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Off to see the big trees

Stepping up

The apartment complex next door holds the entire street hostage. They have some sort of used-car ring (I'm sure I don't want to know) where they park cars along the street, double-parked, daring us to say anything. They bump their music at all times of the day and night. They talk on the phone, screaming into it, on the outside balcony so we can all hear their business.

Today I said something. They sure are pissed, but at least the music got turned down.

Copyright Maya Blum Photography

March 29: Teaching at Jered's Pottery

"Deal With It: Writing Difficult Material": join us!

Shut Up and Write

Outside the dark tormented her without saying a word. That was a terrible metaphor, actually, and she knew it even as she thought it. Cliche, Celeste, you’re drowning in it. She hated thinking in clichés. She hated small talk. She hated things that felt reheated and lukewarm. She would rather burn her tongue than bore it.

Daily OM strikes again

It can be scary to have what we want. We get caught up in the chase and forget to enjoy the beauty right in front of us--like a child who never wants the toy she has in her hand but always the one just out of her reach. Take a moment today to consider the many things you are holding in the palm of your hand and how you might best play with them.

Working on my proposal

Damn. Can we talk Memory Lane for a minute? I mean, this book spans 20 years. That's a lot of lane to traverse.

Little Farm

Marie Howe, "One Day"

One Day

Marie Howe

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

One day the patterned carpet, the folding chairs,

the woman in the blue suit by the door examining her split ends,

all of it will go on without me. I’ll have disappeared,

as easily as a coin under lake water, and few to notice the difference

—a coin dropping into the darkening—

and West 4th Street, the sesame noodles that taste like too much peanut butter

lowered into the small white paper carton—all of it will go on and on—

and the I that caused me so much trouble? Nowhere

or grit thrown into the garden

or into the sticky bodies of several worms,

or just gone, stopped—like the Middle Ages,

like the coin Whitman carried in his pocket all the way to that basement

bar on Broadway that isn’t there anymore.

Oh to be in Whitman’s pocket, on a cold winter day,

to feel his large warm hand slide in and out, and in again.

To be taken hold of by Walt Whitman! To be exchanged!

To be spent for something somebody wanted and drank and found delicious.

News

I am thrilled to announce that I have signed an author agreement with Marisa Zeppieri of Strachan Literary Agency. Marisa will be representing the memoir version of BEARDED LADY. I also want to take the opportunity to thank Miriam Altshuler, who represented me for four years and whose wisdom and grace I cannot properly acknowledge in words. I am so happy!

Somehow

Somehow we made it to spring,
the light lingering, lasting
until your bike squeaked you home.

Sweet season, this --
the rounding-off of the tough one
the dark, the chill --
a year until repeat.

A month
until the clock rambles,
pushing forward.

Upward, upward from here.

Now THIS is the way to work

Office life

I haven't worked regularly in an office since I marched into my editor's quarters at Inman News Features to let him know that I was going to apply to grad school and had him reply, "Well, you can pack up now." That guy can stick it, wherever he is. I went on to go to grad school and build a freelance career, and now I can talk on the phone whenever I want, play Words with Friends, check Facebook, go to lunch with Adam, and not worry about who's clocking me and watching over my shoulder.

Remote work rules!

John Lennon, "Watching the Wheels"

People say I'm crazy
Doing what I'm doing
Well, they give me all kinds of warnings
To save me from ruin
When I say that I'm okay, well they look at me kinda strange
"Surely, you're not happy now, you no longer play the game"

People say I'm lazy
Dreaming my life away
Well they give me all kinds of advice
Designed to enlighten me
When I tell them that I'm doing fine watching shadows on the wall
"Don't you miss the big time boy, you're no longer on the ball?"

I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round
I really love to watch them roll
No longer riding on the merry-go-round
I just had to let it go

Ah, people ask me questions
Lost in confusion
Well, I tell them there's no problem
Only solutions
Well, they shake their heads and they look at me, as if I've lost my mind
I tell them there's no hurry, I'm just sitting here doing time

I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round
I really love to watch them roll
No longer riding on the merry-go-round

I just had to let it go
I just had to let it go
I just had to let it go

Awesome day

Several pieces of great news today, one of which is that I'm going to be writing a piece for Parents! This in addition to my piece for Business Insider means more publication than I've seen in some time. I'm also reading at Bazaar Writers Salon on March 1 and The Racket on March 26. Damn!

WRITING FROM THE EDGE starts again Feb. 27!

I'm teaching this at the fantastic Writing Salon in Berkeley. Check it out!

Best friends

Being written about

In about a week ... I had read The Bearded Lady. Her novel was just short of genius. She was a phenomenal, incredible writer. No question. I already knew she could write. I’d found her article in Salon.com and The Washington Post about her condition and about thinking she’d never get married, how she’d been fiercely alone and independent and how for so long she held people and life at bay, at arm’s length. Until she met Adam, who at once showed her how to love and also how to let go. She released control and jumped into the fire. They’d been together ever since.

Joseph, over email

I picture you at playgrounds or on long distance calls with agents or smoking a joint on rooftops and announcing in the style of Howl (the poem) that you'll defy the world and any God that might come in your way. 

Boys Night Out

Adam's out at something called Hoodslam with the preschool dad dudes. I would have loved to have joined them. My best friends have almost universally been guys. But then with some the whole vague romantic thing comes in and makes itself so goddamned evident. Harry and Sally, or maybe I'm just crazy. There are plenty of guy friends I don't have that with, but am I fooling myself?

Just written

An outside dog is an afterthought. You may go out there to feed it, give it water, perhaps an absent pet on the head, but it’s mostly beyond your conscious thought. It’s much like the agapanthus and bottle-brush tree, the iceplant that is the Southern California special. It just exists.

This says it all

It's not the only reason I stayed loyal, but it's certainly up there.

Farmer's Market

Rings

I wear a gold one on my left hand, a diamond on my right. I look at them daily, twist them around my fingers, slip them on and off. The night he tried on my engagement ring I felt I had committed a betrayal. Perhaps I had.

Let this be my declaration

My name is Allison, and I don't give a fuck about the Super Bowl. That doesn't mean I won't go to a party, drink the beer, and eat the nachos. I'll just do it under duress.

I look okay for 45

Work versus my work

Freelance writing means balancing paid work with creative work that I hope will eventually pay. It ain't easy. These days I don't have time to write nearly as much as I would like, but I've begun editing THE THIRD MAN, so that's a good thing. From the manuscript:

Lennon wasn’t as verbal as some other kids. It worried her sometimes. There’s that part of parenthood you rarely hear about: the competitive niggling, the jockeying. You read all the cute shit your friends’ kids say and then your kid can’t even pronounce piano. You don’t want to feel like you need to be up against that wall. You don’t want to compare. It comes from a place that vaguely shames you, something you don’t want to acknowledge, but that controls part of your heart all the same.

Where does that come from, the competitiveness? She studied anthropology in college, all those explorations of bones and dust, of instincts and nature. Never once did any of her Indiana Jones professors address the parental desire for their kids to be smarter, funnier, more articulate, and most quickly potty-trained of their group. You’d think they would, right? It seems ripe material. But how do you explain that to a group of 19-year-olds whose fertility was not of paramount concern? No one she knew in school thought they wanted a baby. Maybe the professors knew that. Maybe they were tailoring their lectures to that narrow band that is the middle ground between teen and adult, that time known as the college years. Maybe they understood the very little you can actually grok at that point in time, how minimally you embrace the future when the present is just so … present.

Mom?

Lennon freaked out when she went into her own head. Ironic because that’s where he seemed to live, but perhaps that was the precise reason he didn’t like it. Even at his age he already understood that the things you like least about others are to be found in yourself.