From Art to Part

Recently I had dinner with an acquaintance who owns a custom blow molding company. He shows me a four color brochure with pictures of cabinets, spoilers, picnic tables and toys, wheeled trash cans, and a child’s sleigh bed, all products his company makes. He mentions making a sketch of the sleigh bed before it went “to press.”

I tell him I want to know everything, how he gets an idea, how he knows what mixtures work, how it moves through the giant presses, what happens, how it happens, everything. “Oh,” he says. “From art to part.”

From art to part. That’s a new phrase for me. Immediately I begin wondering how that’s analogous to writing. He talks about ideas, sketches, molds, flash, trains, outsourcing, PSI, ambient air, costs, green space, product life cycle. But out of nothing – often borne of desire or need – comes something.

I rather like this phrase, from art to part. I might adopt it. It may be useful to describe the writing process to people who wonder what I could be doing on a weekend in a room with a Jane Austen Action Figure and garish Orange Carpet. I could say I’m working on taking art to part.

That will be this writer’s shorthand for describing how I come up with black and white marbled portfolio books, scribbles on scraps of paper in my purse and on my desk and every other room, pen blobs in unlikely places, and various manuscripts. They are the conduit that transports the vision in my head and yearning in my heart. But really, I'm just taking my ideas from art to part.

Tonight

Tonight I'm taking My Jane Austen Action Figure out of the box and placing her
on my desk. This would be the desk with the original Olympia typewriter on
it, given to me by Theresa Williams. Since I've last written to you, I've
become the proud owner of another Olympia (with an art-deco case, I'm becoming a
total snob), and now Jane is going to provide the vehicle for my creative
expression. Cryptic, I know, but there it is.

In the past two months, thoughts like so many migratory birds passing by have flown through my head. I am neither the beginning nor the end of these thoughts.

Totally unrelated department: I’m having a small dinner birthday party in a few weeks. I was going to grill steak with a Monterey steak rub. Guess what? I lost the recipe. Can you help me find one, or do you have a suggestion? Also, any tips on a good wine to serve with it? I’m a chef in need of some help!

Going uphill, steeply

A friend of mine recently returned from a trip out west, where he attended his son’s college graduation.

Today he writes to me that the trip went very well except for hitting the wall while driving up a narrow winding road to the top of Pike’s Peak. He says he has a big fear of heights, and between that and the altitude, he had to stop and turn around. He almost made it to the peak. He says his son was with him, but he'd been there before, so at least he didn't ruin it for him.

He says there were great views on the way down, but even then he needed to go very slowly and deliberately. It was quite a white knuckle drive, and he was glad to have it over.

I tell him I’m in an agony of a sort for him about the heights and the narrow winding road. I tell him that when I am driving up a long steep hill, I have a fear of the car tipping over backwards. This I blame on a dream I had as a child, but who knows?

This vague fear was with me in New York several times but more intensely driving over a suspension bridge into Savannah, GA with my brother. It was made worse because I felt stupid and didn't think I could tell him. I wanted to pull over and give him the wheel, but the bridge wasn’t that high; not Pike’s Peak. We crested the bridge in a few moments. I tell my friend that I guess I’m saying I feel the trauma.

Perhaps this strange fear of going uphill steeply is a metaphor for some way I’m feeling about life or some such, but maybe not. Maybe we're just two friends who didn’t know about the fear of heights thing about each other, connecting while going uphill, steeply.

Happy Mother's Day, in advance

I’m in Corning, New York, where I’ve landed for the afternoon in the historic Market Street district while traveling home from a conference at Cornell. There are rejuvenated shops of all kinds, antiques, restaurants, and of course, glass shops. I’ve just been watching a glassblower and then moved on to a little shop called The Glass Menagerie.

The trip is great fun. When I see and tour the Cornell campus I think it is where I dream of being. I could spend my life there.

During the journey, people seem to come into my life as I need and am open to them, like Kim, who tells me the good Japanese restaurant in Collegetown and says be sure to take in the suspension bridge over the north gorge. With her directions I visit the Johnson Museum designed by I.M.Pei, see the exhibit “The Novel in Pictures,” and my favorite exhibit, “The Architect’s Brother.” I especially enjoy the photographs by Carrie Mae Weems, from the series "Not Manet's Type": The caption to panel 4 says I took a tip from Frida who from her bed painted incessantly--beautifully while Diego scaled the scaffolds to the top of the world.

There is a chance meeting with a museum security guard who explains the new media to me and directs me to the balcony for a fabulous view of the countryside. There is the driving while I process what I’ve heard at the conference: and what I end up with is, what can I do to live the most satisfying life I can, what does that look and feel like? That is what I’m thinking, looking through the windshield at the rolling hills of New York, off the southern tier expressway of 86 and 17, going west.

All of these adventures, and yet what happens next is a highlight of my trip.

I'm in Corning at The Glass Menagerie, my cell phone vibrates. I look at my watch. It’s 3:15. I figure it’s the office. Nice to be needed. I’ve told everyone I won’t be calling them, as my phone’s on the emergency plan and just about everywhere is roaming.

But no. Not the office.

When I flip open the phone the voice of my beloved older son says cheerily, hi mom!

By now I’m on the sidewalk. The Menagerie was a little oppressive, anyway.

He says he’s at Home Depot buying a grill and wants to know if I could use more mulch. He says he could pick it up for me. I smile. Sure, I say, and I tell him how great it is he called, and I give him a number for mulch bags. He wants to know what kind, and what color. We settle on cypress, red cypress.

He asks when I’ll be home and I say Sunday, maybe a day earlier, who knows? (No wonder people say I’m elusive!) and then we sign off.

I suppose you could say mulch is mulch, but the questions I heard were where are you, are you ok, how’s it going, haven't talked to you in four days, needed to touch base.

It is nice to be needed and loved.

Happy Mother’s Day, in advance, from New York.

Contributors

My secret favorite section of the literary mag The Sun is the "contributors" page. When The Sun arrives in the mail, I soak in the cover photograph and then I turn the cover. I read ever tiny bio, absorbing the details of the artists’ lives. For example, about Michael Chitwood: "The wisteria that he transplanted from his grandmother's yard has bloomed only once since he's had it - in the spring following her death five years ago." Or Krista Bremer, who "lulls their two children to sleep by singing old Arabic folk songs." After I read an article, story, or poem, such as “The First Noble Truth” by Steve Kowit, I go back and read the bio. By the way, his teaching guide is in its twelfth printing and his most recent poetry collection is The Dumbbell Nebula. Why is this my favorite section?

Now I have my own contributors, and they are you.

When “My heart is an egg” came into my head, I buzzed over to a piece of paper and jotted it down, and then I thought, “hmmm, wonder what would happen if I put this on the blog.” Yet in my heart of hearts I must secretly have expected to read “this is the stupidest thing I ever read” or “get a grip.”

Instead, there is a wonderful coterie of comments that are affirming, insightful, and just downright fun to read. Vince, thank you for commenting: I think your egg is a beautiful metaphor for the openness to experience so necessary for growth. And how it flows in your veins, why you must write. Theresa points me to the “creation myth.”

I like how a previous entry, “In the event of fire” became a blog topic for Erin and Vicky, as if we’re making some kind of connection.

You are the favorite part of my blog. Let’s party, my place, two weeks from now. I’m leaving for a conference shortly, will be forced to explore the Finger Lakes region for a few days, and will come back rejuvenated with a clear mind and heart. Or so I hope. I am on the brink of…something. I'll be off-line for a while. Please bring party hats and balloons.

My Olympia, My Studio

Tonight I start my firstborn on my Olympia. This is the manual typewriter Theresa gave to me. I think, as I recall, that she said I had to give her my first born;-) Well, let me tell you, it is just starting out to be very, very good.

When was the last time you typed on a manual? The typing is hard and rhythmic, like drumming and you are doing the dance. It is intimate and personal. I love it.

I promised I would let you know some of the quotes I wanted to write on the walls of my writing studio a la the art gallery I visited this past summer on my road trip. Too many quotes, too little space: would you care to vote on your favorites, or offer something of your own?

Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone. – Picasso

Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible. –Paul Klee

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. – Picasso

Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better. – Andre Gide

Everything you can imagine is real. – Picasso

I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it. – Picasso

Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers. – Rilke

My art has allowed me to bare my soul. – Edvard Munch

Art enable us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. – Thomas Merton

Have no fear of perfection, you’ll never reach it. – Savador Dali

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free. – Michelangelo

My favorite piece of music is the one we hear all the time if we are quiet. – John Cage

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. –Albert Einstein


I think my personal favorite might be the Michaelangelo. What think you?

My heart is an egg

Instead of a heart, I was given an egg. Every time I bump up against something, the shell cracks, and yolk spills into my veins. (Maybe on some days I look slightly jaundiced.) I used to think it was the nature of what I bumped against--what was outside of me-- but now I don't think so. It's just me. My egg is in my basket, and now I know I need to carry myself gently.

How to spend the rest of your life

This week an acquaintance asked me in an email to take a moment and tell how I would spend the rest of my life. Aside from wanting to say oh, you know, the usual, engender world peace and end humger forever, it was just an email, and I didn’t know this person well, so I said something like the following:

I have an immediate desire to throw my jeans in the car and take off for a month out west, stopping at the Badlands, Little Bighorn, traveling down the coast of CA, see the big redwoods, stop in New Mexico and see the pueblos. This would be a non-destination destination trip, meaning I could stop whenever and wherever I want. There would not be camping :-) I'd like to see the Kentucky Derby, the winter Olympics, and walk on the Great Wall of China. I hear Edinburgh and Salzburg are not to be missed. I have a great photo of Mont St Michel, but that was over 20 years ago.

Ok, so how I'd like to spend the rest of my life, in a nutshell: I want to cultivate a state of mind that is happy, unafraid, fully present, free, open and so on. Learning is my passion... I want to make a great discovery. Please don't ask me to define that! Also, don't tell anyone! It's a secret. Also: enhance, increase, and enjoy much of what I already have: loving family and friends (maybe a significant other or soul mate, maybe not, who knows? I lost my crystal ball), health, fitness, doing something new every day. I love doing new things and going new places. I will not, however, try bungee jumping. I would like to move into freelancing full time. All of the above items are inter-related. But I do have one last one...I'd like to live by the water. Still, if that doesn't happen, I don't have any regrets.

Those of you who read my blog know what I really want is to achieve a state of grace. But in the meanwhile....I want to thank you for the sharing wine and lasagna and dessert, and this time I’d like to do a Monterey steak rub (never done it!! suggestions welcome!) with Merlot. I have a vision of friends coming over for dinner and having a good time ... tell me, in a nutshell, how you’d like to spend the rest of your life.

What is...

This week I wake up with the following question:

what is my responsibility to share the wisdom and learning I have with
others?

I try to dismiss this question: it assumes I have some wisdom and learning! Tee Hee! How funny, how arrogant! But still, when I take the chalkboard eraser and try to wipe it out, it keeps reappearing, like the birthday candle that won't be blown out and keeps relighting. What do you think about this question? So many questions, so few answers! Please, can you come over tonight for salad and lasagna and to discuss?

Drive-Thru Confessional

Early this morning I started to clean out some writing snippets from my computer. I’m looking for a prayer I’ve written, but can’t find it, and looking under all the "saved" stuff I have, stuff I can't tell what's there because the titles are sometimes a bit strange: "blue oysters." "Leaving." Well, I've moved so many times I have no idea what that one is. Instead of what I’m looking for, I find this, written about a year ago:

I talk to a box.

It’s a compassionate, loving, and
forgiving box, but a box nevertheless. I tell it the strangest stories,
all of them true, and laugh with it to my heart’s content. We sob together
and we worry about our children and wonder whether we’ll ever find love
again. We talk in bed, too, pillow talk, like we’re lovers, only this is
better, because it won’t leave me.

I know it’s pathetic that
I compare a piece of plug-in metal to a person. It wasn’t always that
way. It started out with pen and paper, my poor little nighttime
handwritings and musings, written when I was exhausted after a full day’s work
and parenting, I was making mental photos which I often left unfinished,
trailing down a piece of paper, nearly illegible, a skier out of control with
one leg up headed towards a tree. Not a pretty sight.

And
then one night I moved to the laptop. Just switched in the hopes that
would increase my volume, whatever that meant. It’s not as intimate
as pen and paper, and the first thing I say is that I’ve lost a lover, my
pen.

I keep some secrets from it. I think about death…
Here’s a big secret. I want to be loved the same way I imagine the box
loves me, forgiving, compassionate, loving, understanding. I want to talk
about anything, my truest heart, and not be made fun of, or corrected, or have
my innermost secrets shared with others to laugh about or criticize. This
truth will shine on me like I’m a sunflower, and I can bask in the radiance of
love and kindness. That’s the way I want to be loved. A divine love,
on earth.

What if I could find this steaming mixture, this
cauldron of stew and boil, trouble and toil? What does it look like?
What might it feel like? If I could tap this reservoir my resources would
be infinite, boundless.

This secret is like the Necco candies I hid
in my locked antique cupboard as a child. I’d steal into my room and eat
some, whenever I wanted! It’s a double secret problem: I was ashamed, like
I’d never want to associate with someone with that problem, only, it’s me with
that problem.

So now every night I pull up to my drive
through confessional.

In the event of fire

About five years ago, our neighbors to the south had two small house fires, about one month apart. The first one occurred in the wee hours of the morning, and the fire trucks and ensuing commotion did not even rouse my sons or my dog. The second one occurred during the middle of the day, during the work week, when no one was home. Fortunately, no one was hurt. Our houses are close together, though, so I had some concern about our place. Plus, I have a vivid imagination and have watched a few bad movies, so a car explosion or two did come to mind.

Still, what I wondered was this: in the event of fire--assuming my loved ones were out of the house and safe-- what would I take with me?

The answer was immediate: my journals. They are handwritten, sloppy things on spiral bound notebooks, legal pads, portfolio notebooks, numbered on the cover with the ensuing dates contained within.

They are filled with the stress and heartbreak of a lifetime, pink “while you were out” messages blossoming like a wild garden from some pages because I was desperate to write something of meaning, and all I had to show for it was exhaustion and a lot of goofy phone calls. They have notes about how my older son always announced how he was going upstairs now to take a shower, every night, like a proclamation. My younger son took care of the neighbor’s cats and came home and said he realized he was spoiled, just like the cats: I don't know, maybe he had to have daily cream and salmon. My ex husband threw his coffee grounds in the parking lot one Sunday morning when we were exchanging children, like he was baptizing the asphalt. The journals say, “today is the day Dad dies.”

They are my photos, little snapshots in time.

I haven’t been writing in those journals too much lately. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it’s because I write to here, or because I’m trying to spend more time on publishable pieces, or maybe I’m just trying to connect, and not be an Emily Dickinson with snippets of pencil writing on the backs of envelopes stuffed into drawers.

Still, I have snippets of notes in my purse that that seem intensely personal. And I have my blog, and it’s available to almost anyone, anywhere.

Now, in the event of fire, assuming your loved ones are safe, what’s the first thing you’d take with you? I'm just wondering. It seems important, rather like, what would you do if you had 24 hours left to live?

poor little night writings

to a man opening gifts at my table

I come downstairs, unfocussed
And we’ve discussed this
You are focused
And you are sitting at my table
The one with my mother’s falling leaves quilt on it
That I use as a tablecloth
And you are looking at the card
(Originally this was
Valentine’s Day in Four Parts,
But the other parts remain undone)
Bent over, scrutinizing it
And the silly sentimental white tissue paper
With the purple hearts is strewn
Over the falling leaves
And I see you haven’t waited for me--
Am I that slow, did you really think I wasn’t coming down---
But you seem happy and
I tell myself it’s just a slightly different tradition, this not waiting
As a lot of things are
Just a slightly different tradition
Later you forget your glasses
They are under the hearts
And above the falling leaves.

My Jane Austen Action Figure

So I open my front door, step onto the green outdoor carpet that covers my front porch--sorta like a mini putt golf course, with a few wrinkles and badly in need of a manicure. I’m gonna get the mail when I almost trip over a small box on the porch floor. I haven’t ordered anything and the box doesn’t have a return address. It’s small and light enough that I can pick it up with one hand. It’s addressed to Beth’s Front Porch.

When I open the box and brush away some of the white packing peanuts, I see the words with writing desk & quill pen! I pull out the clear package and can see a six inch high woman dressed in a regency white and green dress, complete with curly brown hair under a cap, Pride and Prejudice in left hand, quill in right. At the top, in large white letters on a black background: Jane Austen Action Figure: “For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?”

I flip over the box, and on the back of the package are some interesting facts about my new action figure. For example, her Weapon of Choice: Character Study. There are these quotes:

I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking
them.

People always live forever when there is an annuity to be paid
them. (Sense and Sensibility)

There are people who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves. (Emma)

If there is anything disagreeable going on, men are always sure to get out of it.
(Persuasion)

The packaging tells me, in case I don’t know it, Jane Austen was an enduring and much loved English author who wrote novels which reflect universal and timeless truths about humanity. It also tells me there are small parts not suitable for children under 36 months.

In fact Jane has figured tangentially in my work. There is, for example, this paragraph: Frizzy asks if Jane Austen is ok. I say she is, as far as I know. It’s a touchy subject. Jane is Frizzy’s dog, the one she got after Emily Dickinson passed on. Frizzy says when she was in high school she didn’t like Emily’s poetry much, so when she got her first dog she named her Emily. In that way Frizzy hoped she’d some to appreciate Emily’s poetry in a better fashion. I figure Jane got her name in the same way. Later, Frizzy calls and says she has to move because the family she’s living with is allergic to Jane Austen.

But that’s another story.

There’s a small card buried in the original box that was on my front porch. It says:

With Love for Beth’s Front Porch. And won’t the green outfit
go well with the orange carpet? Love you, Dan.

(For those of you following my blog, you may recall that the orange carpet is in my magic carpet-ride writing space.) So whoever would send me such a thing, eh?

This is from the guy who went to Parris Island with me to see his nephew--my son-- graduate from the USMC boot camp. (If you’re reading Beth’s Front Porch, you know about this, and Jarhead, and you deserve to graduate from boot camp, too, for sticking with me.) It’s early in the morning, and he and I are in the stands, and the ceremony is taking place on the parade ground, and the unpredicted rain begins. It’s relentless, torrential. Most of us are unprepared: no hat, no umbrella, no jacket. But I have mascara. Evidently it is not waterproof. It burns when it gets in the eyes. It leaves football player like smudges on the skin. So Dan turns to me and with a compassionate look, pulls out a handkerchief—a real handkerchief—and gives it to me. But it’s the look that gets me. He looks compassionately at a woman whose mascara is running and whose son has become a jarhead. She needs that moment. She remembers what it feels like.

Well, that’s just a little aside. For me it’s the best moment in the trip.

Oh, and he’s the same person who when I'm a senior in high school gives me a poster of a woman on a beach, which at the top, in script, says

I long for what might be.

This is my brother. As a child, I used to imagine I was adopted. Maybe, after all, I am not. Maybe, after all, my tribe is my tribe.

I want to thank my Jane Austen Action Figure for serving as a catalyst for this epiphany. This is much more than the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ever accomplished. At my house, anyway. And, although I don't much like talking to someone through a blog entry...thanks in all ways, Dan. Love, Beth

The face in the blog

Dear Friends,
Today I link my face to my blog in the "profile." It’s a slightly younger face than the one I’m currently sporting, since the photo was taken in November 2004. And thanks to the miracle of sun and chemicals, I’m blonder now.

On either side of me, cropped from the photo, are awesome friends. It’s a pre-Thanksgiving shot, and there was another person with us whom I had never met who took the photo. We were at a restaurant, and somehow the subject of the Iraq war and the understanding and feeling of students about the war on college campuses arose. I sat, not saying anything. Maybe I looked at my comrades. Maybe I looked down at my plate.

The other people at the table were not aware my beloved younger son had enlisted in the Marines and at that moment was preparing for deployment to Iraq. I could not have said anything if I wanted to. I was anguished by what was happening with regards to my son and what he had chosen. I was afraid. I would expound at length, but this isn't a political column. I'll only say that at the dinner I retreated into the well of myself until the subject changed.

This was what was happening when the photo was snapped.

So I was puzzled when someone said to me about the photo: very cute. To me, it’s a troubled face. This face, this mask I wear to the world, to people who don’t know me: I’m fine! I’m marvelous! Wonderful! Fabulous! I can use a lot of exclamation points. Maybe it helps me bridge the gap of alienation I sometimes feel. I look normal: therefore, I am normal. Maybe it’s how I thumb my nose at the world: I was a homely child, taunted. Hurrah for this face, poetic justice! I could slip on a banana peel tomorrow.

Those particular troubled personal times are over now: the younger son is no longer on active duty. Still, the photo represents the start of a metamorphosis. It is troubled before becoming relaxed. It looks smiling but it has a well of sadness: dip down, sweet down with your bucket. It reminds me of Anne Sexton: poetry is my kitchen, my face. ~Beth

Various and Sundry

In the middle of the night I woke up and knew I was looking for my tribe. I’m a little worried that it consists of a lot of dead people – Brautigan, Faulkner, Forster. (For a little more on finding your tribe, check out Theresa’s blog entry on this subject.) It could be that I’m destined to be a nomad, going from thought to thought, the thread of my path being writing and the creative process, to wit:

The hypnagogic state. A little googling after my last entry, I see the hypnagogic state of consciousness is recognized throughout history as the source of creative thought by distinguished philosophers, artists and scientists including Aristotle, Brahms, Puccini, Wagner, Goethe, Keats, Coleridge, Neitzsche, Poe, Dickens, Dali, Ford, and Einstein.

In fact, when Thomas Edison would reach a ‘sticking point’ he would take a ‘cat nap.’ He dozed off in his favorite chair, holding steel balls in the palms of his hands. As he fell asleep—in the hynagogic state—his arms would relax, the steel would fall into pans on the floor, and he would wake, usually with an idea to continue his project.

The United States of Hypnagogia: a place of relaxed consciousness between wakefulness and sleep, during which flashes of inspiration and creative insight often appear. The mind is open and totally free to new ideas. I try to drink from this well as much as I can. I'm very thirsty.

Molly Ivins. I commute, and currently I’m listening to Molly Ivins read her own liberal political newspaper columns. Besides the loud laughs and guffaws coming from my auto, for some odd reason the phrase she used that stuck in my mind is “national laboratory for bad government, Texas.” I like her columns best—and this is a personal preference only—when she writes about a person she likes, such as Jessica Mitford or Ben Bradley. Still, it’s hard not to forget phrases like “if his IQ went any lower we’d have to water him two times a day,” or “his brain’s so small if we put it in a bumblebee it’d fly backwards.” I get energy from Ivins’ writing. I love what she says: keep fighting for freedom and justice, and don’t forget to have fun doing it.

Sometimes I wonder if I said what I think, would I be fired from humanity? Thank the universe for fiction. Writing: it’s like a blood test; it shows what’s going on inside of you. Meek, mild mannered Clark Kent enters a phone booth, bedecks himself with spandex and voila! Meek mild mannered BethsFrontPorch puts on her Olympia typewriter and voila! (For those of you trying to visualize what this might look like, the typewriter would be something like an accordian.)

Harper Lee. Much ado was made of Harper Lee this week in our beloved NYTimes. The headline called her “Gregarious for a Day.” It seems there was an awards ceremony in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, for an essay contest on the subject of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” and Lee put in an appearance. Lee is “one of the most reclusive writers in the history of American letters,” says the Times. She has an “outsized reputation for shyness.” Lee is a shining light for those of us trying to create our own incubators, where our seeds of creativity might germinate.

(It may be that gregariousness is good, but I am of a mind that it is good only in small, sincere doses, if it's given through an eyedropper on a piece of skin that is unscathed and won’t absorb too much. To date, there is no known antidote for an overdose of gregariousness. It is certain death.)

It’s a good thing I’m having company for dinner! It’ll be chicken pesto pasta. Say it 10 times, fast. I’ll be listening, authorized under the National Homeland Wiretapping Act, soon to be passed in a theater near you!

Not my best bon mots...

...or, Perfection is the Enemy of Good.

As promised in an earlier entry, here are some of the thought I was gonna blog about, when I had the time to fully hold up the thoughts to light and see some funky prisms shining down. But here it is, Sunday night, and where are those thoughts? Still waiting to be held up to the light.

I have a file I call "shrapnel," full of bits of paper with ideas and thoughts. That's where they remain: in a file called "Shrapnel." They're waiting for some elderly gent to come along with a metal detector and find them, I guess.

So rather than adding to my shrapnel file I'm gonna make haste and say, here are some sticky-note thoughts:

Joan Didion. In The Year of Magical Thinking, she writes: "Was it only by dreaming or writing that I could find out what I thought?" And I thing, yippee, I have found someone else like me! Affirming that I am not the only person in the zoo who thinks "How can I know what I think till I see what I say?" But then, E.M. Forster said that. Good company.

The Alchemy of Personal Writing. That's what the back cover of The Sun says. "...the surprising alchemy that occurs when we write in a rigorous and intentional way; when we hide nothing, especially what we most want to hide; when we find the never to go back into the fire again and again and again." Ok, so what're you trying to hide? Hey, what am I trying to hide? What aren't we talking about?

When I talk to myself. When I talk to myself, I know I'm writing. You will think I'm silly, and slow, and perhaps there's a tad of truth in that, but it's taken me a while to learn this. When I talk to myself, I know I'm writing. So now I immediately grab a pen and get it down. For example, last night, in what I think Poe called the hypnagogic state--right before sleep--I said to myself, Currently the neighbors to the south have no known qualities except for the solar powered lights lining their sidewalk, which when lit up look like an airport runway waiting for the extra terrestrials to come in. This wasn't always the way it was. Before, there was Ruby Shue.

That's all for tonight. Thelma, if you're there, I'm with you all the way. Step on the gas.

Beth

Six degrees of blog separation

Today I move a second item into my studio. Actually, two items: a wizard and an enchantress. They each stand about three inches tall and sport glitter and magic wands. I place them on a shelf slightly above my desk, so they might bestow wonderful gifts upon my imagination. These items were a surprise gift, delivered to my office unbeknownst to me, by a friend of mine, whom I shall dub scr for the present. Somehow they seem to have more power in my personal space than at the office.

Six degrees of blog separation: scr, bearer of the above gifts, introduced me to mcfawn (please, if you haven't visited her blog, check it out! Reading her blog for me is a bit like looking at my Kachina Still-life: it's beautiful and I come away feeling like I've been in a different place).

As it turns out, mcfawn knows Chris who knows Theresa, and this morning on a blogabout, I see some connectivity taking place, and I am delighted by it and just wanted to share it.

Forgive me.

My Olympia

Dear all,

The first item I moved into my new writing studio--after the desks and art I mentioned in the previous post--was a manual typewriter. Yes, it's true: I am the proud owner of The Olympia, and of course, when I am at Olympia, I am Hercules-ette.

My Olympia is a gift from my magical and beloved friend Theresa Williams-Author. When she first mentioned the gift of the typewriter to me, I said I loved the idea. I said with a typewriter each word seemed important, and I felt I could be Faulkner, or am somehow connected to the great writers of the past who couldn't turn out a lot of folderol just because they had a computer. The great Shelby Foote never used a computer. Each word is a conscious, loving effort. Like Faulkner, I'm gonna pencil in my plots on the walls.

Now I think I won't even put the computer in my studio. This idea gives me energy. Just me and the silence. Way cool. I walked into the space this morning and had goose bumps.

Maybe it's part of.... Richard Brautigan's

Karma Repair Kit: Items 1-4

1. Get enough food to eat, and eat it.


2. Find a place to sleep where it is quiet, and sleep there.


3. Reduce intellectual and emotional noise until you arrive at the silence of yourself, and listen to it.


4.

You get the idea ;-)

Now, I owe my first Olympia-born to Theresa. I'm working on it.

Beth

Extreme makeover: or, a room of my own

Dear Friends,

Lately I’ve been working on creating a personal space for my writing. As I mentioned yesterday, I’m using a vacated kid-space to do this.

When we moved into this house, the room had a hideous orange 1970’s shag carpet. Still, it was ok with my son (and with my budget), so we kept it. I thought perhaps when he moved on, I would change it.

Now, however, he has moved on, but the orange seems just right, a fiery, passionate shade with yellows and reds. It fits well with my internal fire. Now I’m moving all kinds of things into the room that seem to go together in a serendipitous kind of way, ya know what I mean? There is the Kachina Still-Life signed poster by Michael Kabotie with royal blue and shades of orange, and the Mexico beach bag and blanket with pink and blue and red. There is my Matisse poster of a woman at a desk, and the Paul Klee rug of “The Village,” which I’ve had for eons. Lots of orange.

It is a giant genie’s lamp, and I am the genie inside of it, making my wishes and dreams come true.

Perhaps you have three wishes you’d like to share?

I am loving this space.

Commitments:

1. When I traveled on my vision quest this past summer – perhaps you may remember the unfinished serial blog – I visited an art gallery that had inspirational quotes written in crayon on the wall. I’m going to do this too, and want to share with you the quotes I’ve collected and I’m gonna put on my walls.

2. On my table is an 8 ½ by 11 paper that is covered with yellow sticky notes (you know the ones) that have my handwritten notes to self: “brilliant” blog thoughts. Well, forget that. I’m just going to share these without worrying about developing them or being “Brilliant!” I seem to write best when I write fast.

Beth aka woman who talks to herself

Back to Kindergarten

Dear Friends,

Today I posted the sidebar information under the link "View my complete profile." I think it's too long for the sidebar, but I'm having a heckuva time getting it to wrap and connect to the lnk.

Also, I've been visiting some of your blogs, and trying to figure out how to make an easy link to them on my blog. I'm still working on it. The cut and paste thing didn't seem to work for me. They're sending me back to kindergarten.

By the way, I'm also a woman who talks to herself, but I can't put that in the profile. I mean, I wouldn't want to advertise that I'm slightly bizarre, would I? But then, it's nice to know someone is listening :-)

Commitment: I have been working on creating my own writing space in a now-deserted kid's room. I'll be back to talk about the writing space and also the little post it notes I have all over, things I'm gonna blog about in my next life.

Until we meet again--

Beth aka woman who talks to herself