Art Actually

The movie Love Actually opens with Hugh Grant doing a voice over of scenes from Heathrow Airport. People greeting people, smooching, hugging. The monologue ends with him saying, "If you look for it, I've got a sneaking suspicion that love actually. . . is. . . all around."

It's a wonderful bit of cheesy-feel-good and a great way to start a movie that examines love in its many disguises. And call me a cheese-head, but I agree with the statement. And not only about love.

Let me explain.

A number of years ago I was attending university full time, working a quarter time job, while my husband worked three (count 'em) three jobs. Our children were ages one and three and we never used daycare or babysitters. Busy was a gross understatement. It was while I attending a dinner at the university held to connect scholarship recipients with donors that I discovered I wasn't just sleep deprived, I was art deprived too.

I was seated at a table with the elderly couple who supplied the money for the scholarship I had been awarded, and, oddly enough, with the mayor of Camrose, Alberta. After the meal a choir appeared and began to sing (heaven knows what song, but it was lovely whatever it was). I hadn't known there was to be a choir and I suppose you could sum up my reaction to their presence and their song as a jittery woman being ambushed by a robed mob, but there was something deeper at play. Frankly, I wept. No, wept is too delicate a phrase. I bawled. Snotty, bug-eyed mess I was.

My scholarship sponsors noticed. The wife slid some napkins at me under the table. The husband cleared his throat and stared intently at the choir. The mayor noticed and went shifty-eyed. Embarrassing, but I couldn't help myself. There was a voice in my head saying, "When was the last time you experienced beauty? How did life become so devoid of art?"

That night, I began a journey of bringing art into my life, and of looking for it. Keeping my ears open. This has led to a number of changes, even reversals in my life. I'm no longer art deprived. I engage in art daily as a reader and as a writer. Our home is filled with paintings, wall art, words, color. Our children practice piano in the living room, and draw, color, and make all manner of mess on the kitchen table. Music is a friend invited over daily. My husband and I began an artist experience at the church where he pastors. All because one evening a choir made me cry. Taught me a lesson: Look around and find art, and be found by art.

Today I had to make a stop at my children's school to drop something off to my daughter. It was lunch time and the halls and classrooms were empty. The moment I stepped into the school I heard music. I stopped. It was an old Boz Scaggs tune I barely recalled from when I was a kid. Odd choice for an elementary school to play over the sound system, but whatever.

I made my way to my daughter's classroom and I realized the music was getting louder, only now it wasn't just Boz Scaggs playing, it was accompanied by a kazoo. At least it sounded like a kazoo. Except it was keeping perfect time and pitch. There isn't a middle school child alive who can play Boz Scaggs on a kazoo. I slowed my pace and looked around. On my right was the janitor's office. There was no doubt this is where the music was coming from. I slowed my pace even more and looked in. There was the janitor standing in the middle of the room, facing away from me, his karaoke pumping, his lips buzzing on the mouthpiece of his trumpet. Gadzooks! The janitor is a brassman!

I dropped off what my daughter needed and headed back toward the exit. I took my time passing the janitor's office. This time, he was singing along. I don't mean he was mumbling into his janitor cupboard, sneaking a musical moment so as no one would notice. He was belting it out. A Liza Minnelli comeback concert at the Met moment. By the time I reached the exit, I was smiling. More than that, I was laughing. Not at the janitor (who sounded amazing), but from the sheer joy of being jumped by art.

It was another bit of proof I'm collecting along the way. Proof that, art actually. . .is. . .all around.

I bid you good writing.

It's not a poem unless someone calls it a poem, and I'm not calling it that.

With Thanks to Bill Holm

Words lined up in particular form

bring the mirror to your face,

except

it isn't your reflection as much as it is

the face you thought you'd already forgotten.

I've been taken up by my hapless collar and

pulled through the rake of divorce;

tendons separating from bone.

Bone and marrow finely defined.

Later, I leapt

foolish footing from a cliff's edge I hadn't

noticed, or pretended not to see. I didn't think, only

felt the fall and blessed its decent. The

ragged bits of me weightless in the movement;

fantom limbs.

I forgot

the sensible thing, the priority of self

preservation and gave it up

for a guy with blue eyes, his hapless collar tented at the

back. His raked form lovely to my missing eyes.

All these years

for the sake of the heat of the hand in the middle of the night.

The one that has been there for years. Will be.

The heat that could melt a stone.

(I bid you good writing)

I Wish I Wrote Poetry

The first poem I read and 'got' was Keats' Autumn. I was young enough to be startled by my ability to grasp its meaning within meaning. I wondered, fleetingly, harrowingly, if I might possess something of the rhapsodist.

I tore off a few poems that I kept hidden at the back of a binder, which I carried with me always (in the loosest sense these could be called poems. In that they were short and had, if not rhyme or meter, at least emotional intent). I hugged them to my person, believing that they were made of my own dark matter. But when I went back and reread them, they were gibberish. Soggy and wrought.

I've shied away from writing poetry since. I doubt, with no measure of false humility, that I am clever enough for it.

Still, I have days I wish hard that I could write the stuff. That the thoughts bonking around my head could find their best exit inside a poem if only I could provide one. Not the thoughts so much as the feelings. That's the bit that clicked for me with Autumn. How the image of swirling leaves could make you press a hand to your throat, how the idea of approaching cold catches you short and makes you nod to yourself even though you've always told yourself that normal people don't stand around nodding to themselves about death.

I should be able to write poetry, don't you think? I'm a writer. I love sassy nouns, the back talking adjective, verbs that break off in the middle. Jukebox words that slide over one another, make you think there will be a crack up, a crash of meaning that veers off course just in time. Playing chicken on a too careful road. Those are the kinds of words I would use in any poem I might write. I think so. I'd make a bed for them, pick out their clothes for the next day, kiss them goodnight, and turn out the light. I'd let them hide out there in the darkness so like the unlit corner of a high school binder. And I'd wait a spell before checking on them again. To see what time might bend them into.

I bid you good writing.

Christmas in this Place.

The building is long and thin, and after seventeen years still carries the feeling of being a recent renovation. There's a whiff of unsettled conversion. Of not knowing where to put your purse, where to stand before the service starts. Should we sit? Browse the pamphlet table? Oh let's sit and be done with it.

Chairs, not pews. Metal frames, a deep green back and seat. Comfortable rows, but not too many of them. Blue hard covered Bibles dotting the rows. You think they are hymn books, but when you flip through, it's a Bible and you set it aside and wonder why they don't put the scripture up on the power point like everyone else (later you discover they do).

There are no musicians. Not one in the whole place. The singing feels thin with only a guitar, the minister playing better suited to speak than to make music. Old songs, carols, heavens above haven't we sung enough of those this year? Other places have the band play through these old chestnuts double time, then we smile at each other for having sung them, then on with the show.

Why do people come to this long building, this make-do-make-shift place with green chairs and blue bibles and old songs? There are so many other places to go. Large buildings with steeples and stained glass. Parking lots filled to overflowing. Dozens of children poking each other, jittery to get to their classrooms where they can holler out, "Jesus! God!" and get all the answers right. Populous places young people like to go to, like to play in the band, and smile at other young people.

Why the long building with no musicians?

When you look around, you find your answer. The people in this place swim in deep waters. They want to hold their children on their laps and mutter Psalms into their ears. They want to read the Word and hear the pastor say, "Tell me what happened to you as we read those words." They engage in their faith like farmers smelling spring soil.

When the preacher is done preaching he looks at you, at everyone in those green chairs with the blue bibles and says, "I've told you what I think. Now, what do you think?" And it's a shock. He knows that it is at first. To be asked. And they start talking. This group of people thinned, and worn, they start saying what they think, asking, telling, even laughing.

And when someone on the way out says, "Merry Christmas," the words feel dense with purpose. As if Christmas might be something you can do something about. And you leave wondering what could be done.

From our family to yours, Merry Christmas, and a happy New Year.

The Time in Between

Vacation is a grand thing. A break from it all.

In the weeks since I handed my completed manuscript to my agent, I've had a bit of a relax (pronounced RE-lax). Taken time to unwind, let the story I have written seep from my veins (a difficult thing, really, since I lived in that world for two years and saying goodbye is slow and reluctant), and rest my poor brain.

I've been reading.

Heavens above there are wonderful books out there. So many great books. Anyone who tells you that all the novels being published these days are trash are either 1) reading the wrong books, or 2) a new writer at work on his/her first novel (the one that will 'show 'em all how it's done').

It's been a grand time.

But.

Another story seeps into my veins. I can't hold it back, I don't even try.

So, in the time in between the finishing and the (dear God please) publishing, there is writing. Another story. Another storyworld that forms in the peripheral urging toward creation.

The time in between is the time to pick up the pen.

Books I'm Reading, or that I have Read and Recommend

A friend recently asked if I ever posted a list of books I'm reading, or ones I read and loved. So, here is a list of current/recent reads I thought were well worth the trip to the library or book store.

Here is what is currently on my bedside table:

Two books by Michael Ondaatje: The Cat's Table (his newest), and Running in the Family (his semi-biography).

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (a great read for the less hard-core literary reader)

A Large Harmonium by Sue Sorensen (new release)

The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman (her newest, I'm about half way through this one now)

Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

Stories about storytellers : publishing Alice Munro, Robertson Davies, Alistair MacLeod, Pierre Trudeau, and others by Douglas Gibson

Here is a list of books I've read and loved and recommend:

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (read this book. Just do it. Go. Get. It.)

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (her other two novels are wonderful. If you want to read her novels in order of writing: Housekeeping, Gilead, Home).

Two novels by Ann Patchett: Bel Canto, and State of Wonder (State of Wonder requires some patience on the part of the reader, but the pay off is, in my opinion, worth it).

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown (a gentle read about three sisters named after Shakespearian characters. It sounds literary, but it's totally accessible reading. You don't have to know Shakespeare cold to enjoy the story).

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.

The Book of Dun Cow by Walter Wangerin Jr.

Life of Pi by Yann Martel.

And, for my poetry fix, I often pick up one of the books complied by Garrison Kellior: Good Poems, and Good Poems for Hard Times.

What books do you recommend? There's nothing so fun as to sharing stories that moved us!

I bid you good writing.

What to do When You've Finished a Novel

Yes, it's true. I finished writing my longtime work-in-process, a novel I've called A GIRL NAMED FISH. The question is, what do I do now? More to the point what should be done when the novel is finished?

1) Avoid calling my agent--if I call her, she will say, Send me the ms! Pronto! But what if I only think I'm done and it turns out that I'm not really, really, really done?

2) Clean the house. Ah, dust bunnies. Mine have organized themselves into a rudimentary republic and now it appears that vacuuming may be a breech of the Geneva Convention.

3) Call my agent, then hang up before she answers (see #1).

4) Eat food that requires cutlery. After more than a year of eating while typing, it will be wonderful to sit down at a table and pick up a fork. Or, if I just want to go for it, a spoon.

5) Re-familiarize myself with the stove. If I want to eat fancy cutlery-required food, I'd better figure out how to cook it. Good thing I have a great cook book (click the link on the left hand side to download a free copy of Novel Matters Cookbook, Novel Tips on Rice: What to cook when you'd rather be writing and vice versa).

6) Call my agent, then disguise my voice and pretend I've dialed the wrong number and hang up quickly (see #1).

7) Go outside. I've seen it through my window, of course, but now it's time to take the step and actually leave the house. I may cling to the door way like an agoraphobic for an hour or so, but I'll get the hang of it. Eventually.

8) Call my agent. Really. For true this time. Honest. I will. Tomorrow.

I bid you good writing.