Hawaii Women's Journal Issue #4 is LIVE!

Hawaii Women's Journal Issue #4 (available on website or click here for .pdf) is the perfect thing to accompany you on your holiday sojourns of Superspecial Family Time.

When your granduncle asks if you're ever getting married, dress him down with prepared responses from von Hottie's column, which will remind you to keep your chin up and your lipgloss sparkly and flavored. When you're bored from watching a fifth hour of television with people you don't see all year, read our interview with your new favorite 'zine, Frontier Psychiatrist, or check out our brand new Feminine Critique section debuting with Suzanne's Unlikely Read and Rachel's glance at Christopher Nolan's oeuvre: any of which is guaranteed to be better for your brain than watching Elf or A Christmas Carol for the third time in one weekend. When the office party leaves you humorless, turn to any of Anne Marie's poems or Amber and Mindy's tête-à-tête. Stuck working on Black Friday? Curse your stupid, meaningless job and stick it to the man by reading Xian's interviews with two women who make art their living, and live through their art. Feeling bloated and all sprinkle-cookied out? Head to the kitchen and whip up some of the Diva's soup or take five days to indulge in Intuitive Eating and foodplay with Lorelle.

When eyeing the crowd at New Year's eve, remember that Kindness makes a helluva nicer partner than Genius--as we see in Kelly's poem and Keith's fiction. And if you are seeing someone "special" (what does this even mean! like you'd waste your time with someone who wasn't at least slightly special), take the time to really see them: love is not just some simple, abstract notion of togetherness, it is full of secret spaces, the things we do or don't say, as both Kate and Duy prove. In fact, in its own way, Elizabeth's poem "Haleakalā" also reminds us to really appreciate what's right in front of us--every last sharp/gorgeous detail of the world.

Is it time for those perky New Year's Resolutions? In different ways, Ivy, Andrea, and Lorelle all provide smart and accessible ways to change your lifestyle. And Krissa nudges us to remember the journey it took to become the amazing person you see reflected in the mirror, all the little classifications that make you individually and awesomely you.

And, finally, Theresa, James, and I all meditate on connectivity. Which seems appropriate in this the season of gathering together in the spirit of family. They may drive you crazy, but you know you love 'em.

And this is clearly another example of how I really can't fit everything I wanted to say about Hawaii Women's Journal into 1,000 words or less.

Cat Fidelity.

Last week, I read Suzanne's post "Taking Shape" on Cat Fidelity. I was so enjoying this glimpse into her home life, feeling privileged to borrow her hyperobservant gaze as it traced her furbabies in picture and word and acknowledging again that I was ready to follow that nimble mind anywhere.

Then I stumbled on that last paragraph and was instantly and incredibly touched.

Since then, I've been trying to put into coherent words my thanks for that sly and tender little nod. Unfortunately, I'm still unable to convey enough coherence and gratitude, probably because my brain is Fr-I-EDD from three simultaneous deadlines ... so let me just repeat the comment I wrote on her blog:

OHhhahh. I don't know if you can picture that sound, but it is that of my eyes welling, my heart clutching, and me missing you.

New Daily Cuppas ...

Just finished updating my blogroll. Here are some of my new loves:

* Autoblography, charming, witty, handsome hubby of petit hiboux (who maintains the honor of first blog I ever read)

* Cat Fidelity, lifeblog of my dear friend Suzanne, fellow writer and animal lover and wombmate

* Chameleon: A Travel Blog, by Heather, fellow VCFA grad and Slovenia buddy

* One Great Thing, Wordsmith, Editor, Mother, Wife, Friend Extraordinaire

* Suzanne Farrell Smith Dot Com, my dear Suzanne's excavation of lost memory

* The Yawp: a public poetry project, started by true wordhero Emma of A Century of Nerve

* Tiny Stories and Other Musings, blog of fellow VCFA pal James Pounds

* You Are What You Eat ... So Eat Everything, blog of fellow VCFA buddy Duy Nguyen

You must be able to walk within yourself and meet everyone for miles.

Last night I dreamed I was back in New York. With all my New York friends. For some reason, I decided to take off my clothes. "Now it's a party," I joked. Despite the fact that this is something I never, ever would have done in real life, no one stared or even looked at me funny, only fondly and not inappropriately, and I didn't feel at all awkward.

Oh, this is so silly, isn't it? Here I am, in California! The sun is shining, it's sixty-something degrees out, the birds are singing, the snakes are slithering, the mountain lions are ... well, they just are, period, which is crazy enough. This is what I wanted. I wanted to move here, soak in sun, drive around in a car, be in the middle of trees and nature that are bigger than city parks, be near wine country and farms and family. To prepare for late nights because of babies, not bars; to be around other friends in that family-making stage. This is what I wanted for almost the entire time I lived in NY, to get back to this. What has changed? Why must I again slowly warm to California? Why again am I standing here with my heart in my hands, my head in the fog even when its sixty degrees out and sunny? Phil Graham writes in The Moon, Come to Earth of preparing to move back to the U.S. after a year in Portugal: "I can't help regretting that we never ...* but what's the point, this unseemly urge to linger" (p. 128).

In the film Towelhead, one of the lead characters says something along the lines of: the mark of true intelligence is being able to hold two conflicting ideas in your head at the same time.

So that's what this is, then: a mark of true intelligence.

I can lift my face to the Californian sunshine, let it warm me through, and still feel a cold clutch at my heart for what I gave up to stand here. I can acknowledge and accept: "Strange, how our past travels travel with us" (Graham, p. 98). I can grasp the concept that, a year from now, even a half-year, I'll be feeling something else, that this yearning will be foreign to me if not forgotten. I can hold onto the faith that another version of myself is being drafted, that I am, as Graham suggests, "traveling some interior landscape ... [these] streets leading to a place inside myself I haven't yet located" (p. 2).

---

* Graham lists several things, but the specifics are less the point than the listing of them. We all, wherever we are living, have a list like this. I, in fact, usually have several.

Tiny and fantastic lives.

I forgot to report the vivid dream I had while in Portland, such that now only the frays of the fabric remain. Someone gave me and Dave four enormous aquariums, but they weren't filled with water and fish but, rather, entire ecosystems of miniature animals. We're talking giraffes as tall as your index finger (yes, like that commercial), elephants you could tuck in a pocket, pygmy monkeys (ok, less exciting, we already knew those were small). Little lions, mini manatees, tiny tortoises. (And so forth, but I just exhausted my alliterative capabilities.) In my dream, I was amazed by the gift but more so overwhelmed. So many tiny and fantastic lives were now my responsibility. What would I feed them? How to keep them from killing each other? Were these enclosed terrariums really the best idea, throwing them all in there together like that? Such were the questions going through my mind. I overwhelmingly wanted to give the gift back.

The clever writer would make some apt analogy now. The aquariums are like the little worlds we carry about in our heads. Or perhaps they are like the myriad selves within each of us, to borrow from Fernando Pessoa. Or maybe they're like all the dreams we have, the ones we plan for and the ones we've previously never even imagined, all of which require constant feeding and tending. Or perhaps they're metaphor for how to live one's life, that others are the point, that loving isn't always easy, but it will reward you in manifold ways.

Or maybe miniature animals are just really fucking cute, and my subconscious wants to think about something as simple and wonderful as that.

The long whine is over.

Yesterday, I posted on Facebook: "Would really like to figure out a way to do some freelance editing that isn't FREE. As in: I would like to be paid."

Both earnest advice and snarky commentary immediately began pouring in.

I hadn't really expected a response, I guess. What had prompted my whine was I had two prospects for some freelance editing on the side, and both fell through in under one month. I mean, I have a f/t job as an editor but at that point where I'm realizing that I just don't make enough money to live the life I want to live. Or even the money to just dig myself out of debt and maintain the life I currently live. And let's not talk savings, OK. So where I am at is trying to figure out what to do with that realization. And the figuring out requires considerable time and sulking before any productivity can occur. But the responses, all encouraging, all full of solidarity, were a good reminder to get my head out of my own sandy misery. To leave the pity party, as it were. To shut up and fix it.

Consider this me realizing the long whine is over.

Consider this me saying, OK, Universe. I'm as ready as I can be for whatever comes next.

To You, Dear NaNoWriMo.

From my writing group's 11/10/10 prompt: I resist __________ at all costs.

It’s November, which means I want to make absurd promises I won’t keep. This habit began with the NaNoWriMo crazy a handful of years back, as if vowing to write a novel in thirty days would make what’s already taken me twelve years easy, would be the thing to make me quit beating around the bush and finish. Right. But here it is, November, and something about autumn—perhaps it’s those hypercolor leaves crunching under my boot—makes me want to promise myself change. I’ll write every day. I’ll read three, no! five, books a week. I’ll unplug the Internet every Sunday. I’ll cut us down to but a day of red meat! I’ll cut out caffeine and alcohol and get serious about getting pregnant again. I’ll stop watching so much TV. And spending so much money. I’ll get better at calling my friends. My mother. My relatives. I’ll answer the phone. More, anyway, if not all the time. Maybe I’ll stop making promises I won’t keep.

The twenty-three dollar journal.

From my writing group's 11/9/10 prompt: Tell us the story of the last thing you purchased.

This journal is about seven by eight-and-a-half inches, far too large to slip into my purse and carry about as I like to do. It cost me twenty-three dollars, far too much to spend when you fill journals like I do—sometimes as often as one per month. If I use it after the one in which I currently write (bought for ninety-nine cents at Office Max), it will be journal number 103. One hundred and three journals that hold my dreams, doodles, my very heart. One hundred and three journals in which I scrawl my fictions and truths and the half-betweens. One hundred and three journals that conceal my secrets, humiliations, betrayals, promises, vows. One hundred and three journals that contain my words, and which are likewise contained into three trunks and two paper bags, along with correspondence and photos and ticket stubs and theater programs. One hundred and three things I cannot bear to let go of. One hundred and three things I hope no one reads till I’m dead. I’m going to end up a hoarder of words, cemented into a house made of notebooks stacked sky-high. The path through my home, if you were to gaze down at it, would actually spell out a message—but I don’t know what it will someday say.

Anyway, it was a journal I bought. A too big, too expensive journal. I bought it even though I had balanced my checkbook and allocated every last dollar till the end of the month. I bought it because sometimes a blank page provides more shelter than a roof, more sustenance than a meal, more freedom than a full tank of gas. I bought it because it is handstitched and hardcovered and a deep turquoise like I’ve only ever seen in those last moments of dusk before the California sky turns darker, more velvet, studded with stars. The cover of the journal boasts magnolias lined in Tiffany-leaded glass. I bought it because I needed to hold something beautiful in my empty hands.

Gloria, from the Sarah Lawrence Girls tumblr.

I will know I'm a grown up when someone can write a bio like this about me.

Wait a minute. I am a fiction writer, aren't I? I should just make one up.

What Heaven looks like

Powell's City of Books. Finally got to go this weekend during a poe family visit. My head spun like Linda Blair's in the Exorcist, unable to choose a single point on which to focus. Best bookstore I have ever been to. Spent a lot of time making a mental list of books I wanted to buy as well as checking out who I'll be next to on the shelves, you know, when someday I publish a book. If you are a book lover or writer, you must make a pilgrimage. And once you've got your fill of books, you can hit Voodoo for some delicious doughnuts--just down the street. It's all about the Maple-Bacon Bar.

On that last post.

By recent, I guess I meant Spring of 2008.

Kazuo Ishiguro, on setting in fiction.

‎"You do have to choose a setting with great care, because with a setting come all kinds of emotional and historical reverberations." --Kazuo Ishiguro, in a recent Paris Review interview http://bit.ly/aAk10B

A bright spot from a dark, dark place: On Live Poultry Clothing.

Oh gawd, it's interminable ... I'm balancing my personal and the household shared checkbooks and bank accounts since the end of AUGUST. PAINFUL, people, PAINFUL. Also, holy crap, we ate out a LOT.

But anyway, the little brightness in this dark, dark place I write you from? I just spent ten minutes scratching my head over a transaction for $47, paid to "Live Poultry Clothing," in Brooklyn, on a day I was supposed to be in California, apartment searching.

What does Live Poultry clothing even look like? Would I want to wear it? Evidently so, but why did I have a receipt of buying some, but no memory of it?

Finally, I did the thing any intelligent person would have done right off: Googled 'em. It all started to make a lot more sense then: I recalled our last visit (sob) to the Brooklyn Flea and buying this tank in grey and this design on a tote bag in regular tote bag color.

But to be honest, part of me wanted to go back to before I had solved the mystery. The questions I was asking then seemed far more fascinating.

Hawaii Women's Journal issue 4 teaser!

wherein I tease you. Because the issue ain't quite ready yet. But the beautiful cover, featuring ladypoets Mindy Nettifee and Amber Tamblyn, IS!