Northanger Abbey

Because it was on my reader, and I've been on a Gothic kick lately, I just finished reading Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. I'm not sure I've read an Austen book that did not feature money as the key area of conflict, and I appreciate the idea that it would have been disingenuous for money to have taken a back seat in an Austen novel, for once, but I have to admit to a slight irritation that the Gothic aspects of the novel were (to me) so clearly secondary. The premise of the novel is both fun (I love satire) and not fun at all (all of the Gothic elements lead nowhere, really?).

The first half of the book is pure Regency Bath, with Catherine Moreland agonizing over the minute details of walking the Pump Room and attending public dances. Her mentors, the Allens, were not sufficiently connected to introduce her into society right away, and so she needed to wait until the lucky moment when Mrs. Allen bumped into Mrs. Thorpe, and she could be provided with an instant "best friend", Isabella Thorpe, and her overbearing, pathological liar of a brother, John. Thus connected, and no longer doomed to sitting alone and socially awkward in the public rooms, our heroine commences making an attachment to Henry Tilney with the help of his sister, Eleanor. The scenes wherein the Thorpes are manipulating Catherine away from the Tilneys and into their own company, to further the attachment of Isabella to Catherine's brother James, and the attachment of John Thorpe to Catherine herself, provide a great deal of the drama in the early half of the book, and Henry Tilney distinguishes himself as the hero by taking none of it seriously, and being mostly above the painfully obvious social machinations of the Thorpes and their kind.

A digression: my travel to London and Leeds will be extremely busy. I may keep Bath in mind as a day-trip destination, but I'm not sure I'll be able to pry myself and my daughter away from the charms of London, so the visit to Bath may require another trip to England altogether. On that second trip, perhaps I'll also visit Lyme Regis (the setting of The French Lieutenant's Woman), the Lake District (geographic focus of the Lake Poets), and the British moorlands, which provided the setting for The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett and Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. I would very much like to walk the landscapes and cityscapes I have read about so closely.

The second half of Northanger Abbey takes place at the ancestral residence of Henry and Eleanor Tilney. Henry, it turns out, just like Catherine Moreland, is a fan of the Gothic works of Ann Radcliffe, including The Mysteries of Udolpho, to which Catherine is exposed during her stay in Bath. Knowing how much Catherine enjoys the Gothic, and indulging his tendency toward affectionate mockery of his love objects (starting with his sister, and continuing with Catherine), Henry regales her with rumors of the Abbey while driving her there on invitation of General Tilney, his father. General Tilney turns out later to be a pale, petty, watered-down version of the great anti-heroes Mr. Rochester and Heathcliff. His claim to fame is Catherine's suspicion that he wasn't always very nice to his wife, and therefore must have killed her or exiled her permanently to the spider-webby recesses of the Abbey. She decides this after spending a dark and stormy night freaking out about a "mysterious scroll" that turns out to be a stack of laundry bills stuck in an old cupboard, and being forbidden by the General to take a stroll through the dead woman's rooms.

Again and again, the Gothic elements are laid thickly on through the story, and then shrugged off, as if Austen has gotten as bored of the works of Radcliffe as she was of the monotony of Regency Bath. It's all very boring. It requires mockery. Henry has an interest in light literature, and clearly has an interest in naive and pretty young girls. By the end of the story, I began to suspect that Henry was not only the author's tool for mocking Catherine, but Catherine was her tool for mocking Henry, in turn. This guy thinks he's so much better and smarter than the rest of the people at Bath, and yet he goes all gloppy for this perfect girl, who is described as rightly and delightfully free of anything remarkable, such as natural intelligence or taste. She is a blank slate, susceptible to influence, impressionable, vulnerable, and has 3,000 pounds, which is not great, but not terrible, either. She is the perfect catch for a man who himself has a modest living, until the General reveals his real crappy nature, which manifests as gullibility and rabid class-consciousness.

You see, back in Bath, Catherine managed to get free of the manipulative and evil treasure-hunter, John Thorpe, who had inflated her pecuniary value because of his own pride and stupidity. He and his sister thought the Morelands were wealther than they were, and his pride caused him to gossip about the wealth of the Morelands while he worked all of his sly tricks to keep Catherine away from the Tilneys and pinned to his side. General Tilney heard that the Morelands were wealthy from Thorpe, who was self-deluded and posturing, and decided to spirit Catherine away to Northanger Abbey to seduce her into marrying his son, Henry, who had already evidenced an attachment to her. He parades her around his wealth, and practically has her picking out curtains, all the time slobbering over the idea of the 15,000 pounds Thorpe said she had. But before leaving Bath, Catherine has to blow Thorpe back from supposing she is the least bit interested in him, and the next time Thorpe corners the General, he tells a new story: the Morelands are not only destitute, but there's a million kids that need to be supported on the nothing that Catherine's parents have, and everyone in their neighborhood thinks they suck. The General gives immediate orders for his future-daughter-in-law to be hurled into a rented cab and sent home immediately.

What's a beautifully naive, not-too-shabbily financed girl of average intelligence and attractiveness to do? Because her "best friend" Isabella threw her brother over for Henry Tilney's older brother (who subsequently rejected her, leaving her engaged to no one!), that relationship is toast. Because Isabella's brother John Thorpe is a total self-absorbed jerk, Catherine's relationships with Henry and Eleanor are toast. There is nothing for it but for her to ride the rented coach back into the bosom of her mild-mannered family and lay around ignoring her needlework until Henry comes to ask her to marry him. Done, and done. The General is appeased by 3,000 pounds being ultimately way better than nothing, and wedding bells ring. The author suggest that none of this was harmful to Catherine and Henry; to the contrary, that the obstacles described in the story, including begging the General to allow them to marry after Thorpe's damage is cleared up, actually helped build their bond.

The note from the author is amusing, but also unsettling: "...I leave it to be settled, by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience."

What this work does is make fun of Regency England and all the people involved, and to refuse to take advantage of Gothic elements as valid plot points in a "serious" novel. Maybe I'm wrong about that last part. Maybe I'm wrong about the book, and it's all in good fun. I love Austen, and think she's terribly clever, but I actually think she was too clever for her own good in this book, and missed an opportunity to have a lot more fun with the Gothic in Northanger Abbey than she allowed herself to do.

Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights

Right now my pleasure reading is focused on the gothic novel, and I'm taking advantage of my Sony eReader and Project Gutenberg to obtain books in the public domain for free. You know those shelves of classics in Barnes & Noble with the public domain art on the covers? I think you'd know them if you saw them; they all have the same cover style that features some old painting that's sort of relevant to the story. Those books can be had electronically for free from Project Gutenberg. For the price of my Sony eReader, I can have hundreds of free books, although you must remember that all of the books are old, so old that the intellectual property rights have expired.

Reading Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte was never easier, both because it's just easier to hold the light reader open-handed and turn the pages by pressing a button, and because I've read it about five times by now. I remember my difficulty puzzling out the plot when I was in high school; my attention span for required reading was terrible. Now I look at the book and think it reads as easily as any modern novel. This time around, I had to laugh at its grotesques and exaggerations: Oh, Helen! Such a saint! Oh, St. John! I want to shoot you dead, you annoying zealot. Jane Eyre! You're such an impressionable girl! Of all the books written by the Brontes, I find Jane Eyre the most accessible. (I just got deja vu. Have I recently written about Jayne Eyre? All right, never mind. Just write.)

Reading Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte was also easier this time around, for the same reasons, but I have to admit that I still needed to mentally trace the genealogy of the characters every few pages to keep track of the Earnshaws, Lintons, and Heathcliffs. Who was married to whom, and when, and why (maybe on a whim, maybe for love, maybe to poison someone's family and steal their money). Who was whose sibling, whose parent, whose child. I think I got it right this time around, and forgive myself for taking so long to get a grip on the fascinating incestuous tangle. This books needs re-reading in order for the pieces to come together. Read the part twice where Heathcliff hangs up Isabella's dog before abducting her to marry him. Linger on the scene where this charming specimen repeatedly brains himself on a tree-trunk to mourn the passing of damned crazy lunatic Catherine, who by then is his sister-in-law.

This is obvious, but I'm not a scholar, so I'm going to talk about it anyway. Those Bronte sisters do seem to have a thing against classically handsome blond people. The heroes are all dark, usually unattractive, and pretty damned grumpy. Lunacy is soooo romantic. There are dazzling, wild, and crazy people everywhere, and they love more deeply than the pale and attenuated classically handsome blond people. Real heroes have bandy legs and big torsos, and they're even better once they lose an eye or an elbow (elbow knocked off by a burning timber, or squashed by a rabid horse). Sassy and codependent; that's how we like our domineering men. And dark, and unattractive.

I need to read a biography on the Brontes, if I already haven't. Yes, I've read so many books by now, I can't remember what I've already read and what I haven't. You'd think I'd have read such a biography already, but it's not on my bookshelf, and I don't recall checking one out from the library. I usually remember that because of the late fees. It looks as though there may be a biography at Project Gutenberg I could nab and read for free: Elizabeth Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Bronte. I think I can imagine the sort of life that would produce a pack of women who were in love with dark things. I'm in love with dark things too. I imagine the things that happened to those women when they were girls are not the sort of thing that will have made it into a biography written in 1857, unless written by an heir of the Marquis de Sade. I do imagine that their lives were muddled, troubled, suffocated, and if I say much more, I may need to write a novel about it, and that must be avoided at all cost.

No more novel ideas. Nope. Can't even manage to do a blog post every day, so a new novel idea is Right Out.

I might scribble a little note.

Chicago - Day 4

Yep, it's May 2nd, and this is backdated to 28 April. You may throw rotten fruit.

A few words on music festivals of the competitive sort. I've been going to these with my daughter since she was an eighth grader playing clarinet for the high school marching band. It's a system, you see. They let the eighth-graders into the action, which is cool, so by the time they get to high school, they've already been prepped and indoctrinated, and that's how the band grows (or is sustained). I'm sure there are many other music competitions, but I'm going to focus on two, because I'm used to their systems and can describe them with the verisimilitude of first-hand experience.

As I've mentioned before, I love the very idea of subcultures. I don't always like the focus of each subculture (take, for instance, Aryan Youth, do not like) but it's fascinating (even if only morbidly fascinating) to see the fervor of their adherents. Luckily, at least in my town, band is not the Aryan Youth (and all of a sudden, I'm thinking of Aryan Youth competitions, and realizing that I almost took a wrong turn, there). No, marching band is, in itself, a good thing. Concert band. Percussion ensemble. Chamber choir. And yes, even Show Choir (sometimes; I'll tell you about ours in a minute). As in any subculture, the participants range in interest level, but there is a certain percentage that are absolutely rabid.

Take the trip to Ohio last year. My daughter was in the percussion ensemble, and they were convinced they had the winning show in their division that year. So we loaded fifty kids and their massive instruments (marimbas, vibraphones, timpanis, drum kits, bells) into a truck and the kids in two vans, and we parents took turns driving them from Boston to Dayton. The vans stank. The kids were rowdy. It rained both ways. But when we were in the stadium, the rest of the world melted away, and it became the land of the rock star drum lines with names like Incognito and Rhythm X. My daughter's ensemble was in the concert division, which means they don't have a moving drum line, but groups like Rhythm X's drum line doesn't just move; it dances and does acrobatics. The group from Japan had kids on roller blades wearing really big spiky headpieces like something out of Flash Gordon. When Rhythm X queued up their title song of the show, which was a percussion arrangement of Muse's "Knights of Cydonia," the kids were on their feet, shrieking the lyrics, screaming their heads off, and just on fire with passionate delight.

As you might imagine, it's really my kind of scene. It's like one of those big money churches, except nobody's telling you you're going to hell. At worst, they'll try to get you to buy the $50 video of your kid's performance, and you'll end up with a Vic Firth sticker plastered to the bumper of your car.

So, anyway, that was super cool and exciting. The kids came in second to the group that plays like clockwork but has no soul/life, which was heart-breaking, because so many of the percussion kids were seniors, and seniors ADORE going out with a bang and a huge trophy, but it was pretty par for the course for our school. We win some, we lose some, and we never do either one with a very big bang. There's always someone with a better group. We go and enjoy it, and hope anyway, and we know the drill. The same guy seems to do the announcing for every single competition sponsored by NESBA (the New England Scholastic Band Association), and we chant along when he reads the scores. "And with a score of 98.7 (that's ninety-eight POINT seven), Dartmouth High!!!!" And Dartmouth looks bored, because they always win the platinum or whatever the highest score is, whereas the other schools are elated if they get second or third place. Just as with sex, I think it's a bit more exciting when there's just a teeny bit of anticipation and even doubt (but the sexy, exciting kind, not the performance anxiety kind).

By the way, the above description of mania only applies to the big competitions. There are dozens of little competitions that build up to the big competitions, and those are much more subdued. The exciting part is to find out they have cow tails at the concession stand. There's little else exciting about loading the equipment into the rental van, trooping onto a school bus or into a bazillion private cars driven by parents, arriving in the heat, unloading the equipment, milling around forever, doing the show in the mud, wrestling with the props, and then hearing the judge's critique afterward, where the judges tell the kids all the stuff they can do to get a better score next time. Parades are even less exciting, and football games are at the far bottom of the barrel with the rotten apples nobody wants. But big competitions are "what we came for," and they are very exciting. They make all the mud-marching and equipment schlepping totally worth it.

Fast-forward to the big stuff: The Chicago Heritage Music Festival. The festival is much, much different when it happens out in the big world, versus when it happens at home. I imagine that when kids come to Massachusetts from all over creation, they're thrilled to go Salem, and Lexington, and Boston, and get all educated on the history, etc. They probably feel really impressed. Whereas, we yawn over Boston, and get excited over Chicago. Grass. Greener. You get it, right? After the twenty-hour bus ride, we were ready to play, only playing was on the last day, and you've seen the rest of the itinerary. For me, maybe it seems weird, but watching the kids play is the best part for me. I get into it. I was interested in some of the trip as kind of a force-march vacation, but as soon as the festival started, I was engaged. I watched almost every group, and there were quite a few groups from all over the US and Canada.

I saw the trip preview concert, but now I think I'm actually lucky to have missed the second half, which was the choral part. I watched the concert band, the symphony orchestra, and the jazz band, but went home before seeing the concert choir, the chamber choir, or the show choir. I think it was the perfect setup for drama. I knew the concert choir was solid but not sparkling, the symphony was not as solid, and the jazz band was great. At the festival, these groups performed one notch above their standard show, and placed silver, silver, gold. No surprises there. I had heard some rumors about the quality of our choirs, but didn't have direct experience so didn't know what to expect. I saw choir after choir from other schools, getting up and doing the standard thing; concert choirs do classical pieces and spirituals, chamber choirs do the same, at a higher level of difficulty, and show choirs do Glee, with baton-twirling, and glittery dresses, and acne-riddled tenors in tuxedos who slouch their way through the dance numbers as if embarrassed by the whole thing. Our concert choir didn't surprise me. Our chamber choir did a little. The first earned a silver, the second a bronze. And when our show choir did its thing, all hell broke loose. At the end of the performance, the middle judge of three just grabbed his head and flung up his hands in surrender. "What to say about this?"

In NESBA, there are critiques, that are delivered to the band's director, and then the director comes back and gives the kids the news (usually not great). At Heritage there are clinics, where the group actually gets critiqued by one of three judges, up on stage, in front of everybody. The judges will pull out parts they especially didn't like, and they try to teach a five to ten minute class to get their point across on some point or other. The band judges talk about sound, balance, musicality, expression, and so forth. The choir judges talk about long vowels and dynamics and, for show choir, choreography, and so forth. I'd seen several show choirs by the time ours went on stage, and even though my daughter had insisted hers was actually good, I didn't know what she meant. Comparatively good, or good-good? If the former, well, ok. Great. But no, they were good-good. By the end of the second piece, the middle judge had given up his voice-recorder thingy, and was just clapping with the crowd, having a ball. The opening number was the group's theme song, and it was a wacky piece of self-mockery, based on the high school mascot. It had fairly typical choreography with lots of jazz hands and whatnot. But the next pieces were mind-blowing. It's an a capella group, with a vocal percussionist on a microphone. Two of the three featured songs had been arranged by one of the seniors in the group, bracketing a song arranged by the group's director: a mashup of Here and Take On Me, an a capella version of Falling Slowly, and a mashup of Dynamite and Soul Sister. At the last note, the auditorium full of students who had been apathetic through most of the day leaped to their feet in a heart-felt (not the fake kind) standing ovation.

As I said before, the middle judge was beside himself. Luckily, he wasn't the judge in the hot seat; that was the seasoned veteran show choir judge. Who stumbled up on stage and gushed. And gushed. And gushed. And searched through her notes desperately looking for something, anything, helpful to say that would improve the performance. She said, "There isn't another group out there like you. You are unique. You can't teach group dynamics and cohesion like that." She said that the choreography looked completely spontaneous and natural, like the kids had just got it into their heads to have a ball, and it just accidentally was brilliant. Studied, practiced, spontaneous brilliance. After a while, she said something smart about improving the "accelerando" between songs three and four, and something about matching vowel sounds, but immediately brushed off her own critique saying "maybe vowel sounds don't mean much to a group like you." Jubilation. The baffled judge not in the hot seat stumbled up, breaking judge etiquette, to put in his two cents, asking the director why he chose to give the high part in Falling Slowly to the girl instead of the guy, and the director had to patiently explain that the two soloists actually traded the high part back and forth, as do Marketa Irglova and Glen Hansard in the actual song. So, that was cool too.

Drama. High drama. They threw us onto three school buses after the performance and sped us off to Medieval Times in Chicago (which surprised the hell out of me because it was so fun, but I'll write about later). After the show, Sir Anthony, the Master of Ceremonies, did the awards, handing out plaques and trophies using his best Casey Casem voice (Remember America's Top 40? Remember Shaggy?) Then the awards started coming. My daughter's school brought six groups to Chicago and won fourteen awards. Now, we were guaranteed to win six awards, because everybody comes away with an award if you go to Heritage. But they also won four individual performance awards (both soloists from the show choir, the awesome, expressive stand-up bass player and the trumpet player from the jazz band). And they won several really big trophies for stuff I can't remember, including the Festival Sweepstakes, which was the award for (I kid you not) winning enough of the other awards. That's when we found out that the show choir and the jazz band had received the two highest scores at the festival.

Our little high school. Who doesn't usually win or lose in a big way. We coast somewhere in the middle, usually. But not this trip.

This was the last big competition of my daughter's high school music career.

After the award ceremony, there was a dance in the Medieval Times Hall of Celebration or whatever they called the beer area, and the first song was "Dynamite," prominently featured in the show choir's amazing performance, and the whole school was in the air, doing the pogo, so excited to be young, and alive, and finally, FIRST.

Chicago - Day 3

It's actually the 30th of April today; I'm sorry I'm still behind.

I'm having a tough time on this trip keeping up with blogging. It may have something to do with the schedule: up most mornings early, in bed late most nights, with group chaperone duties at both ends, and in the middle. We're on the bus, off the bus, on the bus, off the bus, with every moment accounted for, which is to be expected. When it's time to sit, I tend to fall asleep. I'm falling asleep all over the place this weekend, which is funny, because I'm picky about where I lay my head. Exhaustion is great for the sleep appetite.

Part of the blogging problem is that I'm in a city renowned for its architecture, and I've been having trouble finding a robust enough network connection for uploading my photos. However, this is my lucky day; a little while ago, I saw someone e-mailing a comment to the festival staff (I'm at a music festival, remember?), and when I took out my laptop, I discovered that this whole posh Chicago high school is wired for public wifi, although it's limited access. For example, as with most high school wifi systems, Facebook is Not Allowed. But apparently, you can blog your heart out. For the curious, the school as just as posh in all of its appointments. The toilets are auto-flush, the faucets are auto-wash, and the ladies rooms have padded benches in them. I'm not sure if people in Chicago hang out in the bathrooms way more often than the people in Massachusetts (somehow I doubt it) but if they could, they'd do it in comfort and style. Oprah could visit this high school and not be grossed out (and I'm sure it would be a different story if she were to look for the ladies lounge on my home turf). The last high school I visited had 4,000 students, and everything was brand new.

Network connection. Check. Chicago. Check. Pictures. Check.

This was the view from the top of the ferris wheel at Chicago's Navy Pier. I know I've already complained about not having my regular camera, and only having my phone with me, so I'll mostly skip that part. Until I got onto the ferris wheel, all the photos I had taken were through the rain spattered bus windows, so it was nice to get some clear shots. One thing about ferris wheels: I usually don't like them. That's being polite. I usually hate them with the fiery intensity of a thousand exploding suns. Too high. Too rickety. Are those bicycle tires turning this thing around??? And, depending on the company, the cars are two swingy! Maybe it was the Bonine I took to combat the potential sea-sickness of my day, or maybe it was the unusually sturdy construction of the ferris wheel, or the placidity of my seat mates (teenagers being condescending and pretending being up on a ferris wheel on a beautiful spring morning with a gorgeous view), or the clear, beautiful weather I just mentioned, but for the first time ever, I did not mind being on a ferris wheel. Maybe it's because I was taking a requested photo of the Chicago skyline for someone I care about, that I was distracted enough not to mind my situation, but for whatever reason, I didn't mind, and the picture turned out well.

That's what the ferris wheel car looked like. We had six people packed into one car. Later in the day, when we went on the architecture cruise, the guide told us that each car on the original Ferris wheel built for Chicago's World's Columbian Exposition (World's Fair) in 1893 could hold a whopping sixty people, and the whole Ferris wheel was twice the scale as the one I rode (I'm not sure how the math works, where twice the size of the wheel means ten times as many people fit into each car, but I'm a classicist, not a mathematician). Here's a ground shot of the half-sized replica:

The next set of photos is from the architecture cruise we took on the Chicago River. This was my favorite activity of the entire trip, and the one where I missed my good camera the most. I don't know a lot about architecture, and honestly, I don't know a lot about photography. So I'm going to post the photos I took that I like the best, and allow them to speak for themselves. I took about fifty pictures on the river, as I was worried about my camera battery dying, and not being able to text home, but I promise these are the more interesting shots, visually, and the rest look like snapshots of buildings. Wow. Buildings.







I can't explain why I'm so nutty for architecture. The first time I went to Boston, I took close to 500 photographs over 9 days, but I don't feel as though I saw Boston as well as I saw Chicago from the river yesterday. After the Chicago architecture cruise, I immediately wanted to find a copy of The Devil in the White City, which I haven't read yet, and paw through it cover to cover. I wanted a catalog of photographs of Chicago. I wanted to spend the rest of the day online, figuring out all of the places I didn't get to see because of my limited itinerary. I fell in love with Boston the first time I saw it; I'm glad I live there, and don't want to leave. But yesterday, I developed a devastating crush on Chicago. In fact, Boston might get jealous.I'd say I want to get back here someday, but that's an understatement. I need to get back here. I need to see the Chicago Art Institute, the Field Museum, University of Chicago, the best restaurant for Chicago deep dish pizza (which is not where I ended up yesterday). I saw the tulips on the Miracle Mile, which was wonderful, and now I need to see Buckingham Memorial Fountain, and visit a jazz club (even though I'm not a particular fan of the musical genre). I need to return to Navy Pier and eat some funnel cake (nooom, funnel cake), ride the half-sized Ferris Wheel again, and the see the Smith Museum of Stained Glass Windows.Chicago, I just didn't know. I didn't know. Please forgive me.

Chicago - Day 2

It sounds like there are people in the walls. I just stomped through bed check wearing a Waffle House hat, scaring kids out of the wrong hotel rooms and into hopefully what are the right hotel rooms. Don't get me wrong; I love my child, and I'm glad to have gone on this trip, but once I hang up my Waffle House hat, I'm done with chaperoning. I may at some point be open to accompanying someone else who is an official chaperone, but my daughter is headed to college in the fall, and my duty as the one who stays up until the wee hours of the night chasing hormone factories out of the wrong rooms and into the right rooms is coming to a merciful close.

On the way from the hotel to the various attractions we visited today, I saw a lovely Chicago. We drove on the lake front, past Navy Pier and several stately museums, of which I got to see exactly one, for an hour, before the powers that be herded us into a movie theater to see Tornado Alley in Omnimax. It was, lamentably, a waste of 40 minutes, which would have been better spent meandering around the Museum of Science and Industry (although I did have a nice nap). I hate to sound like a wet blanket, but although it's a bigger museum, and it had a lot of interesting things, including the U-505 submarine, I can't say I was more impressed by it than the Boston Museum of Science. And all in all, I'd have rather been at an art museum. I'm promised that if I'm escorted back, I will brought to a nice one, and I'm counting on being shown the city as I'm sure it was meant to be shown.

So, there was the Museum of Science and Industry. There was lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe. I'd post pictures, but I'm having a tough time with the internet, so the trip pictures will have to wait. There was a show at ComedySportz, which was fairly entertaining as squeaky clean improvisational comedy goes. It was the kind of thing with lots of audience participation, and the high school kids were eager to play and eager to be entertained. After the comedy club, there was dinner at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company at Navy Pier. Tomorrow, we'll have lunch at Watertower Place.

Up way past my bedtime. The litany of tourist destinations is somewhat depressing. I need to remind myself that this isn't a pleasure trip for me; it's rather one last supportive activity on behalf of my child, who is no longer a child. I described a much different trip, earlier in the year, where we went to Monterey and Carmel, ate in lovely restaurants, visited art galleries, took photographs of the coastal areas, and visited family. I enjoy vacations where there's lots of late rising, lolling around, and strolling. I like walking slowly, taking my time framing a photograph. I'll be going back to Martha's Vineyard in a couple of weeks, and that will be my kind of vacation. This getting on and off, on and off, on and off tour buses is something I will remember as being a rewarding experience, even though I had to navigate things like chocolate chip cookies as dangerous as gastronomic land mines, and three meals a day that feel more like six. And awkward conversations with other parents about the kids, and work, and any other topic to fill those heavy silences that fall between people who are tossed together haphazardly through no fault of their own except that they are parents who love their children enough to spend 50 hours on a bus in four days.

I'm a little bit homesick. I've had a few photos of the garden texted to me, and that has been nice. I think I have daffodils that haven't opened yet, and I think they'll open any day now. I wish I'd had my good camera and could have taken some pictures of the hundred of yellow and white daffodils I've seen in Chicago. I wish I'd had time to stop and really take photos of the architecture here, which I must admit is spectacular. The weather is supposed to be sunny and in the low 60's tomorrow, which will be quite nice, thank you. Two more days of fun, fun, fun, and a music festival competition, and I'll be on the bus home. They'll be putting us on board at 11:00 p.m., after the competition, and we'll be riding all night.

I can't wait.

Chicago - Day 1

I'm behind on blogging, so this post is dated 2/25, written on 2/28, about what happened on 2/27. Sorry about that.

We arrived at 5:30 a.m. at the high school, expecting to be boarded and on the road by 6:00 a.m. It was meant to be an 18-hour drive. The bus did not arrive until 6:30, and we were not on the road until 7:00. The weather had been nice, but it was cold waiting for the instruments to be loaded up into one bus, and the luggage into the another. It was the usual seating shuffle once inside the bus, and there were about 8 adults in each bus, huddled toward the front. They give us a big talk about keeping an eye on the kids, during orientation; we're supposed to be keeping things "decent" on the bus, but when it comes down to seating, the adults huddle in the front and ignore whatever happens in the back. That's just the way it goes.

It was the typical long ride, with stops every 2 to 3 hours. The driver announced at the beginning of the trip that the chemicals in the toilet were only sufficient for the processing of liquid waste, and so use should be kept to a minimum. In previous trips, I was told, there was a tradition of seeing how many kids could fit in the bus toilet, with photographic proof. They said they stuffed all the smallest kids in there, but there was no such merriment this time. The adults sat in the front, the kids sat in the back, and a series of movies were played on the bus entertainment system. I was compelled to ignore Mean Girls, most of Finding Nemo, half of Ferris Beuller's Day Off, and most of the last Harry Potter movie.

There's a smell on long bus trips. It's a combination of armpits, feet, and whatever snacks people bring. I brought dried apricots, salt and vinegar Pringles, trail mix, some cereal bars, water, Gummi Savers, and a small package of Munchos. Of all this, the salt and vinegar chips were my only offender. I did not crack open the egg salad or the yoghurt, mostly because I didn't want it, somewhat because I hadn't brought plastic cutlery, and somewhat because it was stinky food and I didn't want to inflict it on anyone. Haven't I mentioned that I'm counting calories? This trip will be a bit difficult, but I've succeeded in turning down lots of treats. I had three Hot Tamales, but no Swedish Fish, and none of the raspberry pastry.

I think I was a rather boring seat mate. I spent most of the trip with my earplugs in, reading Jane Eyre on eReader. Burnt offerings to Project Gutenberg. I finished Jane Eyre, and have moved on to Wuthering Heights. After the first few hours, I took a Dramamine prophylactically, and it put me to sleep, which wasn't bad at all. I think I took about three naps, all told, and the last one was genuine sleep. My seat mate had moved to an empty seat, and I could put up my legs. Sitting upright for 19 hours is not at all preferred, but at least I now know I'd be okay on a long flight to the other side of the world.

My daughter reported back to me what the kids on my bus had said about the adults. That the other adults are obnoxious, and I'm quiet and read/sleep a lot. It's funny, knowing that the kids are watching me while I'm watching them. They're musical kids, and were good natured and surprisingly quiet for most of the trip, though they did explode into restlessness near the end. When they started singing and clapping at about 1 a.m., I did speak up to ask for quiet; it was the only time I raised my voice the entire time, and of course they ignored me. The choir director went to the back of the bus to quiet things down, and that was fine.

My Doubletree hotel room was very nice. Because I am an introvert, I paid for a single room, where other adults are in doubles, triples, and quads, and even then I wore earplugs in order not to hear the 3 or 4 women sharing the room across the hall. Even more urgent than getting 6 hours sleep was plugging in my electronic devices, which I'd all but drained on the bus trip out. Everything except my eReader, which really held up well. Breakfast this morning was the typical hotel buffet (wet but still edible scrambled eggs, greasy but still edible bacon, cold but still edible sausage, unsalted but still edible home fried potatoes, fruit, cottage cheese. Nice assortment of Tazo teas. Yes, I took my supplements.

It's been difficult getting online at the hotel where morning practice is being conducted. I just found out that the camera I brought has no memory card, probably because my daughter is hoarding them, and so all of the photos for this trip will come from my trusty android phone. Unfortunately, the hotel wireless really stinks and uploads take forever, so please don't expect too many photos on this trip. Are you holding your breath waiting for updates? If not, it's all good. If so, please know I'm doing my best at every opportunity to keep you in the loop.

Bill Cunningham

On Saturday evening, I saw the film Bill Cunningham at the Kendall Square Cinema (the Landmark Theater) in Cambridge.

But first, let me tell you about the meal I had at one of my favorite restaurants in Kendall Square before the movie: Friendly Toast. Yum. I had the DGGC (the Damned Good Grilled Cheese) which had American and cheddar cheese and a great garlic-olive spread, with strawberry habanero dipping sauce on the side (I suppose dipping sauce is usually served on the side). I also had the sweet potato fries, which are crispy and totally yummy. And a diet ginger ale. And a pot of peach/apricot tea. And a tall glass of water. I like the food at Friendly Toast, which is all-day breakfast, funky wraps and sandwiches, and other random stuff like the Crazy Quesadilla, which contains brie, mashed chipotle sweet potatoes, red chile pecans, green apple slices, and swiss (with or without baked ham). The atmosphere is vintage kitsch, the most striking piece either the disturbing life-sized Barbie, or the rubber-skinned robo-cow, which chews and chews and chews, while you eat your meal. Much of the restaurant is wallpapered with vintage pulp book covers, and my favorites are in the bar area, where the pulps are from racy novels with ridiculous marketing hyperbole about Ravenous Motorcycle Beauties Starved for Passion on the Dark Highway (I made that up).

After the great meal, I went to see the movie, as I mentioned. There were no previews; the movie started right at 7:30. I'm not sure why I expected differently, but the house was packed. I suppose I'm just used to the North Shore MA crowd, where I often find myself in an audience of less than five at the local screening room for the kind of films I prefer, and here was a regular sized movie theater so packed that latecomers needed to sit several seats or even rows apart. I'd never heard of Bill Cunningham before I saw the advertisement for the film while browsing the cinema's offerings, looking for something a little different. I love subculture films, and this one fit the bill nicely, shining the spotlight on the strange little world of street fashion. Bill Cunningham spent most of his career, I learned, photographing clothes on the streets of Manhattan. I say photographing clothes, rather than people, because that's what he said during the film while accepting an award for fashion photography in Paris. Who cared about actresses and their borrowed dresses; he was there to take pictures of the clothes. The clothes are the art. The clothes are everything.

There was something about this guy. The film showed his studio at Carnegie Hall, a small set of rooms filled to the brim with file cabinets full of photographs. His bed was a mattress set on planks propped on boxes (probably full of photography books or more photographs). When opening a file drawer, he picked up three garments that were on wire hangers dangling from the drawer pull, and e laughingly described the setup, "...and this is my clothes closet." He started as a milliner when he was in his twenties, and progressed to taking photographs as a way of "taking notes." As soon as he got a camera in his hand, he didn't stop. He rode around on a series of bicycles (in the film, he was on his 26th or 27th bicycle, the others having been stolen) and took pictures while in motion, or while prowling the street for camera fodder. For most of his career, he turned down big money to remain an independent artist, and he created street fashion layouts for the New York Times.

You know those layouts you see all the time now, that show twenty-five women all in leopard print, or all in black and white? That's what Bill Cunningham did. He took photographs, and made these lovely collage-like layouts of women, famous women, and unknown women, all hip to hip in his layouts. He spoke of his work as a zealot speaks of his god. It's all he lived for. When asked about relationships, his family, and his religion, his exuberant grinning faded to silent pain, and his answers were simple and still painfully evasive. Yes, he had grown up religious. No, he'd never had a romantic relationship. Yes, he had a few friends. No, he tried to resist those urges of the flesh. No, he wasn't a homosexual. No, his family never understood his career, and probably thought it wasn't manly, but oh well. He would sometimes photograph four high-profile parties in one night, always turning down plates of food, glasses of wine. He was there for the clothes. The clothes were all that mattered.

It was a singular portrait of obsession; Bill Cunningham as the center piece wreathed by his fellow obsessives: Anna Wintour of Vogue, Iris Apfel, a deadpan, ridiculously sincere clothes horse from the U.N. who had a rack of suits made from everything and anything, including an old couch (the jacket) and an old ottoman (the trousers). It was about Cunningham's own fashion sense; his favorite garment was the favorite outfit worn by Parisian street sweepers, a jacket in a bright blue, untearable poly blend. He said he liked the pockets. He'd never cooked a meal in his life, but had also never eaten in a restaurant. The corner diner was best, with every meal under $5, including a cup of coffee. At 80 years old, he was still chaining his bicycle to lamp posts in Times Square, and hunting for unusual shoes, fringe, patterns, patterns, trends. It was the clothes, the hats, the shoes. That's what it was all about. He wouldn't have been much interested in Friendly Toast, or my favorite novels, or traveling for pleasure. He had distilled his life to a singularity, and I'd dare anyone to watch this film and say that his life was not rich and complete, for want of the things most other people have: a car, a mortgage, 2.5 kids, a dog.

To say the least, I went home from the film filled with big thoughts. This was a man whose feet and mouth said the same thing, brilliantly, obsessively, with integrity and enormous feeling. Who had lived his entire life with sensitivity, and artistry, and incredible focus, an encyclopedia of fashion images. At the end of the film, I was shocked that I'd never heard his name before, such a passionate, interesting, monkish obsessive. I wish I could meet him, see him taking pictures, watch him do a layout, ask to see his favorite photo of fur, or flowers, or feathers.

Bill Cunningham.

Eater (You Figure Out the Typo)

Today started with Easter services at First Universalist in Salem. I wore a hat crocheted from twine (dark green for the hat, light green and claret for the crocheted roses) that I purchased from the Northern California Renaissance Faire before they closed the faire site down several years ago. The hat was a hit at church; there weren't very many others.

When I typed the title of this post, I accidentally left out the "s", added it in, and then took it out again. "Eater" is actually pretty accurate for a self-description, although that's not all I did today. I also worked in the garden, tidying both side yards, yanking out ten pounds of dandelions, sweeping up giblets, and spreading three more bags of mulch. Honestly, I don't know how many more bags of mulch I need. I think I'm done mulching. The un-mulched areas look perfectly fine. I also planted the root stock for three Bleeding Hearts, which I love so much. I love those, and I love Columbine, and I'm looking forward to seeing how they come up. (I hope they come up.) Yard work is hard work, but I enjoy it tremendously. The chimes were hung out in the garden today, because they were bothering the neighbors when they were hung next to the kitchen door. A neighbor (we thought the house was vacant, actually, but it's a big house, so clearly it's only partially vacant) wrote us a nice note, and asked if we could move them to the back yard, which was done today. They still look and sound lovely, and are now out of most of wind, and so they only ring sometimes, which is fine.

So, back to church. I started out the day without breakfast, so by the time I got to church, I was ready to eat Peeps. There were lots to choose from, but my favorite were the "smeeps," which were puffy warm bunny peeps, slabs of chocolate and graham crackers. I had mine without chocolate, and it was still great. I also had Rice Crispies squares, which I love, and a mug of nice peach tea. I had so many sweets at church that I skipped lunch, and focused on dinner instead. I have a new grill, and for its inaugural run, I barbecued a large chicken, in half. I also did sweet potatoes, roasted corn, and grilled pineapple. I have it from my fellow celebrants that the food was great. After dinner, I was wiped out, but still managed to peel nine brightly colored Easter eggs, and make egg salad with chives cut from the garden. So far, chives are the only thing I've identified as consumable. I'll take some egg salad with me for lunch tomorrow.

It feels good to have the tidying part of the gardening done. Now, I have several pots and things in the front and side that need annuals planted. I like snapdragons, and those hanging vine things that are not ivy. I also like pansies, the more multi-colored the better. I know I won't have time to plant the annuals before I go on my trip to Chicago, so I'll plant them when I get home. I already see what looks like daffodils in the back yard, but I don't know yet. I may need to have pictures taken while I'm away; I'd hate to miss what's going on. I hope whatever blooms will still be there when I get back. Spring flowers can be so fast to come and go. I'll need to prune the forsythia when I get back so they'll bloom next year. I mean to take very good care of this garden; it's a blessing, and I feel so lucky to have it.

I ended the day with lemon sorbet. There are Klondike bars in the freezer, but they're double evil (double chocolate) and so I will skip them for now. I've put in my order for the Chicago trip already. We'll be eating at the Hard Rock Cafe, and the Bubba Gump Shrimp company. I think we're also going to Medieval Times. Maybe I should pack some hand weights, along with all of my personal electronics. Or my bathing suit (1950's pinup style, with poka dots, and the little skirts). I'm not sure I'm okay with the high school kids seeing my big tattoos. They're already rather inquisitive and think I'm one of the weirdest parents ever (it's something about how young I am compared to the other parents--I got started when I was twenty, so I am the youngest of the parents, and still listen to current music and that sort of thing, which the kids think is good, but also somehow really weird).

I'm a bit behind on posting, but hopefully I will make up for it by doing a bit of travelogue while I'm away on the trip to Chicago.

My congratulations to all of the friends and acquaintances who have recently been nominated for Hugo Awards. I'm so happy for you. Good luck!

Everyone Else is at the Pool

Everyone else is at the pool, and I'm back at the house, with the dog. It's not my house; I'm a visitor. The dog and I are enjoying the fireplace together, listening to the clock tick, the rain fall, and some kind of intermittent pinging sound I can't identify. If this were my house, I'd be able to tell you about the pinging sound. At home, my stove vent makes a pinging sound in the wind, and it sounds a little bit like that. Perhaps it's the chimney flue.

A little while ago, this house that is not mine was full of people, thirteen of us, and together we sounded like a combination congress/YMCA. Children make a torrential sound that rises and falls, happy and furious; adult people negotiating the moment-by-moment of life make a similar sound, but with fewer accusations, like, "He pushed me! And stole my frog!" Let's hope so, anyway.

I can be excitable about things. Today, I was excited about goldfinches. I'm excited about the new shoots coming out of the ground in my yard. I was excited about coming here, today, and was happy to watch the Easter egg hunt, the furious expressions on the children's face, that terrible concentration of searching for something they know is there, they just know it, and it's just out of reach, hidden. After the egg hunt, we had the cacophony of lunch, and then 12 of them decamped to the pool. A curious American kind of thing, scuttling off to the pool in the rain. Me, I stayed behind in the big, empty house, with the dog, who is wisely snoozing by the fire as I sit on the couch with my eyelids getting heavy.

Yesterday was hard; my body had a bit of a breakdown, and I didn't write. I worked at my regular job, then I rushed home to cope with the onrush of illness. A terrible start to the weekend, a pain flare. I'd forgotten my supplements, eaten chocolate--that glorious and terrible stuff. I made the mistake a lot of chronically ill people make: when you feel all better, and you have for a while, you sometimes forget you're sick, and forget to take the stuff that helps you feel well. You forget to avoid the stuff that makes you feel unwell. You operate as if you aren't sick. For at least a little while, you're free. Then it catches up, and maybe you're doubly sorry, but in a way, maybe you're not. What's the point of this life, anyway, if you can't forget yourself sometimes, and eat a bite-sized Snicker's bar, or a chocolate croissant? A pain-free life, possibly, but what's the fun in that?

When I was kid, I loved to swim, and would have been the first in the pool. I was sometimes the person who would go into the pool one inch at a time, and sometimes the person who would jump from the diving board. There were many times as a child when I would swim in the pool alone. I lived in two different houses with swimming pools, and I often swam alone. The apartments I've lived in have all had community pools, and I chipped my front tooth diving into one of these pools, when I was nine or ten. I can't remember exactly, how old. I swam, as they say, like a fish, and when I was young, I tanned very brown. You couldn't tell what nationality I was, when I was a girl. From India, maybe, or Mexico. From a place where people have black hair, and warm golden brown skin. For some reason, I don't swim much any more, and I rarely go into the sun. My skin is a pale olive now.

Although everyone is at the pool, and I am home with dog, listening to rain, I am more than content. There are trees to look at outside the window. The goldfinches come to snatch at the bird feeder, even in the rain. Earlier, I saw a dove, and a cardinal, and different kinds of finches that I don't know the names of. I saw a squirrel. I'm reminded of my first home in Massachusetts, where I had my office in the kitchen, my desk facing out the kitchen window, and I saw quail, turkeys, and chipmunks (with their awesome little racing stripes). I was happy enough with the furor of 13 people in the house, and I am happy in the quiet.

It's enough to imagine the pool, all the happy (and unhappy) shrieking. One lucky (or unlucky) parent responsible for keeping all the silky heads above water. That particular chlorine sting of humidity all around, everything sticky with it. Fights over floats, noodles, pool toys, lots of happy frustration and laughing. I remember the last time there was swimming, and I did go in, and it was like being in the bath tub, which for me is never as nice as standing under the sting of the shower, with steam rising up all around, and (at least in my bathroom) the radiator pinging away. I used to love swimming with my eyes open under water. I loved that feeling of being engulfed and floating, and now I prefer to be warm and dry, and still.

I'll still go into the water, once in a while. I can be lured. But there is something about a body of water that makes me want to look at it, rather than be in it, and there's a pond outside the window here that's doing the contemplative thing quite nicely for me. It can be out there, and I can be in here, and I can watch the misty rain, and the flames in the fireplace, with perfect contentment.

Wind Chimes

There are chimes hanging outside the kitchen door. I like them better hanging there than on the fence, because I can hear them all through the house, and it's wonderful. I can hear from the kitchen, which makes sense, and I can hear them from where I lay in comfort on my bed clear across the house, which makes less sense, but I'm glad I can. One of the reasons I love them is because they sound lovely. They're the long, deep chimes that go "ding, bing, bong," not "tinkle, tinkle." Another reason is that they are elegant and black, not baroque and fancy, and represent the distinct taste of someone I love. I'm not sure what sort of chimes I would have picked out, but I'm glad I didn't pick them, because I'm glad to see the mark of someone other than myself in this big, complicated house. In the realm of strong, particular tastes, it's a mark of bravery to pick out something without consulting anyone and hang it right out there where it can't be missed. The sound of the chimes in the wind has a somewhat reckless quality of running full tilt toward one's own true nature, taking the risk of total exposure (and rejection).

Perhaps it seems as if I'm overstating the case, and that may be so. They are, after all, only wind chimes. But like everything else, I can fold them into my expanding worldview, and make them pull for me. They let me ask, yet again, why there is such a profound pull toward conventionality and conformity. Although I've always been a contrary sort of person, still I feel that pull to sameness as most everyone. I want to feel as if I belong, safe and warm, appreciated and loved. I push against that feeling sometimes with all my might, when sameness means I try and become lovable to the object of my desire. When it's "safe" to be different, I don't have to push as hard, but there's an ever present anxiety nonetheless.

The chimes remind me, also, of something I call the "ping" of recognition when the last piece of a plan or a solution snaps into place in my brain. Part of my thinking process goes like this: my brain is always teeming with information already analyzed and sorted into a billion little slots, like letter slots behind a hotel desk, only more of them. When a new piece of information-like a new letter-arrives, it doesn't usually just go neatly into one of the slots. Usually, a new piece of information causes a massive reorganization of several hundred letters. Imagine, then, that sometimes this reorganization takes a split second. Imagine that every time I've ever interacted with a person, they were kind and smiling. So I have fifty slots containing information about that person, and those slots add up to "trustworthy." Then imagine I chance to see this person cruelly pinch a little girl, when no one is looking (except me), and the next moment, resume smiling kindly when they realize they are being observed. My brain does an instant reorganization of every piece of data I've ever collected on this person, letters flying out of some slots and into others until the slots add up to something else entirely. Maybe what I see is so bad, the letters get glued permanently into those slots, and I'll never trust that person again, no matter what. Or maybe, I get a piece of information that I don't know what to do with, and the letter floats from one slot to another, aimlessly, crookedly, resting here for a moment, then floating over there, and then over there. Imagine there are a hundred pieces of information that just won't settle, and it's not about a person, per se, but a decision I need to make.

Let's say that decision is about what I intend to do with my life, and there aren't just a hundred pieces of information. Let's say there are thousands, or even millions. Millions of points of data, thousands about each person affected, thousands about each choice, thousands about each variable. That's a lot of letters, and a lot of mail slots, and lot of sorting and sifting and filing and labeling. Now, please understand that I understand that anxiety makes getting the information organized much harder to do. Anxiety does not simplify and create rational boundaries. Anxiety creates more data, and causes more instability in the analysis of the data. If I can do something about the anxiety, I can create boundaries, and filter out enough of the data to get all of the letters into the "right" slots, in a organizational structure that I think is "best," and therefore good enough. When this happens, in those rare moments when I can find the self-confidence and self-reliance to focus on what's possible, and filter out what's not possible, see my actual choices, and see the likely consequences of each choice, I can get the data to settle into the "best" pattern, and when that happens, I hear the "ping" of truth, and feel serenity fall around me like a velvet cloak of love.

The "ping" is an illusion; I know that. I don't know what's best. I can't know what's best. There is no best. There is no absolute like that. The "ping" is the sound of rational defenses coalescing, cradling, and protecting my vulnerable, fragile self. This is the absolute best you can do. Do this, and all will be well. You know the next steps, you know the consequences, and you'll survive now. I heard the ping when I got married the first time. I heard the ping when I decided to become a mother. To my great grief, I've heard the ping several times when I knew it was time for a relationship to end. I heard the ping when I went back to college when I was 25. I heard the ping when quit my job and started writing full time. I hear the ping now and then when I lay my head on the shoulder of a trusted friend, and divulge my secrets.

I've been wrestling with the question of writing ever since I heard the ping that led me to quit the writing life and re-enter the workforce. Thousands of letters have been whizzing around ever since then, but lately, there has been more data, and some of it has been scary and confusing. The fewer variables, the fewer letters whizzing around. The more variables, the more letters whizzing around. The more letters whizzing around, the less sleep I get, the less I can focus at work, the more anxiety arises, and you know what happens when the anxiety gets out of control. Sometimes all the letters fall out of the millions of mail slots and it's time to hide under the covers until the whizzing settles down.

The ping is weird. Sometimes, all I need to do is catch and file a single letter of all the thousands whizzing around, and it's as if some magnetic magic sucks the other letters into the right slots, and I hear the ping.

Ping.

And then there's velvety, blissful peace.

The velvety, blissful peace sounds an awful lot like those chimes I'm hearing pinging and bonging in the playful spring wind. It pulls on my eyelids, so sore and dry from insomnia, and it lets me sleep the sweet sleep of the blessed.

I can do this. Yes, I can.

I will sleep, and I will dream, and I will run full tilt toward my true nature, taking the risk of total exposure.

Egg Rolls, Spring Rolls, and Such-like

It was difficult to figure out how to name this post. I've done a couple of other lists like this: Top 10 Eastern Dumplings and Top 10 Western Dumplings. In each of those posts, I think I may have stretched the definition of "dumpling" just a little, but I got the job done, and many people have come to have a look. Unfortunately, I was not able to come up with a similar term to use for those delectable items characterized as 1) a finely chopped meat and/or vegetable mixture; 2) enclosed in some sort of thin wrapper and either deep fried, or not. I thought perhaps "roll" would do, but it won't. It makes me think of dinner rolls, jelly rolls, and the like. I keep threatening to do a post on "buns" but I'm still shy about what to use for a title that won't set off your spam filter. So, I'll go with "Egg Rolls, Spring Rolls, and Such-like," and hope that you'll cut me some slack with the such-like. Unlike my other lists, I could only think of 6, and I'm going to count down to my favorite roll at 1.

6. American egg rolls. These tend to have a thicker and more bubbly wrapper. The wrapper tends to contain wheat and egg, and the roll itself tends to be on the fatter side, and is sometimes served cut in half for ease of eating. My happiness with this style of egg roll is limited. If the wrapper is heavy and chewy instead of crunchy, and the stuffing is of stringy cabbage and carrots, then I'll pass on the egg rolls. Not even a hearty dunk in the ubiquitous duck sauce is enough to save these rolls from themselves. My happiness quotient goes up with the quality of the muddle in the middle. Add meat, and I'm happier. Add black mushrooms and I'm happier still. Add something crunchy, like water chestnuts, and you're really getting somewhere.

5. American spring rolls. These tend to have the much the same ingredients as their American egg roll cousins. The wrappers tend to be made with rice flour, and they tend to be smaller in diameter. They're usually nice and crunchy, rather than bubbly and chewy like egg rolls, and so I like them much better. Still, the stuffing can be just as sub par as American egg roll stuffing, with my least favorite being the sort with a mushy blend of vegetables making a sort of uninteresting paste in the middle. In this case, I peel off curls of crunchy wrapper and leave the rest.

4. Thai spring rolls. Now we're getting somewhere. These rolls use rice paper wrappers, which are nice and thin and crunchy, stuffed with ground pork, black mushroom, and rice noodle, among other things. Not every Thai spring roll has the same stuff inside, but it's usually better than the stuff they put into the American variety. (Real Chinese egg rolls are more like tasty Thai spring rolls.) I recently had Thai spring rolls at a restaurant in Massachusetts, and was a bit disappointed because the filling was sort of pasty and carroty. I much prefer the ground pork, noodle, green onion, mushroom variety. And amen for sweet Thai chili sauce, and down with duck sauce. Down!

3. Thai shrimp roll. This is a Thai spring roll with a whole shrimp rolled up inside, with the little tail sticking out. Don't eat the tail, unless you want to. Every time I've had these, they have been served at one million degrees, and I have lost a layer of skin from the roof of my mouth because I'm just Not Patient. These are yummy, but be careful. Inside that scrumptious, crispy rice wrapper is a succulent shrimp with a little vegetable to add flavor, but every one I've ever had has presented a clear and present danger to my mouth. Again with the sweet chili sauce. Down with duck sauce!

2. Summer roll. These are a Vietnamese roll, which is served cold. Other countries are a lot more sensible than the US in their seasonal dishes. It doesn't make any sense from a green standpoint to cook soups, stews, and roasts in the summer. You turn on the oven when it's hot outside, and it quickly becomes hot inside, and you can't throw open the windows to cool things off. It's also silly to boil water in the heat of summer. You should go outside and cook on the grill, or cook only in the cool of early morning, and have a nice cool meal to eat in the heat of afternoon and early evening. Summer roll has a soft rice wrapper, and is stuffed with cold rice noodle, shreds of carrot, tofu, bits of cilantro, and sometimes cold roast pork or cold steamed shrimp, layered in such a way that you can see the pretty pink shrimp lined up just under a layer of rice wrapper. At a Vietnamese restaurant, the summer roll is served with Tương, which is a tangy fermented soy bean paste sprinkled with ground peanuts.

1. Lumpia. Ever since my mother first gave me lumpia, this has been my favorite of all the fried rolls in the world. The one I remember had ground beef and raisins, and when I was a kid, I remember thinking that it was weird to have raisins with meat. Now I eat all kinds of strange things, and lumpia is no longer weird, but wonderful. Since then, I've had it without raisins, with ground pork, ground beef, and served with a tongue numbing garlic-laced soy sauce. When I cook it myself, I make it with beef, black mushroom, scallion, a little bit of cabbage, cilantro, and the sauce I just mentioned. Maybe it's not the right way, but it's so good. I need to find the wrappers around here, and make up a batch. When I cook them, I prepare the stuffing in a big bowl, and sit and watch TV while I wrap them up. Then I cook them batch after batch, and if I have a bunch of people sitting around, they vanish as fast as I can cook them. I eat while I cook them, or I'll miss out.

Go forth, and eat lumpia.

Click here for my list of Top 10 Western Dumplings, Nom Nom Nom.
Click here for my Top 10 Eastern Dumplings, Nom Nom Nom

Yes, That's How I Spend My Free Time

I spend every moment of my free time writing, thinking about writing, reading about writing, reading other people's writing, and searching the library and the internet for other people's opinion on writing. I'm a colossal bore on the subject of writing. Look. You're bored right now! I spend my free time looking at blogs like this one and asking myself if I have what it takes to write a novel. I used to ask myself if I had what it took to be a writer, but I already am a writer. I've cried those tears, done that work, passed that milestone. I don't blush any more when I tell someone I'm a writer, though the arrogance of that statement used to make me squirm. Oh, you're a writer? Where do you buss tables at your day job? Oh, you think you're so smart! No, really. You can look at my bookshelf, and there are books and magazines there (not too many, but a few) with my words in them. My stories are often nestled up against other stories that are way better than mine, but I'm in there. I can call myself a writer if I want to. But see, I was a writer before that, too, when my work only lived in notebooks. I was a writer, because I wrote.

I'm back to thinking about "watching the feet." I listen to what other people say they want to do, and then I watch their feet, to see what they actually do. If I hear, "I want to do X," but the feet are propped on the ottoman, and their belly is supporting the remote control, I see what they've done there. You want to be an artist? Where's your art? Can't afford art supplies? Talk to artists like Andy Goldsworthy. Get yourself some twigs, a pile of rocks, some ice, and vision. Crawl through dumpsters. Learn about grant writing, and find the cash by sending in a begging letter, and some photographs of your piles of rocks and twigs. If you really want to be a musician, make music. If you want to be an artist, make art. If you want to be a writer, write.

Ask yourself what you do with your "free time." Look at it. Look at it closely. Is that particular activity getting you closer to your goal? No, is it really? Have you done the priority math, and settled on that thing right there? Okay, you need some rest. You need a family, and friends. You need to eat, sleep, and take out the trash. All of these things are your life support system. You need those things. Except it's a fine, fine line between rest and inertia. Who knows when you cross the line? Only you do. No one else can say, "Hey. How is this getting you closer? How much of this is the rest you need in order to gather your strength to push forward, and how much of it is you hiding from your life?" Only you have that answer. People can yell at you from all sides, and quote statistics, and give you metrics, but in the end, it's you who will be looking back at what you have done with the ability to evaluate how well you have lived.

If you use me as an example, be careful. My feet sometimes look as if they're marching straight into the land of accomplished goals. I can walk a really good walk. Look, Ma! I have an education. I have a great job. I have great kids. I have a great house. I have a new car. I can afford Lucky jeans! I have three cameras, a laptop computer, an Android phone, and I'm helping to cure hepatitis C. I can grow tulips. I know how to wipe tears, and give pithy advice, and clarify consequences for young people in a way that doesn't crush their souls. My feet do all of these great things. See the sleight of hand? See how virtuous? See how easy it is to rest on the laurels? But no, this isn't everything my feet are meant to do, see. If you can stop here, and look back on your life, and say, "Self, you did great," then I envy you. Be that person proudly. Be that person with all your heart, and all your soul. Live that life, and live it well. It's a wonderful life; don't waste it by "trying." Do it with everything you have. But, if like me, you're hiding behind all that, because you're scared to fail at something, then you need to wake up.

I guess this has come to me any number of times in my life, and it's crashing down all around me now. Helping my daughter through the college application and selection process has truly kicked my butt on this subject. I've had to tell her these things. If you want to make music, make it. Make it with all your heart, and put yourself out there, and take risks, and accept that it will be a riskier life than if you want to work in a cubicle, with a regular salary, benefits, and a 401k. If you want to be in the music industry, let's see you reach out, against the odds (which are stacked up against you), and reach. Because like writing, no one is going to hand it to you, just because you want it so bad, the idea of not having it, not living it, makes you want to hurl. Even if you feel that deeply, no one's going to hand you an offer letter, a check, and the keys to the studio. If you can't figure out how to get there, you need to knock down the walls and find someone who can tell you how. You spend all of your time on the internet, on the phone, in the library, looking, looking, looking for a way in. You don't sit and wait for the music to happen, you make an instrument out of whatever you have handy, and you make it do something interesting. You say, "Hey, come here. I have something to show you. Hey, you can play the cactus piano? I can bang these two rocks together. Let's be in a band."

Sitting around wanting things will not bring you closer. It just hurts, and often pisses other people off. It certainly puts no food in your belly, art on the walls, or words on the page. It puts pressure on your heart. It's bad for your skin. You're tired? Then go to sleep. And when you wake up, get back at it. Get back at living a way you'll look back on with satisfaction. Live the way that, when you're ninety years old, and you're on plastic knees and your third lung transplant, you think, "I did the best I could, and what more could I have asked of myself? Nothing, that's what. I could have asked for nothing more."

Do that. Stack up some rocks. Bang some rocks together. Go to Open Mic Night at the local cafe on Wednesdays. Go to church and knit shawls for the dying. Write in your journal, about your life of quiet desperation. Learn how to fly an airplane. Figure out the really hard stuff, like how to be a good parent. Learn how to communicate with your children, even if they're forty, and you think it doesn't matter any more. It does matter. Even if you think you know them, you probably don't. Even if you think they know you, they probably don't. Do you really want to leave this world without knowing your children, and letting them know you? Punch through that wall of denial, and see them. That last part is tricky, because usually it's the people who have the thickest walls that don't think they have any walls at all. They think they're living the dream, and they're fooling themselves. They're sitting in front of the television, watching other people make art, or play golf, and believe they have it all under control, and that they have won the game.

Get a dog. Learn how to finger paint. Take yoga. Let yourself be vulnerable. Stop hiding. Put yourself out there.

This is how I spend my free time, thinking about this crap. Hoping, and also doing. Making a metric crap ton of mistakes. Falling down. Yelling and crying. Getting up again, and doing it over, more determined than ever not to let anything stop me.

Don't let anything stop you.

Andy Goldsworthy
Sigur Ros
House of Leaves
Joseph Cornell
David Lynch
Darren Aronofsky
ilovebees
Skin
The Floating World
Trevor Brown-(don't click if easily offended)
Meschantes
Vosgues
Marilyn Manson
Amanda Palmer
Clint Mansell
The Fall

I Got Nothing

I'm a day behind, and so I should be writing two blog posts today in order to catch up.

But really. I got nothing.

Usually, I have something to complain about. Or I can walk you through my day, and spit out a thousand words that way. Today, I had the day off, and I mostly laid around in bed watching movies, reading, resting. It was fabulous, I assure you, but not a day I feel compelled to blog about. I suppose I could write a mini-thesis on the superiority of watching television in bed versus watching television while sitting on the couch, but I suspect you have your own Best Way, and my way is just my way. I could give you a review of The Girlfriend Experience, but if you want the tepid reviews, you can read them on Amazon. I could tell you everything I like about Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor, and the total cuteness/yummy-ness of Billie Piper, but fangirl squee makes for boring blogging.

I've been cruising around Googling "freelance writing" this evening. There's an amusingly vast number of "how to" articles written no doubt by freelance writers trying to generate web content, about freelancers generating web content. If you're not careful, you could fall into one of these black holes and lose every shred of hope you ever had of making a living as a writer. There are several websites that purport to list useful leads for freelancers, mostly for copywriters who can work in person, in SoHo, generating ad copy for the myriad of uninteresting products and services that require dull and uninspiring internet ad copy. I'm reminded of a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and also a documentary I saw about people in some Asian country living in internet cafes, making a dollar per webpage or some sad statistic like that, no doubt writing Nigerian e-mail scams and cialis spam. Maybe writing code that spontaneously generates Nigerian e-mail scams and cialis spam.

Freelance writing just doesn't seem to be a viable career. It seems sort of like eating celery, where you burn more calories chewing than you actually gain from digesting. And in the end, you have a portfolio full of badly spelled Nigerian e-mail scams and invitations to watch Mandy on LiveWebCam. It's what you do, I suppose, when you Got Nothing. Sort of like what I have today. I don't have any bright ideas for a new poem, short story, or novel. I don't have any bright ideas about brilliant blog posts. I checked my stats today, and the Top 10 Western Dumplings post is my current best-seller. It seems that a lot of people are seeking photographs of spaetzle and soup dumplings. My stats tracker says I should be blogging about unusual foods, not the existential angst of making a living as a writer. I should definitely NOT be posting poetry, or stories from my trunk. I should not be doing book reviews, especially if the books are several years old. Movies out in theaters now seem to be an ok draw. Perhaps that's it. I write about a movie and a weird food, every day.

I could give you a behind-the-scenes on the movie-theater hopping I wrote about the other day. When my friend and I used to spend the day at the movies, slinking from theater to theater, we would first make a food run. I had a huge, black, fake leather purse, and we'd make the rounds at our favorites places to fill the sucker up before seeing the first matinee. Candy. Sodas and chips. Loaded baked potatoes from Wendy's. With chili and cheese and sour cream. Red vines. All loaded into this great big shoulder bag and smuggled into the theater. There were many days when we were the only people in the theater, and we would unpack this disgusting picnic and make pigs of ourselves in the light of the silver screen. We'd eat enough calories to fuel an entire third world village, and wash it down with cold Coca Cola. Little did I know back then that I would be recounting the story in a desperate attempt to Have Something, when I Got Nothing.

This article about freelancing showed up on my Facebook wall today. Among other things, it says that you can't be a writer and have writer's block. You need to be able to sit down and generate copy on demand. You don't have time to be a prima donna. You have to put words on the page in order to eat. However uninspired. However awful and pointless. You have to make the words flow in order to live. If you have to beat yourself about the head and shoulders with a tire iron. If you stay up too late. If you piss everybody off. If you bore everyone to tears. You have to Have Something, because if you've Got Nothing, you'll starve. In a gutter. Without pants. And die.

So, even if I've Got Nothing, I'll write about that.

I'll write about anything. Even nothing at all.

Writing the City

When I'm having trouble finishing a book, I turn to non-fiction. I suppose it's very much like turning on music, or watching a movie. I write a great deal of non-fiction, but I'm not trying to be a non-fiction writer, and so I can just read, instead of reading analytically. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil has been on my shelf for years, unread. I tend to purchase books when I hear about them from someone else, but I have so many to read, I often don't get around to them until years later. This is one of those books. I remember, years ago, Will McIntosh reading this book. I also remember getting on an airplane to go and stay at Will's condo outside of Savannah, so I could work on a novel. I stayed by myself out in the marshlands for a week, and it was great. I didn't finish that novel, but the experience was a good one.

John Berendt lived in Savannah for several years, collecting impressions of the city from wandering its environs and talking to its people. Savannah is slow-moving, hospitable, but insular and guarded. I only got a glimpse of the city when I went to visit, and I hope to return there sometime, to see some of the sights described in the book. I remember a great deal of Spanish moss, which I think is lovely, but I don't clearly remember seeing the squares. Perhaps I didn't see enough of them for a strong impression to linger. I certainly didn't meet anyone there, just went to lunch with my friend. So, I'm given to wonder, being an introvert, how one really goes about getting to know a city enough to write a book about it. Berendt wrote about debutantes, drag queens, antiques dealers, politicians, the people from the "right" side of town, and the people from the "wrong" side of town. He wrote about the wealthy, the poor, and one memorable character who spent most of his life living it up like a wealthy mover and shaker, who was actually a sometime squatter, and a frequent visitor to the courthouse for fraud and bad checks. Savannah wasn't really a character in and of itself, like some other cities in other novels; it's character was rather an assemblage of its denizens.

China Mieville's Perdido Street Station is set in the fictional world of Bas-Lag, in the city-state of New Crobuzon. Similarly, the city is an assemblage of characters, but it also has a character of its own, which is developed in lengthy descriptive passages. "The river twists and turns to face the city. It looms suddenly, massive, stamped on the landscape. Its light wells up around the surrounds, the rock hills, like bruise-blood. Its dirty towers glow... It is a vast pollutant, a stench, a klaxon sounding. Fat chimneys retch dirt into the sky even now in the deep night." It's clear, at least to me, that the author has a powerful love for the city he describes so elaborately, and for the grotesque characters that live there. The stinking backdrop, and the stinking characters are a fabulously tortured setting for human emotions: love, artistic hunger, hope, friendship. Set in a shiny, pristine fantasy-land, the struggle would be lost, and the story, dead.

Here are some of the novels I have a hard time finishing, but not because they are not good. They are dense, and they are difficult, but they are as gorgeous and grotesque as Mieville's book (these books were written first). Unlike Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil which was written in clean, journalistic style, and even Perdido Street Station which is elaborate and baroque in the first half, and a fast-paced dungeon crawl in the second half, Gormenghast is pompous, bejeweled, mired in ritual, and gorgeously stultifying from start to finish. Each sentence is a labor. And of course, this is the point. The story is centered on a land, and a royal family, that is suffocating under the weight of its own history and tradition. I have to pause at the end of each paragraph to process what I've read into a coherent paving stone on a long and torturous road.

Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls. They sprawled over the sloping earth, each one half way over its neighbour, until, held back the castle ramparts, the innermost of these hovels laid hold on the great walls, clamping themselves thereto like limpets to a rock. These dwellings, by ancient law, were granted this chill intimacy with the stronghold that loomed above them. Over their irregular roofs would fall throughout the seasons, the shadows of time-eaten buttresses, of broken and lofty turrets, and, most enormous of all, the shadow of the Tower of Flints. This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven.

It's no wonder that I scurry back to the cleanliness of non-fiction once steeped for a while in writing like the above. Non-fiction is the palate cleanser, after the richness of truffles. My own environments tend to be much smaller. I write about the insides of homes, mostly, because my stories tend to be about some single individual and his or her struggle emerging from a solitary and safe cocoon. This is no surprise, and no wonder. This is me. In my actual life, I do get out of the house and have lively adventures, but traveling too far from home strikes terror in my heart, and the only way I can cope is if I bring a bit of my home environment with me. I usually bring all of my electronics, so I can maintain connections via text and e-mail; otherwise I would feel alone and adrift in the vastness of the outside world.

I have the feeling that in order to open up my next work into novel length, I will need larger environs, larger than a single room, or even a single house, or a single neighborhood. My longest published work, "Over the River," featuring a switchblade slinging Little Red Hiding Hood heroine, takes place in the streets and subways of a far-future Boston. It is by no means a masterful or artful story, but it's bigger than my other stories, and I think it will take expanding of the environment in order to break the hold the short story has on me. I know how to set a story in a room, or even a wooden box. I'm comfortable there. There is usually only one or two entrance and exit points. It's cozy. A novel, for me, is not cozy. It's getting on an airplane and going to London (an experience I will have, terrifyingly, this summer). A novel is wandering foreign streets with an unfamiliar map, and trusting that a digression from the path is okay, provided you end up back at your hotel room at the end of the day.

I read these novels to build muscle, and I read the non-fiction to stretch out and rest.

Little by little, I gather my courage.