Scrumtious Sentences: Best Book 09

Day 4 of Gwen Bell’s December blogging challenge:  Best Book '09

 The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

This was one of those books where, after reading a few sentences, I thought to myself, 'I'm in love. In love.  Where have you been hiding, Angela Carter?   I mean, there must be a road named after you somewhere, right?'

While reading The Bloody Chamber, her book of short stories based on famous fairy-tales, I wanted to eat her words, smear her beautiful sentences all over myself and lick them off one by one. 

If you love Thomas Hardy, as I do, you'll love Angela Carter.  Like Hardy, she writes prose with the exactitude of a poet.  Her stories are full of vivid imagery, but they are also plot driven.  There is nothing flowery or excessive about them.  They keep your heart racing. Most of the stories in The Bloody Chamber are recognizable but twisted up in all kinds of fascinating ways, probing at the psychological and mythological depths of fatal attraction.  The title story, based on the Bluebeard tale, is chilling with a bit of wicked humor.  Puss-in-Boots, in contrast, is a naughty romp. 

Angela Carter died of cancer in 1992 at the height of her powers, which might at least partly account for why she is not more widely known outside of Great Britain. 

Salman Rushdie was a friend and huge fan.  Here's a link to Rushdie's tribute, which gives a nice overview of her entire body of work: http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/12/27/specials/carter-rushdie.html

Rushdie suggests that Carter's fame might snowball after her death.  I hope it's happening.  She deserves it, and the world needs her tremendous gifts.

Spider Alchemy

Day 3 of Gwen Bell’s December blogging challenge:  Best Article '09

The earth is sacred.  I remember this when I'm standing on the street at dawn under a Bradford pear tree bursting with birdsong as the sky slowly turns from silver to peach or I'm watching a rose bloom in the snow.

But what about when I'm running late for someplace, talking on my cell phone in the back of a fossil fueled cab?  Do I remember then?  When my life seems to be speeding out in front of me, racing away from the natural world, sometimes a dramatic reminder of the profound beauty and alchemical power our earth possesses can bring me back into a state of wonder.

This really exists:  Golden silk threads that are 5 to 6 times stronger than steel and as soft as cashmere, created by large spiders in Madagascar.  The shimmering golden silk would make Rumpelstiltskin proud.  Scientists have been trying to emulate the material for use in NASA, and have failed to be able to do it thus far. 

Fishermen in Madagascar have been using the thread to weave simple nets for centuries, but the silk webbing is too time consuming to extract (painlessly and harmlessly) from the spiders to consider using it commercially. 

Still, two European men became obsessed with the idea of weaving with this spider silk and, with local women doing most of the real labor, they spent 5 years creating a large tapestry, which is now on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City until February ‘10. 

The men spent half a million dollars of their own money to do it.  They were called crazy.  Maybe they are.  But it is a crazy that I understand.  To me, the tapestry is like a visual poem, a ballad from and to the earth.  It is singing, ‘Look how amazing the earth is, the creatures of the earth!  Just look!’  It takes my breath away.

Here's the link to the fascinating New York Times article that inspired me trek to the museum and then wade through all of those old dioramas to see it for myself.    http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/23/arts/design/23spiders.html

Oh, and I'd like a side of bigotry with that too, please

Day 2 of Gwen Bell’s December blogging challenge.  The prompt for the day was ‘Best restaurant experience ‘09.’  I was going to write a post tonight about a cavernous, Kubla Khan’s pleasure dome type restaurant in New York City.  I had avoided going to this place since its opening several years ago because I’d told myself that I don’t like big flashy restaurants.  I like intimate quiet ones.  I live inside the spectacle that is Manhattan and don’t crave more of it.  But then one night the stars aligned and I found myself there in the middle of fashion week no less, packed with designers and models in neon stilettos. 

It was an amazing night.  My friends and I joined a birthday party full of Londoners on holiday at a long communal table, and ate delectable dumplings dripping with exotic sauces while being expertly cared for by friendly staff.  There was none of the cool, sneering attitude I had expected to find in a place designed to see and be seen.

Then I remembered that I knew the guy who had probably made most of the restaurant's final hiring decisions.  I had worked with him as a waiter years ago.   He had the rare ability to bring up both the morale and the efficiency of an entire crew of jaded, exhausted performers, misfits, and immigrant restaurant workers.   He'd thrown me several life rafts of encouragement during my first wobbly weeks of working at a big midtown restaurant fresh out of school and freshly dealing with being just another waiter/aspiring artist in the city.

Kindness was clearly valued in the staff here.  Wow. (I hadn’t let on that I knew any managers, so the kindness couldn’t be chalked up to deferential treatment).

I'd cut myself off from ever going to this big restaurant before because in a blanket statement I'd decided, ‘I don’t like restaurants like that’.   This is what I was going to write about, but then the news of the New York Senate’s vote 38-24 against the gay marriage amendment came in, and after dinner tonight I crawled into bed and turned out the light.  My body felt weighted down by lead balloons.

I had stupidly thought that my beloved New York recognized the immense contributions of its gay and lesbian constituency.  Doesn’t every straight identified person know a gay couple, a gay family? The anti-gay rights people are cutting themselves off from hundreds of thousands of loving families.  It's like my bias against the restaurant that turned out to be my “favorite restaurant experience ‘09”.  I had assumed that I knew what it was all about without ever having set foot in the door.  The no voters and the people they represent are stuck in straitjackets of rigid beliefs.

Over time, the 38 no votes will be seen to be on the wrong side of history.  But in the present, there are families who are denied health and life insurance from their partners’ employers, and there are citizens and commitments that are not being honored with the respect they deserve. It just so happens that the manager of that great restaurant has a long-term same-sex partner, and they have a child together.  Today New York has said to them, and to countless others, ‘we don’t care about you’.   This has to change.

Carolina In My Mind

I am stepping up to the Best of  09 blogging challenge put out by the wonderful social media maven & yogini Gwen Bell. Each day in December she gives a prompt.  It is a great kick in the pants to get into the habit of blogging more frequently, as well as a way to give thanks for some amazing experiences, people, and things that have been part of my life this year.  My goals: 1. Don't bore people who might read it. 2. Answer each prompt. 3. Inspiration--give it & get it.   December 1st is Best Trip 09. 

I tried writing a prose piece about this trip, but the experience didn't lend itself to it.  So, in a really surprising move for me, here's a poem-y kind of a thing.


an island somewhere off the coast of South Carolina


no t.v.
no cellphone
no laptop
no ipod
no commercials
no catalogues
no billboards

salt air perfume
bones melt into warm sand
the waves steady exhale
an invitation to do the same.
pick up a book
or put it down
read poetry or gossip
stare at the shifting clouds
lie in a hammock
sit in a grey cedar rocking chair
and watch the sunrise
listen to someone play the guitar
or walk silently through the surf under the moon

laugh with loved ones
beloved conspirators.
stirrers of inspiration.
acolytes in the church of beauty.

share simple food
fresh tomatoes
fried okra
boiled shrimp
caramel cake
conversation
about important things:
dreams especially.

ride the waves
play like otters
or runaways

sit on the dock at sunset
creekside lowtide
the green grasses deepening
against the fuchsia sky.

Dead Days

release of what is not
was not
could not be
what is over
get down into the dirt
back to the earth heart
the worm core
that center place
where all things blossom
blue fungi blooms
around the heart wood

there is life inside of death
the spider creeping over white eyes
terrifies because it is so gentle
the way the rain is gentle
as it seeps into the mud
creating momentary sculptures
mud people first people
a frothing pulsing hot birth
bursting through the carapace.

It is not the birth we expected.

lovedrunk freewrite in which I do something that scares me

I have no idea what I am going to write about.  None at all. I am writing about the blank page.

The last hour or so has seen me flitting around on twitter, peeling at my cuticle, reading the New York Times Sunday magazine, and thinking about working on the novel.  A procrastination snarl.  I am fairly famous for them.  They feel usual.

This is unusual, though, this blogging 'off the cuff' about nothing when I have at least 10 blog ideas in my mind.

What is really interesting me right now is my novel, and the play I am getting ready to workshop, and the opera I am dramaturging.

And this.   I've been thinking about my spiritual path.  I'm a Sufi.  To me, this means a seeker who is lovedrunk-- not just with the Divine, but with the world.

It has taken me four years of deep practice to define myself as Sufi.  A novice.  Learning slowly.  Its great, this slowness, learning something that takes many years to deepen into instead of something I'm supposed to 'master' after some six week course.

But  I'm not very comfortable with labels, and I'm even less comfortable discussing my spirituality.  That said, something has shifted and it feels innate.  Permanent, somehow.  A part of my core self.

To be lovedrunk is just what it sounds like.

Let's say I find myself holding a grudge.  For example, a woman I respect belittles a child in a crowded room.  I'm too shocked to respond before the moment passes.  I want to forgive her, but I simply can't.  She's made me feel powerless.  I can't shake it.  I want to shake her instead. 

Then one night I have a glass of wine, and another, and maybe one after that.  My heart is like a singing bird.  I happen to think about the person and find that the grudge is gone.  The love has returned.

Tipsily I dial, the phone is miraculously answered, I gently tell her how I felt and we make up.

Sufism finds ways to get to compassion, forgiveness, and love without the actual wine, and eventually embody those feelings not just in ecstatic states, but always.

The process is not always pretty or pleasant.  It can feel tough, though it can also be blissful.    I am a Sufi.  I needed to say that. 

Now to work on the novel.

*painting by Pakistani artist Shafique Farooqi

A Fabulous Hat or How Limitations Can Increase Creativity

I used to tell myself, 'I'll write when I have more time'. The opposite is actually true. The less time I have, the more feverishly I work. There is no time to second guess myself. Deadlines are genius. I love other constraints, too. They push my creativity in directions I wouldn't think to go.

The hat in the picture recently won first prize in the Garden Club of Virginia's 2009 rose show, category creative. The constraints were: make a modern creative arrangement using roses as the predominant flower and involving a hat. Take inspiration from the life of Richmond philanthropist Grace Arents, 1848-1926.

There is a haunting, ghost-like quality in arrangement's use of negative space. The choice to use a metal mesh hat form with a cloche shape evokes a bygone era, but the sweet pink roses and silvery leaves hint at something enchanted and hopeful. This hat tells a story.

It was made by my mother, Rosanne Temple-West Jones. She says that she wanted to invoke a sense of spirit and memory.

I'm giving myself one week to make some art involving this hat. I invite anyone else who feels like it to do the same, or make up your own constraints.  Write a story, poem, painting, etc. and I will post it on the blog. Thanks for the inspiration, Mummy!

Rilke, Limbo, & Snakeskin Leggins or: How Do I Make a Living Doing What I Love?

I want my job to pay my rent and a plane ticket to a meditation retreat in Bali. I also want it to be ecstatically satisfying, and this desire has had me holding every failure, success, regret, and thought pattern up to the light for scrutiny.

I’m getting there. I love what I do, but I’ve been trying to incorporate more of my artistic self into my herbal business because bringing out people’s creativity is a core piece of who I am, I’m great at it, and many of my clients tell me that they want help in this area of their lives. However the mystery remains; how to make it happen?

Rilke says that we need to love the questions themselves. I’ve been a Rilke fan since 14 and he’s always been right. But with my burning question searing a hole in my head, I decided to sign up for a group firestarter session with Danielle LaPorte, the author of Style Statement, and White Hot Truth, a blog that has been helping me get to the heart of the matter. Danielle is genius at inspiring entrepreneurs to fuel their businesses and lives with true passion.

About 19 women and one relaxed man gathered in the beautiful home of novelist and blogger Aidan Donnelley Rowley, to learn how to capitalize on work we love. I walked in fairly terrified, intimidated by thinking of entrepreneurs leap years ahead of me, but mostly made sleepless and queasy by the feeling that I was on the precipice of some deep change. Change is scary to me. It helped that everyone in the room radiated excitement and warmth.

Danielle was reassuring without being cloying. She spoke of the Bardo, the Tibetan Buddhist word for the liminal states of being: in-between places, limbo. I relaxed then. I reminded myself that I’m fairly comfortable with limbo. The first prize I ever won was for limbo queen when I was three. The one I’m experiencing right now in my business is normal. Deep exhale.

Danielle, like Rilke, believes in questions. Here’s a sampling:

• If you dropped acid and wrote your business plan, what would it look like?
  Write that first. Then write your business plan.
  
• What are people interested in when you talk?
  
• What do people thank you for?
  

Danielle was also very full of practical advice about how to increase your blog’s subscription list, how to budget time efficiently, etc. Her attention to the aesthetic and spiritual aspects of business (i.e. truth and beauty are as important as the bottom line) resonates with me deeply, so she’s a perfect teacher. And if (the boss of me) artistic self would rather hear it from a dread-headed philosopher in a grey cashmere sweater dress and green snakeskin leggings, then I’m very lucky such a one exists.

By the end of the three hours, with the help of some of the other wise ones in the room, I began to see where I’m headed.

** Awesome image found on Max "Bunny" Sparber's site

Evesdropping at the Theater

I love going to the theater alone because I don't have to wonder whether or not someone else is having a good time, and I get to eavesdrop on strangers. On most recent solo trip to BAM's Next Wave Festival I was typically running late, and didn't have to apologize to anyone as I breathlessly took my seat after sprinting from the subway.  


After the show it was fun to listen to audience reactions without having to participate in the debate myself. I wrote down my thoughts (not what I do when I'm with friends), and was probably clearer in my writing than I would have been if I'd been talking.

The show was In/I, a dance theater piece starring Juliette Binoche and Akram Khan. I loved it. You can read my review here.

A Book That Will Get You In The Mood... to Birth Freaky Brilliant Brain Children, a.k.a. Lynda Barry Rocks!

Last fall my fantastic friend Simone and I went to the New Yorker Festival and listened to Matt Groening and Lynda Barry chat about the artistic process. Simone and I walked away high on ideas, clutching our newly signed copies of Lynda Barry's book, WHAT IT IS, to our chests, clicking our heels all the way home.

Barry is an acclaimed comic strip writer and novelist, best known for Marlys from Ernie Pook's Comeek, as well as a playwright. I hope that sooner or later she will be just as well known for What IT IS, because it is one of those rare books I want to give to everyone I meet.

What excites me about the book is Barry's understanding of the interplay between visual creativity and writing. Like other mammals, humans tend to think, imagine, and remember in images, and yet when we write, we often forget about that. Playing with images helps us remember. The book is part graphic memoir, part creativity workbook, part exploration of the nature of art. It is impossible to read the book and not feel inspired.

After reading it for a bit I wanted to pick up a glue stick and some images and dance a little jig and then do some writing. It reminded me just how much fun the creative process can be. Whenever I open it, it feeds my desire for stories and fresh ideas while my eyes feast on Barry's deceptively simple ('I can do that too!') artwork.

It feels wrong to flatly state the shimmery ideas inside the book, presented like treasure in a child's pirate game. Here is something from my journal that I was inspired to write in watercolor, without stopping to think, on Barry's suggestion.

'I bought a blue rose on Avenue A today with Eve.
It was expensive, but I was thinking about...making friends with death.
How to do that?
'Blue roses' reminds me of Tennessee Williams, of course,
and my grandmother
who lit her hedges with blue lights
in honor of Mary, goddess of the sea, at Christmastime.
It is clearly unnatural, this blue rose.
I carried it with me,
poking out the top of my green shopping bag
unconcerned, like it was somehow tougher than other roses.'


Here are some of the questions Barry asks in the book:

When images come to us, where do they come from?

Does your imagination know what year it is?

What is the past made of?

When we imagine things we don't want to imagine, why can't we stop ourselves?

She expresses many of her ideas obliquely through her graphic memoir, suggesting fun games to strengthen her readers' imagistic powers in the fourth quarter.

Lynda Barry has a website that has said it is 'coming soon!' for at least a year. There are some great images of What IT IS on her myspace page, but I find that format really difficult to navigate.

She typically teaches writing classes at least a couple of times a year, and I hope to have the chance to take one sometime for the hit of inspiration I know I'll receive.

And yes, I know I'm frothing at the mouth about her, but she and What IT IS are worth the froth.