Napa Valley Writers Conference: First Report

Yes, well, obviously I was having too good a time to blog from the Napa Valley Writers Conference (hi, Nan!). Make that too good a time and way too busy. I was pretty much on the go from 8:30 a.m. until 10 p.m. But it was work I wanted to do -- a race I wanted to run and a track I wanted to run on. Re-entry to the work-a-day world has been rather wrenching, as if riding the wind-shears on a turbulent flight. I stayed in most of the weekend, hoping to stabilize. Now it's more of a slowing down, cutting back from gallop to lope to amble and today, barely a notch above shuffle. It's jet-lag, really, coming down from the excitement of the conference, the conversation, the stories, the laughter,. Of meeting old writing buddies and friends: Gary Silva, Z Egloff, and new: Angela Pnueman, Angela Watrous, of hanging with a Limester, Jane Alynn, but not for long enough.

Be that as it may, I snagged some terrific reads:
Bearing the Body, novel, by Ehud Havazalet
Mendocino, short stories, by Ann Packer
Hunger, short stories, by Lan Samantha Chang
Home Remedies, short stories, by Angela Pnueman
Fire to Fire, poems, by Mark Doty
Famous Builder, memoir, by Paul Lisicky
Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, memoir, by Nick Flynn
Rope Bridge, poems, by Nan Cohen

So if nothing else I can read my fool head off until the next conference. Or residency. Or whathaveyou. Because there better be another one ... soon!

A-Conferencing We Go

haven't attended to this blog lately, been pre-occupied with getting ready for: ta da!!! The Napa Valley Writers Conference! Yep, yep, starts tomorrow and I'm ready to roll.

I may...or may not...blog from there. As a staffer this time, I'll have plenty to do. For one thing, I'll be running the cam-corder of the lectures and readings for documentation. For another, one of my best buds from graduate school will be there; lots of catching up to do. The in-person kind, cause we do the email thing plenty. Also, I'm introducing Ron Carlson, who is one of my writing heroes--we all have to have one or two in order to keep putting one word after the other, left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot as he might say. He's not the only one; Faulkner is another and Woolf and Nabokov and Cheever; Annie Poulx, Jane Hamilton Jim Krusoe, Barbara Kingsolver, Junot Diaz, Annie Dillard, Alan Gurganus. The list goes on. Lorrie Moore, can't forget her. Or Antonya Nelson. So of course, I want to do the intro right. But I'll settle for being coherent on stage and not making a fool of myself in some god-forsaken, unforseen way

The weather promises to be pretty good; sorta hot (90's) but not super hot, like two years ago, when the temp climbed into the 100's. That's when your eyeballs crisped up just walking across the parking lot and your lungs melted a tad with each intake. I'm not much for 100+, even if it is dry. With most of (but not all) the fires put out, the air is pretty clean, though occasionally the wind pushes some old smoke, slightly brown and stale-smelling, down the valley.

The bags are packed; I'm ready to go. Better get some sleep and take my vitamins first, though.

100 Things - exit stage left!

I'm making progress on the Remove One Thing A Day project. I've tossed out a wobbly folding chair that no longer folded, let go of a Deskjet 840C that finally started chuttering rather than printing and returned the canopy that fell apart after one use, and (get this!) didn't replace it with another one.

There's also a box in my living room with a growing mountain of stuff: toys someone else's kids can chew; a zip-up jacket and two winter scarves that were probably left here by friends of my kids when they were all in junior high a decade ago; those special dorm sheets and pillow cases used for one semester of college and then I don't want to know what they slept in or where; some extraneous holiday-themed table linens and a faux-sombrero from Chevy's. Now I just have to get the box from my living room to the Goodwill. How hard is that?

Obviously hard enough because the box is still sitting there. Dang!

We won't go into the bizarre and probably latent-OCD reasons why I simply can't put the box in the back of the car and then take it out when I get to Saks Thrift Avenue (clever name, no?). I think maybe I'm waiting to fill it up. But how full is full? Is the box going to sit there for 6 months slowly gathering random small things, a thick layer of dust and cat dander? The correct answer is yes.

So I've come up with yet another plan (stick with me long enough and we'll have enough to wallpaper the Oval Office). The other day, I was out in my studio, which is one of those built-in-day garden shed kits, roughly 10 by 12 feet. But I treat it like one of those magic bottomless bags. I'm constantly bringing things out to it: books, notebooks, tchotchkes I think I can't write without, another cozy blanket for winter, a fan for summer -- while rarely taking anything out unless there's an odor involved. It became so crowded I could barely turn around in it; my ideas got all tangled every time I looked up. Then I lost a cat in a corner behind a few piles. Boy, was he pissed when I finally realized he'd gone missing and came to let him out. Standing in the doorway, enduring the silent wrath of one indignant tabby, I stared at the over-full shelves, the stacks of books and papers, the piles of blankets, the encroaching tide of magazines and odd socks on the floor; it occurred to me that I could probably take 100 things out and still have plenty of stuff to spare. It would be the inverse of the original proposal of owning only 100 things, though I'd settled on having only 100 things in any given room--not counting books.

Of course, hypocrites that we are, when we take them out, we'll count books as one thing.

p.s. I've taken 66 things out so far and I like the result. So spacious, so airy...well, it will never be airy exactly, but at least now we have air flow.

100 Things = Fewer Things to Lose

With the fires to the west, north and east of us more or less under control, the skies have returned to a more normal summertime blue, undimmed by smoke or haze. Even the fog is being kicked to the curb by a high pressure system and we are on our way to another heat wave. But to the south, in Big Sur and Goleta, the fires rage on, consuming thousands of acres, jumping fire lines, roaring closer to towns and homes. Evacuation orders wobble between mandatory to recommended and back again as the fire lines advance, retreat, curl back around.

Most people in the affected areas by now are prepared, cars packed and pets close by, ready to drive out at a moments notice. I look around my house, wondering what I would pack besides the kids (if they were home), the cat, (if I could find them) and the essential documents (ditto). My laptop, of course, Norm’s sculptures, the small cat figurines the kids have given me for my collection, some of the art they’ve made, some photos, the few prints we have. But beyond that…well, suddenly, the 100 Things system has an obvious practical side. If I'd gotten with the program, I'd have already shed the clutter and crap and figured out what I couldn’t give up. Yet even then, would I put even half of those things in the car, if I had 20 or 30 minutes to get out? I doubt it. When the fire comes, most objects become non-essential; life itself is what counts. While photos and works of art cannot be replaced, I would rather have the kids, than the kids' watercolors or photos.

But let's not dissemble here too much: I do like my things. I’m a packrat, descended from a long line of packrats. I haven’t met an object yet that I could reasonably refuse to house. (This is why I have a spouse; otherwise I’d be living in one of those houses with narrow paths between towering collections of … stuff.) In due time, I’m sure I would pine for the antique settee, the 1000-plus books, the few odd things from my grandparents whom I never quite knew, the deer tooth from a best buddy (yes, someday, sometime, I'll tell that story), the entire collection of cat-figurines, the mirror framed in carved-wood maple leaves that has hung in my bedroom from the time I was knee-high to a grasshopper. I’m sure regret and loss would have its day with me.

But maybe I should take advantage of the situation, and use the threat of fire as an impetus. Perhaps I could evaluate things on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 designating those objects worthy of a spot in the car and 10 designating what I would gladly let burn. And if I’m smart, I’ll remove all the 10’s well before we're ever ordered to evacuate. And if I’m super-smart, I’ll load all the important photos onto cd’s and put them in a fireproof case with all our birth certificates. Once I find them. Sorry, kids, I know they're here somewhere.

A Bit More About Carlin

My friend Carol, who posted a bit about George Carlin here, along with a great photo (and kindly linked to my piece), reminded me of his movie roles and especially the first SNL episode he hosted. Hate to date myself this much, but I distinctly remember that first SNL: the usual gang had gathered at our house to watch what was rumored to be this hot new show. Some of us had our doubts, but what the hey. Mostly I remember we laughed so hard we just about choked on the popcorn we'd made back-in-the-day style: a layer of popcorn kernels in a bit of oil, shaken in a pan on the stove, loaded up with lots of butter and salt, passed around in a large ceramic bowl. By the time Andy Kaufman came on, we knew this was going to be a hit. Of course, I had to watch the dvd of it to recall the actual personnel: Andy Kaufman (lip-synching the Mighty Mouse song, which I still sing to this day complete with the hand gestures, embarrassing any number of kids who happen to be around), John Belushi, Dan Akroyd, Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin, Chevy Chase, Laraine Newman; they were all there. Father Guido Sarducci came later, but that's a whole 'nother story.

But Carlin as host convinced us to watch the show, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Here's the Smoke. There's the Fire.

The sun rose today a vibrant tangerine fuzz-ball in the thick haze of smoke like something out of a sci-fi flick. Fires to the east, fires to the northwest, fires to the south; just no fires exactly here. But we got the smoke, greasy grey and thick as Hades. Over 7,000 lightening strikes in California last weekend, over 800 1,000 fires still rage. The fire brigades are stretched thin and work ceaselessly; they are overwhelmed. Only one or two of the largest blazes are more than 20% contained; the smoke that fills our valley could be here for weeks, they say, depending on wind patterns.

Though I'm more or less okay while I'm inside, the coughing starts as soon as I open the front door. I've been abusing my albuterol inhaler over the past three days to avoid asthmatic hacking; I'll be moving onto the harder stuff tonight. Everyone's breathing is compromised, eyes are red and itchy, throats are sore. The air reeks like the bars of yore, without the underlying hints of spilled beer and wayward piss; it is unhealthy; it is downright nasty at times. Closer to the fires, roads are closed because of the wretchedly poor visibility; deer, foxes, raccoons fleeing the fires crash down the canyons, across roads and highways.

All day the sky hangs low, Sonoma Mountain invisible behind the murk. An eerie red sun sinks down the thick leaden sky, limning the world in a peculiar rosy-gold. Planes fly overhead, low and weary, returning to home bases for the night. They will fly out again tomorrow in the peachy-amber light of another smokey dawn.

George Carlin 1937 - 2008

Today, in honor of George Carlin, I used all seven words you can't say on TV (or radio), quarreled with God on the way he's running the damn Universe ( the Goddess, imho, could do so much better with 6 of her 8 hands tied behind her back, two toddlers and guests coming over for diner) and moved a bunch of my stuff to a better stuff-location. Even in my sorrow, I was laughing.

wtf. We've lost one of the best: a giant among comedians; a word-smith extraordinaire; an intelligence to be admired. Even as he skewered us on our pretensions and un-considered habits, we were peeing our pants and gasping for breath from laughter. He nailed us in all our bad habits of thought and entranced us with the sheer poetry of his own mind and word-wizardry. And even as our guts cramped up from guffawing, we knew he was right on.

Bye, George, thanks for the laughs.

100 Things Challenge

So have you heard about this particular challenge to our madcrazy consumeristic world? It's a movement, as some call it, to limit our personal belongings to 100 things. But really, it's a guy named Dave, blogging at stuckinstuff (click post title for link) He's concerned about the rampant, unconscious, unconsidered consumerism we suffer from and the small mountains of stuff that subsequently accrete around each and every one of us (cue George Carlin on Stuff: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac).

Doing his bit for Less Stuff = More Fun, Dave's been working on purging his own pile.

But as any of us who have repeatedly failed De-Cluttering 101, purging is a helluva lot harder than acquiring. So Dave gave himself this challenge: pare down to 100 personal items. Yes, faint if you must, because I just about did. I mean, I have at least 50 tchotchkes on my desk right now. Maybe, just maybe, I could get down to 1000 items, if there was like, money involved, say $10 an item disposed of..... What I find more interesting in conversations with friends and online are the things that are immediately declared off limits to the decree: books, dvds, records, tools, shoes, unders, paintings, photographs, bug collections, car paraphernalia, inherited ancestral stuff. Where would you draw the line?

And then what to do with the stuff you can finally bear to part with?

I certainly don't want to just dump stuff, especially indestructible plastic, into the waste-stream. This guy named Dave has managed to donate, sell and recycle most of his stuff (not all of it was junk, that helped) and I could probably do the same with some of it. But, getting beyond the question of why I still have this crapola, consider what I wouldn't want to just toss and no one in their right mind could possibly want: old analog tapes, Beta tapes, teething rings, cracked Tupperware, parts of machines the kids took apart, plastic doodads, thingamajigs, lick'em-ups and wham-whams. Guess I could stuff it all into boxes and then store them in the basement? Yikes, isn't this where we started? Wouldn't those those boxes have to be declared off limits. too?

It is all a bit much. Perhaps I'll resort to an old practice and just try to remove at least one thing from my household per day by whatever means possible: recycle, sell, donate. That too is harder than it sounds. I tried this a few years ago and I only lasted two weeks.

Say, anyone interested in a hot tub?

The Point Reyes National Seashore is a treasure of the first order, which most people who have been there know. That space between ocean and land, water and air has the power to create change. In my notebook from the retreat there two (three?) weekends ago, I found this response to being there.

On Pelicans

They glide silently and in snug formation with barely a wing beat--just an acute sense of wind and upwelling, sometimes a mere foot or two over the rocking water. Their necks are crooked back, their prehistoric pouchy beaks furled tight underneath. One wing beat, two, ripples the fluid line; they skim along the bluff below, wheel the corner, skim back-- a mottled brown and white necklace sailing loose and flung free

Something in me, that feathered thing perhaps, rises with them as they flash over the rim of the bluff and float swiftly onward over the land of water, on an ocean of air.

heckled fetlock

(sometimes you get these bogus snake-oil emails touting remedies for the-dysfunction-of-the-moment that have their own poetry within; see below for an almost direct quote. The title is word-for-word real. lk)

Ever tell you I saw him once?
Dude, had a good lol time.
said I could have other employment than lacemaking.bayeux@home.
Gothither, o king, in all thy prosperity, he said. He stood on the earthdam before me.
Think I want a fresh hogshead of beer, the lowenbrau, I answered.
I refuse to marry you. Is that clear? he shouted, citing the basic principles of self-government in the territories.
We heckled the fetlock into a twee dawn; then he was flew the little deuce coop.

rearranged by Lakin Khan

Blogcast, Publishing and the Rejection Carousel

For writers, publication is the holy grail, the magic elixir that gives meaning to the slogging drudgery required to finish a manuscript. Suddenly, it was all worthwhile, every gnashed tooth, every smacked forehead, every expletive. In fact, the agony is often forgotten altogether, like childbirth. (Oh, yeah, took me only 40 months, not too bad, no back labor, just shooting pains in the wrists and a threatened divorce. No, no, everything's fine now; it's a healthy little book.)

But as anyone who has sent their babies out on the Rejection Carousel can testify, publication itself seems more like a crap shoot than a reflection of the quality of our little darlings. Unfortunately, publication is our proof of the pudding; it is the accepted way writers, as artists, are acknowledged. Our words exist primarily as a private conversation between us and the keyboard, either ephemerally as bytes on a hard drive or more tangibly as weighty reams of recycled paper, serving most usefully as a doorstop for our studio or fodder for our writers group. Unless some other entity agrees to publish, it doesn’t exist for a larger audience. Without that tangible published work (no matter where or by whom) to wave and crow about our endless hours in studio can look like more like an excuse to be willfully anti-social.

The way I see it, most other artists don't need an intermediary to produce their work. Artists who paint, draw or sculpt always have the object that represents their thousands of studio hours ; they can point to it, display it, hang it on a wall. Musicians, after their years of scales and practice, can pull out an instrument and play tunes, whether at a gig, a party or their home where it can be heard by another person instantaneiously. (I agree, the professional part is a bit different, but bear with me.) A dancer can reveal his or her ability on any dance floor. But the writer? We are still bound to a feudal system in which we create the work and then seek a second party for it's manitestation. Except for occassional readings, impromptu recitations or odd requests by Aunt Agatha for a sweet piece for Bertie's engagement party, we are invisible. Without the concrete proof of a published work, no one knows what the hell we’re doing secluded in a studio while the rest of the world parties, goes to movies, takes their first baby steps, graduates cum laude, or blows itself to smithereens.

And so our struggle is two-fold: to make the best work possible and then convince someone to take it.

But I see this changing even as I type. Although I'll continue to submit work, now for the first time, writers can dodge the editors, the arbiters of what will and won’t get published. We can blog, e-publish, podcast and let the audiences be the judge. No more second guessing, no more trying to please some old crotchety guy in Wichita; now we can work to please our own standards, high, low or inbetween, and our own niche-y audience. Maybe we’ll only have 15 readers, but that’s 15 more than we would have had, working the old system.

Don’t get me wrong, if someone agrees to publish any of my stuff, I’d come unglued, salivate like a starving boxer at a barbeque and I agree to just about any terms (yes, you can just call me Print Slut anytime now). But until then,I'll blog, blog away and let the publishers take the hindmost. For these days, the proof is in the blogcast.

What's Writing Got To Do With It?

What's writing but second-hand emotions--or, as it's been said, re-living your experiences with commentary and editing? Just a passing comment...

Lately, the conversation in various webby-circles has turned to rejection, perseverance and why the hell we do this thing called writing anyway. First of all, you have to sit down and produce anywhere from 5,000 to 100,000 words, not just any words, but the "right word in the right place," as Mark Twain said. We won't speculate on the amount of time this might take, you all know it's far more than anyone would pay you for a real job. At the end of this you have maybe a ream of paper with endless lines of tiny black marks or the more ephemeral billions of bytes. But as an object, it doesn't have much of an existence to be shared as a communication... until it's been published.

Wherein lies the rub. After you've bled all over the keyboard, bored your friends to tears, strained/wrecked your marriage, provided fodder for your children's abandonment issues and consequently expensive therapist, after all that, now you get to send it out on the Rejection Carousel. Here's an eloquent page on that subject from ZYZZYVASPEAKS: Passed On

It only stands to reason, then, that after the 20th, 30th or even 50th rejection, we pause to give ourselves a reality check. Why should we want to continue?

E-Flash News: Semi-finalists Gather for World's First Annual Post-Kegger Belching Contest.

At least that's what it sounded like, down on the beach of Drake's Bay in the Pt Reyes National Seashore, about a mile or two from a recently established elephant seal rookery. Those guys are way loud, even though at this time of year only the weaned pups (merely a few hundred pounds) were still lurking about. Twenty-five of us gathered last weekend for a Writing Retreat Field Seminar at the refurbished Lifeboat Station, just below Chimney Rock, somewhat south-east of the Pt Reyes Lighthouse. We were here to commune with nature, write ourselves silly and talk shop. The elephant seals trolled along the small beach, watching us wander around with notebooks in hand and our minds off in left field. Whether their explosive guttural outbursts were comments on our looniness, or a mere fact of biology was, at times, a bit difficult to determine.

The elephant seals were not the only creatures around. With the low tide, the sea stars and sea anemones were exposed among the kelpy rocks, seagulls hovered about hoping for handouts, and pelicans, those prehistoric-looking birds, floated by in long banners. And of course, us writers, soaking up sensations and inspiration, working on prompts and/or our own stuff, listening to the ocean, the world, our words, ourselves.

The leaders, Patti Trimble and Susan Bono, did a magnificent job with the diverse range of writing experience and orientations, giving us all room to roam and time to report back. On the first day, they took us on a hike up to the top of the bluff; in the mizzle and mist, we stood there, on the spine of the world, eye-level with the pelicans, one side ocean, the other side bay. The mournful foghorns, the booming waves and the long, low, loud belches filled our ears.

Nature: isn't it grand?

Here's the link to the Pt Reyes Field Seminars, though the Writing Retreat, since it's over, is no longer listed. But there's tons of other seminars .... and there's always next year. Keep your eyes peeled!

http://www.ptreyes.org/fieldseminars/

Looking for a Few More Good Writers

Yes, fictioneer folks, the Napa Valley Writer's Conference is still accepting applications. I urge anyone who relishes a week immersed in writing to apply. Can't beat great faculty (Ron Carlson, Lan Samantha Chang, Ehud Havazelet, Ann Packer), stunning location (the Wine Country), fabulous meals (majority of meals catered by the culinary school on campus), high-quality students. As noted on the Conference website, "Vanessa Hua, who attended in 2006, has won first place in the Atlantic Monthly Student Writing Contest for the story she worked on in ZZ Packer’s workshop."

Of course, I have to reveal that I'm working on staff this year. But! I have attended the conference two previous summers and been just amazed at having this top-notch conference in my backyard, so to speak. I's like a best-kept secret, or an undiscovered treasure. Check out the website, and see what you think.

http://www.napawritersconf.org/

Nature's Way pub: Swallows and Owls

It's been a good three weeks since my last post, I'm rather embarrassed to say. Hectic-wild at work for one week, then it was hella hot and I wimpered in the shade with my feet in a wading pool waiting for the 100 degree temps to disappear. But the marine layer (weatherman talk for fog-starter) is making its way back and this evening, I've been shutting windows against the chill.

But I did manage to complete an essay for Newsbytes and it ran last Friday, so here is the link, for those who are interested. It's titled: Owl Boxes and Swallows Nests.

http://www.sonoma.edu/pubs/nb/05_16_08/naturesway.shtml

I haven't abandoned my Wildlife Backyard Project willy-nilly; more on that later. Gonna get some pix of my improvements, too. But first, I have to find the camera. That thing is so small, sometimes I'll find it in the couch cushions along with the spare change and gum wrappers.

Spring Calls for New Projects

After writing about hedgerows, native plants, birds, bees, butterflies and the like, I've decided to put my money where my sore knees will be and turn our yard into a Certified Wildlife Habitat. A naturalist-gardener friend of mine, Frederique Lavoipierre, gave me the idea and steered me to The National Wildlife Organization, which sponsors the official backyard certification program. Since I'm not much for garden or yard organizing, I figured this would be as good a way as any to structure my wanton, gone-to-seed-and-weeds backyard. And harbor a few critters along the way. And this is part of the point of the project, to integrate way stations and habitats throughout our land for critters, rather than relegating them to the diminishing wildlands and the scattered, insufficient nature preserves. I want to do my part because without insect or critter scurrying, bird songs or butterfly dances, our place seems sterile and barren. Eerie, too.

So I cruised www.nwf.org and found it's not really all that difficult, to wit:

All you need to do is provide elements from each of the following areas:

• Food Sources. For example: Native plants, seeds, fruits, nuts, berries, nectar
• Water Sources. For example: Birdbath, pond, water garden, stream
• Places for Cover. For example: Thicket, rockpile, birdhouse
• Places to Raise Young. For example: Dense shrubs, vegetation, nesting box, pond
• Sustainable Gardening. For example: Mulch, compost, rain garden, chemical-free fertilizer

(excerpt taken from http://www.nwf.org/backyard/)
(link to it from title of this post)

Some of the steps I've already put into practice. I've done my hippie best to avoid all chemical additives, to the point that our lawns were more like weed-patches--and not that kind of weed, either. I've used compost and mulched like crazy. Last summer, we nuked our front lawn by sheet mulching it, letting it RIP under thick layers of newspapers and wood chips. I don't intend to reseed with water-greedy grasses. To encourage bird and butterfly life, I've planted a few sorts of bushes and flowers they like (mallow, penstamen, lavender, salvias) and kept two bird feeders going. Newts and salamanders have benefited by my lax and lazy gardening; I spy them under damp leaves and overgrown bushes.

So I really only need to provide a water source, some shelters and more places to raise young. And up my use of native plant species. I can probably do all that this spring. Then we'll see how many creatures take me up on my welcome mat. I'll even leave the porch light on--for the bugs.

Nerd or Geek; what’s the distinction?

This was the question posed at a celebratory dinner the other evening. I was curious because, at least in my experience eons ago, these terms had not only been used derogatorily, but also somewhat interchangeably. How many people feel the need to parse an insult? Get mad, get even perhaps, but not stop to quibble about which slur fits. But the times, thank the goddess and pass the gigabytes, have changed and, in this regard, for the better. Still, it leaves me with the question: is there a definable difference between geek and nerd, and if so, what?

So this is what I’ve come up with.

Geek — someone who is highly, even overly, enthusiastic about a particular field of endeavor or interest. More than hobbyists, geeks are several ranks up from buffs. Usually, equipment or materials are involved, as in: camera geek, yarn geek, car geek, silent movie geek. Has to be non-sentient, too: someone who’s avid about people they don’t personally know would be either a fan, groupie or stalker. So, one can be a rock geek, a star geek, but not a rock-star geek.

Geeks collect their totem items, and can be distracted beyond measure by its presence. Witness a book geek in a bookstore. Might as well bring in take-out Chinese if you thought you were sharing a lunch date.

Geeks love to hang out with other geeks of their persuasion, witness camera clubs, yarn-off evenings and Trekkie Conventions (Trekkies are geeks not fans because their focus is the whole show, not just the stars). A geek’s concentration, while it might seem somewhat whacked to their significant others, nevertheless can be genially tolerated and should even be indulged. If it’s an irritant, then look out, that relationship is OVER. While geeks will gladly talk shop whenever possible, they are also willing and able to converse on other topics and they will participate in other activities, such as work that might not be their enthusiasm, raising the kids, attending family functions. In the best of all possible worlds, some one, a nephew, niece, grandparent, in-law, uncle or aunt, is also smitten by the same bug, and the long afternoon barbeques pass in a lovely haze of shared enthusiasms.

Nerd — this is someone who is in over their head, immersed in their interest to the point of letting go of the tow rope. They are generally the reigning expert and are only too happy to establish that. They don’t seem to understand “a passing interest” in their subject. When talking with a non-nerd, the conversation can be quite one-sided; when talking with another nerd, the volume tends to escalate, as they strive to out-nerd each other. Nerds can be quite bored with activities or people not related to their interest. This makes it difficult for non-nerds to appreciate their genuine intelligence and wealth of knowledge. I would think that nerds are best matched up with another nerd of the same or similar persuasion.

Although those who know me might disagree, I self-identify as a word-geek. I love words and how they operate; I love them forwards, backward, sideways, jumbled-up, scrabbled. New words thrill me; making them up is even better. Anagrams, puns, poems; bring them on. A word geek like myself either has the OED or lusts after one. But a word nerd no longer needs one; they have it memorized and can recite definition and antecedent, first print appearances, annotations, footnotes, and variance of usage across time. We need the word-nerds of the world to keep the dictionaries well-oiled and running. Then we word-geeks can have the fun of pushing them to their limits.

Getting Unstuck

When the words don't flow, when the ideas are lame, when the brain is mush and the eyes crossed, there is nothing left to do but throw up my hands and admit I'm stuck, flat out stuck. There are all sorts of evasive measures I'll take to prime the pump. But if weeding/mulching/pruning all 16 roses, vacuuming lint out of the crevisses of the sofa, washing every reachable curtain, changing the oil in my car, grooming the cats, answering email, and laying in supplies for the winter hasn't brought forth the juices of creativity, then I apply the following 7 steps, in the method of a religious ritual.

1)Remind myself I can quit writing any time; it's not like I'm getting paid the big bucks here.

2)Find some walnuts, hard apples, stale chips, anything to gnash with my teeth as I have probably gnawed my fingers to bleeding stumps, thus accounting for the small red-brown smears on the final paper drafts, something electronic submissions can't yet transmit—thank you, thank you, Goddess of All Small Things.

3)Consume vast quantities of coffee to get the heart rate up and the blood flowing, hauling a fresh dose of oxygen up to the brain, shaking loose cobwebs, freeing up ideas, making connections.

4)Consume even vaster amounts of chocolate to raise the serotonin levels, lubricating all the newly loosened brain-parts.

5)Within the hour, I'll be jittery, sweaty and queasy from the odd combination of foodstuffs, caffeine-overdose and oncoming insulin shock. I bolt out the door for a very, very long walk around town, muttering to myself in the voices of my characters. That is, not only talking to myself but answering, the classic definition of schizophrenia.

6)Returning home, I'm exhausted and in some sort of trance. Surely something will arrive when I sit down at the keyboard, as there is nothing left in my puddin'headed brain to offer any resistance.

7)If all else fails, I write to the Tiny Lights question of the month. By the time I'm finished, the day has passed and I'm off the hook. Tomorrow, I swear, I'll finish the novella.

(published courtesy of TinyLights.com)

http://www.tiny-lights.com/searchlights.html?id=289

April? Spring?

Some of these posts will be un-chronological, dislodged somewhat from time. The one below is an excerpt from a chapbook my daughter made from essays of mine published by Newsbytes, a newsletter of Sonoma State University. Which explains why it is talking about winter in the middle of spring. Not that it feels like spring. Though the trees and tulips have blossomed, the wind whipping the pollen around has been cold, cold, bitter cold. Down vests in April, oh yes, and in California, believe it or not.

btw, the chapbook is beautifully put together. Very proud I am of her and it.

Stopping by Our Pond on a Pre-winter’s Morning

Winter is close upon us, the nights and early mornings brisk, as they say in New England. To the west and east of our valley, dense fog layers over and between the hills, Chinese ink paintings for our contemplation during morning and evening drives. Coming in from the M lot one morning, the ponds were grey with the reflected sky. Six cormorants stood along the concrete rim of the island, black-clad sentinels for an invisible castle behind them. There had been a whole slew of them a few weeks ago, more than ever before, it seemed. Aside from those six standing on the island’s edge, I counted at least four more in the water— though it’s difficult to get an accurate head count the way they lingered underneath, popping up just as others popped down.

I went back by the ponds around noon-time that day for a bit more cormorant-watching and ran into Carol Hall, Administrative Coordinator in the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs and bird enthusiast. We swapped tales as we ate our respective leftovers-for-lunch in the weak sunshine. She told me she’d counted anywhere from 8 to 15 cormorants over the previous week and showed me some pictures she’d taken of them, both in the pond and out. Along the bank of the island in front of us, the cormorants stretched and held out their wings like damp feathered overcoats linings loaded with goodies for the indiscriminate bargain hunter: knock-off watches, oyster-shell rings, mackerel tails, seaweed necklaces.

These are Double Crested cormorants, dark-bodied, with a pale orange around the eyes and beak, sometimes a dull yellow sliding down the neck like a meager ascot. They hold their wings out in order to dry them, for the top layers of their feathers are not as waterproofed as those of other water birds. This gives the cormorant deeper dive capabilities; the Double Crested is known to dive close to 25 feet down — other species of cormorants dive even further.

They are amusing birds, these cormorants, endearing and lithe, true swimmers. They are not buoyant birds, like the more staid and stately ducks and geese that float on the water like ships, flipping their back ends up as they scrabble under the water’s surface for sustenance, rarely submerging themselves completely. Cormorants are the submarines, their backs just under the water’s surface as they cruise the pond in small flotillas, their distinctively hooked beaks pointed skyward, like periscopes-up! Or as if in salute. They’ll be there one moment and gone the next, gathering themselves up and shooting under water, sometimes two or three in unison, having spotted some sort of succulent pond snack. They are under long enough that we begin to wonder and then up they surface, almost bouncing a bit as they hit the air, a fish tail sliding quickly down their beak and gullet. They can be quite far from their point of entry into the water, and if Carol or I didn’t see them dive under, it was un-nerving to see them suddenly pop, pop, pop! Up on the pond in front of us. It tickled my funny bone, and made me giggle, even when I didn’t think I had much to giggle about.

The double crests, for which this species is named, are white feathers projecting out over the eyes and above the head, only visible during courtship and mating, which takes place in early spring, further north and inland from here, often in colonies of thousands. This small batch was probably scoping out some over-wintering spots and will move on once the fishing gets slim, as it’s bound to do. Because they aren’t buoyant and their top feathers are wettable, cormorants are quite vulnerable to oil spills; they get soaked to their skins, the weight of the oil immobilizing their wings, pulling them under to drown.

So I am glad they were here, even if only for a short spell, for they have escaped the oil sludge from the tanker that has contaminated the Bay and the San Francisco and Marin beaches. It is some comfort to know that we have a respite station. For the time that they were here we have enjoyed their presence and appreciated their grace and humor. And they in turn might remember that our ponds were a safe haven during a very bad fall for ocean life in the Bay Area.