B is for Beer & my (probably overly ambitious) summer reading list

"I've actually been writing since I was five. There are stories still in existence. But I didn't get published until I was seven." 

"Well, every writer has to have his years of struggle."

photo by Cade Martin

I’m really trying to prep my brain for focus in the coming three years of academia. So I’ve set up a rather rigorous reading list in the time before I leave. Seeing as I like to overwhelm myself, I’ve paired it with a rather rigorous “To Write” list, as well, of course “to figure out” and “to organize to ship to Scotland” list. Let’s start with the easiest one: “To Read.” It’s got some books I’ve been meaning to get to, some books vaguely related to Nicholas & Alexandra, as well as the books by my future professors (one, The Glister, I already read earlier this Spring.) It also features some of the books that were on last year’s MLitt curriculum list, in the hopes that they will be on this year’s list as well.

-Finish Mary McCarthy’s The Group (only about 100 pages left)

-Finish Meaghan Delahunt’s In The Casa Azul
(This is my future professor's book about a mother/son assassin team & Frida Kahlo's affair with Leon Trotsky-- also useful Trotsky research for Nic & Alix-- not that you ever see Trotsky in the musical)

-Meaghan Delahunt’s The Red Book
(her other novel, about photographers in India)

- Out of My Skin by John Haskell

- Unholy Ghost: Writers on Depression by Nell Casey

- Falling Man by Don DeLillo

- The Winner Stands Alone by Paulo Coelho

- The Modern Scottish Novel by Craig Cairns

And I'd like to get around to knocking out one or two more of Tom Robbins. That guy is so effing funny. The perfect example of this is his children's book B is for Beer.  Just hilarious. But I love Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, Jitterbug Perfume & Still Life with Woodpecker. So I'd like to get around to Skinny Legs and All or Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates.

For more examples of his fabulous humor (he loves puns! reminds me of Dad!) listen this hilarious interview with on Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me.


Oh, and I’m putting it on my list to get around to finally starting Stieg Larsson’s Millenium Trilogy.

I need a Kindle, stat. Anyone want to make a donation to my pitiful readers’ fund?

REMINDER: Cronin reading The Passage, TUESDAY 7PM Borders in Columbus Circle. Be there. 

the ring

I'm off to a big, glamorous wedding in New Jersey. I've been in a serious lot of weddings for someone who's not even 30 yet. My current emotional state about love at the time of the wedding determines how much I look forward to the open bar.


But do you all read Miss Jane? My lovely friend, Sara, runs this blog (I call her McC-- she's genuinely one of my favorite people. She comes to stay with me in NYC a lot & vice versa, when she lived here and I didn't. When we hang out, at some point in the wee hours of the morning, we have to impose a moratorium on talking [philosophizing, really- look for our hit new book, The Philosophy of Waiting & Seeing in stores next year] and just vow to go to sleep in the womb-room). Anyhow, she's amazing. I recommend reading her all the time (One of my favorite recent entries was about the Jumpology exhibit here in NYC).


I try not to think about weddings too much, but I really do love diamonds. (They're my birthstone!) Sara was kind enough to save me the trouble of finding my perfect ring for me.


In case anyone out there is planning (unbeknownst to me) on proposing to me (perhaps you are a rugged, hilarious, art-loving, land-owning Scotsman) I'd like to humbly request that you get me this ring, reminiscent of Queen Victoria's. I have very small hands, so I need something simple, but that has personality & packs a punch. This is just the right amount of classic and gorgeous and badass.


For more, check out this Refinery29 article


Mazel Tov, Daryl & Paul!

Friday Article Roundup

(These are kinda sorta themed. 10 points if you can guess!)

If the feminine ruled  

This sort of echoes the article I talked about in "My Obsolete Loves" 

Rare photo of Marilyn


This. Is excellent. Read the whole thing. I know it's long.It's not really about Franzen (about whom I have many conflicting feelings). And This Recording isn't where it originally appeared. But they have the good sense to put it up again, which makes me like them more.

Life, obviously, is about more than this. It's not as though anyone thinks that being a good writer makes you a good person. But it helps. (Isn't this perhaps one reason why women, as a whole, are more apt than men to see writing and reading as therapeutic acts? All that private time spent rendering and transforming personal experience on paper is easier to justify if the writer - and, ideally, reader - is healed in the process.) If you're truly talented, then your work becomes your way of doing good in the world; if you're not, it's a self-indulgence, even an embarrassment.

To that end...  http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/features/n_8970/ 

Have a great weekend, everyone! 

a healthy neurotic

"We worked out all our issues. And the issues we didn't work out, I turned into a career." 

I never knew I related to John Waters so much! Other than being the source material of some Broadway musicals-- a very good musical, as well as the only show I've ever left at intermission-- I didn't give him too much thought. But he has a new book out called Role Models, and did this lengthy, wonderful interview on NPR.

For all the obvious tonal reasons, I'm about as far from Waters as you can get. But then.... From the love of cemeteries, to to living alone, to the way he kept trying to make his therapist like him, by the end of  the interview,  I felt surprisingly connected to him.

Guess it just goes  to show that if you get to know anyone well enough, it's hard not to be compassionate. And empathetic.

photo by Greg Gorman


Happy Friday!

orbits

Look at me, circling the drain on all my personal theories in my early twenties. I recommend everyone read their old writing. It's illuminating. 

June 30th, 2005

orbits

 I believe in orbits.
 I believe that once you have had the good fortune or consistent choosing or involuntary placement by your parents to remain in a certain place, with a certain set of people, at some point, these people become a part of your orbit.
 I believe in this orbit possibly more than I believe in a sense of place and/or the right place. I believe that once people have become a part of your orbit, you all just keep circling around on your individual axis until you both meet up again at the point of the orbit where you always do....
With the exception of Human Revolution, in the Buddhist sense, I don't think people change. They do grow up though... some end up closer to you and some farther away, but isn't it fun to remember the times when the orbits spun directly in line with one another. When that was all the world was made of.
And you come back to the people in your orbit, the way I drove by my old apartment last night after the show (someone new had moved in)-- you come back because of the shared history that on a daily basis would suffocate you... but every now and then...when the orbits circle back again...you need.

March 15th, 2006

I came east to be closer to the sunrise.

I have only ever given up on one person in my life, and whether it was the right decision or not, it haunts me to this day.

I say that a lot. I don't give up on people. They may orbit out for a while, but I've never given up on them. Except one, who, despite the amazing connectedness to me...despite the kind of death I experienced myself by severing from this person... had to be given up on in order for me to literally survive. Some people are disruptive and hurtful. Especially when there is genuine emotion on the line. But I tend to see the good intentions behind people, or at the very least, the pain in their life condition that is causing them to act out at others.

I try not to make it personal, because most of the time, it's not about me.

But how do I not take it personally, when it crosses the line into my life?

And how do I balance forgiveness as well as my own well being?
When is enough enough?

And as I read my World Tribune on the train this morning, I realized that forgiveness is like making the sun rise in your heart.
(and we all know how I feel about the word RISE...indeed, it is my favorite)
How do you force a sun rise in your heart, when it seems so far out of orbit?
Should you even?
What is the emotion in between-- a solid place to land-- in the middle of letting everything slide, forgiving, saying it's okay, not giving up on someone.... and being upset and hurt? Because I don't want to feel upset or hurt... and I certainly do not want to feel the helplessness of results from allowing everything to be "okay" by me. Not everything is.

I guess the answer is take it in stride. I'm not even sure I can articulate what that means, exactly, but I guess I try to shoot for it.
Make the sun rise in my heart.

And I realize that what I have the hardest time forgiving, what karmically has become my mission, is people so hell-bent on self-destruction.

And it makes me heart sick.

I just want to shake them!
"What is wrong with you???"
And why wouldn't they let me help them?

What do you do?
Everything you can. Clearly.

So, as the sun rises over Manhattan, I wake early and make the sun rise in my heart for everyone who has hurt me, or who hurts. Moment by moment, I am learning the way to live in a world with pain, and come out on the other side clean. Moment by moment, revealing true identity. Moment by moment, gaining courage.

And I'm no knight. I can't save anyone. But the sun rising in the east sends rays to the entire world, and if I can just try hard enough, chant hard enough, expand my heart wide enough, I just might be able to shed some rays on all those people I care about so much, and pain will turn to grace.
And then, and only then, will I feel I have done everything I can. I will have done enough.

taking it back to 1936 & 1996

"I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together again and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new. What is broken is broken - and I'd rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I lived. "--Margaret Mitchell 

With all this talk I've been doing lately about The Passage being the greatest book of all time, I thought I should do some clarifying. While I do find Cronin's new book to be amazing, there is nothing that could ever be written by a mere mortal that could top the one and only. For me, since the age of 10, there is this book, and then...everything else.

That book, of course, is Gone With The Wind, the finest piece of literature ever written. (If you'd like to challenge me on that, I'd be happy to provide you with a lengthy explantion of why-- more on that later.)

As a child (and, really, almost anyone can back this up) I was literally possessed by the thing. My obsession was so complete and pathological that I'd get into arguments with people about the trivia, I'd buy 2 of every collectible (just in case), I sent a letter to a board game company about three (3!) errors I found in their game, I could recite it from beginning to end (one friend even claimed I'd speak from the movie in my sleep. I don't think I believe this.)

I was an automaton of facts. But it's as if that was the only way I could think of to truly express my love of it. I couldn't describe it, I could only quote, spew, collect, analyze it's own content-- not the depths of what I felt about it.

Catch me on pretty much any day and I could give you a love song about GWTW. I love it for what it is, I love it for what it isn't, I love it as symbol of my own version of The Old South-- which didn't have slavery (unless you count the way I forced my dear Grandmother to drive me all over the state of Georgia looking for GWTW memorabilia) but it did have a kind of charm that can never return.

It was filled with romantic things and all the time in the world to dream about all the good things in life, like iced tea & butter beans and hoop skirts and big canopy trees, and old houses and the way they smell, and the libraries filled with books and the way they smelled. Of powder rooms and perfumes and china and old pictures and endless room to wonder what all those folks' lives had been like. Endless hours to learn how to make a pig out of an acorn and some toothpicks. All the time you needed to get the smell of corn-relish out of the skin of your arms after you'd been stirring the pot that was bigger than you  for as much time as the corn relish needed.

Maybe I was born a writer or maybe I became one in those summers because I was given the room. The Old South of my life was one where everyone had as much time as they needed. I could tell a story every day about how much my extended summers with my grandparents meant to me.

But if you want to boil it down to one thing-- one thing that will always mean what it means-- it's Gone With The Wind. And everyone knew that was mine. And it was, strangely, something we could all do together-- it became all of ours (because I have a tendency to catch people up in my loves vortex). Like Grandma and Me, spinning down the highways and the time my Papoo bought me the ENTIRE 36 plate GWTW collector's plate series and kept it for me, as a surprise for me one day. I only even found out about it after he died, and it seemed like that's how he'd planned it all along.

(He still has a way of doing things like that-- more on him later.)

But in honor of the center of gravity of my childhood, I thought it'd be fun to show you the original Time Magazine review of the novel from July 6, 1936. It was also the inaugural book of the Time Book of the Month Club, the precursor, of course, to Oprah's Book Club.

lunch hour bravo, Jake

Bravo, Jake. I love love love you.

For more info, check out or visit www.thebatterysdown.com

my obsolete loves

One of the many things that keeps me up at night:

The book survived the phonograph as it had the newspaper. Listening didn't replace reading. Edison's invention came to be used mainly for playing music rather than declaiming poetry and prose. During the twentieth century, book reading would withstand a fresh onslaught of seemingly mortal threats: moviegoing, radio listening, TV viewing. Today, books remain as commonplace as ever, and there's every reason to believe that printed works will continue to be produced and read, in some sizable quantity, for years to come. While physical books may be on the road to obsolescence, the road will almost certainly be a long and winding one. Yet the continued existence of the codex, though it may provide some cheer to bibliophiles, doesn't change the fact that books and book reading, at least as we've defined those things in the past, are in their cultural twilight. As a society, we devote ever less time to reading printed words, and even when we do read them, we do so in the busy shadow of the Internet. "Already," the literary critic George Steiner wrote in 1997, "the silences, the arts of concentration and memorization, the luxuries of time on which ‘high reading' depended are largely disposed." But "these erosions," he continued, "are nearly insignificant compared with the brave new world of the electronic." Fifty years ago, it would have been possible to make the case that we were still in the age of print. Today, it is not.

Some thinkers welcome the eclipse of the book and the literary mind it fostered. In a recent address to a group of teachers, Mark Federman, an education researcher at the University of Toronto, argued that literacy, as we've traditionally understood it, "is now nothing but a quaint notion, an aesthetic form that is as irrelevant to the real questions and issues of pedagogy today as is recited poetry — clearly not devoid of value, but equally no longer the structuring force of society." The time has come, he said, for teachers and students alike to abandon the "linear, hierarchical" world of the book and enter the Web's "world of ubiquitous connectivity and pervasive proximity" — a world in which "the greatest skill" involves "discovering emergent meaning among contexts that are continually in flux."

That's from Nicholas Carr's The Shallows, which I was reading/listening to on NPR (online no less!). I mean, listen, I have insomnia, so a good many things keep me up at night. But the idea that 5 years in a multi-tasking workforce has turned me into someone unable to concentrate long enough to be truly creative scares the living bejeezus out of me. I see it, even. Not just with reading. But the way I have to allow myself to wind down this spiral to finally settle enough to get to the meat  of what I want to write. It feels like water circling a drain somehow, so I... postpone it. Like I fear how much time the creativity moments will take, so I just don't go there. 


But I'm going to have to go there this fall. Every day. And even though all sorts of things worry me about all of the dying art forms I adore (curses!) I feel hopeful. So I may starve and daydream and read poetry and write and other obsolete things. But I'll get to do here and here and for that matter, here:

And that's enough for me. 

the trails are lined with jasmine

To really really go back, here's a blog I pulled from EIGHT YEARS ago when I was living in Japan. 

Who is this kid? 

The way my sentences are phrased, you can tell I spoke Japanese 90% of the time. We had a joke that we no longer spoke any languages fluently....

originally dated May 4th, 2002

Tadaima! Im back! Wow, at first I was scared about going to Atami, but now I am so glad I went and I wish I could have stayed another day.

Heres a geography lesson: who thought Mt. Fuji was in Tokyo? I know I did until about a year or two ago. But you would be incorrect. Mt. Fuji, or Fuji-san, is located on the Izu peninsula, the next peninsula over from the Tokyo peninsula. This is also where Atami is, as well as Ito. Ito is where Nichiren Daishonin was exiled under the care of the feudal Lord of the area, Lord Ito in 1261.

This morning I went to where he was taken in by a man named Yasaburo and his wife. There he lived in a very small house.

There is also a story that goes with the temple that is now in that area... the Butsugenji Temple. In Ito bay, there was something shining at the bottom that the villagers kept noticing. Eventually it was discovered that the shining was coming from a golden statue of Shakamuni Buddha. When Nichiren helped Lord Ito during illness, Ito bestowed the statue unto Nichiren and it is enshrined there at the temple (Nichiren Sho... not Shoshu) In fact, Butsugenji means `the temple where the Buddha appeared.`

This place was beautiful it was amazing. Japan is a country of textures, which pictures can never quite express. Most everything I saw from the top of volcanic mountains is hidden in mist that your eyes can see through, but my camera lens cant.

The hikes were great. I almost felt cliche. I could see Fujisan in the distance and everything was all misting and ancient feeling. I could have been in a samurai drama like the one I watched the night before.

Genji's parents were amazed at my ohashi skills (chop sticks). To 96 and 94 year olds, they add the kego (ultimate respect) to everything. To nouns, you do this by adding O before the word.... o-mizu (water) O-hirugohan (lunch). They even called me O-Ryann. Which works in an Irish kind of way too.  Anyways, I think onsen is the key to longevity... and walking. Oji-chan and oba-chan both smoke a pack a day, but have an onsen in their house. Oji-chan's OLDER SISTER, Onee-chan, is 107 years old... smokes two packs a day.

Thats another thing... smoking is disgusting.... but I might as well start because I swear Im getting enough second hand smoke. Everyone smokes here. I mean everyone. Every single male and at least 80 percent of females. I have never met a male in this country who doesnt smoke. Even when I thought one didnt, I would later learn... he does.

Grandma, I have some omiagi (gifts) for you!

my eagle peak friends

It's been a long time since I've been able to devote the kind of time to my practice (at least activities) that I was used to a few years ago. In truth, I needed to take a step back to in order to see some things for myself.  But even if we never get to spend the kind of time we used to, in those glorious early morning tosos and eating at Au Bon Pan before they shut down the one by the Culture Center, I will always remember those days as a time of growth for me.

Every morning that I plied myself out of bed at 6:30 on a Sunday, it was partly about my Human Revolution, but largely about seeing my eagle peak friends-- Chucky, Jeremy, Emily, Eddie, Mariko and all my youth division comrades.

I'm especially thinking of Chucky these days. The Joffees and the Hortons are like these Lion Buddhist families. Three kids in each family,  matching perfectly in age. And we lost Mr. Horton this year. And while I'm sending my daimoku to both families, I know it's not enough.

I wish I could have one of those "lifetime" conversations with Chucky like we used to have before he moved to LA and I drifted into my reconciling faith with reality phase. I wish we could walk up 5th Ave, it barely being light outside, while I smack Chucky & tell him to stop smoking.

But even though we can't get the time back, this song will always remind me of Chucky and those days of music in Union Square, traveling to Staten Island to see members, being challenged by them to not shut down when things got hard. Somehow it all seemed like a breeze, even though it wasn't. But this song just sounds like the reminder that once, with great pillars around me & a lot of prayer, everything was a New York summer day, stretching out into infinity. And all you had to do was be there for each other.

And of balancing the unrelenting progress (through discipline) we saw for our lives with some of  the most fun we've ever had. Just walking through the streets as Boddhisatvas of the Earth.

I'll be sending D's from Scotland, my Lion-like comrades.

the literary equivalent of a unicorn

One week from today...quite possibly THE GREATEST BOOK OF ALL TIME (at least to my biased self) will finally be available for sale. I really can't speak highly enough of The Passage.


Pretty much everyone has said it better or first, but I can tell you that the two weeks I spent during this very cold last winter reading this mammoth book were some of the best moments Ive ever spent as a reader & a lover of the English language.


It had been a pretty dark winter for me. I wondered what the next phase in my life was going to be. And every former confidence I had in myself as a writer had been challenged.


I remember walking from my office over the RH office to pick up the copy from a friend. I remember practically dancing back and smiling until my face hurt. I couldn't wait for the day to be over so I could start it. I'm not kidding when I say that I just NEEDED this book to be good.


While reading it, I remembered all the reasons I ever thought I could be a professional writer. Many of which were born at Rice & under the guidance and encouragement of JCC. It was right around this time that I found out I had been accepted in St. Andrews (probably didn't hurt that Cronin wrote a letter of rec). So I suppose there's a part of me that feels like The Passage is a good luck charm for me (as it clearly is for Cronin!)


It's also one of those rare moments in the literary world where someone truly deserving gets all that's coming to them. Popular, critical, and financial success stories in this business just don't come along that often. I sure am glad it happened to my friend and mentor, who was also so kind as to pseudo adopt me into his awesome family when I really needed one.


So much of what's thrilling about being in a family, belonging, being a part of something awesome is in The Passage. (As Cronin says "What does it mean to be a human? And who gets to be one?") The way you feel a part of the separate family-clusters of characters who band together to save the world. The way you'll find yourself yelling out loud at one o'clock in the morning when they roll into Vegas in the tank, "NO! Don't turn left on Sunset! That'll never work! You're gonna get us killed! TURN RIGHT!" The way you'll feel truly sad when, after 700 some odd pages, you'll have to set  Alicia and Peter and Amy aside for you're not sure how long until Part 2 comes out. (And you hope that your friend JCC will let you preview some pages ;)


There's also a vampire named Ferguson, so keep your eyes open (by that, I mean blink & you'll miss it!). Which you probably should anyhow, because some crazy shit goes down around just about every corner.


I've also promised dear Cronin that I would bring as many of my folks as possible to the his opening day reading/signing event at the Borders in Columbus Circle. So, if you're free around 7PM next Tuesday, come with me! I can promise that Cronin is a wonderful reader and tells great jokes.


Tuesday, June 8^th—NEW YORK, NY 
7:00 pm
Talk & Signing
Borders
10 Columbus Circle
New York, NY 10019

“Justin Cronin has written a wild, headlong, sweeping extravaganza of a novel.  The Passage is the literary equivalent of a unicorn: a bonafide thriller that is sharply written, deeply humane, ablaze with big ideas, and absolutely impossible to put down.”
—Jennifer Egan, author of The Keep

three day weekends are heaven

Such a great Memorial Day so far- complete with beer gardens and staying up way way too late, long walks & parks & outdoor cafes & the boat basin with old friends, friends made on the subway & new friends. ah, freedom.

your glistening eyes show the hell you're gonna give 'em when they back off the mic for once and give it to a woman

Sometimes, I'll just be walking along, having a normal morning, and It'll hit me: the gratitude. This morning, it was Kate Floyd. I've been friends with Reverend Kate Hurst Floyd for about 11 years. She so honestly embodies everything earnest, seeking and cool I can think of in this life. Mild-mannered, sweet, genuinely compassionate, fiercely feminist and equality-oriented.

When you think about what organized religion needs in the 21^st century, my answer is easy: Kate Floyd at the pulpit and anywhere else we can put her. She’s thoughtful and cutting and wise and never abrasive.

She’s one of those people you always kick yourself for not being able to spend more time with. She has a soft and understanding laugh. She is a comrade in faith. A simple faith in the world. 

And trust me when I say,  without exaggeration or dramatic flare, that I’m a Buddhist who persists in a belief in a God because of 3 books and 2 people, and one of those people is Kate Floyd.

If I could stream live over the internet her sermons, I’d do it. Oh, wait! I can.  If I lived in Chicago, I’d attend Methodist church every Sunday to hear her.

She and her grad school mates had a little dance that went the Indigo Girls’ “Pendulum Swinger.” It’s an adorable dance. And when it’s easy for me to sometimes feel pessimistic about the world, I think of this song and Kate dancing to it, and then I’m smiling ear to ear and laughing and crying a little bit on the street. Because I know there’s pendulum swingers out there like Kate, (that want to be friends with me!) who not only try to change the way things are with their "passion for justice" and brand of optimistic, diligent progress...but inspire me to swing that pendulum myself.

This video is a bit literal for me...I prefer just the lyrics. But this song could be about any time you'd hang out with Kate. :)

I meet you for coffee
We get together periodically
I got a bad case I can't shake off of me
The fevered walking round wondering how it ought to be
You work in the system
You see possibilities and your glistening
Eyes show the hell you're gonna give 'em
When they back off the mic for once and give it to a woman

I dream like a mad one
Brutal fantasies I catch as catch can
I'm a psychic and a laywoman
I see love and I like to make it happen
What we get from your war walk
Ticker of the nation breaking down like a bad clock
I want the pendulum to swing again
So that all your mighty mandate was just spitting in the wind

It doesn't come by the bullwhip
It's not persuaded with your hands on your hips
Not the company of gunslingers
The epicenter love is the pendulum swinger
She is she is she is

It's fine about the old scroll Sanskrit
Gnostic gospels the da vinci code a smash hit
Aren't we dying just to read it and relate
Too hard just to go by a blind faith
But they left out the sisters
Praying to a father god so long I really missed her
The goddess of benevolence
You should listen to your mama if you have a lick of sense left

Pushed under by the main press, buried under a code of dress
Relegated by the Vatican
But you can't keep a spirit down that wants to get up again

If we're a drop in the bucket
With just enough science to keep from saying fuck it
Until the last drop of sun burns its sweet light
Plenty revolutions left until we get this thing right 



Also see: these excerpts from my novel RISE: May 27th & May 19th

looting in lubbock-- an excerpt from Rise

Lubbock, Texas November 1999 

As the cuckoo clock announced six o’clock, they headed out the screen door, which slammed behind them.

            In Kate’s little red Honda, they arrived quickly at Jazz, where David’s sister Tanya ruled from behind the bar.

            All the walls were covered in deco-pauged sheet music from Jazz classics. Saxophones hung from the ceiling and all the seats were covered in purple vinyl. Meg had never been to New Orleans, but she imagined it was a lot like the restaurant David’s sister owned. Somewhere between old world manners and the schmaltz of Las Vegas.