ut omnia bene

wolf

2012-02-02T19:22:00.000-08:00

Nicholas, tail in the air, head down, goes in for the kill.

He sinks his teeth deep into the ropetoy, those teeth the end result of hundreds of years of wolf-to-dog evolution. Hegnaws and chews, but always his eyes come up over the chew toy, then downagain, up over the chew toy, then down again. A break in canine concentration. Ithink canine can mean dog or wolf, but if we were talking wolf concentration,it would be straight on that toy, riveted on the prey, no room for distraction.

Brown eyes up over the chew toy, thendown again. Nicholas relaxes into his butchery, tail and butt down, paws aroundthe victim, strands between his teeth.

Eyes upover the rope toy.

Again.

To makesure I’m watching.

keyword

2012-01-27T07:00:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I like to look at my blogger stats just to chuckle at the keyword searches that bring unsuspecting folks to my blog. Most of these probably bounce out again, but it's fun to see all the varied subjects. Here are some I've gathered over this past month...

faberge..........................................................[it's this]

shadow the face with lamp on the paper................[this]

1930's hollywood images................................[not sure]

lady weeping funny.........................................[not sure]

drawing of couples on a boat..............................[nope]

eighteenth century duck......................................[um?]

a taste of the frozen moment..........................[ok, lots]

fred astaire costume...................................[must be this]

[and the image that that unsuspecting person found...]

snowflakes on windows.......................[well, there's this.]
...................................................................[and this]

how do i groom down there..................................[uh]
...........................[i have to thank b. frayn masters for that one...]

constructivist poster lenin...................................[this]
..............................................[one of my favorite displays]

world ends mayan banner..............................[no idea]

body benne girl...........................................[hmm...]

And most popular of all:

woman jumping out of cake......................................

woman out of cake....................................................

girl jumping out of cake...............................................

naked woman jumping out of cake...............................

naked cake woman.....................................................

girl naked calendar ....................................................

girls jumping out of kakes..........................................

[undoubtedly the biggest reason for hits on my blog. there are a million people out there looking for pictures of women jumping out of cakes. most of them are probably disappointed to find out that it's something to read, and more than half are probably disappointed to find out that the picture isn't that naked. the piece is here.]

a taste of the frozen moment: HOW TO DISSOLVE

2012-01-18T07:53:00.000-08:00

[the book is THE FROZEN MOMENT. the publication date was DECEMBER 17th. here's a little TASTE of one of the stories...]

HOW TO DISSOLVE by Christine Calfas

the dark asked me to marry him this week, and i said yes. i kissed him on the mouth, and a sweet musky taste came on my tongue. like earth. wet earth.

[Christine Calfas is a professional actor, performance artist and singer. She also writes. See her in the film noir short: THE BIG BLACK DARK by Brian Padian. You can follow her work at www.christinecalfas.com. ]

The Frozen Moment can be ordered through Publication Studio here or in person at Publication Studios in Portland, Oregon,Berkeley, California,Vancouver, BC, Toronto, Ontario,and someplace the Publication Studio website calls the Midwest Radical CultureCorridor. In Portland, look for the anthology also in select bookstores, including Powell's City of Books.

frozen moment reading night

2012-01-17T18:52:00.000-08:00

It was another lovely reading, last night, for The Frozen Moment. I was a little worried about the snow, of course, since we in Portland get a little nuts with any bit of a dusting, but we had a good turn-out. EAT at Crow Arts Manor is a cool spot for a reading. The event space is a nook just off from the bar and tables, so you have the best of both worlds - refreshment without too much noisiness. In our nook, we had church pews set up facing the stage [plus a tiny plastic children's set of table and chairs, which I kind of wanted to sit in] and great swaths of orange fabric swagged overhead.

Editor Colin Farstad was all stylish in suit coat and tie, giving everyone a sweet and personal and sometimes funny intro. I was first in the lineup, and as I stepped up on stage, there was a sudden scuffle of techs trying to figure out why we were getting that awful buzz from the speakers. I stood there at the podium. Someone in the audience called out, "entertain us!" I leaned into the mic and sang, "Let me entertain you..." and got a little laugh but was smart enough to not keep going. Colin stood and said, "Shall we do a song and dance?" and for one crazy moment, I thought he was serious, that we should think of something to sing. My impulse to sing in public is always so great that if I get an opportunity, even a teeny one like this, my brain goes blank of all the songs in the world. Tom Spanbauer was sitting right there in the front row, and at a recent party he and I did a lovely, if awkward duet of Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend, but then Colin said, "I don't know how to dance," and I said "check, check, check" into the mic and some guy turned a dial, and the buzzing quieted.

I read the first ten minutes of my story "Book Club." Had a nice reaction from the audience, some good laughs. I loved that I'd been chosen to go first, because then I got to sit back down, relax and just watch the show...

Elva Redwood, all punk elegant in gown and feather boa with her bangs spiked up. British accent, saying the one thing you need to do is suspend your disbelief and picture that her narrator comes from Southern California. Reading slow and smooth - her voice matching her steamy-dreamy language - about a young woman's down-deep reaction to the baby inside her.

It was one of those nights I got pregnant. I know exactly when it was because it was my mistake.

Us awake in the late night. In the tacked on bedroom of our cabin, far from the wood stove. Hearing Doug fir and sugar pines, long feathery arms brush the roof. Big sops of snow slipping down.

Holly Goodman reading her entire story, an intensely personal piece that got me choked up by about halfway in and left me in a bit of a state by the end. It's beautifully constructed and elegantly crafted, but it's also very close - to the hard time in my own life.

All of us standing at the ticket counter, checking luggage, but him not going.

Security is the end of the line for Sam.

"I love you," he says. "I wish I was going."

He's hugging and I'm not hugging back.

"I know," I say.

I can't say I wish he was going too.

"That's it?" he says. "You know?"

He's crying into the glass wall of a newsstand, head against the window, when I look back, and I hate myself.

Nora Robertson pulling me back into my body with two poems from her series Body-Making Cookery, a lush and visceral collection of poetry that explores the ties between food and sex, fertility, personal history, human connection, desire, belief... She read "Sun Tea," which is featured in The Frozen Moment, and "How to Boil an Egg," which was nominated for a Push Cart Prize and expanded into the short film The Body Show in 2010.

I would run my hands over and over my belly. I imagined it taut. I imagined the nine months of waiting, of growing rounder. I didn't care anymore about the kids who avoided me at passing time and or whether my thighs were too chubby. I whispered to myself, I am strong and I can give birth. On my futon, cradled in the lush black, I had a dream that a thousand small frogs tumbled from between my legs in a rush of gray-green water, tiny and writhing.

Kathleen Lane opening the second half after an interlude of music, with one of my all-time favorite short stories, "In the Jetway," which starts with one of the funniest first lines ever and then shoots out transcendent and keeps going. I could talk forever about the quirky greatness of her voice, but I won't. I'll let it speak for itself:

Right now, I could lick that bald man's neck. I could just stick my tongue out and lick that man's neck and no one could stop me.

A person could just lick another person's neck.

The bald man would probably jump a little, that's probably what he'd do. He'd probably whip around and look at me.

Did you just lick me, he'll say, more loudly than necessary because I'm standing right there. And I'll say, yes, I did lick you, because it would be a difficult thing to deny.

[did you see what she did, there, with her verbs? how she went from i could to i would to i will? masterful.]

Gage Mace giving us an excellent impersonation of JFK in his intro and then launching into his piece with a dramatic flair. Reading about the disconnect between a father and a son, giving us, at least in this part of the story, a kid narrator - funny, real, without cutesy sentimentality. It's hard to write "kid," and Gage has got it down.

I'd been begging for a bicycle since first grade, but Mom and Dad wouldn't let me have one until I was eight. I kept telling them I'd been ready since before I was seven, but Dad said to stop asking or I wouldn't get one even when I was eight. But eight lasted a whole year, and my birthday went by with no bicycle.

Kevin Meyer, up on stage with his iPad, ready to read electronically until he realized the print was too small and had to grab a copy of the book. Power of voice [that confidence, that edge of dry wit, that sense of simple inevitability] pulling us from the announcement of a death, through the plane ride home, almost through a doggy door, and stopping just short of the blood.

Daniela's father, my father-in-law, died the kind of alone that left his body dead on the floor of his laundry room for two days before he was found. Wednesday, sometime in the morning, they think, he hit his head, bled to death. It wasn't until Friday we found out.

and further [when they find out]:

Daniela pinched her phone between her ear and her shoulder. She drank the glass of wine in one chug, then poured herself another. Tipped the bottle damn near upside down, and the wine came out in gasps that splashed purple on the tablecloth.

Christine Calfas rounding out the evening with two offerings. First a vocal performance from her one-woman show "Sounding Hecate," which she sang, accompanying herself on harmonium, her sweet, clear voice and her lyrics doing a lovely, languid dance around one, long droning note. Then her poem from The Frozen Moment, which is deep, dark and lucious.

an ancestor whispered in my ear. she huffed. blew smoke from her pipe. in norway it snows for months and the dark eats her family up, the dark swallows her house, and they live in its belly like a winter whale.

what a world of fools is this. none of us knows now to die.

Great turnout, great readings, great evening. Plus, I got to see lots of family and friends, got to meet an e-friend and fellow writer I'd been looking forward to meeting for a long time, got to do a little signing of the book, and at the end of things, a woman came up to me and told me how much she'd particularly loved my piece.

...Then the woman started talking all about narrators licking people's necks, but I didn't tell her she'd gotten the wrong brunette.

a moment in the day: mane

2012-01-15T10:18:00.000-08:00

I walk Nicholas in the Portland snow. When I woke up, it was fairy tale snow with big confetti flakes, but now it's just a shaker of salt. Snow used to be another of the games I played. Snow was a contract with a circus we wanted to work for or a favorable letter in the mail from a literary agent or a promise that, if that letter in the mail was just another of those tiny pre-printed slips, at least sometime in the future what I wanted was going to happen.

It was an easy game, because at the time I lived in Wisconsin.

I've been trying lately to wash all of those games out of my head, but when I saw the snow, first thing this morning, I had to stop myself and remind myself that snow is snow is snow.

Nicholas doesn't think anything of the bits of ice falling from the sky, just walks down the sidewalk, sniffing. The streets are wet. The only place the snow is sticking is in the black mane of the tiny toy horse tied to the hitching ring at the edge of the sidewalk.

a dream of reading

2012-01-15T09:58:00.000-08:00

Morning of the second Frozen Moment reading. I dreamed the reading took place in a church. After some of the contributors had read, the thing had turned into some sort of open mic reading, and it had gone on so long, the audience was leaving. Now there was just a scatter in the pews. I hadn't read yet and Kevin Meyer, all the way from San Francisco, hadn't read yet, and there was a woman on stage talking in a long monotone with words I didn't understand.

She started walking down the side aisle, still reading, getting quieter and quieter like the fadeout of a song, and everyone started applauding, but she said, back at her seat now, "I'm not done yet!"

But she was, and she got up and put her whole hand on top of my head and said, "I want her to read next."

Up on stage, I somehow had decided to read from one of my children's books instead. The lights were in my eyes. I looked down at the [blue-purple] fingers of my hand and wondered why I couldn't see the words written there. I tried to recite from memory. I looked up and Kevin was gone.

a taste of the frozen moment: BOOK CLUB

2012-01-15T06:00:00.000-08:00

[the book is THE FROZEN MOMENT. the publication date is DECEMBER 17th. here's a little TASTE of one of the stories...]

OK, so I keep forgetting to do one for myself. Here's a piece of my story Book Club.

I figured the whole thing with the affair was okay, because,when it came down to it, I wasn’t doing it for myself.

Kimbo was the one who wanted the sex. Oh, I’m not saying I didn’t get anything outof it, but mostly I was doing it for him. He really, really wanted it, and I didn’t like disappointing people.

That day, I have to say, I wasn’t disappointed either. It was a Monday, of course, and he was alwaysbetter on Mondays than on Thursdays. Sometimes I thought about asking him why he was good on Mondays, but Ifigured that would be like saying he wasn’t good on Thursdays, so Ididn’t. I just lay back against thelumpy mattress of the fold-out couch—he liked using his fold-out couch because,he said, that way he wouldn’t be disturbed by dreams of yearning for me when heslept alone in his bed at night. Now, helay long down the length of the mattress, tipped up on one side, elbow in thepillow and his chin in his hand in a way that said his smile was so heavy hehad to concentrate to keep his head held up.

Kimbo looking at me, Kimbo beautiful in the way I figuredthat guy who played Alfalfa was probably beautiful when he grew up—little boyeyes and too many freckles.

“So, here’s what we do,” he said. “We seal our secret love with a tattoo.”

I'll will be reading along with contributors Kevin Meyer, Kathleen Lane, Christine Calfas, Gage Mace, Nora Robertson, Dian Greenwood, Elva Redwood and Holly Goodman at Crow Arts Manor on January 15th. You can also order The Frozen Moment through Publication Studio here.

the north plan

2012-01-14T07:09:00.000-08:00

So, there was a moment somewhere in the middle of The North Plan where I laughed that kind of laugh that shoots out of your mouth and echoes over the heads of the people in front of you and you miss the next couple lines because you're thinking about how embarrassed your husband is.

I want to admit that as we were sitting in the theater waiting for the show to start, as I was reading the Director's Notes in the program*, and Rose Riordan wrote that, "the unleashing of the character Tanya Shepke will go down in PCS history," I thought, oh no. I thought, this is going to be some overdrawn, overacted, overblown caricature who everyone's going to think is hilarious and who's going to get on my nerves. Nothing against Rose Riordan; anytime a character is lauded like that, I get ready to be annoyed. But she was thoroughly enjoyable. Total off the wall ADD motormouth, shooting f bombs with perfect timing. When she was hilarious right away, I thought, OK, when's this going to wear thin, and it didn't wear thin.

Kate Eastwood Norris as Tanya Shepke. So good. [you can't see it, but perfect costume too.] [oh, i just realized she's flipping off the camera in this picture...]

I laughed through the whole show. All the characters were funny in their own way, all had this great mix of ridiculous and real. The writing was so smart, and the actors each were so good, there was such - again - pitch perfect timing. One of my favorite moments was a great deadpan back and forth between Tim True [always love him in PCS productions] and Ashley Everage in which he said ___ and she said ___ - oh, heck, I hate spoilers. Just go watch it. The play is a modern screwball comedy about conspiracy theories and renegade government, and going into it, I worried that I'd get lost in the plot-line, that I'd have to remember and interpret all sorts of complex and convoluted twists. When the pace of the show seemed so fast right off the bat, I again worried that I'd get lost in things. But in the end, it's a simple plot and the candy in this particular show is its craft. The thing you're sitting there devouring and loving is the craft of the writing, the craft of the acting, the craft of direction.

Brian Patrick Monahan as Carlton Berg. Just enough edge of panic in his portrayal that you were reminded that, as the conspiracy theory guy, he might be crazy. [who set up these pictures? i love how his eye is looking at the camera.]

At intermission, I told Stephen that now was the time you had to worry if the show was going to jump the shark. All the set up was smart and hilarious, but as the plot started gathering steam and winding toward its conclusion, it might start to strain and become the wrong kind of ridiculous. There was a moment just as the second half started, when Tanya entered the scene, where a few lines were an expected kind of funny, but then it took off again, and new particular, funny characters were introduced, and things were different enough to be fresh.

If I had to take issue with anything in the play, I could take issue with the ending - it was definitely audacious but was it right or wrong for ___ to ___ and then for ___to ___? I wasn't completely sure. Stephen and I left questioning and discussing, and in the end, isn't that what you want to do as you're leaving the theater? I'd love to hear what others think of the ending, and I'd highly recommend the show. It's at Portland Center Stage through February 5.

*Can I mention that I love the PCS always includes a couple features in their program - the Director's Notes and at least one background article about the show? When I go to plays at other theaters and don't get this extra stuff in the program, I'm always disappointed.

a moment in the day: green star

2012-01-13T12:52:00.000-08:00

I get on the elevator with my cart. The cart is empty now but for the last month or two it’s been sitting in the middle of my workspace full of holiday detritus - bits of garland, holiday shelf talkers, wrapping paper rolls. All through the holidays, the cart and the empty holiday decoration boxes, all the clutter have been making my brain feel itchy, but now that the decorations are down and packed away and I’m getting it all out of my workspace, I feel a little sad. At the place where the top shelf of the cart meets the wooden back, the crease is scattered with tiny bits of tinsel and a single green foil star.

There’s one other person on the elevator, a young guy wearing a bright green t-shirt and looking at his cell phone. He looks up and smiles like you do when you forget you’re supposed to avoid people’s eyes on elevators.

“Having a good workday?” he says.

“Yes,” I say, and pick up the green foil star. “I found a star.”

“Nice,” he says.

“It matches your shirt,” I say. “You should have it.” I reach the star out.

“Hey, thanks,” he says, and takes it. The doors open, and he leaves the elevator, looking at the star on his finger.

beast

2012-01-13T08:18:00.000-08:00

It wasn't late, but it was dark. Nicholas had the leash on the woman with the lap, and he was leading her down the sidewalk.

Up ahead a Christmas tree lay on its side at the edge of the road. Nicholas stopped short, sniffing. Even on its side, the Christmas tree was much taller than Nicholas, much bulkier, much pointier, but Nicholas put up his hackles and lowered his head and growled his most menacing.

The Christmas tree lay in the shadows, quiet but ready.

a taste of the frozen moment: DISCONNECT

2012-01-13T06:42:00.000-08:00

[the book is THE FROZEN MOMENT. the publication date is DECEMBER 17th. here's a little TASTE of one of the stories...]

DISCONNECT by Holly Goodman

I’m on the #75 bus with Baby Lila smelling like a pancake breakfast beside me the morning The Zone slips its hot little hands around my phone and ganks it clean out of my pocket. Way I was always losing things Sam used to say I had a Zone of my own, a personal wormhole that sucked in my things and spit them back at me ages after I stopped needing or wanting or looking for them. Said there was meaning in the things it took and if I listened close I’d get the message. The last three years of our marriage, I wished it would open up and suck him in.

Never came through for me, though. I had to end it the old fashion way with therapists and texts and a double-long U-Haul in the driveway. I got a new apartment for me and the girls and we got to know city bus schedules down to the minute.

Weekdays the #75 runs every 15.

[Holly Goodman lives and writes in Portland, Oregon. Her short stories, essays and reporting have appeared in The Journal, Literary Mama, and various magazines and newspapers. She is a past winner of The Journal's Alumni Flash Fiction writing contest and is currently at work on her first novel.]

Holly will be reading along with contributors Kevin Meyer, Kathleen Lane, Gage Mace, Nora Robertson, Dian Greenwood, Elva Redwood and Gigi Little at Crow Arts Manor on January 15th. You can also order The Frozen Moment through Publication Studio here.

a taste of the frozen moment: THE HOLE

2012-01-10T06:00:00.000-08:00

[the book is THE FROZEN MOMENT. the publication date is DECEMBER 17th. here's a little TASTE of one of the stories...]

THE HOLE by Gage Mace

Dad had a Hole he carried around in him and passed on to me and my brother and sister. It was kind of an heirloom, handed down from generation to generation. A cold, black, raging Hole that was a prison with enough empty space to trick you into thinking it was freedom.

[Gage has been a broadcaster, visual artist, and teacher besides being a writer, and has held every kind of day job from limo driver to museum guard. He is a member of Tom Spanbauer's Dangerous Writers group and is hard at work finishing his first novel, The Big Happy Later On.]

Gage will be reading along with contributors Kevin Meyer, Kathleen Lane, Holly Goodman, Christine Calfas, Nora Robertson, Dian Greenwood, Elva Redwood and Gigi Little at Crow Arts Manor on January 15th. You can order The Frozen Moment through Publication Studio here.

a taste of the frozen moment: YOU SAID BOY

2012-01-04T06:30:00.000-08:00

[the book is THE FROZEN MOMENT. the publication date is DECEMBER 17th. here's a little TASTE of one of the stories...]

YOU SAID BOY by Tori Malcangio

You were hardlyshowing that day. The minor bump under your t-shirt could have easily beenmistaken for a large meal. Thoughat five months along, you’d probably already Googled “Down syndrome” everymorning, every night, every moment the reality grew physicallyintolerable. I imagine you let your long fingers tap, tap out the two words on your keyboard because it was theclosest thing to regurgitating them. In your desperate search did you secretlyhope to run across an herb or yoga pose to stop the Syndrome, wherever it wasat that point, and hold him steady at almost, not quite full-blown Downs? Though at that point, everything hadalready been cast in flesh and bone.

[Tori Malcangio is a freelance advertising copywriter, mom, cereal expert,ninja, etc. in San Diego. Current Pushcart Prize nominee; Winner of 2010 WaasmodeFiction Prize; Finalist in 2010 Iowa Review Fiction Contest. Publications:ZYZZYVA; Passages North; Smokelong Quarterly; Pearl Magazine; Literary Mama;The Reader; and more. Story forthcoming in Cream City Review. MFA candidate at Bennington College. Oh, the mom blog that'sanything but: halfassedmom.com.]

Tori and fellow The Frozen Moment contributors Nicole Vollrath, Andrew Printer and Judy Reeves will read from the Anthology on Sunday, January 21, at The Ink Spot in San Diego. Publication date for The Frozen Moment anthology is December 17th. You can order books through Publication Studio here.

new year's picture

2012-01-01T12:48:00.000-08:00

And one more picture, to finish up my last post. Actually, this doesn't completely belong, as it was taken after midnight on January first.

We spent New Year's just the two of us, doing what we like to do. Champagne and good food and a movie. For me, the food was cheese. For me the food is always cheese. A bit of delice de Bourgogne, (more than a bit) (and then more), a bit of mimolette, a bit of morbier. Stephen had two things. The first was bacon-wrapped steak. The second was bacon. Oh, and plantain chips. The champagne was two kinds. Cava, actually, for most of the watching of the movie and Veuve Clicquot for the New Year's toast. We opened the Veuve Clicquot at the start of the movie to be ceremonious, had a toast and a glass, and then saved another glass for the end. [hmm, that sounds like we drank two bottles. i want to go on record saying we didn't finish either.]

The movie was Yankee Doodle Dandy, the James Cagney biopic of George M. Cohan. Maybe it seems like a better movie for the Fourth of July, but the pageantry of musicals is always good for New Year's Eve, and there's nothing like ringing out the old year with James Cagney tap-dancing down the White House steps.

I like to play a game where the image that's on the screen when we clink glasses for a New Year's kiss is going to represent the coming year. I did it last year and got Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing cheek to cheek. [wrote about it here.] This year, this is what Stephen and I got.

If you look close, in the foreground are two glasses of the good stuff, and in the background are Cagney and costar Joan Leslie as an old couple drinking tea.

Two toasts for 2012. If you wanted to interpret this image, you might look at the whole film and note that in this moment this couple is looking back on a lifetime of accomplishments and about to embark on their greatest accomplishment of all. Or you might note that they're two old people drinking tea. Either way, it's cozy.

2011, a year of blessings in pictures

2011-12-31T20:30:00.000-08:00

January.

Work. [a couple shots of my new workspace at powell's, which stephen designed.]

Theater. [imaginary invalid at portland center stage - and miss christine calfas.]

Art. [stephen's show exquisite allegory at winston wächter fine art in seattle.]

February.

Work. [window displays.]

[one flew over the cuckoo's nest - books plus t-shirts plus co-promoting with portland center stage, which was doing the theatrical version.]

[wacky family books, highlighting the new novel drinking closer to home by jessica blau.]

More art [stephen's artist talk at "sweet night" at winston wächter.]

Love. [valentine's day - here are the cards we made each other. first, stephen's to me. then below, mine to him.]

March.

Gifts. [one page out of the scrapbook mary made us.]

More window displays.

[2011 smallpressapalooza.]

Readings.

[tom spanbauer and margaret malone at hot off the press.]

[with rick j, anatoly molotkov and john sibley williams at spokensong.]

[with margaret malone, colin farstad and nora robertson [pictured] among others at a night of story and song - note the giant eyeball over my head.]

[with sheila ashdown and megan zabel at workers' writes reading for the third issue of ne'er-do-well literary magazine.]

April.

Art. [stephen at the symposium "the figure in contemporary art" at the tacoma art museum.]

More readings. [dangerous writers contingent at lidia yuknavich's event for chronology of water at powell's city of books.]

Publication. [my essay "mariel at the tent flaps" in thumbnail magazine.]

Celebration.

[get it? thumbnail?

everything's small?]

May.

Theater. [our quick stint as part of the greek chorus in opera theater oregon's "sordid lives."]

Art. [stephen wins the artists wanted power of self grand prize.]

[i have a small piece in the "pressure and release" art show at local 5's gallery.]

June.

[some readings are bigger than others... with karen munro and susan scott, reading from our pieces in the pacific northwest reader, at the olympia public library.]

[our audience.]

[ok, it grew by show time... a little...]

Birthday. [my homemade card from stephen.]

July.

Birthday. [this time, stephen's. here's my card to him.]

Fun with good friends.
[dw swarm, plus cymbalman.]

Reorganizing. [we moved the apartment around to give each of us a better studio.]

[mine.]

[and below, stephen's.]

August.

Nicholas! [the day we met him.]

[the day he came to live with us.]

[more.]

Anniversary.

[my card to stephen.]

[stephen's card to me.]

September.

Activity / celebration. [hiking in the gorge with stephen and nicholas.]

[watching vaux swifts at chapman school.]

October.

Performance.
[richard foreman mini festival.]

[sharing at share.]

November.

Family. [mom and dad come to visit. to see us but mostly to see nicholas.]

[meeting him in the hallway.]

[what the men do while the women are goo-gooing over the doggy.]

Writing [finishing the novel]

December.

Decorating.

[my job.]

[stephen's job.]

[nicholas' job.]

Publication.

[the frozen moment anthology.]

[editor colin farstad introducing his readers at "a night of story and song" at the woods.]

Christmas.

[nicholas checking out the care package from lulu and pops, finding chew toy and doggy treats.]

[and every year, we watch "a child's christmas in wales."]

[holiday card.]

[so many blessings to be thankful for. and there were lots of other things that happened this year that have no pictures to show for themselves. i suppose i'd have a picture or two to represent new year's eve, if I'd just get off the computer...]

a taste of the frozen moment: THAT STUFFED TIGER

2011-12-30T07:30:00.000-08:00

[the book is THE FROZEN MOMENT. the publication date is DECEMBER 17th. here's a little TASTE of one of the stories...]

THAT STUFFED TIGER by Elva Redwood

Never felt a damn thing like it, not in this life. That baby with her long fingers and dark darkeyes looking right into mine. Shewrapped those fingers all the way round my thumb.

This whole, clean feeling in me, new like mountainrain. With that utterly real hand, byreflex just holding on.

I never felt so profoundly related. Like this child was physically part of me.

Then my thought was: Thank God. Now I don’t have to have one of my own.

[Elva Redwood lives in Portland, Oregon, where she is privilegedto study with Tom Spanbauer and the Dangerous Writers. She is a counselor and is inspired by theways people relate their internal, private experiences to others and the world.]

Elva will be reading along with contributors Holly Goodman, Kevin Meyer, Kathleen Lane, Gage Mace, Nora Robertson, Christine Calfas, Dian Greenwood and Gigi Little at Crow Arts Manor on January 15th. Details to come. The publication date of The Frozen Moment is December 17th. You can also order books through Publication Studio here.

a moment in the day: christmas eve book question

2011-12-25T10:47:00.000-08:00

I'm shelving books on Christmas Eve, and the store is packed. As I step toward my cart through the stream of customers along the aisle, a woman appears from behind a post covered with display titles. On the other side of the post, a girl leafs through an enormous book about Lady Gaga.

The woman stops me. "Can you help me? We're looking for... Wait, where's my daughter." [the girl looks about thirteen?] "So, we have to buy a book for her grandfather. And he's kind of a shit. So, what's a good, impersonal book to give an old man?"

a taste of the frozen moment: SUBURBAN BITCH CRUISE

2011-12-23T06:00:00.000-08:00

[the book is THE FROZEN MOMENT. the publication date is DECEMBER 17th. here's a little TASTE of one of the stories...]

SUBURBAN BITCH CRUISE by Akhim Cabey

Iremembered how, when Lisa and I would get high at night in her room, we’dfasten a scented dryer sheet to the end of a cardboard toilet-paper roll andblow the smoke through it. Our breath came out the other side smelling likeperfume, and we’d marvel at the magic of changing one thing into another. Thenwe’d make love all night. We were both screamers and believed our pants andmoans had the power to drown out the memories of molestation and a dead father,of a physically abusive stepfather and crackhead parents, to take away the odorof our pasts and make us come out smelling fine on the other side. Sometimes,when we woke up the next morning, we were at peace for several hours and nolonger so painfully, brutally in love.

"Suburban Bitch Cruise" was originally published in the Sun magazine.

The Frozen Moment anthology came out on December 17th. You can order books through Publication Studio here.

the big black dark

2011-12-22T08:33:00.000-08:00

I'm just back from walking Nicholas. Outside, the dark and the streetlamp gold and the sheen of frost on everything reminded me of two things - Christmas ornaments and the particular way water works in film noir. The glitter of Hollywood rain and the way sun lies on the waves of the 1940s ocean in the black of some scene that's supposed to be night but which is actually day so the film wizards do some sort of magic and turn down the light.

Last night Stephen and I went to the Someday Lounge for the film screening of The Big Black Dark, the new short film noir by Northern Flicker Films. They screened it on the darkest night of the year - clever. Film noir is maybe my favorite genre, so I was extra excited for this. And a little wary. I'm always wary when the modern world creates something noir. On film, it usually turns out to be a spoof or a pastiche. Brian Padian's The Big Black Dark is neither.

It has elements of both - it's funny and it does recreate that noir style - even going so far as to be shot on film [!] - but it's not a spoof and it's not a poorly-made recreation. It's its own thing. For me, it's the perfect mix. The opening credits are great, and the music is not some wannabe noir jazz riff. That to me is always the first marker of a bad modern noir - the wannabe noir jazz soundtrack. And the wannabe noir dialogue with phrases like, alright, you mugs, getcher hands up or I'm gonna fill ya fulla lead. Nothing like that here, thank god. And the writing was sharp and the dialogue smart.

The sense of time is a nice ambiguity. Period clothing and period props but modern elements in the sets too. For instance, there's a scene where our hero is on the phone. Behind him is a fan that looks to be from the forties, he's dialing the amount of numbers you'd dial today, and the telephone itself seems to come from a time somewhere in between, tying it all up together. The world was created so carefully, the ambiguity set up so well, that when there was a CD in one of the scenes, I didn't even notice the object as out of place. It fit.

I'm going to try to stop saying so much about specifics in the film - I don't want to toss a bunch of spoilers out there. Let me just say that the second-person voice-over narration worked great, the way rear-screen projection was used was brilliant, the ending was excellent.

Great acting from Lanie Hoyo and Mike Barber, who didn't overdo their roles, didn't spoof it up.

Great deadpan / shell-shocked turn from Matt Sipes - that part calls for a good actor and he poured subtle life into it.

And Christine Calfas - that's the back of her head up there - whoosh, sexy as ever and perfect for this movie. She put a subtlety into her performance that was just wonderful. Again - the possibilities for overdoing this art form - the role she plays could easily be pushed too far, but Christine works this part gently and just nails it.

The biggest surprise for me, actor-wise, was Brian Padian, himself, who was absolutely marvelous - quirky and funny. I had no idea he was an actor as well as... well, all the other things he does on this film - writing, directing, producing. He blew me away.

Can't wait to see it again. I hear it'll be available soon with a blooper reel and everything. If you want to check it out, the facebook page for The Big Black Dark is here.

deux

2011-12-19T10:18:00.000-08:00

Nicholas trots fast down the sidewalk. The tips of his ears bob-bob-bob. He waits at the entryway of the apartment for me to open the door and then bob-bob-bob up the marble steps under the white wedding-cake-frosting high, high ceiling. Then up two flights of steps to our door. Inside, I let him off the leash and skirt Stephen doing his yoga, to toss my little bag in the trash.

"Deux fois," I tell Stephen.

He makes an approving noise.

Stephen was the one who started discussing Nicholas' business in French. "Il a fait caca," he likes to say. Always a little worried if Nicholas takes a walk and doesn't go numero deux. Partly out of worry that it may happen in the apartment but more out of that sense of paternal concern, wanting everything inside our little guy to be running right.

There's really no reason to be gladder if Nicholas goes twice, other than the excuse to say two more French words. Neither of us has had the opportunity to announce il a fait caca trois fois yet. This morning, walking Nicholas and pleased that I got to announce deux fois, which doesn't happen often, I started fantasizing about trois. As we came down that last stretch of sidewalk toward the apartment, I considered passing it by and taking Nicholas around the corner. But it was cold. So I had to concede deux and get on with my life. Deux was good enough.

So, this is what we've come to. Yes. For more on this subject, you can read a blog post by Stephen here.

book launch night

2011-12-18T12:28:00.000-08:00

Excellent book launch event last night. We arrived about ten minutes after doors opened, and already The Woods was packed. The Woods is a campy-charming event space that was once a funeral parlor - Spanish style with big chandeliers hanging down. What do you call those chandeliers that aren't sprays of crystal but look like giant plastic beehives? Nooks opening off of the main room, all bright painted but low light, kooky couches, a bar on one side that we never made it to. So sad that this place will be closing sometime soon.

Before showtime it was a rush to say hi and throw hugs around so many people. We never made it out of the entryway, and it didn't look like there were any seats left, anyway. I sidled myself up to the edge of the open archway to the main room, and I and a number of us stood there in and behind the archway for all the readings. Where I was, I had a straight shot over the heads of people in seats, to the readers on stage. Colin gave each reader a sweet, little intro - made me selfishly look forward to hearing my own in January. Colin all suave and confident and wearing a tie. There were a lot of readers, but nothing bogged down. Every piece was totally engaging, and the evening really moved.

Mary Wharff making us all laugh somewhere between delighted and horrified as she read about wanting to eat the baby. How deftly her narrative moved back and forth between the scene in the drug store and the scene in the bar, between funny and heartbreaking. [Mary came all the way from Kansas to be part of this event.]

Wes Griffith with his voice all biscuits and molasses. In his intro, Colin said something like, if you fall in love with his voice, look out, because he's married. Sometimes I'm glad I have such a dysfunctional memory, because things I already know can be new again. I've read Wes' piece in a number of incarnations, but still, last night when he got to the end, it hit me so hard I made a little gasp, standing there.

Liz Prato getting up on stage and saying that, here she is reading at a 21-and-over event, and for the first time she's presenting a piece that doesn't contain the F-bomb.

"So," and then a tiny pause, and, "Fuck!" she shouted.

It's a deft piece of writing, laying down a leapfrog of moments and details, and no F-bomb is needed.

Margaret Malone and her lovely monotone, reading half of an intensely personal essay. Fragmented and laced together the way memory is. Precise, little moments written in her precise, graceful voice.

Bradley K. Rosen, clown at heart, saying he was told there was a time limit, so he'd shrunk his piece. Then he pulled out what looked like a tiny book, size of a pat of butter, and one of those big magnifying glasses.

"Florence...stepped out of the car...languidly..."

He pretended to try to read from the tiny pages until a friend walked up with a black notebook and handed it to him. Then Brad was off, reading his real piece, obliterating the cliché text of his gag opening with his lovely language.

Charles Dye so big on stage he looked like he was bursting out of his spotlight. Reading only a part of his story, starting at the beginning where it grabs hold of your heart and stopping in a spot where it punches you in the gut. I think when he stopped reading, the whole room had one of those moments where the breath stops at the back of your throat.

"It only gets darker from there," Charles tells me.

Michael Sage Ricci trying to raise the music stand but pulling the top clean off instead. Reading a story that starts out light and goes to surprising places. In each of the stories in this book, and in each of the readings, I've found myself, naturally, looking for the frozen moment. Trying to predict what each offering's frozen moment is going to be. Sage's piece, in particular, did real honor to Colin's theme, I think.

Tom Spanbauer stepping up in a vintage suit. [Last time I saw him, Tom had said, "What are you going to wear? I'm going to wear vintage." So I wore vintage too.]

"I'm feeling kind of tender," Tom said into the mic. "Brad says I always cry." This was Tom's way of steeling himself for his own reading after all the emotions already put out into the room.

He read his piece "The Visitations," which I've heard him read twice before. Once in workshop and once at the benefit reading for Walt Curtis. Every time I hear or read this story, it does something to me that I don't understand. We talk about writing as music, but when I hear this story, I hear real music. Some certain sound in my head, a dark, foreboding, relentless sound in my head. The second-person voice of his story is like an elegant nightmare, from which you're suddenly raised up into moments of transcendence.

After the readings, the first of two bands, Leaves Russell, started on stage. They sounded great, but we didn't want the music of the readings washed out of our heads. Stephen and I went over to the sale table and had a gander at the book. It's a sweet, handcrafted book, which comes with different colored covers. One of the cool things about Publication Studio books is that you can go into one of their studios and order one, and they make it right there in front of you. It's dated on the spine. I'll get a contributor's copy, but I also look forward to going into the Portland Publication Studio and getting one hot off the press. But last night, Stephen picked up a copy there, and we moved into the crowd to chat with people and give hugs and congratulations.

Then we ended up at an Italian place called Gino's, a big group of us ringing a large table, ordering wine and clinking glasses. A few of us who will be reading at the January event: Christine Calfas, Nora Robertson [and beau], Holly Goodman. Also Krista Price, another writer from the basement. Mary Wharff [and beau]. Tom and Sage, Tom sitting down next to me, Tom presenting me with the pages he'd read from, which made a lovely souvenir of the evening.

We ordered food. I was famished. "I spent all evening on one banana," I said.

Tom said, "Did it hurt?"

When Colin and his wife Rebekah showed up, we got to be obnoxious in the restaurant and applaud and cheer. When Brad Rosen appeared, we got to be obnoxious again. More joking about my banana. More clinking of glasses and then good food. A lovely way to round out a wonderful evening.

a taste of the frozen moment: ADVENTURES OF A MAYA QUEEN

2011-12-17T07:31:00.000-08:00

[the book is THE FROZEN MOMENT. the publication date is DECEMBER 17th. here's a little TASTE of one of the stories...]

ADVENTURES OF A MAYA QUEEN by Liz Prato

It was late in the morning when we arrived at Tikal. Mosttourists got to the ruins early, at sunrise, because the pyramids were built to beseen with the sun rising or setting or atsome other perfect point in the sky. But it’s hard to get there that early,really, when you begin in Belize and eat breakfast first at that little café inSan Ignacio, the one that’s painted yellow and pink and has a three-legged dogsleeping outside.

“I’m calling him Franz,” I said, and fed him a sausage link.A dance troupe of fleas hip-hopped on his head.

“That thing’s mangy.” Peter peered over the top of hisPeterson’s Field Guide. “I don’t think you should feed it. As a matter of fact,I don’t think you should name it.”

[Liz Prato's workhas been nominated for four Pushcart-prizes and appeared in severalpublications, including Iron HorseLiterary Review, Salon.com, Subtropics, Hunger Mountain, ZYZZYVAand Who’s Your Mama (Soft Skull Press). When she’s not teachingas an Associate Fellow at the Attic Institute, she fantasizes about Guatemalanlimeade.]

Liz will be reading along with contributors Tom Spanbauer, Michael Sage Ricci, Margaret Malone, Charles Dye, J. W. Griffith, Mary Wharff and Brad Rosen on December 17th at The Woods. The facebook event is here. Books will be available at the event. You can also order books through Publication Studio here.

a taste of the frozen moment: THE VISITATIONS

2011-12-14T06:33:00.001-08:00

[the book is THE FROZEN MOMENT. the publication date is DECEMBER 17th. here's a little TASTE of one of the stories...]

THE VISITATIONS by Tom Spanbauer

Two weeks of hot hot bright August. Portland. During the day,the kind of heat your old house soaks up into its bones. At night, theheat is inside the walls, under the floor, comes off in waves from the ceiling.Forget about going upstairs. All your long skinny windows open with thosepop-in expandable screens.

At night, they walk by, drunk from the AltoLounge or the Belmont Inn. They are loud and horny, passing cigarettes, joints,yelling fuck on their way to the bars on Stark and 28^th. Youth. You remember youth. How you walked from bar to bar. The night atZefiro’s you drank espressos and dirty martinis back to back. Nat Shermans,Galois, Camel straights. In one of the narrow toilettes, the doorlocked, a line of cocaine tapped out on the sink. Above the toilet, thephoto of the young naked woman on the beach. A moment that one night whenyou stopped. You looked around. This isn’t supposed to be goodfor you, you said.

[Tom Spanbauer is the author of Faraway Places, The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon, Now is the Hour and In the City of Shy Hunters. You can find his website here.]

Tom will be reading along with contributors Michael Sage Ricci, Margaret Malone, Charles Dye, Liz Prato, Mary Wharff, J. W. Griffith and Brad Rosen on December 17th at The Woods. The facebook event is here. Books will be available at the event. You can also order books through Publication Studio here.

drinking again

2011-12-10T06:40:00.001-08:00

The end of last night's dream had me watching myself on TV. First some sort of clip of me as a clown, and then suddenly the program's soundtrack was an on-the-edge-of-clumsy string of piano notes and then my voice singing that old Bette Midler song "Drinking Again." Low and sort of raspy - obviously the me on the soundtrack was trying hard to mimic Midler's voice on the album I played over and over when I was fifteen. Hearing myself in the dream was like listening with unadulterated ears to the me I was back then, the me who worked the song out on the piano by ear and sneaked my tape recorder into the living room when everyone was out of the house, to play and sing all proud and exuberant and then sneak back up to my room with the tape and not show anyone. Except my mom.

The song was in my head [Bette Midler's version, not mine] as I walked Nicholas in the dark this morning, frost on top of cars twinkling. I don't sing enough anymore. I don't remember, when Stephen is out, to put on Bette Midler or Peggy Lee or the Andrews Sisters and let my voice go free. I wondered if I could remember all the words to the song, so I ran through it in my head, and not only were the lyrics all there, but the memory of the fifteen-year-old me, the way she thought about all the lines she used to sing. Funny that while it never occurred to her that "lying around for total strangers" refers to sex, it did occur to her, every time she sang the song, that in the last line, "All I've got is a bottle of beer and just my memories," that word "just" is redundant and should be edited out.

a taste of the frozen moment: CAVERN OF SPACE

2011-12-08T07:00:00.000-08:00

[the book is THE FROZEN MOMENT. the publication date is DECEMBER 17th. here's a little TASTE of one of the stories...]

CAVERN OF SPACE by Margaret Malone

The three of us spent most of our time together at Mark’smom’s place. We all still lived at home with our mothers, but because Mark wasolder, it wasn’t weird to his mom that we were drinking forty ounce bottles ofmalt liquor and quarts of tequila. It helped that she spent a lot of timeupstairs in her bedroom with the door closed, watching TV, smoking menthol100s. Every night that fall, we had the first floor all to ourselves.

We were best friends. Always together.

We were all friends together until accidentally we weremore.

[Margaret Malone's writing has appeared in The Missouri Review, Swink, The Wordstock TenAnthology and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a 2009 Oregon Literary Fellowship in Fiction and a 2011 OregonArts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship. To contact her, visit her websiteat www.margaretmalone.com.]

Margaret will be reading along with contributors Tom Spanbauer, Michael Sage Ricci, Liz Prato, Charles Dye, J. W. Griffith and Brad Rosen on December 17th at The Woods. The facebook event is here. Books will be available at the event. You can also order books through Publication Studio here.

a taste of the frozen moment: AN ANCIENT AIR

2011-12-06T06:49:00.000-08:00

[the book is THE FROZEN MOMENT. the publication date is DECEMBER 17th. here's a little TASTE of one of the stories...]

AN ANCIENT AIR by Bradley K. Rosen

They say the air is older in Italythan it is in America.They say the cotton ball clouds and the rolling vineyards and farmlandsand the sun’s warm light have been around for an ocean’s eon, since the daybefore Jesus rolled the rock. I know this romantic idea of an older airis certainly a scientifically ridiculous one, yet, when you are there, in Italia, the idea thatthe air is older somehow seems plausible, seems more I do believe in fairies.

[Bradley K Rosen grew up in Claremont, California. In 1992 he migrated to Oregon and now lives in Portland, where he has lived since 1998. He has two sons. His first novel, The Bunkie Spills, is in its final stages.]

Bradley will be reading along with contributors Tom Spanbauer, Margaret Malone, Michael Sage Ricci, Liz Prato, J. W. Griffith and Charles Dye on December 17th at The Woods. The facebook event is here. Books will be available at the event. You can also order books through Publication Studio here.

a moment in the day: roses

2011-12-05T11:56:00.001-08:00

Whenever I hear this kind of music, in my mind I see people dancing. It's a familiar waltz, although I don't know the name, and I have the vague thought, as I always do when I hear waltzes, that it was probably used for many a trapeze act.

We're in the car, almost to Powell's, and Stephen in the passenger seat is whistling along. As the piece starts to wind up to its end, Stephen's whistling stops, and I can hear his brain working to guess the name.

"Roses from the South?" he says. His voice is equal parts sure and tentative.

We turn the last corner, drive past Powells' Couch Street entrance, the Christmas tree there through the entryway window, the displays of books I set up in the cases flanking the door.

"Drive slowly," Stephen says, as we start to roll toward where I'll let him off.

The music ends, and the radio gal with the voice that annoys me, the oddly halting voice, says:

"Tha... twas the beautifu... lStrauss walt... z... Roses from the South."

Stephen claps loud, then raises his fists in the air.

"He shoots, he scores!" he shouts.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is as close to sports as my husband gets.

qball

2011-12-03T06:58:00.001-08:00

This morning, I looked, as I often do, to see if the two little guys we went to see the day we decided to adopt Nicholas have been adopted, themselves, yet. And lo and behold, QBall has found a home. So glad, I had to take a screenshot of the page. This little guy was so cute and energetic. I wrote about him a little bit here.

a taste of the frozen moment: CONEY ISLAND KISS

2011-12-03T06:54:00.000-08:00

[the book is THE FROZEN MOMENT. the publication date is DECEMBER 17th. here's a little TASTE of one of the stories...]

CONEY ISLAND KISS by David Ciminello

The subway train raced along steel tracks. Wheels sparked.Inside ceiling fans spun. So crowded they had to stand. Stanford’s right anklepressed against a wicker picnic basket, his left hip touched Jack’s. Hane’swhite t-shirt crisp, skin soft, aftershave sweet. He wanted to beg for a kiss.Ask for it. Take a swan dive and go for it. But strange clown faces and burlyimmigrant bodies surrounded them. A whole circus pile of summer beach travelersring-rounded them. A lurch and you were in someone’s lap. Maybe Jack’s. Maybethe old man eating fried chicken. Morty, can’t you wait!? Hands clutched beachballs, beach umbrellas, towels, blankets, and sacks. Jack in his new Palm Beach pants grippeda seat pole. His smile did all the talking.

[Coney Island Kiss is a chapter excerpt from David's novel in progress, The Queen of Steeplechase Park.]

[David Ciminello’s fiction has appeared in the Lambda LiteraryAward winning anthology Portland Queer: Tales of the Rose City,the literary journal Lumina, the online anthology Underwater New York, and onbroadcastr. His poetry has appeared in Poetry Northwest. David is a 2011 LambdaLiterary Fellow in Fiction.]

The Frozen Moment anthology comes out on December 17th. You can order books through Publication Studio here.

on finishing the novel

2011-12-02T08:06:00.001-08:00

It's hard [impossible] to say when a book [story] [poem] is finished [beyond the moment it's printed, of course]. But there has to be a moment when the writer stops and looks and says, "There. It is what it is." I don't know exactly what it was, last night, that made me sit back and say this about my novel. What final word gave the manuscript its thingness, its completeness. I opened the door to my little writing studio, went down the hall and into the kitchen, poured one swallow, each, of champagne [cava] into two glasses.

Me being the ritualistic person I am, the over-celebrator I am, I took some time to decide which glasses, and I finally chose the thick ones with the little starbursts etched in, the ones Stephen's grandmother gave him [left to him?]. Stephen always says Grandma Betty was the person who most encouraged his art, who taught him to "see." [She makes a tiny appearance in my novel, and Stephen's art makes a huge appearance.] I took the glasses the two steps out into Stephen's studio and handed him one. I said, "I've signed the painting."

[grandma betty]

Stephen says he knows a painting is finished when he looks and looks and his eye doesn't show him anything to change anymore. Then he signs it. He knows he'll continue to fuss with the painting after it's signed, sometimes for a long time, before the coat of varnish goes down, but for him, once he's signed it, it's finished. I know I'll fuss with the novel, and if it has the luck to be run through the ringer that is the agent process and the editor process and the publication process [a pact cosigned by Mephistopheles would help], I'll be doing much more than fussing with it, but for me, the signature's gone on the painting.

[delacroix' mephistopheles]

Funny thing, mentally signing my work. I spent so much of my childhood and young adulthood hating myself that things like my name left a bad taste in my mouth just because they were mine. I almost never said my name out loud, and writing it down was like writing the name of that bully "friend" who used to ridicule you and made you ride horses in fourth grade [smelly].

When I started workshopping the novel, the writers in my group would jot little wrap-up notes at the bottoms of my pages: "Gigi, this is..." Me being the ritualistic person I am, I would go home and consolidate all their notes into a master set of pages, making sure to copy their marks and comments exactly, including any spelling errors [don't ask me why], but in the beginning the one thing I didn't include was my name. I don't know when I started copying my own name down in these pages, but I do know that when I did, it was with the knowledge that the goodness of the process of really learning to write, and the loveliness of these amazing writers, not to mention Stephen at home, had helped me get to a place in my life in which I didn't hate myself anymore. If nothing more than this comes from these five years [six?] in Tom Spanbauer's basement [and that pact cosigned by Mephistopheles], it's still a wonderful, wonderful thing.

a taste of the frozen moment: MESSY THINGS, PEPPER TREES

2011-12-02T06:40:00.000-08:00

[the book is THE FROZEN MOMENT. the publication date is DECEMBER 17th. here's a little TASTE of one of the stories...]

MESSY THINGS, PEPPER TREES by Judy Reeves

I am in therecovery room with my legs propped open and a sun lamp warming the torn place.If the doctor had arrived sooner he could have made a neat cut to open myvagina enough for the baby’s head and shoulders to fit through without tearing,but the nurses weren’t taught how to make the cut. Plus they didn’t have theknives.

[Judy Reeves is a writer, teacher and writing practice provocateur who has published four books on the craft including A Writer’s Book of Days, which was named
Best General Nonfiction in the 2011 San Diego Book Awards. She lives in San Diego and is cofounder of San Diego Writers, Ink. Her website is: http://judyreeveswriter.com/ ]

Judy and fellow The Frozen Moment contributors Nicole Vollrath, Andrew Printer and Tori Malcangio will read from the Anthology on Sunday, January 21, at The Ink Spot in San Diego. The Frozen Moment anthology comes out on December 17th. You can order books through Publication Studio here.

a moment in the day: calendar

2011-12-01T08:14:00.001-08:00

On the calendar on the kitchen wall, November is little squares of days filled with jotted notes in mostly Stephen's handwriting. All the things we did, all the people we saw. I flip the page, and already the little squares of days of December are filled with more jottings. Things we'll do, people we'll see. With time, the tiny holes at the top of each calendar page, where the nail runs through to hold up the month, open and elongate, and I always have a little worry that the calendar will tear right through - but each new month slipped onto that nail adds strength to the whole. There's got to be a metaphor in there somewhere.

a taste of the frozen moment: LAG

2011-11-30T06:49:00.000-08:00

[the book is THE FROZEN MOMENT. the publication date is DECEMBER 17th. here's a little TASTE of one of the stories...]

LAG, by Michael Sage Ricci

Here’s the final word, darlings:

6:15 AM at any major airport is distinctly unglamorous.

I mean really, it’s way too early to be herded through security checkpoints, mad cows in a pen awaiting approval. Now that the world lives in constant fear, security is paramount and I had to sacrifice my beauty sleep to catch my flight on time. Protection has a cost, darlings. Like most economies, the low man on the totem pole is the one that pays the price.

[Michael Sage Ricci writes and tattoos in Portland Oregon.He also teaches with Tom Spanbauer’s Dangerous Writers and has been publishedin Portland Queer, DeathMagazine, White Crane Journal, RadicalFaeireDigest, Ellipses,and Under A Silver Sky, an anthology of Northwest Poets. Hehas just finished his first novel: The Resurrection of AquaBoy.]

Sage will be reading along with contributors Tom Spanbauer, Margaret Malone, Charles Dye, Liz Prato, J. W. Griffith and Brad Rosen on December 17th at The Woods. The facebook event is here. Books will be available at the event. You can also order books through Publication Studio here.

a moment in the day: spoons

2011-11-26T08:34:00.001-08:00

I'm doing dishes, my hands all warm in soapy water. Fish two spoons out of the bottom of a pan, and before I think about it, I'm playing them. Both spoons spooned into each other and clicking a mad clack into the palm of my right hand.

The things we do without thinking. The things we do all the time. Odd that no matter where I am in my life, if I fish two spoons out of a pan, I have to play them.

a taste of the frozen moment: EMOTICON

2011-11-26T07:15:00.000-08:00

[the book is THE FROZEN MOMENT. the publication date is DECEMBER 17th. here's a little TASTE of one of the stories...]

EMOTICON by Andrew Printer

Once inside his apartment, once inside anystranger’s home, these things happen fast. There’s no time to pause or be quickon my feet with clever excuses. Men who misrepresent themselves rarely linger.On the contrary, they hurry me in and then quickly out of my clothes, leavingme no time to un-promise anything. Today was no exception. Before I had time tosay a word he had lifted my shirt up over my head and both his and mysummer-colored shorts had dropped to the floor.

[one of the illustrations of EMOTICON]

[andrew will be reading his piece at the san diego release party on december 16th at double break. more info is here. andrew and fellow contributors judy reeves, nicole vollrath and tori malcangio will read from the anthology on sunday, january 21, at the ink spot in san diego. you can check out andrew's art and film works here. the book can be ordered here. facebook page and info for the first reading event, to coincide with the december 17th launch of the book, is here.]

a taste of the frozen moment: MILWAUKEE

2011-11-25T06:05:00.000-08:00

[the book is THE FROZEN MOMENT. the publication date is DECEMBER 17th. here's a little TASTE of one of the stories...]

MILWAUKEE by Charles Dye

It doesn’t matter that I’m a boy standingnext to his father’s deathbed. Doesn’t matter that I’m a week from myfourteenth birthday. Or that I’m wearing jeans with an Ocean Pacific t-shirtand a coat that’s not warm enough for Wisconsinwinter. What seems important is the string of green blips on the heart monitor,and the idea that the black margins are squeezing the life out of him. To thegrown man looking back on it a lifetime later, what really matters is that myfather’s body is close enough to touch but my father isn’t close enough toreach.

Charles will be reading along with contributors Tom Spanbauer, Margaret Malone, Michael Sage Ricci, Liz Prato, J. W. Griffith and Brad Rosen on December 17th at The Woods. The facebook event is here. Books will be available at the event. You can also order books through Publication Studio here.

[Charles Dye is a professional copywriter anddigital media strategist, award-winning journalist, and a Dangerous Writersince 2004. Prior to settling in Portland,he fought wildfires and coached high school and NCAA football. His writing hasappeared indie fiction anthologies Artscape and The Classthat Fell in Love with the Man.]

a moment in the day: the chatty printer

2011-11-20T13:30:00.000-08:00

I'm printing my whole novel for my own reading for the first time. As I print in the back room, Stephen is out in the studio on his own laptop, which he just recently hooked up to be able to print wirelessly* to this printer through some voo-doo magic I don't understand.

One of the first times the printer runs out of paper and I need to fill it, I realize I should let Stephen know I'm going to be printing for a while so he doesn't try to print something, too. When I step down the hall into the studio, Stephen is looking at me with a smile on his face, a pinch-mouthed and mirthful smile like maybe Nicholas has done something cute and he's about to tell me about it.

He says, "Quit sending me out-of-paper alerts."

Apparently when the printer communicates to my laptop that it's out of paper, it communicates to Stephen's laptop too. Like that thing they say about twins knowing each others' thoughts.

The next time the printer runs out of paper, Stephen calls from the studio, "You're out of paper," and I laugh.

The next time the printer runs out of paper, I call, "Out of paper," and Stephen laughs. His laugh comes soft down the hallway and straight to that place in the middle of me that feels like joy.

Knowing our history, how we fell in love first through words on a computer screen, I shouldn't be surprised. Any kind of communication, even printer-to-computer, can be a way for two people to touch.

*Blogger flagged the word "wirelessly" as being spelled wrong. It offered four words in its place. The last was my favorite:

tirelessly
wireless
relentlessly
witlessly

printing it all

2011-11-20T12:48:00.001-08:00

After having completed my second draft of the novel, which, because of the constant rewriting in between, is more like a fifth draft, after having had the manuscript read by some important readers, I'm ready for the part in the process where I print it out and read the whole book through - to look at big picture, to look at everything from a different perspective. I'll read it on paper, not at my computer. I'll read it in my head, not out loud, which is my usual way. I change the font to Verdana, not Times New Roman. Anything to aid in my attempt to make this look at my book fresh.

For a while, the printer runs through its gyrations, kicking out the lines of paragraphs in its particular rhythm, spitting out pages. I gather the pages in piles. I look down at one page as it sloops from the mouth of the printer, and my eyes land on a one-word paragraph in the middle of things.

"Or."

Immediately, my brain knows the line that comes after. And the line that comes after.

Hmm.

Doesn't bode well for seeing this thing fresh...

skin

2011-11-20T11:50:00.001-08:00

A friend of mine has started writing a beautiful blog, something very personal and brave. He's written about his childhood, his fatherhood, his sorrows and joys, his transition female-to-male. Alone with my computer, I read and feel close to him, as we do when something is written with personal openness and elegance.

Yesterday, we got on an elevator together, he with his cart of books, me with mine. I wanted to say, thank you for what you put out there. I wanted to say, how brave and lovely. Instead, I said, "Ooh, can I see your new tattoo?"

In my own blog, in my novel and the essays I write, I'm not afraid to go very deep, to talk about the fool I so often feel I am, to confess about the baby blanket I held onto for too long. [Way too long.] In person, where words are spoken, not read, is this as close as I can get to someone? To peer down at the words written on his skin?

a moment in the day: the Remainders girl

2011-11-19T06:14:00.001-08:00

With Cal, hanging holiday lights at the City of Books. Cal's on the ladder, jingle of the knot of keys latched to his belt loop, and I'm down below keeping the strand untangled. Turn, and to the left of me, hauling stacks of books onto a table, is that young brunette from the Remainders team. She's in profile, and lo and behold: a pregnant belly.

Though I've always loved children, though they've always loved me, I've never really wanted to have children. I was always more child than mother. Blanket in arms for most of my childhood, forever wanting to hold onto something soft to make me comfortable. Sometimes I wonder if it's all those blanket years that make me so full of wanting, now. Wanting that next publication, wanting that next comment on my last silly status update, wanting to fill myself up with cheese. Wanting, sometimes, with nothing on the other end of the sentence - just wanting.

I don't remember how old I was when I stopped carrying the blanket around all the time. Backy Dacky was its name, and it was pink, white and blue knit zigzag stripes that faded with all the holding, faded and got full of holes. As I got older, I used to cut tiny strands from the loose ends of the holes and knot them around necklaces to hang, hidden, under my shirts. I'm not even going to tell you about the time I tried to hide Backy Dacky at the bottom of my carry-on bag to take it with me on my trip to Europe, and I'm not going to tell you how old I was.

Fifteen.

Looking at the pregnant Remainders girl - I don't even remember her name - I'm struck by how similar that belly seems to my blanket of long ago. That holding. How lovely, to walk around the bookstore, to go about your workday, with all that joy, all that fear, all that miracle held inside.

blargh

2011-11-16T06:08:00.001-08:00

[just because i liked the theme of yesterday's post...]

Step one: grab the garland and scissors and tissue paper and go down to Powells' Green Room early [8:10] in hopes that you can get all four window displays bedecked in the pre-customer quiet before your carts of books come and you have three hours of shelving to take care of.

Step two: pull out first window display case and lay down first length of tissue paper under display books.

Step three: open first skein [yes, i'm calling it a skein] of garland.

Step four: try to get the strand started without it getting tangled up.

Step five: oh, you've got to be kidding me.

Step six: pull it all off the cardboard carefully and try to extract the starting end of garland from the mess it came in.

Step seven, eight, nine, twelve, twenty-four: try to disentangle big knot of red sparkly madness.

Step twenty-five [8:30]: over the loudspeaker: "Attention Powell's employee Gigi, your carts are in in-coming. Gigi, your carts are here."

lunch

2011-11-15T07:17:00.001-08:00

Step one: put lunch in rectangular tupperware container.

Step two: find that the plastic top that is shaped just like the container is just a hair too big for that particular container.

Step three: stretch up into the cabinet where you can almost reach the piles of containers and tops and pull out another lid that looks just like the first one.

Step four: it doesn't fit.

Step five: start grabbing down every damn top in the cabinet.

Step six: try even the tiny round ones and the big square ones because you're annoyed and like the universe to know.

Step seven: none of them fit.

Step eight: pull out the rectangular tupperware container that looks exactly like the first tupperware container and dump all the contents of your lunch in there and shove the top on extra hard and stuff all the rest of the plastic pieces back into the cabinet.

Step nine: make a huffing sound.

Step ten: wash the original container and put it back in the cabinet even though nothing fits the damn thing.

Step eleven: get hit on the head with falling tupperware container.

a moment in the night: lovejoy skateboarder

2011-11-13T08:32:00.001-08:00

It's 12:30 at night, which is also 12:30 in the morning, and I'm just up from a dream to walk Nicholas in the dry icy cold, because after his 8:00 walk and after the movie, it was pouring and he was asleep under the covers, and we thought we might get away with it. I had fallen asleep right after the movie. Stephen had read a while, then turned the light off not long before Nicholas nosed his way up from the covers and stood by my pillow, staring me down in my sleep.

Being blinked out of sleep by the bathroom wishes of a dog is enough to make your walk across the street feel surreal. It's not raining now, but the sky is deep and starless, and streetlamp light shining down on puddles of shiny yellow leaves all across the sidewalk makes everything look like the detail of a painting Stephen might paint. The way he always says he likes to paint trees that don't look like trees but like beautiful paintings of trees.

Skishing by, down Lovejoy, half gold, half silhouette, is a skateboarder in a pair of those long shorts that come down over your knees, a cap backwards on his head.

Strange how you can so love the place you live and the life you have here and still pine so hard for that other home.

a moment in the day: water clock

2011-11-10T06:41:00.001-08:00

I step into the bedroom, reach to the clock and turn down the sound of electric water until the room is silent. Usually just turning down the water makes Stephen come awake, but he's still a long, lean lump under the covers. I shake his shoulder a little and he lifts his head.

"I turned the water off and you didn't wake up," I say.

"Wwww gblg mfff?" he says.

"Good morning," I say. "Would you like coffee or tea? Or me?"

"Coffee, gblg mfff?" he says.

"Would you marry me?" I say.

His eyes blink. He looks like maybe a burglar crawled through the window and proposed to him. "Marry what say?" he says. Then another blink. Then he's awake. "Oh," he says. "Happy anniversary."

On the original day, when Stephen was the one proposing to me and I was the one in the bed, the big moment was bookended by an old dog peeing on the floor and an old cat puking on the carpet. This morning, warm under the covers against Stephen's body a young dog sleeps.

holiday catalog day

2011-11-02T07:27:00.000-07:00

Two days to cram in the week's work at Powell's before Mom and Dad arrive and I take the rest of the week off. This two days happens to include the launch of the Holiday Catalog, which means approximately 55 staff favorite titles chosen to be displayed and sold at thirty percent off. Looking at it here in the glow of my computer screen, that just looks like some innocuous number, 55, but it's a huge endeavor. In the Green Room, it means reducing by half our display of author events books, moving into that open space half of our bestsellers and filling three cases with the Holiday Catalog books. In the Orange Room, this year, it meant completely reconfiguring the layout of about a third of the room, moving tables and spinner racks, taking books from this table and loading them into this display case, and vice versa. [I didn't have to move furniture - my hands were always on the books.]

This year, too, the morning was compounded by another huge display promotion switching out, and it was my job to take care of both. And to assist in the changing of signage posted and hanging in various places where the Holiday Catalog was going. I had help from some excellent coworkers, and still I worked pretty nonstop from seven in the morning to six-thirty last night to get all the books out, the signs up and four window displays put in place.

Holiday Catalog launch is always equal parts stress and exhilaration for me. No, maybe more exhilaration. There's something about running up and down the back stairs, pushing cart after cart down those corridors. Something about the pass of hundreds of books across my hands.

When I got home last night, Stephen had cheese waiting. We got in bed and put our feet up and watched Shirley Temple shorts.

Today: going in an hour early, maybe staying an hour or two late. Dealing with all the carts of books I abandoned at the end of yesterday. Overstock that needs to be put away, books that need to be relabeled for different sections. Posters advertising the Holiday Catalog need to go up. A hundred plus shelf talkers need to be notated with shelf locations and distributed. The books I order need to be tended to.

Then straight from work to an art opening and then home. And then home. Stephen and me and Nicholas and more cheese and a glass of wine. And then Mom and Dad.

so young

2011-11-02T06:26:00.000-07:00

found poetry from facebook posts with grammar errors: missing period...

"i don't remember the year we were so young."

...

2011-10-30T15:30:00.001-07:00

I dreamed I was being cited for contempt of [gardening in] court.

a moment in the day: front steps

2011-10-28T06:25:00.000-07:00

It's cold, and I wish I were still sleeping. We walk down the sidewalk through the early morning dark, my fingers numb around the end of the leash, ice air a sting in my lungs. I reach for the handle of the apartment's entryway door and let Nicholas click happy toenails up the front steps ahead of me. Into the warm. He leads me up the marble steps and stops at the top, sits in a Chihuahuah curl, nose up, to watch me pull out my keys. What more lovely moment can there be than the one of knowing that a dog can take completely for granted his safety, his comfort and his love.

team mate

2011-10-25T06:50:00.000-07:00

It was nine-thirty in the evening, and Nicholas decided it was time to take the woman with the lap for her walk. They strolled down the sidewalk and turned a corner to head to the place where Nicholas liked to look for the cat that always hid, crouched, under a bush or a car and never moved when Nicholas barked.

A few more steps, a few more sniffs, and there it was in the dimness of October nine-thirty gray. Nicholas leapt forth into valiant barking - then stopped. The cat was not a cat. The cat was an enormous raccoon.

For just a second, all three creatures - Nicholas, the raccoon and the woman with the lap - shared that very particular, intimate animal moment: locked in a stare, linked in mutual anticipation.

Nicholas figured he could take the raccoon. The raccoon figured he could take the woman with the lap.

Then the woman with the lap picked Nicholas up off the pavement and they got going back toward home. Coming down the sidewalk the other way were two men in conversation. As they passed Nicholas and the woman, one man said to the other, "When your team mate gets the ball, like, you have to get out of the way."
.

a moment in the day: spring

2011-10-16T10:15:00.000-07:00

I walk through three seasons on my way home from work. First, down the pseudo-boardwalk behind Jamison Square under a tunnel of yellow leaves - that is fall. Turn and continue along the pavement through another tree tunnel, this one dotted with tiny gold lights - that is winter. Off to the left, the fountain shaped like a tiny seashore is flowing - water over the rocks and down into a shallow pool at the center. There aren't any children playing in the chill, but still. That is summer. Spring will have to wait.

a moment in the day: in the play space

2011-10-15T06:50:00.000-07:00

One o'clock at the play space. Kathleen and I talk writing and neuroses over a margherita pizza while her boys climb and run and slide in the enormous indoor jungle gym shaped like a castle. At the next table over, a young man and woman sit facing the castle. Arranged on the empty chairs across the table are three sets of tiny sneakers, pink, lavender, blue. And on the table between them, two glasses and a full bottle of wine.

richard foreman mini festival 2011 - the rest of the story

2011-10-12T06:56:00.000-07:00

Two doors opened off of the theater, one on each side of the back wall. You could say they led to backstage, but what they really led to was the apartment of the people who own Performance Works Northwest. We dressed in their bedroom, watched by two cats, waited in their living room for our turns in the program. The main stage door was in the kitchen.

The apartment / green room was packed: a troupe of guys in striped shirts singing to the tune of a Christmas song, a drag queen in half whiteface clown makeup, a sexy young woman in bodice and tights and high lace-up boots, a group of guys in war paint and scant costumes made of strips of fabric. The show was getting close to starting, and everyone was warming up, running lines and stretching, laughing. One of the guys in war paint needed help adjusting his scant strips of fabric, and a middle aged woman in a black evening gown stepped behind him, got close, and said, "Where do you want it?"

Stephen and I sat in the middle of it all like accountants* at the party, Stephen sitting straight-backed in his jeans and button-down shirt, except, of course, he was also made up with lipstick and false eyelashes. We were on last, and as acts came and went we chatted in whispers but mostly just sat, the two of us, and ran our lines. Having had ten days to put this whole thing together, neither of us felt sure that we wouldn't royally screw up. The program had three parts and two intermissions. During the second part, we went into the bedroom to change. The bedroom opened out into the living room - no door - people everywhere - so I stood in my dress, fanning my skirt out wide as if there were any possible way this might make a good enough screen to keep Stephen hidden as he stripped down. I have to say, as we stepped back out of the bedroom in our full regalia, we were turning heads - well, mostly Stephen was.

We spent all night waiting backstage, watching the acts come and go. The later it got, the quieter it got back there, as more performers finished up and slid out into the audience to watch. One of the guys in war paint, this one in a white tutu, pushed by in his wheelchair and turned to us and said, "Merde."

When it was our turn to go on, the whole backstage / apartment / green room was quiet. We hunched in the kitchen, at the stage door, waiting to be announced.

And then this happened.

And then this happened.

Sitting in the spotlight for twenty seconds waiting for your musical cue is not the best way to start a performance, but I suspect there must have been some sort of technical difficulty. I hear our technician is a wizard at what he does. Once the music started up, our lines rolled out surprisingly well. We were getting laughs. We started into the first song and sang nicely.

And then other things happened. There was bobbling of dialogue, coincidentally and unfortunately mostly obliterating most of our references to Richard Foreman's notebooks (meaning, the prompts we were to build our piece around). Then Stephen launched beautifully into Shadow Waltz, and our paper cones got a nice laugh, but there was no monitor to adequately hear our background music over our own voices, so when we finally came up for air, we were a couple beats ahead of the music. In that pause, I lifted out of the song and floated over a sudden streaming of music that had no meaning. I didn't know where it or I was. Like sometimes happens when you're water skiing and the boat turns and the line goes slack, that tug picks up again - my ears found the forward thrust of the song again - and my voice kicked in. We sang the big finish, our arms up in a grand pose. The music ended - ta-da and applause - I let my arms drop and glanced over to see Stephen still frozen in his grand pose. I didn't know what to do, so I bowed, by myself, and the lights came down.

Then it was all out and over, and we were walking back through the kitchen, and I was thinking, did we stink?

I was thinking, did we look like the one amateur act in the whole Richard Foreman Festival?

I was thinking, is Stephen sorry we ever took on this crazy experience?

As we got to the back bedroom where our clothes were waiting, Stephen turned, grinned, reached out, and shook my hand.

*[sorry, dad]

a moment in the day: convergence

2011-10-12T06:39:00.000-07:00

With Nicholas cradled in my right arm and swagging a loop of leash over the side, I step down the apartment staircase into a convergence of early morning dogs.

Big, black dog, panting and straining against a synched-up leash held close by a neighbor. "Good morning." "Good morning." Passing by us and up the steps.

Woman and a brown Boxer coming in from outside, woman and two Basset hounds heading for the same door. "Oh! Good morning." "Good morning."

Me with my little Chihuahua in arms. "Good morning. Good morning."

Wait for the convergence of dogs to clear, wait for two Basset hounds to clatter echoey claws down the marble steps in the entryway. Then a bit of quiet and a lick on the nose from Nicholas, and we're through the entryway, down the last set of stairs, and out into the six o'clock black.

shadow dancing

2011-10-11T07:23:00.000-07:00

I have to give Stephen total credit for one of my favorite aspects of our little performance with the Richard Foreman Mini Festival. Since the main song we were singing was Shadow Waltz, he had the idea of having shadows waltz behind us during the song. The Performance Works Northwest folks told us they could project still images or film sequences on the stage wall, so we set about figuring how to create a little shadow film. Keeping in mind that we had only ten days (and very few nights together) between getting the prompt and performing the complete piece, it was squeeze to fit this in with writing the piece, putting together the background music, practicing and practicing. Oh, and going to work. Oh, and a computer crash in the middle of it all.

Monday night: Stephen and me in the back room of the apartment with the couch up on its end and leaned against the closet door, an art lamp affixed to a tripod shoved in the corner and Stephen's iPhone (camera) propped against the computer. In the wide spot of light beaming against the wall, Stephen and I waltzed in a circle. Trying to stay inside the tiny square marked out with tape on the floor. I banged into the corner of the desk. The blurry shadow figures on the wall were elongated and every time we turned, my butt looked like an attached beach ball.

We tried all night, moved furniture around, pointed the lamp from every angle, but the room was just too small. No way to get the shadows sharp in the frame and keep our real bodies out. I kept saying what we needed to do was go find a blank wall somewhere and project the car's headlights on it, and dance in front of that. Then Stephen came up with the idea of the shadow puppets.

He spent part of Tuesday and Wednesday drawing and cutting out of stiff art board three sets of dancing couples--modeled after Astaire and Rogers from pictures in a book.

Lovely, detailed silhouettes with delicate profiles and fingered hands. On Thursday, I stayed home from Dangerous Writing, and we set up the lamp and camera again. By then, Stephen had attached some chopsticks to the bases of the paper puppets and glued it all down. He'd also added a final touch to his dancing couples, using some parchment paper, with hopes that the light through the parchment would give a gauzy effect to part of the costuming. When Stephen does something, he does it to detailed perfection.

This was my job.

Then, when the sun went down, we started filming, shining the light across our stick puppets and against a thin piece of Bristol set up on Stephen's artist's easel.

He filmed from the opposite side, which gave us the sharpest possible shadow dancers. Sadly the parchment paper didn't give us the effect we wanted, so we had to take a little time to remove those pieces, but then we got back to choreographing the dancers.

I knelt down in front of the easel screen and twirled my silhouette duo, and Nicholas came over and curled up on the backs of my calves.

All night, Stephen and I played the music of Shadow Waltz and were two-dimensional dancers in a circle of light.

a moment in the day: richard foreman festival panic moment number two

2011-10-10T15:29:00.000-07:00

Stephen and I walk out into the silent dark. Beyond the soft ring of spotlight on the floor is the blur of the audience, mostly shadow. We set down our stools, set down our prop bouquets, sit on the stools and wait.

As the light comes up on our 1930s drags, there's a little roll of laughter in the crowd - a good sign. The technician is to give us a couple seconds before starting the music, so Madeleine and Penny Prévert in their imaginary dressing room start to pantomime primping at their imaginary dressing table, looking through an invisible mirror to the audience.

I check my hair (wig), doing that thing where you cup your hand and pat at the bottom of your curls, and I think, oh god, that's so cliché. I peer ahead into the mirror and fiddle with my earring, dab at my lipstick. I want to powder my face with an imaginary puff but I'm afraid of taking it too far.

After a few moments, I start to wonder when the music's going to start. A peek over at Stephen: he's fluffing the puffs of white net at his shoulder and trying not to look worried. Still no music. I try to shoot a quick look over at our technician sitting in a glow of red light at the back corner of the performance space, but with my glasses off, I don't even know if I'm looking at him.

Stephen could just give up and say the first line, but the first line is, "Oh, listen, the orchestra is starting," and the orchestra hasn't started yet, so we sit in our spotlight, looking through our mirror at the silent audience, and wait for the music.

a moment in the day: richard foreman festival panic moment number one

2011-10-10T09:55:00.000-07:00

Stephen and I stand at the stage door in our gowns and wigs. The act before us is finished and now it's quiet in the house. I lean my ear as close to the door as I can without bending my hat, and I whisper at Stephen.

"I don't hear anything. Should we go out?"

Stephen's eyes are a little wide under the swoops of his false eyelashes, "I think they'll announce our name."

We're pretty sure it's our turn in the program, but the emcee doesn't have a microphone, and no one has been giving clear instructions about entrances. For a long moment, we wait. Then I hiss at Stephen again.

"I don't hear anything. Should we go out?"

Standing there looking slightly terrified in that odd, little kitchen in the apartment that juts off of the performance space, Stephen as Madeleine Prévert is the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.

The masculine and feminine of his face, the deep, red lips, the blond sculpted wig under sequinned black net hat. Behind the door, now, is a quiet murmur. Maybe a voice.

I make out, "without further ado," but then silence again. I raise my eyebrows at Stephen.

"I think they'll announce our name," he says, but he doesn't look sure.

Total silence behind the door. Adrenaline is hot wet cement seeping through my bones. If they were ready out there, wouldn't they announce our names? But silence and silence. I whisper at Stephen.

"Should we go out?"

He pulls open the door. Beyond is blackness and a soft gray-shadow puddle of spotlight on the floor. Grabbing up our stools and our flowered paper cones, we step through, forgetting to close the door behind us, and step out into the silent dark.

a moment in the day: fishing

2011-10-09T14:52:00.000-07:00

Rehearsing in the studio. We run lines and sing the songs as we mime fixing our makeup and hair in Madeleine and Penny Prévert's imaginary dressing room. I pretend to powder puff my face, then start to twist open a pretend jar of some sort of makeup. When Stephen starts laughing, I realize I'm overdoing my pantomime. As we start back into the song, I bait an invisible hook and cast out an invisible fishing rod. So many moments of laughing along this process of preparing for the Richard Foreman Festival. Then it's back to work again.

a moment in the day: pancakes

2011-10-08T06:33:00.000-07:00

Streetlight down through the tree makes confetti on a six o'clock black shadow sidewalk. Nicholas sniffs at the bushes. From the glowing second story apartment window above comes music, chiming bells and the voices of the Nineteen Eighties: Feed the world, let them know it's Christmas time. It repeats and repeats and then, instead of fading out, just stops, and we walk down the sidewalk in city morning quiet, that hum. At the edge of the next apartment building, between the bushes, are two pancakes, flecked with ants.

Coming back the other way, heading home, we pass under the same window, and the Band-Aid song is playing again. Over and over: Feed the world, let them know it's Christmas time. Two male voices over the music, laughing and talking about Michael Jackson.

versatile

2011-10-06T07:03:00.000-07:00

Liz and Bridget over at Pocket Shrink have shared the Versatile Blogger Award with me. Thanks so much, ladies.

In turn, I was asked to do three things:

1) Kiss my dog on the head
2) Go to work dressed in a 1938 Naval officer's uniform and a natty, little hat with a chartreuse feather
3) Eat a cucumber sandwich with the crusts cut off

Oh, sorry.

1) Thank the awarder and link back to him/her
2) Share 7 things about yourself
3) Pass on this award to 15 blogs you've discovered

Well, thanks again, Liz and Bridget. Right back atcha [as you'll see below]. Here are seven random things about me...

~When I was very young, I and a friend stole some sort of candy from a convenience store, and then I immediately went home and told my mom, hey, guess what Shannon taught me you can do. This was not an excuse. I really did think it was OK.

~When I'm in the shower, my dog Nicholas stands on the other side of the curtain with his paws on the edge of the tub and makes noises like a baby pig.

[bonus picture, not at bathtub...]

~I like cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off.

~Some of the production costumes I wore as a circus clown were: convict, policeman [with detachable pants], bullfight patron [with sombrero], nurse [with balloon boobs], racehorse and rider [the bottom half of me was the horse], and Bill Clinton.

~When I was a kid, my best friend was afraid of rubber alligators. I was afraid of earthquakes, house fires, making friends and being noticed all by myself at school.

~One of my dream careers would be designing book covers.

~I fell in love with my husband first in the form of art, then in the form of words, then in the form of voice, and lastly in person.

And here is my list of 15 cool blogs.

Pocket Shrink - a daily bit of counsel from two smart, insightful [and entertaining] psychologists.

SHARE - a bi-monthly Portland event that gathers a group of artists to create in a shared space. I've attended this event a few times and it's great, creative fun.

Nora Robertson.org - lovely local writer who's plugged into the arts and literary scene in Portland.

Confessions of a Pop Fan - Jamie S. Rich is a graphic novel writer [loved his very noir You Have Killed Me] who also writes great film reviews.

The Old Foodie - an excellent food history blog.

Recently Banned Literature - a very prolific poet / artist who also writes musings on life and old books.

Bags of Wind - blog of a Portland filmmaker. A great mix - some film stuff, some personal stuff, plus links to his very funny "Last Film I Saw" podcasts.

Guts and Shame - I love personal blogs, and the best kind is one written by a good writer - like this one.

Laura Stanfill - great stuff on the art of writing, plus her cool Seven Questions interview series.

Corgiodyssey - meet Dr. Jenkins!

Kevin Sampsell.com - if you didn't read A Common Pornography, you should. Right now.

Dangerousboi.com - personal writing with an amazing sense of voice.

Post-Apocalyptic Bohemian - musings both personal and universal, including great posts on birthdays in gay history.

Advanced Style - "Proof from the wise and silver haired set that personal style advances with age" - so charming.

and the inimitable Reading Local: Portland.

six days

2011-10-03T20:56:00.000-07:00

The Richard Foreman Mini Festival is less than a week away, now. We're in the middle of preparations. The prompt from Richard Foreman's notebooks came to us at twelve-o-one in the morning on Thursday. We printed the pages and went through the lines from his play script and chose a couple to incorporate into the piece we were to write. On Saturday night we got together with our cyber-maestro Sage Ricci to finalize our backup music, and on Sunday we wrote the piece.

Today, Monday, we were given our second prompt, which came to us from the performers who will be on stage before us. They were to choose a bit of language, a bit of dance, a prop... something from their own piece and pass it on to us, and we were to incorporate it into our piece. We, in turn, had to choose a bit from ours to pass on. Today also was a two-hour rehearsal period at the little theater. There are other preparations we're involved in, but I don't want to give away what we're doing - all I guess I want to give away right now is the quick forward momentum of this whole process. So interesting. Ten days between getting the prompt and performing in the show. Today, we performed to an empty house and a cat sitting on a chair. He listened to about half a song and then he was gone.

oklahoma! at pcs

2011-09-25T18:45:00.000-07:00

Friday night, we went to see Oklahoma! at Portland Center Stage. If I'm remembering correctly, Oklahoma! was the first musical I ever saw live - at a dinner theater in California. This was during the period of my childhood when I wished my life were a musical and I sang and danced around the house, but only when no one was looking. At the dinner theater, the dancers clicked their heels, and the waitress brought me sour milk in a wine glass.

I was excited to see Oklahoma! live as an adult - and of course extra interested to see Portland Center Stage's production with its all-African-American cast. There's true historical relevance to this casting. Oklahoma! is about America during the period when Oklahoma was on the verge of becoming a state, and the play is full of the icons of the old Southwest - the cowboy and the farmer, the box social and the surrey with a fringe on top - but most of us just have one basic vision in our heads when we think of this era, and that vision is white. Yet one in three cowboys was not white. There were lots of black cowboys, and in the Oklahoma Territory back at the turn of the last century, there were many towns that were all African American. PCS has a really cool blog post with some great old photos about this here.

So, right away, there's an extra layer to this version of the musical. And the production is well researched in terms of set and costume, and even in dialect. A voice coach was brought in to teach cast members to speak the way African Americans spoke in Oklahoma in 1906. In fact, here's another really interesting PCS blog post about that.

Of course, everyone's been wondering what this twist would do to PCS' production of the show. For me, yes, it added a bit of richness to the story, but for the most part, any "differentness" in the show disappeared pretty quickly. In fact, with all the expectation there is in the theater world that plays be made "new and different," this particular twist mostly allowed PCS to stage a very classic rendition of Oklahoma - and that's pretty refreshing. Singing and dancing, a little roping. Lots of energy, lots of humor. Some highlights for me:

The first few lines of "Oh What a Beautiful Morning" were surprising and moving. The production number that opens the second half, "The Farmer and the Cowman," was a lot of fun, a great, energetic return after intermission, and the setting was beautiful with hanging baskets lit by candles. There was some lovely harmony in "Many a New Day" (which I listened for, later, in the cast album of the film and didn't hear). The very close of the first half, coming back from the ballet dream sequence, was staged in a way that made it quite chilling, and after all the energy and the dancing, it was almost surprisingly dramatic to me. One of my favorite songs (and favorite odd plot points) is "Poor Jud is Dead," and Rodney Hicks (Curly) and Justin Lee Miller (Jud Fry) performed it beautifully - with the added treat of Hicks mimicking an Oklahoma preacher, which was one of the funniest moments in the show. Ado Annie was played by Marisha Wallace with a huge amount of energy, but not in a way that grated. In "I Cain't Say No," she worked that energy well, bringing it up to a great crescendo in spots like the build-ups to the cain't-say-nos (I cain't be prissy an' quaint / I ain't the type that can faint/ How can I be what I ain't / I cain't say no).

Oklahoma! runs through October 30 at Portland Center Stage.

nicholas at the party

2011-09-18T16:46:00.000-07:00

The day doesn't start out great. After a month of hot sun, it's the first time since Nicholas came to live here that the day is cold and rainy. Nicholas is puzzled and disheartened by this. He's hoped it wouldn't rain in this place; after all, he came such a long way from the last place he lived (Beaverton)*.

In the evening, though, the tall man who calls him dog and the woman with the lap take Nicholas out to a party at the home of the woman who makes everyone laugh and the man who writes pornography.

No, no! says the woman with the lap, the book is called A Common Pornography. Nicholas doesn't get the distinction, or why the woman with the lap seems so horrified by his blunder - he isn't quite sure what pornography is.

The party is called the End of Summer Party, but the tall man who calls him dog laughs sadly and says it should probably have been called the Party to End Summer. As they round the backyard to head inside, they see one man smoking in the wet dark and a ping pong table lonely under a plastic cover shiny with pools of rain.

But the man who writes pornography, standing by the barbecue at the edge of the house, looks happy and grins as he meets Nicholas, and offers to cook them some hotdogs. Inside, the house is packed full of people. There's a big wall with trees and a squirrel painted on it, and a low coffee table covered with food. The refreshments include crumbs at people's feet and a dollop of key lime whipped cream, which Nicholas finds on the carpet. People want to hold Nicholas, and he is passed from person to person.

One group of three get excited and have their picture taken, all holding Nicholas together. They say they are the proprietors of Smalldoggies (a magazine and press and also a reading series), but they've never been photographed with an actual small doggie before (they have cats). On their card is a logo of a Chihuahua looking a lot like Nicholas except that it has two heads. Nicholas has never seen a Chihuahua like this before.

There are so many people at the party, Nicholas can't remember all their names. There's the woman with the blues tattoo and the woman with the girlish voice and the man who lets Nicholas lick his mouth and the man who writes and the woman who writes and the man who writes and the woman who writes. At the end of the evening, when it's time to go, the woman who makes everyone laugh does a little goodbye dance to the Captain and Tennille.

Overall Nicholas enjoys his night on the town.

*[editor's note: the woman with the lap would like to go on record saying she's not actually sure where nicholas' foster home was, so she chose beaverton, since this was where she first met nicholas.]

question mark

2011-09-15T08:05:00.000-07:00

Last night, Nicholas went to Chapman School in the northwest where, at this time of year, thousands of swifts nest in a huge chimney and where, during the seven o'clock hour, they gather and swarm in the sky before swirling and funneling down into the chimney for the night.

Two humans went too. One was the woman with the lap. One was a man who spoke like poetry. The three of them sat on a slope in the grass surrounded by all sorts of other people, lots of kids, some dogs. Nicholas thought about running around and through and over all those people, but the woman with the lap held him on her lap and bribed him to stay with much petting and talking in that odd voice she uses when she talks to Nicholas.

The man who spoke like poetry looked up and said there were hundreds of parentheses turning in the sky.

A mom came up with a little red-haired boy. She said, "We just want to say we love your dog."

The woman with the lap was happy and asked the little boy if he'd like to meet Nicholas, but the little boy made a tiny smile and stepped back. The mom said the little boy wasn't ready to meet Nicholas but that, though he was afraid of dogs, Nicholas was the first dog he'd ever said he liked.

More and more swifts churned overhead, though Nicholas didn't watch them because he couldn't smell them from that far away. On one side of the hill, the sea of people and blankets was parted, and children with flattened boxes rode like magic carpets down the slope. A man walked through the crowds handing out leaflets about Vaux swifts and showing off two little glass boxes. One had a dead swift inside, the other a dead swallow. A small group of boys followed the man with their eyes big on the boxes of dead birds.

Look, said the woman with the lap, it's like a big question mark in the sky.

Up over everything, a huge black curl that straightened out at the bottom as the birds tunneled down into the chimney.

A thousand parentheses come together to make a question mark, said the man who spoke like poetry.

fingerdance

2011-09-14T08:08:00.000-07:00

On October 9th (hey, isn't that John Lennon's birthday?) Stephen and I ( or Madeleine and Penny) will be performing in the Richard Foreman Festival. Which you can check out here. We won't get our prompt (which the theme of our performance will be based around) until ten days before, but as Madeleine and Penny don't come with an orchestra, we figured we'd better take a look at our music.

Stephen had an idea about what our musical accompaniment should be, but first we need a tape with the basic tunes on it. I figured maybe I could take the sheet music and work it out on piano (OK, what we have is an old electric keyboard) and then record that, and that would give us something to start with. Let me play around with it Tuesday night, I said, and I'll see if I can learn how to play the songs.

It's been a long time since I've played piano. I am not sure when the last time was that I played piano. I don't sight read very well--I know most of the notes inside the lines of the treble clef and about five of the ones inside the lines of the bass clef, and for the rest I have to stop and do math. But I have a good ear and figured if I studied the lines and notes and rests and knew the basic songs, I could piece it together and then memorize it.

I'm not great at memorization.

Tuesday after I left work, after I went to the grocery store and put away the food, I sat down on the couch with the keyboard in front of me balanced on a chair, and Nicholas curled next to me (when he wasn't trying to get on my lap), and I stayed there for probably four hours poking my fingers at the keys.

I'm not saying I expected to turn into Oscar Levant in four hours.

(I tried to find a clip of Levant playing Sabre Dance or something else from the movie we watched Monday night, which is The Barkleys of Broadway, but i can't find a thing, so I'll have to just say that when you watch him play, you understand how piano fingers dance. His fingers dance as much as Fred and Ginger do in that movie.)

I didn't expect to turn into Oscar Levant in four hours, but I worked pretty much straight, just getting through one song. So many black keys. Black keys mean you can't play it by ear and logic, you have to more or less memorize the song note for note. But it's strange what happened with my fingers on keys for the first time in years. When I didn't think too much about them, they mostly remembered where they were supposed to be - and stranger, they started dancing. Not something you could see by watching my clumsy work, but I could feel it - some sort of magic thing that moved my hands as much as I was moving them. There's a bit of dance in everyone. I used to feel it when I was clowning. And even at times when I had my hands on a light board. The impulse is in me even when I'm an everyday body in space, walking to work, going down steps, sliding books onto a shelf. If it were socially acceptable, I'd probably dance everywhere, in some small way.

My fingers on the keys was a dance I'd forgotten with all the years that have passed since I used to play. That dance kept me sitting there on the couch until ten o'clock through a thousand wrong notes. I don't know if I'll be able to pull off playing the song sufficiently in the time we have, but the evening was worth it for that tiny awakening.

[goodnight, oscar levant, wherever you are.]

americus

2011-09-09T07:36:00.000-07:00

This month, I got to create my first real window display in... too long. So excited because it's touting not only Banned Books Week (coming up at the end of this month) but a new graphic novel illustrated by Portland artist (and friend) Jonathan Hill.

The book is called Americus and deals with the issue of banned books. You can check the book out here but if you're a Portlander, I'd encourage you to come down to the downtown store and have a look at this month's gallery show, which features every single illustration Jonathan drew for the book.

For the window display, Jonathan gave me an image for a poster he created - I think he put it together for a comicon - and I incorporated that into the panel. Can I just say how satisfying it was to put together a window display again? My little show-off image below includes an image of the book cover, but in the real window, the actual book is displayed there in front of the panel. The display will be up the whole month of September. The art show will be as well. Also, check out Jonathan's website here.

2011-09-08T07:11:00.000-07:00

File this under: what have we gotten ourselves into...

nicholas on the trail

2011-09-07T07:30:00.000-07:00

On the last weekend of August, Nicholas went hiking. Well, two humans went too - the woman with the lap and the tall man who calls him Dog. It may have been some sort of anniversary for the humans. The first trail Nicholas hiked was in a place called Strawberry Island, which wasn't an island and didn't have any strawberries. It did have wild blackberries, though, and the humans picked some right off the twisted, thorny vines and ate them. The woman with the lap reached a blackberry down for Nicholas. He smelled it. The woman loves the fact that anything she offers to Nicholas - blackberry, book, hairbrush - he smells.

Strawberry Island was all waving, golden grasses and blue sky. Wind pushed the hot air around. When a peculiar smell came with that air, the woman with the lap said, "Mint?"

The tall man who calls Nicholas Dog reached down and, with a finger and a thumb, rubbed the leaf of a small plant growing low to the ground, then brought his fingers to his nose and sniffed.

The woman with the lap said, "Poison oak?"

Later when the trail forked and down on the right stood a strange, industrial-looking building, the woman with the lap sniffed that same scent and said, "Sewage treatment plant?"

Nicholas stopped on the trail and twitched his nose. He didn't mind the smell of the sewage treatment plant.

But there were beautiful views of the Columbia River and lovely fields of gold. Overhead cartwheeling against sky were two hawks. They whirled past the sun and threw sudden flashes of shadow down on the hikers.

They were too far away for Nicholas to smell.

The second place where Nicholas hiked was called Fort Cascades and was very different from Strawberry Island. It was forested and green and cool. Nicholas walked among enormous moss-covered boulders unearthed by the flood of 1894.

He did not pee on the replica of a Native American petroglyph. He did not pee on the remnants of the old railway or on the 1861 gravestone.

At the end of the hike, the tall man who calls him Dog noticed another short trail leading away from the area where cars were parked. The trail led down a hill and over and through rocks of various sizes until it landed at the shore of the Columbia. There, at the end of the long day, the man and the woman found places to sit on flat rocks and brought out the liver snacks, and Nicholas sat on a lap and sniffed and contemplated contentment.

pocket shrink

2011-09-03T07:32:00.000-07:00

Recently, I created a banner graphic for the new blog Pocket Shrink. I love the problem-solving you have to do in taking an existing space shape, an existing picture and a specific set of text and fitting it cohesively and attractively together. There's also the added element of tone. What kind of look would work best for this particular blog? What can I do with color, what can I do with font? It's definitely not as easy as you'd think.

Here's the final product.

The blog is equal parts psychology and writing, two of my favorite subjects. I've been privileged to witness parts of the book Pocket Shrink as it's been taking shape, and it's lovely. Totally accessible, totally smart writing, discussing issues for which we could all use a bit of "shrink" in our lives. The blog is like a daily dose of the book on a smaller scale. A Pocket Pocket Shrink. Check it out and follow if you so desire! Here's a link!

dogs and roses

2011-09-01T07:30:00.000-07:00

One of the things that's made our experience of having a new dog even more lovely is that we're reading the book Inside of a Dog by Alexandra Horowitz. I'd been eyeing the book for a while as I shelved bestsellers at Powell's, and when I brought it home, Stephen had the idea that we could read it together. We used to read to each other when we were first together and have read a number of books that way, including Faraway Places and The Man Who Fell in Love With the Moon. It's been a while, though, and when Stephen suggested we do that with Inside of a Dog, I thought it was a perfect idea. Horowitz is a psychologist who focuses her study on animals, and this book explores dogs' perceptual and cognitive abilities and gives you a good idea of what it's like to be a dog.

So lovely to lie in bed together with Nicholas curled up against us or burrowed deep in the covers, and read about dogness. The book is illuminating but also written with a sweet, droll style--and thank you lord, not full of cutesy animal puns. I'd highly recommend reading it if you have a new dog, or otherwise. Here's a paragraph I really enjoyed:

"...Imagine if each detail of our visual world were matched by a corresponding smell. Each petal on a rose may be distinct, having been visited by insects leaving pollen footprints from faraway flowers. What is to us just a single stem actually holds a record of who held it, and when. A burst of chemicals marks where a leaf was torn. The flesh of the petals, plump with moisture compared to that of the leaf, holds a different odor besides. The fold of a leaf has a smell; so does a dew drop on a thorn. And time is in those details: while we can see one of the petals drying and browning, the dog can smell this process of decay and aging. Imagine smelling every minute visual detail. That might be the experience of a rose to a dog..."

adopted

2011-08-31T14:01:00.000-07:00

This is a little late, but I just thought to check online again, and here's an updated page on He Who Was Known as Ditka. I remember those first few days I had to try hard not to want to call him Ditka (or, occasionally, José). Now it's strange to see him with that name.

pretty

2011-08-22T10:25:00.000-07:00

Fabergé Easter egg.

Fabergé Easter egg.

Fabergé Easter egg.

Fabergé Easter egg.

Red pepper.

and speaking of pretty...

2011-08-22T10:12:00.000-07:00

A new interview with the lovely and talented artist (husband) Stephen O'Donnell is up on Laura Stanfill's cool writing blog. It's part of her Seven Questions series. I thought the questions were really smart and gave him a lot to think about and talk about. You can take a look here.

the continuing adventures of nicholas c. o'dittle

2011-08-16T19:25:00.000-07:00

When you're moving to a new home, there are lots of adventures to be had.

There's the initial discovery of this place. Running all around as soon as you're let down by the nice Indigo Rescue lady. This weird place with half-made paintings all over and questionable creatures lurking.

There's the scary moment when the Indigo Rescue lady leaves and you're left with these two strange people you don't really know. They talk to you in goo-goo voices and take you on a long walk in the neighborhood, but you don't pee. You're not sure you're ready for the commitment.

There's the trip to the big pet store for more supplies, and there's lots more exploring in the apartment and sitting in laps and being petted, and you think you're kind of starting to like these strange people.

The woman holds you and says, "Nicholas, Nicholas, Nicholas."

The man is very tall and he looks down at you and grins and says, "Dawg!"

They take you out on more walks. All along neighborhood streets full of Art Deco apartment buildings and up to the park. You don't hesitate anymore; you trot along fast and the tips of your ears make a tiny flopflopflop as you go.

But you don't pee. You're not sure you're ready for the commitment.

Around seven (you know this because you're a very sophisticated dog who can apparently tell time), the tall man who calls you Dog leaves to go to another store and get you a new blanket. The woman kind of wants to give you a blanket that was once used by someone named José, but the tall man who calls you Dog thinks you need your very own, new blanket. You agree with this. Not only are you your own man, but, well, these people have a little shrine to this mysterious José, with a book and a framed portrait and plastered paw prints and things, and you think that's a little odd.

You keep these thoughts to yourself.

You're glad the tall man who calls you Dog is the one who has gone out to do the shopping, because he's clearly the one for the job. He's the Adrian behind your new wardrobe with the dashing green collar and matching harness and leash.

You sit in the woman's lap while she taps at the computer and posts pictures of you for her friends and family to see, and you think this lap fits really nicely. Then the phone rings and it's the tall man, and he wants the woman with the lap to tell him the size of the bottom of your crate (which incidentally matches your wardrobe). As she measures it, you pee on the rug.

You are ready for a commitment.

There are more walks and more adventures. There's trying out different places to sit in this new place.

And discovering the doppelganger who lives in the mirror.

There's the first play.

There's watching the tall man do yoga in the morning.

waiting...

2011-08-11T06:44:00.000-07:00

Things to do after work when you're [impatiently] awaiting word on adopting a new dog.

Step one. Call Mom and talk about dogs. Have her turn the phone over to Dad. Talk to him about computers. And dogs.

Step two. Get on the internet and read about dogs.

Step three. Try for about three minutes to work on writing.

Step four. Give up and get on the internet and read about dogs.

Step five. Make frozen pizza and watch a movie. Look through your collection for something that might be about dogs or at least heartwarming. Select White Heat.

Step six. Think, hmm, Cagney would make a great name for a Chihuahua.

names not to name your dog

2011-08-07T07:44:00.000-07:00

When Stephen and I finally got serious about looking at dogs for adoption, we came across a tiny guy named QBall. He was one of a few we met yesterday, and though he was incredibly cute (and I fell a little in love at first sight as he was very meticulously trying to attack a bit of fluff out of the air), he was more energetic than would be good in our apartment.

As we browsed doggies online, we've tried to keep the renaming impulse in check because that's far too personal before you know a dog is actually going to be coming to live with you. But we couldn't help it with QBall. When I got José, I would have liked to rename him, but I figured two and a half years old was too old - it would be too confusing. I don't think that anymore, and... well... QBall.

It's just not our kind of name.

[can i say, i still think horatio is one of the best dog names ever...]

We couldn't help but play the rename game with QBall, wondering if there was something we could come up with that rhymed or sounded similar...

Screwball...

U-Haul...

Ru Paul...

new workspaces part two - the ladies who watch over me

2011-07-16T07:46:00.001-07:00

One of the lovely outcomes of moving our spaces around in the apartment was the way decorating and redecorating made these spaces our own. I've been known to do my writing anywhere. From the makeshift "desk" in the living room of recent days, to vans and tents and sleeper trucks when I was in the circus. I think in those circus years, I sort of forgot about what nesting can do to you personally and to your art.

When we got all the furniture and accessories settled, Stephen had to do a little nudging, actually, to get me off my tuffet and into the task of nesting in my new area. Together, we put up a few pieces of his art in the room, over the couch and by the joint computer - and he reminded me of a couple prints that in the past I had said I'd someday like to frame and hang.

Once everything was up on the walls, I noticed something. Now when I write, I have a circle of women like muses around me...

The tempestuous Norma

A couple of not-so-tempestuous but quite fashionable ladies of Stephen's creation

The lovely and glamorous Medusa (also of Stephen's creation)

And, ladies and gentlemen, standing behind me and watching over my shoulder, the inimitable Bette Davis.

new workspaces

2011-07-14T07:15:00.000-07:00

Another little show and tell. Recently, Stephen and I moved the rooms around in the apartment so that we both had better places to work. We used to have three desks crammed into the studio. Stephen did his art in there, but it was so claustrophobic that I couldn't write. Plus, I need to work in a separate space from him. Plus my desk was such a mess I couldn't stand it but was too lazy to clean it off... So instead, I would have my computer on the little table in the... living/dining room and work there.

Now Stephen has a bigger art area and I have a little writing area all my own.

Stephen's space. Bay window backdrop. Note the rabbits.

He's made his space pretty.

Here's the view from Stephen's chair. Along with sneak previews of what he's working on...

And here's my new space in back. It's also where the couch went, so maybe that makes it the den. See? I can write or I can take a nap. But, oh man, trying to get that couch in that room...

My desk back by the window. Nice to look out and see sky when I write.

The walls there in my corner. Something extra special about putting up a little art around me. Makes it more my corner. The poster is from when I was a super for the opera Norma.

And this is my view from the desk. The desk, when Stephen took the picture, was still mostly uncluttered...

Thanks to Stephen for being the mastermind, able to work out all the math of what could go where so we could get the best space possible.

birthday card show-off

2011-07-12T06:47:00.001-07:00

Friday was Stephen's birthday. We both worked that day but we had a lovely evening. Including dinner out and champagne with puréed strawberries (from the farmer's market). And the traditional homemade card.

So, here's my show-off of this time around. Because of all that's been going on, I thought I'd go with a New York theme. So here's Lady Liberty by way of Judith and Holofernes...

dame

2011-06-14T13:13:00.000-07:00

What better for your birthday morning than chocolate croissants and strawberries in champagne and dames? Or Dames, anyway. Busby Berkeley dance numbers, Dick Powell making wise cracks, Ruby Keeler faces everywhere.

The card Stephen made was Berkeley too, although from a different movie. Here's "By a Waterfall" from Footlight Parade...

And since I've always wanted to be a Berkeley girl...

interview

2011-06-10T12:25:00.000-07:00

An interview with Stephen just went up at Artinfo.com.

Check it out here!

reading

2011-06-04T12:17:00.000-07:00

Yes, I practice for readings.

It seems like most writers just show up with their book or their pages and start to read, but if I did that... well, how do I know what would happen if I did that, because I don't ever let myself do that. But when I read, my eyes are like the parent and my mouth is like the three year old who just squatted down and put that little yellow bug in his mouth. I just made up a metaphor in which a mouth puts something it its mouth, and that's weird, but I don't really have time to think up something better. An example is better. Like when I was guest reader with the Portland Fiction Project and looked down at my pages and recited that my closets were filled with beans.

Supposed to say jeans.

My wedding video is another example. Stephen and me reading the letters we wrote to each other as vows, and between my never having seen it before and my here-and-there trying-not-to-cry, I sound like one of those halting, robotic automated messages your doctor sends you to confirm your appointment.

This is how I practice. If I book a reading a month down the line, I tell myself I will go through the piece once a day all the way up to the event. This makes me feel very secure.

Then I get bored of that and by the time the reading comes around, I've read the piece through exactly seven and a half times, but that's far more times than most writers do, so I feel... well, at least a little bit secure.

Then on the day of the reading, I stay home from work knowing that I can spend all morning reading it to myself.

Instead I read it once and then go write a blog post about it.

beauty

2011-05-28T15:49:00.001-07:00

What if

jewels

were something

you could taste?

[maple syrup.]

freudian...ish

2011-05-17T07:34:00.000-07:00

...

2011-05-14T06:51:00.000-07:00

Another thing I've realized, which doesn't matter.

In the movie Flamingo Road (whose premise is all about place) Joan Crawford's character's name is Lane and Zachary Scott's character's name is Field.

Sydney Greenstreet's character's name isn't about place in any way, but after all, his name is Sydney Greenstreet.

...

2011-05-05T12:21:00.000-07:00

And Sasquatch did absquatulate.

[translation: Bigfoot hot-footed it out of there.]

sordid lives

2011-05-05T07:56:00.000-07:00

On impulse--and an invitation from Lisa Mooyman, who's performing in the show--Stephen and I got involved with singing in the chorus for Opera Theater Oregon's next performance, Sordid Lives. Opera Theater Oregon is known for pairing opera with all sorts of kookiness, and Sordid Lives is a crazy combination of eighties soap operas and tabloids and those choose-your-own-adventure books--remember them?

I like how in the press release material, they call us a Greek Chorus. Sounds nicely hoity-toity. But we'll be singing, among other things, pieces of the Men At Work song Down Under, and cuss words involving the part of the body I don't like to think about.

When we were first invited to be part of the show, I thought we were being asked to make a single appearance as a crowd screaming obscenities. And I thought I got to pick my own obscenities. But actually, we'll be singing those four letter words. And they're not the ones I like to say out loud.

I'm good with the f word, I'm great with the f word. It's the s one I don't like to think about. It was strange to sit in rehearsal last night and sing that word loud. And then to have to follow it up with fart. You see, I can hardly write it here - and I've got to sing it.

The last word in the trio is ass. And even though that's the place from whence come the other two words, it's much easier for me to say. In my brain, I always add a little jack, so that it's about the donkey instead.

The rehearsal ran long, and they asked anyone who wanted to stay another half hour... to do so. The whole chorus - including the chorus master - left except for Stephen and me and one other woman. I hoped we'd rehearse some other part, but, no, we had to sing our ass words again, and louder this time, with no other voices to hide behind.

All in all, rehearsal was a really fun experience. Along with cuss words, we get to sing bits of the Toreador song and... well, other things. Guess I'd be giving things away. All I'm going to say at this point is that it's seriously worth the price of the ticket to hear Lisa sing Queen of the Night while in the midst of a cat fight. It was so funny I had to stop thinking about it so I didn't keep laughing through the next bit of practice.

The show goes on Friday, 7 PM, at the Mission Theater.

encounter at the funeral

2011-05-03T05:53:00.000-07:00

This isn't about the man we went there to honor. Who, whenever I think of chatting with him at family parties, makes me smile before my face even knows.

This is about the moment standing in the entryway of the huge Catholic church forty-five minutes before the service was to start. Mary and me standing together and I’m smiling and reacting as she talks with a middle-aged black man wearing glasses with hexagonal white frames. Something about his suit makes me think he is part of the church. He looks across to Stephen and says he not only loves Stephen's tie but wishes he could buy it off of Stephen right now. He has a tie collection. He estimates that he owns about two hundred ties.

“You have class!” he says loud across to Stephen in the echoing narthex, and we all laugh.

The man tells Mary that when he dies, he wants his daughter to sew a quilt out of his ties to give to his granddaughter.

He says, my granddaughter is beautiful. Blond and blue eyed. He says, I married a Caucasian. I wanted beautiful children.

Mary nods and smiles and responds, but her smile starts looking a bit plastered on her face. Tiny, confused line between her eyebrows.

He says, I taught my daughter that she should marry a Caucasian, too. And she did! And now I have a beautiful blond haired, blue eyed granddaughter!

Later, I go down the aisle and sit in a pew. I'm surrounded by faces. In the stained glass windows and in statues all around. Jesus and Mary, apostles and saints. All of them with white, white faces.

easter

2011-04-25T09:49:00.000-07:00

Nice little Easter.

First cyber, then in the flesh.

Morning computer time, me alone in the studio, a back and forth string of Jesus Christ Superstar lyrics down my facebook page with Frank.

Life lived with fingertips and words.

He started it. The opening line to Heaven On Their Minds. One of my very favorite of the songs. We rolled it out, line after line. Only sad thing: Edina wasn't on. Or you would have had the three of us going at it.

Here would be a funny Little Family Easter vigil in cybertime. The three of us in our separate corners, each with a basket of malted milk balls and jelly beans (or maybe some pizza... I'd rather the pizza) laying down a back and forth of that whole rock opera. Think we could do it? We were trying to do it without cheating yesterday, and after a while, I knew my memory for the lyrics was going a little blooey. We didn't get past Heaven, but that was enough for me to feel Easter.

In the evening, it was Mary and Stephen and me and salad and appetizers and good music and then Judy Garland and Easter Parade. Mary brought CDs of classical adagios and we sat and listened and talked. She also brought Benny. Elegant greyhound, he of the celebrated longest tail of all greyhounds around. Really: he won a prize. It was some big local greyhound get-together Mary took him to recently. The prize was a soft rubber doggie bowl you can fold up and take with you. She had it with her, in fact, and put it on her lap full of water and he got his sleek nose up there and drank. Weirdly, the doggie bowl was imprinted with an ad for some beer.

To get ready for having Mary over, I cleaned off my desk - by which I mean the little table in the living room, the only table in the apartment. I piled my piles on the other piles on my real desk in the studio, which is so full of piles that I can't write back there. This morning, I moved my laptop back on the table but left the piles in the back. I'll get those piles moved back, but for today, I might just see what it's like to write without a mess around me.

song and dance

2011-04-22T07:01:00.000-07:00

On Thursday night, Stephen and I went to the ballet. Very exciting. We see a lot of theater when we can, but I, at least, don't have a lot of experience seeing dance. Unless Fred Astaire movies count.

It made me think a lot about the discussions we had been having as Stephen prepared for his symposium at the Tacoma Art Museum, actually. Back then, the talk was about how the body on the canvas tells the story. Last night, it was about how the body in movement tells the story. My brain always wanting to find story--but story isn't always the most important aspect of an art. What's interesting to me about dance is how minimal the elements of story become. Or can become. And they hit you as viscerally as if you were given a narrator and a plot to follow. They go to the fundamental. The body moves, the body interacts with another body, and it gives you something to feel.

We saw Song and Dance, presented by Oregon Ballet Theater at the Newmark. Part one was a square dance set to Vivaldi and Corelli. With a square dance caller, even. Choreographed by Ballanchine and originally performed in 1957. Somehow, I never realized that dance choreography could live in the same way music lives. How it can be created and written down and used again and again. How if you saw Square Dance done by the New York City Ballet in 1957, you'd see the same dance as I saw last night.

I was pretty rapt when Julia Rowe and Chauncey Parsons danced alone. Everything was so exact. And of course so light. The only way you knew they were touching the floor was that little clunk of the toe shoes against the stage. During the first intermission, Stephen told me Ballanchine was known for his very exacting choreography. I found it fascinating to watch.

Part two was called Speak and took from hip hop. It was totally cool to see this on the heels of Ballanchine. Completely different body story, movement story. About the lovely way culture can create a dance that lives in the bodies of people in their everyday lives, a way bodies communicate through movement. I think when dance goes modern it can sometimes turn out hokey, but Speak was totally great. True. Different kinds of subtle from the Ballanchine. And pretty exhilarating.

Left Unsaid was something gorgeous. Something almost surreal about the way it played with the relationships of the people on the stage. As it started, I realized I didn't know what to expect of it. I'd remembered the first one was going to be a square dance, I'd remembered about the hop hop, but I went into this one with a blank slate. And what I got was like anonymous story being born. Because I didn't have any expectations of theme, I tried to let my eyes just watch the beauty of the dancing, but it was always hints of story in my head. During one of the dances, I actually found myself letting that story take the form of one of the novels I've been following as it takes shape in my Dangerous Writing workshop. And it was another revelation of what dance can do. And I'm pretty sure I know who's going to die at the end of that novel. Well, maybe not, but beauty of movement, well-choreographed use of dramatic tension, became complete story in my head.

Stephen noticed that the woman from Speak was the principal woman in Left Unsaid. I thought everyone danced beautifully, but he has the eye for singling people out, remembering faces, and he has a more studied eye when it comes to dance. And he said she was outstanding. Anne Mueller - who apparently has been a part of Oregon Ballet Theatre since 1996.

The music was Bach. And contrasting with that, another element in Left Unsaid was apparently yoga. Which I don't know, so I can't speak for it, but I'd love to have had the knowledge to be able to pick out the "asanas" (OK, I don't even know what that is) that I read were a part of the choreography.

Last up was Eyes on You, which was all Cole Porter music. Sometimes piped in, sometimes live with a vocalist and piano. It was really cool, getting these very different types of music and of dance in these four different segments. Really reminded you of all the many worlds you can get to with just bodies and music. Well, bodies and music and a simple bit of costume and stage set. The use of color and contrast, visually, worked really nicely in Eyes on You. I liked the costumes all in white against the changing color of the backdrop. It seemed like the costuming was a successful reference to the Thirties - didn't seem like a bad imitation, which most imitations of that time period seem to turn out to be. Stephen's the expert on time and costume, and if he says something is successfully period, I figure it must be.

Overall, a lovely evening. Here's another picture I found on OBT's Flickr site:

Anne Mueller from Speak. Can't you just tell how cool she is?

Song and Dance goes until May 1st. Here's a link to their site if you want to check it out!

opus

2011-04-16T06:55:00.000-07:00

When we got home last night, after seeing Opus at Portland Center Stage, I told Stephen I could tell that the play had been written by someone who knew music. Who knew what it was like to be part of a quartet. Then I said that, of course, I have no idea what it's like to be part of a quartet - but you can tell when art and story is infused with authenticity. For me, the writing of Opus worked in the way music works. There's the part about numbers, about order and interval and brain. And there's the part about emotion and tension and heart. I've always been fascinated by the way that music is about mathematics, how this thing (math) that I used to think of as the exact opposite of creativity is what gives music its... music. The play Opus works this way. In terms of people, Opus is about what 4 means. What 4 minus 1 means. What 4 plus 1 means. What 1 plus 1 means. And within those numbers, you find feeling and tension and beauty.

And, oh man, tension. The human story is so taut. The way the particular violin and viola are used - at times it was excruciating. In Dangerous Writing, Tom Spanbauer often talks about "loving the object." Fully putting that object on the page, using it as it can best be used. In Opus, the writer (Michael Hollinger), the director (Brendon Fox) and the actors poured some great and effective love on those two objects. Overall, Opus is a tense, human and smartly written play. Moments that could be melodramatic in another story are handled with delicacy or humor. There's the right balance of headiness and emotion.

Of course, music can be great, but it has to be played well. I thought Opus was very well staged. The set seemed the right amount of minimalism, and the fluid and geometric backdrop provided a tiny bit of magic. I thought the actors all did a great job. Particularly Matthew Boston, who plays Dorian, and Chris Coleman, who plays Elliott. I was naturally pretty curious how Coleman was going to be as an actor, since he's worked as Artistic Director of PCS for over ten years now. He was very, very good. Totally engaging and particular. The two of them in the scene introducing the violin and viola were just beautiful. All the actors made their characters distinct and real and worked well with the smart script and the timing of the "documentary" moments.

That Behind the Music aspect of the play was something I didn't need - turning the moments when the characters spoke directly to the audience into pieces of a documentary. I understand that it's a way to remind the audience of other famous musical feuds, like the Beatles, but what it reminded me about more was reality TV. It wasn't something that bugged me in the play - just something that made me aware that I would have been fine with the characters speaking to me, without needing a reason for it.

Maybe the writer felt like it would widen the appeal, help keep the classical music aspect of the play from scaring people who just want to go out and be entertained. Well, Opus is highly entertaining as well as being heady. You leave the theater feeling smart and moved and, yes, entertained. And you so wish you could play the violin.

It goes until May 8 on the main stage of Portland Center Stage.

thumbnail celebration

2011-04-12T06:40:00.000-07:00

Stephen and I are consummate celebraters. And particularly, each art show or publication must come with a celebration to honor it. Usually this means food and/or a movie. The night after Stephen's symposium in Tacoma, it was The Leopard, a film so influential he'd spoken about it and shown images in his presentation. When Portland Noir came out, we had dinner at Everett Street Bistro, and Stephen had them make me a blue drink even though they didn't have one on the menu, since a blue drink (and subsequent blue teeth) make an appearance in my story.

Saturday night was a little celebration in honor of the publication of the April 2011 issue of Thumbnail Magazine, and my essay "Mariel at the Tent Flaps." [Which is just out - you can check it out and order print or e-copies here. Just saying.] The unique thing about Thumbnail is that everything in it is small. Flash fiction, tiny essays, short poetry. I told Stephen we should have a tiny celebration. Everything small. He not only indulged my whim, he went a little hog wild at the store while I was still at work.

Tiny pizzas. Tiny spanakopitas. Mushroom pockets that looked like little pasties. Grape tomatoes. Other little hors d'oeuvres. Stephen had mini chicken tacos.

[full disclosure: after we took the pictures, we dumped everything from the small plates into something more manageable.]

Tiny bottle of champagne (why it's blue, i don't know - you could also buy one whose bottle was pink like pepto bismol).

[full disclosure: after the tiny champagne, we opened a full-sized bottle.]

Tiny dessert.

And the movie? Time Bandits. A childhood favorite - one we had on video and watched over and over when I was a kid. It also happens to have a cast of small people.

When we popped the tiny champagne, I told Stephen we had to have a toast.

"A small toast," I said.

I raised my [shamefully regular-sized] glass. "To," I said.

And drank.

Stephen laughed the way you laugh when you're being sweet and indulging your wife's sense of humor.

He raised his glass. He said, "You."

sip

2011-03-30T13:03:00.000-07:00

At the end of the mezzanine, waiting for the elevator with my cart of books, I reach and pull a book off. Open it. Careful. To where I was last when I was reading my copy at home.

"I am 11.

I play clarinet with my friend Brody and we tap our feet three-quarter time our mouths around the instruments our fingers between the struggle of learning and the dance of music our knees our lives nearly touching."*

Ding and then the swish of elevator door opening. Close the book and put it on the cart, take it down, put it on the shelf.

How many books on shelves have I sipped a bit of beauty from in my morning work? How many people have touched eyes on the very same words, the very same ink. What a particular and anonymous sharing.

[*from the chronology of water - lidia yuknavitch.]

the last film i saw

2011-03-26T05:55:00.000-07:00

A new episode of The Last Film I Saw podcast is here!

Stephen was the special guest this time, and he is obviously a much better on-the-spot speaker on the subject of film than I. Spoilers if you haven't yet seen Rome, Open City.

Plus, Brian Padian is hilarious.

Plus, I want to watch The Shining again.

parrot

2011-03-22T13:29:00.000-07:00

On impulse this morning, alone in Powells' big elevator with a few carts of books, I pulled one off and decided to open it at random and read out loud. This is what I read before the doors opened again:

"You might think, who is this, and I might say, this is God and what are you to do? Or I might say, a bird! Or I could tell you, madame, monsieur, sir, madam, how this name was given to me - I was christened Parrot because my hair was colored carrot, because my skin was burned to feathers, and when I tumbled down into the whaler, the coxswain yelled, Here's a parrot, captain. So, it seems you have your answer, but you don't."

Cool.

That's Parrot and Olivier in America.

letter to lidia

2011-03-20T08:58:00.000-07:00

Open letter to Lidia Yuknavitch.

Dear Lidia,

Please stop getting in the way of my morning shelving duties at Powell's City of Books. If I can't stop standing by my book cart on the fourth floor workspace, reading The Chronology of Water, I won't ever get down to the Green Room to put your books where they belong, in the Upcoming Author Events display in the Green Room. I'm on the clock - I only wanted to take a peek at the opening line - usually this is safe - rarely do I get sucked in.

It is not good for me to drop tears on the merchandise.

Yours,
Gigi

...

2011-03-17T12:02:00.000-07:00

I practice my piece for Friday’s reading to benefit ILWU Local Five, the union that supports Powell's - while workers’ rights are being taken away across the country.

I work to promote my early June Olympia, Washington, reading in honor of the Pacific Northwest Reader — and take a look at the piece I'll be reading - about the tsunami warning off the Oregon Coast, including the flip line, “I didn’t get a tsunami for my birthday” — while Japan is embroiled in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami that killed thousands.

I walk to work and am almost surprised by the pink blossoms in trees, the tiny yellow daffodils. Such a strange spring.

in japan

2011-03-12T06:29:00.000-08:00

I keep thinking about all the people I met or crossed paths with in Japan.

The young guy who was working as... maybe an usher for the show? Who didn't speak much English but who said, whatever you'd like, just let me know. And who was taken up on this offer and drove us miles and miles one day, out to see a Japanese circus.

The woman who was our announcer, who went on field trips with all of us, who said "tastyfish" like it was one word.

The sort-of wheeler-dealer guy who popped in and out here and there in the tour - and who later, when we were back in America, found and made arrangements for a new pink trumpet when our first was stolen from our car at the border to Mexico. Who we picked up from the airport when he came to visit America and who wanted so much to see the Batman movie that we had to take him to see it right that night - and he slept through most of it. He lived in Kobe and survived the 1995 quake.

The young woman who came to our hotel room in Tokyo and sat on the bed with her Japanese-English dictionary to get help with translations and pointed to a word in a letter and said, "What mean... shit?"

The lines of school children looking at the exhibits when we visited the atomic bomb museum in Nagasaki.

The two men who worked at the hotel in Tokyo, who gave us quiet bows, nothing else, every morning as we left the hotel for the circus. But who were so excited after they saw the show one night that they invited us out to a karaoke bar. They knew about as much English as we knew Japanese and just kept ordering food and drinks and singing in the tiny bar. And laughing and laughing as the barmaid brought drinks to our table and told us to call her "Mama." The next morning on our way out to the circus, they were quiet bows, nothing else, again.

The family we got to know in one city, whose son was learning to play the trumpet and who invited a few of us to have dinner in their restaurant after the show's bandleader / trumpet player offered to give the boy a lesson. And who we invited to the circus as a thank you for the dinner. And who presented us with traditional Japanese candies as a thank you for the invitation to the circus. The gratitude back-and-forth went on all throughout the date - at one point including a trip to the place where the sumo wrestlers train, to watch a training session and meet the champion Akebono (we had a picture taken with him. the picture cut off akebono's head) - until, as the whole circus was loaded up in a big tour bus to leave for the next city, the family was running out to see us off, and to hand big bags of snacks to us through the bus windows.

faster

2011-03-08T16:53:00.000-08:00

The forever ever onward of life. And how it never stops going faster.

Schedule two different readings in one night. Get to the first just in the nick of time. Step through the front door of the place and almost immediately onto the stage and into your reading. Flash of your words over the mic, then flash of applause at the end. Step back off the stage and stand at the corner of the bar to listen to ten minutes of story, then another ten minutes of story, other people's words, going by so fast you can't hold them. Say hi to friends who came to see you read, knowing you don't have the time to give anyone more than a quick hello or hug, then rush off for the second reading.

Raspberry Italian soda with ice in a glass. A moment to ground yourself before the second event starts. Try to read more slowly this time, OK? Intimate coffee shop, poets and folk music--still each moment is a flash, then gone, a flash, then gone.

Monday, you could relax, but there's writing to be done. Work on the novel. Think about making a snack. Work on the novel. Think about making a snack. Work so long and deep on the novel that you forget it's Monday and you're supposed to be doing the laundry.

Go to sleep too late, get up too early. E-mails to take care of, and look, pictures from the readings. Make breakfast but run out of time to eat it. Take it in a plastic container to have at work later.

No time for reading, stick the ear buds in your ear. Virginia Woolf and To the Lighthouse in your ears as you walk to work--try not to get distracted from her stream of consciousness by thoughts of all the things you have to get done at work today.

Try to slow it down a bit. Try to stop in the moment. Take the time to listen to the words in your ears and to notice, lying in the street, just past the curb, two potatoes.

i'm my own double feature

2011-03-01T21:36:00.000-08:00

Once in school, I had to make a speech in which I demonstrated a unique skill I had. At the time, my most unique skill was staring at objects and failing to move them with telekinetic mind power, so I decided to do my speech on calligraphy. I was so terrified that when the teacher called my name, I went up there and said that, before I could start, I had to write a few examples on the chalk board.

As I started drawing a fancy capital A, the teacher let the next kid step up for his turn. I realized somewhere in the middle of the letter C that no one was paying attention to me anymore. Kids came up to give their speeches and I just kept drawing letters. Slowly and carefully since calligraphy takes time to do right. By the time I got to Z, it was the end of class, and I got up there and said something about how the tip of the calligraphy pen is slanted, and the bell rang. It was the best speech I ever had to give in my life.

I think back then, had I heard that writers give readings, I would have given up my ambitions right there. Writing seemed lovely because, among other things, you got to have a voice without having to speak out loud. And here I am getting ready to do two readings in one night. With no chalk board.

This Sunday, March 6:

5:00pm - A Night of Story and Song

At Backspace - 115 NW 5th Ave., Portland

I'll be reading with Emily Chenoweth, Margaret Malone and Nora Robertson, along with writers from Portland State's writing community. Musical guests will be Leaves Russell.

then

7:00pm - Spokensong

At Three Friends Coffee House - 201 SE 12th & Ash, Portland

With poets Anatoly Molotkov and John Sibley Williams, and folk musician Eric Mckuen. I'll be reading a number of short pieces, including one coming out soon in Thumbnail Magazine. The reading is split into two sets with an intermission. Since I'm reading before and after the break, can I call it three readings? That would be even cooler.

cuckoo part two

2011-02-26T07:05:00.000-08:00

Friday night: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest at Portland Center Stage. So great to go with Holly, fellow writer and big Kesey fan, and be able to talk all kinds of Kesey, including her wonderful experience on one occasion of the man's birthday.

Review without spoilers: go see it.

Review with some spoilers...

First off, the set was great and used very effectively. The day room presided over by Nurse Ratched behind glass in her cubicle like a control booth in some spaceship was oppressive and claustrophobic, but the hallway leading back into the rest of the institution - that was even more oppressive. Our seats were over on the right, so I couldn't see the end of that hall, but even so - that is a dangerous corridor. Feels iconic, like the entrance to hell.

Nurse Ratched's little glassed-in room: again, really effective. It has that feel of the royal box at the Roman games, where the king pronounces thumbs-up or thumbs-down. And the control panel studded with lights in the background - a line of lights fade on and off, on and off, like the machine is breathing. A wonderful reference to Chief Bromden's "Combine."

More great stuff with light: the hanging institutional lights contrasting with the pattern of sunlight (freedom) angling down to the floor from the window to the outside.

I loved the opening. First of all, you hear a bit of the "one flew east, one flew west," rhyme, and I swear that's Kesey's voice, there. If it's not, it sure sounds like him.

Of course, the book is told from the Chief's point of view, and you can't help but expect to miss that when you see it on stage. Wasserman's script finds a way to pay homage to that part of the story, and to give voice to Chief's "Combine" ideas, among other things, with the short passages the Chief recites as if speaking to his father. The best use of this is in the opening. Chief standing in the pattern of sunlight on the floor and looking out at freedom, talking to his father, his voice "big" the way he will be "big" at the end of the story - and then he finishes what he has to say and his head droops and all that "big" and all that freedom is gone.

Just great.

I have to say, by the third or fourth time, this felt device-y and I worried that it would start to annoy me. Then it stopped. In a place where it made sense for it to stop, felt right that it would stop, because of how the character and the story had changed.

The production felt really well balanced to me between funny and devastating. I laughed a lot. I was shocked at particular moments. Sometimes it's great to have a bad memory. I forgot a couple of key moments in the plot, and when they happened, they grabbed me hard.

I thought the cast did a wonderful job. Particularly Ryan Tresser playing Billy Bibbit with pitch-perfect innocence and a beautiful stammer. When Billy tells a story about himself stuttering, that stutter sounds appropriately faked, and when he speaks normally, that stutter sounds authentic.

Here are the two biggies. I thought both PJ Sosko as McMurphy and Gretchen Corbett as Ratched were very good.

And Stephen Caffrey as Harding was just the right amount of what he needed to be. The right amount of self-confidence, the right amount of fear, the right amount of priss.

Ooh, and again: that thing about how nice it is at times to have a bad memory. I didn't remember this scene happening the same way in the book. Wasn't it different in the book? I don't know, but what happens in the World Series scene and how it was executed in this production was some lovely magic.

PCS always does Kesey proud. I loved their Sometimes a Great Notion and thought this was great too. It's playing through the end of March.