The Creative Habit

I look exactly like Anne Sexton only not so leggy and without the cigarette.

This is my "week to write," meaning the kids are in daycare full time and I can leave scabby breakfast dishes on the table all day without repercussion (we artistes get a lot of leeway).

Like everyone else, I'm working on a novel. This is daunting in so many ways, but especially because I am already a proven literary failure. Years ago—maybe six now—I completed a novel. It was ok. It had its moments, but it wasn't going to take the literary world by storm, or inspire any movements, or get translated into Urdu. But, I had a fancy agent who sent it to fancy publishers and one very fancy and famous editor in New York liked my book and wanted to meet me.

I walked through the streets of Greenwich Village in a gritty windstorm to her office and then spent the entire meeting acting like a monosyllabic mouth-breather and trying to free tiny grains of sand from between my teeth. I think I said "That's cool" a lot. In parting she said, "Well, Samantha, I'm not going to publish your book, but I did like it quite a bit and I want to see whatever else you write."

It only went downhill from there. Rejection after rejection after rejection. Until there was no one left to reject me. And, here I am, living proof that your dreams do not necessarily come true. Or at least they don't come true in time for you to be a young literary phenom.

But, bootstraps and all that. Six years, two anthologies, and a set of twins later, I think I may have mustered the courage to have another go. Fifty-four pages down, 250 more to go. Too bad the fancy editor is no longer in the biz. I'm sure she's been waiting with bated breath.

Last night I started perusing Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit, a book that has been on my nightstand as long as my last novel has been in a box in my garage. I believe in taking one's creative endeavors seriously and I thought she might have something righteous and helpful to offer. And she does. She's very tough and no nonsense. She says things like, "I hope you've been to the ballet and seen a dance company in action on stage. If you haven't, shame on you; that's like admitting you've never read a novel or strolled through a museum or heard a Beethoven symphony live. If you give me that much, we can work together." Luckily, I meet her standards and we can work together.

Except for page 26, where she is talking about distractions and how to get them out of the way. She writes, "I try to cut it all off. I want to place myself in a bubble of monomaniacal absorption where I am fully invested in the task at hand. As a result, I find I am often subtracting things from my life rather than adding them."

Ok, I get that. But what's weird is how resistant my three-year-old twins are to being ignored. Try as I might to achieve a state of monomaniacal absorption, there are still the lunches to pack, the breakfast to make, the socks to put on, and the dance moves to witness.

And here's my question for you: Motherhood and creative pursuits, how do you do it? Is it possible (without the full time cadre of nannies, I mean).

Sylvia Plath is NOT my model but I do sympathize

To the next 41

Nine years ago, at about this time, I was sending my bridesmaids out into the garden to pick little white flowers that I had decided at the last minute I HAD to have in my hair before I walked down the aisle. They all wilted before the recessional. It was sweltering in Occidental. And perfect. Everyone we loved was there, looking stunning and shiny and positively lit up. The sun sparkled through the Redwoods, the flowers bloomed, the pond was algae-free. Even when our Filipino dental hygienist DJ from Pinole accidentally put on Kenny G., the day was not marred. I was buzzing with happiness, literally vibrating with the energy that comes from so much love and goodwill.

Around the time of our wedding, the Mister's grandmother was mourning the death of her beloved husband of more than 50 years. When I asked her what the secret to a long and happy marriage was, she said, "Oh, it gets easier. In the beginning you have all those feelings."

I'm not sure about the easier part (for better or worse, we still have all those feelings). But I do know that along with all the many, many forms that a marriage takes, it is, above all, the greatest comfort of my life. And I don't think it's possible that I could have married a better person than the Mister.

Maybe Gandhi, but he's a little austere for me.

Happy anniversary, Mister.

Touch Me

Summer is late, my heart.

Words plucked out of the air

some forty years ago

when I was wild with love

and torn almost in two

scatter like leaves this night

of whistling wind and rain.

It is my heart that's late,

it is my song that's flown.

Outdoors all afternoon

under a gunmetal sky

staking my garden down,

I kneeled to the crickets trilling

underfoot as if about

to burst from their crusty shells;

and like a child again

marveled to hear so clear

and brave a music pour

from such a small machine.

What makes the engine go?

Desire, desire, desire.

The longing for the dance

stirs in the buried life.

One season only,

and it's done.

So let the battered old willow

thrash against the windowpanes

and the house timbers creak.

Darling, do you remember

the man you married? Touch me,

remind me who I am.

—Stanley Kunitz

How not to organize your time

Today is my second day of true unemployment and already I can tell I'm falling into that weird timeless time where my to-do list gets longer and the days gets shorter and I keep eating weird things out of the fridge (to wit: one Thai shrimp dumpling and a spoonful of cold brown rice), and I start to feel sort of greasy and filmy and my outfits get worse and worse.

My to-do list contains the following items, verbatim:

--write novel

--exchange tanbark

--make headboard

--update website

--look into unemployment insurance

--clean out garage

--pitch stories to Cookie, Sierra, Coastal Living, etc

And then, of course, there are all the reoccurring things like sweeping and dishes and blow drying my hair. I can't figure out how to organize myself. So instead I sit on the couch stumbling through the world wide web until I find myself on Christian organic farming blogs.

But pretty soon I'm going to get serious, real serious. As soon as I buy a craft mat I can get right down to novel writing. Or maybe I should hang the teacup hooks first?

A thing I Like

A day at the Sonoma County Fair with my family.

I feel pretty, oh so pretty

I got carded at Trader Joe's today. That's what you get for a how-bad-can-it-be purchase of $3.99 Savingnon Blanc. The checker made a point of saying,"It's not that I think you're under 21, it's that I don't think you're over 40 and we now card anyone who looks under 40." Grateful as I am not appear older than my 39 years, I now have a new bar against which I can measure my preservation attempts: once they stop carding me at Trader Joe's, I will officially look 40. No more grocery shopping in sweats and a ponytail. I am stepping it up, people.

Speaking of youth and loveliness... this morning, as I was trying to get the kids ready for school, they decided it was as good a time as any to play a little hide-and-seek. They still hide like ostriches: faces buried, bodies absurdly visible. Today, when I "found" them, kneeling like Muslims in the fireplace (it's non-working, don't worry), Maggie refused to give up the ghost, saying in a taunting voice, "But you can't see my beautiful face."

Which leads me to believe I may be telling her I love her beautiful face a little too often. Not the love part, the beautiful part. The part where I emphasize her looks in a way I probably don't with her brother (whose face I find equally beautiful, or, cute, actually, if I am to be honest).

It's a tricky thing, girls and their looks. I want her to feel beautiful, of course, but I don't want her to start believing it's her best quality (that's a toss up between her sense of humor and how lovely she is with younger kids). And I really don't want her to get what my old friend Tom called "pretty girl's disease," a sort of flat blandness that can result from being told how pretty you are all the time.

All of this is probably moot anyway. Aside from referring to her face as beautiful, Maggie isn't exactly a Gossip Girl (is this reference correct? I've never seen the show). She won't wear anything in her hair (ponytails are a struggle). She doesn't care what she wears, and has thus far shown a worrisome lack of sartorial sense (thanks, Mister). And her walk, kind of wide-legged and manly, is very dykes-on-bikes. In fact, except for her preference for glittery pink shoes, she's shaping up to be the greasy-haired girl in the stained hand-me-downs*. So, never mind. I think we're good.

* Barring a severe head trauma, I would never really let that happen. I'm thinking more tawny soccer player with rosy cheeks, the kind of girl I wished I was.

A thing I like

My kids and husband in this very funny anti-Kindle ad. Go books!

chicken pozole and huge egg giveaways

That's a decoy egg so they know what they are supposed to do in that box

This is the one year anniversary of this blog. My second entry, back when I was still a blogging newbie, was about the Sonoma Co. Fair and we are headed back this afternoon to ride more ponies and eat fried things off of sticks. The circle of life and all that.

As of yesterday at 5 o'clock I am officially unemployed. Although I am not all broken up about it, I do feel at loose ends. As I've said, I'm not exactly sure what's next for me. I'll be doing a lot of work shifts at my kids' co-op nursery school. I plan to get totally ripped. I'm going to write a draft of the novel I've been working on. I might chip away at my 39 Things list by building that headboard, and I'll definitely clean out the garage. But I'm sure I'll also spend way too much time shuffling around the house, organizing the junk drawer, getting sidetracked by old photo albums and picking at otherwise invisible facial blemishes until they turn into scabs. It should be pretty fun.

I will also be minding my remaining chickens, biding my time until they finally start laying eggs. Which brings me to our next topic: The Guess the Date of the First Egg Contest. Today they are 17 weeks old. According to most experts chicken begin to lay around 20 weeks. But it could be earlier. Pick the correct date and I will hand-deliver a dozen fresh eggs to you. If you don't live in San Francisco, I will send you an Eggling planter so you can grow fresh thyme. It's a score either way, so start your guessing. The comments are open.

Finally, Tilly was delicious. First I made him into broth then I made him into pozole. He fed 8 people and we still have some soup left over. Thanks, Tilly.

Tilly all naked and ready to go

Tilly all picked and ready to be soup

Tilly pozole

Lee Anne happily sniffing Tilly pozole. Yum.

It's possible I've found Michael Jackson's replacement

This weekend (between chicken killing and book club) I introduced the kids to family movie night.

Our first selection? Chitty Chitty Bang Bang  (well, half of it.).  Ollie and Maggie were rapt, basically completely silent and unblinking the entire time.  Except for Dick Van Dyke’s vaguely Tyrolean song and dance number, “Me Ole Bamboo,” during which Oliver, still without removing his eyes from the screen, said, “I want to do that.  I want to be like them.” It sounded like some sort of prophesy, such was his intensity.

Between the dance classes and the voice coach, it looks like I’m in for a long haul as a stage mother. And sewing all those spangles on his leotards is going to be a real bitch.

 

But you have to admit, it’s pretty irresistible.

Thank you, Tilly (or how to kill your pet chicken)

First, a warning. This post is about killing a chicken. So if you are a PETA member or especially squeamish, or just totally not into things like this, I urge you to read another blog today (I really like Decorno and Petunia Face and can pretty much promise they won't write about killing stuff) and to come back later when I will get back to less bloody topics, like buying shoes and overhearing my kids saying cute things.

Still with me? Ok.

After finally coming to terms with Tilly's Y chromosome, and hearing him crow, we knew we had to get rid of him (roosters are not allowed in the city and even though some of our neighbors are jerks, we didn't want our errant chicken waking them up at 6am on a Sunday).

We had always kind of joked about slaughtering him if he turned out to be a he, but in my heart of hearts I didn't really think we were made of such stuff (we're made of stuff like carnitas burritos and blended Italian reds).

But, when we called Animal Care & Control we found out that they would just euthanize him and then throw him away. Such a waste. So undignified.

There was the possibility of finding him a nice farm were he could live out his chicken days crowing to his little heart's content. Except that we had to get rid of him that day, before another day dawned and he began his macho morning crowing again.

Plus, we sort of like the whole righteous farmer act. We like the idea of being all butch about things like chickens. We aspire to be totally 4H.

So we opted for killing him and eating him.

First, I went to the gym with the kids.

Then The Mister's two best pals Chris and Mark came over.

When I got home, two hours later, Tilly was dead and plucked and sitting in a pot in our fridge looking for all the world like something you would cook and eat.

Here's what happened while I was gone. The Mister is the one holding the video camera and tittering nervously.

How did three citified pansies know what to do? They consulted our poultry bible, The Joy of Keeping Chickens. How did they come up with that ingenious head-through-the-pot contraption? Sarah Palin's turkey pardoning videos on YouTube. She's finally good for something other than Tina Fey's career.

In the end I find it difficult to watch but ok. It seems respectful and dignified. It's still taking a life and there is something that is weird to me there. But I am a meat eater so I can't get too prissy about it.

So, what do you think? Worse than you thought? Easier? And, more importantly, could you eat him? We are having people over for pozole on Wednesday. No joke.