Living with a Writer

Want to understand the peaceful security of being involved with a writer? Take a look at this relationship quiz. It’s designed for writers and their vic— I mean, their significant others.

This is from Eric Maisel’s website . He’s a writer and psychologist who specializes in creativity issues. I recently read his book Deep Writing, which is one of the few writing books that seems both insightful and realistic. And it’s well-written, which not all writing books are.

Obviously, not all the quiz questions apply to any writer, and the answers certainly don’t. I considered posting my answers, including write-in votes, but decided that it was getting too gamy and defensive. The writing was a major issue between Billy and me, so it can be difficult to discuss the difficulties of my writing career without also bringing in the death throes of the marriage.

Just one observation: For years I’ve said, “I’m a professional. I can write anything, take editorial changes, and do what’s needed rather than recording my artistic vision.” At work I still have to think that way. But I think it’s time to start being an artist again at home.

Last week I dreamed that I was up on a ladder in a vast room like a library, trying to clean a whitewashed ceiling. Underneath (really, above) was a beautiful fresco of gods and angels, dimly seen through the masking pallor.

The vision is there. I just need to restore it.

September 17, 1862

It was the bloodiest day in American history: about 23,100 young men killed, wounded, or missing, as well as four generals. A quarter of the Confederates were killed or wounded. Many of the Union soldiers died fighting on a bridge over a stream that they could easily have forded, if only General Burnsides (or anyone else) had thought to check. By the time the Battle of Antietam ended, a thirty-acre cornfield was a stubblefield so covered with dead and dying soldiers that you could walk from end to end without ever touching the ground. The best book on the battle is titled The Landscape Turned Red—a straightforward description of what happens when that many men die on such a small patch of ground. And the center of the battlefield was a Dunker church whose members were pacifists.

Despite all that bloodshed, the battle was a draw, but it counted as a tactical victory for the North. Lincoln had been waiting for the right moment. A week after Antietam, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. It freed only those slaves who were in the Confederacy, but it changed the focus of the war. It signaled the intent to deliver four million human beings from a captivity so bleak and dangerous it can scarcely be imagined.

In considering the meaning of the Emancipation Proclamation, let’s not forget the human cost of battle: what it meant to those men to march into beautiful farmland, kill and die, lie out all night suffering with wounds. What it cost their families and friends, their nation that would miss a generation of leaders, thinkers, workers, human beings.

I can’t weigh or judge their actions. I can only grieve for the lost, try to live mindfully, and work to relieve suffering wherever it may come. It’s not enough. It’s never enough.

Photographs of the battlefield, now and immediately after the battle, can be found online. There is also an extraordinary series of paintings by a professional painter who fought there that day.

92 million

· Mexico’s total population

· annual new cases of chlamydia in the US

· abortions worldwide every two years

· extra people added each year to the world population

· US and Canadian citizens over 16 who surf the Internet (as of 1999)

· amount in pounds that Internet abuse cost UK business (as of 1999)

· drinkers in the US in 1993 who were not heavy drinkers

· Americans who are functionally illiterate

· Pakistanis who are illiterate

· passengers a year who fly via the 3 NYC airports

· decline in global forest cover, in hectares, that has been estimated to be lost between 1990 and 2100

· people whose lives and homes would be threatened by a 50cm sea level rise

· number of pounds of cheddar cheese annually consumed at Taco Bells around the world

· population of Nigeria

· age in years of the oldest fossil ant known

· acres in the US protected by 511 National Wildlife Refuges

· acres around the world protected by the Nature Conservancy

· new cases filed in state courts in the US in 2000

· mobile workers in the US

· cases of lymphatic filiariasis, a severely disfiguring disease, to be treated by 40 countries this year

· acres of longleaf pine forests that formerly spread from Virginia to Texas (currently only 3 million acres)

· acres of U.S. land that is developed

· acres of grassy rangeland in Texas

· amount in pounds that the charity Oxfam collects per year

· people in Latin America who are without safe drinking water

· tax rebate checks sent to US citizens in 2001

· paper checks written in Singapore, 1999

· estimated damage in dollars of the 1992 Landers earthquake

· record albums by Bon Jovi music sold around the world

· record albums by Garth Brooks sold in the US

· population of pigs in the US

· working women in the European Economic Community

· questions answered by Ask Jeeves in the second quarter of 1999

· gallons of particles of hydrocarbons and other air pollutants from cars and factories washed into the ocean every year

· Americans who live in areas with chronic smog problems

· pounds of material Boeing recycled in 1998

· combined usage of today’s top ten paper users, in tons, ten years ago (current figure is 208 million tons, an increase of 126%)

· days in bed caused by morbid obesity in 1995

· egg production of South Carolina chickens during June 2002

· pages of documents declassified in 1998 by the National Archives

· cell phone users in the US in 2000 (rising at a rate of 1 million per month)

· Christmas cards sent by Australians for Christmas 2000

· American adults who planned to take family vacations in 1995

· in 1993, number of US households that visited casinos

· unsolicited spam e-mails advertising pornographic web sites sent to AOL subscribers by LCGM, using forged headers

In case you’re wondering, I needed to jazz up the number 92 million for work this afternoon, so I did a Google search on 92 million. These are a few of the more interesting factoids I found.

50% DISCOUNT!! SPY ON YOUR TEENAGE BARNYARD CREDITORS!!!

My candidate for the perfect spam e-mail subject line.

And no, I do not write spam for a living. Everything I write is opt-in, which means people ask for it. I certainly do not ask for the appalling spam I get on AOL. I delete 95% of it unread, but even the subject lines give me a gloomy view of humanity, not to mention a certain pity for sheep.

Northern Lights

This is a great year for seeing the aurora borealis. I haven’t seen any — I’m mostly in at night, and I live fairly far south for them — but I bet my friends and family in upstate Pennsylvania and New York can see them. There are even forecasts available online that predict when the solar storms will produce the most brilliant light shows.

Do check out the links. (They show up in a different text color.) These sites have gorgeous pictures of the northern lights, so if you can’t get out to see them, or you’re living too far south, you can still have an idea of the glory of these displays.

Yes, Dammit, I Know the Anniversary Is Over

But the grief goes on. The survivors can’t confine their sorrow to one day a year. And so, when I ran across this while looking for something else, I decided I’d better post the link to this heartwrenching article about Gettysburg and Shanksville, PA: On Hallowed Ground.

Aromas, California

Driving down to the writers’ conference Friday, I passed a sign for a town called Aromas. That must be the ideal California address. California — woodsy, pungent, spicy — is quite as beautiful to smell as it is to see.

I hear some reader jesting about smog, and God knows it’s true in some areas. I can’t spend more than a day at a time in the LA basin (such an appropriate name for it), because the air is consistently bad. For some reason, Northern California isn’t nearly as smoggy. San Francisco itself has good air, fresh off the Pacific.

But the scents. . . . even in southern California, the very first time I visited there, I loved the way California smelled. Billy and I were in the Angeles National Forest just before it rained, when all the pines and chamise and sagebrush exhaled in the suddenly humid air. Months later, I opened a little bag of postcards and the scent came rushing out, so strong and unexpected I sneezed.

Friday and today, driving along 101, I smelled dozens of separate fragrances, most delightful. Of course, you can smell Gilroy from several miles away: that pungent combination of garlic and fertilizer is unmistakable. In the spring, there is the delicately sweet scent of blooming cherry and peach orchards. The sod farms and hay farms and the hills smell of grass hot in the sun. Sometimes trucks carrying enormous mesh hoppers of onions, garlic, or tomatoes passed me; if you had some bread, you could make a wonderful pizza.

The shrubs in the hills all have their own scents: sage, rosemary, dozens of plants whose names I don’t know. The herbal, almost medicinal smells of their intense volatile oils are released in the heat, or the rain, or when the leaves are bruised by the wind. Rosemary is grown here as casually as easterners plant crown vetch or barberries, and there are times when the roadsides are blue with rosemary flowers.

At intervals along the road, there are stands of eucalyptus; even on a dry day, they exude the tingling, vigorous scent that’s so much more complex and satisfying than the boiled-down smell of Vicks VapoRub. After a rain, the air in those groves is like a spa. When I lived up in the hills beyond La Honda, I had to drive home through thick belts of eucalyptus, and their fragrance always raised my spirits, energized me. Once I drove through with my window open to the rain. The next morning, a cloud of fragrance rolled out when I opened the truck door.

The scent of the redwoods is my favorite of all: woodsy, deeper and more subtle than cedar, it’s an aroma of peace and simplicity and pleasure. When we lived in the hills, Gabriel used to come in with her fur scented with redwood needles.

Dateline: Two Dogs Internet Café in San Luis Obispo

The writers’ conference is over, and I’ve paused on my way home to eat breakfast and log on to the Internet. I have a couple of days’ worth of e-mail to deal with, and I really wanted to post here.

Yes, I did bring my laptop on this trip. But I forgot the power cord—a classically Freudian self-destructive move that shows just how scared I’ve been of writing. I’m not letting that stop me, though. There’s always another way.

I also didn’t bring printouts of any work, but that was a deliberate decision. I didn’t attend the writers’ conference to get a contract, find a new agent, or validate myself through praise and recognition. In some ways I was traveling incognito—not talking about my work or reading it aloud, not showing off my knowledge or trying to gain acknowledgment as a colleague from the presenters. Yes, I did that, deplorable as it is, last time I went to a writers’ conference as an attendee—that was the 1993 RWA convention in beautiful subaqueous St. Louis, where the Gateway Arch was up to its knees in Mississippi, and I bought a small sandbag as a souvenir.

I’m waffling. I could go off here into the tragicomic story of how I always encounter natural disasters when I travel. It’s amusing, and it’s well off the topic. But not today—I want to face this, dammit.

I went to the writers’ conference to remember who I am. To be among people who value what matters to me: the art and craft of writing. (Which sounds redundant, but isn’t.) And to start caring enough again to overcome the fear that’s kept me frozen these long years.

I have a stable home now. I have a computer to write on. I have a supportive partner. I don’t have time, but I can make that—I have to make it somehow. Even an hour a day would make a difference. I just need to build the momentum to carry me into writing every single day.

For years I had what every writer dreams of: hours alone every day, hours of unspoiled time in which to devote myself to the work. Afterwards I could do errands, cook, read, sleep, handle Billy. Writing was my fulltime job. Of course, I paid a price for it, and when the price got too high, I left that marriage and that life. I’ve posted about that already, though, and there’s no point in rehashing the devil’s bargain. I chose my life above my writing, which sounds idiotic; unless I’m alive, I can’t possibly write. And of course it was more complicated than that. But the point is. The point is.

I haven’t written a book in five years—well, five years come November. And I haven’t finished a book of my own in far longer. I‘ve worked on other people’s projects. I’ve been writing ad copy, marketing e-mails, persuasive junk mail. It pays the rent. It gives me a sense of achievement, and at least I’ve been able to write copy for products I believe in. But I miss my own work.

And every tiny chance element of the Cuesta College Writers’ Conference seemed designed to remind me that life is short, and I’d better write today, because tomorrow I might not be breathing.

In his welcome speech, David Congalton, the conference co-director, apologized to returning participants for the lack of guitar music, which had been a tradition. The guitar player dropped dead in March. Heart attack. He was 49. There was an empty chair with his picture propped against the back as a memorial.

And there was more. I don’t have time now to record every detail, but the most touching moment of the conference for me came when Susan Vreeland mentioned the circumstances of her finishing the manuscript of Girl in Hyacinth Blue. She was in the hospital with lymphoma; she’d had a bone-marrow transplant, and it wasn’t clear if she would survive. But she finished the book. She wanted to make sure her writers’ group knew that she had been happy in those last months of her life.

The Lump has been a distraction for me. Not anymore. Now it’s a spur. I am 43. I could have another 60 years, or I could die on the way home. I don’t want to waste the time I have left. I don’t have unbroken days to write any longer. But I can find an hour, two hours. I can do this. I have to.

You Look Like You Could Use a Laugh

I’ve been meaning to post this link to The Best of Craigslist for a while, but tonight I just had to. It’s not just because it’s hilarious, though it is. It’s because it can make me laugh and think and feel like a human being even when I’m infernally weary (I didn’t get home from work until 11PM).

Craigslist.org is a San Francisco original (now available in a number of other areas around the country). It is a bulletin board with ads for jobs, apartments, ridesharing, romance, furniture, useless junk, performance art, cars, and many other things, as well as online conversations about everything else in life. I found my elderly Mac, a gorgeous antique dining-room table and chairs, my truck, and several other wonderful things on Craigslist. And the Best Of Craigslist winnows out all the ordinary ads for traveling companions or 72-piece Tupperware sets and presents us only with the Ultimate — such as the guy who is looking for a traveling companion back into the past, or the guy who’s looking for work (his major qualification is his skill at playing FreeCell on company time).

They’re all good, but these are some of the best to start with:

Wisdom on marriage and kids: RE: Almost 35, Unmarried, Depressed

Wickedly funny classification of personal ads: Warm it up Craig

Microsoft error messages in haiku: For Those Who Fear the Window

Really unusual classified ads: horny futon mattress desperate for some hot action – $100; Lil’ Unicorn is getting pissed off! (photo) – $1

Ten exciting reasons: It’s great to be a cat.

Good sexual advice/personal ad: Foreplay – A Reader’s Guide

The Creme de la Creme of that day’s personal ads: Ladies, May I Present The Men

A warped and very funny personal ad: ‘Modern Executive’ seeks conspirator for accounting fraud and dinner.

Wise advice for those who dream of Someplace Else: We all have problems. Minnesota is NOT the solution.

I promise I’ll post something I actually wrote at some point in the near future. Plus the Lumpdate. But right now, I’m exhausted. It’s been a long, hard week, and I need to get to bed.

Nobel Laureate Pays Tribute to Sept. 11 Dead

WARSAW (Reuters) – Poland’s Nobel Prize-winning poet Wislawa Szymborska has written a moving tribute to the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.

A photograph from Sept. 11

They jumped from the burning stories, down

– one, two, a few more

higher, lower.

A photograph captured them while they were alive and now preserves them

above ground, toward the ground.

Each still whole

with their own face

and blood well hidden.

There is still time,

for their hair to be tossed,

and for keys and small change

to fall from their pockets. They are still in the realm of the air,

within the places

which have just opened.

There are only two things I can do for them

– to describe this flight

and not to add a final word.