This is just a little collage of the things I see when I run (or walk and listen to Neil Conan).
One of the best parts about running is that it makes me notice whats around me. The painted address on the telephone pole. The leaves that match the "Dead End" sign and the family of toothless grinning pumpkins.
Fall is my favorite time of year, because everyone is always a little haunted and the branches on the trees look like witches fingers. Also, CANDY.
My essay about working at a taekwondo magazine is out in the Yellow Medicine Review. Also, Andrei Codrescu is in it and I'm in the same journal as him!!AHHHHHHH!
With the exception of the lady who peers into our windows and yells at us for not coming to her terrible garage sales, we have the best neighbors.
When we moved into our house, it was known as the rainbow house, because of a conspicuous pastel rainbow painted over the front door. Our first night, our across the street neighbors, Joe and Natalie, came over and said, "You have to paint that thing, NOW!" We wanted to get rid of the rainbow, but you see. When we closed on the house, the people who owned it kind of freaked out and refused to give us the key, sucking us and several local banks into a cycle of crazy, that ended in the couple demanding that the closing money be given to them in cash. The couple's bank finally agreed that okay, they could come withdraw the money at 9pm on a Friday night and kept the bank open just for them. But, the couple never showed up to withdraw the money and we never got our key. So, on move in day, we hired a lock smith to drill our locks and we busted into our new home. All of this and the couple we bought the house from, lives four houses away. The moving day ended with one of the former owners of the house coming over, demanding to be let in and when I refused she collapsed sobbing on my shoulder. So, naturally, after breaking and entering into our new house and the whole crying thing, we didn't want to aggravate the situation further by painting over their carefully cultivated pastel rainbow.
We explained all of this to Joe and Natalie, our neighbors, as we sipped wine in our new house. When we were done, Natalie said, "So, what's your point?" And at 10:45pm, we drove a car onto the lawn and turned on the headlights. Natalie and Joe drug over their ladder and a paint brush and we each took turns painting away the rainbow. This is the kind of neighbors they are.
A week ago, on Thursday. Joe and Natalie's son was in a car accident and they flew down to Georgia to be with him. This year has been tough for them. Natalie's mom has been fighting a losing a battle to breast cancer. Joe is a pastor of a local church and the recession has been hitting all churches pretty hard. This has given Dave and I a little bit of PTSD. Because our 2007, was a lot like this. A month after Dave's dad died of cancer, two of my sisters ( I have four total) were in a devastating car accident. One sister spent weeks in the hospital and later, months at our home, learning to walk again. Through it all, our neighbors were our best support and ally. They let us borrow a bed, plied us with booze and friendship and Natalie even gave me advice on how to handle suddenly having an 18-year-old in my home. Tip #1: Don't make eye contact, back away slowly.
So, I hope and pray that the same grace, love and humor that they have extended to us will be extended to them. And all I can do is take their dog on walks, try and make sure their car doesn't fight other cats in the neighborhood and stock their shelves with wine.
Looks like my essay about my time working with The Grandmaster will be published in The Yellow Medicine Review. Don't know what I'm talking about? Stay tuned for a link to one of the craziest but true stories that singlehandedly made me a hit at parties.
Last year, I ran my first half-marathon, with a lot of encouragement from my friend Mel. This year, I did it again. This time with my brother.
At the last mile, when my brother saw the finish line, he ripped off his bandanna and yelled, "IT'S ON!" And when I stopped laughing, I ran ahead and beat him like a rented mule.
But really, not much beats crossing the finish line with your brother.
Read the article about Barbara Robinette Moss's passing here.
In college I liked to browse the library. Actually, my whole life I've browsed the library. Wherever we've moved and no matter where I've gone, I always feel at home in a library. I moved in the middle of my Junior year of high school from a school of about 500 to a school of about 4,000. From a graduating class of over 100 to a graduating class of almost 800. It was overwhelming. I had no friends and no one to eat lunch with. So, I hid in the library and read and reread "The Story Girl" and walked among the books, getting courage for my next rush through the crowded anonymous halls.
This is how I've discovered books like Change Me Into Zeus' Daughter. I found that book in college, on one of my many escapes to the library in search of friends. I checked the book out and read and reread it twice in the course of a week. The pages were full of beauty and heartache and unflinching honesty. And the lovely moments of the book seemed to encapsulate a longing that pervading my own childhood. The book opens with a scene, where Barbara describes her siblings stealing money to buy Cokes (or RC Cola's I believe) and that secret joy of stolen luxuries. It brought me back to me when I was 12-years-old. I would sneak coins from my mother's purse and dig pennies from the dirt in my yard, hording them away until I had fifty cents. Then, I would creep down the street to a tanning store and buy a Coke and secret myself away from the chaos of my family and read a book and drink a Coke. The secret joy of stolen luxuries. Until it was all shattered by someone screaming, someone crying, some one yelling for something to be done. Barbara's words so accurately pierced through to that little girl who would hide away, clutching a book as her only protection from world that seemed to constantly tilt and slide away. If you are a reader, then you know, you don't forget moments of connection like that.
Years later, in Iowa I heard her on a radio program and I called in. I asked her how she could write with such courage. She told me, "If it happened to you it's your story. You need to tell your story and let others have the job of telling theirs." Those words were so simple and so powerful. And have given me the courage to write things that make me afraid and to write about things that have kept me afraid. The year after that, I was talking about books with a co-worker and I mentioned Change Me Into Zeus' Daughter. "Oh, I know her," the woman said. "She is a dear friend. You should write her."
And so I did.
I began writing Barbara Robinette Moss in 2008. Just as I was applying to graduate schools.Her emails were full of wisdom and wit and vivacity. I cherish them. When I was rejected from the Writer's Workshop she told me the same thing had happened to her. She wrote, "Move on, I say! Write your heart out. . . and let the chips fall where they may." She wrote, "The most important thing is that this is what you have decided to do - and do it." She told me of her own journey as a writer, "I worked hard. I went to readings at Prairie Lights, took summer classes, took advice from the writers I knew (and threw some of their advice away) - and more than anything, I followed my heart. I cried, and got over it, and cried some more. But I followed the voice inside that said I could do this."
I printed those words out and pasted them over my desk. I've been following her advice ever since.
Today, I learned that she passed away.
I don't know any of the details. Just that she is gone and I am going through her emails and her writing and hording away her words like a sacred currency.
