Hi everyone. I found out this morning I didn’t win the book contest. I am sad but okay. I have been telling myself whoever wins will be the one meant to win in this round. And looking at the winner’s photo on the New Rivers Press Facebook page, I felt good seeing her, knowing this was her time to win. Maybe one day it will be my time. :)
Write about what stirs you. What stirs me? I like making big pots of soup. I stir them with a wooden spoon. But when I want to taste them I dig a big metal soupspoon out of the drawer. The texture and the flavor of the wood interfere. I like stirring soup. It stirs me to smell it, to imagine sitting down to a big bowl of it, the hot ceramic cradled against my belly when I lean back on the couch or the bed, my kitchen towel napkin draped across my torso as though I’m preparing to eat lobster. What stirs me? Taste, color, texture, the exquisite beauty of our natural world, the craggy rocks on our mountains on a clear day that make you want to rub your hand across them, feel the ragged edges of the ridge. I am stirred by little things. My father gave me this, I think. I can be stirred to awe, stirred to pity, stirred to anger, excitement, gratitude. I am stirred when people take the time to reassure me, stirred by their kindness in that act, their generosity. I am stirred by injustice, by empathy. I’ve always rooted for the underdog. I hated the roadrunner cartoons when I was a little girl. I always felt bad for the coyote.
“I’d count myself lucky,” I said to her, or something like that. Was I snippy? Too harsh? I can’t remember, but I know there was a stiffness in me when I spoke, and I’m pretty sure I sounded critical. I was judging her because I couldn’t understand how having a mockingbird singing outside your window would be reason to lament, even in the middle of the night. “I’d count myself lucky,” I said. And I’ve been lucky in the last few weeks. There’s one who comes now to the electrical pole not far from the window by my bed. He sings from his perch there during the day, but it’s the late night hours I find the most enchanting. It reminds me of living in Santa Rosa years ago, not many months after I first learned who the mockingbird is. One would come to the tree outside my bedroom window and serenade our quiet neighborhood in the middle of the summer nights. It always felt like a dream, like magic, a holy visit. Now when I hear our Palm Springs mockingbird singing when the rest of the world is silent, that same sense of enchantment comes over me. I relish his song while I lie in bed, the way I savor the sound of raindrops on the roof, sometimes only half waking in the dark, like a lullaby, sending me deeper into dreams. The late night singing feeds me freesias and night-blooming jasmine, fresh sea air and moonlight on water. It feeds me stars and the night sky, the scent of moist dirt rising. Not once have I wanted to stop his singing, only to be able to keep listening, keep soaking it up like the dry earth soaks up rain. The mockingbird’s song is a dance, a celebration, an invitation to take wing. My heart soars with his cadence, and I slide back into sleep.
Facebook announcement of the MVP finalists
I’m sorry now I didn’t post this here the very evening I heard Suzzanne’s message on my voicemail. It was after Laurie and I spent that day writing for over six hours. I’m convinced it’s all connected. Listening to my messages, tired at the end of that intense day of writing, I found out my book manuscript, You and Me, has been selected as one of ten finalists for the Many Voices Project at New Rivers Press. It still feels like a dream. I didn’t post the news right away because Suzzanne thought they would be gathering photos of each finalist, making an announcement on their website. I waited to tell you about it because I wanted to be able to offer up the link to that page, make it all real. Now it makes me sad I didn’t share the news while it was still hot, still streaking through my veins, the joy and the thrill, the incredible validation, the almost overwhelming gratitude. I don’t know exactly how many entries there were. Maybe 300 or so, Suzzanne thought. And it looks now as though they may not get a chance to post us on their website before the winner is selected, which could be at the end of this month. (They are a university press, run by a small staff, so I understand this. It’s likely they are already accomplishing more than is humanly possible.) Still, I love that they let us know right away, let each of us savor being selected while every one of us still has a chance of winning. I think it is a great kindness. I pray to keep my joy about this, to hold fast to my gratitude and to the deep validation in it no matter how things unfold. If my manuscript wins, I will rejoice like nobody’s business, leaping tall buildings in a single bound. And this time I promise I’ll tell you right away.
I have an ailing cat. She keeps losing weight but on most days will still climb the fence to go exploring. My godmother has a beloved older dog who is undergoing one thing after another. She hurts her wrist and her shoulder grinding up Annie’s pills. She’s been through this before. My friend Audrey has a friend who may be heading into the last stretch of a long debilitating illness. She isn’t eating enough, so Audrey brings her to her home and cooks her an omelette. She thinks she’ll only eat a few bites, but her friend polishes off the whole thing. Another friend falls apart when one of her sisters calls to let her know their mother has broken her hip. It stirs everything up, sinister foreshadowing, the beginning of the end. I think the unknown is the hardest part. She feels the death of her parents looming, then makes the jump to the ailments and death of all her friends. “It all looks pretty bleak,” she says. Wait, I think later. Come back. We may have decades of healthy lives ahead of us. I buy organic liver cat food, and my Sofia licks the bowl clean. The next day she won’t touch it. I worry when she leaves the courtyard and doesn’t reappear for six hours. When she comes back in the late afternoon, I fall in a heap and cry, the sun spilling across me on the kitchen floor. We all know this, are on one side of the equation or the other. We’ve been through this before. Our hearts sink and soar. Our courage, our hope, ebb and flow. Life becomes moments. Savor the taste of the cheese omelette in our mouths. Thrill at the sight of the red glass bowl on the floor licked clean. Rejoice in watching your too-thin friend enjoying the breakfast you made her. Lick the last piece of liver off your paw. Bury again and again the part of you who wilts inside at the way the ribs show through the woman’s skin, the cat’s gray fur. Breathe. Lean into laughter when you can. Kiss them on the forehead every chance you get.
One year ago today was a Monday, the first true day I counted for living in our new old trailer home. We moved on Saturday, and Sunday I spent hours at Avenida Ortega, cleaning, digging up palm starts, making piles, the last odds and ends of our life there. I remember sitting outside in the courtyard on Monday morning, surrounded by most of my belongings. The palo verde was the only life here then besides me and the cats. I caught movement to my right. A verdin with his wash of yellow landed in the tree. I remember thinking it was a good omen. I felt off kilter. Our first night, I walked out to the street to smoke a cigarette. I was determined not to bring that here, not to begin that way in our new home. When I came back, I’d locked myself out. I tried to break in but couldn’t. I hunted around the piles of things, managed to find the phone book, called a locksmith. Then I sat in the moonlight on one of the bar stools and waited. The courtyard was filled with eery mountains of things, ghostlike in the half light. I wasn’t afraid. I dozed off, jerked awake again. The cats must have thought I was crazy. Why didn’t I come to bed? Today instead of phantom towers, the courtyard has three trees in big pots, two bougainvillea and a honeysuckle in the earth. Today, I have a house key hidden. Today, I do yoga underneath the stars. I lie on the mat and look up at the outlines of blossoms on the palo verde, silhouettes against the dark sky. I’m not off kilter anymore. But the cats still think I’m crazy.
Today I can feel myself getting better. I hope I can sleep tonight. I don’t think I’ve had the stomach flu since I was a child. I have a hard time believing it now, even after three nights of little sleep. And being who I am, I can’t help but wonder. Why did I get sick? How did I catch it? I think of the blackberries I bought at the farmer’s market. They looked dark and succulent. I was disappointed when I pulled them out of the narrow cardboard flat where they nestled with the two baskets of strawberries. What a gyp, I thought, seeing how shallow their container was, a third of the depth of the box, if that. I ate one unwashed. It was sour. They were all sour. But did I allow in that snatch of thought, that maybe they were unclean? Is that why I got sick, because I didn’t banish the thought? Is that how I got sick, from someone with this crummy flu packing blackberries? Or was I vulnerable because of my intense day of writing last week with Laurie, over six hours of writing and reading our work, and the stunning voicemail waiting for me when I got home that evening? Or even better, did I get sick to somehow mark my transition to the next thing? My spring break felt like a passage in itself, this accidental holiday filled with big days. Semana Santa. Passover. The lunar eclipse. April 18th. Then our big writing day embedded in the heart of it. Was having the flu a way to mark the changes, the ending of my big week, to begin again anew? A cleansing, both the figurative and the literal, the universe’s odd sense of humor? Because there is something unmistakable about recovering from even so brief an illness. A sense of returning to yourself, the adding on of layers that were stripped away, until you feel like yourself again but not quite the same, as though the layers were placed back at different angles, or as if they stretched or shrank in the peeling off process. Today I wriggle in my new skin. I hope tomorrow I wake up fully me.
No Holds Barred 