?

Perhaps this childish behavior is my way of vainly grasping at the last physical reminders of my childhood—that could definitely be the case, but, there is too much joy and not enough shrill self-denial to make me worry. As hard as it was to say goodbye to my childhood bed, I’m happy that a bigger bed gives me more space in which to take refuge. Plus, there’s not enough room for an adult to take a diagonal nap on a twin bed.

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