Today is very warm, wonderfully so without being uncomfortable. I've made one of my famous day-camps out on the balcony and have been organizing the stacks of notes associated with my book. This project should feel overwhelming, but for some reason it doesn't.
When I make a day-camp, I surround myself with everything I might need for a long, uninterrupted stay in one place. Besides the stacks and stacks of papers with notes I've made over the last five-plus years, today I have both phones, something to drink, reading glasses (regular) as well as reading glasses (for sitting in the sun), the remote control for the awning, several pens, my microcassette recorder, my camera (just in case something remarkable happens), and my giant 2011 calendar.
It doesn't make for a very fascinating blog post, but I want to go on record that I've been reading through these notes and working out story details all day. A while ago I stopped and took a few photos of a great blue heron and a snowy egret hanging out by the creek. It's OK to take a break, right?
Finally, it's quiet out here. This morning saw (and heard) quite a bit of maintenance work going on in the form of gardeners on riding mowers and some wood chipping down the block. But it's just after 2 PM now, and all I hear are the birds.
Today I am focusing on the characters, one by one. What do they want? What is stopping them? What are their secrets? What do they bring to the book's themes? What can make them more vivid to the reader?
Maybe I'm just in a good mood, but as daunting of a task as this novel is, I suddenly am beginning to feel more positive. Maybe all the vitamins I've been taking over the last few months are finally having an effect. It's not that I don't still feel awful about how long I've spent on this multi-volume epic extravaganza (because I do), but because I recognize such agonizing is counter-productive if it goes in circles and doesn't lead to improvements.
Social media doesn't account for all of my wasted time, but it does eat up a couple of hours each day, time I could be spending on any number of book-related activities. Including writing the damn thing.
* * *
Before I go to bed tonight, I want to have a specific schedule for the book's completion.
Showing posts with label carpe diem trivia journal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label carpe diem trivia journal. Show all posts
Friday, April 15, 2011
Thursday, April 14, 2011
certain ideas about luxury
Lately I've been committed to the idea of taking more photographs. It's not as if it takes a lot of time and effort, and there's no significant cost involved other than a bit of electricity to charge my Canon's battery and upload digital files to my computer. And so, in pursuit of that committment, you often find me late at night roaming around, looking for something intriguing to capture. That's why I just posted an image (see previous blog post) of some ruby-colored glasses. Before my bedtime melatonin kicked in I fooled around and shot the glassware both with and without a flash, closer and further away, and that sort of thing. With more time and care I'm sure I could improve on that image, but the idea is to push things along quickly. From a therapeutic self-help standpoint, I want to start and finish projects.
Those glasses, along with their matching decanter, sit in the living room on a metal trunk I got at Pottery Barn. I like blending dressy with casual, and always have. The set was a gift, and while I don't actually drink out of them, as art objects they give me a feeling of luxury. They weren't always precisely to my taste, but they've grown on me.
The topic of luxury intrigues me enough that I plan on writing more about it here. But first, I'm committed to the idea of getting some pages done today. September is coming up fast, and my book isn't writing itself (no matter how many story notes I make on my tape recorder). I don't have the luxury of a hotel room and room service for the book's completion. I have to make my own time, squeeze my own orange juice.
ciao ciao,
b
Those glasses, along with their matching decanter, sit in the living room on a metal trunk I got at Pottery Barn. I like blending dressy with casual, and always have. The set was a gift, and while I don't actually drink out of them, as art objects they give me a feeling of luxury. They weren't always precisely to my taste, but they've grown on me.
The topic of luxury intrigues me enough that I plan on writing more about it here. But first, I'm committed to the idea of getting some pages done today. September is coming up fast, and my book isn't writing itself (no matter how many story notes I make on my tape recorder). I don't have the luxury of a hotel room and room service for the book's completion. I have to make my own time, squeeze my own orange juice.
ciao ciao,
b
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
running to catch up
A black dog (recall Winston Churchill's name for his occasional depression) has been hanging around lately. And while he isn't to blame for this long blogpresence silence-- I must take responsibility for that myself; details not important-- but the pesky fellow has slowed things down for me. The dog, I mean, not Sir Winston.
It's nothing serious, but I do struggle just a little with it now and then, usually a fleeting challenge... not that anyone would be able to discern this condition very easily from the more or less positive attitude I maintain and present to the world.
Maybe instead of my more typical long rumination on a single topic, what I might do today, within one or two blog entries, is a series of quick non-sequitirs. This will fill in a few gaps.
Regarding this blog: One of the items on this year's to-do list is to link up my various archived blog posts into categories, if only for my own big-picture navigating convenience. Another stated goal was to develop some theme organization both within this blog, and across my various other (neglected) blogs. And yes, January was the new year and this is March and I'm falling behind on nearly every front, and I don't have my plan of action yet; I do know that. I keep meaning to create a blogging schedule, and stick to it. This will help a lot.
What few readers I do have are deserving of that respect, but it's also clear that without goals, structure, and urgency to my various writing projects... what, then? Let's just say there's a dramatic whooshing sound as calendar pages fly off left and right in a series of slow camera dissolves, cherry blossoms bloom and drop off, clock hands chase each other around at a dizzying speed, autumn leaves blow in and out of the frame, all of this underscored with haunting orchestral phrases... and before you know it, we're setting our clocks back an hour. Again. By the way, I can't imagine any of you guys actually enjoy reading about my private struggles with this stuff, but I'm hoping there's some psychological power in this confession. Thanks for indulging me.
Supermoon: Yes, the moon was bigger and brighter. I don't know if I would have figured this out without reading about it first, but I made note of it and went out on the balcony to view it. Alas, the cloud cover turned our celestial neighbor into a ghostly apparition. I did capture an image digitally which turned out even more ghostly because it was hand-held for several seconds.
* * *
More later. And I really will go back and fill in some blog gaps, if only for my own satisfaction.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
a box of old audio tapes, part one
As part of my ongoing efforts to completely streamline my media, my archives, my ephemera, and my life, I pulled out a zippered case filled with old microcasette tapes waiting patiently for my administrative care. I hadn't gone through them in years.
Without having to look at the labels, I immediately remembered several of them: Jeremy Butterfield speaking (in a vast echoey room, a church I believe) at a conference on consciousness held in 1996 at Jesus College in Cambridge; why I taped his talk and not any of the others is now a mystery, but it might have been because of his gorgeous, perfect British accent. I knew I'd find taped interviews with my old friends Alan Worsley and Stephen LaBerge, informal sessions which were always vaguely intended to become articles. Many of the tapes were (are) various of my dream accounts, including nights I spent at a lucid dreaming retreat, and even in the psych department sleep lab at Stanford where I was enclosed in a black-walled little chamber, my head dotted with wired electrodes.
And so I began to go through these tiny plastic casettes, rewinding, playing them, writing long overdue labels as best as I could. Many were completely unmarked, several were nearly unintelligible for various reasons. Two were tapes of people now gone: my old friend Scott Gibbs, and my paternal grandmother, Beatrice Cox.
* * *
to be continued
Monday, January 24, 2011
analog digital me
What time is it?
Picture of analog clock on home office computer screen; analog clock in powder room; antique clock on family room wall; iPad app of a ticking analog clock.
I need to write a memo:Grab a piece of paper, or type on a virtual yellow sticky note on my computer screen. Usually the former.
Take a photograph:Digital photography only, for the last seven years. It felt very strange to retire my film camera and gear to the attic.
Listen to music:The iTunes account on my main computer houses nearly all of my music collection. I still have some favorites in CD form to play in my car or in my sleek little bedsite Brookstone CD stereo system, but the majority of my collection I recorded for myself, then gave the original CDs to my dad and sister. This same collection lives on my iPad Classic, which I place in a really cool speaker dock for home use. Unlike my young friends, I rarely put in headphones and listen to music while out in the world.
Texting:I do not text on my phone, period. Don't send me texts, please.
Talking in the car:There is a new law specifically prohibiting cell phone use while driving unless you're hands free. I comply with this (even though my sense is, it's the fact that one is in Thoughtspace while speaking on a phone that makes for lack of focus, not the hands issue as such). I try not to do a lot of phone gabbing in the car, but when I do, I put my five year-old cell phone on speaker mode.
Picture of analog clock on home office computer screen; analog clock in powder room; antique clock on family room wall; iPad app of a ticking analog clock.
I need to write a memo:Grab a piece of paper, or type on a virtual yellow sticky note on my computer screen. Usually the former.
Take a photograph:Digital photography only, for the last seven years. It felt very strange to retire my film camera and gear to the attic.
Listen to music:The iTunes account on my main computer houses nearly all of my music collection. I still have some favorites in CD form to play in my car or in my sleek little bedsite Brookstone CD stereo system, but the majority of my collection I recorded for myself, then gave the original CDs to my dad and sister. This same collection lives on my iPad Classic, which I place in a really cool speaker dock for home use. Unlike my young friends, I rarely put in headphones and listen to music while out in the world.
Texting:I do not text on my phone, period. Don't send me texts, please.
Talking in the car:There is a new law specifically prohibiting cell phone use while driving unless you're hands free. I comply with this (even though my sense is, it's the fact that one is in Thoughtspace while speaking on a phone that makes for lack of focus, not the hands issue as such). I try not to do a lot of phone gabbing in the car, but when I do, I put my five year-old cell phone on speaker mode.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
1/1/11
Time to reset, begin anew where needed. One bit of cyberhousekeeping I've been putting off is a logical reorganization of my various blogs, groups, and websites...
Friday, December 31, 2010
one more thing
Photo was taken in Atlanta, Georgia, ten years ago. Cheers.What does it mean that at four minutes until the end of 2010 I'm overcome by the urge to write yet one more blog post? Never mind; I think I know.
There's a sign up in my home office that says "When opportunity knocks, don't be in your bathrobe." Words to live by! And in a related idea, the words of William C. Martell, screenwriter and dear old friend: "Take my advice-- I'm not using it." (Don't worry; I'll explain later).
One more thing.
Never enough. Never enough time, never enough accomplished, never enough.
But, onward we go.
xo
b
There's a sign up in my home office that says "When opportunity knocks, don't be in your bathrobe." Words to live by! And in a related idea, the words of William C. Martell, screenwriter and dear old friend: "Take my advice-- I'm not using it." (Don't worry; I'll explain later).
One more thing.
Never enough. Never enough time, never enough accomplished, never enough.
But, onward we go.
xo
b
Saturday, December 11, 2010
christmas approaches
This post is actually a time-travelling post being written on March 29, 2011. I definitely had an entire piece in mind when I posted the title, but it slipped away for no legitimate reason. In a way, Christmas 2011 can be said to be approaching. How early will I do my Christmas shopping this year? How long will I sustain the annual fantasy of creating my own cards, or actually having a Christmas party here at the house? Will I pull out the huge tree and dedicate the days needed to adorn it? Decorating isn't the hard bit, either-- that would be the task of taking everything down and packing it away. But sure, I can do this. People joke sometimes about Christmas in July. So what about Christmas in March? That means those stockings and garlands still sitting out in my guest room aren't evidence of slothful post-Christmas housekeeping. I just means I'm the first to get ready for the next Yule. Maybe this year I'll put up ALL of my artificial trees and ALL of my decorations, because nothing is more gorgeous... I haven't done that in years. I'll bake cookies and swap with neighbors; I'll make homemade liqueurs and spice rubs with gorgeous labels, and be ready with a new gown (my own design) well before the big work Christmas party. Merry Christmas, and happy (almost ) April Fool's Day, everyone.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
a simple matter of complexity
Time-travel post, arriving in this slot from March 31, 2011. I have no idea what I had in mind when I named this post and then left it blank. Oh well. This shot of a completed game seemed just as appropriate as anything. It occurs to me that a writer could use a naturally-occurring game board such as this as an exercise: use all of the words in a short-ish piece of prose without anything seeming forced.
b
Thursday, September 23, 2010
winter plans
With great pride of accomplishment I'd like to announce that I've done nearly all of my Christmas shopping. I also have a certain nagging medical issue out of the way, and finally have a handle on my out-of-control laundry and wardrobe issues.
Will this be the winter I finally finish up my novel? I'm trying to clear the decks so I can be singleminded in my focus. And yes, this does sound familiar; it's my recurring theme...
* * *
Will this be the winter I finally finish up my novel? I'm trying to clear the decks so I can be singleminded in my focus. And yes, this does sound familiar; it's my recurring theme...
* * *
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
thoughts of tea on a rainy day
Tea service, tea-time, high tea, tea and mystery, tea and crumpets, tea and sympathy, tea and whimsy, tea for two, a spot of tea, tea and fancy, tea rooms, coffee or tea, the Mad Hatter's tea party, tea and thee.
Don't roll your eyes, although I know it's tempting. I know I chattered away about the mystique of Afternoon Tea in previous posts. (I'm actually writing the bulk of this post on October 6).
What's the appeal? First off, tea service is outside of the typical American breakfast/lunch/dinner schema (or breakfast/dinner/supper, or brunch/late supper, or what have you) and has a civilized yet indulgent aura. I like the idea, obviously, and have nothing but positive highly romanticized associations with it.
I keep thinking I'll introduce an abbreviated but still pleasing afternoon tea ritual to those days I'm home alone and writing, but as of yet I haven't made that committment. Today's wonderful rain has me daydreaming about such things.
It's tempting. To keep this additional meal break from turning into a weight-gain program (or programme) I'd have to have a very light breakfast (which I already do), no second breakfast (like Hobbits, I'm afraid I sometimes like a mid-morning treat), and I'd have to stick with just some fruit or veggies for lunch. Teatime's shortbread cookies and finger-sandwiches are indulgences with a price; but frankly I've been known to grab a fistful of Fritos or peanut butter pretzels around that same time anyway. A cup of steaming Earl Grey, gentle piano music, cloth napkins, and a few tasty treats would be a real improvement.
Don't roll your eyes, although I know it's tempting. I know I chattered away about the mystique of Afternoon Tea in previous posts. (I'm actually writing the bulk of this post on October 6).
What's the appeal? First off, tea service is outside of the typical American breakfast/lunch/dinner schema (or breakfast/dinner/supper, or brunch/late supper, or what have you) and has a civilized yet indulgent aura. I like the idea, obviously, and have nothing but positive highly romanticized associations with it.
I keep thinking I'll introduce an abbreviated but still pleasing afternoon tea ritual to those days I'm home alone and writing, but as of yet I haven't made that committment. Today's wonderful rain has me daydreaming about such things.
It's tempting. To keep this additional meal break from turning into a weight-gain program (or programme) I'd have to have a very light breakfast (which I already do), no second breakfast (like Hobbits, I'm afraid I sometimes like a mid-morning treat), and I'd have to stick with just some fruit or veggies for lunch. Teatime's shortbread cookies and finger-sandwiches are indulgences with a price; but frankly I've been known to grab a fistful of Fritos or peanut butter pretzels around that same time anyway. A cup of steaming Earl Grey, gentle piano music, cloth napkins, and a few tasty treats would be a real improvement.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Saturday, June 26, 2010
saturday morning cartoons
The other day I found a great site while searching for the correct wording of a Popeye quote. Before you say anything, I want to go on record as believing there is, quite likely, a Popeye the Sailor Man quote for nearly any occasion. (This is also true for Rocky and Bullwinkle, a rich subject for another day).
My longtime friend Bill, a screenwriter, uses the phrase "Popeye point" to describe that critical point in a story where the protagonist "has all [he] can stands, and [he] can't stands no more." I acks you, what better way to describe it?
The Popeye canon is rich with uncommon wisdom. But don't take my word for it. Here is a link to a site that has culled some Popeye quotes from the 1980 feature film and a few very early cartoons. This is the site I used, but there are actually several:
Quotes site- Popeye
And a couple of quotes to get you started:
_____
Popeye: That's just one of them invisible garages that you can't see on the desert.
Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves 1937
_____
Popeye: Wrong is wrong, even when it helps ya.
Popeye 1980
_____
[After pulling off Abu Hassan's long johns]
Popeye: Abu Hassan got 'em anymore!
Abu Hassan: You want to make fool from me?
Popeye: Aah, nature beat me to it.
Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves 1937
_____
Here's a link to the IMDb entry for the 1980 film starring Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall, directed by Robert Altman, written by Jules Feiffer. I don't remember many details about that film, but I do recall thinking it was an eerily perfect cast.
Popeye, 1980
But as many of you know, Popeye the cartoon character goes way back to Max Fleischer, a man of exceptional talent, vision, and accomplishment. Few people, at least outside of the film industry, realize the father of Popeye was also the inventor of the rotoscope.
More about Mr. Fleischer soon.
Where's the entrance to the exit? - Popeye the Sailor Man
* * *
My longtime friend Bill, a screenwriter, uses the phrase "Popeye point" to describe that critical point in a story where the protagonist "has all [he] can stands, and [he] can't stands no more." I acks you, what better way to describe it?
The Popeye canon is rich with uncommon wisdom. But don't take my word for it. Here is a link to a site that has culled some Popeye quotes from the 1980 feature film and a few very early cartoons. This is the site I used, but there are actually several:
Quotes site- Popeye
And a couple of quotes to get you started:
_____
Popeye: That's just one of them invisible garages that you can't see on the desert.
Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves 1937
_____
Popeye: Wrong is wrong, even when it helps ya.
Popeye 1980
_____
[After pulling off Abu Hassan's long johns]
Popeye: Abu Hassan got 'em anymore!
Abu Hassan: You want to make fool from me?
Popeye: Aah, nature beat me to it.
Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves 1937
_____
Here's a link to the IMDb entry for the 1980 film starring Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall, directed by Robert Altman, written by Jules Feiffer. I don't remember many details about that film, but I do recall thinking it was an eerily perfect cast.
Popeye, 1980
But as many of you know, Popeye the cartoon character goes way back to Max Fleischer, a man of exceptional talent, vision, and accomplishment. Few people, at least outside of the film industry, realize the father of Popeye was also the inventor of the rotoscope.
More about Mr. Fleischer soon.
Where's the entrance to the exit? - Popeye the Sailor Man
* * *
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
southwest memories
As much as I love fooling around with photographs, it's great when I don't have to fix a single thing. This one, taken on the way to Sedona, arrives to this site au naturel without so much as a pixel adjustment or cropping. It won't win any awards, but it's a vista that brings back fond memories of a special time and place.Friday, May 28, 2010
working towards a writing weekend
tickticktickticktick, continued
Once again, I am allowing myself the luxurious five-minute fantasy that I'll be able to dedicate great expanses of time to my writing this weekend.
The house is quiet, and I'm alone. All the laundry is done. There's plenty of food in the pantry. I have no place I need to be until next week's media job in San Francisco.
My fingers are poised over my novel, and I'm smiling at the prospect of digging in.
But wait! We're almost out of that special cat food I buy at the vet's office...
There's always something, n'est pas?
* * *
Once again, I am allowing myself the luxurious five-minute fantasy that I'll be able to dedicate great expanses of time to my writing this weekend.
The house is quiet, and I'm alone. All the laundry is done. There's plenty of food in the pantry. I have no place I need to be until next week's media job in San Francisco.
My fingers are poised over my novel, and I'm smiling at the prospect of digging in.
But wait! We're almost out of that special cat food I buy at the vet's office...
There's always something, n'est pas?
* * *
Thursday, May 13, 2010
early morning in an imaginary airstream
Once again, I awoke at around 4 AM. Rather than fret over this, I got up and did a few things around the house before assuming my post here at the nerve center. Emails out of the way, social networking sites checked, I inexplicably but somehow logically ended up on the Airstream trailer site, looking at gorgeous photos of sleek metal designs. Within moments this activity actually became a kind of waking dream of a drive on a deserted morning road through spectacular scenery, perhaps because I was looking at these images during the very time I would ordinarily have been in the classically long REM morning dream period. * * * and the dream continues
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
road trip
The drive from Northern California to Southern California, or vice versa, is one I've made many times. It can be accomplished in as few as 7 1/2 hours or so, but it makes more sense to allow 9 hours. Usually I do this drive alone.
For some time, after moving to San Diego for my husband's career in 1996, I continued to seek out and accept freelance corporate video work in the San Francisco Bay Area where I had lived my entire life. This allowed me to retain the source of income I'd enjoyed since 1987 (and, truth be told, a good portion of my identity), but also to ease the overall change.
Once I eventually realized I hadn't lost a home town but had gained a lovely new area and lifestyle, our unexpected 500 mile relocation ceased to be a source of deep anxiety. This relatively unexplored, balmy, less counterculture part of the state proved to be nearly perfect for me; it only remained to reassure myself that my old friends, family, and livelihood was a mere half day's drive away.
And so it was.
But I didn't always take the overland route from point A to B. I'm no longer sure of the sequence, but for a while I managed this new living situation by flying back and forth on Southwest Airlines, maintaining not only two complete sets of work kits, but two cars. The ambivalence demonstrated by this elaborate duplication seems painfully obvious to me now, some fourteen years later, but I didn't question it at the time.
That first year of my new life now has a hazy, dreamlike quality to it.
Just how much was crammed into that time period wasn't clear to me until the other day when I was sorting some boxes of slides. Before digital photography eclipsed film and rendered it a quaint folk art, most of my photography took the form of 35mm slides. I unfailingly sorted them for perhaps the first ten years of our now 30-year marriage. The rest are in unmarked stacks, awaiting my attention.
Looking at these slides a couple of weeks ago, I noted that some time during that blur of a year that was 1996, my husband and I moved to a small furnished apartment in downtown San Diego with our four cats, awaiting our eventual move to a new home in North County some six months later. I had never lived anywhere but in the suburbs, and the urban setting felt unreal. It would be some time before I figured out how to grocery shop there; restaurants proved easier. All of our furnishings and most of my art and craft supplies were packed up and sent away into long-term storage. Life, as I knew it, would clearly be in a kind of holding pattern. I can't recall where we spent Christmas.
This was also the year my husband and I took a trip to the UK for his work; grafted onto this excursion was a side-trip to a small, elegant Human Consciousness conference at Jesus College in Oxford with a difficult friend and writing partner while my husband stayed back in High Wycombe and carried out his work.
There was another conference that year, this one in Tucson, Arizona, a twelve-hour drive away. This was the time of my growing involvement with the lucid dreaming and consciousness community; dreaming and psychology had long been of interest, but my sudden immersion was evidence of restlessness and indecision about my life path. In this quirky world (scientific, but with whiffs of new age-ery) I was making my civilian contributions wherever I could, losing myself in a kind of extended pseudo-academic reverie. It escalated to the point where I spent nights in the Stanford dream lab with electrodes glued to my head, and even co-authored and presented a sound and respectable paper despite lack of any official credentials. Caught up in the magic and yet aware of the limitations of being a fringe player, I toyed briefly with the idea of returning to school for a psychology degree, before coming to my senses and realizing going back to school would, in my case, be a stalling tactic.
More stacks of slides later, I'm reminded this was also the year of our trip to New Zealand. Like England, this too was a trip undertaken for my husband's job. I can remember packing and wearing a spray eau de parfum called Red, new at the time. The scent reminded me of my mother because we'd bought bottles of it around the same time.
The people we met there were unfailingly kind. They fed us, and drove us everywhere, and the scenery was spectacular at every diverse turn; New Zealand seemed like a half dozen marvelous countries combined. We peered into exotic Maori houses, scampered around steam vents and mud pits, savored gourmet food in convivial restaurants, and rowed through quiet caves with ceilings lit by fairytale glowworms. Every day we felt the giddy rush of being further from home on this amazing blue orb than we'd ever been.
All too soon, my husband and I were on the long flight home. For many surrealistically long hours where we'd never fall more than half asleep, we felt the plane drop from the sky again and again in the worst nauseating turbulence we'd ever experienced.
By October, my mother would be losing her year-long battle with colon cancer. My father would later recall a conversation they had about our pending move to San Diego, and that athough her thinking wasn't as sharp as it had once been, she was aware our relocation plans were becoming more definite. I recall the months just prior to her death as a blur of video jobs, staying at my parents' house in my old bedroom and helping my father and sister with her care as best I could. Throughout this, I must have been travelling from one end of the state to the other, but I have no recollection of it.
Our new home was ready in the spring, and we moved in. I'm sure my mother would have loved seeing it.
Our move to San Diego was cushioned by some work benefits, including compensation from my husband's company for what would undoubtedly be my lost income. I spent some of this money in one extravagant and unforgettable night attending a party at the winery estate of Francis Coppola with the idea of casually wearing my fashion designs, theoretically facilitating career contacts with the event's promising guest list. Because hotel rooms in the Rutherford area turned out to be prohibitively expensive, I rented an Airstream trailer to serve as a hotel room, situated in a funny little trees-and-dirt park in Calistoga.
The trailer floor swaying under my high heels, I stepped into my evening gown, put on my makeup in waning sunlight, and stepped out the doorway with my original, elaborately decorated handbag. I walked carefully across the dirt parking lot to my car, drove a winding road leading to the gated estate, and wandered among the rich and famous for one magical night.
* * *
When we are young, we're told again and again that time passes more quickly as one grows older. This has certainly proven to be true in my own life, but never more so than after 1996.
Moreover, just as the process of evolution seems to happen with glacial slowness and then in cataclysmic mutations, the forces of change seem to come in stunning clusters, seemingly from out of nowhere, followed by periods of repetitive quiet that slip by with unnerving speed.
Last week I drove up north for the first time in nearly three years, the longest period without going home since my move to San Diego. Enough time had passed such that as my car descended into the Livermore valley on I-580 for the last hour's stretch, the vista was noticably changed with large new electronic billboards and sleek new car dealerships. There's nothing like a greatly changed landscape to make a person feel like Rip Van Winkle.
It occurred to me during those long hours of driving that this older version of myself hadn't made this trip before. Just as one never steps into the same river more than once.
Southern Californians call freeways "the" I-5 or "the" 101. Northern Californians do not use the "the". I now take the I-5 when I drive from one end of California to the other.
The drive is a long one, a kind of extended meditation, an endurance test, a game, a session of mind control, a tributary of time removed from the river's flow. I calculate and re-calculate mileage and speed, plan when I'll stop, when I'll refuel, and what book on tape I'll listen to. I remember a car trip I took with an old friend from the production business, now deceased, a trip planned not for speed but for the special, quirky sort of adventure that a road trip can be. The I-5 allows the miles to slip by quickly, but other routes with greater narrative value await anyone willing to spend the extra time.
In some ways, my life has become quieter. I leave home less often, I've lost family members and friends, and I'm no longer either driving 500 miles in the blink of an eye at the drop of the hat, nor am I turning road trips into idiosyncratic personal theater. It's been many, many years since I've had two complete sets of work gear and two cars, in two worlds. My work has slowed, and last year for the first time, I had no income to report.
This is not a bad thing. Mostly, my days are spent at home now. This is something that feels good to me, and feels right. I'm not always on the road chasing either a fast trip or an eventful one. I now appreciate my life, my gifts, my marriage, more than ever before. I spend my time keeping my home, making art, interacting online, and doing the writing I'd long promised myself. I'm reminded of the old saying about doors closing and windows opening. Or is it the other way around?
With the passage of time both leisurely and blurry-fast, I've now learned in my soul what I've always intellectually known: except through the power of dream and memory, we can't keep everyone we love with us forever. We can't seize every dream, take every route, and be every version of ourselves. But we can find good paths, and zero in on the goals that matter most.
There will come again someday another year of upheaval where too much happens, where good and bad episodes jam up against eachother and rearrange my life as they did in 1996. Some of this will be purposeful as I push myself to complete my projects. And some of this, outside my control, I steel myself against. And dare not even mention.
That's life.
Road trip. Not a metaphor I invented, but it certainly fits.
For some time, after moving to San Diego for my husband's career in 1996, I continued to seek out and accept freelance corporate video work in the San Francisco Bay Area where I had lived my entire life. This allowed me to retain the source of income I'd enjoyed since 1987 (and, truth be told, a good portion of my identity), but also to ease the overall change.
Once I eventually realized I hadn't lost a home town but had gained a lovely new area and lifestyle, our unexpected 500 mile relocation ceased to be a source of deep anxiety. This relatively unexplored, balmy, less counterculture part of the state proved to be nearly perfect for me; it only remained to reassure myself that my old friends, family, and livelihood was a mere half day's drive away.
And so it was.
But I didn't always take the overland route from point A to B. I'm no longer sure of the sequence, but for a while I managed this new living situation by flying back and forth on Southwest Airlines, maintaining not only two complete sets of work kits, but two cars. The ambivalence demonstrated by this elaborate duplication seems painfully obvious to me now, some fourteen years later, but I didn't question it at the time.
That first year of my new life now has a hazy, dreamlike quality to it.
Just how much was crammed into that time period wasn't clear to me until the other day when I was sorting some boxes of slides. Before digital photography eclipsed film and rendered it a quaint folk art, most of my photography took the form of 35mm slides. I unfailingly sorted them for perhaps the first ten years of our now 30-year marriage. The rest are in unmarked stacks, awaiting my attention.
Looking at these slides a couple of weeks ago, I noted that some time during that blur of a year that was 1996, my husband and I moved to a small furnished apartment in downtown San Diego with our four cats, awaiting our eventual move to a new home in North County some six months later. I had never lived anywhere but in the suburbs, and the urban setting felt unreal. It would be some time before I figured out how to grocery shop there; restaurants proved easier. All of our furnishings and most of my art and craft supplies were packed up and sent away into long-term storage. Life, as I knew it, would clearly be in a kind of holding pattern. I can't recall where we spent Christmas.
This was also the year my husband and I took a trip to the UK for his work; grafted onto this excursion was a side-trip to a small, elegant Human Consciousness conference at Jesus College in Oxford with a difficult friend and writing partner while my husband stayed back in High Wycombe and carried out his work.
There was another conference that year, this one in Tucson, Arizona, a twelve-hour drive away. This was the time of my growing involvement with the lucid dreaming and consciousness community; dreaming and psychology had long been of interest, but my sudden immersion was evidence of restlessness and indecision about my life path. In this quirky world (scientific, but with whiffs of new age-ery) I was making my civilian contributions wherever I could, losing myself in a kind of extended pseudo-academic reverie. It escalated to the point where I spent nights in the Stanford dream lab with electrodes glued to my head, and even co-authored and presented a sound and respectable paper despite lack of any official credentials. Caught up in the magic and yet aware of the limitations of being a fringe player, I toyed briefly with the idea of returning to school for a psychology degree, before coming to my senses and realizing going back to school would, in my case, be a stalling tactic.
More stacks of slides later, I'm reminded this was also the year of our trip to New Zealand. Like England, this too was a trip undertaken for my husband's job. I can remember packing and wearing a spray eau de parfum called Red, new at the time. The scent reminded me of my mother because we'd bought bottles of it around the same time.
The people we met there were unfailingly kind. They fed us, and drove us everywhere, and the scenery was spectacular at every diverse turn; New Zealand seemed like a half dozen marvelous countries combined. We peered into exotic Maori houses, scampered around steam vents and mud pits, savored gourmet food in convivial restaurants, and rowed through quiet caves with ceilings lit by fairytale glowworms. Every day we felt the giddy rush of being further from home on this amazing blue orb than we'd ever been.
All too soon, my husband and I were on the long flight home. For many surrealistically long hours where we'd never fall more than half asleep, we felt the plane drop from the sky again and again in the worst nauseating turbulence we'd ever experienced.
By October, my mother would be losing her year-long battle with colon cancer. My father would later recall a conversation they had about our pending move to San Diego, and that athough her thinking wasn't as sharp as it had once been, she was aware our relocation plans were becoming more definite. I recall the months just prior to her death as a blur of video jobs, staying at my parents' house in my old bedroom and helping my father and sister with her care as best I could. Throughout this, I must have been travelling from one end of the state to the other, but I have no recollection of it.
Our new home was ready in the spring, and we moved in. I'm sure my mother would have loved seeing it.
Our move to San Diego was cushioned by some work benefits, including compensation from my husband's company for what would undoubtedly be my lost income. I spent some of this money in one extravagant and unforgettable night attending a party at the winery estate of Francis Coppola with the idea of casually wearing my fashion designs, theoretically facilitating career contacts with the event's promising guest list. Because hotel rooms in the Rutherford area turned out to be prohibitively expensive, I rented an Airstream trailer to serve as a hotel room, situated in a funny little trees-and-dirt park in Calistoga.
The trailer floor swaying under my high heels, I stepped into my evening gown, put on my makeup in waning sunlight, and stepped out the doorway with my original, elaborately decorated handbag. I walked carefully across the dirt parking lot to my car, drove a winding road leading to the gated estate, and wandered among the rich and famous for one magical night.
* * *
When we are young, we're told again and again that time passes more quickly as one grows older. This has certainly proven to be true in my own life, but never more so than after 1996.
Moreover, just as the process of evolution seems to happen with glacial slowness and then in cataclysmic mutations, the forces of change seem to come in stunning clusters, seemingly from out of nowhere, followed by periods of repetitive quiet that slip by with unnerving speed.
Last week I drove up north for the first time in nearly three years, the longest period without going home since my move to San Diego. Enough time had passed such that as my car descended into the Livermore valley on I-580 for the last hour's stretch, the vista was noticably changed with large new electronic billboards and sleek new car dealerships. There's nothing like a greatly changed landscape to make a person feel like Rip Van Winkle.
It occurred to me during those long hours of driving that this older version of myself hadn't made this trip before. Just as one never steps into the same river more than once.
Southern Californians call freeways "the" I-5 or "the" 101. Northern Californians do not use the "the". I now take the I-5 when I drive from one end of California to the other.
The drive is a long one, a kind of extended meditation, an endurance test, a game, a session of mind control, a tributary of time removed from the river's flow. I calculate and re-calculate mileage and speed, plan when I'll stop, when I'll refuel, and what book on tape I'll listen to. I remember a car trip I took with an old friend from the production business, now deceased, a trip planned not for speed but for the special, quirky sort of adventure that a road trip can be. The I-5 allows the miles to slip by quickly, but other routes with greater narrative value await anyone willing to spend the extra time.
In some ways, my life has become quieter. I leave home less often, I've lost family members and friends, and I'm no longer either driving 500 miles in the blink of an eye at the drop of the hat, nor am I turning road trips into idiosyncratic personal theater. It's been many, many years since I've had two complete sets of work gear and two cars, in two worlds. My work has slowed, and last year for the first time, I had no income to report.
This is not a bad thing. Mostly, my days are spent at home now. This is something that feels good to me, and feels right. I'm not always on the road chasing either a fast trip or an eventful one. I now appreciate my life, my gifts, my marriage, more than ever before. I spend my time keeping my home, making art, interacting online, and doing the writing I'd long promised myself. I'm reminded of the old saying about doors closing and windows opening. Or is it the other way around?
With the passage of time both leisurely and blurry-fast, I've now learned in my soul what I've always intellectually known: except through the power of dream and memory, we can't keep everyone we love with us forever. We can't seize every dream, take every route, and be every version of ourselves. But we can find good paths, and zero in on the goals that matter most.
There will come again someday another year of upheaval where too much happens, where good and bad episodes jam up against eachother and rearrange my life as they did in 1996. Some of this will be purposeful as I push myself to complete my projects. And some of this, outside my control, I steel myself against. And dare not even mention.
That's life.
Road trip. Not a metaphor I invented, but it certainly fits.
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