Archive for the 'The Writing Life' Category

May 4, 2010

The Drunk Girl In My Bathroom

Last night a drunk girl came to visit. I didn’t know her and she didn’t know me. Yet, there she was – clothing somewhat optional and drunk off her ass – in my bathroom. Her name began with a J (I do know her name, but I think she’s suffered enough indignity to end up drunk in a stranger’s bathroom, don’t you?). So, Miss J had a bad day. And if I can infer enough from her tears, Miss J’s bad days had come in a series that began when she was 13 and her mother died. Miss J was somewhere in the vacinity of 30 so when I say drunk “girl” really, please don’t picture a 17 year old. Miss J should have known better than to be drunk off her ass at 7:30 pm at her age, but those bad days have stacked up against her.

My sister happened to come over somewhere in the midst of me getting Miss J out of the bathtub and into her skinny jeans. Have you ever had to get a fully grown, drunk, woman out of a bathtub and into a pair of skinny jeans? I should add that Miss J is my height – so please don’t picture a petite little 17 year old. My sister and I have both been drunk girls in bathrooms at one point or another – typically, I can speak mostly for myself here as my sister will have to answer for herself – in our own or at least friend’s bathrooms, so I’m not calling pot shots out at anyone, okay. But if you are going to go out on an all day bender perhaps skinny jeans are not your best option. So, my sister and I got the drunk girl out of my bathroom and into my kitchen. “Oh, look a dog. Cute doggie. I like dogs. Oh, look, are those children . . . there are small people here?” (cue my husband literally shooing the children out the front door and off to get pizza with his arms akimbo like a blue oxfod wearing father goose.) And no, I don’t usually wait until 7:30 to feed them, but it was Cub Scouts night. I am sure there’s not a badge for drunk girl saving.

So, Miss J’s phone was dead. The one person Miss J wanted more than anyone else in the world was – her father. This part did surprise me. My father would absolutely have killed me. Luckily for Miss J her father was listed on the white pages website. Thank God he’s of the generation that still has a landline and actually answers it. So, Miss J’s father is on his way and we’re still feeding Miss J Ritz crackers, water and ibuprofen. Have I mentioned how happy I was that Miss J declared, “I’m not a puker” when I handed her a bucket to put on her lap? The skinny jeans had been enough for me.

So, here’s where this is going. Miss J, while attempting to smoke a cigarette with me holding my hands underneath hers so she wouldn’t burn herself (I don’t smoke and yet I facilitated a drunk girl holding a burning object – surely there is a badge for this in the Senior-level Girl Scout handbook!) looked up at my sister and said, “are you married? cause my dad is totally going to hit on you.” (he did not, for the record) So, should I feel guilty because the only thing I could think of is “wow, this would make a great story – the couple who met over a drunk girl in a stranger’s bathroom.”

March 1, 2010

Somewhere Only We Know

Where I live in my head is a jumbled mass of ideas and impressions. Sometimes, there’s a really angry troll in there trying to use a machete to cut through the overgrowth. Like today.

I keep trying to get the people close to me to understand, but unless you’ve been somewhere, how do you know what the landscape looks like? I have this overwhelming desire every minute of every day to create something. That’s why the vines grow and the buds come out and the webs get spun. My interior life is all about solving problems and making stuff – I don’t walk down the street without re-imagining what everything *could* look like. I don’t meet someone or see someone in line somewhere without instantly describing them in my head as if they were a character I was introducing. I don’t go through my days half asleep. My head is buzzing. All the time.

Being misunderstood is probably the most profound of all human problems. I’m pretty angry sometimes because my time to be creative is limited. That makes me grumpy. And I know grumpy gets old to the people upon whom you inflict the sharpness and bitterness of a constant grump. I’ve read endless biographies of artists and writers and a common theme really is the tendency to make enemies out of your loved ones simply because the constant frustration of a creative life spreads like a ratty old quilt across a bed. Lumpy, full of holes and with a tell-tale musty smell at times. I just wish everyone understood that if I could make myself be upbeat and happy and carefree I WOULD!! But that’s not the temperament nor the brain I was given. I was given this rich interior space full of creativity and brimming with the ability to “see” what things could look like transformed. It’s crazy-making even though I do try for sanity. The one strategy that works for me over and over again is searching out the creative struggles other people endure.

I love the Dar Williams song, After All. Perfect description of creative angst and my favorite line is:
It felt like a winter machine that you go through, and then, you catch your breath and winter starts again, and everyone else is spring-bound.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28N_A-dy52Y

Anyone else end up being misunderstood?

January 20, 2010

My Studio

If you saw my post “During the Reign of the Oak King” today on Petit Fours, and would like to see some pictures of my studio, then here they are! Most of my pictures are focused on the ideas I used to create things and the sewing equipment I’ve planned around. Writing really only takes up the space between my elbows.

My desk – made from old six panel doors and then painted and decoupaged. The shelf that runs along the wall has all of my favorite books. The brackets that hold up the shelf are pieces of old furniture – things like brackets from old pianos and the spine of a chair.

Sewing machine table and cabinets made out of old windows and scrap lumber. I have three machines – a Pfaff sewing machine, a serger, and an embroidery machine.

Cutting table with storage underneath. The table is a metal catering table from a restaurant. I built a folding wooden top for it and then covered it with wool blankets and a cutting matt. Very handy for steaming full lengthes of fabric. You can sort of see the rug the dog sleeps on and my mop sink seeping around the edges of the picture.

Paper roll storage – two iron window bars welded together with plumbing pipe inbetween.

Section of decoupage on the sewing table top. It’s a full scene called “What the Fairy Dreamed” and it runs the length of the table. My 11 year old and I did it together.

Thanks for stopping in to tour my studio!

January 12, 2010

The Chaos Box

Disclaimer: This is not my original idea. I stole it from my friend, Nicki http://www.8headedhydra.blogspot.com/ She’ll probably blog about this as well – only in a much more beautiful manner than moi.
One of my resolutions this year is to contain the chaos. We all have it – like the dust under the refrigerator that you try to ignore. Sometimes the chaos seeps around the edges of my life and makes fulfilling my mission impossible. Let me be real – I like drama. It’s easier to engage in drama than it is to write. Drama is exciting – look! An emergency! I must attend to it! Somehow over the past five or six years I’ve allowed everything to become a drama.
Here’s the solution: chaos box. If something seems in the least bit likely to spiral into drama I’m going to put it in the chaos box and shut the lid. Typical of me, however, my first impulse was to actually make a chaos box – I’ve got a great shoebox. Wait! there’s that little metal box I’ve just been waiting to decoupage! I could get out my rust-stopping primer and some images I’ve been saving up. What color is chaos? Black? Too easy. Teal? Hmmm. Red! I could hit the fancy paper store and get a box of pretty paper to write down my chaotic situations and people to put in the box – maybe a new marker!
In the middle of this creative frenzy it hit me. Turning a chaos box into a chaos project is exactly the wrong path to take. My chaos box is now a virtual box – industrial sized for all the crap I think it’s going to have to hold this year.
Score: Me=1, Drama=0.

October 16, 2007

Modern Mother

I’ve given birth to a Puritan. My daughter cries and grows upset at any hint of anything sexy. We went to a nice Italian restaurant on a street that is known for three things: Italian restaurants (authentic ones – you’re sure the waiter is packing heat and the guy in the corner with the slicked back hair is taking a “meeting”), upscale antiques stores, and strip clubs. It’s a wild mix, but hey, that’s life in the city. She saw a billboard advertising “Naked Ladies!!” and proceeded to cry for two hours. I dug out my art books and showed her how the female form has been celebrated and depicted since the dawn of mankind. “See that little stone statue, that’s the Venus of Willendorf. See how she’s naked and has breasts – like all women?” More tears.

She’s very bent out of shape that I write books she can’t read. Not even over my shoulder. As she did attempt once. My bad luck that it was a love scene and she reads well and quickly for a third-grader. More tears.

Until I had children, I always thought they were hedonistic little things. Maybe some are. Not my darling. I adore her, of course, and would never do anything to upset her equilibrium. Like cutting my hair, which I am not allowed to do. Or, heaven forbid, dying it red. Which I wanted to do for my fortieth birthday. I had to be satisfied with a trim. Not the life-changing event I had planned.

I wanted children. Even in my twenties I tried. I thought I’d be a young mother. But ex-husbands and personal story arc’s sometimes go wobbly. I was thirty-one when she was born and thirty-four when her younger brother came along. That’s long enough to have lived. A lot. And now I find myself having to put on a persona I never imagined to be the restrictive falsehood it is. I’m a MOTHER.

My babies nursed at a tattooed breast. I swung a hammer restoring our beat up old Victorian while gestating. I’ve drag raced driving a Jaguar, a Corvette and a Plymouth Valiant. I know how to speed shift in a Karmen Ghia. I’ve been married twice. I’ve had love affairs that were mind-blowing, multi-continent and terribly illicit. I’ve drunk many a man under the table – including her father. I’ve spent enough time on construction sites to be able to use every bad word in a single sentence.

Sure, I was also in a sorority and I know how to write a thank you note for any occasion. I understand cutlery and can set a table for a six course meal. I can brew tea for thirty and make finger sandwiches out of delicate little bits of this and that. What can I say – I’m a brassy renaissance woman.

And that’s the problem. This whole mother-as-sole-identity thing might have worked in the fifties. Maybe even in the sixties. But what happens to those of us born after the sexual revolution? How do you stop being who you are so you can successfully raise a happy Puritan?