a scattering of thoughts about thoughts

We were on a walk today, with Peggy dog on her leash, Edith Emily in her sling. I could smell the rain coming. Wind was blowing, and the colors seemed extra vivid to me. Wherever I looked I noticed interesting combinations of colors - dark purple berries on a forest green bush, the sudden florescent spattering of fallen leaves on a bright lawn, sun faded tan adobe walls flush against sun faded bricks, the light grey of concrete as a backdrop for a teal painted iron fence, some lavender blossoms - and I realized I was imagining the colors as skeins of yarn. Hand dyed hanks of the colors I saw around me on a day whose sky was greyer than the rest. I have been thinking about knitting a lot lately, and knitting a lot as well. Ravelry provides an endless source of fascination, as nearly everyone in the world currently using wool to make things seem to have a profile on there, with pictures of finished projects, yarn stashes, and hand dyed, handspun fibery goodness. Then there are the knitting blogs....

But anyways, I did not open this posting box to write about knitting. I wanted to express somehow, the thoughts that swirled through my head this afternoon as Peggy dragged us through the neighborhood, nose first. It seems like whatever my mind is tuned into, becomes the way I see. I do not remember ever noticing colors so vividly before. When I was taking a lot of pictures, I would notice interesting colors, but they were always part of a larger scene - something with visual interest beside color - form, content, light and shadow, whatever. Today was different because it was so specific to just color combinations. I realized that I haven't been writing as much (yes I know, nanowrimo actually took too much joy away from the writing process and I turned to knitting instead. told you something like that was bound to happen...) lately, but when I was writing pretty regular blog entries, my thoughts on walks like this were more word oriented. I would spend mental energy thinking about how I would describe something, and sifting through the day to find interesting situations worth writing about. So now that my thoughts have been tuned to knitting, the pieces of the world that I perceive the most happen to be color and texture oriented. Forgive me if I am repeating myself, I'm just circling what is probably a very simple concept.

Different people perceive the world differently. We probably all know this, to some degree. Yet it's a hard thing to really know. I am constantly surprised when another person reveals that no, they are not on the same page as I am. Because I'm only looking at one page, I forget that there are words on the other side. I have never had any interest in sailing, but my cousin has an album full of sailing photos on his facebook page. He's also a commercial pilot. Which reminds me of a friend of mine's father, who has participated in sailing races and also got his pilot's license a few years ago. He and his wife live on a private runway so he can fly his plane whenever he wants. Today it was windy, like I mentioned, and to me that means that my skirt flaps around on our walk, Edie wears a hat, leaves eddy up into momentary swirls of color, and the trees dance. A windy day is beautiful to me, and exciting to walk through. I was thinking today, after noticing how I was noticing colors especially, that on a day like this my cousin or my friend's dad might have some extra perception regarding the wind. The direction, the quality, how fast, how cold...things that don't matter much to me necessarily, because I am just walking around going gaga over the color of things. But if I could jump into somebody else's head, what bits of the world would I notice especially much? The sound of things? The way it smells? How healthy the plant life is? What kind of birds are singing? The make and model of every car that passes? The price of cigarettes at the corner store?

What if we were aware of all the details, all at once?

Today I finally remembered to water Kenneth's garden while he was at work. I turned on the sprinkler and ran inside to try and squeeze a shower in while Edie napped. She woke up screaming before I could turn the water on, and I ran to comfort her wearing my towel. She was inconsolable for a long time - she hadn't been ready to wake up when she did. Finally she calmed down, though she was clingy, and I remembered the sprinkler. Ran outside and turned it off, but the garden looked like the flooded farms of the midwest. Gurty drank from one of the pools between the rows of kale. And now it is pouring rain like LA thinks it's Portland.

this might sound crazy...
but I actually think Emily is trying to pretend she has long hair when she drapes yarn around her neck. Tonight she placed a few strands in their usual spot, and then started tugging her hair. Plus, she acts really girly when she plays with the yarn. You can blame Grammy, because she sure doesn't get that girly stuff from me.

The fires

The sky is yellow.
The air smells like campfire, and it tastes acrid.
Everything is dusted with ash.

Today we will stay inside.

baby movies

baby movies

One of Emily's more unfortunate favorite activities is to drape yarn around her neck. She will crawl over to me when I am knitting and grab the yarn between me and the skeins, and loop it over the back of her neck like she is putting on a necklace. She is so methodical about it, she must think she is doing some kind of grown up activity, but I can't think of what she might be imitating.

Just in the time I've taken to write this, she's put about four loops around her neck.
Oh, Kid! I'm going to have to knit her a little scarf that she can drape around her neck all she wants.

She waves now, at everybody. It's really cute.
She also says Kitty Cat, Dog, Dada, Mama, and Grandpa. Of course, it's not that obvious. It's more like "Kkkhhkcat" and "Gah Puh". Still. It's an exciting time to know this kid.
She's also kissing and hugging a lot more. She used to like giving the cold shoulder when we went in for the kiss, but now she's all about it. This morning she woke up and started kissing my face right away. Awwww....cuddly baby. I'll have some more pictures up on Picasa soon.

It's a good time for pep talks.

Thanks, Neil Gaiman.

I hate the novel so far. I don't even want to write novels! I thought I'd be writing fast and furious memoir stuff, about things that really happened, because you know that's what I know and they say to write what you know. Plus I am my favorite main character! My life is my favorite plot!

But I had trouble with the fast pace, trying to get every precious little detail of my precious little memories in line just right, so I had to make somebody up and make her go do stuff that I didn't do. The good news? I still have an imagination! I can still make pictures in my head of places I've never been!
The bad news? It's a load of crap, so far, and doesn't carry the emotional weight that it would if it were MY story happening. But I have to just get out of the way and type this dreadful thing, because I said I would. Bleah.

Where are my uninterrupted stretches of writing time for NaNo!!??

I'm so far behind. Like, 10,000 words behind.

Ah, so this is what true, deep gratitude feels like. I have been truly, deeply grateful in the past, the last and biggest example being that time I held a brand new soul in my hands as she took her first breaths and told her "thank you for being here, for choosing us." And of course there have been plenty of moments since that one where I took pause and realized how lucky I am. (remember when you helped me attend Literary Star class?) It happens whenever that above-mentioned, still pretty new soul falls asleep after nursing, arching her body, smacking her lips a couple of times, and letting out a deep sigh before becoming perfectly still for a blissful stretch of time. When she sleeps, her face glows from within, and she looks like a completely different creature than the animated, squirmy, laughing and wild Edith Emily who grows faster and faster every day. I say a quick and silent thank you before getting up to do the things I cannot do when she is awake. I say thank you other times, for other things - these past few rainy days in LA have been heaven, getting out to walk the dog, our new bike seat and thus freedom, and new friends in town.

This gratitude right now is so different. This is the gratitude of a collective spirit, a world holding its breath to see about renewing that hope for the future. I have learned to be grateful for the blessings I have received; I have tried to be grateful for the blessings that others receive and sometimes succeeded, sometimes held hands with Lady Jealousy at the same time; and now, finally, I can feel the gratitude that belongs to us all.

For some odd reason, it gave me the energy to unload the dishwasher, throw the diapers in the wash, load the dishwasher, and wipe the counter tops, just in the last hour! Usually that constitutes a day's work for me, dragging my sad and homesick self between the chores and the couch while the baby makes do with a floorful of toys.

The effects of happiness are instantaneous. Hope for the future does wonders for a body. I feel ten years younger, twenty five pounds lighter. I'm not sure, but I think I might be falling back in love with America, that crazy b$@!* I am so grateful to be alive today, and that my daughter's first years will be spent in a changing society, under the leadership of the first African American President of the USA. As she grows older, I look forward to telling her stories about this election - how more people than ever before came out to vote because we were ready for a big change, a good change. The work is only just beginning, but I am so excited to see what we can make with this time, with this country.

At the same time...
Yes on 8? Come ON, California! You are losing some major cool points with me. As my friend Salvez pointed out, Oregon also has farmer's markets and ocean beaches. Equal marriage rights for same-sex couples was one of the only things that gave you an edge besides all the frozen yogurt places and the show Californication. I am very very disappointed in you, California, and I am counting down the minutes until we are on our way back to Pabst Blue Ribbon Beaver Bridge Town, where the air is clear, and the tap water drinkable.

NaWoAmMo

dangit, I really and truly believed that a Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius would just fly from my fingertips and onto the page, happy to finally have been set free. Doh. I started writing about one thing. Then I got bored with it after about, oh, like a blog's length. My attention span is not what it once was. Was it ever? Hm. So I kept at it, writing crappy scenes that didn't connect to one another. After about 2000 words, I started a new novel. This one was much easier to write like a story. I used the third person and changed "I" to a character named "_____". Still a true story, but now it seemed like fiction. After a page of that story, I got bored again. Just now I had a great story idea in the shower, one that would be ACTUALLY fictional, but that I could easily pretend myself into. But maybe I need to practice sticking with the original idea for a change. I really do seem to be more of a sprinter than a long distance marathon writer. Pace yourself, Kendal.

Anyways, though roughly half of my word count is crap, or little admonishments from my internal editor (what the heck? she was supposed to go stay in the Internal Editor Kennel for the month. She keeps escaping!) about what a crappy excuse for a story I am trying to write, I have 3480 words now, including both story starts and the third idea. Nothing fits together. Maybe they should rename it National Word Amassing Month, because I think the term "Novel Writing" is rather misleading.

At least there are the pep talks to look forward to:
I received this message in my inbox yesterday...

"Dear Writer,

Howdy! NaNo Program Director Chris Baty here. Welcome to the 10th NaNoWriMo! It's great to have you on board.

I'll be sending you one of these emails each week from here until the end of the event. Between my emails, you'll also get two encouraging missives from our panel of celebrity author pep talkers. This week, you'll be hearing from Jonathan Stroud and Philip Pullman.

Okay. Enough chit-chat. It's time to talk geodes.

Geodes, for the geologically disinclined, look like normal rocks on the outside. But when you cut them open, they're filled with all sorts of wonders—bubbly layers of agate, sparkly crystals, elves.

As a kid, I was obsessed with geodes. The highlight of my year was a visit to Dick's Rock Shop in Fountain, Colorado. The owner of the store, Richard Stearns, had a crate of dirty, unremarkable, tennis-ball-sized rocks in his Geode Bin. You'd spend an hour hunting through them until you'd picked out the perfect dirty, unremarkable rock.

Richard would then fire up his slab saw and cut the thing in half for you. The machine screamed and spit water to cool the blade, and it was messy and slow. Most of the time, Richard would lose a finger in the process.

That's how I remember it anyway. The details are a little fuzzy after so many years.

When he was done, Richard would present you with both halves of your geode. They'd be wet, and sometimes you'd gaze down into a glittering concavity of purple or green. Other times, you'd cry because you'd stupidly picked one of the geodes where the all the crystals were caked with a calcified layer of elf spit.

As we head into NaNoWriMo, I'm reminded of the feeling I got standing in Dick's Rock Shop, watching as that year's mystery stone revealed whatever magic it possessed. After nine NaNoWriMo novels—most of which have trended more towards elf spit than gemstones—I still get an excited stomach-flutter at the start of November. I can't help but feel giddy as I ponder questions like: Will this be the best novel I've ever written? And, secretly: Will this be the best novel ever written in the history of humankind?

Because it really could be.

Then the writing starts, and by the second sentence, two new questions have occurred to me. Namely: What am I doing? And: Could this be the worst novel ever written in the history of humankind?

And you know what? It really could be. But that's fine. Trust me on this. Don't waste your time measuring the success of your NaNo novel by the sparkle of your prose or the rock-solid genius of your plot. The books we write in November won't start out like the novels we buy in bookstores. Because the novels we buy in bookstores didn't start out like bookstore-novels either.

Nope. They started out as way-less beautiful, way-more exciting things called first drafts. These are the dinged-up cousins to final drafts, and they're packed with crazy energy and laughable tangents and embarrassing instances where a main character's name shifts six times over the course of a single chapter.

Creating this reckless, romantic, and potential-filled beast is the first step in writing a great book. It's also a fantastic workout for your imagination, and monkey-barrels of fun. There's a catch, though. Getting through a first draft will require you leave perfectionism and self-criticism at the door. Fear not: We'll keep them both safe and return them to you in December.

But in November, you are beyond criticism. Because you are doing something that few people in the world have the guts to try—you're packing a huge creative challenge into an already-hectic life. You're juggling work and home; family and friends. With all of that going on, you've signed up for NaNoWriMo. Where you've spent the last few weeks hunting through the bin of possible novel ideas, trying to pick out the perfect one. Maybe you've got yours already. Or maybe you feel like you're not quite ready.

You're ready.

It's November 1, writer.

What say we fire up the ol' slab saw and find out what's in there?

Chris
NaNoWriMo"

Can this guy write or what?

Back to the typing board.