I am putting novel notes into my novel document this week. That means that I’m going through the 500-page Word document and adding my copious handwritten notes in through this strange code I made up. (I make up codes a lot. Every organizational system I have is coded, and the codes make no sense to anyone but me, largely because they are inconsistent and change on a whim.)

Anyway, it’s boring work, so I am listening to radio shows in the background while I do it. Thus the previous post about Isabel Allende, and thus this post about Naeem Murr, who I hadn’t heard of before the Bookworm interview. I liked one thing he had to say about writers. Want to hear it? Here is it:

The writer is a dreadful position to be in, in some ways. As I say, for me, human beings are everything. My central passion ever since I could remember was just, people. What was going on inside of them, what they were, the mystery, the central mystery.

And the thing is, my mother was a wonderful woman who was very secretive about a terrible past. I think as a young child, you see into that, but how you get to it is through her gestures, every single minor movement and flicker of the eyes, everything that is – it comes to you in a kind of intimacy. You understand that there’s something there, there’s something behind that. And so you are fantastically intimate with something that you do not know and that you cannot penetrate.

That is the position of almost all writers that I know. They are obsessed with connection and human beings, but because of that obsession, there’s so distantly separated from humanity. You’re constantly in this paradox of connection, of trying to read and understand what a human being is, while being absolutely disconnected from them.

And that’s a really difficult place … to be in for any length of time. And that’s why so many writers are drunks, and so on. You can’t be there for very long without it beginning to corrode.

This quotation matches my experience exactly, except I don’t seem to find this observer state as lonely or upsetting as he does. But anyway, well put, Naeem.

I am very into molecular mixology and molecular gastronomy right now. I don’t know why, since I don’t have regular gastronomy/mixology down, but whatever. Anyway, Marcia and I made these awesome champagne cocktail things with creme de casis “bubbles” last weekend. You can read more and try the recipe on Marcia’s blog.

Since there’s very little information on the web about these kinds of things, we had to semi-guess how to make them. I’m proud of myself because I’m pretty sure my doctored recipe is better than the original. Now I need to figure out how to make whatever this is.

Bookworm has an interview with Isabel Allende about her new memoir The Sum of Our Days here. I transcribed my favorite parts for you:

On starting out as a writer:

As a writer, I wrote The House of the Spirits at night. I had two jobs, two shifts, I worked 12 hours a day. And at night, after dinner, I would sit in the kitchen with a portable typewriter, and I would type away like crazy until I was dead with fatigue, and I would have to go to bed. And in a year, I wrote The House of the Spirits.

Of Love and Shadows, I wrote inside of a closet. I’m not exaggerating. I took everything out of the closet and put a board and a light bulb, and there I put my typewriter and my papers. And I would close the closet, my office would be closed. And when I opened the closet, I could write–until I had a room of my own, many years and many books past.

So my life has been very unstable. It’s only now, for the first time in my life that I feel that I have a safe place and a quiet place to write. But if I didn’t have it, I would still write.

On the blurring of imagination and reality:

There’s a point when I start writing where I can’t trace a line between what I have imagined, what I have dreamed, what is real, what maybe I have read. Sometimes I have to check myself to see if I’m not plagiarizing … because everything is confused in my mind. And the real lives of the real people around me become stories, and they come into the books and they come out of the books, and I don’t even know who is a character and who is a person.

Can’t say I have experienced that last bit; sounds a little frightening. But maybe that’s part of her being obsessive and single-minded enough to write a book in a year after working two jobs and 12-hour days. Wowza.

Sandra Beasley, the poet who writes this blog, is at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and blogging about it over at this blog. It’s a interesting rundown of what it is like to go to one of these conferences. Sounds hectic:

A typical day’s schedule is: 8-9 AM breakfast, 9 and 10 AM readings and panels, an 11 AM craft talk, lunch at 12:30, 1:45 PM workshops (each meets every other day, so there is theoretically “open” time embedded here), 4:15 faculty reading, 5:30 reception (sometimes a lavish spread, sometimes BYOB), dinner at 6:45, another big faculty reading at 8:15, receptions or open mics or socializing at the French House afterwards. This schedule rolls right through the weekend. Sometimes there are hikes at 7 AM. Whew, right?

She also has some thoughts about the formalist bend (the use of metrical and rhymed verse) the conference is taking:

But it has taken some getting used to. I can’t remember my last workshop with so much discussion of spondees and quatrain choice and headless lines. But Aaron Baker, another fellow and another former UVA student, made a really good point: the terms for formal discussion can be quickly agreed upon in this limited time of a conference workshop, whereas the groundwork for a really meaningful dialogue on free verse has to be built over a long familiarity with each other’s work. “Otherwise,” he said, “it’s just one big group therapy session.”

Leslie Pietrzyk, who runs this Work-in-Progress blog, admits to being “intensely envious (in a good way)” of Beasley’s experience. I concur.

Actually, I am going to a writer’s conference in September, myself. It’s not as fancy as Sewanee, but I am excited. The keynote speaker is Joyce Carol Oates, one of my favorite writers.

A week or so ago, I went to see the Frida Kahlo exhibit at SFMOMA. I like art I can understand, and I feel like I can understand Kahlo’s art. I look at it, and I just feel like I get it.

My interest in her work follows my interest in her husband Diego Rivera’s work. I had Vendedor de Flores on my wall all through high school but didn’t discover Kahlo’s work until college. I love her diary and have read several biographies and bad fictionalizations of her life. Her life is shaped by two tragedies. One, she was injured in a streetcar accident where a metal stake went through her back and made her an invalid. She suffered great physical pain throughout her life because of it. Two, she married Rivera, who repeatedly cheated on her (she cheated on him too, I guess), including with her sister. She suffered great mental pain throughout her life because of it.

Her paintings are an imagistic response to that pain. As such, it is their emotional content that makes them so relatable.

I had only seen one or two of her paintings in person before the exhibit. Now I have seen all the important ones. Here are some thoughts:

A. Kahlo was a brilliant portrait artist. I didn’t understand the sheer scope of her ability before this exhibit. The eyes, which I understand are a major way to judge portraits, are filled with subtle yet very specific emotions. Emotions you don’t expect. For example, look at the complicated ways the eyes are unfocused and pointed inward in this painting, giving me a sense of the sadness and disconnection from the viewer:

B. Seeing Kahlo’s art in person changes it. With all the mass marketing of her work, you think you know these paintings before you see them, but more than any artist I have ever seen, Kahlo’s paintings get lost in photographs. You don’t get the subtleties. I had seen copies of the below painting hundreds of times, but had never noticed that the face it androgynous until I saw it in person.

The photo makes it look like it is just a little off, but in person you see that it is a deliberate choice on her part. She made half of her face like a woman and half like a man. It is one of the best androgynous paintings I’ve ever seen.

C. A portrait of chronic pain:

D. Her last paintings are interesting after all. Before Kahlo died, she was mostly painting fruit. I don’t go in for fruit or flower paintings, so I never paid much attention to these paintings before. In person, they are truly gory and disturbing. The fruit looks like rotting body parts and things that wriggled out of birth canals and other creepy things. I liked them.

E. San Francisco needs a fourth major art gallery. Every time I go to one of these exhibits, they are stuffed full of people. It’s like the perpetual crowd in front of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre. There are many art lovers in that town, and that’s great. Some clever person should take advantage and build another gallery. S/he would make a killing. Demand and supply, man.

Summer Activities List (Updated):

Hiking
Tennis
Blackberry picking
Listening to live music
Canoeing/kayaking
Picnics
Something involving a fire on a beach and hot dogs
Going on a boat
Wine tasting
Art galleries
Daytrips (Gualala/Mammoth Lake)

A couple of weeks ago, when Marcia made this decision, we played hooky from work and went canoeing. We can do this because we are fancy free and held down by no one.

As you may know, I am not sporty. I dislike sports and sporty people. I do, however, like the occasional sporty activity, as long as the emphasis is on fun and no one is going to tell me to push myself or make me eat a power bar. Marcia is a good person to do sporty things with because she likes fun and she understands that if you are going to do sports, you ought to have a picnic. So we assembled a picnic of figs and pancetta and other things and rented a canoe on the Russian River.

Of course, neither of us is very strong, so for the most part, our canoe lurched along the water like a drunken man. We kept running into the bank, which seemed harmless for the most part. So, we made two goals: As long as we didn’t turn over or hit another person, we would call the day a success.

So we floated along. We saw ducks cuddling on logs, a fat gold trout jump out of the water, and many Great Blue Herons standing on the banks. The water was a glittering blue.

At one point, there were two other canoes ahead of us. We grew quiet, concentrating all our efforts on not hitting them. We did pretty well and managed to get past the first boat without incident.

But as we tried to pass the second canoe, we were suddenly caught up in a current. The boat careened away from the canoe—good—and toward the bank—bad. We paddled frantically, but it was useless as we swept toward a large tree. In fact, before I knew it, a tree branch as thick as a leg was coming directly at my face.

As we sailed helplessly toward the tree branch, I did the only thing I could do: I laid down in the canoe. My head went back and the branch sailed over me. The boat went underneath, and turned magically so that it directed out into the water again. Marcia, it turned out, had crouched forward so that the boat went over her head too. The idea of the two of us hiding in the boat while the water carried us under the tree struck us as hilarious.

The second time this happened, however, it wasn’t so funny. This time, the current was stronger, we were moving faster, and the branch was lower and thicker. As we glided toward it, there didn’t seem to be enough room to lay down. For a terrible moment, I considered the options: do I push away from the branch? No, I’m not strong enough. Do I protect my face? No, I will hurt other parts of myself.

Finally, I laid down again, and the canoe slammed into the bank. I was staring at tree branches. Cautiously, I sat up. My thumb had been smashed, but other than that, I was all right. So was Marcia. The boat, however, was wedged under the tree and we were stuck as the water rushed by us.

I looked around and saw a man standing on the bank opposite us. If he had been a cartoon character, his jaw would have been on the ground.

“We’re okay,” I called weakly. He waded over and freed our canoe.

After that, I told Marcia I needed a picnic. So we stopped and ate, which revived my spirits. The rest of the trip went swimmingly. Despite being almost decapitated by a tree branch, we both had an awesome time. After all, we didn’t turn over or crash into anyone. I call the day a success.

Glad you all liked the last video. It is from Current TV’s Target Women segment, staring Sarah Haskins. Here is my second favorite episode on Wedding Shows:

Check out the rest here.

Hilarious!

The ending is cut off. She says: What else could a woman possibly need?

A few things I am thinking about lately:

In the early 1900s, L. Frank Baum was releasing one Oz book every year. (So was Beatrix Potter, for that matter.) I wonder if that was a bit like the Harry Potter books today? Did tiny 1907 children dress up like Dorothy and stand in line at their bookstore for the latest Oz book?

I need a costume book. I write a lot of historical fiction, and when it comes to imagining a character’s physicality, it really helps to have a sense of how they dressed. I need a book that goes into underwear and day wear and evening clothes for both rich and poor people. Unfortunately, all the costume books I have found are very expensive, but it is something I should buy some day.

Flashbacks in fiction are tricky to achieve without creating a third-person narrator voice: “The story of Bob and Ginny went like this,” for example. Keeping a flashback in the character’s head brings up a questions about how we remember things–memory is often emotional, and narrative is didactic. How do you balance the emotions of a memory with the information necessary to let the reader know what is going on? I am paying attention to how other writers do flashbacks right now.

I really want to read My Sister, My Love, Joyce Carol Oates’s new book on the JonBenet Ramsay murder. Unfortunately, I’m judging a book contest and then have to review a different book, so I won’t have time until at least late August. Annoying!

Why are there so few books on subjects I want to know about? Corporate robber barons circa 1901! Daily life for women in San Francisco during the Civil War! Different poem structures and how exactly they are achieved by poets! Where are these books? (Doesn’t really matter because I don’t have time to read them right now, but still.)

I want to carry on a old-fashioned letter correspondence with someone, preferably another writer who will write to me long philosophical diatribes on pretty stationery. Kind of like Betty Hester to Flannery O’Connor, only I would rather we both be Flannery O’Connor in this scenario.

Oooh juicy: How bad was JM Barrie?

My grocery bill has dropped significantly. The reason? Squash. I have so much squash right now, it’s not even funny. The zucchini plants are probably producing a zucchini a day at the point. If I leave them go, I end up with zucchinis the size of clubs. Last weekend, I made two batches of zucchini muffins and two loaves of zucchini bread from one large 5-pound zucchini.

But that isn’t the problem, because zucchini it very versatile. It’s the yellow squash that is hard to use up. Especially since they are rather large too. Case in point:

I shouldn’t complain. The fact is, this is the best garden I have ever had. Everything is producing and I am delighted. Even the baby cherry tree managed to produce four cherries before it was done.

Right now, I’m getting a lot of bell peppers, jalapeños, and, as mentioned, squash. But I have three loaded tomato plants, along with green beans, green onions, and leeks about ready to be harvested. My fingerling potatoes plants grew strong, blossomed, and now are starting to die away, which means I should get to dig up potatoes in a few weeks. Most excitingly, my three crane melon plans (like cantaloupe but sweeter) have gone nuts and are covered with little yellow flowers—I even have my first baby melon out there. And just a few minutes ago, I went outside and discovered artichokes! Three of them! Right there on my plants!

Here is an update from June on what I am producing:

Crops that are done from last month: Radishes (47 total), Baby Spinach (22 total), Green Onions (1).

Mushrooms: 15 in June, 19 in July. Increase of 4 mushrooms between June and July.
Carrots: 11 in June, 36 in July. Increase of 25 carrots.
Strawberries: 35 in June, 49 in July. Increase of 14 strawberries.
Peas: 34 in June, 131 in July. Increase of 97 peas.
Zucchini: 3 in June, 39 in July. Increase of 34 zucchinis.
Beets: 9 in June, 10 in July. Increase of 1 beet.
Cherries: 0 in June, 4 in July. Increase of 4 cherries.
Jalapeños: 0 in June, 34 in July. Increase of 34 jalapeños.
Yellow Squash: 0 in June, 34 in July. Increase of 34 yellow squashes.
Bell Pepper: 0 in June, 9 in July. Increase of 9 bell peppers.

There have been a few surprises here and there too. Sunflowers have magically sprouted all over my yard, including one huge on in my front window box. I may actually get some seeds off that one if the birds don’t get to it first.

The other surprise is that a nectarine tree has grown up behind the garage. The neighbor said it just sprouted there in the last year or so, I guess because a bird or child must have dropped a pit there. The thing is, the tree is loaded with fruit! The neighbors called it a weed, but Kyle and I are going to transplant the tree this winter. Why waste a perfectly good nectarine tree?