And Genius Scratches Its Ass

About a week ago I let myself get distracted from writing with a “quick look” at Facebook. Half an hour later I was watching Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED talk on creativity and the creative genius. It is very much worth a watch, so if you want to take a moment to do that before you finish reading this post, I’ll totally understand. If you don’t want to, I’ll get to the most salient point as quickly and with as much eloquence as I can. Gilbert begins by talking  about the crippling fear faced by artists when they sit down to work on a new project, especially in the wake of success (in Gilbert’s case it was with Eat, Pray, Love, a mind-boggling success that took her by surprise). This fear can understandably inhibit the creative process and has been known to drive artists mad–or at least to drink and do drugs. In order to combat this fear, Gilbert began looking for ways to understand the creative impulse, what we sometimes call genius, and she raises the marvelous possibility that genius is not something that comes from within but is something external to the artist, something that can be invited into the room to give the artist a little help, like, as she says, Dobby the house elf. There’s more to this TED talk, so you really should watch the video when you get a chance.

After the video ended, I finally pulled myself away from the Facebook and went back to work, inspired and relieved. I did a little experiment and extended an invitation to Dobby the House Genius to join me. Ralphie, my dog, was curled up on one end of the couch, but there was ample room for Dobby on the other. And damned if the writing didn’t go just a little bit smoother. The slog was a little less sloggier. I didn’t feel tortured at all, which got me to thinking about something that I’ve been thinking about for some time: a mixture of images and ideas that are best described as the portrait of the artist as a tortured soul, so burdened by the weight of his genius that he goes mad.

When I was younger–in my teens and twenties especially–this portrait fascinated me. There’s just something so special, I thought, about that artist so driven to do his or her work, so driven by his or her genius, that they can be held apart, distinguished, as somehow better than other mortals. Somehow less mortal. It’s a seductive image, especially for an adolescent, because, among other things, it gives permission for a lot of very bad behavior. “I’m an artist. I commune with the divine. I don’t have to live by bourgeois rules.” Who doesn’t want to have permission to say something like that? From the other side of forty, however, I can see quite clearly how that is not a very healthy idea, how, no matter the distinction it brings, genius is not a burden I wish to bear.

But when  I was  a freshman at UCONN, I reveled in that image. Early in my first semester,  I took some time one afternoon to craft a sign to hang on my dorm room door whenever I was writing a paper. First I wrote (in as elaborate a script as I could manage–we didn’t have computers in our rooms back then) “Abandon hope all ye who enter.” Then I poured coffee over the sign and hung it to dry. Later I charred the edges with my friend Paula’s cigarette lighter. I was very pleased with my sign, not just because I had made it myself but also because it was an awesome prop in my ongoing performance of being a Writer. The purpose, of course, was to let everyone on my floor know that I was WRITING and that things could get crazy because that’s what happens when someone is WRITING. I embraced this role because I thought that’s how an artistic person should act, and I was nothing if not an artistic person. I cringe now to think about it, and I realize that I had very indulgent friends, especially my roommate Kim, who happily studied downstairs in the cafeteria so I could write in our room. No one laughed to my face about my pretension. They just kind of took it in stride.

Of course, behind the door with my awesome sign, I was doing the work. I didn’t just sit at my desk, pulling out my hair. Fueled by coffee and chocolate, I wrote draft after draft of my papers, crossing out lines, cutting bits and pasting them–or taping them–to other bits, and then when it was ready, typing the whole thing to be turned in. Without really understanding it, I was actually doing my duty as a writer. For, as Gilbert makes clear, that is the artist’s only job: showing up and doing the work–sitting down to write and writing, no matter how awful or wonderful the words, bringing paint brush to canvas, warming up the body to dance, running lines before a rehearsal or performance, whatever the work, it is the artist’s job just to do it. Genius belongs elsewhere, to Dobby, or to whatever one chooses to envision. And that is a remarkably freeing idea for a type-A-must-get-it-right-and-be-perfect person like me.

It was freeing for Elizabeth Gilbert, too. While she was deep in a draft of the book after Eat, Pray, Love (or maybe it was that one, I can’t remember), she looked up from her work one day and addressed a corner in her office, saying something like, “I showed up. I’m here doing the work. So if this sucks it isn’t my fault.” That moment helped her turn a corner and actually finish the book. Whether her genius showed up or not didn’t really matter after that.

The one problem I have with Gilbert’s notion of genius is that she connects it to the divine. To me that connection undermines the whole pressure-relieving notion of genius as separate. I don’t want to worry about a deity occupying any corner of my house. How am I to keep from taking myself too seriously if I believe that God has taken some time out of His busy day to make sure that my writing doesn’t suck? Isn’t that the point of removing the burden of genius from myself–so that I can get on with my work and not be so tortured? Besides, I’m not a big believer in gods.

As a reaction against this invocation of the divine, I’ve been refining my vision of the genius that I welcome to my office every day, searching for something a little earthier, a little baser. So now I imagine a combination of Dobby the house elf and Tom Hulce from the movie Amadeus: it’s helpful like Dobby, but also crude and irreverent like Hulce’s Mozart. When I sit down to write, I invite this Dobby Mozart to join me. While I’m slogging away, my genius is sitting on the couch with Ralphie. Looking out the window, maybe, or watching me or just, I don’t know, geniusing. If, as I am going about my work, I start to take myself too seriously, my genius looks at me and pointedly scratches its ass.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Killing the Sylph

When I was fourteen years old, my ballet teacher pulled me aside after class one day and told me that I needed to lose some weight. I was about the same height I am now, five foot three, and I weighed around one hundred and ten pounds. While I was not ballerina thin, I certainly was not fat. I had a nice body, actually, a budding woman’s body, strong, with beautiful curves. But Ms. Allenby told me she wanted to consider me for bigger parts in the small company with which I danced, and that to do so, she needed me to be thinner. I don’t remember that “request” bothering me. I didn’t go home and cry; I didn’t feel humiliated or defeated. I was daunted by the woman’s body developing without my control, and I think I wanted–on some level, perhaps not consciously–to stop it. I didn’t really like my breasts or my round butt and curvy hips. I was mortified by my first period. I didn’t like maturing, so the part of the story that comes next makes perfect sense.

I went on a diet–counting calories, cutting out sweets, and planning my meals very carefully. The “request” came toward the end of the summer between eighth grade and my freshman year in high school. By the time school started, I had lost around ten pounds. It was exhilarating at first. Anorexia always is. By mid-fall I had lost almost twenty pounds. Ms. Allenby seemed pleased, and that pleased me. I got to dance some great parts–fun variations in the Nutcracker and Juliet in the Romeo and Juliet balcony scene choreographed by John Cranko. My budding breasts nearly disappeared and my period stopped; my development was arrested and I was relieved. I had a ballerina’s body–not that this picture shows it very well, but it’s the only one I can find.

 

 

Almost everyone knows about the many forms of lasting damage caused by anorexia and other eating disorders. I think for me the most pernicious result was how anorexia narrowed my definition of myself–encouraging me almost to erase myself. As a dancer, I equated my body with my whole being, and it reflected my value in a scary inverse proportion: the less I weighed, the more I was worth. The logic is mind-boggling: I’m worth more when I almost don’t exist at all. The book Competing with the Sylph: The Quest for the Perfect Dance Body sheds some light on this bizarre aspiration that I shared with so many young women. In my quest for near weightlessness, for a sylphlike body of air, I created an image of what my body should be. Forever. That was when I was fourteen. Thirty-one years later, I still struggle with this image of my body–from time to time I find myself at war with my own flesh.

A couple of things have happened recently to bring all of this mess back up. In September I started training to teach Pilates. Since then I’ve been working out a lot, and I’ve been a lot hungrier, which means I’m eating more–it’s really hard to do things like hang upside down in Pilates inversions if I’m not getting enough nutrition.

 

 

In January I turned forty-five, something I celebrated with a four day dessertapalooza, which paved the way to sequels in subsequent months. Then a few weeks ago I realized that I was tired of being afraid of food. I’m tired of worrying about how what I eat might kill me. Last summer I stopped eating gluten and dairy to control my asthma, which actually stays under control just fine as long as I take my Flonase. I got sick of being so restrictive, so I started eating things that had been off-limits–like croissants and ice cream. All of these things have led to some weight gain because my forty-five year old body does not metabolize food like it did when I was twenty-five (ah the joys of peri-menopause!). I have no idea how much weight I have gained as I have no scale, but I know that my body has changed. It has more flesh. A lot of this new flesh is muscle–my sister and I develop muscle very easily, probably because of our eastern European peasant genes. But some of it is not muscle. Some of it, in my recovering anorexic’s mind, is excess. Unnecessary flesh.

But my  body–the ideal Platonic vision I created at fourteen–has no excess. I was driving home from Pilates the other day, and I realized that is why I am having trouble with the “extra” flesh on my stomach, thighs, and butt. I see that flesh as not part of my real body, the ballerina’s body aspiring for sylph-hood. There’s certainly no fat on that body. It is sleek, perfect. Anything else is not really me–it might be attached to me, but it is not me. The insanity of that notion struck me as I sat waiting for the light to change, thinking about how I didn’t like the way my thighs feel. In that moment, I wanted to cut off part of my body. Remove a chunk my flesh. Part of me. Jesus, that is fucked up.

I’m hardly unique in this horrifying desire. I hear my friends talk about their bodies in much the same way. They grab handfuls of flesh that they’ve identified as excess, the part that needs to be eliminated from their stomachs, thighs, butts, waists–everywhere that “excess” intrudes. One of my friends jokes (?) about “just getting it all sucked out.” Getting part of her body sucked out and thrown away as though it is trash. What makes a woman think that about her body? What makes anyone think such thoughts?

Of course I can’t answer that question for anyone else. But sitting in the car, wondering how to get rid of those bits of my body that don’t really belong to me, I figured it out for myself. And it pissed me off. When I stop and listen to the voice in my head telling me that there is too much flesh on my body, I hear the faint traces of a South African accent–it is an echo of my ballet teacher’s voice. I was sixteen years old and in the middle of rehearsal when she had me come over to where she sat. She reached out and grabbed the flesh of my inner thighs, saying, “If we could just get rid of this part….” So, yes, I understand the compulsion to just cut it off. I was eighteen years old and sitting in her office trying to explain why I didn’t want to dance anymore when Jean told me that I would be nothing but a fat, plain lady if I left ballet. I think some part of me has been trying to prove her wrong ever since. But the best way I can do that is to ignore the echo of her voice and to change the ideal image of my body to one that is strong and healthy, not frail and sylphlike.

In fact, that ideal body does not serve me well. When I am pared down, when there is no excess, I tend to be much sadder. I’m crankier and harder to be around. And I’m less healthy–my joints ache, my asthma flares up more readily, and I feel weaker. I’m tired and can’t concentrate, which makes most things harder to do.

That I can even see the difference now is progress. That I can also see my body with some measure of objectivity is also progress. Believe me, I know that there are lots of people who think I’m crazy, who must resent my complaints about my body because it is actually beautiful. More importantly, it is strong, well-muscled, and solid. Mine is a woman’s body, not that of some pre-pubescent teenager, all angles and limbs, or of a sylph, weightless and airy. In this body I have a lot of energy and much more focus for my teaching and my writing. My joints don’t hurt, and my asthma flares up far less often. This body, my body, made of flesh and bone and blood, serves me so well. Why would I want another?

 

 

 

 

 

Widgets

I’m not embarrassed to admit that the interweb still frightens and confuses me. I’m a little technologically challenged, so there is A LOT out there that I simply do not understand. Among so many other things, apparently the internet is a great place for the independent author who knows how to navigate her way around Twitter’s hashtags and retweets, Facebook’s likes and pokes, and Goodreads’ giveaways and widgets. Because I had to be dragged into the twenty-first century, I’m amazed by people who actually know not only what all that stuff means, but also how to use it. My friend Milton, for instance, has been blogging for years, and his blog is filled with all kinds of media and icons and, I am pretty sure, widgets. And while I put the link to his blog in this post myself (here’s hoping that it works), I still haven’t managed to figure out how to make my blog look pretty, much less how to navigate my way through all these newfangled thingamajigs.

Nevertheless, I’m trying, and, the other night, frustrated by my inability to follow simple instructions about how to use the Goodreads Author program to my advantage, I asked Dave, “What the hell is a widget?”

As he usually does when I ask an impatient question about technology, my tech savvy husband smiled before responding with a mixture of patience and amusement. “I’m pretty sure I’ve already explained that to you,” he said.

“Well, clearly I have forgotten,” I replied with more than a hint of sass. “So can you tell me again?”

Unfortunately I can’t remember what he said (because sometimes when people talk about things I don’t understand, they sound like the adults in Peanuts cartoons), but I think his response was that it is a general term for a tool, not a specific thing. So I’m still not really clear about what a damn widget is because the Google was not much more specific. But I do know that I’m supposed to use them to encourage people to buy Luminous Creatures Press books and add them to their Goodreads bookshelves and write reviews so that other people will buy the books and add them to their bookshelves and other people….

If I’m really honest, though, I will confess that my fear of technology masks an entirely different issue. Behind my reluctance to learn how to use these technologies lies an aversion to self-promotion–specifically the shameless variety. I don’t mean other people’s shameless self-promtion. Just mine. I see people like the great monologist Mike Daisey on Facebook employing it almost purely as a tool for marketing. And he navigates it like a master. First of all he accepts friend requests from everyone. I know this because I sent him one after I saw him at Berkeley Rep a few years ago, and he accepted it. He also posts article after article and review after review of his work. He must issue thousands of invitations to performances every day. But what strikes me the most about Daisey’s use of Facebook is the complete lack of self-consciousness that I see. He clearly does not feel even the least bit awkward tooting his own horn. Or if he does, he hides it very well.

I do feel awkward. Terribly awkward. I resisted posting status updates or putting up a profile picture on Facebook for at least a full year after my friend Jill convinced me to join. Why on earth would anyone care what I’m doing or how I’m feeling in any given moment? Now any one of the five hundred or so Facebook friends I have could tell you that I’m obviously over that. Then came this blog, which Dave convinced me to write. I’ve also begun tweeting (a verb that still makes me shudder). I signed up for a Twitter account after Emily and I released our first short story collection because the books about marketing your self-published work suggest it. I believe I’m up to a whopping thirty-two followers. That after harboring nothing but disdain for Twitter since I first heard of it. Yesterday I did my first hashtag (does one do hashtags, employ them, or what? What’s the verb here?). And today I retweeted. All with only a little embarrassment.

So I’m learning, and bit by bit I’m getting over my fear or aversion or whatever hinders me from doing what every other successful artist seems perfectly willing to do–tell everyone how awesome their work is. In fact, I am very proud of the work Emily and I do. So much so that I am willing to sit down and learn to make use of the technology I’ve avoided.I think I’m making progress in teeny tiny baby steps. In this blog entry alone, which I’m posting to both Facebook and Twitter, I’ve set up two links to promote my work. And I’m okay with that.

As for the Goodreads author widgets: last night I asked Dave to show me how to use one. I cannot tell you how pleased I was that he had trouble figuring it out.

Maddie’s Purple Party

My niece Madison organized an eating disorders awareness event for her senior project. She invited me to speak (for reasons listed below), and because I knew that I would have a long day of travel before speaking, I wrote everything down. After I finished speaking a few people asked if I could send them my talk. So I’m posting it here–without the deviations that naturally occurred when in front of an audience because I can’t remember what I said:

When Maddie first invited me to speak at her Purple Party, I wasn’t sure what to say. I knew that she’d asked me in part because I have my own eating disorder stories to tell, and since the worst of my anorexia faded away a long time ago, perhaps I could shed light on the recovery process. But I didn’t really want to relive my anorexia story. It’s old, and, frankly, it’s not that different from anyone else’s. Yet I love my niece very much, and I want to support her, so I kept thinking about what I could say if I didn’t talk about anorexia.

The idea came to me, as so many of my ideas do, while I was getting ready for bed one night a few weeks ago. As I was brushing my teeth, a sentence began to form in my mind, so I rushed into my bedroom to write it down in the notebook I keep by my bed for that purpose. Finally I knew what I could talk about. Stories. Specifically the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and about our relationship to the world.

I call them stories rather than thoughts or even beliefs for a few reasons. I’m a writer, so stories are what I work on every day. I also come from a family of women who LOVE to tell stories. Especially funny stories. I think that’s another reason Maddie invited me to speak—aside from my experience with anorexia, like the other women in my family, I am very entertaining. At any rate, lately I have become really interested in the power of our own stories—how they shape who we are, how they benefit us, and how they get in our way.

We all tell ourselves stories about ourselves—I’m a loser because…, I’m a winner because…, I’m lucky, I’m unlucky, the world owes me something, I’m not good enough…they go on and on. Some of our stories have been with us since we were very small, some develop as we grow older. Many of the stories we tell ourselves come from outside influences: for instance, there’s the old chestnut: ‘girls are bad at math,’ so there are hundreds of young women who don’t even bother with math. I was actually pretty good at math until I heard that I wasn’t supposed to be. Or until I took trigonometry—because it kicked my ass. And then there are the stories that advertising tells us that we absorb often without realizing it. Those stories are scary because they are so patently unreal, and yet we believe them as though they are proven facts. You can all think of at least one seductive advertising campaign that had you believing you needed x product to make your life complete, or stop aging (I’m not growing old gracefully, I’m going to fight it every step of the way), or have perfect hair. And you can all think of at least one little story you tell yourself about yourself.

Although some of the stories we tell ourselves can be comforting, many of them can be harmful. For example, when I was a teenager I began to tell myself the story that if I weighed above 100 pounds I was fundamentally unworthy of being loved. That’s a horrible story for anyone to tell herself—not least because it’s not true! But it stayed with me—perhaps not so clearly articulated—until my thirties—resulting in some really bad dating decisions. I am pretty sure that story came out of my anorexia (which I said I wasn’t going to talk about, but there you are). As you know eating disorders breed a whole host of horrible stories.

There’s a particularly insidious storyline in many eating disorder stories—the victim story. “I am a victim of ED,” it goes. “And that victimhood stems from something in my childhood, in my culture, in whatever it is I tell myself is true, whatever led me to embrace ED.” My problem with this story has two parts—first of all making the eating disorder into a character by naming it ED really bothers me. Giving a man’s name to a disease that largely affects young women seems fundamentally wrong. I know it’s a convenient nickname, but calling an eating disorder ED removes some of –if not all of—the power from the person who has the eating disorder. It becomes a separate entity entirely, not tied exclusively to the complexity of the individual, not allowing the individual full ownership of her—or his—disease. I also hate the victim story because it actually makes recovery—real recovery—impossible. As long as anyone believes she or he is ED’s victim, he or she cannot be free from ED. In taking away our responsibility for our behavior, we take away our power over the disease. As “victims of ED” we are forever linked to ED. I hate that.

Then how might we break free from our eating disorder stories?? I have a deceptively simple suggestion: we tell different ones. The beauty of being a writer in the early 21^st century is that technology makes my job SOOO much easier. On my computer I can change anything with just a few clicks. That never gets old for someone who learned how to type on a typewriter (you could probably find a picture of one on the Google). But many of you knew more about computers by the time you were five than I ever will, so you know exactly what I’m talking about. Because of this editorial ease, I see all narratives as amazingly flexible, erasable, rewritable.

That’s why when Maddie asked me if she could say in the program that I would speak about the power of our thoughts I said no. Thoughts are different from stories. Thoughts creep up on us; they surface sometimes almost without our noticing them and then they’re gone. Replaced by a song (Electric avenue has been running through my mind for weeks) or another thought or something else. We can also be lulled into believing that what we think is true and therefore immutable. But stories require effort—we bring several thoughts together into a narrative. Stories have form, plots, characters. We make our stories, so we can change them. We can revise them. Reshape them. Rewrite them.

And that’s a big deal because if you really want to change who you are, you have to change the stories you tell yourself about yourself. That’s where my healing began—and continues—for I am NOT a victim of an eating disorder. [That’s my toothbrushing sentence] I am not a victim of my childhood experiences. Not a victim of something my parents, teachers, culture did or didn’t do. Yes, all of these things inform who I am and how I manage to negotiate my way through the world. But I refuse to see myself as a victim. As seductive as that story can be—because it takes the responsibility for a lot of my behavior off of my shoulders—that isn’t my story anymore, and that doesn’t have to be anyone’s story anymore.

But what, you might ask, do I do with this idea, (aunt) Beth? How do I apply it to my life and to my recovery? I’d love to say it’s easy as I’m making it sound with my awesome computer analogy. But it requires a lot of work. You start by thinking, really thinking, about what you want your story to be. Who do you want to be? How do you want to see yourself? Then you listen to yourself to find those stories that get in the way of you being who you want to be. What are the repeating negative storylines? One of mine is that chaos is just around the corner at all times and if I’m not vigilant about everything, chaos will reign. The world will spin completely out of my control and all hell will break loose. I break free from this story in a couple of ways—first of all, I know that chaos always wins anyway—one of the laws of entropy tells us that nature tends toward chaos—and I remind myself that I’m actually okay with that. There’s something kind of exciting and relieving about chaos being inevitable. Then I remind myself that my actions and the universe have absolutely no relationship. None. The laws of physics operate no matter how much I worry about anything—whether it’s about traffic, my husband, my dog, my work, my time, my health, my dog’s health…I think you get the picture. The truth is, I have very little control over most things. But I can either let that fact drive me crazy, or I can change the story. I can tell myself I am the type of person who doesn’t worry about control. I am the type of person who does not worry. (breathe)

That’s only the first part, of course. Because if I’m really going to change the story, I actually have to behave like a person who doesn’t worry about things that she cannot control. I’m working on that. My first step has been to stop the crazy worry stories from gaining traction in my mind by repeating, aloud if necessary, “Just because I can imagine it does not make it true.” That simple, albeit grammatically dodgy, mantra has helped a lot. It stills my mind and calms my stomach. It’s a tiny action I can take to change how I behave.

And that’s where all this leads. Putting the new stories into action. When you figure out what stories you want to tell yourself—the old stories that still work and the new stories that help you heal—then you figure out how to act like the person you want to be. It’s a constant negotiation with yourself and with the world, but it’s a negotiation that puts the power back in your hands. Which is where it belongs.

Luminous Creatures Press

About a year ago my friend Emily and I started a writing group of two. We meet every other week at a cafe in Fairfax, CA and talk about the writing we’ve sent each other. We also eat lunch–generally the same thing every week, so whenever we change our order someone raises an eyebrow. They’re really nice at the Barefoot Cafe, so if you ever find yourself near there, check them out. (The warm spinach salad with grilled chicken is good.)

Then one day in June when we were talking about what to do with the things we’ve written, Emily suggested that we start an e-publishing company. It sounded a little daunting and kind of crazy, but also exciting, so I said why not? It turns out that Emily had already done quite a bit of research about ebook publishers, so a lot of our early work was already done. We got our name from a writing exercise I had done for fun one week. I had an opening sentence but no story, so I drafted five possible beginnings to five different novels. There were luminous creatures in one of them. (That’s not the one I ended up working on, just in case you wondered). It’s a great name for a fantasy fiction publishing company, isn’t it? Luminous Creatures Press.

So flash forward to now, and we’re just about to launch. The website will go live tonight (once our tech guy, Dave, finishes playing with Ralphie). We’ve already got a Facebook page, and I’m thinking about signing up for a Twitter account (although just the idea of Twitter makes me want to run away). Our first book, a collection of short stories called UNGODLY HUNGERS, will be out next week–Emily has done the painstaking work of formatting it for both Amazon.com and Smashwords. She’s going to teach me so I can take on half of that work. I’ll have to get over my aversion to all things technical, but I think I can manage that.

We’ve also started work on a second collection of stories: THE PAINTED DOG AND OTHER STORIES. That should be out in early spring. Next comes the first of our Regency Magic series of books, MARY BENNET. And in the fall / winter we’ll begin releasing a gorgeous trilogy written by Emily. I’m very proud of this work, and I think people will like it!

I’ve envisioned many things for my life–some of them pretty outrageous like being a ballerina who also managed the Pittsburgh Pirates–but I never imagined I would start a company of any kind. Yet when I was traipsing down the corridor at the Marin County Hall of Justice on my way to file a Fictitious Business Name with the country clerk, I felt like I was doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing.

Home

We woke up in our own bed this morning because we came home a day early.  We’re all glad that we did.  Ralphie already seems to have forgotten we left, except that he’s been carefully, almost methodically re-marking the neighborhood, letting his dog friends know he is back, I suppose.  (There’s a very lame joke to be made here about catching up on his pee-mail.  But I won’t make it.  Oh, wait, I just did.)

When we left Battle Mountain yesterday morning at 8:30, we planned to go to the Whole Foods in Reno (we can’t figure out why we didn’t find it on the outbound portion of the trip) then continue on to Truckee.  Around 10:30 , however, I decided that I did not want to sleep in another hotel bed.  Nor did I want to unpack and pack the car.  I wanted to go home.  Dave was cool with that so we changed our plans.  Just like that.

Ordinarily I find changes in plans very stressful.  I’m a planner.  A careful planner.  When packing for this trip, for example, I needed to plan ahead for multiple hotel stops.  I didn’t want to have to dig through the suitcase for clothes each day, so I devised a packing system that involved what Dave called “clothes packets:” each one contained a shirt, underwear and socks for Dave then a shirt, underwear, and socks for me laid on top of Dave’s clothes.  I folded Dave’s shirt’s sleeves over to make the packet complete:

Yes, those are my polka dot panties and they are very cute.  The system has more details but I’m simply using it as an example of my need to plan.

Yet when we agreed that we’d just push through and get home yesterday instead of today, I felt relief, even elation.  That’s how badly I wanted to sleep in my own bed.

We stuck to the part of the plan that involved stopping at Whole Foods in Reno–people have to eat.  There we shared a rotisserie chicken, and then I had what probably amounted to half a watermelon while Dave ate figs. I was really hungry.  Ralphie got some of the chicken, so he was happy.  I finished my lovely (albeit paper) cup of tea while Dave went back in for peanut butter and strangers came up to admire the Ralphster.  Strangers everywhere admire Ralphie.  How could they not?

After lunch and some navigating around construction (thank you Samantha!), we resumed the long drive home.  Maybe it was all in my head, but once we got beyond Truckee and we reached lower altitudes, the air seemed thicker, even richer.  For Ralphie’s sake we stopped in Davis so he could do some running.  The Google led us to a dog park, which happened to be near my old running route.  I never noticed its existence when I lived in Davis.  We had the park to ourselves and Ralphie enjoyed playing fetch with his new toy, until the squirrels appeared.  We let him work off a little more energy chasing squirrels  then bundled him back in the car for the final push.

Thank God we were driving West–the traffic eastbound looked like a nightmare–but we had a smooth ride from Davis.  We pulled into the driveway sometime around 6:00 pm.  Ralphie started wagging and wiggling at the sight of the house.  It turns out he really missed home, too.

As we ate dinner last night (at our kitchen table using real plates and utensils) I asked Dave what his favorite part of the trip, (category road portion) was.  We had the same favorite: hiking Sunlight Mountain with Ralphie and Bella.  His second favorite part, (category road portion) differed a little from mine: his was sitting in our room at the Hotel Denver drinking a beer and reading.  I voted for the Greek omelet at the Daily Bread.  Dave’s favorite moment, (category Denver) was playing video games with Clark.  Mine was a tie between playing Wii with Clark’s coaching and playing cards with Cory and Jack.  But other moments stand out, too: watching the Gay Pride Parade, listening to the thunderstorms, and relaxing in the backyard at Dave’s parents’ house, surrounded by family.

We didn’t come face to face with as much wildlife as I thought we might, and I can’t decide if I’m relieved or disappointed by that.  But we did catch glimpses.  One day I looked over while driving and I saw a deer swimming in the Colorado River.  It was pretty magnificent.  Yesterday Dave nudged me and pointed so that I wouldn’t miss the coyote standing casually in the grass dividing I-80 East from I-80 West.

And that’s the end of our road trip with Ralphie.  We are already planning another one for next summer, driving up the west coast.  I think it will be as successful as this road trip.  But that’s next year.

I’m probably going to take a little break from blogging for a few weeks.  I have a novella to revise, and I start rehearsals for my next show, Our Country’s Good, in July.  I think I’ll blog about the rehearsal process. I’ve never written about rehearsing.  I think that might be fun.

 

Return to Battle Mountain

Driving is damn tiring work.  You wouldn’t think so since it involves so much sitting.  But I’m exhausted.

We’re in the middle of nowhere again: Battle Mountain, Nevada.  It is really freaking hot–as hot as it was cold in Truckee.  In fact, I can’t wait to get to Truckee tomorrow for the cold (then I will complain about how cold it is). I decided today that if there is a hell it looks like the stretch of Nevada that lines 80 Westbound.

Anyway, enough bitching.  When I stopped writing last night to go sit in the hot tub, I had just mentioned taking Ralphie out to play with his new toy.  He’s been seeming a little bored lately (I guess he’s just not into “Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me”), so we stopped at a pet store in Salt Lake City yesterday and got him two new toys.  Here’s Ralphie playing fetch near the lake; see if you can resist the cuteness:

It’s a combination chew, fetch, and tug toy made by Kong.  We can only get him super durable toys because he’s a destruction machine.  (Luckily for us he only destroys his toys; he doesn’t chew on our stuff.)  Here he’s shaking the crap out of it–probably to make sure it’s dead.

We had another mostly uneventful night in the Holiday Inn Express (thank God for the ocean sounds coming from the Android) and woke up at a leisurely 7:20 when Ralphie decided it was time to get up.  He’s generally the first one up; once he’s done sleeping, he’s not interested in lounging around.  So Dave, being the best husband in the world, got up and took him for a longish walk.  We were in no hurry to return to Battle Mountain, so after breakfast we took another walk.  Soon enough, however, we had to face the inevitable.  Besides if we want to get home within the next two days, we have to go through Nevada.

But we still had a lot of Utah to cross, including the Bonneville Salt Flats. There’s a convenient rest stop where we got out and wandered around a little.  The area is beautiful. If you saw the movie The World’s Fastest Indian starring Anthony Hopkins you know that the World of Speed happens there every year.  If you didn’t see that movie, you know it now.

I looked up the salt flat’s history on the Google, which told me that it used to be part of a massive lake the size of Lake Michigan.  The Great Salt Lake is all that is left of it.  Dave took some great pictures; here’s another one:

We next stopped in Wells, Nevada (former home of our new tires) to eat lunch.  The Google told Dave that Wells has a park where we could eat the lunch we bought at Whole Foods the day before (we thought ahead this time!).  The Google was right.  It was a nice little park with a picnic table under a shady tree.  A strong wind kept us from getting hot, which was nice.

Once back on the road, we listened to several more Wait Waits while Ralphie slept in the back seat.  We made a little nest for him that you can’t really see, but it includes his favorite pillow.  Why he’s sprawled on our computer bags, I don’t know.

Because sometimes he won’t sit down in the car, he has a harness to keep him from flying through the windshield.  He seems to have learned to relax in the car on this trip, though, so maybe he won’t need it so much in the future.

Wait Wait makes a great road trip soundtrack.  We’ve learned a lot about the news from the past six months and started a list of books to read and movies to see based on their celebrity guests playing “Not My Job.”  In case you are interested, Paula Poundstone is our favorite Wait Wait panel member, but there weren’t many episodes featuring her.  There should be more Wait Waits with Paula Poundstone.  I’m just saying.

And then we got here, where it is currently 97 degrees.  It’s cooled off a bit since we arrived.  Tonight we’re going to take advantage of the tv in our room to watch the NBA finals.  The last time I watched tv in our room we were in Green River on the way to Denver and I saw “Dance Moms” for the first and last time.  I still shudder at the thought.

That’s all I’ve got for today.  Maybe once we get out of the desert heat and into the mountain cool I’ll have more energy and more to say.

 

Line Painting Day

I didn’t mean to take two days off from writing but Monday night we had no Internet and Tuesday I was just too tired.  I’ll explain why in a moment.

We’re back in Salt Lake City, half way home to San Rafael.  This afternoon we covered much of Utah, which is how we know that today is line painting day.  We got stuck in traffic (ever so briefly) a few times because the yellow lines dividing the two-lane freeway were being painted.  They looked really nice.  The traffic jams lasted no more than five minutes–remarkable as far as I’m concerned.  If road crews were out painting freeway lines during the day in the Bay Area, the traffic would be unbearable.  But we were in the middle of nowhere so it was okay.

That’s not much of a story, but the title is so good I couldn’t resist.  (It was that or “Westward ho!”)

But getting back to the beginning: we left Denver Monday afternoon for the short drive to Glenwood Springs.  This time we were staying in the Sunlight Mountain Inn, just south of town.  All went smoothly and Samantha led us back to Glenwood Springs without incident.  Until we hit the final stretch of the day’s journey.  She seemed so sure of herself when she had me turn right onto a gravel road that wound its way up the mountain that I obeyed even though the road sign said FS 300 instead of County Road 117.  Samantha said it was County Road 117, so it must have been County Road 117, right?  As we drove up and up and up, however, I began to get worried.  Yet Samantha knew what the road we were on looked like, so we figured she must have known where she was going.  When she announced that we had arrived at our destination on the right, we knew she was wrong.  Here’s what it looked like:

So beautiful.  So serene.  And so empty.

As we headed back down that bumpy gravel road I told Dave about the episode of The Office when Michael followed a GPS’s instructions right into a lake while Dwight shouted at him to stop.  That’s kind of how it felt.

Once back on the paved road, we noticed a sign directing us toward the Sunlight Mountain Inn.  When we’d made the wrong turn, we were one minute away.  Choosing not to be bitter, Dave and I laughed about it, then went in to register.

After we unpacked the car, fed Ralphie, and ate dinner, we wandered around outside where we met Clayton, who runs the inn with his wife (I think her name is Kate, but I’m not sure).  He suggested that the next day we hike up the mountain, which is a ski resort.  He told us about all the wildlife in the area: elk, moose, bears (both brown and cinnamon), and cougars.  Possibly because he saw the look of panic in my eyes, he reassured us (me) that the bigger animals would leave us alone because we had a dog.  (Whether because of Ralphie and Bella–you’ll understand in a minute–or not, the bigger wildlife left us alone).  We did see a porcupine during our evening walk.  Ralphie really wanted to go after it but wiser heads prevailed.

There were only two other people staying in the Inn that night so it was quiet except for the brook running just outside our room.  Before going to bed, we went out to look at the stars.  There may not have been internet access at the inn, but that was okay.  It was peaceful and beautiful.  Like camping, only inside.  The way I like camping.

In the morning we had a quick breakfast then headed up the mountain.  On the way there we were joined by a shepherd mix whose name we later learned was Bella.  (At one point during the hike I called to her, trying out the first name that came to me: Bella.  Because she didn’t respond, I figured I was wrong. Turns out she was just ignoring me.).  Bella is a very friendly dog who knows the mountain really well.  She seemed to be guiding us as we hiked.  Dave called her our outrider; I called her the vanguard.  She’d run ahead and sniff stuff, then wait for us or run back to herd us along.  Ralphie did really well once he decided that she was helping us.  I credit her more than Ralphie for warding off the bears and cougars.

The hike was rigorous but gorgeous.  We passed aspen stands, evergreens, and fields of flowers and butterflies.

But the view from the top made the hike (and the next day’s soreness) completely worthwhile:

And this:

The trip down the mountain was easier, naturally.  Bella chose to stay on the mountain, but we knew our way home so that was cool.  As we neared the bottom, we saw what appeared to be trampoline camp going on behind the ski resort.  That explained the noise that we’d heard on our evening walk: little girls at camp.  It looked like fun.

When we made it back to our room to finish packing, we realized we had been hiking for two hours.  That’s why I was too tired to write anything last night.  Promising to return, we checked out and packed the car.  Before we left I made Dave take a picture of the car because it will probably never again be so dirty.  I felt like an outdoor adventurer for just a little while.

Then we headed back to town for lunch.  I can confirm that the Daily Bread, the diner where we ate breakfast last Thursday morning, has the best Greek omelette I have ever eaten.  I’m going to miss that place.

We finally got on the road for Green River, Utah around 1:00.  Dave made a kick ass playlist for that leg of the trip and we played a game in which I tried to identify the song and artist.  I lost.  Spectacularly.  It seems that Dave is fond of Warren Zevon, who, until yesterday I could not identify.  The list also included They Might Be Giants, Amos Lee, Johnny Cash, the Cure, the Pogues (I knew that song!), Siouxsie and the Banshees, Mississippi John Hurt (another of Dave’s favorites), Sinead O’Connor (another one I knew), Paul McCartney (from his Wings days), and John Lennon.  I know there were more, but I can’t remember them.

Green River remains hot and boring, so we didn’t do much there.  At least I didn’t do much there.  Dave took Ralphie for a walk and took a few pictures but otherwise we hung out in the room and read.

If I hadn’t been so tired and if I had known the view of the river was so nice, I might have gone with them.  But I didn’t so I have to settle for the picture that Dave took:

This morning I woke up with the sore neck that has been bothering me for a few days (a Wii injury, I think) AND with a sciatica flare-up (what I get for hiking up a mountain and then not stretching.  Learn from me and stretch!)  The drive from Green River to Salt Lake City was uncomfortable at best until all the ibuprofen kicked in.  I finally started feeling better around the time we checked into the hotel and took Ralphie for a short walk to play fetch with his new toy.  But I’ll write about that tomorrow.  Now I’m heading to the hot tub to soak.

Denver with Family

We’ve been in the Denver area since Thursday and have discovered something curious about the mile high city and its environs. The Denverites seem to make as much use of individual street names as possible.  In other words, Denver is host to a Franklin Street, Franklin Ave, Franklin Blvd, and Franklin Circle.  Whenever we program information into Samatha to get directions, she returns many different options, and if we don’t know which one we want, we can’t get there.  Dave gets frustrated (which is unusual) because the similar street names get confusing.  I think it’s because the lack of oxygen at this altitude translates to a lack of creativity.  But that might be a big jump.  At any rate, since discovering the street naming thing, whenever we encounter something we can’t explain, something that seems to defy logic and / or common sense, I suggest that it’s the lack of oxygen.  Because I’m just that funny.

But Denver more than makes up for its confusing street naming system with an abundance of walking, biking, and running paths.  I’m pretty sure you can get just about everywhere here on foot or by bike without worrying about cars.  That is really impressive.

Denver also has thunderstorms.  Exciting ones.  Oh how I miss good thunderstorms!  We don’t really get them often in Northern California.  I remember one time waking up in the middle of the night, hearing a thunderstorm, and not knowing what it was. I woke Dave up to tell him that we were under attack.  He told me it was just a thunderstorm and asked how I, who grew up in Southern Indiana, land of frequent thunderstorms, could not know what was going on.  It was just that I hadn’t heard one in a long time.  Anyway, Friday afternoon we were wandering around a lovely area near a nature center where Dave’s dad volunteers and the skies kind of suddenly grew very dark.  Then the thunder and lightning started.  The temperature must have dropped twenty degrees in the few minutes we were walking.  It was actually very lovely.

We were lucky because we avoided hail, but apparently other areas of Denver got pummeled.  The thunder and lighting were nice, though.  And the smell of wet pavement in summertime brought back some wonderful memories of playing in the rain with Leslie Remien and Jennifer Keeping about a hundred years ago.

The storm on Friday forced us back to Dave’s parents’ house before we got a chance to explore the trail we had begun.  So instead we spent the afternoon reading, talking, eating, and playing video games.

Clark is really good at these games and provides helpful direction to those of us less fortunate.  He’s also a four-year-old who can read and count to three hundred.  Despite not having children of my own and not spending much time with others’ kids, I still know that that is unusual.  On the other hand, he’s mad about anything Star Wars, which is not unusual for kids his age.  His generation keeps Dave employed.  So, go Clark!

I will admit that I’ve become attached to the Wii swordplay games.  I like to wave the control around and pretend that I can actually do damage (okay, I’m really pretending that I’m the Slayer.  There, I admitted it.).  There’s one game that we call “smashing nerds” (neither Dave nor I can remember its actual name) that is particularly satisfying.  Dave plays wisely, using defensive strategies to survive the nerd onslaught.  Clark and I both play savagely, swinging away and smashing the crap out of all the nerds that approach us.  Guess who scores higher.

On Saturday Dave and I did what needed to be done for the return trip: laundry and cooking for Ralphie.  Yep, I cook for my dog.  He eats brown rice (cooked until it resembles porridge), sweet potatoes, red potatoes (purple if I can get them), kale (dino), parsley, and chicken.  To this mixture I add calcium powder that I buy from the vet and a pinch of salt.  He loves it.  One of these days I’ll post the recipe that I devised after a lot of trial and error.

Ralphie also got a bath in the backyard on Saturday.  He was a trooper, only attempting to escape a few times.  Once free from the towels, he resumed his favorite backyard activity: hunting squirrels.  The squirrels that live around my in-laws’ backyard are cheeky little bastards who seem to enjoy taunting him. (If I’m repeating myself, it’s because of the altitude.)

He loves being in the back yard, which means we’re going to have to get a house with a nice back yard one of these days, just like we bought a new couch after we adopted him so we’d all have room to relax.

And naturally since he’d just had a bath, Ralphie had to find something stinky to roll around in.

That brings us to Sunday, Father’s Day.  This morning we went into Denver to hang out with Dave’s brother Greg and his boyfriend Jack.  (I LOVE Jack.  Love, love, love him.)  We met them at the Gay Pride Parade, which was a lot of fun.  Then the four of us and Ralphie went to lunch at a Greek restaurant.  The Greek omelette was delicious.  I’d say as good as the one in Glenwood Springs and that was a damn fine omelette.

After lunch we went back to the hotel so that Ralphie could nap and I could start writing this post.  We needed a little quiet time today because it was so hot.

Soon enough it was time to return to Dave’s parents’ for a delicious Father’s Day dinner of grilled salmon, asparagus, and fruit salad.  I’m going to be sore tomorrow from playing so much Wii, again with coaching by the inimitable Clark.

After dinner I was thoroughly trounced by my other nephew, Cory, in a few games of doubles solitaire.  But it was fun and that’s what matters, right?

Now we’re just back from a final walk with Ralphie.  He was hunting rabbits while we were trying to get him to do his business so we could return to the hotel.  As usual he was unsuccessful–with the rabbits, not the business.  I wonder how he’d do off the leash; he’s pretty fast and agile.  Maybe he’d catch one.  I don’t really want to find out.

Tomorrow we begin the return trek.  I’m looking forward to re-tracing our steps.  But first I have to pack.

 

 

Glenwood Springs and Beyond

I could live in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, death place of Doc Holliday and home of the best Greek omelette I have ever eaten.  After four days of staying almost in the middle of nowhere (except for Salt Lake City, but we were so far outside the city we might as well have been in the middle of nowhere), it was so refreshing to stay in a little tourist town, especially since it was not swarming with tourists.

We arrived pretty early yesterday afternoon and checked into the lovely Hotel Denver.  Once we finished unpacking (ish) and had a quick lunch, we set off on a short hike to the burial place of Doc Holliday (in case you can’t remember who he is, Val Kilmer played him in Tombstone).  Although the hike to the cemetery was only a half a mile, we were exhausted by the time we got there.  The trail (more of a path really) was steep and exposed to the sun, which is much stronger here.  Not to mention the altitude of 5,700 (ish) feet.

Once we reached the cemetery and recovered enough to explore, we discovered that Doc Holliday’s grave isn’t clearly marked.  Apparently he died a pauper and is thought to be buried in Potter’s field with a wooden cross–long since rotted–to mark his grave.  So we settled for a picture of Dave at a grave in the cemetery that holds Doc Holliday’s remains:

Then somewhat disappointed and really hot we headed back to the hotel to rest.  (It is a really nice picture of Dave and Ralphie, though).

The remainder of the day was uneventful–except for a trip to the grocery store, which wasn’t so much eventful as exhausting as I chose to walk the seven blocks.  I almost scoffed when the nice lady at the reception suggested that I might prefer to drive, thinking to myself, “seven blocks? please!  That’s nothing.”  Turns out that seven blocks uphill in the sun at 5,700 feet is more daunting than I could have imagined.  But I did it.  And I made it back in one piece.  Shortly thereafter I was asleep in a chair with my book on my lap.  And I was pretty much done for the rest of the day.

But after a really good night’s sleep, I felt much better.  The headache that had been bothering me all day on Wednesday was gone.  Relieved that I didn’t have altitude sickness, I was ready to face the day.  (I almost called this post “Altitude Sickness” because I looked up the symptoms on the Internet.  It’s what I do.)  Dave, Ralphie, and I took a really nice stroll by the river before heading to breakfast at a little coffee shop with outside seating.  It was the first restaurant we’d been able to bring Ralphie to because of its outside seating.  And that is where I had the best Greek omelette I’ve ever had.

Fortified with a solid breakfast, we were ready to pack up and head to Denver (Highlands Ranch to be more specific).  The drive here included some truly spectacular scenery.  But you’ll have to take my word for it because we didn’t stop to take any pictures.  We didn’t stop for anything because I wanted to get here and be done with the driving for a while.  I-70 took us through the mountains, which meant a lot of up and down driving; our car strained on the uphill but seemed to enjoy the downhill.  I really liked passing 10,000 feet at the Vail pass.  We spend most of our time at around 23 feet above sea level, so these high altitudes make a nice change.

We spent the afternoon with Dave’s family, which was really lovely.  Our nephews Cory and Clark were both there.  We had not seen Cory since he was 12 and he just graduated from the University of Colorado, Boulder.  The last time we saw Clark he was about 6 months old.  Now he’s almost five.  They’ve both changed a lot.  After dinner we took a family walk to the park where Dave and Cory threw a frisbee around for a while.  Cory has always been a really athletic guy and it shows.  But Uncle Dave held his own!  Clark loves to play Lego Star Wars on the Wii that his grandparents bought for him.  So Dave and Clark played together.  Uncle Dave also held his own with Clark.

Ralphie enjoyed wandering around Dave’s parents house sniffing things.  Then he enjoyed running around in the backyard where he found and killed a plastic soccer ball that was meant for Clark.  Luckily Clark didn’t seem to care (or notice).  And now Ralphie is sacked out on the couch in our room.  It’s almost like home, with me on one end with my computer and Dave on the other with his and Ralphie stretched between us, taking up most of the room.  We’re staying in a Residence Inn, which is nice because there’s so much more space and we have a little kitchen.  It’s good to know that we’ll be in the same place for the next several nights before we turn around and head home.