"Niche"

This morning I had a conversation with a friend of a friend in the publishing business.  (May I just say, I can’t wait to edge out that middle “friend” and have my own direct contacts for these things.)  She was giving me some advice to help me get my book published, and there was a refreshing realism to what she told me.  A few years ago, if I had been told that much of the burden of marketing and selling my books would fall on me, I would have felt sick to my stomach.  I would have expected the news that it would take another few years at least before I could see my book in print would depress me for days.  Instead, it’s given me a new determination.  I don’t want people to tell me how easy it will be, that it will just happen and all my dreams will come true at once.  I know the world better now, and I understand that it’s going to take some hard work.  I find myself excited as well as nervous at the thought of reaching out with my book, offering what I have to the world. 

There is one thing that bothered me, however, while we were talking.  As soon as I told this contact what my book was about, she introduced me to a new phrase that I was unfamiliar with, but which rather defines itself: “niche genre.”  In this case it refers to science fiction, though I imagine fantasy would be considered the same.  I don’t like this phrase.  To me, it implies readers who sit at home alone with this book, unwilling to bring it out with them for fear of another’s critique.  It implies genres which are not “widely accepted”, which most people don’t read.  Niche genres are the nerds of the written world, watching by the sidelines while the cool kids—“literary” works.  What does that even mean?—stride by.

I’ve faced this struggle for years.  I have a deep and abiding love for my alma mater, Hollins, but it was there that I first faced this prejudice, as I consider it.  I was attending a summer camp at Hollins when I met with negative feedback for the first time.  I remember mentioning my interest in writing fantasy, and I can see even now the old professor’s eyes angling downward, hear his sigh.  “I don’t consider fantasy and science fiction to be literature,” he said.

It broke my little thirteen-year-old-heart, scarred me so that for years I couldn’t bring myself to turn in my “real” work to workshops.  Oh, I etched out a few short stories set in this world, but to say truth I found them boring.  My heart was in the explorations I made into other worlds, in magic and wizards and unicorns, in spaceships and other planets and the endless possibilities of the future.  Somehow this fascination made me a fringe member of my writerly community, even though I could see dozens of others who were just as interested as I was.  Our numbers, however, didn’t seem to matter—we were still the niche, not the main stage.

Now I ask you: why is it this way?  Why, when I tell people that I write science fiction and fantasy, do I feel a sinking in my stomach, thinking that any interest they show after that revelation will be mere politeness?  Why do I feel that the vast majority of my acquaintance will not be interested in my work?  Why did my contact this morning automatically dismiss my novel as “entertainment”?  (She didn’t mean to offend, of course, and would most likely be horrified to hear I took it that way, but even so.)  She told me that niche genre work doesn’t have to be artistic, that artistry is not what these publishers look for.  I ask you, why is that so, when fantasy and science fiction are not concerned with the world as it is, but as it could be?  There is so much opportunity in these genres, chances to make real what could never be in our lifetimes.  My novel explores the very nature of what it means to be human, from the point of view of a character who is not human.  Where will you find that in a “literary” novel?  And for heaven’s sake, why can’t my sci fi book be literature? 

I think it’s past time that I put my foot down on this matter.  My book is beautiful—I say that with modesty, feeling as I do that the story didn’t come from me but through me, emerging from the very fabric of human experience.  I say again that my book is beautiful, as are many science fiction and fantasy books that I have spent my life devouring, and they do not deserve to be dismissed out of hand.  They are entertaining, yes, but they are also poetic and insightful and carefully, lovingly crafted.  They provide an opportunity for readers to broaden their minds beyond the confines of this world, to see the possibilities of humankind, and that is something that’s sorely needed.  And if that is not enough to make it “literature”, then I think it’s about time for that word to be redefined.

Digging Through the Button Jar

“Don’t worry,” she said, peering through the glass.  “If you die, we’ll just get new ones.”

I was there when my friend said this.  It was a cold comment, worthy of a femme fatale from one of my stories.  But I wasn’t concerned; I only laughed.  Because I am just as cold-hearted?  No, because my friend was talking to fish, and as cute as they are, it’s hard to love fish.  Besides, she bought them on a whim for less than a dollar each.

Context is everything.  This rings especially true for a writer.  As a writing project I’ve assigned myself, I’m going through all my old journals (I’m currently on volume fourteen) to see if any of the ideas inside inspire me.  And I am finding a great deal of inspiration.  These journals are riddled with half-ideas—newspaper headlines, quotes that caught my eye or my ear, pictures that intrigue me, recorded dreams.  But they’re only half-ideas because I don’t know where they fit yet.  A line of dialogue doesn’t mean anything unless you know who said it and why; a character doesn’t matter until you know where they come from and why they are the way they are.  Indeed, the reason I am a writer is I have a need to know the whole story.

My journals are like button jars.  The only reason to have a button jar is so that someday, when you need a replacement for that one lost button, you might find something that fits.  But until you do have the need, that empty space, those buttons are just decoration.  I have a wonderful character, Genevieve, that very villainess I mentioned a moment ago.  Her mother killed her fiancé, because she thought that he made Genevieve weak.  In retaliation, Genevieve killed her mother, but she continues to follow her mother’s belief that women define their own moral code and wield power through control over men.  All this is fascinating, but a stagnant picture of a person is only interesting to me for a short time.  (Maybe that’s why I was always so quick to get bored in museums.)  To hold my interest, the character needs to move, grow, change, evolve or devolve.  What happens to Genevieve?  How does she use her ill-gotten power—for good or for evil?  Does she ever meet a man she can’t control?  Who would he turn out to be?  All of these questions remain unanswered, and as long as they do, Genevieve is just a black and white button in a jar.

I write stories so that I can find out the whole.  Characters, ideas, lines and phrases—all these things only matter to me when a story gives them their true place.  That is when they come alive.

Sincerity?

I’ve never considered myself beautiful.  I’m close, maybe, but just a shade too round-faced, with my skin not enough like porcelain and my eyes a smidgeon too squinty.  This is not self-pity talking, I promise—I’m quite pretty enough for my own esteem, and beauty will only fade as time goes by.  Still, it’s been a long time since anyone aside from my mother called me beautiful.  Or it had been, before I walked into the laundromat this week and attracted someone’s attention.

He straightened up as I came in, an older gentleman in a white t-shirt and jeans, and his eyes widened.  “Wow,” he said.  “You are so sweet and beautiful.”

Now, I was probably overdressed for this errand.  I’d put on my new white shirt with the black lace down the arms, my bright blue pants, and my high boots.  My face was made up and my hair was fixed, because sometimes I don’t like to feel like a slob.  I was looking pretty good, and I knew it.  But it was still nice to hear it.  At first.

I thanked him, and the compliment did warm me.  People don’t usually say such things with such fervent honesty.  Most of them are honest only when it will not put them into any vulnerable place, or when it will benefit them.

“Really,” he told me as I moved past him to put my clothes in the dryer.  “You must be married.  Beautiful girls like you are always married.”

I laughed and shook my head.

“Really?  Then you must have a group of boyfriends.”

“No,” I said, laughing with a little more trepidation.  I focused on my clothes as they flopped into the dryer.  “Haven’t found anyone worth it yet.”

“Really?  That’s a shame,” he said.  He was still looking at me.

Suddenly the admiration wasn’t so welcome.  I found myself wondering if there was anyone else in the building, though I didn’t want to look and find out. 

He offered to take me to dinner, said he would love to do it.  “I own my own house,” he told me, smiling.  I laughed as if he were joking.  I couldn’t meet his eyes, and I moved away as soon as I could.  And still his eyes followed me.  He didn’t look away even as he was leaving, not until the last minute.

Now, I don’t want to be unfair.  The poor man may very well have been joking.  He was significantly older than me, and he didn’t look at all as if he could harm me, much less have wanted to.  His compliment may very well have been sincere.  But the way he said it made me very uncomfortable, even frightened.

I think it’s a shame that we have as much trouble reading one another as we do.  Did he know how unwelcome I found his advances, however gentle?  Was he even aware of my discomfort?  Too often, I think, men don’t even realize how disturbing their admiration can be.  This man’s compliment, after all, was immediately followed by an expectation of something in return, and I think it’s a shame that he felt the need to press himself forward.

In the end, it was a harmless experience, but a sobering one.  I hope that if I ever have sons of my own, I can teach them to be sincere and selfless in their praise.  It is possible—or at least I very much hope so—to tell a girl she is beautiful without phrasing it as a favor she should return.  Maybe if more men did this, we would have more women believing themselves to be beautiful. 

How to Find The Circumference of An Idea

Higher education in America is a mess.  I don’t think anyone would disagree with me on that score.  Just look at the statistics of student debt, or the comparisons between the American system and some of those abroad.  I have been out of college for two and a half years now, and I can reasonably expect to be making loan payments for the next eight years.  That’s if I keep on schedule—it will be longer if at any point I have to defer.  And I’m one of the lucky ones.  I remember the panicked expressions on my classmates’ faces at the end of senior year when we attended those mandatory loan meetings.  Some of them faced twenty thousand dollars of debt or more.  In the current economy, where a college degree doesn’t guarantee you a well-paying job (I’m still working in a restaurant), that’s a huge number.  And tuition prices are only getting higher.  Now, there might be any number of reasons for this, and I’m no economist to speculate on what those might be.  But even I can read the alarming line graphs I see online and in the papers. 

The government is trying to deal with this, inasmuch as the government can.  President Obama has instituted a debt forgiveness program that allows students who enroll this year to pay only ten percent of their income on student loans, and after twenty years all debts are forgiven.  As for the universities themselves, a new program is expected in time for the 2015-16 school year that will rate universities all over America and assign them financial aid according to those ratings.  Universities are up in arms about this, saying that there is no way of quantifying an education, and that deserving universities will slip through the net cast by the government rating tests, having a terrible impact on the quality of higher education.

I agree that it is next to impossible to measure the value of an education.  I wouldn’t give up my liberal arts degree for the world—if I could do it over again, I’d do it exactly the same way.  But I do admit that it doesn’t make me employable at first glance.  The problem is that federal programs like this require a homogeneous standard that can be measured, and education simply isn’t homogeneous.  Every student wants something different and needs different things from the school and its professors.  This is true at the lower levels, too—standardized tests may give the government the numbers and statistics it wants, but it doesn’t help those students who are dyslexic, or have learning disabilities, or who are kinesthetic learners.  All of these students may be brilliant in ways that don’t come up on the tests, and a good college education can give them the tools to hone that brilliance.  What happens if those good colleges are missed by the tests that only measure graduation rates and graduate income levels?

On the other hand, something has to be done.  A system that bankrupts its students for an education that they need to survive in the world is a system that needs to be changed.  Perhaps other factors could be added to the ratings list—range of options offered to each student, or number of awards received by professors, or even student happiness rankings.  Though these things are harder to measure, they are vital to the value of an education, and they have as much to say about the quality of a university as dollar signs and percentages.

The glory and the downfall of mankind, in my opinion, is how different we are.  Every human being on the planet has a little bit of a different idea as to what’s important and what needs to be known.  Our education is what teaches us those different ideas, and I would hope the government would remember that it’s not what our schools teach us that’s important, or at least that that’s not the only important thing.  What is the most vital thing a student has to learn is how to think for him- or herself, and I learned that in college.  I'd hate for younger generations to never have the chance to learn it at all.  

Some of the websites I looked at for this post: http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/education/higher-education/ensuring-that-student-loans-are-affordable

https://studentaid.ed.gov/repay-loans/forgiveness-cancellation/charts/public-service

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_styles#Neil_Fleming.27s_VAK.2FVARK_model

Also an article in Time, the April 28, 2014 issue, entitled "Should US Colleges Be Graded by the Government?" written by Haley Sweetland Edwards

Photo credit: https://searchingeyes.wordpress.com/tag/education-assessment-comic/

A Letter To An Unpleasant Man

Dear Sir,

I dislike you.

How difficult that is to say aloud!  Our culture doesn’t permit this sort of communication.  We’re supposed to be polite and kind, at least in our words.  To say this type of thing, we’re forced to rely on other methods of communication.  You, however, seem to be oblivious to those methods.  When you are standing too close to me, you don’t notice when I step back, when my body angles away from you as if longing to spring into the air.  You don’t see the exasperation and discomfort in my expression while you’re laughing at your own joke, the same one you’ve been telling all day (and all yesterday, too).   You don’t hear the hesitations before I speak, and you don’t understand what my pauses mean.  My carefully worded answers to your questions are works of art, so much energy and thought goes into every word and inflection as I try to express my true thoughts in a non-antagonistic way.  What a waste!  I might as well be talking through a gag.

Let me make it clear that your liking for me does not change my dislike of you.  In fact, it makes matters worse.  I see the way you treat my friends, have been standing next to them as you shout and roar for no reason at all.  That you later apologize to me, claiming your anger was not directed at me, does not make it better.  It was there, that senseless cruelty that demands the lowering of others, and I saw it, felt it on my skin.  I know it is in you, and your honey-sweetness to me sticks in my throat.  I would rather you shouted at me, too, so I might be justified in shouting back.

I recognize that your need for control is a desperate response to the lack of it.  Perhaps you do not like the way your life has gone, and for that I am sorry, but it does not give you the right to tell everyone that their way is wrong.  Allow me to inform you that I was here long before you arrived, and I was good at this before you came to tell me how I have been mistaken.  I hate especially that your logic makes sense when you first spill it at me, in that kindly, reasonable tone that makes my skin crawl, but it is a carefully constructed kind of sense that more often than not comes crashing down at a single question.  I have placed those questions before you once or twice, punching a hole in your perfect plans, and I could see so clearly the closed expression on your face, the irrefutable denial in your eyes as you pleasantly demanded that I do it your way nevertheless.  “Humor me,” you say.  Well, sir, my humor has long since expired.

I would like you to know that you have changed a warm, open environment into a place that makes my stomach sink whenever I arrive.  You have used your power to place yourself on a pedestal, but let me warn you that you will not stay over my head long.  I stop short at implying that you will be dragged down—God knows that many men worse than you have remained all their lives in a place they do not deserve.  No, what I am telling you is that your power over me is far more limited than you know.  I am more than you see in me, oh so very much more, and fear will not hold me in your shadow.  I will walk out into that cold world rather than become as small as you think I am or want me to be.  Do not think of my discretion as weakness.  You, sir, will be very much surprised.

Sincerely,

A woman whose power was not given to her by someone else

Many Steps To Go

“The only courage you ever need is the courage to live the life you want.” Oprah

I saw this quote on my friend’s coffee cup at work last night.  It took me a moment to figure it out, possibly because I was about as sleep-deprived and spacey as it is possible to be and still be functioning.  But I think a larger portion of my confusion comes out of the fact that, as good as the quote sounds, its logic is a bit flawed.

The implication here is that all you need to do is make a leap of faith to get the life you want.  Take risks, chase your dreams, the usual motivation we hear from graduation speakers.  The implication is that if you have the courage to defy expectations, to ignore “common sense” and turn down that job selling insurance, you’ll be able to build a life doing exactly what you want.  It’s a pretty picture, isn’t it?  A very American ideal—take charge, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, find the right door and burst right through.

Image from http://therefinedimage.wordpress.com/

When we are young, we believe that we’ll step off the college campus and right into a four-bedroom house, a six-figure job, and a happy marriage.  In college, we dream of world travel, of art and culture and fine dining.  The reality is much more complicated than that, as most realities are.  What we don’t realize until we are out in the world is that those lives we imagine for ourselves have to built from the bottom up.  To buy a house or even rent an apartment, you need money, and that takes years of carefully stockpiling your wrinkled singles and diving for every penny you see.  To get that amazing job, you need to make connections with the right people (or even the wrong people), send out dozens of resumes that often disappear into the ether, and tear your hair out in frustration.  And when it comes to relationships, you may find yourself in a string of losers (of either sex), be trapped in an interminable pairing with someone who isn’t right, or even find yourself standing alone, wondering if there’s even one person in a hundred miles who is not repulsive or taken.  The old adage doesn’t say that a journey of a thousand miles can be accomplished with a single step.  There are many, many more steps that have to be taken before we reach our destination—assuming that you even know where you’re going, which is not true at all for most of my generation.  I know how tempting it is to take an easier, if less inspiring path.

True courage for me, then, is in those who just keep walking.  Those who don’t let the long hours and sleepless nights wear them down.  Those who take rejections and hang them on their walls to motivate the next try.  Those who show up at their dead-end job every day and do their best at it.  Those starving artists who neatly stack their pennies so they won’t actually starve.  Those who come home at three in the morning, rub their eyes, and sacrifice sleep to the dream.  Those who don’t let this cold, crowded world drag them down into the rut of doing work they hate to make more money to be able to continue doing work they hate.  It’s true courage to live on that line, compromising common sense and foolish hope, trusting that yes, you will have enough shifts to make rent and enough free time to make you happy.  And honestly, though it may be terrifying sometimes, I can’t see any other way, because for me, the cost of accepting the easier path is far too high.

The Shape of Our Containers

"Every configuration of people is an entirely new universe unto itself."  Kristin Cashore, from her book Bitterblue

The identity is a complicated thing.  I am a different person depending on my surroundings and my circumstances.  With my family, who have known me the longest, I am a goofy and young, rather naïve, and a bit clumsy.  Perhaps more than a bit.  With my friends, I laugh a lot, but I also am a great deal quieter, smiling and listening more than I speak.  At work I am professional, rather more sarcastic than elsewhere, with long fuses of patience that cause large explosions when they burn out.  And at home I am silent, thoughtful, and I often speak to myself. 

It is truly impossible to fully understand a person.  The intricacies of who we are and what has shaped us are so complex that we have trouble keeping track of ourselves, much less others.  With each person we meet, we become a little different, responding to their responses to our actions and words.  We build layer upon layer of awareness and behavior, then tear those layers down when a new person comes into view.

This is the adaptability that has placed us at the top of the evolutionary ladder.  In the physical world, humans had all the best tools to survive, and now in this world of hearts and minds we have done the same.  We have made ourselves malleable, liquid personalities capable of surviving any challenge of hatred or fear or inquiry that others may present to us.  And in so doing, we create our own struggles, because these constant changes make it all that more difficult to understand ourselves, to know what that odd little word “I” really means.

Reflections of Self

Being young, single, and rather non-maternal, you wouldn’t think I spend a lot of time thinking about my future children.  And I don’t, really.  I spend more of my prodigious imagination (and yes, I think I am allowed to call it prodigious, knowing exactly how many novels and stories I’ve come up with) dreaming about the boy who will be the father of said children, and not just because of his potential as a father, either.  No—I have other plans for him first.

But I was reading something today that made me wonder about the differences between generations, and especially the difference between my generation and the next.  In a short story entitled "Arcadia", Frederick Reiken pays tribute to his four-year-old daughter, to how much he loves her and what he wants to give to her.  One of the things he addresses is how very little of his own life she will know about or understand.  “All this,” he says, “for her, is insubstantial; for me, it’s history.”

This struck me with some force.  It made me realize that in ten years or so when I do have children, the things that happened to me to make me who I am at that point, will mean very little to them.  They will know only that I am there in front of them, that I can and wish to take care of them and love them.  These very days in which I live right now may never be known to them.

It also makes me think of just how much I don’t know about my parents’ lives.  So much of what I know of their pasts—in the “dark days” before they had me, of course—I think of in terms of who they are now.  My mother is a dentist, for which degree she spent time in Mexico and Dallas, worked in an office in Williamson, then got her own practice in Galax.  My father used to be a hospital administrator, and he ran the hospital where I was born, but he gave that up so that he could raise my siblings and me.  It’s a very backwards way to think about a life, and a very selfish one, now that I think of it.  But we can’t really help it.  For so long, our only knowledge of our parents were how their lives converged into our own, and thereafter how they connect with ours. 

It’s strange to me, to think of how long it may be before I can look into my children’s eyes as equals.  Everything around me now feels so real—the sunlight on the leaves outside, the breeze from the fan behind me, my hair in its untended curls around my head, the music playing a bit too loud from my speakers, the remaining taste of the strawberry dacquiri I drank after lunch, the circle around today’s date on the calendar that tells me I haven’t yet paid my bills.  Yet in ten years, it will be nothing but words to me, and less to my children, if children there are by that time.  How old will they be before they begin to look at their parents, as I am beginning to now, with new eyes, wondering who these people really are?  Twenty?  Thirty?  Or will they always look at me with that faint blindness, seeing only the reflections of themselves? 

I hope the latter isn’t true.  I hope that I will be a wise mother, wise enough to teach my children to see others clearly—even me.

You Are Here?

Sometimes, I am simply staggered by the wealth of human consciousness.  Are you ever amazed by just how complex that pale, wrinkled gray stuff between your ears actually is?  How many memories are tucked away in the folds, ready to be accessed at the taste of a cookie or a line in a song?  How many strange and obscure facts are there in your brain that you never knew you knew until you find you correctly answered that one Jeopardy! question?  How many images are there, be they places, faces, works of art?  How many words in how many languages?  How many emotions have you felt in your life—no, forget that: how many emotions have you felt today?  For me, the list begins with fatigue and continues with relief, satisfaction, amusement, sorrow, exasperation, concern, earnestness…and I’m sure there are some that I’ve missed.  Most importantly, how many ideas rest in that cave of bone, thoughts and dreams coiled around their source?

Think about that for a moment.  Then, allow me to remind you that there are 7.2 billion of those brains in the world.  

No wonder we still have trouble understanding ourselves.  There is so much territory to cover, so much that it would take us longer than our lifetimes last to even scratch the surface.

Of course many of those thoughts and much of that experience is shared.  We all hunger, thirst, and seek to survive.  We all want something from our lives, and we all seek to connect with others who want similar things.  But in the end, these are only the most basic things, and even the person who is most like you in the entire world shares only part of who you are.  Imagine that you and that super-similar person are two circles in a Venn diagram.  At best, I’d say that you share two-thirds of your area, and each of you hold your own boundaries outside of the other.  And some of us never cross one another’s borders at all.  With so much that makes us who we are, so much that changes us in every single day, it’s impossible that there could ever be anyone just like you.

The Internet provides the beginning of a map of that vast world of thought, one that can help you locate those who are like you and those who are most different.  There you can find people’s thoughts and opinions in vlogs, forums, and blogs like mine.  You can hear their songs and see their art, listen to their voices and see their faces.  You can read about the causes to which they have chosen to devote their lives (and so many causes, with all the passion of many hearts behind them!  Breast cancer research, deep ocean exploration, gay rights, robotics, veteran rehabilitation, autism, ants, sports analysis…just scroll through the videos on TED talks).  You can see photos of their lives and hear about their day, eventful or not.  You can see what they want, what they dream about, what they love.  

It's a confusing, fragmented, and imperfect map, representing only a portion of the human race, and yet it's the best representation yet of what humanity really looks like.  In the end, all the Internet really is, in my opinion, is an attempt to make all of this tangible, to reach out for everything we are and say, here we are.  This is it, this is the way it is.  Humorous and profound, beautiful and ugly, fierce and loud and wise and loving, running in seven billion different directions and all seeking the same fulfillment.  This is who we are.

Maybe, if we can find ourselves on the map, we'll realize that there is a world of difference between being unique and being alone.

The beautiful art is from artPause on Etsy.

Throwback Thursday: May 28, 2013

Have you ever put so much energy and thought into a project, that it seems like forever since you began it?  I feel this way about my novel.  This is not, of course, the novel that is currently (I hope) being considered by an agent, nor is it any of the fledglings that have not yet hit their 50-page marks (poor darlings).  I am referring to the beast to which I am currently enslaved, the sci-fi creature which may someday be my masterpiece.  Yes, I am working on my masterpiece at twenty-three.  No, I have not considered what its being my masterpiece may mean for my future works.  But I digress.

This novel, the first of a series of four, is dubbed Youngest for the title character, which is an artificial intelligence.  And no, I was not using incorrect grammar in the previous sentence.  Youngest as it begins the story is sexless, although when it enters human society it takes on a feminine identity.  Disguised as a human girl, Youngest leaves behind a past of trauma and torment to learn about human society and whether it can become a part of it.  The story and its characters have consumed me ever since it first came into my mind, and it seems ages that it has been pounding on the walls of my skull, demanding to be set free.

So it was surprising to me, the other day, to look back at my progress record and realize that it was still in fledgling stage at this time last year.  At the end of May 2013, I hadn’t quite reached the fortieth page, which for me makes the novel just a baby, just a beginning.

One hundred and fifty pages in one year may not be all that impressive.  That’s only a bit more than two-fifths of a page each day, maybe three hundred words.  A 300-word assignment back in college was one I could roll out in half an hour.  But you have to realize that there were days—many days—in which I didn’t write at all, because I was away or doing other things, or because my infant-dragon muse was asleep on top of my bookshelf where I can’t reach her.  More than that, a novel of this magnitude doesn’t just involve sitting in front of a keyboard.  Hours of research and planning, outlines and revised outlines, maps and drawings and lists of names—there’s an entire notebook of my scrawls.  Not to mention a few months last fall when I wrote a large chunk of the story by hand, sitting at one of the tables at work.  I’ve done enough that I’m not terrified by the self-imposed deadline of two months to finish it, eight months to have it fully revised.  The end is that close, and it’s only been a year.

To me, this hammers home the true value of this time.  In this one aspect of my life, this one segment of my creative work, I have made a huge stride, and I am filled with that strange kind of humble pride, where you are amazed that you could have done such a thing.  It gives me hope, because if this is possible in one year, what might be happening for me in the next?

Throwback Thursday: May 9, 2012

Two years ago, minus one day, I spent a wonderful evening watching the very first performance of “Decision Height”, a play written and directed by my good friend Meredith.  The play was her undergraduate honors thesis project, and it was very much a nod to our university and the ties of sisterhood we learned there.  The play takes place in World War II-era Texas, where a school of aviation takes on a group of rather unique pilots: women.  Six women explore their reasons for flying, and their pasts, their successes, their failures, and their friendships make for a touching and inspiring story.

Of the many times I have seen this play produced—and it has enjoyed its own level of success, appearing twice since its debut in area theatres, as well as elsewhere across the States—the first performance remains my favorite.  I remember the tiny dark studio where it was performed, the familiar faces making up its cast and crew, the tossed-together sets and music which just so happened to include piano themes by yours truly.  I remember the rush of pride in my friend, the tears stinging my eyes at two different points in the story.  I had heard about the play for months, had been just down the hall for all the playwright’s stressful moments, had attended the very first experimental reading.  Back then I was still a part of the process, and I was honored to be a member of the sisterhood.

I think moments like this, moments of first success, are incredibly poignant.  They are filled with a strange kind of forward-facing nostalgia, an awareness of coming joy.  It is both an ending and a beginning, a branching of the path into new things and away from the old.  I felt that, watching my friend’s work come alive, and I felt it a few weeks later on the day we both walked across the stage and switched our tassels from one side to the other.  My wish for her, and for me, is many more such moments to come.

Epiphany

Sometimes, I am struck by the wonder of my existence.

Most recently, it happened to me yesterday in church.  I was sitting with the other musicians, looking at the back of the reverend’s head as he made the weekly announcements.  The same kind of thing that happens every week.  I was a bit tuned out—I blame lack of sleep—and so really I was just letting my mind wander.  And quite suddenly I thought, Where am I?  What am I doing here?  And I didn’t mean here in the cafeteria that my church uses as a facility, sitting on a plastic chair and waiting for the songs to start.  I meant here, inside this ball of bone and flesh, living in a nest of electric and chemical signals, looking out of a pair of human eyes. 

This feeling comes on me every so often.  I could be walking down the street, or reading a book, or talking to friends, and BAM.  I am filled with astonishment at the thought of myself.  In these moments, I try to picture myself, try to pull up an image of who and what I am.  Sometimes I think of the face I see in the mirror, that round-cheeked girl with big teeth, lots of unruly hair, and questioning eyes.  But other times I can’t think of anything.  In those times, I can’t pin myself down.  How did I get here?  I wonder.  Why am I here?

It isn’t just myself that amazes me, though.  It’s everything I see around me.  Yesterday I looked at the sea of cables and the faulty speakers that make up our sound system, and I think, someone made these.  Someone made them, and someone sold them, and someone bought them.  Someone knew exactly how to set them up, plugged in each cord exactly where it needs to go, can tweak and adjust them so that the very sounds we make are changed.  Someone does that every single week. 

Someone made that guitar, smoothing the wood, setting the glue.  Someone made those strings, and someone else uncurled them to stretch over the bridge.  Someone figured out exactly how to translate metal and wood and air into music.  Someone built these walls, and made this chair, and set the tiles in the floor. 

Someone made these fantastic red boots I’m wearing, and someone put the clearance sticker on them so that I could bring them home.  My clothes, my earrings, the hairspray in my hair—in those moments, everything seems to be a miracle, and I can feel the touch of thousands of people, how I am connected to all of them in even the smallest ways.  And each of them is connected to a thousand more, and a thousand more…

We can’t live alone.  We just can’t do it.  In this world, everything we see, touch, buy, eat, drink, was somehow brought to us by someone else.  We take it for granted, but it’s true. 

Someone made my clock, my vitamins, this keyboard I’m hammering on, the monitor where I watch the words rolling across the screen.  Someone put the tea in the bag, and someone arranged the pipes so I could put water into the kettle someone made, and someone wired my stove so I could heat the water, and someone made this mug in which I put the tea, and someone milked the cow and someone harvested the sugar… 

You see?  We live in a web of people who are making things and learning things and each working in their small way to help all of us survive.

This is why I go to church.  This is why I believe in a higher power, and submit to that higher power.  I can’t believe that all these someones just sprang out of chaos and, purely by chance, became these inquisitive creatures sitting inside our flesh.  I don’t want to believe that.  No—Someone made them, those round shields of bone, those firing synapses, the hands that make and hammer and grasp and reach.  That Someone wants them to keep making things, keep reaching out to each other, keep spinning the web.  That Someone wants us to be connected this way, and gives us what we need to do it.

I don't know about you, but I think that's amazing.

Throwback Thursday: April 24, 2012

There were twenty-six days left until graduation.  That was my primary concern on this date two years ago.  My calendar marks events that I meant to attend and didn’t, due dates for class assignments, rehearsals for final performances and ceremonies honoring my accomplishments, and every single day had a little pencil mark counting down the days left.

I don’t like to think of myself wishing those days away.  My last days at my beloved alma mater, the last days living with my wonderfully mouthy college roommate and my nerdy neighbor, those last few tranquil classes (I scheduled my senior year very carefully)—they were precious times.  But living in those moments, you really can’t help yourself.  The coming change, the leap from college to “adulthood”, whatever that is, was all-consuming.  I thought I was ready, and I wanted it.  As it turns out, I wasn’t quite, but it only took a summer sleeping on the couch and a gentle kick in the pants to make me so.  But that’s a topic for another throwback.

Those days—the days when my homework was dwindling and I was easy while my classmates panicked, the days I spent finishing my thesis and dreaming about my own apartment and total freedom—were dreamy, peaceful times.  I may not have left college with a bang, but that wasn’t my style anyway.  I sauntered through my days, counting off each one, and looking ahead.  I don’t think that’s a terrible way to live life.

The End

It’s hard for me to move between worlds.  Don’t worry, I’m not claiming that I actually left good ol’ Terra today.  As a matter of fact, metaphorically, I was still on the same continent.  I was reading Naamah’s Blessing by Jacqueline Carey, the last book of its series, and a good portion of the book takes place in North America, among a fantasy equivalent of the Aztecs.  The story—which is the conclusion of three trilogies of books, beginning with Kushiel’s Dart, Kushiel’s Scion, and Naamah’s Kiss, respectively—is a revised history of the world spanning from the late middle ages to the end of the fifteenth century, centered on present-day France.  This land, called Terre d’Ange in the books, is the homeland of a people who are descended from angels, their primary god giving them only one precept: Love As Thou Wilt.

The books are beautifully done.  The first series follows Phédre no Delaunay, a courtesan and spy chosen by the one-time Punisher of God to endure pain as pleasure.  She moves through a world of intrigue, art, beauty, and yes, gratuitous sex.  In the course of three books, Phédre becomes a great heroine, traveling all across the known world and saving her homeland multiple times.  She even manages to rescue a young prince, the son of her deadliest enemy, and it is this boy, Imriel, who is the hero of the following series.  He, too, journeys all across the world, more often missing than not, but he, too, finds love by the end of the series.  I had thought that his story was the last that would be set in this intoxicating world, but I was wrong.  Carey wasn’t finished, and in Naamah’s Kiss, she introduced a new heroine, the wild and beautiful Moirin mac Fainche, daughter of a d’Angeline priest of desire and a witch of the Alban faith that worships the Great Bear.  I know, complicated.  If you read them, I advise that you begin with Phédre’s stories, otherwise all the implications will be lost to you.

Moirin’s stories are filled with more magic than in the previous books, and to be honest, the magic put a toll on my ability to disbelieve.  Poor Moirin is put through a lot, more even than one tends to expect from the heroines of novels, without much of a chance to rest.  Still, the books are beautifully written, with Moirin an impulsive, loving, and sexy character who is easy to like.  And the books do have something simply wonderful to say about the value of all faiths and the commonality of the human condition.  Finally, it is simply fascinating to look at our world in a new light. 

It was out of this world that I rose tonight, reluctantly, on closing the covers of the last book.  I sighed, smoothed my hands over the cover, and went to put it back on the shelf, and outwardly, that was that.  But in my head I’m still caught by the faces of Moirin and Bao and Desirée and Thierry and Brother Phanuel, as well as the City of Elua, Bryn Gorrydum, and the true Terre d’Ange-that-lies-beyond.  It’s hard to leave them behind, hard to remember that there is no magic in the world I’ve returned to, or at least if there is, it’s only the ordinary, every-day kind.  It’s hard for me to move on, and in a way I don’t want to.  I want to nurse this painful softness to myself, to appreciate just a little longer the art of a good story.  This is the gift I give to the author, the tribute I pay to her work, and I know that even though she may not know of it, she is glad of it.  It’s all I hope for in my own future, that someday someone might do the same for my own books, closing the last cover and simultaneously exalting in and mourning the end.

An Evening Walk

It has been a long time since I wanted to go to bed early due to physical weariness.  This evening, my roommate and I went on a long walk on a wooded trail, then spent nearly twenty minutes on the swings, because we’re adults.  I was quite worn out by the time we were done, mostly because I am horrendously out of shape.  It’s a good feeling, though, one that I’ve missed without realizing that I missed it.

So much of my life these days has been stationary.  My job is fairly physical, true, but the moment I get home I sit down in front of my computer, and for hours the only parts of me that will move are my hands.  Sometimes not even them, if I’m being particularly lazy and just scrolling through Facebook or Pinterest.  Books take up much of the rest of my time, and physical activity isn’t a priority for me.

As a kid, though, I was a mover and shaker.  I did gymnastics and soccer for years, and I was always climbing trees and running across the fields.  In high school I did marching band, and anyone who doesn’t believe that to be a sport has never held up a three-pound weight for eight minutes straight whilst playing fortissimo and running the equivalent of the hundred-yard dash in step. 

I’ve become more introspective over the years, I suppose.  Able to find privacy and inspiration in my own head, I didn’t spend as much time looking for it outdoors.  But when I gave up these activities, I also gave up the thrill of a racing pulse, the pleasant almost-ache of warm muscles, the sweet rush of quickened breath.  Tonight’s excursion, however brief, reminded me that sometimes it’s just as nice to exist inside this body as away from it.  And this world, with its cloudy moons, soft breezes, cool raindrops, and yes, swingsets, is just as wonderful—if not more so—as any I could create.

Skywalkers

I don’t usually delve too deeply into internet trends.  Funny pictures of cats, e-cards and memes—these things are good for a chuckle or a distraction when I’m suffering from writer's block.  But these pictures caught and held my attention.  It’s pretty hard not to be caught by it, to be honest.  I found myself searching for the safety equipment, for any sign of photoshopping, but found nada.  These are real, flesh-and-blood people who are hanging off of skyscrapers.

What kind of a trend is this?  Because I’ve done my research, and apparently it is a trend.  ABC News did a segment on it, which proves I’m not imagining things.  The trend began in Russia, where “skywalkers” like Vitaly Raskalov and Marat Dupri have made names for themselves climbing impossibly tall structures without safety gear of any kind.  At the top, they take pictures of the views and of themselves—naturally, right?  No one would believe them, otherwise.  Now if it were just these few people doing it, I would be impressed.  I would question their sanity a little, but I would be impressed. 

But there are hundreds of people doing this.  There are pictures of skywalkers and “roofers” all across the internet, each more daring that the last.  People doing handstands on exposed beams, people dangling from suspension bridges, all in their twenties or younger.  I look at all of this in blank astonishment, and my question is: why?  Who would want to do this?  What in this trend would be worth risking their lives?  It is so, so dangerous.  Check out the video above, if you haven’t already—it says plainly that one young man has died from this hobby.  His friend Marat, also a skywalker, says this tragedy stopped him from doing “something very risky.”  He still climbs, though, and to me, that's pretty damn risky.

I’m trying to restrain the immediate, mom-like impulse, which is utter horror.  I don’t want to be a stick in the mud, by any means.  In theory, I can come up with a few reasons people may want to do this, and most don't balance the risk, in my opinion.  If they do it for fame, then I pity them the lack of wisdom that counts the regard of others over their own self-regard.  If they do it for the thrill, then I pity them that they can’t find happiness in smaller things.  But if they do it for art—to capture the beauty and the danger of such a moment, to put their lives on the line to find something that no other human being can—well.  That I can admire, and even be grateful for.

I still am afraid for these people, and I regret the years they might lose, the years they don’t value enough to protect.  But after all, what makes humans amazing is their vast differences from one another.  Some will never take their eyes off the ground, not once in their entire lives.  Some will wish for the stars, but never do more that hope.  And some—some will steal stairways to heaven, will offer up their safety and sanity for a chance to taste it.  That vast spectrum between the former and the latter is what makes humanity all that it is.