Category Archives: writing

Poetry Archives: Mary Karr

11 Saturday Feb 2017

Posted by in dear apples, everyday poems, Uncategorized, writing

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I read somewhere
that if   pedestrians didn’t break traffic laws to cross
Times Square whenever and by whatever means possible,
      
the whole city
would stop, it would stop.
Cars would back up to Rhode Island,
an epic gridlock not even a cat
could thread through. It’s not law but the sprawl
of our separate wills that keeps us all flowing. Today I loved
the unprecedented gall
of the piano movers, shoving a roped-up baby grand
up Ninth Avenue before a thunderstorm.
They were a grim and hefty pair, cynical
as any day laborers. They knew what was coming,
the instrument white lacquered, the sky bulging black
as a bad water balloon and in one pinprick instant
it burst. A downpour like a fire hose.
For a few heartbeats, the whole city stalled,
paused, a heart thump, then it all went staccato.
And it was my pleasure to witness a not
insignificant miracle: in one instant every black
umbrella in Hell’s Kitchen opened on cue, everyone
still moving. It was a scene from an unwritten opera,
the sails of some vast armada.
And four old ladies interrupted their own slow progress
to accompany the piano movers.
each holding what might have once been
lace parasols over the grunting men. I passed next
the crowd of pastel ballerinas huddled
under the corner awning,
in line for an open call — stork-limbed, ankles
zigzagged with ribbon, a few passing a lit cigarette
around. The city feeds on beauty, starves
for it, breeds it. Coming home after midnight,
to my deserted block with its famously high
subway-rat count, I heard a tenor exhale pure
longing down the brick canyons, the steaming moon
opened its mouth to drink from on high …
-“A Perfect Mess”

Day 3, and 2017 is already looking interesting

03 Tuesday Jan 2017

Posted by in dear apples, expat life, journal, new year, Uncategorized, writing

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Dear Apples,

It’s only 11:30am, and so far I have:

-Gone to the grocery store with my shirt on inside-out

-Put fabric softener in the washing machine instead of washing detergent

-Failed to do my writing work

-Thrown a plate into the trash can instead of the banana peel on top of it

-Remembered last night’s dream that involved Donald Trump doing a commercial for Kraft cheese that required him to sit in a tub of boxed macaroni and cheese.  (I was mainly confused as to why Kraft believed that this marketing idea would boost their mac n’ cheese sales.)

How’s your day going?  Happy New Year!

Antakya, Turkey: First Impressions

01 Sunday Jan 2017

Posted by in dear apples, expat life, journal, learning a language, refugees, Syria, Turkey, Uncategorized, writing

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Dear Apples,

We’ve moved! (From Lebanon to Turkey). We’re not quite settled; we’re still staying in a temporary guest house because frankly we’ve just been too busy to move into our new apartment, which is only a ten minute walk away.  We’ll use the New Year holiday to continue assembling our mountain of two-dimensional Ikea pieces into the objects the online catalogue promised they were.

I’m surprised by how much I love it here.  The thing about having perpetually low expectations for everything means that I’m almost always startled by my own happiness.  Here are some first impressions and recent happenings.

-We arrive in Hatay (Antakya’s province) at night after a long layover in Istanbul.  I have been breastfeeding Isla the entire second flight without eating enough, so I have a migraine and I’m too exhausted to notice our new surroundings through the taxi window.  C holds Isla, we arrive at the guest house, and he goes out to bring us food.  All I am aware of is the fact that we still have to put Isla’s crib together, which in the moment feels like knowing we need to run a marathon up a steep mountain range without sleeping first.  To C’s amusement, I start crying with joy when he comes home with a huge steak and puts the crib together by himself. (Me through my tears:  “I thought you meant you were bringing a raw steak that we’d have to cook!  But I can eat this right now!”)

-I wake up in the sun and look out the living room window to a view of the bustling center of the tiny city.  The red flapping of a Turkish flag, a mosque’s spire jutting up against the mountain, cars and pedestrians circling a roundabout with Ataturk’s statue in the center.  We go out for a walk and there are so many young people and the sidewalks are crammed with baby strollers vying for space.  You’d think babies would attract as little attention as the squirrels in NJ; they are so commonplace, but no, Isla receives more waves and smiles and admiring words than a celebrity would. We hear as much Arabic in passing conversation as we do Turkish.  We sit down in a restaurant, guess at the menu, and make the happy accident of ordering a breakfast that could feed about five people.

-We find a babysitter for Isla; a Syrian woman from Hasakeh who has one home in Aleppo and another in Damascus.  She doesn’t speak English and sings the Arabic songs that Isla has grown up with.  Isla loves her right away, and we walk to her house every morning where I drop her off, write for a couple hours, and pick her up.  Before I take Isla home, we have coffee or tea and watch the news together and learn the updates on Syria.

-C’s work is urgent and stressful: truckloads of food and winter supplies need to make it over the border into Syria, and war tends to throw everything off course all too often.  There is little predictability.  His office is across the street from where we are staying, and we have lunch together every day.  C and I haven’t done too much cooking for each other since we’ve been together, (I made my own meals and we ate a lot of C’s mother’s dishes before we had our own kitchen) but I have always loved real food and loved to cook.  Now once I day I make a meal for our lunch.  I haven’t found a good volunteering fit yet, so feeding him is my contribution to relief efforts for now.

-I am always homesick around Thanksgiving and Christmas, and so I call my family almost daily.  We celebrate Thanksgiving with a big group of American expats and we eat all the beloved signature dishes of the day including two large turkeys.

-Isla turns one year old.  She is happy here and sings a lot.  We laugh when she starts singing along with all the calls to prayer from the mosques.  She prefers tearing sheets of tin foil into tiny shreds over playing with her toys. She is stubborn and emotive and wonderful.  I think back to last year when her early arrival caught us off guard.  She was so incredibly tiny that we were scared for her, but she’s been a tough little girl from the get go.

-C travels to the US and Isla and I stay and prepare for Christmas by setting up a nativity scene, playing holiday music, making cookies and buying two small cypress trees.  Christmas involves cinnamon rolls, gifts, whiskey, games, and a Christmas Day lunch celebrated with a small group of (mostly Muslim) Syrians.  The evacuations from Aleppo have finished and peace talks are underway.  For now, things seem hopeful.

-I’m homesick for both New Jersey and Lebanon, but I do love it here.  Turkey is less accessible to me than Lebanon; the people seem more guarded.  It might just be my interpretation and the fact that I don’t speak Turkish, or it might be the result of all the attacks that Turkey has undergone lately.

For now it’s so right for us to be here and we’re soaking it up.  We’re in close proximity to a whole lot of suffering and terror, but we’re also amongst brave people and witnessing incredible resilience and humanity and ordinary life in the midst of it.  (I need to expand on what I mean by that in another post.) I know 2016 was a bruiser, but here we are at the end of it, and here’s to seeing what 2017 will bring.

Middle Grade Fiction Favorites

17 Thursday Nov 2016

Posted by in dear apples, education, fiction, Uncategorized, writing

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Dear Apples,

Remember when we used to read out loud to each other?  Wasn’t that just the best?  Now I still miss it so much that I’m always trying to replicate it, and I read out loud to Isla all the time, whether it’s Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See? or a re-read of J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey.  I read to C too, regardless of whether he’s paying attention or not.

I’ve started so many posts about all of the books that I loved growing up–and that I still remember and sometimes reread–and I’ve left them half-done because the volume is just too overwhelming.  There are children’s books that I loved when I was a kid and now there are a whole army of new ones that have grabbed my attention.  The same goes for every category and subcategory of literature.  But since I could talk about books forever and never get bored of it, I’ll try to start slow and see how far I get with listing at least some of the books that have shaped me and been my most constant solace through every stage of life.

Today I’ll start with some of my favorite Middle Grade fiction.  Some were written for that age group, and some I just happened to read when I was in 6th, 7th and 8th grade.  This is by far one of the best categories in literature, and I think it’s because it’s just such an awesome age.  I know a lot of people would disagree with me, but adolescents have all that incredible curiosity and enthusiasm and awkwardness and budding maturity that hasn’t yet turned cynical.  Although I love a lot of Young Adult fiction as well, I usually don’t find the same depth and variety and scope there that I can usually count on in Middle Grade fiction.   This is certainly not a comprehensive list, and some of them feel younger than middle grade while others feel slightly older, but I’m trying to pull out the heavy hitters of the adolescence-ish age that I can recall at the moment.

Harry Potter Series- J. K. Rowling 

I started reading these in high school, and they finished coming out when I was in college, but I would have loved starting them a little younger too.  It was great to have the experience of waiting desperately for her to complete the next one and the next one, and checking for your turn to come to borrow it at the library or waiting for a friend’s copy.  I’m so glad I had the chance to love those books as she was writing them.

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh-Robert C. O’Brien

My 6th grade teacher read this book out loud to my class, and we weren’t supposed to skip ahead, but I couldn’t wait and definitely checked this one out at the library and read the whole thing while the class was in the first few chapters.  It didn’t stop me from loving it while the teacher read it.

The Wednesday Wars-Gary D. Schmidt

This one is a Newberry honor, and totally deserves it.  Holling Hoodhood is a hilarious boy who is forced to spend Wednesdays with a teacher he hates while everyone else is in religion class.  The story takes place during the Vietnam war, and the backstory of his family is woven in so well.  I really need to go back and re-read this one.

Up a Road Slowly-Irene Hunt

I’ve read this book many times.  The characters are fascinating and funny and compelling, and it’s a coming of age story in a reality very different from mine, but so relatable at the same time.  I learned a lot from this book.  I just looked at the Amazon page, and it has a pretty unappealing cover that shows a dreamy girl peering wistfully out into space, and that image does not do a great job at conveying the content of this book.

To Kill A Mockingbird-Harper Lee

I started this after I was riding home from school on the bus one day and saw a girl in high school finish it and say “What a book!”  I’ve re-read it many times since then, and it always makes me cry.

The Great Brain series

Ohmygosh these are the best.  Told through the voice of a young boy recounting the adventures of growing up with his older brother, they are perfectly hilarious and honest.

Dear Mr. Henshaw-Beverly Cleary

This is another Newberry Medal winner, but surprisingly, I doubt it’s Cleary’s best known book.  I absolutely loved all the Ramona books and the Henry Huggins books, and this one was quite different from her younger books but such a pleasant surprise.  It’s a poignant conversation in letters between a growing boy and his favorite author as the boy navigates everything happening around him through adolescence and his teenage years.

The Narnia Series- C.S. Lewis 

I didn’t read all of these, (probably because we owned those really weird but good movies that BBC did, and so I knew most of the stories very well) but I loved The Magician’s Nephew and The Last Battle.

His Dark Materials series-Philip Pullman

I read these in grad school and finished all three in a few days.  Pullman is such an incredible storyteller, and I think I would have loved reading them when I was younger.

I don’t have time to give descriptions of all the books that are on this very incomplete list, but I absolutely loved all the following books as well and I promise that they deserve emphatic recommendations:

Homer Price books-Robert McCloskey

Lily’s Crossing- Patricia Reilly Giff

A Wrinkle in Time-Madeleine L’Engle

Emily of New Moon series

Peter Pan- J.M. Barrie

The Giver-Lois Lowry (Just found out now that this is a series!! I only ever knew about the first one)

What are some of your favorites?

For love of words IV

15 Tuesday Nov 2016

Posted by in fiction, for love of words, journal, writing

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Below are small excerpts and clippings that I’ve extracted from things I’ve read or re-read recently.

(Posts one, two and three)

“I opened the tattered book.  Its onion-skin pages were stained with grease from his fingers.  On one page, I covered his thumbprint with my thumb and considered for the first time that Papa might have been more than just old pictures-0ld, repeated stories.” -Wally Lamb, I know this much is true

“Finally, by the sea, where God is everywhere, I gradually calmed.” -Patti Smith, Just Kids

“He was whittled down now, either to banalities or to simple truths.  Either way, they would have to do.” -Sharon Guskin, The Forgetting Time

“Later I will look at video made close to that day of the children watching the rapacious hawk, and hear the light tinkling bells in Simon’s voice and think, he was so young that April.” -Elizabeth Alexander, The Light of the World

“When the truth would be unbearable the mind often just blanks it out. But some ghost of an event may stay in your head. Then, like the smudge of a bad word quickly wiped off a school blackboard, this ghost can call undue attention to itself by its very vagueness. You keep studying the dim shape of it, as if the original form will magically emerge. This blank spot in my past, then, spoke most loudly to me by being blank. It was a hole in my life that I both feared and kept coming back to because I couldn’t quite fill it in.” –Mary Karr, The Liar’s Club

“So the challenge I face with children is the redemption of adulthood.  We must make it evident that maturity is the fulfillment of childhood and adolescence, not a diminishing; that it is an affirmation of life, not a denial; that it is entering fully into our essential selves.” -Madeleine L’Engle, A Circle of Quiet

For love of words III

23 Friday Sep 2016

Posted by in fiction, for love of words, quotes, Uncategorized, writing

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Below are small excerpts and clippings that I’ve extracted from things I’ve read or re-read recently.

(posts one and two)

“Experience taught Strike that there was a certain type of woman to whom he was unusually attractive.  Their common characteristics were intelligence and the flickering intensity of badly wired lamps.” -Robert Galbraith, The Silkworm

“He looked as though he had been carved out of soft ebony by a master hand that had grown bored with its own expertise, and started to veer towards the grotesque.” -Robert Galbraith, The Cuckoo’s Calling

“He could see a new set of muscles hardening in the right forearm of his wife, Teresa, from the constant twisting of oranges on the juicer while their children held up their cups and waited for more.” -Ann Patchett, Commonwealth

“If a man can’t build a violin, he may as well make pizzas in a former violin shop.” -Molly Wizenburg, Delancey

“Until you forgive, you defend yourself against the possibility of understanding.” -Marilynn Robinson, Home

“But unlike his brothers, Henry had a redeeming attribute.  Two of them, to be exact: he was intelligent, and he was interested in trees.” -Elizabeth Gilbert, The Signature of All Things

“For here was the hole in Alma’s theory: she could not, for the life of her, understand the evolutionary advantages of altruism and self-sacrifice.  If the natural world was indeed the sphere of amoral and constant struggle for survival that it appeared to be, and if outcompeting one’s rivals was the key to dominance, adaptation and endurance–then what was one supposed to make, for instance, of someone like her sister Prudence?”   -Elizabeth Gilbert, The Signature of All Things

“To see a thing in its proportion, whatever it was, to draw its outlines true and sure and simple–that was bottomless content, which lightened all the world.” -Pearl S. Buck, The Proud Heart

On Ideas and Execution

13 Tuesday Sep 2016

Posted by in dear apples, journal, writing

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Dear Apples,

Yesterday I was brooding for much of the day.  It was the last day of a long weekend (Lebanon was on holiday for Eid Al Adha), and the fourth day in a row that I hadn’t written, and the internal pressure had really revved up.  My story has been running all over the place like a capricious teenager, and I have been sitting and wondering how to pull it back on course, and asking it what it wants to be, and panicking over the self-inflicted deadline that will probably arrive before the plot reconfigures itself into a more promising shape.  It’s been a bit paralyzing, honestly.

C suggested we go out last night to break up the schedule, and so we went to catch dinner and a movie.  I reluctantly updated him on where the plot had veered off course, and it was hugely relieving to be able to think it through out loud and realize that there might just be a way forward.

Today I have to begin gutting much of what I’ve worked on and finding out what the essence of the story is and working from there, which feels both terrifying and exciting.  Heavy on the terrifying.  I am trying to force myself to take it slowly and sit in the ideation phase for as much time as I need without scurrying right into execution and finding that I have to scratch half of what I’ve written and redirect.  What is the balance between the time spent mapping out the book and the time spent writing it?  For me, the ideas are sluggish but the writing is quick.  It’s probably different for everyone, but I’d love a good formula.  So far, this story has taken me by surprise at almost every turn.  It’s been fun, but I am exhausted from chasing it around, and I’d really like to return to the driver’s seat and decide where we’re going before we set out.

With that in mind, I am giving myself a week to let the story percolate.  It feels extravagant and wasteful, but I have never tried it before and I am simply not ready to move forward until I have something stolid and dependable that will not run away from me the minute I let it out onto the page.

Wish me luck.

In the meantime, here’s what Walt Whitman has to say about it:

“I like the scientific spirit—the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: this is ultimately fine—it always keeps the way beyond open—always gives life, thought, affection, the whole man, a chance to try over again after a mistake—after a wrong guess.”
― Walt Whitman, Walt Whitman’s Camden Conversations

And Amy Poehler:

“You just lean over the computer and stretch and pace.  You write and cook something and write some more.  You put your hand on your heart and feel it beating and decide if what you wrote feels true.  You do it because the doing of it is the thing.  The talking and worrying and thinking is not the thing.  This is what I know.”  –Yes Please

And Steve Jobs:

“If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on.”
― Steve Jobs

My Writing Manifesto

12 Friday Aug 2016

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For the past several months, I’ve been working on drafting a young adult novel.  Since it’s a solitary activity as well as a first attempt at novel writing, it can be hard to take myself seriously and keep pushing forward.  This podcast spurred me to come up with my own Writing Manifesto as a mission statement of sorts to keep me going when the going gets tough.

  1. You are only the conduit.

Similar to the old concept of writers receiving visits from the Muses, I like to think of myself as simply the instrument for the ideas working through me. If the creative energy is what’s doing the real work, it takes a lot of pressure off of me, and also gives me the impetus to try and channel that energy in the best way possible and to keep working at it so as to be a better conduit. On the mornings when my motivation is lacking, the thing that gets me going is the realization that I just have to play my part in allowing the ideas to get to the page.  Elizabeth Gilbert talks quite eloquently about the value of taking this perspective in her book Big Magic.

  1. You love this.

Writing–or the fear of writing–can be draining and feel immensely daunting at times.  Often I’ll get stuck or find some holes in the plot line or realize that the writing is flat, and I’ll reach a point where I’m driving C crazy and complaining about how hopeless the process feels.  In these moments it’s critical for me to remember that I am doing exactly the thing I love to do and there is really no other work I’d rather commit my time to.  I don’t think there has ever been a time when writing has not provided me with a deep satisfaction, and I am lucky to at least be trying at it.

  1. Write what scares you.

There are a lot of topics that are uncomfortable to dive in to, and it’s easy to second guess myself and chop out or gloss over the gritty bits.  But the fact is, the authors of all of my favorite novels are brave enough to go to challenging places, and that very willingness is often what makes the writing memorable and visceral.

  1. Keep going.

I am very prone to reviewing something I’ve written and cringing and wanting to give up altogether.  But I’m well aware that the only way to improve is through practice and practice and practice.  The feeling that comes after I’ve refined a patchy part over and over and turned it around in my mind for days and then finally happened upon something that holds its own is one of the very best feelings in the world.

Another thing to remember in this same vein, is that publication is not the purpose.  I’m sure it is a very gratifying outcome, but the process itself is the greatest reward.  The path to publication is paved with rejection, and if that is my end goal, it robs from the purity of the pursuit.

  1. Stay close to your people.

I really need to work on this one, but it is endlessly helpful to be surrounded (online or otherwise) by peers.  Writing can be a lonely thing.  The most bolstering solution when I’m in a pit is to talk with other people who are trying to do the same thing.  For me, this currently means reading books and articles and listening to podcasts about writing.  I know I need to build a peer network and find support in the writing community.  It is not just the critiquing and feedback that is necessary; it’s also the motivation and shared energy that’s really essential.

I’m sure I’ll have new points to add to this list as I go, but for now this is the essence of what I want to keep in mind as I work.

For Love of Words: II

25 Monday Jul 2016

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I enjoyed posting small selections from books I’d read lately here, and now I’ve curated a new selection.

“Thus the neglected idea did what many self-respecting living entities would do in the same circumstance: It hit the road.” -Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic

“She didn’t understand the struggles some of us went through.  If you had to write 1500 words you wrote 1500 words.  You put one word then another then another…You didn’t think too much and you didn’t expect too much.” -David Almond, A Song for Ella Grey

-“I feel about our children sometimes the way I used to feel about our tabby cat, Tiny.  I used to look at him blinking slowly in the sun, or lifting his hind foot to chew at his toes with his minuscule front teeth, and I’d think, Why is he even living here with us?  We have so little in common.  The thought was always accompanied by a cresting wave of love.  ‘Our cat! Our dear, strange animal!'” -Catherine Newman, Catastrophic Happiness

-“Every once in awhile in the block, there’s a day that doesn’t start right.  A day when all the repeating patterns that Melanie uses as measuring sticks for her life fail to occur, one after another, and she feels like she’d bobbing around helplessly in the air–a Melanie-shaped ballon.” -M.R.Carey The Girl With All the Talents

-But this new place was other things too… It was ghoulish and ghastly.  It was all things unimagineable.  But Ernest D. was the bravest of explorers.  He battled and brawled until the moon ducked low.” -Joseph Kuefler, Beyond the Pond (Isla’s recommendation)

Ode to Twenty-Somethings

21 Thursday Apr 2016

Posted by in dear apples, everyday poems, journal, quarter life crisis, writing

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'Sure I'd like to have everything but where would I put it?'

Dear Apples,

I was going to write a post about children’s books, because I love them and because I love to write children’s stories, but then I read a message that you sent me last night and it really got me thinking. And then I wrote a little poem for our lovely generation:

“When you’re 30 you will thrive”
I told myself at 25.
But now that I’ve reached 29
I’m doubtful of that hopeful line.

“Lean in!” says Sandburg, “Show your clout!”
I whisper back…Can I lean out?
“It’s woman’s day! We won the fight!”
Am I ungrateful for my rights?

They tell me I can Have It All
But All’s too tall for one so small
“Do what you love! Forge your own way!”
…My way forgets there’s bills to pay.

“Single life is your best look!
But check out these weddings on Facebook!
Juggle all the balls at once!”
(And you’ll look like a fumbling dunce)

“If you’re outside the public eye
You may as well not even try
All that matters is your brand
Even the Pope has instagram!”

The questions swirl inside my head
Mind if I just go to bed?
I’ll do my best to check your boxes
If you’ll please help me with my taxes.