Day 28/30

At a coffee shop, in a city that was once mine but no longer is.

Dear probably-mid-20s women who are sitting out on the patio,

Thanks, just for being.

I’ve been enjoying watching your movements through the café. I see how you’re both working on your laptops together, and how you take smoke breaks. I like how casually you leave your laptops unguarded (though still in eyeshot). I like that you’re both in salwar kameezes. I like that you’re curvy and unapologetic. I like how you’re sitting on that bench, smoking, your legs crossed in lotus-position. You have this vibe, the two of you, that reminds me of the best of my times with my friends when I used to live in this city.

You make me feel like there would have been space for me here, had I stayed.

There’s no good way for me to say thank you to you in real life, bungling and awkward as I am. I am trying to think whether I can buy your next round of coffee for you without making you feel condescended to. I am wondering whether I can tell you, without sounding weird, random or creepy, how happy you make me just by being you. But I hesitate to interrupt your conversation or intrude on your space.

A couple of hours later.

Dear you-lovely-pair,

Our conversation was my favorite part of an already happy day.

Tell you what, though. If this scene had been in a movie or a book, I would have rolled my eyes. Lazy writing, I’d call it. Trite. Too convenient, too contrived. Observe: older woman sees two younger women, feels a sort of warmth towards them, goes to just tell them they rock; they invite her to sit down; a great conversation is had; the older woman encourages them to follow their hearts. But it works both ways, because the younger women inspire the older woman too.

As if! As if that ever actually happens in real life.

But it did, didn’t it? We were there.

Listen. It’s not my place to give you advice. But perhaps it’s okay for me to say, here’s what I want to tell my past self, the 20-something-year-old who had nothing figured out and thought that that was a problem:

Give yourself permission. Take up space. Make some noise.

That is what I would tell my past self.

Give yourself permission. Take up space. Make some noise.

It’s also what I’m telling my present self, because I want my future self to look back at now-me and say, admiringly, “Damn, girl.”

I loved talking with you. Thank you for inviting me in, and for sharing deep, vulnerable parts of your souls with me. I’ve figured very little out, lifewise, but I’ve had about a decade longer than you to make mistakes, so anything I can share with you that will make your own journey more fulfilling, I gladly will.

Take care of yourselves. And take care of each other. How very beautiful you are.

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Day 28/30.

Day 27: Perfect Pitch

Strangers straggle into a room, occasionally offering tight or tentative smiles. You avoid eye contact altogether. Like everyone else, you pick up a folded piece of paper from a basket by the door and then find a seat. There is mostly silence, some shuffling of chairs, clearing of throats.

A bell dings, quietly.

You rise. You open your piece of paper. Around you, others do the same.

On your piece of paper is a music staff, with a single note on it: A flat. You hum it quietly to yourself. You need no piano, no tuner.

It calms you, this A flat, floating above the air your diaphragm pushes through your lungs, vibrating gently through your throat, resonating through your nose and closed mouth, tickling your lips. This is your om.

Someone hovers tentatively by your side. Mmmm.

Their hum is an E. Low on the staff.

You hum your A flat above it.

You make eye contact. She smiles at you and you smile back. Together you walk into the milling of musicians.

You walk towards another pair and hum your dyad at them, inquiring. They hum their dyad at you. You shrug your shoulders in regretful agreement. These four notes together are not ideal. But that is alright. You move on.

Someone comes up to you. Mmmmm.

Ooh. This will be a tricky addition, but a good challenge. You and your partner welcome this person into your evolving chord.

It’s getting harder now. Very few single notes left. Mostly dyads and triads trying to come together. A peculiarly constrained jazz.

In a few minutes, everyone is standing in groups of threes and fours, the occasional dyad still lingering, and a couple of fives. There is a new energy in the room.

You arrange yourselves, still in groups, into a sort of circle. There is an expectant pause, and then a dyad hums into the quiet their two notes. It’s pretty, of course.

Their hum fades.

Next to them, a four begins. They hum their notes individually first, one atop the other, and when the third comes in, you frown. This will be tricky. But then the fourth comes in and pulls the other notes together and you feel your shoulders relax into this lovely, tense, unexpected chord. Around you, you see similar reactions. Smiles, the nodding of heads, contented exhalations.

And so on around the circle. Each group hums their notes and presents the chords that they built. Each chord lingers for minutes, filling the space and taking shape, gently erasing the memory of the chord from the earlier group, and then fading gracefully to give way to the next.

When the first five-note chord sounds, there are appreciative smiles. Then, a group or two later, is a final group, the second fivesome. They begin to layer their notes, and several of you let out quiet, amazed ohs. The group presenting the chord grins. You grin back. It’s a risky structure they built, barely stable, but damn does it sound good.

The dyad that had presented first steps forward, a little diffidently. Mmmmm, they hum.

The fivesome catches on. As the dyad’s notes begin to fade, they hum again, and suddenly in two chords, one unremarkable and one too much for the soul, there is a beautiful, balanced cadence.

This, you think, feeling that familiar lightheadedness, this is grace.

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Day 27/30. I have no idea what time it is any more. I could swear it’s been fewer than 24 hours since I last posted but the time-stamps suggest otherwise. Whatever. At least I’m writing.

Day 26: Mirror, bathroom, airplane

In the unsympathetic light, I can see every hair, fine and coarse, that aspires to be a luxuriant moustache and goatee; these hairs are determined and they will fight me. Armed though I am with tweezers and hot wax, these hairs have time on their side and the fact that my store of concern is running low.

I am noticing more and more—with approval and admiration—women who do not remove their facial hair. The pharmacist at the drugstore the other day: she was a woman—she had breasts, her voice sounded like that of an older woman, her name was something like Veronica or Dorothy—and she had a distinct moustache, black and even above her lip, and a quite rakish sort of goatee, with grey and white and black hairs curled on either side of her chin. The goatee situation was at least a half-inch from edge to chin, and it was prominent. It was like that of a man.

When I have a month to myself, perhaps at a writing residency, I would like to let my facial hair grow out. What do I look like au naturel? How much time and money will I save because that—fighting my facial hair—is something I stop doing?

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Day 26/30

Day 25: It occurs to me

It occurs to me that we must be generous with our own experiences, and allow our characters to feel resonance with one or the other of them and say, quietly, yes, that was me; rather than impose our stories on them. They are already alive. They have motivations. They are aspects of us, but they are not us alone. They also have aspects from elsewhere: they are children of many, many, many parents, most unknown.

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Day 25/30: Alas, travel threw me off terribly. It’s been over a week since I posted. On the 2nd and 3rd, I was busy packing and prepping; on the 4th and 5th, I traveled; it took me a good couple of days to de-fog from jet lag; and then I discovered that my laptop charger was dead, so I had to replace it, blah blah blah. Not to make excuses, but merely to observe what gets in the way, so that I can work around it in the future. There will be no self-flagellation. But! I did prep this post and the next on a plane. (Couldn’t figure out the wifi, alas.)

Day 24: Watch out

Oh my goodness. This is amazing. Ready?

I looked up “Feeling Good” on Wikipedia (long may it live). The song is part of a musical and is sung by a character called only “the Negro.” So, dear ones, this is in fact a song of freedom, of emancipation, as advertised by lyrics, and I am in fact not mistaken in hearing the music as being intent and menacing. The wordless narrator in the music is saying, “Watch out, watch out, watch out.”

But I made the mistake of thinking that the music-narrator’s warning was to the lyrics-narrator, trying to pull the latter back to earth. But no! It is the MN’s warning about the LN, and to us. The oppressor is represented in the musical by certain characters, I’m guessing, but of course the warning is also to oppressors, potential-oppressors and would-be oppressors in the audience: you, me, the people next to us. (And yes, of course: excluded from “us” are the members of the audience whom the LN represents.)

And given all this, it is entirely appropriate and delightful that the song I thought of as a parallel was “Run The World (Girls).” Also a warning to the oppressor inside the song and outside.

I love it when music is at its full power, as in these two songs, as opposed to merely ornamentation. Not that there’s anything wrong with a nicely made ornament. Just that ornament is not all that music is. Ornament is not all that we are.

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Day 23/30.

Day 23: The spectrum of male stupidity

There’s the mostly harmless idiot, who is easily put in his place with lightheartedness. And then there’s the unhinged, terrifying idiologue who is quite likely to become a serial killer.

As the queen Margaret Atwood observed, men are afraid that women will laugh at them, while women are afraid that men will kill them. (And I guess they’re both right.)

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Day 23/30. #notallmen

Day 22: When music complicates or contradicts lyrics

What is it about that song “I’m Feelin’ Good” by Nina Simone? Why is it so menacing? Why/how is that menacing music paired with those blissful lyrics? It’s like there’s a voice larger than the narrator, saying watch out watch out watch out.

It’s the inverse of songs like “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” which is a cheery, boppy little song about a serial killer. There’s “Sunshine on my shoulders” by John Denver: the melody makes the lyrics turn wistful and melancholic, like making peace with deep loss. So the music “complicates” the lyrics, adds an extra layer of meaning. But what are other songs like “Feelin’ Good,” where the music actually contradicts the lyrics, and is another voice?

I found one. Beyoncé (of course), in her song “Run The World (Girls),”: when the narrator says, “Come here, baby, I hope you still like me,” is entirely without credibility. The internal audience, the man addressed as “baby,” should be very worried and backing away slowly. The music/melody/feel of those lines is angry and intent, like a former victim who is fighting back. And the music of the next lines–“My persuasion / can build a nation” is straight up terrifying. And then Beyoncé goes back to the sound of “Who run the world / girls,” which already confounds the usual “uplifting bop” kind of aesthetic with its fierceness, its unmistakable undercurrent of “Enough.“

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Day 22/30

Day 21: Three Seeds

[1] Prescient

A novel, each of whose, say, 10 or 12 chapters is told by a different narrator describing some time in their life that intersected with Sandy. At some point in the story, Sandy gives them advice, which they do not follow. Sometimes the negative consequences are minor. As the stories progress and Sandy gets older, her advice becomes more like predictions, and the consequences of not believing her become more dire.

Sandy, of course, is Cassandra.

[2] Untitled, So Far

Parsi woman.
Jewish man
They don’t mean to but they do fall in love
Now what?

Ugh but I don’t want to write just a love story

Yes to lovely explorations of these two cultures and their parallels

Explorations of Jerusalem, Mumbai, Calcutta. Iran?

But they find (or make) their peace in NY or SF.

[3] The Continuing Adventures of Q, Toby and Mr. Snufflepants

Q is a zailor*. Toby is a scholar. Mr. Snufflepants is probably a dog. Probably.

*A sailor, but on the sea surrounding a world like Underground London, as in Failbetter Games’ beautiful game Sunless Sea.

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Day 21/30. Ideas are a dime a dozen.

Day 20: The Equivalent of Light, further

(Continuing from yesterday.)

They find that when she is using her hands, no brushes, she’s able to create work that she’s happy with. She paints blindfolded, telling P1 when she wants a new color, or when she wants to be reoriented to the center of the canvas. When she’s done, she takes off her blindfold and examines what she’s done.

She does this many times, until she starts associated her unseeing movements with what she later sees on her canvas. And gradually is able to anticipate and control her movements and the paintings she produces. This takes days and weeks and months. She wants to give up several times. She does give up several times. P1 is invested in P2 but even she gets frustrated sometimes. They squabble. They reconnect.

One day, when P2 is at work, and P1 is watching, P1 says, quietly, “I’ve just realized something about your back-up art.”

“Oh?” says P2, wondering whether P1 is about to make a joke about how she (P2) should abandon this and return to her woeful attempts to become musical.

P1 says, “Yeah. It’s not music. It’s dance.” She has watched P2 basically create a language of movement for herself, using her whole body to navigate the canvases she works with, learning how to center herself each time and work outward from there. P2 started off clumsy and literal; over time her movements–and the art she produces–have become graceful and abstract.

P2’s eyesight fails rapidly, until she is nearly blind.

Wait a moment: what is P1 grappling with? P2 is basically having an existential crisis–losing her eyesight, especially as a painter, is effectively a brush (ha) with death. But what is P1 struggling with, on her own, that she’s better able to deal with as a result of seeing how P2 deals with her art and her blindness?

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Day 20/30. Two-thirds of the way through! The next few days will be a bit difficult, and I hope I’m able to (a) remember to post, and (b) come up with something to post.

Day 18: The Equivalent of Light, continued.

Short story. Continuing from yesterday.

Person 2 is starting to go blind but we don’t know this right away. Person 1 is our point-of-view character. P2 is desperately learning how to sing and play guitar but appears to have only limited artistic talent. P1 wants to know why P2 is struggling through this. P2 says she is losing her eyesight; it will be only a little time before she is completely blind. And she is a painter. So she is trying to channel her art into another medium.

Eventually P1 comes up with an idea. P2 stands before a large canvas. P1 stands to the side, facing her, not looking at the canvas. P1’s job is to hold a palette and to dip brushes into paints as instructed by P2. They start simple: a limited color palette, a simple drawing. P1 positions P2’s arm in the center each time, and then P2 moves. At first they try trees and people and it’s no good; things come out like scribbles at best. At this point P2 can still see a little, so she is blindfolded while doing this exercise. It’s practice for when she’s blind.

Then P1 says, let go of these ideas of what you thought you wanted to paint. Instead, paint what you see with your eyes closed. What do you see? Darkness?

P2 is silent for a while and then says, light. All I see is light.

With your eyes closed? P1 is skeptical, puzzled.

With my eyes closed. P2 is certain.

Alright. Then we’re painting light today. What colors?

Green, Yellow. White, says P2.

And which brushes?

No brushes, says P2. Just hands.

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Day 18/30. Thinking out loud.

Day 17: The Equivalent of Light

            So there I was, a frustrated physicist standing on a street corner holding a colander. Above me, clouds scudded along the sky and a V of geese made its uncaring way across.

That’s the first sentence of the story/novella/novel. What happens next: Person walks by holding a welder’s mask, gives sympathetic smile. They end up talking, falling in love maybe. Are they both women? The physicist definitely is but we realize only a little ways in.

But this can’t be just a love story, can it?

Can it be about the other person, a visual artist, maybe a painter, going blind? That’s still a love story. Ah, and the eclipse becomes a nice metaphor, but one we must never spell out.

Perhaps it is about art? And one’s identity as an artist? Perhaps it is an xploration of how deeply one’s artistry is tied to a particular medium.

This one can definitely be a hero’s journey.

I think they’re both women.

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Day 17/30: Another idea for a story. I like thinking about what’s happening at the subtext level before actually starting on the surface stuff.

Day 16: Depression diary

I just want to be able. I want to get up and do. But instead, I sit here in my corner and hide and pour woeful ink onto paper that absolutely could not care less because it is still dead, still angry, still remembering being tall and branched and reaching its green head up to the rain.

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Day 16/30

Day 15: Cleaving

Within moments you were snoring, those small gentle snores that I had loved. Loved! I had loved your snores! For what a very long I was in love with you. Years and years.

I tiptoed out to the living room and waited, and the demons followed me there and sat down beside me on that couch (how I hated that couch; couches I don’t like are a running theme in my relationships), they sat down beside me on that couch and they put their arms around me and crooned, “We’re here now. We’re here now.”

I remember feeling scared that the cries coming up through my body would split me open, and then wishing they would, just so that this unbearable pressure would end. It didn’t, it didn’t, it just kept coming, in big ugly breathtaking waves, and I knew I had to touch you or I would drown.

I went to you. You were asleep. I curled up beside you and wept, not knowing whether to wake you. I touched you and I swear, I swear I am not making this up, but your skin was cool, where was the heat that had burned every night that I had known you, I am not making this up for the sake of a love song, your skin that night was cool to my touch.

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Day 15/30

Day 14: Nina and The Last Fairy

Nina goes outside her gated apartment complex because she is frustrated and wants a moment’s peace. Outside the night is cool and still. The road is deserted. By the sidewalks, the occasional shapeless vehicle is parked.

She walks and the crisp air on her skin cools her off enough that she realizes that she really should not be out here at this time. The wee hours of the morning are when people are at their weakest and most vulnerable, her grandmother always told her. That’s why armies invade at that time.

Suddenly Nina feels exposed. She was unlikely to be in the way of an invading army, but she was most certainly an easy target for a thief. She shivers and turns immediately around to walk back up the road. But she is too late.

A girl? woman? in a shabby tent of a dark green coat is crossing the road and walking towards Nina with an odd little smile on her face. Her pace appears unhurried and yet there is unmistakable intent to it. Nina accelerates, still walking, but striding. Don’t run, her grandmother had said, if you can avoid it. When you run, they chase, and they will be faster. Stride determinedly away. Show yourself to be strong.

The thief keeps following, matching Nina’s pace without losing that appearance of an unhurried hunter. Nina grabs at the pendant dangling on her chest and yanks. The delicate chain around her neck breaks. Nina tosses the necklace into the middle of the road, hoping the thief will go after it, and let Nina go. But the thief ignores the necklace and keeps her eyes on Nina.

“It’s an expensive necklace!” Nina shouts, but her voice sounds thin and desperate. “Gold chain! Handmade pendant dipped in gold!” The thief ignores all this and keeps walking towards Nina.

Nina feels a spike of fear. If the thief doesn’t want the necklace, then why is she after Nina? The fear is followed immediately by irritation. Why should Nina lose her beautiful necklace?

Nina darts across the road to where the necklace lies, glinting in the pale light of the streetlamps. As she bends to pick it up, she sees in the distance the headlights of a vehicle approaching at great speed. She considers darting across to the far side to put some distance between herself and the thief. But she is afraid of getting hit by the vehicle, so she grabs her necklace and darts back to where she had been. The thief is still several yards away, still unhurried, still intent, still approaching.

Nina walks so fast that she is breathless and has shin splints. She has to stop. But not by her own apartment gate. That is no ordinary thief, and Nina will not give away where she lives. She stops at one gate as if it is hers, and tries to catch her breath. The thief gets closer. Nina turns and hurries on past several such gates—including her own—and sees with relief that one of the small shops up ahead has a light in the window. She glances over her shoulder to see the thief pause at the place when Nina had paused. The thief puts a hand on the gate, appears to consider and reject it, and resumes walking after Nina.

Nina, now just a few yards away from the promise of the light in the shop window, breaks into a mad sprint up the stairs and to the front door of the shop. She raises her fist to hammer on the door but it opens, and the shop lady stands silently back to let Nina in. The door closes gently behind them. “Lock it,” Nina says, frantic, “lock it. She’s here. She’ll try to find me.”

The shop lady murmurs something calmly. Nina has darted over to the heavy curtains on either side of a large window and she is peeping through, trying to stay hidden. She sees a shadow—it’s the thief! Oh god, it’s the thief! Looking for Nina!

Nina turns away from the window, nearly babbling with fear, and stops, astonished, when she sees her grandmother descending from the narrow staircase on the other side of the shop.

“I thought you were supposed to be asleep!”

“And I thought you were supposed to be asleep,” replies the grandmother, tartly. Then her tone softens and she says, “Don’t worry. You’re safe now, Ninoosh. She can’t come in here.”

Nina looks from her grandmother to the shop lady to the window, where the thief appears still to be lurking. The shop lady looks composed. She nods and says to Nina, “Lulu is right. Come sit. Have some brandy.”

“Lydia!” Nina’s grandmother sounds exasperated.

“Alright, alright. Just some tea, then.” Lydia winks at Nina, who is still trying to wrap her head around what is going on—including the fact that someone just called her grandmother—her imperious, opinionated, bossy harridan of a grandmother—Lulu.

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Day 14/30

Day 13: Kay

It’s strange, but now that I am old no one asks me interesting questions any more. Or perhaps I am being unkind. Perhaps they ask me the questions that interest them. But no one asks me the questions that interest me. So I must ask those questions. It feels lonely, though.

So a day came when I began to ask myself aloud, just to hear a voice say those words. And then, some time later, I realized, I could make my voice be slightly other, and more other still. How nice that felt, almost like company. Of course one wants one’s company to be at least somewhat varied, so to each voice I assigned a different persona, and then, of course, a different name. This one was cantankerous and suspicious of new ideas, much more so than me; this other one was a mild-mannered, agreeable sort of skeptic, again much more so than me. I played host, facilitator, moderator.

These invisible friends have kept me company as others have moved on: to die, to travel away, to choose different friends when I became disagreeable to them. I no longer take it personally.

Now, don’t look at me like that, please. I know what you are thinking. A kind old woman—or is it a man, it’s so hard to tell with old people—who has invisible, talking friends: obviously a case of dementia, or maybe schizophrenia. No. I am quite aware that these are my own imaginings. I have a perfectly good grip on reality. But you try being alone for a long, long time. You try having no one to talk to. You’ll start talking to yourself too. You might lose sight of reality and forget why you began talking to yourself, You might think you are having perfectly real conversations with real people who are not you. I am not that.

I don’t care any more what others think of me, so I don’t hide my conversations away. You can see me walking down the street, talking quietly, occasionally changing stance or gait as I change persona, but if you were to stop and say hello to me, or talk with me, you would find me lucid and grounded.

No, wait. I recant what I said earlier. I do care what others think of me. But only a little bit.

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Day 13/30.

Day 12: The Night Thieves

A gang (duo? trio?) of thieves is stealing the night from the sleeping. People are waking up tired and puzzled; they find that they are waking up just a little tired, and that day seems to come just a very little bit too soon. Over time, this becomes an increasingly bigger problem, until productivity begins to fall, and everyone, from doctors to construction workers to office workers, is yawning.

A detective (very senior, experienced, near retirement) investigates and finds that night-shift workers are unaffected and that naps are not compromised.

She sets a clever trap and catches the Night Thieves. They are contrite and sheepish. They confess. They have been stealing bits of night from everyone because… because? Are they donating it to a cause? Perhaps—perhaps they find children who are scared and can’t sleep, or new parents, or perhaps they find people who, for whatever reason, need more sleep, more rest. And they give them a little more night.

But of late, they have begun to get sloppy and take more night than they should. Night thievery is a delicate, skilled operation: you have to take so little from people that they don’t notice it—so you take that little sliver of night at the very end, when they are already all rested and don’t really need the extra twenty minutes. But if a Night Thief is not careful and painstaking, s/he lops off too much night. And that was what had been happening. The reason?

Ah, the Night Thieves had forgotten that they, too, needed sleep! Without adequate sleep, they were unable to think clearly and perform their delicate operations. It’s just that there were so many people in the world who needed more sleep! And the Night Thieves were dedicated to their good work.

The detective, who had not told anyone else anything yet, frowned and pondered over the matter. She had thought the Night Thieves were the Enemy, that she should/would shut them down. But clearly that was not the right solution, because they were actually trying to solve a legitimate problem. But clearly status quo needed to change. What to do? Think, think, think.

And then! An idea comes to her! Never mind shutting them down. What about expanding the gang? Recruiting more Night Thieves would mean they could take turns, and sleep properly. The Night Thieves consider this and then say, “But who will manage all this? The recruiting, the scheduling, etc.? Who will run things?”

The detective frowns again, thinking hard. Suddenly she becomes aware that the Night Thieves are looking at her. “What?” she says. “Me? Don’t be silly!” But they persuade her and she has (truth be told) grown so fond of them that she agrees. She was about to retire anyway, and what would she do with her time?

So she becomes the head of the newly expanded Night Thieves. People go back to resting well. And everyone lives happily etc.

(Wait, why can’t the gang just be upfront about it? Aha: because they are trained thieves and the law doesn’t look kindly upon them. Also, people are very possessive about their sleep even when it’s superfluous.)

Potential opening to story:

Really, the last straw was when Detective Strunkenwyte lay stretched out on a dentist’s chair, and Dr. Tsailatay barely stifled a yawn. The pointy metal instrument in his hand quavered slightly and the detective’s eyes narrowed. “Eyuff,” she barked, the anaesthetic in her mouth interfering slightly with her normally flawless enunciation.

She hopped off the chair and glared at the dentist, who lowered his gaze. “I’m sorry, Auntie Ella,” he mumbled.

“Wha ish ‘a ma’er wi’ ‘oo?” demanded Detective Strunkenwyte.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I must not have slept well last night. I’ve been sleepy all morning.”

“We–,” began Detective Strunkenwyte, and then reconsidered. Walking over to his desk, she pulled a piece of paper and pen towards her, and wrote: “Call me when you’re rested. No poking at my gums till then.” And with that, she gathered up her scarf and hat, and stalked out, nodding briefly to the receptionist, who tried to make himself invisible.

The brisk air did little to cool the detective’s temper.

[to be continued…]

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Day 12/30: This one I love. There’s an Odia word, nisaachara, that my mother uses. It means “night grazer,” and she called me that when I was a teenager and would poke about in the kitchen late at night for snacks. But at first, I misheard and thought the word was “nisaachora,” which translates to “night thieves,” also a charming way to describe late-night kitchen raiders. And from that misunderstanding, I spun this story, still very much in outline form.

Day 11: Now You See Me

A story about a woman who has the supposed markers of success: a husband, kids, a dog or two, an SUV, a middling career. Diagnosed with cancer, she feels, paradoxically, that she has a new lease on life. Suddenly everyone is fawning over her. She is visible. She enjoys the sympathy for a while. She thinks that since she has limited time to live, she will quit her job, travel, do all the things she wanted to do but never had time or money or energy for. She becomes more assertive, standing up for herself in ways she didn’t before, because she feels she has nothing to lose.

But a couple of weeks later (maybe a smidge longer), further tests come in negative: she definitely has no cancer. It was some other thing. Someone’s files got mixed up. Some tech had ketchup on their glove while handling her slides or something. She should be delighted, but instead she feels sucker-punched. She feels like she was finally given the opportunity to be herself and to be appreciated for it, and now it was taken away. She doesn’t want to go back to that meaningless obscurity, that vague unhappiness.

So what does she do? If I were Tolstoy, she would sink back into the mire, accepting her fate and giving up, giving in. But I am not Tolstoy. The priest in her church tells her to return to her family life as it was before. But she has a “hidden angel,” a cantankerous old person she visits as part of her church volunteering. The cantankerous person snaps at her when shemopes, and tells her to stop being such a sap; if she is truly so unhappy, then she should just go, her family will be perfectly fine without her. It’s an unpleasant scene. Our heroine is deeply uncomfortable with confrontation, and flees. But under her feelings of “omg how rude and ungrateful,” the undeniable truth lurks. The Cranky One was right.

She vanishes.

The story is narrated by her somewhat jerkish son. He is in the other room when he hears his mom and the Cranky One talking, is how we learn of it. We see his gentle contempt for his mother, the condescension. Perhaps he has inherited her slightly boring looks, and his sister inherited his father’s more striking looks.

When she vanishes, they don’t know where to even look for her. She had no friends of her own that they knew of. Then the son remembers the Cranky One. They go there. The Cranky One laughs and laughs and laughs. Says, she finally did one thing right. Refuses to say more. Dad gets offended and angry, and says he’ll call the police to question CO. Cranky One, unconcerned and unimpressed, spits tobacco into a nearby plant and says go right ahead. Dad storms off, followed by son.

Something has been changing in the son during these few days. His tone has been changing (only the reader sees that, no one in the book, except maybe someone he usually picks on in school). As they are leaving CO’s house, son says, let’s not waste our time here, CO is crazy and was obviously surprised to hear the news. Dad says really? Son says yeah. Adds, let’s look elsewhere. And maybe she just needed a break and will be back in a couple of days, so let’s not make a fuss, it’ll just be embarrassing. (She had left a note, so she obviously wasn’t kidnapped.) Dad agrees; he wants to maintain his status and not give the neighbors anything to snicker or gossip about.

But as they’re leaving the house, the son sets a small detail aright, something that tells him that for sure she’s in CO’s house, or was recently. Like, there’s a statuette that she keeps turning a certain way when she visits, and CO inevitably changes it back again, maybe to get something behind it and maybe the mom likes to dust back there, maybe it’s like weed or something. Son has noticed this quirk/tick before. And when they were here with CO last, and CO snapped at his mom, he saw that she left, upset, before she could fix the statuette. Son notes this with usual disdain, laughing at his mom, at the time. But this time, having seen that his mom is in fact in there hiding, or was in there on her way to wherever she went, he acts (for once) with discretion and some kindness.

Maybe after she disappears, he realizes as they search for her that they had stuff in common in the way they thought or hid or recuperated from the world. He doesn’t say anything of this to his dad. Maybe the son is 15 or 16, old enough to convince the father to just let the hunt go, wait and let her come back. But in his heart he hopes she is free. (And this redeems him slightly as a character in the reader’s eyes.)

———————–
Day 11/30. This is how I sometimes build a story. This one started with a friend (who is now 80 or so) telling me that she was diagnosed with possible-cancer, and when tests came back negative, she felt inexplicably disappointed. I started with that seed, created this outline of a woman (who is nothing like my friend, to be clear), and sat back to see what happened. I didn’t know ahead of time that she would vanish. I didn’t know ahead of time that her son would be narrating. I didn’t know there would be a Cranky One in the mix (but I do love a good anarchic, unpredictable, cranky character with a bit of good in their heart). Will this ever become a full-fledged story? Maybe. Maybe not. For now, it is this: an outline, a sketch.

Day 10:

A guilty pleasure: watching YouTube compilations of the best blind auditions from The Voice USA. Sometimes I re-watch a compilation that I’ve already seen/heard. Who can tire of Judith Hill’s masterful rendition of “What a Girl Wants” (no joke to cover Aguilera; you have to really know your stuff) or Sawyer Frederick’s goose-bump-raising voice on “Man of Constant Sorrow?”

Sometimes I have to skip forward through the compilation because there might be a voice I can’t stand: breathy and light and altogether too cutesy for me. Or there might be a voice that is entirely competent but which I just don’t find particularly compelling. And sometimes I have to skip forward because I come across Christina Grimmie’s full-throated cover of “Wrecking Ball.”

It takes my breath away, how this show made and unmade her.

She wasn’t unknown before appearing on The Voice: she had an EP out, and a healthy YouTube presence. But I think it was after appearing on The Voice that she became properly famous. And she was twenty-two when an obsessed fan shot and killed her at a meet-and-greet event.

Twenty two. Just coming into adulthood. Just becoming a big star, already making waves. She had poise when she performed her blind audition on The Voice. Unlike some singers, who sink to their knees or double over or otherwise show how overwhelmed they are by this moment, Grimmie raised her arms at the audience: confident and triumphant. The judges swooned shamelessly over her, and she was pleased but not overcome. She was ready for stardom.

Who thinks, when they’re leaving the house to go to work, that they might not get home that night? I guess we think it about those we love. I didn’t understand for a long time why, when I lived with my parents still, my mother would stay awake at night when I went out and not sleep until I was home again. Even now that I’m an adult and haven’t lived at home for twenty years, when I’m visiting and staying with them, if I go out with friends, she’ll stay awake till I come home.

Sometimes I wonder whether one reason I’ve wanted not to have children of my own is that it seems to me an unbearable kind of love, the kind that lacerates your heart every day but that you would not, once you experienced it, ever give up, even if you could. And isn’t there enough aching in the world? Who wants to ache more?

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Day 10 of 30.

Day 9

There is nothing like a good cover. A really thoughtful take. Not just, “Hey I’m singing the same song but in my voice,” but, “I’m now going to sing the same song, and make it say something new.”

Jeff Buckley’s cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” is the most famous version of the song for good reason: he sets the song free. Cohen’s a genius, but his version is too “on the nose,” with the gospel choir backing him. Buckley’s spare version (even if I personally have little patience for the thin, quavery timbre) brings goosebumps, captures the feeling of grace and of grace lost, without needing to resort to the theatrics of Cohen’s version. (And, to be clear, I love gospel choirs. I just don’t think it was a good call for that particular song.)

Miche Braden’s cover of Prince’s “Purple Rain” also gave me goosebumps. I think the phrase I’m looking for is “took me to church.” Braden doesn’t compete with Prince. Their renditions are distinct. They sing the same words but manage to sound different (Braden’s scoffing before “but you can’t make up your mind”!), because Braden brings a different (perhaps more complex) tone to the narrative voice. And what thoughtfulness, insight it must take, to make one of Prince’s hits more complex.

Recently, Eric Clapton covered “Purple Rain.” I confess I got bored listening to it. Clapton is amazing in general. I love his music. But he brings absolutely nothing to this cover. What’s the point of listening to “Purple Rain” sung overall less compellingly? And Clapton knows how to do a good cover. He covered his own song, “Layla,” doing a gorgeous acoustic version for MTV Unplugged. If you’re going to cover Prince, bring something new to the telling, or leave the telling to The Purple One himself.

Oh. And this is the same thing with writing, yes? We tell the same stories: heartbreak, loss, redemption, love, parenting, immigrating, isolation, bonding, grace. The same stories over and over again. It’s not just that the prose is new, or the tone is a little different. A good storyteller makes it new again, makes you turn the story over and marvel that you never noticed that thing before.

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Day 9/30. I forgot Day 8!!! Oh no.

Day 7: At the Ferry Building on a rainy day

Hidden somewhere among the demons (mixed up, misfiled) are ghosts I would like to visit one last time, and set free. It is my fear (fear?) that is holding them back, tethered to a place where they don’t belong (and a time, too, where they don’t belong). Like pain, they intensify when I close my eyes and look away. Today I decide to seek out one of these ghosts, look it in the face, and say, “I see you. You meant the world to me. You did well. Now go. Be free.”

I haven’t been to the Ferry Building without back-up in years. Friends have held me together, distracted me with ferries and chocolate and fog and tours through Alcatraz. Today, the city’s summer fog is here, and so is our summer rain. My kind of day. Perfect for ghost-watching.

My umbrella breaks as I walk along Market Street, and I walk the last four blocks trying to stay some sort of dry under the flopping nylon. Inside the Ferry Building, I am accosted by a boy, maybe 8 years old, all skinny legs, earnest eyes and shaggy blond hair. I think at first that he’s trying to sell me candy to fundraise for something, but then it transpires that he is trading. It’s a school project—he’s visiting from Portland—and he wants to know if I’ll trade something I have for something he has.

He pulls one thing at a time from a large bag, like a magician, a confused and not particularly coherent magician: a can of blackberry-flavored bubbly water, a bicycle light, a pack of gum. A pair of gel pens, pink and purple. I tell him I don’t want anything, but does he want my slightly broken umbrella? He does. He examines it with the air of an expert, asks me to show him where it’s broken, announces that he can fix it. (I doubt it, but I approve of the enthusiasm.) Am I sure, he asks, that I don’t want anything in trade? I am sure. He wanders off to accost someone else.

I reflect on how Portland is so much kookier than we are. I miss our kookiness. Cities change. I know this all too well. And nostalgia is a dangerous thing, a quicksand trap.

The last ferry to Sausalito pulls away as I emerge from the back doors on to the… what is this, a promenade? I lean against a pillar (my right foot is throbbing), protected by a sliver of roof overhang from the needles of rain. Silver-green waves blend into steel-grey sky, separated at the horizon by a strip of East Bay. This is my bay, I think. It was mine before and it is mine now.

Behind me is a Mexican restaurant. Seven, eight years ago, it was a sushi joint. Ask me how I know.

The weight of the sky, the rhythm of the waves: these still my mind and I see something through the internal fog. It wasn’t my fear that bound this ghost. It was an impotent grief, an irrational hope-like thing. This kind of grief is hope in disguise: hope misplaced, mixed-up, misfiled.

The sun begins to set. The thousands of tiny LED lights lining the cables of the Bay Bridge blink on. The stars don’t stand a chance—not that we’d see them through the fog, or with the bright lights of this most beautiful of cities—but especially not against the lights of the Bay Bridge. They were an art installation, I think, and they are now permanent, iconic. Programmed, they light up in patterns like waves, like rain, never repeating. May our mistakes also be so.

———————
Day 7 of 30.

Day 6: An experiment

Before he turned into an alcoholic and then a domestic abuser, before his playfulness turned into a cutting, belittling snark, he was the perfect uncle. We’d play endless rounds of Uno; we’d talk books and music. He was that rare, delightful grownup who seemed to genuinely enjoy hanging out with the kids.

Each time we visited their home, he’d have a different album playing. I’d go rifling through his shelves and shelves of cassettes (and I thought I had a vast collection). I remember coming in one day with my parents and sister, already excited about the music, and hearing Tracy Chapman for the first time. I didn’t know a woman could sound like that.

Obviously we weren’t going to call him by his first name; it was a matter of what honorific to use. Uncle? Cousin? My parents couldn’t quite agree on which. With pen and paper we worked it out, my sister and he and I. On the family tree, he was at the uncle-level, some degrees removed. But he was far too youthful, too cool, for us to call him Uncle. So we made up an acronym that traced the line from us to him, and that was what we called him. In this moment, as I write, I honestly cannot remember his actual name.

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Day 6 of 30. An experiment, but I don’t think I’ll say what exactly.

Day 5: At a critique group

A photographer friend invited me to come along to a photography group he attends. I was eager to go: what were photographers like en masse? How did they talk about their work and each other’s work? What were their critique groups like? What can writers learn from them about workshopping?

In short, it turned out that peoples is peoples. The photography group had pretty much the same strengths and challenges that a group of writers faces when it hasn’t had any sort of “training” in how to critique. Critiquing and workshopping: these are skills separate from the skills of your art, whether that’s writing or photography or dance or whatever.

So I decided to start compiling a list of “do this, not that” guidelines for artists who are either displaying their work to a critique group, or providing critique to an artist who is. Here’s what I have so far in my very-much evolving list:

When showing your work

• When you introduce your work, be mindful about framing your process versus your content. Talking about your artistic process or technique is different from talking about “what do you want to say through this content.” If you are looking for feedback about a specific thing or aspect, say so. Frame the conversation.
• If you don’t have a specific question, come up with one. Otherwise, the first person to respond sets the conversation and it might not be good or useful or relevant.
• Don’t talk too much. Every moment you’re talking is feedback you’re not getting. Say just enough to:
  • Frame the conversation
  • Clarify gross misunderstandings
  • Redirect the conversation if it has meandered too far
• Follow the good moderators.
• Follow up with the thoughtful ones.

When seeing others’ work

• You are a guest. Behave accordingly.
• Careful with the “shoulds”: unless the artist asks you specifically, stay the hell away from prescriptive statements.
• In the absence of clear framing/direction from the artist regarding what they seek in terms of feedback:
  • Find the beauty
  • Find the elements that recur, dominate or appear to define
  • Say how you respond, what moved you, what mood(s) you picked up
• Don’t like something? Suggest an alternative as a question “If you were to do X instead of Y, how might that impact this work?” Or, “If you were to do X instead of Y, you’d get result Z, which seems to me to move your artistic agenda forward.”
• You won’t be able to say everything you want to. That’s fine. Pick what will move the conversation forward—be a good citizen. Have more to say? Follow up privately.
• Follow up with the thoughtful ones.

Following up with “the thoughtful ones”: I find that one of the best things to happen in a critique group is that you encounter someone smart and thoughtful, who makes good art and who gives good feedback. That kind of person I want to build a relationship with. But it’s up to me (and you) to make that first move. Most of us like someone but do nothing about it.

So I’ve started to go up to people I like in a critique group and say, “I really enjoyed looking at your work,” or, “I loved the way you framed your feedback.” More often than not, they have similar things to say to me. And then I say, “Hey, do you want to grab coffee some time and talk more about <art thing>?” or, “Would you care to exchange emails and stay in touch?” Especially if I’ve seen them more than once at a critique group, then I feel comfortable suggesting that we meet for coffee.

I’ve made some lovely connections with people this way. They’ve become part of my network of writers and fellow artists, as well as friends independent of art.

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Day 5 of a 30-day writing project. The rules: post something I’ve written every day for 30 days. That is all.

Day 4: Fragment

-1-

As everyone marched determinedly to and past, not even heeding the delights promised by that sandy paradise, a little girl slipped back through the throng of bodies, unnoticed. (Unnoticed, she would reflect many times through her life, was best. Notice always hurt.) She clambered into the playground and onto a swing.

Higher, she went. Higher! Higher! She imagined her stiff, coarse hair being long and lustrous, streaming behind and before as she rose, dipped and rose again.

And then tragedy, of course: some passing breeze, or perhaps her own delighted wiggle. Instead of arcing straight back, the swing veered just a little off as it rushed back down and so wrapped itself around the pole.

She held on, too panicked to cry, as the swing whipped around and around the pole, the length of chain growing shorter and the circles tighter, until with a wobble the swing stopped a few feet above the ground, and her numb fingers slipped and fell to the ground, taking the rest of her body with them.

Feeling hysteria well up inside, but still too shocked to cry, she staggered away, collapsing in front of a wall in the middle of the block, beside a collection of large trash bins that rose protectively over her, shielding her a little from view.

The man who found her there, who sat down with her and wrapped his strong hands around her tiny arms, parted his legs, assured her it wouldn’t hurt and dragged her closer. She should cry, she knew. Whatever it was, she sensed that it would hurt. She should shout, she should scream, but still her body was dazed and not under its own command.

Then the man looked up over her shoulder. His eyes widened. Her world seemed to slow down. His hands went slack and fell away from her body. She stumbled backwards, away, and turned to see another man. This one stood on the sidewalk, several feet away, wearing a ratty, once-white bathrobe and an expression of grave disappointment. His lank hair brushed the tops of his shoulders, and his arms hung loosely by his side. He didn’t move.

The swerving sound of approaching sirens prompted time forward again and made the first man start and scramble to his feet. “Jesus,” he whispered, but the man in the bathrobe just stood there with that look on his face, and the first man, no doubt overwhelmed by his own shortcomings, let the uniformed ones pull his arms behind his back and lead him away. The girl watched as he was walked to their stern cars. He looked back at Jesus, a desperate look on his face. (Later she would recognize that look.) The uniformed ones prodded him unsympathetically on.

Jesus was not looking at him any more. He was looking at her.

-2-

That was how she met the man called O’Anne.

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Day 4 of a 30-day writing project. The rules: post something I’ve written every day for 30 days. That is all.

Day 3: Maps

Through the cave there runs a wide, shallow river with wicked currents. Mist hangs low, gathering or receding as if with a mind of its own. When you come to the river, turn back. The water is warm and inviting as it swirls lazily by your ankles, but as you walk in, the mist descends and currents tug. How far in do you dare to go? How far in would you allow your children to go?

Artists brave the river. Demons lie beyond.
Artists brave the river because demons lie beyond.

The demons are not evil or wicked or bad. They are not good either. They simply are. They obey no law but their own individual ones. They are neutral. They are anarchic. They are chaotic. They are curious and might try to take you apart to see how you work, but then they lose interest and wander off, leaving the pieces of you dismantled and forgotten. They might turn to malice out of boredom and torment you and then go elsewhere when they get distracted, leaving shreds of you hanging in ribbons from the ceiling.

The artists go far enough into the cave to see the demons, maybe touch them, but they (mostly) do not lose the rope that tethers them to the mouth of the cave. They emerge from the demons’ lair, find their way back to the mouth of the cave, and document their discoveries and adventures and experiences.

We need the artists. We need them in order to satisfy our curiosity about demons—we ourselves might accidentally lose our way or snap the rope and be devoured. We need the artists as our guides: they create maps and signposts and warnings for us when we make our own (smaller, safer) journeys. We need not make all the turns and detours they made. We need not go in search of every demon. Between us, the artists and the laity, we can build a better understanding of the demons.

No wonder your mother said, “Anything else at all, whatever you please, but please do not be an artist.”

With depression, you lose the rope that tethers you to the mouth of the cave. Deeper you go and deeper, and then you meet the demons.

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Day 3 of a 30-day writing project. The rules: post something I’ve written every day for 30 days. That is all.

Day 2: Eviction

He walks towards the bedroom.

She calls after him: “Wait, don’t take the wine in there; there’s too much white!”

He calls back, laughing, “It’ll be fine, I’m not a child.”

Needless to say, he spills a large amount of red wine on her white linen bedspread. She stays calm. “Don’t do anything,” she says, “I’ve got this.” She is about to run to the kitchen and grab some wine-removing spray. He says, “Oops, let me just—” and starts to wipe at the stain with his cocktail napkin, driving the stains deeper into the fabric. She grabs his arms and steers him away from the bed. “Seriously. I need you to not do anything right now while I take care of that stain. Please.”

He says, “Okay, okay. Don’t get all upset. It’s just a comforter or whatever. Easy to replace.”

 “Okay,” she says, tartly, “I’ll send you the bill.”

“Me?? He sounds surprised. “It’s your stuff.”

She considers this for a moment. “You’re right. My stuff.” She smiles at him easily now. He smiles back. She says, “Well, let me show you how I take care of this stuff. It’s easy, actually.” She walks out into the hallway, beckoning at him to follow. He does. She opens the front door and he pauses. She looks back him reassuringly. “Come on. Don’t shut the door. Bring the wine.”

He follows her out of the apartment and down three flights of stairs. They reach the outer gate. She steps out first, holding the door open for him. “Okay,” she says, pointing, “there’s the side door. See that number pad to the left?”

He steps in that direction, squinting in the soft light.

She retreats and pulls the grilled gate shut behind her.

“Hey!”

She ignores him and walks up the stairs. He rattles the grill but of course it doesn’t give.

“Hey! What the fuck!”

She says nothing. Takes the stairs up. Reaches her apartment. At this point he is shouting obscenities. It will be moments before neighbors poke their heads out to wonder.

He is shouting about how his stuff is all still upstairs in her apartment.

She comes back out to the landing, holding things. “Here’s your stuff,” she says. She tosses his jacket over the railing and it falls three stories to the ground. He is too surprised to catch it. She wasn’t aiming. She holds up the messenger bag he had plopped by the shoe stand when he came in.

“Don’t you dare!” he shouts. “Don’t you fucking dare throw that bag!”

She shrugs. “Okay. I won’t throw the bag.” She unclips the top, turns it upside down and shakes it. A tablet, pens, papers, cables, a book, a large ring of keys: these plummet to the ground with clinks and thuds and the unmistakable crunch of electronics being smashed.

He is livid.

“You sure you don’t want the bag?” she calls, solicitously.

“You crazy bitch! You’re going to pay for this!”

“Me?” she says, affecting surprise. “But it’s your stuff.”

He is shouting.

She speaks evenly and her voice carries in the still night. “You better go before I call the cops.”

He pulls his phone out of his jeans and starts to dial. “I’m calling them first, you batshit cunt!”

She shrugs. “Cool. Thanks.” She goes inside. Her nosiest neighbor has poked his head out and tries to call up to her but she ignores him. Her phone dings; that’ll be him trying to reach her anyway. She goes into the apartment and shuts the door.

No police arrive. The next morning, there is no trace of the man or his belongings. When she looks him up on the dating website, she can’t find him. She looks again using her spy account and there he is. So he blocked her. That’s alright by her.

She logs in to her third account: set up to look like that of a handsome, tall, wealthy man. She updates a list called “Avoid these:” and adds the profile name of the man she had ejected the night before.

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Day 2 of a 30-day writing project. The rules: post something I’ve written every day for 30 days. That is all.

Day 1: The Five-Year Mark

Excerpt from Implausible Love Stories

He reaches over, plucks something from the top of her hat and hands it to her. It is a bit of pink thread. She looks at him, her face a mask of horror. It surprises him; he blinks.

She speaks before he can react. “I must go. They have found me.” Her voice is strangled. A few heads turn, only half-curious, because in this city the slightly strange is entirely normal.

He stares at her for a moment, then rallies magnificently. He clutches the lapel of his jacket with one hand and reaches towards her with the other. “No,” he pleads, “don’t go. Don’t leave me again.”

Now she is surprised but also delighted. She strikes a pose of regret, her body half-twisted as if to flee, one wrist delicately placed against her forehead. “You know I must. It is too late.”

“I will come with you.”

“No, no. I cannot let you. You—you have always been good me… Egbert.” Under the expression of anguish, the corners of her mouth twitch a little.

He, not to be outdone, murmurs, “Oh, Valentina! If only—”

The door opens and a man walks into the café, pushing back the hood from his face. He looks curiously at the pair.

She casts a terrified glance at the newcomer before saying, “Too late! I must go!”

He sinks dramatically to his knees as she turns and walks away, her steps small and hurried.

At the counter, she grins at the nonplussed barista and says, “A double espresso, please, and whatever he’s having.” She tilts her head. “Just charge me for something expensive.”

“No need,” the barista says, “he’s a regular. He always gets an iced coffee.” He rings her up.

She does not turn back to see what the unexpectedly game stranger is doing. She waits at the pick-up counter till another barista calls her drinks and slides them over.

She deposits her espresso on an empty table and then, holding the iced coffee aloft before her, she walks slowly towards a table across the room, where the man sits reading.

“Egbert…” she intones.

The man starts. He looks around as if fearful and suspicious.

“Egg… berrrt…” she says again, now adding a little hollowness, a little tremble.

He stands up. “V-Valentina?” he whispers. “Is that you?” He looks straight at the cup of coffee. He gasps. “Valentina! Is that you?”

She says, in that hollow voice, “Egbert… you are… a good man…”

He pretends to sob. “Oh, Valentina! What did they do to you! Come back to me!”

“It is too late for me, my love…”

“Well,” he says, in a suddenly pragmatic tone, “at least I got some coffee.”

She grins and drops character. “It was good of you to play along,” she says, holding the coffee out.

He accepts the coffee, lifts it up in a salute, grins back. “It was fun.”

She nods lightly at him, and returns to her own table.

There, from behind the wall of her laptop and various papers, she occasionally steals a brief glance at him. He has returned to reading. He is absorbed. He appears to be affected by the book. She sees his brow furrow as he turns a page; a little later she sees him put the book down for a moment, as if to compose himself, and then he lifts the book again.

With a shock she realizes what he is reading. Should she say something? But what on earth would she say, she’s never been in this situation before.

 As she mulls, trying simultaneously to keep working, she sees out of the corner of her eye that he is getting up and gathering his jacket and book and bag. He is leaving! Now she must say something, or—

He looks up, catches her eye and gives her a friendly nod. Then he walks out of the café onto the crowded sidewalk and he’s gone.

Well.

She exhales. That’s that. She won’t romanticize this needlessly. It was a lovely bit of fun, that was all. She won’t go to the barista and ask for his name, or leave her number for him, good heavens.

An hour passes and then another. Engrossed in her work, she is startled when the door of the café opens too hard.

“Valentina!”

She looks up to see him, there he is, slightly out of breath.

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Day 1 of a 30-day writing project. The rules: post something I’ve written every day for 30 days. That is all.

On pretentious prickery

I saw this post go by when several friends posted it. I was taken back by the title of the post, and would have dismissed it as a cheap grab for attention were it not for the fact that the friends who had posted it are very smart, thoughtful people. So I read the post. And was annoyed enough that I ended up writing more in response than would have fit as a comment or a post on FB.

So here’s what bothers me about this piece.

One, there is the asshole-y tone of the piece. Contempt. Scorn. It’s almost like, “Well, here’s someone who’s big and famous, so I can be scathing of them.” Why? They’re people too. Yes, I get that they have a certain kind of power, but their having power doesn’t give you carte blanche to be a jerk.

Two, there is cheap reasoning in the piece. So, the writer points out that Aamir Khan hung out with some activists in preparing for a role in a movie, and then didn’t hang out with them any more. Okay, and? I mean, he’s an actor. This is his job. He’s not an activist, and he’s not pretending to be. It’s okay to say, “I think such-and-such cause is important; I will do a little bit to support it or to shed light on it, but I will not make it my primary battle.” We all do this. So many of us donate to certain charities, or “Like” certain “heal the world” posts on FB, but we don’t give up our jobs to go work in those organizations, do we? So why should Aamir?

Three, the “analysis” is deeply biased: the blogger lists some “good things” that Aamir Khan does but dismisses them (“all good,” or “… all that is fucking expected from an actor in the first place”). On the other hand, when he lists the “bad things” that Aamir Khan does or has done, the blogger stays with that thought and unpacks it, as in his take on the Aamir Khan versus Chetan Bhagat anecdote.

The dismissal of Aamir Khan’s commendable behaviors undermines the blogger’s credibility as a voice of reason. He writes, “But all that is fucking expected from an actor in the first place. Just because ours is a hare-brained industry, doesn’t make someone a goddamn Socrates.” Really? I don’t know about that. The fact that it is a hare-brained industry that allows, even encourages, actors to be hare-brained, makes it commendable that this one person chose to stand apart from it. And… what the hell does it mean to call someone a goddamn Socrates? Aamir Khan doesn’t style himself that way, and this “shorthand” use of “Socrates” to mean “wise person” is misguided and misleading.

“Aamir Khan tells the nation not to litter. Aamir Khan tells the nation to be nice to foreigners. Aamir Khan tells the nation to be nice to foreigners.” Okay. And what is the problem with that? They are good things that Aamir Khan does, but because the blogger is intent on showing what a “pretentious prick” Khan is, he (the blogger) leaves these sentences hanging as if there were some obvious “bad” thing in there, and leaves it to the reader to imagine what that might be. Lazy writing, and lazy thinking.

The blogger does this repeatedly, listing examples of “good things” that Aamir Khan does, but giving them no weight and even dismissing them with a strange, uncalled-for condescension:

• “Aamir Khan is a socially aware star. How? Because he blogs about issues.”
• “A star like Aamir Khan talking about issues that we Indians never bother to speak about, is commendable. Kudos.”
• “His logic was, the youth of the nation today talk in that manner. If you can not stand such language, please don’t watch the film. All good.”

Now, I totally agree that it is idiotic to comment on something without knowledge of that thing.Did Aamir Khan deny Chetan Bhagat’s intellectual property rights without having actually read the book? If so, that’s terrible. Not to mention stupid. Did Aamir Khan comment on the AIB roast without having actually watched it? If so, that’s also a dumb move—intellectually dishonest but also really dumb from a PR perspective.

Here’s the thing: no one’s perfect. Some are more flawed than others. Some, we can argue, have greater responsibility because they have positions with status, power, visibility and reach; to these people we grant less leeway. It’s far more shocking when a pillar of the community is caught having an affair than when a random friend of a friend does, for instance.

But the main problem with this piece is the heavy-handed, attention-seeking headline—(“Oh my goodness, this radical blogger is saying something astonishing and going against the grain; let us read this blog post at once!”)—coupled with the cheap malice of the writing—(“aging douchebag”).

There is the convenient partial pulling in of evidence when it suits: The blogger quotes Russell Peters (“Also, like Russel Peters said, you are an actor”) but clearly doesn’t pay attention to Peters’ full sentence: “[Aamir Khan] is an actor; not even a real artist.” The blogger goes on to say, “But just like [Aamir Khan] is an artist…” So what is going on here, does the blogger agree with Russel Peters or not? Or only partly? It’s not clear. See above: lazy writing, and lazy thinking.

A much more effective way to handle this, a more nuanced approach, would have been to build the argument thus:

• Here is an actor who sets himself apart by putting a lot of effort into his work
• Here are various “good things” that he does
• Given all that, it is surprising/ shocking/ saddening when he does dumbass things like [the Chetan Bhagat incident] or [commenting on the AIB controversy without having actually watched the thing].
• Conclusion: hey Aamir, you have power and reach so please kindly do good things and refrain from doing obviously idiotic shit kplsthx.

I’m not interested in taking sides on whether Aamir Khan is all that and a bag of chips or not. But I do object to cheap-ass writing that, because of its cheap-ass attention-grabbing tactics, manages to propagate shoddy, shallow thinking.

This cheap-ass writing is really a shame because I get the sense that the blogger generally has interesting things to say, and has a following because of it. Dear blogger: please carry on being thoughtful and calling out general bs, and please stop with the cheap tactics and shoddy thinking, kplsthxbai.

Reading and Shame

Recently, I read this article, in which the author says, “Adults should feel embarrassed about reading literature written for children.” (The italicization is hers.) Her argument? Books written for teens are too simplistic, too much about gratification. She argues that if adults “are substituting maudlin teen dramas for the complexity of great adult literature, then they are missing something.”

I disagree.

There is as much trash in adult fiction as there is in YA (young adult) fiction. How you define “trash” is up to you. If you want to define “trash” as writing that asks of nothing from the reader, and delivers the equivalent of cheap candy–sweet and perhaps quirky lovers, villainous villains who will be thwarted, puerile “life lessons”–you’ll find it in books written for all ages.

The best books that are appropriate for children to read are also complex enough for adults to read. Consider Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories. A children’s book? I don’t know. I read very different things in the same book when I was a teenager, and then 15 years later. What was a fantastic romp through dreamworlds, filled with sly little linguistic winks, and complete with a happy ending for the good guys, felt quite different to me when I read it as an adult. I saw more in the barely-discussed relationship between Haroun’s parents; I saw a fair amount of thinly-disguised commentary on politics and censorship. These things are obvious to the adult reader. Not so to the child.

Of course there are books that don’t hold up. But I think that’s true of books written for adults too. I was reading adult fiction by the time I was 10 (I actually read more YA than ever before when I was teaching middle school for a couple of years), and I assure you that many of those books I would not waste time re-reading. There are plenty of books that don’t age well; often, you have to be an inexperienced reader for them to pass muster.

Consider C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia. I quite enjoyed them when I read them for the first time, as a pre-teen. I re-read the first one about ten years later, as an undergraduate. It was like reading a totally different book, one that–well, let’s just say that I saw all the things that critics say. I had an unsettling dream that night about Aslan being all judgy. ::shudder::

Two examples come to mind of writing that is intended for children, and amuses them greatly, but fails to amuse the more sophisticated viewer: Darkwing Duck and Pinky and the Brain. Yup. Disappointments–the latter more so than the former. Yes, these are television shows, but there are plenty of books that fall into the same category.

Here is a thought. I am of the opinion that so-called “genre fiction” is generally terrible writing. The excuse there is, “I’m so busy building alternate worlds that I can’t be bothered about creating awesome prose at the same time.” Every time you state a caveat for a book–“oh, but it is sci-fi”; “oh, but it is a fantasy novel”; “oh, but it’s specifically written for fans of noir-style detective stories starring werewolves”–you make an excuse for it. And “YA” might as well be a genre. The best books are the ones that move readers, independent of the reader’s age, often independent of how old the book is, and definitely independent of genre.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I think that people should read what makes them happy. I certainly encourage people to grow as readers, but if all you want to do is read trashy romances, whatever your reasons are, that’s just fine.

I do think there are beautiful worlds waiting to be explored, in books that may or may not have originally been written for children, in books written over the last so many centuries. There are books in which the plot is engrossing, the characters thought-provoking, and the prose luminous. If you do wish to take upon yourself the burden of being ashamed of what you read–not something I recommend–then I suggest you do so on the basis of the quality of the writing itself, not on the basis of who the intended audience is.

Afterthought: I came upon this rather lovely piece about children’s literature in the New Yorker. It’s fascinating to see what adults think children’s literature “should” or “should not” be.

On being ready

Two and a half years ago, I was sitting in my therapist’s office, telling her how I actively stressed over my body every single day. Every single day I would bemoan to myself my unacceptable fatness, my embarrassing out-of-shapeness, my lame avoidance tactics where the gym was concerned, and the ugh-what-a-lump I saw when I looked in the mirror. It was very stressful, I said. (No kidding.) My therapist, a small,  unflappable woman, did not actually shrug but the shrug was in her voice when she said, “So, stop.”

Stop?! I looked at her, amazed. Was she crazy? “If I stop fussing over my body,” I said, “I will get nothing done to fix it.” She looked at me and said, “What are you getting done now?” And I had to admit: “Nothing.”

This therapist had already proven her worth to me at a time when I was dealing with a stressful business school program and a fairly traumatic personal situation. I’d come to trust her. And so I said to myself: “Okay. I’m going to try this. I’m just… going to stop thinking about my body and how fat I am.”

It took a couple of years for me to earn back my own trust. I looked at myself in the mirror and said, “This is what you look like. Now stop buying  clothes that look like tents and stop hoarding old clothes you outgrew.” I bought clothes for my size, clothes that felt “true” to how I like to dress. I stopped thinking in terms of, “When I am back to Size x, I will…” I threw out the clothes I’d been holding on to from several dress sizes ago. I didn’t love my body; that’s asking too much, perhaps. But I honored it and respected it.

This past March, I found myself thinking, “Y’know, I’d like to work out. And I am ready to try eating better.” So I started doing both, signing up with a nutritionist and signing up with a self-taught fitness guy at a nearby gym. Neither of person worked out for me– stories for another time– but that didn’t stop me from continuing what I’d started. And that’s because I was doing it just for me, and not out of any sense of external pressure.

When I was ready, I was ready, and I knew. It was not an ecstatic realization; it was a small, quiet, centered voice saying, “All right. Let’s do this.”

It has taken me 8 years to get to this point.

Got the sniffles?

A dear friend recently broke up with her boyfriend. Amicable though the parting was, and unambiguous though the decision was, her heart has been heavy. She tells me how things are going: how she does her best to spend time with her friends, or to focus on her professional engagements, but how the sadness is inescapable.

I found myself saying, at one point, “You can do your best to alleviate the pain a little, but it’s like the common cold, y’know? It just takes its own time to run its course.” There was a beat of silence, and I feared I had offended her with the comparison. Then she started laughing. “That,” she said, “is the perfect analogy.” So let’s see how far I can take it.

How a break-up is like the common cold: three striking similarities

One: They can happen at any time, but both have peak seasons.

The common cold is most common at certain times of year: winter, or monsoon, for instance. In the winter or the monsoon, when weather conditions are cold and damp, our immune systems are vulnerable to viruses, and we’re in somewhat more confined spaces with other people.

The break-up typically peaks in late very early January and in mid-February. In early January, one has often seen a partner in the larger context of the family; under this duress, which can take several forms, the break-up is not uncommon. In mid-February, break-ups typically follow in the wake of a marked absence of offerings of chocolate.

However, as is so abundantly evident, peak seasons though there be, the break-up, the common cold, can happen at any time of year.

Two: You typically see it coming, though not always.

It begins with a tickle in the throat, or sniffly nose, or perhaps a certain leaden sensation in the head or the limbs, and you just know you’re about to get sick. But sometimes it comes out of nowhere.

It begins with a sinking sensation in the heart and a dawning realization in the head, and you just know you’re about to get single. But sometimes it comes out of nowhere.

Three: You can’t hurry the healing process. Each must run its course.

You can take medication to ease some of the symptoms of the common cold, but you cannot shorten its duration. Similarly, the healing time that a break-up requires cannot be shortened, though its pain can be eased a little with the company of good friends, and chocolate.

How a break-up is not like the common cold: one critical difference

Unlike the common cold, break-ups are not contagious.

That’s right! Study after scientific study confirms that, when your friend goes through a break-up, you do not have to avoid her, or wash your hands after you hug her. In fact, both she and you will feel better for spending time together on such timeless activities as painting nails, making business plans for start-ups, or discussing whether art can exist without politics.

The end

Faced with death, we imagine an afterlife. Faced with a door closing, we imagine a window. Faced with an experience ending, we wonder what’s next.

This is the end. Stay in this moment. Say goodbye.

.

——–

Day 100.

Third Arm: Part 10

As the sun crept over the horizon and the village began to stir to life, Anita rose from the steps and went inside the house, locking and bolting the door behind her. She closed the windows and drew all the curtains shut. She went into the bedroom, letting the shawl slip from her shoulders to the floor, unfastening her dress as she walked, and lying down naked on the bed. Drawing a thin sheet over herself, she fell asleep.

Through that whole day, and the night, she slept, waking only late the following morning. For a moment after her eyes opened, she lay in bed. She had slept so deeply. Slowly, she lifted the sheet covering her body and rose out of bed, marveling at the clarity and lightness she felt. Tucking the third arm under her other arm as usual, Anita got dressed. She felt entirely calm.

She fetched a sturdy bag and placed inside it a few articles of clothing, some bread, some cheese, some fruit, a flagon of water, a small blanket. A moment’s hesitation–then she scribbling a note and placed it on the bed, weighting it down with a book. Then, pulling a hooded cloak over her dress, Anita left the house, walking briskly towards the woods.

.

———-

Day 99.

disheveled limbs

under a sky poised to rain we
lie in the grass–disheveled limbs–
fingers like drunk bees, heavy, haphazard–

[       ]
when you turn and say
[       ]

your words are like ice-cold lemonade
sliding down the back of my throat
on a hot summer day

.

———-

Day 98. [          ]– coming soon.

Sally

Sally is an anomaly, a relatively young woman in the old boys’ club.

They didn’t take her seriously in her classes at first. She was one of the few undergraduate women majoring in finance and she could tell no one thought she would last long. She showed them. She graduated with honors, got an MBA from a top-tier school and came to this firm. Within a few years, she was running a division herself. Oh, people talked. There were nasty rumors–sexual in nature, naturally— about how she landed the role, and snide remarks, but they quietened down soon enough. It is difficult to dislike Sally once you know her, sensible, reliable, warm Sally.

She works hard, is unafraid to say she doesn’t know something, and defends her people ferociously. Ari remembers once making a huge mistake–he reversed the calculation while converting currencies, a tiny mistake, but it cost a high-profile client a few million dollars. Sally called Ari in to her office immediately, and shredded him to bits. He had felt about two inches high. Then they went in to the office of Sally’s boss, and to Ari’s immense astonishment, Sally proceeded to defend Ari, explaining that it was a small mistake, that Ari was one of her best workers, that they could recover most of the money without too much trouble, that this could happen to anyone, that Ari already had taken responsibility. Ari stood there astonished as she spoke. Her boss nodded gravely and gave Ari only a very minor dressing down.

Everyone on Sally’s team has a story like this one. She is unafraid to take her people to task, but is always fair and always stands up for her team who, in turn, would walk through fire for her. In the six months that she has been in this position, she has become one of the most trusted, respected people in the office.

This morning, Sally is a bit flustered. The new intern is due to arrive at 11 am, after HR is done with her. Sally had liked Brittany right away and it had been an easy enough decision to hire her. But now that she was about to start, Sally found she had too much on her hands to think about an intern. And then there was the matter of Drew.

Sally and Drew have been together for ten years, friends first, lovers later and then, without really talking about it, partners. Drew moved in six years ago and they haven’t looked back since. Sally’s socially conservative parents had been horrified; Drew’s family, an old, monied Boston family, had simply ignored their relationship and then ignored Drew as well. It hadn’t been easy on anyone.

At work, Sally is open, warm, accessible–except about her personal life. She is entirely tight-lipped about that and no one quite knows why. Of course the rumors abound. Why is Drew never seen? Does this “Drew” even exist? Why does Sally have no pictures in her office? The gossip reaches Sally’s ears, of course, but she never rises to the bait.

No one has guessed Sally’s secret. Yet.

Drew is a woman, and she no longer wants to stay hidden from Sally’s colleagues.

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———-

Day 97. Thanks to my wonderful W, part of whose story I wove into this one.

Dear fruitflies

Dear fruitflies, or whatever the hell you are,

I hope you had a good time with the fruit while I was away for two weeks. But the gig is up. I’m back and the fruit has been thrown out. Exactly how much longer do you plan to hang around? Based on past experience, I thought that you’d be gone in search of new haunts within a few days of this kitchen being purged of such delicacies as overripe pears. It has been three days and you are still here.

Upon my return, I encouraged you to explore the wonders of the garbage cans on the side of the house. Cow the resident/itinerant cat and his buddies sometimes poke holes in the bags inside, in search of treats. You might consider, I said, finding your way in there and hanging out. But no. You persisted in my kitchen.

Well, that was your final notice and now the gloves are off. Tonight, I shall implement this simple, well-researched and devilishly clever ploy: I shall put some apple cider vinegar and a bit lemon-scented dish soap in a disposable cup with a funnel over it. Terrible, I know.

Goodbye.

Cheerily,
noteventherain

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———-

Day 96.

Now Hiring

noteventherain

___________________________________________

Currently accepting applications for: Great Starting Job (GSJ)
___________________________________________

Overview of noteventherain

noteventherain was established nearly 3 decades ago and has provided clients with customized solutions for a variety of problems in organizational strategy, people management and public relations. We are a firm with strong personal values, integrity, a triple bottom line (no jokes about bottoms, please), great spelling, an occasionally stymieing sense of humor and a marked fondness for earrings.

Overview of Position

The GSJ position is highly competitive and can begin as early as within two weeks of an offer being made. The GSJ requires that noteventherain have stimulating, challenging and interesting work to do in a professional and friendly environment. The GSJ is responsible for giving noteventherain hands-on experience in multiple projects with varied foci, as well as for providing the necessary tools and environment for noteventherain to succeed, such as professional development opportunities, a sane supervisor, a mentor or two, and colleagues who don’t make us want to throttle them before lunch. The ideal GSJ will also provide noteventherain with opportunities for career growth.

Qualifications

The ideal GSJ candidate will:
– Hail from an energetic, entrepreneurial, hands-on organization with happy, motivated, dedicated employees
– Offer a salary that allows a reasonable lifestyle (defined as the ability to live in a sunny 1BR in a safe, pleasant neighborhood and still have money leftover for things like, oh, I don’t know, groceries, or savings… maybe even both!)
– Offer full health benefits and retirement options
– Be intellectually challenging but with reasonable expectations
– Preferably be centered around one or a combination of the following: education reform; organizational strategy; organizational behavior; management consulting; leadership development and training; writing awful but vaguely entertaining verse.
– Be located in one of the following cities: San Francisco Bay Area (greatly preferred), Paris, New York, London, Washington, D.C., Boston, Chicago.

Compensation

noteventherain offers a competitive package that combines (a) the creative, unusual insight of a liberal arts training with (b) a teacher’s capacity to manage multiple stakeholders while performing with limited resources under strenuous conditions, and (c) rigorous quantitative analytical skills honed at a top-tier business school. noteventherain is willing to negotiate length of work hours and nature of specific work.

Note

Applicants for the Perfect Starting Job position may use the same procedure, except to specify PSJ rather than GSJ in the subject line.

Contact

Interested and qualified candidates should email a description [500 – 1000 words] of their fit for the GSJ position to noteventherain at yourockheresahundredgrand dot com. Please specify compensation offered, and please feel free to send outrageous gifts to woo us.

_______________________________________________________________

.

————-

Day 95. Now I just sit back and wait. Right?

Outrage

I hear variations on this often: “I couldn’t possibly work in education, because I just get so angry about all the problems!”

It’s very simple. When you really care about something, sure, you get angry, but then you put that anger aside and get down to work. You do something about it. You channel your anger into something constructive. If you are “so angry” that you couldn’t work in the education space, I’m thinking that you just have this sort of self-righteous anger and possibly the delusion that you have the answers, and they’re so simple, so why are other people just screwing up. Anger is a selfish, useless thing. If you really care about something, you will put your anger aside and get down to work.

Some people are quick to blame. It’s the politicians. It’s the principals. It’s the parents who are poor and uneducated. Or the perennial favorite, it’s the crappy teachers. Now, really. If there were one cause, or even a handful of causes, to which one could clearly point, wouldn’t we have solved the problem by now? Incredible, bright minds spend lifetimes thinking about problems in education and doing things to make alleviate them. But the problems persist. That alone should inspire humility in you and me as we prepare to join the movement for education reform.

If you are outraged, truly outraged, do something about it.

.

———-

Day 94.

Judgment

W and I were talking to a classmate about our interest in education reform. We were saying something about how there are a lot of problems with the way the system is right now, and our classmate snorted and said, “Yeah, shitty teaching!” and I thought, no, but one problem is that people like you make snap judgments about the system with no basis for those judgments. As if on cue, he began to rant about the shortcomings of the system, concluding with, “I mean, I know this. I’m a product of the system. It’s not complicated!”

Now: you use a toothbrush, right? Every single day? Sometimes twice or thrice a day? Does that make you qualified to engineer a toothbrush?

You live in a house, or an apartment. You even fix things around the house sometimes. Does that qualify you to be an architect?

You live in a city. Maybe you were born here! You know it well, its streets, its culture, its weather, its people, its shortcomings. Does that qualify you to be its mayor?

So let me ask you now: you went to a school. Does that qualify you to be a teacher? A principal? Superintendent or chancellor? US Secretary of Education?

I’m going to take a wild guess and say… no.

Go ahead and say what you want to say. Just as you have the right to comment about your city, your house and your toothbrush, you have the right to comment about schools. But understand that the right to comment is different from being right.

I remember talking to someone at a bus stop about the route of a bus being changed. He spoke bitterly and at length about how politicians don’t care and how stupid it was to change the route and so forth. I wondered, but what makes you think you understand the whole problem? It is quite possible, yes, that this route change is entirely political and misguided. But it is also possible that the route is inefficient, that there are other buses that cover those areas, that it would save the city a lot of money, yes? Until we fully understand a problem, how can we comment on it?

And if you’re responding with, I know everything I need to know, chances are you don’t.

.

———

Day 93.

Women’s shoes

Why do women wear uncomfortable shoes? Why do they buy shoes in which they cannot walk except in pain, shoes which make them miserable within an hour? Surely it is possible to wear shoes that are both beautiful and comfortable, shoes that look good but don’t hurt your feet, knees and back? Sure, you can say, “But they’re so beautiful!” Really? Beauty is often a matter of socialization. Someone somewhere thought footbinding led to beautiful feet. Many cultures alter the body in ways that they say makes it more beautiful, but which outsiders consider mutilation.

I think that a culture in which women are considered beautiful if they are wearing ridiculous shoes is one in which women will simply not succeed. Not only are they submitting to someone else’s idea of beauty, but also, by accepting and celebrating that idea, they are undermining their own cause. Ladies, how seriously will the world take you if you are in shoes that prevent you from walking on cobblestones or grass, or running to catch a bus, or striding confidently without fear of damage?

We need a movement, a revolution. Women need to stand up for themselves and create shoes that are stylish and comfortable. There is absolutely no reason to think that a woman perched precariously atop six inch stillettos is anything but silly. True beauty comes from strength, and no one is strong when her feet are killing her.

.

———

Day 92.

Blessing

You don’t need today’s ceremonies to know how you feel about this man, or he about you, but ritual helps us demarcate what is special, the turning points in our life. And today we celebrate the beginning of your lives together.

I wish for you unadulterated happiness, of course, but such a thing is rare, and perhaps impossible, since happiness is to some extent known in contrast to sorrow, defined by what it isn’t. And so I wish for you, this: May you have

the ability to remain even-keeled through life’s inevitable storms;
the satisfaction of knowing that you love him just as he loves you;
the pleasure of small things, small joys;
the certainty that you are good, beautiful and of great value to the world; and
the strength of close friends and family.

I hope your marriage is a happy one, that it provides stability, warmth and love to both of you, and that it anchors you in a world that is shifting and uncertain.

And should anything go wrong, love, I’ll be right here for you.

.

——-

Day 91. For R, whom I love fiercely.

Lighting bushes

I have been asked to light the bushes.
I will do so with care.
Armed with some lights and some vim and some zest,
These bushes I will ensnare.
No bush in this place will remain in the dark,
Not while I am on duty.
The bushes will all be decorated by me,
And all will revel in their beauty.
I am the master of bushes, you see–
And what more is left to be said?
For the reason that I excel in this work
Is: I use both my heart and my head.
With pride I announce that this work is my joy,
That I am in fact a bush-lighter,
And I light all these bushes with minimal lights
Because I can pull the lights tighter.
I fail to see, sir, what mirth lies in this,
Or why you are snorting with laughter.
I have no time for this–there are bushes to light–
But you I will deal with… after.

.

———–

Day 90. This one is for MahiVe, who will be lighting the bushes at R’s wedding.

Dear Parent

Dear Parent,

I have some terrible news to share with you today. Your precious little angel is a spoiled, obnoxious little brat. When others smile and say “so cute,” inside, they are thinking, “No child of mine would ever…” or, less kindly, “Now there is a child I’d like to slap.”

You must be devastated. After all, isn’t the little darling so pretty, so talented, so cute, so funny? Well… yes, but not as much as you think and certainly not as much as she thinks. Yes, I know, I too have been asked by my parents, on occasion, to sing. I was dead shy about it, but either I would  say no and my parents would drop the matter, or I would sing and then go off and do my own thing. Your child, your little cutie pie, actually asked us to turn our phones off. Well, let’s be honest. She demanded. Precious much? I was willing to let it pass, and I laughed along with everyone else. But when she announced, “And no one should be reading any books,” well, I wondered how exactly you had been bringing her up.

You did notice, right, that she spent about fifteen minutes making demands? She wanted a curtain so that she could make her entrance. A sari was provided for this. She then saw fit to insist that the people holding the sari stand a certain way. She wanted a microphone–a real one, she specified. She also wanted an announcement: “Say ladies and gentlemen…!” She wanted musical accompaniment but no clapping along. It is a small miracle that she didn’t also demand M&Ms but only the green ones.

Consider how, while she was enacting this drama, her cousin was in the corner, quietly playing a few rather pleasing arpeggios on a keyboard. Not even a full piece! But when he finished, we all clapped. Did you fail to see how miffed she was when she realized she had been outshone? And then, when you–you–began, at our genuine urging, to sing, did you see how she threw herself bodily at you, saying loudly, insistently, “Mama! Mama! I have something to say to you”? When your song ended and we all moved on to someone else, and she buried her face in your lap and sulked, while you stroked her hair, did it occur to you once to say to her, “Love, you can’t always demand attention”? No? I didn’t think so.

In Bangla we have a word: paka. There is no adequate translation in English for the nuances of the word, which literally means “ripe,” as in a fruit, but it applies idiomatically to a child who speaks or acts in a way that is too old for her, in a distinctly unflattering, inappropriate way. There is never anything charming, pleasant or endearing about a child who is paka. Your angel is paka.

You, madam, have done a great disservice to your child. She will be the one that bosses other children around. She will be the one who demands the lead in the school play, and the one that teachers will want to strangle. She will be the one with the shallow friends. She will be the one that men will call “high maintenance”–or other, less kind words.

I know all this must come as a terrible shock to you. You are disbelieving. That is normal. It is denial, the first stage in dealing with loss, and what you have lost is the illusion that your child is a star among children, a shining example of glorious genes and educated nurture. It is a terrible loss.

But fear not! There is hope yet. After all, she is only four. With patience, with love, with understanding, with kindness, with firmness, with objectivity–with all these things, you can teach her to be gracious, generous, humble. You can teach her that if she really sings–no matter how well or badly, but genuinely, with her heart, without demands–then the world will listen, and applaud.

Love,
noteventherain

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———-

Day 89. This really happened. But no, I didn’t actually say all this. I fear, though, that my face might have betrayed my thoughts.

Bethany 3

Bethany spends a couple of hours the night before her first day, agonizing over what to wear and what to carry. She decides against carrying her laptop. She is guessing they will have paper and pens for her, but is carrying a small notebook and a pen anyway. Also, a book to read, just in case. She considers packing lunch and decides against it; it seems a bit nerdy and she wants to stay flexible. But she slips a granola bar and a pear into her bag. And a pair of flat shoes, just in case. An umbrella. A spare sweater? No, now her bag is getting heavy. Maybe she should carry a different bag? Something smaller? Something more professional than this messenger bag she’s had for two years?

And what about clothes? Her counselor at the University Career Center always advises erring on the side of conservative when it comes to clothes. She opts for a plain black suit with a knee length skirt and a lavender button-down shirt with white pin stripes. A pair of pearl studs in her ears, simple black pumps on her feet, and her hair in a bun. So dull, she thinks. She rearranges her hair. A braid? Too schoolmarmish. Loose? Probably too wild, given her curls. She opts for a low slung ponytail held in place with a barrette–a softer look than the pulled-back bun but still contained.

She sighs at her reflection. She looks so dull. Professional, yes; polished, perhaps; mature, probably. But dull. There is nothing in the mirror that reflects anything real about herself, she thinks. But it will be Day 1 and she must be careful to observe what is or isn’t acceptable at the firm.

Bethany turns away, slips out of the clothes and hangs them up neatly. She steps into a beat up pair of shorts and a tank top. She slips into bed and turns out the light, but  is so wired that she lies in the dark with her eyes wide open. Bethany wonders what her colleagues will be like. She has heard some real horror stories about the chauvinism and conservatism at the firm. Her boss seems nice, though. She seemed genuinely warm. And she is a woman–an anomaly in the upper management of this firm. Bethany hopes Sally will prove as kind and thoughtful as she seemed during the interview. Despite herself, her eyes begin to close.

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———–

Day 88. Tired. Traveled, schlepping a 35 lb suitcase and a messenger bag. I’m going to take a wild guess and say I overpacked. But I was so careful! And it’s for 5 days! And for a wedding! With many events! …and I’m exhausted and I need to sleep. Should not have had two glasses of wine at M’s place, given my tiredness. But it’s done now. And I apologize for the ensuing lameness.

Ari 2

When Ari returns to work on Wednesday, everyone is solicitous, asking him if everything was fine. He makes up a story about having spent too much time in the sun on Monday afternoon and getting a bad headache from it. There are sympathetic clucks and he smiles bravely and changes the subject.

Sally discusses the report and other projects with him. Ari asks about the assistant position, which has stayed open for a while–Sally is very particular–and she says, “Oh! Yes, how could I forget? I decided to go with that young girl from FancyPants University.”

“I don’t think I met her,” Ari says, trying to remember.
“No, you were at a client site that day.”
“So she’s better than that guy from SomeOther University?”
“Yes. He knew significantly more about the finance world, but she seems… wiser, actually. She will probably be more open to learning things; he was a bit on the cocky side.”
“What’s her name?”
“Bethany. Bethany Aaronsohn. She begins in a couple of weeks. I was thinking to put her on one of your projects.”
“Well, then, I hope we get along,” Ari says, smiling. He knows Sally is particular about choosing people for her team who are personable, warm, kind. She has a horror of the stereotypical finance chauvinism.

He leaves Sally’s office for his cube. His is one of the larger ones, and by the windows. This new girl will have one of the smaller ones, probably, he thinks, the one just outside Sally’s office. He remembers coming in fresh-faced and eager, four years ago. He remembers the initial euphoria of the work he did and, even more, the lifestyle–the sumptuous parties, the perks, the feeling of suddenly being able to buy a nice watch just because he felt like it. And he remembers how quickly he came to hate it all, hate the showy ways of his colleagues and clients, hate the long hours, hate the stiff, conservative attitudes. He wonders what it will be like for this girl–Brittany? Whitney? He has already forgotten.

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——–

Day 87.

Bethany 2

The phone goes silent and Bethany, who had been pacing, stomach in knots, falls backwards onto her bed. Relief floods her. She had been worried sick about not having a job lined up–her medical insurance would run out very shortly. She doesn’t know whether an abortion was covered under insurance (probably not, she thinks) but it can’t hurt to have insurance anyway. It occurs to her that the job means that she will be able to pay rent, buy groceries, live. She will begin in two weeks. That gives her time to pack her few belongings and move to an apartment downtown. Her salary isn’t quite princely but it is generous and she looks forward to finding a sunny little one-bedroom place.

She pauses, realizing that she hasn’t been thinking about the job itself, just the benefits it will bring. As an economics and business double major, she has always been interested in the workings of large financial institutions. Now, she will begin on the lowest rung at _____, the venerable financial institution, in an assistant position. She confirmed: she would not just be a personal secretary. She’ll get to work on real projects. Her would-be boss had seemed quite amiable when they’d met a month ago (her fourth interview for the position!), but the silence thereafter had her despairing. The call from HR this morning has just made her day.

She breathes out slowly. Her heart is racing. She needs to call her parents and let them know the news. She wants to announce it on Facebook, too, but resists the temptation–how often has she felt annoyed by similar announcements from her acquaintances? “Show off,” she would think, or, “yeah, rub it in.”

Now she starts feeling excited. She will call her parents and then the realtor she has been talking to. Cautiously optimistic, she has been keeping tabs on apartments downtown, just in case an offer came through from one of the several firms at which she interviewed. She had seen the perfect apartment a couple of weeks ago; she is hoping hoping hoping that it is still available. But first, her parents. She picks her phone up again, and calls.

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———–

Day 86.

Ed

I think that if we give kids a fair chance in schools, then we give them the tools to shape their own lives. Then it’s in their hands. But as long as we don’t give them those tools, then we have failed them, and we cannot hold them entirely responsible for things like teen pregnancy or drug dealing or gang violence or whatever. What alternatives have we given them? And it’s not enough to say the alternatives exist—we have to show them the alternative in a meaningful way.

I am reminded of Arthur Dent, who, upon discovering that his house was about to be razed, was told that the notice had been posted clearly in a closet in a basement somewhere in some obscure building. So: the information was out there. Can he really be held responsible for not know it? I mean, this story is out of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. So it’s all meant to be pretty funny. But when we say that kids ought to “know better” than to do some of the dumb things they do, really, isn’t that situation exactly the same as Arthur’s?

And to some extent it is pointless to ask why I care about education. Why does someone care about entrepreneurship? Or law? Or policy? Or running a shop? Or starting a family? I can defend why education is an important thing to care about, but is it not meaningless to ask why education matters more to me than, say, running a consulting firm (or whatever)? It just so happens that I care about this and not something else. That’s all! I don’t try to push this down other people’s throats: I don’t think it is reasonable to ask the whole world to give up their jobs and focus primarily on education. But just everyone needs to have some responsibility and some thought about, say, government, or environment, so also education needs to be on that level, because it is an integral part of society. To suggest a “survival of the fittest” approach to public education is to say also that it’s perfectly acceptable that some groups of people are simply not given a chance to succeed in the same way that other groups or people are.

Is it okay that a child born to a poor family has no chance to become the head of a multinational company, or a scientist, or a singer? The odds are so slim as to be, effectively, zero. But me, because I was born to this family, I take it for granted that I travel the world, and live in New York, and get an MBA from Carnegie Mellon.

Is it not defeatist and apathetic to say don’t attempt to fix the problem because you can’t fix it? I don’t think I can fix the education system. But I hope to help pull in the right direction so that other people can build on my work, and others on theirs, and in the process we continually improve the situation. Do political revolutions happen overnight? How long were the British in India before they left? How many generations of freedom fighters poked and prodded the problem to lay the ground for Gandhi to do what he did? He didn’t work in a vacuum. All his satyagraha stuff was well and good, but it relied on the work of the Extremists and Moderates who came before him. I am not trying to be the Gandhi of education. I am not even trying to be one of the big names. I just want to help pull in the right direction.

Nothing matters; I can do this or I can be homeless and destitute or I can run a tobacco lobbying group—whatever. In the end I die. I don’t think there is any afterlife and in any case I won’t know till I get there, so it makes little sense to count on it. So I must do in this life what matters to me, and what makes me feel like my life is something I’m okay with. I can defend it to myself. That’s my choice, my decision. We all try to have meaning in our lives, don’t we? Well, I think my life is meaningful if I am making other people’s lives a bit better, if I am helping to create a more just world. That’s all.

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———–

Day 85.

Ari

Ari is lying in bed. It is Tuesday morning. For the first time in his four years at ______, the venerable financial institution, Ari is considering taking a “mental health day.” He reaches for his cell phone and calls his manager. He can hear the phone ringing at the other end; quickly he hangs up. Then he realizes that Sally will see that she missed his call, and–and even as his thought is forming, his phone rings and it is Sally.

Ari takes the call. “Hello?” he says, and his voice comes out as a croak because his mouth is so dry. Sally sounds concerned. “Ari–everything okay?” He hedges. “Um,” he says, “I’m not feeling great…” Sally immediately says, “You sound pretty bad–take the day. The only thing I really need from you today is that update on the McPherson account–think you can email it to me?” Ari nods, catches himself, and replies, “Yes, of course–thank you.”

He lies back in bed. The update she wants is already done; he has completed a five-page report with a two-page appendix. She will be pleased to read the contents. His laptop is, as usual, on his nightstand; he opens it and in a few minutes, has emailed Sally the report. Ari puts the laptop away, slides down under the covers and buries his face in his pillow.

He hates his job with a passion. He doesn’t care any more about making wealthy people even wealthier. He doesn’t care about the cushy perks and generous salary. He doesn’t want to wear conservative suits anymore. He doesn’t want–argh. He doesn’t want to be doing this any more. For four years he has plodded grimly forward. Good at his job, he has been promoted and feted and given raises. Each day he has hated his work a little more.

But at the end of this month, he turns thirty. And he is determined to live the third decade of his life in a way that makes him happy. A shiver runs through him. Happiness. His whole life so far has been about success. Never happiness. Happiness was for the weak, for the silly, for the impractical, for the unambitious. But he has to admit that without happiness, he is, well, unhappy.

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———-

Day 84.

Clara

Clara is a vampire but no one believes her.

At 22, she was bitten in the neck by a gorgeous young man at a club. He stared at her with smoldering eyes before reaching out to hold her face with his cold hands. She thought, as he leaned in and tilted his head, that he was going to kiss her. But he bit her and she had gasped with pain. And then something heady rushed up her spine and she went weak in the knees. When she came to, her friends had her lying back in a booth in the corner and were murmuring worriedly. She smile at them brightly and knew herself to be immortal.

Now, five years later, she is tired of explaining herself to to people. How can she explain that all this “no reflection in mirrors” business is just silliness, just stories? The truth is that vampires simply prefer the dark, drink human bloody and live forever. The rest is just story-telling. Luckily, she has found a community–New York has all kinds of people–and feels understood there.

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——–

Day 83.

Charmaine

Charmaine was born Sherry-Mae and hates the country sound of it. Somewhere in high school, when her family moved from a small town in Alabama to ____, she began introducing herself to her new classmates as Charmaine. She went to the trouble of letting the administration know that she preferred to go by “Charmaine” so that it was that name that showed up on class registers. In fact, just a few months ago, right before it was time to start thinking about college applications, she convinced her parents to allow a legal name change. She dresses carefully, differently, conscientiously reading Vogue and trying to emulate the latest trends. It helps that she is tall and slim, and that most clothes look good on her. But still for some reason she cannot fully penetrate the clique she so admires—the languid preppy kids with expensive cars and trust funds. It is as though they sense somewhere that she isn’t really a Charmaine, just a dressed up Sherry-Mae. She supposes that one giveaway is her parents—sensible, middle class Jared and Sandy Thomson. It is a small miracle that they allowed the name change, that they don’t comment too much on her clothes or on the people and activities on which she spends her time.

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————-

Day 82.

Bethany

Bethany is smart. She graduated just two weeks ago from a prestigious university with honors. She discovered this morning that she is pregnant. Unfortunately, the father is the guy she broke up with recently. Too bad it took her this long to find out what a loser he is.

She doesn’t want a child. She is barely 21. She has no idea how to get an abortion but knows she wants one. She’s not sure who to talk to. Her parents would be furious and sad, she imagines, if they found out she had had premarital sex—they are very religious. They would also probably not allow an abortion.

Luckily, they live far away and although they came for the graduation ceremony, they returned home shortly thereafter, while Bethany stayed on in the little house off campus that she shares with three other girls. This is all very convenient. She lives on her own, in a reasonably liberal state, is covered by health insurance for another two months, is in the process of interviewing for jobs and has a modest savings from her part-time jobs. For the moment, she is on relatively stable ground.

Still, briefly, she contemplates suicide. Slashing her wrists would be too messy and dramatic. She can’t imagine being able to knife herself. She doesn’t imagine drowning would be too pleasant. Running into traffic or jumping off a building could result in terrible injury instead of death, and Bethany likes to be efficient and certain about things. She concludes that it would have to be an overdose of sleeping pills. She could take them just before going to bed, fall asleep and that would be that.

In the next moment, she dismisses it. She is too much in love with life. She can’t imagine offing herself. It’s just an abortion—not the end of the world. She will recover and move on and be wiser for it.

The first step is for her to consult the oracle of her times: the Internet. She has no idea how to go about getting an abortion or what it will cost or entail, but a Google search is probably a good place to start.

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———–

Day 81.