Moving Days

This has been a sticky, sweaty, unrepentant month of DC summer--and a month of moving. I'm not someone who takes well to liminal spaces.  I speak no second languages because I can't bear the in-between of faltering, approximated phrases. I've been known to char sponges and dish towels because I start cleaning the stove before the burner is off. So it's very hard for me to function in these sprawling days; my instinct is to line up, to square away, to settle. As we have hand-carried our lives into this place, one box and bag at a time, the building itself has been mid-facelift as well. This should be our last week of scaffolding (and its accordant 8 AM wake-up call of construction clatter); the halls smell like new paint. Patience. 

When moving, writers are always preoccupied by the question Will I be able to write here? And the panicked answer is almost always, initially, No. Or to be more precise: Noooooo. The chair I used for three books is gone, the leather seat having worn away to flakes and threads. What has been my desk now feels, more than ever, like a dining table. The overhead fan makes a regular, undeniable clicking noise. All of which has had me lying awake at night, terrified that I've Made the Wrong Decision and Will Never Write Again. 

The antidote to this abstract and paralyzing fear is as simple as writing, of course. I'll get there. Part of growing older is learning to ignore my inner Harbinger of Doom and Self-Doubt. 

One must take comfort in small pleasures, like pint glasses that have been chilled in the freezer beforehand, from which one drinks Boddinger's Pub Ale while muddling through hour two of sorting fifteen years' worth of cds while one sits on a bare floor. When one really should be writing. Because one is overdue on three major deadlines. 

A beacon of encouragement has been that this will be a place where I cook. Often. Enthusiastically. There is a spice rack. The oven need not double as a storage unit for six pans. I can actually open my fridge AND my dishwasher, all the way--O the novelty! Because our apartment approximates tropical rainforest levels of humidity, and because my love works evenings, we've been experimenting with the art of the "odds & ends" lunch that consumes the day's perishables. So far my favorite has been a linguine based with onion, bacon, and red peppers, with avocado added for creaminess. Sauté all of that together with salt, pepper, and chili flakes, fold in a little spinach and squeeze in some lemon juice before serving--voila. Cooking is a creative process. If I can improvise with flavors, words will follow. 

I've also relished being back in town for readings, which included hearing Katherine Hill at Politics & Prose yesterday to celebrate the release of her debut novel, The Violet Hour. Her images were tight--she has a poet's ear for metaphor, but curbs it in proportion to dialogue. The premise, a family's outing on a boat, set up the right balance of claustrophobia, humor, and tangible action. She had a standing-room-only crowd and a long Q&A; the book sold out. At her reception afterwards, Katherine's father--a fellow Board member at the Writer's Center--poured glasses of cava spiked with creme de violette, while his wife prepped a cake made in the image of the book's cover. "Did I do all right?" she asked them, which is the exact same question I ask my parents after every reading. Yes, you did, Katherine. In fact you kinda kicked ass. So thrilling when you can feel the electricity of a book that is going to be big, and deserves to be.

Long story short, I am laying low for a bit. Not even reading--except for the Sunday New York Times, which now miraculously appears on my doorstep each week. I am unpacking. Perspiring. Conspiring. Devising salads. Debating "lemongrass" versus "jade" as a rug color. Wondering how to curb the ripening of bananas. Re-acquainting myself with Tryst. Updating addresses in umpteen databases. Cleaning closets. Pondering file cabinets. Figuring out the most efficient elevator routes for a building with nine external doors. Meeting the new neighbors, like this epic pup, who seems to share my disposition toward this weather. Onwards.  Sometimes, the secret to a move is just that you gotta keep moving. 

Oh! And before I forget, I have one lil' reading in August--at Baked and Wired, my sister's favorite Georgetown spot--with some vagabonds of poetry: Justin Boening, Miriam Bird Greenberg, and John Fenlon Hogan. Justin won the Poetry Society of America's National Chapbook Fellowship with "Self-Portrait as a Missing Person," and this fall he'll be the Stadler Fellow at Bucknell University. Miriam teaches ESL in San Francisco (when not wandering) and has had stints at both P-Town and as a Stegner Fellow. John has had work popping up all over the place, including Boston Review and Quarterly West. Diana Khoi Nguyen, who is organizing it all, is a powerhouse of poetry herself, a Columbia grad and a recent Bread Loaf waiter. Frankly, I'm not sure I'm cool enough to be part of this line-up. But I'm excited to hear these new voices. The "Omission Summer Poetry Tour" stops off in DC at 6 PM on Monday, August 5, free. 

Workin'

This would have felt like the longest day no matter what, because I spent seven straight hours of it completing a grant application. But it is the solstice, the literal longest day of sun all year. My hair is also long these days and right now, like a fairy-tale princess, rippled. That's because I tucked it into a bun on Wednesday while it was still soaking wet, where it then stayed for eight hours straight. Because I am Working--and it's been a while since I felt that pressure of must be clean & must look professional. 

Three days a week I am going to my old office to send emails, corral files, and get things in order. A lot (books!) has happened since I last worked there, but the vocabulary of itineraries and rolos remains the same. As of late I have dusted, pitched defunct CD players, and pulled dead leaves off a valiant but struggling purple plant of unknown origin. There's several cabinets of papers to compress and label. There's about a zillion cards and letters to answer. Why is it so satisfying to do these tasks for someone else, these things we eternally put off when it comes to our own lives?


I am profoundly grateful for this opportunity to help out my former employers. We come to working together in a far better and more equitable place than before, at ease with each other's rhythms and idiosyncrasies. And frankly, it feels good to have an hourly wage again, to have stretches when my time is invested in someone else's priorities and creative output. As I type that I look around, worriedly, like someone is going to come and take my "full-time writer" license away. Eh. When I tell students of creative writing to resist falling into the assumption they must primarily teach to support themselves--to choose that path only if it truly appeals--I mean it. But everyone's got to pay the bills. In fact, I would urge those looking for work that dovetails with a writing life to investigate whether their local college has a retiring professor who needs help prepping papers for donation. It can be sneaky, fascinating work, filled with stories.

Is there a job you'd return to, if you could? Knowing what you do now?

The news has been shared elsewhere that a selection from my third collection (in the hands of editors now) has won the 2013 Center for Book Arts chapbook prize, judged by Harryette Mullin and Sharon Dolin, and will be published in a letterpress, limited edition of 100 copies come this fall. Having stood at the Center's table during many an AWP Bookfair, gazing longingly at the array, it's surreal to think my work will soon be among them. The award comes with a bit of money, which gets added to a substantial freelance assignment I'm working on right now, which gets added to my pay from the work described above, which equals a summer's worth of rent. 

The thing is, and it's healthy to be transparent about this, no one of these gigs could be reliably multiplied into "making a living." For the one contest I won, I spent hours and $$$ applying to a half-dozen more (with many of the same poems!) to no effect. Though I expect this freelance essay to run on time, or close to it, there are several more mired in editorial limbo and therefore unpaid. I couldn't and wouldn't return to my old job five days a week; that would minimize the possibility of writing new poems, much less touring to read them. So, I juggle, which is the true task of the full-time writer. It's a Friday night, at 10:30 PM, and here I am trying to rally to get back to work.

This post is not illustrated with me at a desk, or me up to my elbows in dust and bent file folders. Instead I'm sharing snapshots of "The Commission," a one-night art installation in Charlottesville, courtesy of Virginia Center for Creative Arts; a book arts exhibit at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art in Charleston; a glimpse of the seashore at Folly Beach, from the end of the pier; a glimpse of the marsh (and bordering roses) that line the other side of the island; and below, the set at intermission--waiting for the comedy to commence--of The Shakespeare Theatre's The Winters Tale, which I attended with my dad for Father's Day. 

Not pictured: a sunburned shoulder, NOPA's brussels sprouts, and Star Trek: Into Darkness. These have also been a part of my crazy, busy June. That's the thing about work, though we knock it, though we whine. Work yields play. Wine tastes sweeter after a day of thirst. Let me go test that theory now, and I'll get back to you.

Memorial Day Weekend

On Monday, I'll go my first Nationals game since back in town--Washington vs. Baltimore, kicking off a series--in the company of a poet-friend who is longtime Orioles fan, and who will wear the jersey and all. Eeek. Besmirching our section with orange and black! (Luckily even sworn enemies can come together over beer and french fries; besides, back in the family Ripken days, my father and I would trek to Camden Yards.) 

As we file into the ballpark they will hand us little American flags, a reminder that it is Memorial Day. It was May 5, 1868, when a General who headed a veteran's organization called for a "Decoration Day"--decreeing that all the graves of the Union dead should be adorned--and officials chose May 30, because that was thought to be when flowers would be at the height of bloom. For 100 years it was celebrated on a fixed date. Now we celebrate it on the last-May Monday because of the "Uniform Monday Holiday Act" (yes, really) which Congress passed in 1968 to give us more three-day weekends. As Lyndon B. Johnson declared when he signed it (as the Uniform Holiday Bill), "The Monday holiday will stimulate greater industrial and commercial production, sparing business and labor the penalty of midweek shutdowns."

In an email earlier today, I was describing to a friend this strange and somewhat painful tipping point in which we fully commit to living in this year--and just as suddenly, the year's end is in sight. In two weeks I'll be in Charleston for the Piccolo Spoleto festival, a reading combined with the indulgence of getting an oceanfront room on Folly Beach for a night. Last night, over a Moscow Mule, I worked out a summer schedule to assist a mentor and old boss by returning to her office three days a week. September book travels to Nashville and Lexington are set. In November I'll be in Iowa for a Distinguished Writer gig. But that'll be with a new apartment waiting back home, to be shared with my love. By December I'll probably have to admit I have a wedding ceremony coming up, and should do some planning. For now, my thoughts on the value of weddings are captured perfectly by this excerpt from this weekend's Augusten Burroughs edition of "Modern Love":

For me, saying “I am married now” is like saying “I am lucky now.” I stumbled and crashed my way into the literal arms of something I never quite believed in before: my soul mate. A man who frequently smells like cheeseburgers and makes me laugh hard every day and makes me want to be worthy of being his husband.

That trumps the loss of “boyfriend” and having to withstand the silent judgment of: “Huh, so you’re the wife. I wondered how that worked.”

Getting married felt as if the city clerk was looking at us and saying, “Admit it, just admit it.” And we were smiling and laughing because it was true and we both knew it. So we each said, “Yeah, I do.”

Life never pauses. Another email I wrote today was to a friend asking for advice on freelance. What I always answer: assess your skills, network, don't be afraid to ask. What I always think: Bluff! The opportunities you get are directly proportional to the opportunities you project being accustomed to getting.

In the South, where Confederate dead might be buried miles away from home, Memorial Day was historically celebrated with a trek, perhaps a religious service, and a picnic graveside. You put a tablecloth down on the grass and you visit with your dead. In a perfect world I would take my little red, white & blue flag and, after the baseball game, drive to National Memorial Park Cemetery out on Lee Highway in Arlington. I would plant the flag by my Grandpa Marvin's grave and the sit down to chat with my Grandma Beasley. She died not that long after I had the news of my second and third books, right as I was deciding to quit my editing job and try to support myself as a writer.

It's going all right, I would start by saying, because she worries. I'd talk about my fiancé, this sweet lanky Florida-born painter, and I'd ask to hear the story about meeting my grandfather on the steps of Rice University, then reuniting with a high school sweetheart many years after being widowed. Did you actually like keeping parakeets, or was that for Joe's sake? What was the fanciest event you ever attended in DC? I'd get around to asking if she ever had eaten an avocado, if she liked them, or if that shade of green was just an abstract concept in her house. I would tell her I miss playing Scrabble. I'd ask her forgiveness for not bringing flowers the last time I saw her. I would admit that I worry, too. I would ask what songs she knew by heart. 

I thought I wanted to write a book about traveling. But perhaps I already did that, in poems. Maybe now I want to write a book about staying right here.