Lions & Libraries & Planets Oh My
Hello Friends.
This installment was supposed to be about libraries, which I've been working in over the past few weeks as my family transitions into summer. About making adjustments and breaking routines. And it still is---I still urge you to sit inside the Rose Room at the NYPL main branch (if you can, with work or a book on the non-tourist side, and look up, and feel like your brain was worthy of creating all that beauty for), and to see what's it's like to pass a morning at your local library, frescos or not. To take out books from there, to use the resources, to donate.
Last week I enrolled my kids in a half-day camp near where I grew up, which is 10 minutes from me by car. Friends happened to be out of town and lent us their car. The library was small and easy to park at and the light mostly came in through large, high windows. I took the same table and chair every day. On breaks, I walked the tiny library, looking for books, spotting friends and favorites (hi to MARLENA by Julie Buntin and GIRL IN SNOW by Danya Kukafka and THE ANIMATORS by Kayla Rae Whittaker and ANOTHER BROOKLYN by Jacqueline Woodson). But best of all, in not that much time, I found my way back into my own book, which is the hardest thing to do when your schedule has been disrupted, as mine had by school ending in late June. The planets seemed to be aligning, as they say. I was doing good work with the time I had, and I felt like, with my working days getting longer for the next few weeks, I was in a good position to keep moving forward to the end of this draft. I'm revising the earlier sections of my book so that I can finish the end, pulling stitches tight. I'd been stuck and I felt, finally, unstuck.
I'll skip the boring details but when I had my first day back at my home desk Monday, I flubbed my sync from my mobile program to my desktop program. I spent all of that day's workday trying to recover the stitched-together versions of a few chapters I believed I had put to bed late last week, to no avail. I also did a fair amount of crying and lying on the floor. The fan worked great from down there, and when I'd discover another chapter I could see wasn't synced as it should have been, the floor seemed to be the only place I could bear it from. I admired our new rug till I could get up again.
I spent Tuesday and Wednesday re-doing? -imagining? just doing? that work. It will be different. I can't remember all the changes I made, because while writing is absolutely work, it's also some of magic of being in the moment, and that's impossible to recapture. I know I'll get through it, and move forward, that maybe what I stitch up now will be better than it was before during those blissful library mornings (I'll never know!), but what is far harder to parse is how frustrated I am with myself. Had I slowed down for a few minutes Monday morning, I likely wouldn't be in this situation. I proceeded foolishly. This is the part where everyone who checks their horoscopes (either fully invested or pretending they're doing it "for fun") is shouting about Mercury Retrogrades and eclipses and moons at me. Hi. I hear you. I know. The thing about these retrogrades, about astrology in general, is that they're not predictive or prescriptive, but reflective; they're reminders. Mercury retrogrades are known for making communication, deals, things that work, that you need to go smoothly, not go smoothly, but they don't ignore free will. So while in one, you should just stop and think before you act. I didn't do that. The day the retrograde began, my beloved Leo charm broke, falling from my chain onto the dinner table. What luck that I wasn't walking. What luck that I saw it happen at all, that I caught it. I took it in to the jeweler (along with my watch, whose battery died the next morning, hello); I had it fixed. Then I put it back on my chain Monday morning, ignoring the reminders to take my time, to not be such a prideful lion, and screwed up that sync. It's been a learning week.
Nice Things/Using My Words
I have so much love for The Freya Project, an organization that amplifies the voices of women and non-binary writers in support of organizations doing radical work outside of the blue state bubbles. I am so honored to have received a Meret Grant from them this spring. That grant paid for the camp/time to write mentioned above. Freya put up "Backfire," the essay I read at their series last summer on their site if you want to know what I was like in high school and how I feel about sportsball. They happen to be in the middle of their first ever fundraising campaign, if you're so inclined to support this organization and their work.
Reading, Thinking, Feeling
The A/C is on. I hate a/c but I hate humidity more.
Speaking of humidity, if your body parts touch in the humidity, MegaBabe is excellent.
I was diagnosed with celiac this spring, and we've found out that my kid has it too, so we've been buying so many gluten-free flours and today I'm going to try making a blend (via the Aherns' Gluten-Free Girl cookbooks, which I took out from the aforementioned library) so we can become a proper baking household again. I'm ready. I also cleaned my KitchenAid using qtips which is the kind of thing I love to do. There were 14 years of crumbs in that thing. When my story collection was on submission to editors I put together a lot of bookshelves and cleaned my walls and moldings. Baking and cleaning are so much more tangible than writing. It's how I started baking pies in my summer between grad school years, not knowing that procrastibaking would become a thing people would write essays about a decade later.
JELL-O GIRLS by Allie Rowbottom: Holy hell this book is phenomenal. It's hybrid memoir and social history and love story and I think a work of actual genius. It just came out in paperback, so pack it in your beach bag.
I read Deborah Levy's THE COST OF LIVING while in the waiting room during my daughter's endoscopy, and I don't want to say too much about it because I don't want to narrow the readership for this book. You are breathing and living and were born from a mother? Good to go. I so think this book would be especially interesting to anyone who is interested in divorce or separations of any kind and storytelling. Like I said, breathing and living. I highlighted passages from this on my Instagram feed if you're curious.
I'm definitely on a memoir kick. Two others I've loved recently is the even-better-than-all-the-buzz graphic memoir GOOD TALK by Mira Jacobs which is what it is live in America today. Mary Laura Philipott's I MISS YOU WHEN I BLINK is like talking to a friend, the one who makes you feel less alone and who makes you laugh about all the shit that also makes you want to cry. (Mary Laura has a great Tiny Letter herself, which is way more succinct and witty than this one. You should sign up for it.)
THE LOST DAUGHTER by Elena Ferrante. I think I've mentioned this before, but I quit the Neopolitian novels on book 3 (the politics bored me, quite frankly), and now that I've read two Ferrante stand-alones I can say I prefer them to the quartet (which I still hold out hope of finishing, though also that they'll make the HBO series till the end and I can watch rather than read them?). DAYS OF ABANDONMENT is the other standalone Ferrante I think is excellent. Both of these are some of the best writing on motherhood in its aching intensity and uh, frequent nightmarishness (completely separate from being inside a marriage or family unit) that I've ever read.
I also did another comfort-reread of Arthur Miller's THE CRUCIBLE, which is a thing I do every now and again.
I picked up Alix Ohlin's INSIDE at the library (along with a top secret research book; did you know taking out books from your library helps keep it afloat? And requesting books keeps authors afloat?) and I'm really enjoying the way she weaves together multiple storylines with such clarity and tenderness. I found it browsing the shelves and reading the first few pages, a time-tested method.
Where to Find Me
Taking a Twitter break. I don't miss it. Still on Instagram, reporting to my husband where people seem to be on vacation currently. Greece, Paris, various wooded cabins. I've also started a highlights there on books I've loved. Half for my own purposes because I can never remember.
Properly backing up my files as I continue to work on my novel.
I'll be teaching again at Catapult this fall. If you have a short story you'd like to revise, this one is for you. More details to come, but keep a close eye on the Catapult site in the next few weeks.
Talk soon,
Danielle