Knife, Fork, Pen

WHAT: Poetry

It is a cruel trick of the light

That his hair is silver

The color of my mother’s

Of a schnauzer

Of steely January skies and

Of dove’s wings

He is two

The calendar and clock are laid upon the breast

Along with infant sons

The march through milestones

The vaccination record

A chronicle of both progress and

Loss

Wordsworth claims that childhood is lost to us

That the splendor of the grass

Will never be quite as splendid

It will, it is

The color of the grass

Twice as blue turquoise

Twice as lemon golden

Seen through both of our eyes

And there is a smell to him

Peanut butter

Apple juice

The smell of the earth turned over

WHAT: Poetry

So one of the professors at school must assign a poetry assignment where the poem must begin with “I regret” because every reading there are several works that follow this pattern. I’m not much of a poet, but I was up late a couple of nights ago and found myself thinking about this assignment. While at the readings, I’ve always thought of it as being kind of a lazy prompt, but late at night, I realized it’s a good starting point – regret must be universal for anyone after a certain age. Anyway, here’s what I regret:

All the King’s Horses

I regret

That the tablecloth was not yanked smoothly

That the lead crystal goblets knocked their heads together

That the china slid so trustingly to the floor

    On a wave of yellow damask

I gathered the cloth, now bristling with shards

I regret

That we pretend the table has always been empty

That you are the first to set it

And I’m convinced

Eventually

Everyone carries this armful of glass and silk

WHO: Amy Tan! Amy Tan! Amy Tan!

So I’m not sure if this counts, but I’ve partially fulfilled one of the goals of my life, which was to see a performance by the Rock Bottom Remainders, a band which counts among its members Stephen King, Dave Barry, Matt Groening, and as lead rhythm/dominatrix, Amy Tan. Friday night I went to see Amy Tan speak and read from The Joy Luck Club, and she was witty, charming, kind, and very very thin. She kept the audience laughing, first when she told a story about going to a book signing and recognizing her own novel on the Cliffs Notes shelf, and later as she told a story about rushing home from vacation in Hawaii because her mother had a heart attack in San Francisco, but then realizing it was no heart attack and that her mother had gotten into a fight with a fishmonger.

Her advice for the audience full of writers was invaluable, too. She describes wanting to write and working on these American suburbia short stories that she imagined Updike or Cheever writing, because she thought nobody would be interested in her Chinese culture, and then realizing there was no authenticity and the audience could spot a fake. The most dull and quotidian things to the writer are the things in which the reader is interested. She also stressed the process and not the product, claiming that the reward to being a writer is “discovering the essential self.” She became a writer because “of the life she was given,” and, in the audience, everyone mulled over their own lives and thought of anything worth salvaging to the page.

And although there’s only one date for the Rock Bottom Remainders this year (and it’s in Sun Valley, Idaho, so I won’t be attending), she promises the band will add more dates next year. So far, the group has raised over two million dollars for children’s literacy programs, even if Ms. Tan claims she never can remember the words to “These Boots Are Made for Walking.” She says the audience always forgives her when she gives Stephen King a smack with her riding crop, something which sounds suspiciously like someone who plays lead rhythm/dominatrix would do.

WHAT: The Trouble with Blogging

I’m realizing that having a blog solely as the means of posting my creative work has a built-in problem — it’s publication, but to what degree? I have so many submissions out right now that I feel none of these things can be posted and still ensure that they retain the right of first publication (which is what most literary magazines are looking for)… This is why I’m hesitant to add new content, and why some things have been removed (like “Never Cut Into Bread Fresh From the Oven and Nine Other Things Foodies are Secretly Judging You For).

So the question becomes (and I’ve been asked it several times): What are you trying to accomplish by having a blog? Well, I’m just trying to find a home for the many things I’ve written that will never exist anywhere else besides in my documents file. I just wanted to post these things and if anyone wants to read them, wonderful, then they’re no longer homeless and unseen, no longer a tree falling in the forest with nobody around to hear it. I’m not interested in being a blog celebrity, or of maintaining some kind of consistent theme or being a source of specific information. My blog is not informative but creative, and it’s for people that already know me. In fact, I hesitate to call it a blog, because that implies some sort of regularity, some sense of what you can expect when you view the site. I didn’t want an online magazine, but a record of work. But if I’m trying to sell this work it can’t live here too.

Most things (if not all of them) will never sell. But I can’t let that stop me from believing in them and sending them out into the world and having them make the rounds and come back home with their feelings hurt. So I think there’s going to be a distance in time with this site, a separation between when the work happens and when the work goes up, and when you see something, you can probably feel safe knowing that it a) went out and came back or b) never went out at all. Both circumstances imply the work wasn’t the best, but that I still liked it enough to call it my own.

WHEN: April 18, 2009 Columbus State’s Writer’s Conference

Some highlights from the CSCC writer’s conference this weekend:

• Kay Ryan, poet laureate of the United States – I cannot say enough good things about this woman. She is the ideal ambassador for poetry; she is witty, engaging, and a fantastic poet. Here’s an example of her work (entirely without her permission so I hope she will forgive me):

   

  Beasts

   

  Time lingers

  quietly in attics.

  Romantics are always fingering

  some discolored

  fabric or other,

  feeling a deep

  nostalgia for sepia,

  a mellow sadness

  at what keeps but yellows.

  But other people

  don’t trust ambering

  Or court the filigrees

  of rust. They’ve

  seen lost greens

  of memory ignite,

  dead dogs released,

  and don’t invite

  the rainbow beasts.                

      

   

  Her dedication to “mildness” is at first amusing, and then, on second take, wise, and her poem “Blandeur” is a lovely example of this. And speaking of second takes, she read every poem at her reading twice, which really made the audience feel at ease and concentrate on her words, not on our reactions to her work.

   

• Todd Jones, writer for The Columbus Dispatch – His explanation of narrative feature writing was informative and helpful, and I took away two main points: one, a narrative occurs in scenes (which sounds obvious but it’s not) and two, the difference between quotes and dialogue is subtle but important.

   

• Ann Palazzo, professor at CSCC – Her discussion about memoir and creative nonfiction was eye-opening. It seems we all agree that journalism should be 100% truthful, but that we all have a different sense of what can be made up in a memoir. Her take? “Don’t deliberately lie. You can imagine, but don’t deliberately lie.” Her energy made the class exciting, too; if it’s the end of a long day of writing workshops and you see her name on the list for the final session, you know you’ll learn a lot and be entertained.

HOW: Vermicelli Soup Recipe

My son, unlike my husband, is crazy about Turkish food, but that could be because he had so much of it in utero, while my husband had to stay home in San Antonio. James has been especially crazy about a soup recipe my sister-in-law Sarah learned from a Turkish cooking class. This vermicelli soup is not just for little kids; it’s sort of the grown-up Turkish version of Chef Boyardee.

Technically there’s a recipe but you don’t need it. Just sauté a few chopped tomatoes in a decent amount of butter – oh, let’s say three full-size tomatoes with three tablespoons of butter. If you’re feeling fancy or if you’re serving the soup to someone you want to impress, you may want to peel and seed the tomatoes, but otherwise, don’t bother. Add some stock (I really like chicken or turkey stock here), maybe 3 cups or so, and a spoonful of tomato paste. To season, just add a few dashes of paprika, and check the salt. Add a couple of handfuls of vermicelli or fideo or fine egg noodles and give the pasta a few minutes to soften. Serve with chopped fresh parsley if you’ve got it because it adds a beautiful green to the brick red of the broth.

One warning, but it might not bother you: if you store this soup, the noodles really drink up the broth. My son actually likes it better this way because it’s easier for a one year old to eat, but I’m not sure if it still qualifies as soup. I love this soup because it satisfies regardless of the weather: if it’s cold and blustery, it’ll warm you up, but it’s not so heavy even when the sun comes out.

WHAT: (creative nonfiction) I Want to Be the Turkish Frances Mayes

I was four months pregnant when I went to Istanbul, and starving, but I couldn’t eat the soft cheeses, the watery cucumbers turned my stomach and I had not acquired the dirty taste of lamb. “Ayran,” my guide Ali offered me, pronounced Eye Ron, “extremely healthy, a drink made from yogurt, salt and water.” One sip left me gagging and I left it in its glass on the table at Sultanamet Koftecisi, across from the Blue Mosque, and I subsisted on the vibrant shepherd’s salad, and the bread with the chewy golden crust and the cloudlike crumb. The olives served at breakfast were too briny to eat whole, but a sliver cut away from the pit activated every salt taste bud in my mouth, and I mashed the piece with my tongue before swallowing, taking ten minutes to finish a single olive. I did not drink the coffee, mainly because it was too sweet and it filled my mouth with grounds, but I did drink cup after tulip shaped cup of fortifying Turkish tea and my son, now almost two, appears to be fine.

    Pregnancy affects everybody differently, so I don’t want to make any generalizations, but for me it cut off the wellspring of creativity and turned me into a cow. I chewed slowly, constantly, moving my chin from side to side instead of up and down. I did and said nothing, watching everybody but remembering very little. No words marched through my head, no preformed sentences demanding to be recorded in a notebook, no focus to read or to even listen to the person next to me; I put earbuds in my ears and played no music. Some part of me realized the loss and I forced myself to open my journal, but it went unfilled, other than a dutiful recording of meal after meal and a couple of day’s worth of tourist attractions: “Dinner cruise lovely had sour cherry juice rice tomatoes fish chicken eggplant dolmas bread – sailed around the Bosporus looking at palaces and mosques – feel like an ugly American — never wearing the right thing – miss Ben phenomenally he’s probably barely noticed my absence – hotel is charming, very continental & elegant, with a bed! bed! bed! and a shower of undrinkable water.”

    Every meal was like this, not cereal and coffee but plate after plate of fruit, vegetables, rice, meat. Breakfast our first morning: “cereal, milk, croissant with rose jam, water (so thirsty after last night not drinking water)” and then a few hours later at the Sultanamet Koftecisi: “kofta, rice, bread, ayran (yuck!), salad of carrots, lettuce, white beans and oil, semolina havla, pickled peppers,” and then still a few more hours later: “kofta chicken, broiled tomatoes, rice, yogurt cucumber sauce called cacik, eggplant tomato mixture, lamb pide (like a pizza or chalupa), lettuce wraps filled with bulgur wheat, cheese, shredded wheat desert.” I list the massive amounts of food because to the Turkish, Turkey is world famous for two reasons — their cuisine and their hospitality – only apparently you have to travel to Turkey to discover this, as nobody outside knows. Indeed, it is a cliché of a Turkish cookbook to mention that every Turk considers their cuisine to be one of the three great cuisines of the world – the others being French and Chinese – and to sort of chuckle at the self-involvement, but really, the food is hard to forget, and moreover, our group of five Americans and five Turks traveling from Istanbul to Antalya to Izmir never once paid for dinner. We were invited to dinner at schools, at private homes (although our group was split into two or even three), and when we did eat at a restaurant, they refused to charge us, and in one case, at Piri Piri in a suburb of Istanbul, invited us back for a second free multi -course meal. I remember emerging from the frigid cold of March in Istanbul to the almost Hawaiian-like waterfalls in Antalya, and the ten of us taking a long wooden table in a tree house over a fish hatchery and each of us eating an entire fish cooked in butter in a cast iron pan and homemade cheese and bread and the ubiquitous shepherd’s salad and a Pepsi, and the sun shone on our arms and warmed our collarbones and we ate and ate until we felt content and fat and happy and they rejected our offers to pay.

Turkey was life-changing – the images I carry in my mind only partially formed, draped in the exotic textile of brilliant silk scarf, speaking to me in the compelling, unintelligible voice of the muezzin. I have heard many travelers speak of the place they must get back to, the destination they went to, returned from, and have thought about since. France was the place I imagined would be this for me, and it was, until I went and saw Paris as just another beautiful city. Turkey was nothing to me before – a vague desire to see what I then called the Hagia Sophia, formed after reading a book about Justinian. Istanbul was ancient, layered, both colorless and dazzling, her taste both familiar and foreign. In The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion describes her grief at her husband’s death, and the imagery, although not the sentiment, is the same: “This is a case in which I wish I had instead of words and their rhythms a cutting room, equipped with … a digital editing system on which I could touch a key and collapse the sequence of time, show you simultaneously all the frames of memory that come to me now…” But there is nothing, only imperfect and improperly formed memory, and to recreate it I have no words upon which to rely. Let me return to the writer’s job and sketch the sensory impressions so that I will have something to hold onto:

Sight: minarets, mosque fountains, gray of the city and the pigeons and the shocking crimson of the Turkish flag, black clothes with brilliant headscarves, the ghostly pillars of the underground cistern where the blind fish swim and the medusa head capitals are sideways or upside down so that the viewer will not turn to stone, the burnt sugar color of Turkish tea… Sound: the calls and echoes of the muezzin, the z’s of the Turkish tongue, the calls of street vendors, the rattle of constant traffic… Smell: spiced paprika, precious saffron, the airport smell of exhaust and coffee, astringent lemon soap, brackish salt scent of the Sea of Marmara meeting the Bosporous… Taste: ayran, yogurt, brine of olives, water of cucumbers, eggplant, honey syrup of baklava and shredded wheat desserts, yeast of bread, sweet Turkish tomato paste, fresh ocean-y fish, dirty game of lamb, sharp onion, the al dente bite of bulgur and the puckery Mediterranean lemon, the simple clean lentil soups… Touch: the rough bristle of woolen rugs compared to the smooth silk weave, the metal rim of the glass teacup between your teeth, the feel of carpet under your toes when you remove your shoes everywhere, the glossy feel of a silk scarf draped over hair, the hands on your hands, the soreness of muscles unaccustomed to walking…

And then the journal is there, too, to bring me back to Istanbul and to screw me firmly into that time. I first felt James move on the flight from Frankfurt to Turkey and anxiously held my belly for days afterward, but nothing more, until this entry on 3/11/07, exactly five months to the day before he was born: “Dolmabace Palace—very European nice spot on the Bosporous made on reclaimed land then to Taksim Square – too much before dinner – starving and uncomfortable – waiting for dinner on third floor of narrow wooden restaurant made entirely of timber – thinking uncomfortably of fire – want to lie down on these pillows – felt kicks in my stomach for second time.”

WHAT: (flash fiction) Everything’s Different Above 7,000 Feet

The air, at least ten degrees cooler among the aspens, passes over her face and she smells wet dirt and pine needles. She breathes as much of it in as she can but it’s still not enough. At seven thousand feet she is gasping from her hike up to the grove and her tennis shoes are covered in red mud.

    There’s a footprint in the puddle before her. She bends from the waist to examine it and thinks that it is bear, but the animal twisted while leaving the impression and she can only just see the four star points of the claws. There are ruts in the road beside the print and she runs her hand over them, feeling how dry and hard they are next to the muck of the paw print and now her hand is coated in dust and the rut may have been left by a stagecoach a hundred years ago or a kid might have left it while riding on his four wheeler. There is no tread, just depression; the earth has been smoothed and hollowed out and where someone once passed she now rests her hand and imagines them all here together at the same time: black bear, gasping backpacker, stage coach and all terrain vehicle. Around her the aspens, cold and regal, pin her to the earth by their own telescopic rising. They cancel out sound and there is only vacuum and the silken wallpaper of their trunks, the black and white damask, the shimmering silvered leaves, gilded on one side.

WHAT: (creative nonfiction) Before I Knew You

Let me tell you about the wine that night that splashed rusty red into our glasses and filled our mouths with gunpowder: tempranillo, I think, Spanish, cheap but good. Sara Chicago bought the first bottle, and the Christmas lights glinting in the scarlet matched our jovial mood. We dipped our shrimp in cilantro sour cream to cool the burn of jalapeno and smacked lips greasy from bacon and cotija cheese. We left El Mercado, fell out into the night, found ourselves at Clay Pit, drowning garlic basil na’an in mussels, white wine, garam masala. Somebody ordered the lime pickle, which we hated and couldn’t stop eating. Somebody wished me happy birthday.

    Let me tell you, darling, about that night’s brittle freshness, sharp as folded paper, the plume of breath, the stamping and pawing of earth we did entering each new place. Finally, at Dog and Duck, there was no table large enough to hold us; we sat outside and cackled in our coats and gloves. Eddi and Sara were newly engaged, Cary had lost a tooth but could not afford to replace it as his novel still had not sold, Ian was going back to Savannah and we could all visit him if we liked. Tyler was there for the first time, drinking black and tans, eating Scotch eggs and Stilton. How wonderful it had been to discover these people, and this food, and these drinks, and couldn’t we do this for the rest of our lives and be happy?

    Quite often, child, you do not know the last time for anything. You cannot take the time to say goodbye when you do not know things are ending. You were there, James, already growing, already thumb-tack sized and I would not trade you for a lifetime of these nights. But I still remember getting coffee and cupping my hands around the mug to warm them and leaning into your father for shelter, and I did not know then that this was the last night he and I were young.

WHAT: (creative non-fiction) Every Other Weekend, Plus Two Weeks in Summer

This is 1987, because my sister and I live on Towhee Drive with our mom and our stepfather, and therefore I am in middle school, and it’s either autumn or winter, because the live oaks are not quite bare, but the leaves are brown and crinkly hard and the little oak shoots that spring from the ground are so poky we have to keep our flip flops on. Stacey Park is empty except for the three of us, and the busy squirrels and softly hooting doves are industriously keeping winter houses. The blue jays won’t return until spring, but I don’t want to completely discount the mockingbirds; every so often I see a whir in the trees and then a white flash on a wing .

    I kick my legs under the picnic table, and listen to my real dad telling my sister the difference between Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon, a comparison he is fully qualified to outline because he has read Clan of the Cave Bear six times. “They don’t like Ayla,” he tells my sister, “because she is what’s coming next. They’re completely composed of their past, you see, all their instincts and knowledge saved up for generations. ”

    My sister grins at him, the corners of her mouth disappearing into bulging squirrel cheeks. “She’s what’s coming next.” She giggles, and her freckles dance on the bridge of her nose. She is nine.

    My toe twists in the dust and makes a cavity, and I turn my foot at the ankle and try to make the hole look like an ant lion’s den, but I’m not successful. I had read Clan of the Cave Bear that summer, too, but I am thinking about a different book at the moment, as my gaze falls on the drained kid’s pool and its loneliness of pale blue paint and vacant lifeguard chair. The tennis courts have new nets and the white stripes are fresh against the green, but their carpet of twisted live oak leaves gives them an air of neglect. The wind takes the dry leaves easily and skitters them across the dust, tossing them against the limestone walls of the arroyo rising all around us.

    ”So, basically,” my dad is telling both of us, although he knows I have already read the stupid book, “they know they’re not part of the future and it scares them. It was them, and only them, and now their time is passing.” My father’s hands are smooth and sunburned, and they have not yet begun to fold in upon themselves.

    I have left my book in the floorboard of my father’s Volkswagen Rabbit, but it doesn’t matter because I have already finished the scene that left the impression. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier, you know, “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley…”? The narrator had no name, as I recall, and was simply the second Mrs. DeWinter, but there was one scene that had particularly struck me: she and Maxim have just been married and they are driving through the countryside and she is so happy she must record the moment in her mind, and she just takes it all in, she sees everything, she notes the geese in the road and the shirt on the man passing by and the flowers that have started to droop in the afternoon sun, and she records and keeps this vision as if it will not go stale in the cupboard of her memory, and I am fascinated by this and think I could do the same:

    My bare and dirty toe is plunged into the sand and clay of the Balcones Escarpment, my father desperately wants us to talk to him but he doesn’t know what to say to make our mouths open, and the remains of a pan dulce made yesterday and bought cheap today at La Mexicana crumble on a pink paper napkin barely anchored to the picnic table. The creek burbles, full and flowing, and a water moccasin glints and curves on the surface, the only snake I ever saw at Stacey Park, a water-logged branch that whips itself back and leaves a tiny wake that breaks on the pebbles and I know I won’t ever wade in that creek again. The bone white of the limestone shale is being overtaken by an emerald velvet of moss, and the smell is fecund, rain-forest-y, rotting. Initials in the table: R. W., I think, and an inky, evil-looking grackle is hopping slowly toward us, head cocked as if to say “Are you going to eat that?”

    It worked, I know instantly. I know that I have recorded the moment, the sunny pattern of my shorts, the missing snap at the bottom of my shirt. I have recorded my sister’s pig tails, and the smell of the cigarette my dad is about to light, a smell like Fig Newton’s almost, the scab on the knuckle of his right pinky, the feel of my own fingers twisting the silver and turquoise ring I brought home from Tombstone, Arizona. I know this moment has been saved, and on top of this, I know it has already changed.

    My dad shakes a cigarette out, strikes a match, holds it to the tip. Breath-robbing tobacco eclipses the scent of sulfur. When he drops the match onto the table, the ember has not yet died, and I walk my fingers across the rough cedar planks and touch the pad of my thumb to it, but nothing, only a black mark of charcoal on my skin. The instant of burn has gone.