CUT THE HARSH TALK TO SELF

 

The other day, I stopped, listened, and for the first time really heard— the harsh way I was talking to myself.

 

Me: “What a dumb thing to do, you!”

Self: “Really stupid. Don’t do that again.”

Me: “Only an idiot like you could do this.”

Self: “A moron. That’s what you are.”

 

What occurred to me right then was that what I should not do again was talk to self this way.

 

Old habits die hard. New habits, such as paying attention to self-flagellation, take time and resolve to stick and stay. So, the first order of business was to pay attention and Not. Do. This.

 

There’s an extra bonus to my new resolve. I find the harsh observations of others have softened and rounded also.

 

Kindness is contagious. Start with you.

The Month of May

I woke up today, tired of Corona and determined to embrace the daffiness that this time of year usually confers on me. So with few apologies, here goes.

I find the very thought of the month of May very gay, in the older sense of this word. The wintry darkness lifted, the flowers bursting forth, and for my writerly soul, the word lends itself to an airy dance.

In May, we swoon and sway

Come May, night give way to day

What else can I say?

Pray, play, and spray away the gray

May is A-Okay

That kind of gay^. Let the bloom of new creativity beam over you, like sunshine’s ray.

Feeling silly positive, and wishing to spread May all over the bay...

YAY!

And listen, you everywhere yearning for the day we'll all breath free:
We need such fay sentiments right now. Okay?

Oy Vey

The Silent Pulse

Ever have a day where nothing goes right? If you can relate to Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst, then you have and you know.

But what about the other kind of day? Imagine this: you wake up after a restful night’s sleep and the backache you had yesterday had vanished. Your cat greets you, and your dog wags his tail and they seem fine with each other, for a change. The coffee tastes delicious, and when you open your computer, an acceptance of an article you submitted eons ago comes in. You leave for a scheduled dental appointment, and where usually there are no parking spaces— the perfect one right in front of the dentist’s midtown office awaits you and, behold, the meter is already paid for the next ninety minutes. Your dentist is full of cheer and so are you, because, after she looks inside your mouth, she declares it looks marvelous and then she adds, “no cavities!”

And so it goes for the rest of the day.

Call it YOUR DELIGHTFULLY BRIGHTLY VERY GOOD DAY.

Many years ago, I attended a book launch where the author George Leonard spoke of his new book, THE SILENT PULSE. He explored this seeming perfection suggesting it can be created. It’s been on my mind ever since, though it remains mysterious. I experience these sorts of days as if I’m a character in someone else’s story, and I thank the author for this exquisite sweet very good narrative arc, even if it cannot last.

When Should You Give Up?

“NEVER!”

The answer we hear in professional conventions (yes, writers and artists have them too. Conferences are not just for scientists) is that you must never ever give up.

John Grisham likes to tell how he gave himself a year to succeed, but when a small publisher acquired A Time to Kill, Mr. Grisham bought all five-thousand copies himself. Only after his second book, The Firm, made the bestsellers chart, did his first book get re-printed and voila, another story about not giving up.

It’s a wonderful story from a terrific storyteller. But he did give himself a deadline, didn’t he.

My answer is that it is okay to give up. But you can always do it later. So what’s the rush?

“Never” is a daunting notion. By all means, give up but do it later. Much later. The creative life is full of possibilities, so keep living it.

Love what you do, and thus love who you are.

 Bit of summer musing as I plot my next novel.

The Lunar Year Begins

Living in the San Francisco bay area, the celebrations of the lunar calendar are evident.

The East Asian Lunar New Year celebrations are, or were historically, based on the traditional Chinese lunisolar calendar (occurring in late January or early February)

·         Chinese New Year

·         Japanese New Year (prior to 1873)

·         Korean New Year (Seollal)

·         Mongolian New Year (Tsagaan Sar) – may be celebrated a month later

·         Tibetan New Year (Losar) – celebrated a month later

·         Vietnamese New Year (Tết)

Today, February 5^th  2019, is the first day of the Lunar New Year and this time it’s ...

The year of the PIG.

If you are celebrating, many blessing on you. If you’re not, why not?

!Wishing peace and prosperity to all!

Placebo as the Real Deal

PLACEBO:

Noun: placebo; plural noun: placebos

1.     A harmless pill, medicine, or procedure prescribed more for the psychological benefit to the patient than for any physiological effect.

"His Aunt Beatrice had been kept alive on sympathy and placebos for thirty years"

2.     A substance that has no therapeutic effect, used as a control in testing new drugs.

3.     A measure designed merely to calm or please someone.
 {{From the Latin meaning "I shall please"}

I have a friend who is a retired physician. She insists that most doctors don’t know much most of the time. But she also says that appearing to be in the know and having a Ms./Mr. Fix-it demeanor is half of the treatment right there.

This didn’t make me happy to hear. We pay a lot of good money for what might be a fifty percent pretend.

In an article in the New York Times Magazine (November 10, 2018) the question as to whether placebo is part of the cure seems to be settled. The power of the mind was scientifically vindicated, sending the western scientific method into uncharted territory.

Seems to me this pertains to the rest of our endeavors. It tells me that if I think I can, I am already halfway there. In certain instances, I am all the way there.

So marching on, and encouraging ‘y’all to believe. Not in fairies, but in the power of the tales they tell.

Finding the Light in Revision Cave*

*With apologies to the heroic rescue of the trapped youngsters of the flooded cave in northern Thailand. No concrete comparison is appropriate. But to be honest, this real life wrenching drama inspired this post.

Dealing with revision suggestions can feel like trying to crawl in complete darkness. That is because after catching one’s breath from the gut-punch (akin to someone saying your perfect baby is not so lovely after all L) and then allowing the suggestions to sink in, many a time the writer still can’t see why these suggestions were made.


It's easy, even fun, to make changes when the suggestion make sense. These "Ah-Hah (!)" suggestions make the write's heart grow limbs and do an exhilarating Hopak, which is a Cossacks' leg-kicking dance, in joyous appreciation. It's just that these types of suggestions are the rare ones.

Most editorial suggestions fall into the other camp. Be it by a Beta reader, an Intern, an agent or an editor, the writer feels like telling them they just didn’t get it and the fault lies in their flawed reading, not her writing.

But feelings should have nothing to do with it. Feelings and intuition guided the first draft all the way. Revision is about returning reason to the equation and reminding oneself the feedback came from someone who, just for making the suggestions, is a helpful soul.

So now the writer moves to phase two. To implement the suggested changes, or not to? That is the question.

My answer is that I must try. Not because the reader was right. Not because the reader was wrong. But because it is good for me to try.

This is where it feels like I'm crawling in the dark. How to make changes that don’t resonate? Where, who, and with what?

Take a deeeeep breath. Trust in the muse. She is akin to a miner’s light.

She’ll get you there, and your humanity will be better for it.

My Only Addiction

It’s too easy to look down on addicts. If you have never experienced such an affliction, you can feel smugly superior to the poor souls who allowed themselves to succumb. How pathetic they are, and how low they descend, risking everything for a fix.

I don’t seem to have the personality or misfortune to have had such challenges.

The first is a matter of propensity over which anyone can make decisions not to risk exposure. Long ago, at the age of five or six, I watched my nicotine-dependent father go out on a stormy, drenching rainy Friday night, hail a cab (expensive) to the outskirts of town, (Jerusalem) where the one and only small kiosk sold cigarettes on the Sabbath. He thought he had stashed an extra pack, but couldn’t find it.

It was a lesson in what not to do. No cigarettes, ever. Don’t want to have to haul that monkey on my back.

The second, the matter of luck, has to do with things that can happen and leave a person dependent. With two herniated discs in my lower back, I remember realizing how addiction to painkillers can start, and how understandable and insidious the process is.
That was two years plus ago. When my doctor prescribed narcotics, I never took them. I chose not to haul that monkey on my miserably aching back, either. But some folks don’t know what the doctor had given them before it’s too late, and the climb out of that hole is steep.

But I don’t feel superior, because I do have a sort of addiction, or maybe it’s closer to a dependence. Can you guess to what?

Yes, I can stop. I did without difficulty while pregnant. Twice.

And, NO, I don’t want to.

So there. Maybe this feeling of "I *need* my coffee" gives me a peek into addiction, and maybe what I really need is that insight and compassion in addition to the caffeine. Because smugness is unattractive and worse.

Oh, and one other thing--

Out of the COMFORT Zone~~~

There is a valid suggestion, not only for artistic creative folks but for all, to get out of one’s comfort zone now and then.

The thing about comfort, which has much to recommend it, is that it has a lulling affect. You don’t want to walk through life lulled all the time, do you? Certainly not if you want your muse to keep talking to you.

So this last Sunday I did something that took me out of my comfort zone. At least that’s what I told myself to get Self there. I went to an in-person meeting with lots of folks I don’t know, without a single person I do know. The last time I did that was before the invention of the wheel, or so it seems to me.

The meeting was of local SCBWI members, (Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) and for the first time this chapter was meeting in a café practically in my neighborhood. It was too good not to go to. Sunday morning is a perfect time for me. I know the café and I like it. It stopped raining and the sun washed the streets with rays of positive vibrations. I had no excuse.

What’s the big deal, you say?

For a shy person it is a big deal.

Everyone there was lovely and many were lively. I pretended not to be shy, (that’s one of my specialties, developed of necessity) and tried to be helpful. It was nice.

But here’s the real deal— I got out of my comfort zone and the creative juices reconstituted into liquid flow. A good, good thing.

What would you do to get out of your comfort zone?

All the Reasons to Like PURIM

The Jewish holiday Purim, celebrating the Jewish people’s (once again) salvation from mortal threat, starts tomorrow evening.

How do I like thee, Purim? Let me count the ways~~~ (Apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning)

            *The chance to wear a goofy costume

            *The scroll of Esther is a hoot. J   Look it up and re-read if you don’t believe me

            *Hamantaschen, when made right, are delicious

            *Getting baskets of goodies (MISHLO’ACH MANOT) is fun, and giving such is even more fun

*It’s religious-observant “light,” perfect for the family I grew up in

*Jews are commanded to get seriously tipsy, which makes everyone daffier

*It falls right around my birthday

*And just for good measure, again— COSTUMES!

So even if you’re not Jewish, it’s a good time to join us.

{Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York—

Only the children are in costumes there^}

CELEBRATE!

SACRED TIME

Or—

Why “I just don’t have the time” doesn’t fly

A dear friend who is an accomplished musician lamented that she has not been able to touch her instrument in ions. Life’s demands have gotten all of her time and stamina.

This reminded me of countless occasions where someone said to me, “I’d love to write,” or “I started to write,” and invariably followed with “but I couldn’t find the time.”

I used to be that person, also.

Some years ago, I realized that the only way I know to get from under this sort of loop is to think of what I want to do most for myself and what time I can practically quarantine on a regular basis, and then treat that time as sacred.

“Sacred” is not just for the religious. It means a realm not be violated for any but the few reasons I set ahead of time. Even the most orthodox Jews will break the holy Sabbath if it is a matter of life and death, but for no other reason.

I made the decision that only medical emergencies of self or family will break Sacred Time.

For me, this meant setting a reasonable amount of time five days a week for writing. I disconnect the phones, (or their ringers, anyway) and I don’t answer them-- or my door. Sorry if this seems fanatical, but to do anything with consistency, (something the world doesn’t necessarily rewards and is “just for me”) required fanaticism. I don’t apologize to anyone who knocked on my door, virtual or physical, for making that time scared.

Realistic demands, job, family care, health maintenance and communal obligations will determine how much sacred time you can allow. It can be five minutes a day (meditation, or stretching exercises) or half an hour, or many hours. Realistic self-knowledge will determine if you make it once a week, every other day, or daily. But is must be sacred if you are to live it for the long haul.

Because otherwise, the “I always wanted to but...” will become yet another relic in the half-done, once begun, couldn’t stick it out box of broken promises. Too many of these lying around everywhere, and I resolved not to add to that heap.

The key word for me was Sacred. That was many years ago, and I can vouch that it worked.

January 30, This Day in HISTORY

There is something ominously grim when I look at January 30^th’s notable marks. On this calendar day in 1933, Hitler was sworn as chancellor of Germany. On this calendar day in 1948, Gandhi was assassinated. On this calendar date in 1956, African-American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.'s home is bombed in retaliation for the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

That’s just for starters. On this date, also---

·         1925 – The Government of Turkey expels Patriarch Constantine VI from Istanbul.

·         1930 – The Politburo of the Soviet Union orders the extermination of the Kulaks.

·         1969 – The Beatles' last public performance, on the roof of Apple Records in London. The police break up the impromptu concert.

·         1972 – The Troubles: Bloody Sunday: British paratroopers open fire on anti-internment marchers in Derry, Northern Ireland, killing 13 people; another person later dies of injuries sustained.

·         1979 – A Varig Boeing 707-323C freighter disappears over the Pacific Ocean 30 minutes after taking off from Tokyo.

And so much more.

If this is your birthday, I apologize. I hope you celebrate with gusto and do something wonderful so the cloud hovering over this date lightens a little. Many small and a few great actions can make the kettle less black. Let’s polish it into a beautiful reflective silver shine.

I don’t know what is set in stone, predestined, or guided by unseen patterns. What I am sure of is that what we do matters.

History was. Now let’s make some.

Nothing Wasted

When a job application does not result in an offer, when an audition did not yield a part, or when a story failed to find a publisher, many sum up the time and effort as a failure.

Here’s my take, which is also a sort of moto for me:

Nothing wasted if I learned from it.

I have written middle grade novels that have not sold. (Yet. Let’s be positive.) But in the process of research for each my world got richer, fuller, and the purse of riches is still with me and continues to grow.

The only writing failures in my eyes are the stories that came with little inner motivation, such as attempting something that was fashionable, or repeating a variation of a story and setting I have plowed and fully mined before. Those taught me nothing. (Unless I count the “don’t do this again,” so maybe they are not complete failures, either.)

Striving and learning are the most worthwhile of all. Prizes may be the frosting, but striving is the cake.

Eat cake, folks!

My Guarded Hanukah Secret is Out...

Tonight is the first night of Hanukah.

No, that’s not the secret.

In years past, we had a small crowd for our yearly Hanukah party, and that meant making latkes.

I have a trusted recipe for latkes. It’s not hard, and I’ve shared it here. This recipe makes very good latkes for a small family. The grating and squeezing of the potatoes is part of the dues we pay for eating them, and the tears shed grating the onions must stand for any penitential feeling we have about taking in so much oil then, and for eight days to come.

But for a party, (that is, more than twenty latkes gobblers) it’s different. Not only will the cook be grating until there’s no strength left to eat, but the onion-tears will make more than a puddle. You are liable to drawn before anyone arrives.

My kids attended a Jewish preschool, where I volunteered to be part of the latke-making crew. The teacher in charge of the kitchen was a legendary cook. I mean it literally; as the rumor persisted she’d been a real chef in some fancy shmanzy three-star restaurant in France in her younger days. She most certainly had a French accent, so it was not impossible.

She taught us a thing or two about child rearing. She was wise that way. But her lasting contribution for me was her latkes-for-a-crowd secret. I’m paying it forward on to you, which is my Hanukah gift this year.

So here goes: For half the amount, use your favorite traditional “from scratch” latkes recipe. The second half you will make with potato pancake mix. Yup, the kind you buy in small boxes in the “ethnic” section of the supermarket. Then use one half cup less water for each boxed mix. Make the mix first, and add to it the hand grated traditional ingredients as you grate them.

A.    You will not need to squeeze the potato water as much.

B.     You will have more time to play with the dreidel, because you will not need to grate as much

C.    The Monoglycerides and Sulfite to Maintain color in the mix will keep the whole batter nice and yellow before the potatoes oxidize into an unappetizing gray, and you won’t have to hurry as much

D.   This combination absorbs just enough oil to make it the miracle of the oil,  but not quite as much

Finally, this half-and-half recipe actually makes the best large-batch latkes. 

REGRET is a Useless Emotion Unless...

It Prompts to Do Better Going Forward

I’ve heard actors and musicians say they don’t care to look at their own performances because they cringe at how they did something they should have done differently. For writers, the printed first edition can yield a similar emotion. There is much we’d change, rephrase, or cut. Now it’s set, and we can’t.

Life is like that. Once something has passed, regret can take over about the many things that we could’ve and maybe should’ve, and now we can’t do over.

I know people who are raked with regrets. It’s a useless loop that serves to paralyze. The functional among us “let it go,” which usually means we try to forget and move on.

But forgetting, while serving the purpose of getting the wheels to move, isn’t the best way. For my own process, there were times I wished I could be as good at forgetting as many people I have known. There’s at least one typo in each of my published books that gnaws on me, and I can’t do a thing about it. There are chapters in my life I would never “do” the same way.

I found a way to mentally handle these sorts of cant’-fix ‘em. I am not a Catholic, but I borrowed it from the Catholic confession, when at the end the priest says, “Now go and sin no more.” This echoes Jesus’ saying. (John 8, 11) The brilliance of confession is not the telling, or the penance. It’s an awareness combined with learning from mistakes and resolving to not repeat.

Nothing wasted— if we learn from it.

I will look at my performance. I will stare at these typos and awkward phrasings. I will remember where I dropped the ball. Then I will resolve to pay attention and to try not to repeat. Of course, I will repeat. But maybe not the same mistakes or sins, and maybe I will catch them earlier when I can fix something. It’s a process, and a mighty beneficial one.

In this way, regret becomes useful.

This Life is NOW

A few months ago someone I had some virtual contact with, mostly in years back, let her Facebook friends know she had just suffered a calamitous loss. On what should have been a joyous father-son bonding trip, half her family was wiped out. Her husband and older son died while hiking, likely from heatstroke.

In one cruel swoop she was a widow, and the mother of one surviving son.

This horrific event was on the news, local and national. I read the reports over and over, as if re-reading would tell a different story, maybe with a happier ending. I woke up the next day with that feeling most would recognize. It’s that did this really happen thought, and a feeling of reality descending but not quite hitting the ground.

This did not happen to me. I could go on with my day and the days to come with my routine intact. But it did shake me up. The opening words of Joan Didion’s Year of magical Thinking kept echoing—

Life changes in an instant.

It’s still a wake-up call for me. I tell my kitties I’m so happy they’re here. I look at people and places with gratitude. Nothing is permanent and most things are not for later, they are now.

Hugs, everyone.

Already?

I can hear the sighs. Is it the end of August? Already?

Yes, that. Already.

Got me thinking of how we’re continuously surprised at the passage of time. You’d think we’d have gotten it by now.

And this got me thinking about now, and about another “already”—

The things I’m all ready for right now.

I’m all ready to start drafting a new Middle Grade novel.

I’m all ready to let anxiety abate about dear ones and the world in general. Worrying hasn’t been helpful.

I’m all ready to make a positive contribution to the general pool, and accept feeling good about it. (Hint, I’m ever-so-very ready to have an acceptance or two in the pile of rejections in my inbox.)

Yup, I’m already ready. 

What are you ready for?

Let’s do it together—

Ready, set, GO!

Thank You, GOOD People

The other day someone snatched a laptop from a café close to my neighborhood, jumped into a car and drove off. The laptop owner, a talented local musician who had his work stored on it, pursued the thief by clinging to the fleeing car, with tragic consequences. He was dragged, and died of his injuries.

This was an exceptional result of something that has sadly become all too common. Laptops, cell phones and IPods taken in full view of others because someone thinks they need not work or pay for what they want.

Only two days later, DD had gone for a walk with a friend in a nearby town. While visiting the Berkeley Rose Garden, now fragrant and in full bloom thanks to a good rainy season, her IPod managed to evaporate. At first, she assumed she had possibly left it at home. But when she returned, the whole family scoured the house and, no IPod.

It seems very possible, in light of the oh-so many swipes and snatches, that someone may have helped themselves to her pocket when she was distracted, smelling the roses, so to speak. But it was also possible, just maybe please –let-it-be, that it fell out of her pocket, and was still somewhere on the ground.

But if so, what were the odds it wasn’t picked up and pocketed after that?

DD remembered that the Rose Garden closes after dark. But she and DH drove there, and with the help of flashlights, it took but a minute to see that although the garden gate was indeed locked, someone had left her IPod off the ground right next to the gate.

And there was more. When an IPod is locked, apparently there is no way to open it and see who the owner might be. But there is one thing you can do, and that is take photos with it. The people who found it and left it so thoughtfully where she could come back for it, also left their faces by way of saying Hello.

We don’t know this family, but we love them. If you know them, thank them for us. Small acts like this make up for a lot. I’m also thankful for the many passers-by in Berkeley who chose not to take the IPod as it sat, waiting for DD by the gate, for five hours.

I will make sure to pay it forward, somehow.

This Day in History

Many things happened on this day in recorded history, some good and many bad. But I choose to focus on something great that happened this date a century and a half ago. I’m only sorry I’m a year late to commemorate the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary.

 

 

1866 US House of Representatives passes 14th Amendment. (Civil rights)

 

 

It is this amendment that finally fulfilled America’s declarations of independence, which stated all men were created equal and endowed by the creator to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. (It would take a few more years before this would come to stand for all men and women.) It is the fourteenth amendment that made former slaves into full citizens.

 

 

Here is what section one of this amendment is says:

 

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

 

 

Aspects of this important constitutional clarification are debated even to this day. But most Americans hold it as part of the fabric that is our nation, one that is based on an idea, not on a nationality or racial ancestry or a specific religion.

There’s what to celebrate.

 

{From the front page of the Cleveland Leader June 14 1866}



It’s a Walk in the Park

Or, actually, a stroll.

I woke up this morning, itching for some jolly good news.

The usual sources didn’t yield it. But, alas, a peculiar old song crept into my parched mind and made my day.

 

Strolling Through the Park

 

While strolling through the park one day
In the merry merry month of May
I was taken by surprise
By a pair of roguish eyes
I was scared but I didn't run away

He walked along so daintily
Moving as graceful as can be
His legs were like the trunks of trees
I hardly came up to his knees
He looked at me again
And I knew we would be friends
He's just a little bigger than me!

He had the cutest baby too
About as old as me and you
Maybe soon one day
We could all go out and play
And be friends with one
Elephants in the park

He walked along so daintily
Moving as graceful as can be
I though I'd seen a lot of things
From New York to Colorado Springs
From his tail up to his trunk
From the back up to the front
The elephant is so astonishing
This elephant is so astonishing
This elephant is so astonishing

 

 

You can hear a bit of this marvelous ditty here – or here—

 

And then go on whistling, because—NEWS FLASH— this is The Merry Merry Month of May~~~

 

It’s been that^ for over a hundred years, so who needs the news.? It would manage a dark take on it anyway...