I know, I know.

It’s been forever and a day since I’ve updated this thing. Let’s just say life and work took over, and I’m just now getting my head right, as the expression goes.

But a conversation I had last night has gotten me thinking. I was chatting with my dear friend Allegra,* who is an ace of a writer with a fierce wit and quirky sense of humor to match. To read Allegra’s work is to be pulled into the page; that is the kind of, albeit subtle, command she has. As I’ve told her, she structures her stories with a grace people shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars on higher education in the hopes of achieving. She, however, comes by it naturally.

In the wee hours of the morning, Allegra explained to me her recent bout of… Well, not writer’s block, per se, but something akin to it. “I can’t write,” she told me, and recounted the reasons why. I won’t go into detail, but they all related to situations and circumstances that have left Allegra feeling despair, frustration, anger, and sadness. But something else was there, too, something I’m only now putting my finger on. What Allegra was describing to me, what was really hindering her ability to write, was a sort of mental claustrophobia. The trials of life had come down upon her cumulatively and in a way that had simply crowded her brain, sapping it of energy and the will to prep herself for work.

This isn’t to say that all nastiness leads to blocks. In fact, unfortunate events often spawn fonts of genius – loss of jobs, death of loved ones, divorce, natural disasters, etc – but some are less than inspiring. I find that there are definitely certain types of woe that actively act against any kind of creativity, the sort that sneakily and steadily invade one’s life and headspace until there is nothing to do but mentally cower under the bed and wait for the awfulness to pass. Allegra was under the bed last night. I’ve certainly been under the bed, over and over and over again. I’m sure you have been under the bed your fair share of times.

But “under the bed” – and not writing – is not a permanent state, as I said to Allegra. I’ll confess here that, during my hiatus from blogging and hacking at my book, I often found myself on the floor, staring up at my proverbial mattress. Overwhelmed by a string of complicated matters, I panicked every time I picked up a pen or sat down at the computer. No matter what I did, no matter how calm or comfortable or soothed I attempted to be, nothing would come out of me. This paralysis is just now stopping, or at least slowing down enough for me to get a word in edgewise, and I know it will fade for Allegra, too.

She is, after all, simply too good.

*Name changed  

Today, which is a Sunday, is usually my writing day.

This Sunday is no exception… But I am using it to write about something else.

I have just watched several videos of the police brutalizing peaceful protesters at the University of California: Davis campus. They stand in a clot, rolling on the back of their heels, casual but alert as students prepare for what they know is coming. The cops, as though in slow motion, ready their weapon of choice: Military-grade pepper spray, hot and searing and, at times, lethal. One stout fellow, who we later learn is Lieutenant John Pike, shakes his can, displaying it to the gathered students, who cluster on the ground, unmoving.

Then the madness. Pike, with astounding calm, steps over protesters and begins to shoot them directly in the face with his spray. The students begin to roll and scream, covering their faces, coughing and gagging. They are pushed to the ground, forced onto their stomachs, and are cuffed behind their backs with riot zip-ties.

But these are not rioters. These are students.

*

I was once a protester. I had just turned sixteen years old. I was doing it for the wrong reasons, with the wrong people, and at the wrong time, but I was there. Caught up in a movement I did not fully understand, I took a week-long leave from my beloved arts camp to go to something called Philly Freedom Summer, a protest against the Republican National Convention put on by the now-largely defunct group Refuse and Resist and their sister group, the “formerly” homophobic and paranoid Revolutionary Communist Party. I was part of a cadre of about fifteen men and women occupying one room of an apartment on the west side of Philadelphia, sleeping on the floor, and – at the urging of our group leaders – using an assumed name. We were cautioned to be careful of large trucks and vans because they could contain listening devices. Signs adorned the walls of our crash pad: “Pigs have ears.” FBI files were mentioned. I was terrified.

During my time there, in addition to being terrorized by the delusions of the group leaders (I doubt to this day that any of the cube trucks parked outside contained a single officer with a microphone) and listening to endless meetings, I had a choice to make: To participate in direct action – a type of peaceful protest that can often lead to police intervention – or not. After much agonizing, I stood down, content to shout slogans on the fringe. “The whole world is watching!” we screamed.

When all was said and done, most everyone came back unscathed. There was one woman who sustained an arm injury, so there was some discussion of what to do, but her situation was unique. I returned to camp with many stories but not a scratch on me.

*

I never returned to organized politics again – for various reasons, which are another story entirely – but recently felt the heat and pull of Occupy Wall Street as I stood on the sidelines a few nights ago. Microphones bleated out garbled messages to thousands of people assembled in and near Zuccotti Park. Police stood in throngs outside barricades. Signs waved and people cheered and cheered into the dark night.

 Do I understand completely what the movement is about? No. Do I agree one hundred percent with what they are standing for, or think that there is a concrete statement they are making? Also no. But do I want them to be safe? Do I think they have a right to do what they are doing?

 YES.

As the students writhe in pain on my computer screen, tears fall down my face. The cops step on a young man’s lower back. Batons fly. The Chancellor of UC Davis walks to her car in eerie silence, her path lined with students who do not speak a word. These are brave young men and women, far braver than I was then and I am now. They may not have a concrete handle on what they wish to accomplish, but who does? And does it matter?

Something needs to be done to stop this, and in my heart of hearts, I believe that it will.

Because, this time, the whole world is watching.

CRITICAL LINKS: 

Police PEPPER SPRAY UC DAVIS STUDENT PROTESTERS (youTube video)

UC Davis Chancellor Katehi walks to her car (youTube video)

Assistant English Professor Nathan Brown’s open letter to Chancellor Katehi

iPod Nano… WriMo

Original photograph by Andrew*

Today on the train, an old favorite comes through my (new) headphones, and all else is blotted out.

The song is by a friend, one I have known for over ten years. Her name is Basya Schechter, her band is called Pharaoh’s Daughter, and she has one of the truest, most natural voices I have ever heard.

The song is called ‘Hagar,’ and is the story of Hagar and Sarai (Sara). From an interview with Basya conducted some time ago:

Hagar. This text is Biblical from the book of Genesis. Hagar was hired to be the concubine of Abraham. Sarah gets jealous when Hagar gets pregnant. Hagar taunts Sarah about this. This led Hagar to run away from the family and go to the desert. She goes to a well and has conversation with an angel of God. The angel says she has to go back to the house and resubmit herself under Sara and have this child, which is going to be called Yishmael, which means “God is listening.” This is the beginning of everything; this is the family where Christianity, Islam, and Judaism came from. This is the first time an angel of God has ever spoken to anyone. And it is to Hagar, the mother of Yishamel, the father of the Muslim nation.

What is interesting to me is that this is possibly the only text in the Jewish tradition that is not Hebraic. This is not a story that we focused on in school. You don’t get the sense that the voice of the Arabic nation is given respect or attention in the Bible or by commentators. Hagar’s voice is very underrepresented in Jewish music. So I am giving her voice.

This explanation is straightforward, yet the song is anything but. It’s a complex ribbon of sounds and instruments and, of course, Basya’s strong voice, which commands you to listen simply in its skill alone. And it is, somehow, just about the most heartwrenching melody one could imagine.

Not that I understand much of what is being said; the song is all in Hebrew. The basic gist I can get (Basya’s commentary helps), but why is it that tears well suddenly in my eyes on a traincar full of people? How is it that they persist as I ride the elevator to my floor of the office? In my cube, insulated from the world by four semi-walls?

Am I crying for manipulated Hagar (mean though she was to Sarai), for jealous and conflicted Sarai, or for myself and my own rocks/hard places?

That I couldn’t tell you.

HAGAR - Pharaoh’s Daughter (www.pharaohsdaughter.com)

Cute books I found at work. From Houghton Mifflin, 1976!

If I close my eyes and squint a little, I can sing like Patty Griffin.

Okay, well, if I close my eyes as tightly as I can, squint a lot, and am under the influence of a LOT of alcohol, I *think* I can sing like Patty Griffin. Fact is, I really can’t.

The problem is, Patty Griffin-a-like or not, I never actually sing — in front of people, that is. The secret truth is that I love it like nothing else, maybe even more than playing my beloved drums. For a few years in middle school, I was a member of an (albeit compulsory) chorus, one headed by an inimitable woman named Jane Smith. She made magic of an often out of tune grand piano and, under her command, we sang Greek songs, Latin songs, protest songs, and ballads. My voice, blending with thirty or so others, was indistinguishable from the pack, and I could belt as loud as I dared.

Then, much later, I sang in the car as I drove down the California freeways in search of either adventure, a newsworthy story, or both. In my three years as a San Diegoan, I sang so much that my voice was loose enough to hit both the high harmonies and the low, low notes.

So yes, I love to sing. But hand me a microphone and turn up an instrumental track and I freeze, no matter how familiar the lyrics may be, no matter how much I am itching to come in right at the chorus. What if I suck, I can’t help but wonder. Equally terrifying is the opposite question: what if I’m good?

My friend Tilly* can sing like Annie Lennox. Really. It’s kind of scary. Anyway, I discovered this a few nights ago at her karaoke birthday party when gamely ponied up to do a lovely rendition of — if I remember correctly — “Love is a Stranger” in front of… Well, strangers. Later, in our rented booth, her friends alternately belted, rapped, screamed, and warbled their way through a series of classics from a variety of decades while I alternately listened and laughed along with them.

Then Tilly turned to the magic machine(tm) that spooled out our music and accompanying lyrics and punched in a song by my favorite band, The Tragically Hip. The mic was mine, and I swallowed, hard. This is it, I thought. Now I’ll know. But alas, it was not to be that night. Fear set in and I had Tilly skip the song which was, ironically enough, a track called “Courage.”

Maybe someday I will get over my paralysis and find out the truth. But until then, I leave the rocking to those like Tilly and her pals who, really and truly, killed it — in the good way.

*name changed to protect the “innocent” :)

My mother loved the country.

Though she was and considered herself to be a New Yorker through-and-through, there was a part of her that yearned to hole up in a wooded cottage somewhere and nest. I don’t know what it was in particular that inspired this in her, and I guess I never will.

Each summer, we packed a rental car with our belongings and cat and headed south to our little corner of the wilderness, a small rural town in northwest Connecticut. The cottage was actually more of a cabin, if I am to be precise, with walls stained a dark brown from years of exposure to pipe smoke.

Though the cabin didn’t belong to us, my mother took it upon herself to put in a garden. It started quite by accident. We were whipping down one of the numerous back roads, Mom driving too fast (as she was apt to do) with all the windows rolled down, when she stopped the car abruptly. She never said a word, just bounded out of the car and stooped low, hands in the underbrush. Scrabbling there a minute, she remained crouched like a frog until finally she rose, triumphant, with an unruly bunch of greenery in her hand.

“It’s a fern!” she shouted to me. 

The fern, a soft flag of a plant with impossibly intricate leaves, was the first of many to be uprooted at the roadside and placed firmly and with confidence outside the cabin’s door. I remained my mother’s faithful assistant, walking by her side as we scoured the hills and ditches for flowers and pleasant weeds, hair wet from a midday swim in the lake. Sometimes we explored in our nightgowns as the sun began to sink, thick and golden, behind the protective trees that surrounded us.

As we went, my mother called each plant out by common name, which I imagine she learned either as a child herself, from a book, or both. I absorbed this information with an ease I no longer possess: Queen Anne’s Lace. Black-Eyed Susan. Wild Rose. Phlox. Jewelweed. Bladderwort. I was the sort of child who read field guides cover-to-cover, pouring over pictures of gems and trees and plants and birds, inhaling the faint tang of 1970s printing ink for hours at a time. But this was the real deal. Something unlocked in me there, amidst the graceful wilds of the town we stayed in, and I stepped boldly, barefoot, into adventure.

The garden expanded. My mother enrolled me in a day camp at a flower and herb farm not far from the cabin. It was a delicious place with a two-story “barn” filled with dried flowers. There I pressed leaf samples onto index cards, cementing them in place with sheets of contact paper. Our counselor, a sweet woman with a long brunette ponytail, took us through the neat flowerbeds and introduced us to the friendly goat, Jezebel, who ruled the small animal pen. We read Peter Rabbit aloud and ate our lunch on mossy rocks, handing our leftovers to Jezebel, who nibbled them away and nuzzled our palms with her soft nose. 

At the farm, and with my mother at the local nursery, I began to learn the names of the less wild, more domesticated plants: Laurel, Yarrow, Rue and Lamb’s Ear. There were Geraniums, which smelled like damp dust, and Alyssum, which filled the air with the scent of fresh honey. Crates of these plants went into my mother’s garden, blossoms heavy on their stalks. We surrounded them with stones and weeded with gusto, my mother in a floppy straw had and I in a yellow sun visor. 

Those days were long and filled with swimming, reading, and planting. I slept hard at night, the buoyancy of the lake water still cradling my little body, dreaming of vines and earthworms, dense soil and smooth rocks, of pulling myself under the surface of the lake and looking up at the floating sunshine above.

Today, I am not much of a gardener, and have not visited the cabin in almost fifteen years. My mother has been gone for nineteen now, but, miraculously, the names of the plants she loved remain firmly in my memory. They are as a part of me as my childhood home, as my oldest friends, as anything else my mother gave or told to me. I like to think of her there, kneeling in front of the cabin with her hands in the soil, fostering life from the earth she has returned to. 

My fave cafe writingspace

My coworker received the following unsolicited voicemail pitch this morning. The caller was male and, other than some discussion of him possibly sporting an unironic mustache, nothing about him is known other than he wants his book published so damn bad!

He said:

“COWORKER NAME, my name is REDACTED and I called a few minutes ago to find out who I should speak to regarding the new book I wrote for kids. I spoke to a very snippy gentleman who gave me your email address and I’d like to introduce myself, but the person in charge of the magazine hangs up on me! Is that how you do business, COWORKER? I mean, I wasn’t raised that way. But he hangs up! COWORKER, I’d like to know if you’re the right property for me to entrust my book to see if you’d like to review it, to see if you’d like to advertise, you know, my book. But to hang up on me, I can’t believe it. I’d know the name if I heard it, but I couldn’t believe it! In the middle of a PHONE NUMBER. I don’t know your title, I don’t know anything about you, if you’re the right person, nothing, he just hung up! PHONE NUMBER. Please get back to me and let me know if you’re the right person I should speak to. Bye-bye!”

What. A. Nightmare.

(via Kirkus) Protesters at Occupy Wall Street have set up their own cardboard box-and-Sharpie library — including fiction and poetry!