On Goldilocks, John McPhee and Cows

I feel a little foolish this week, complaining about the weather in Seattle. “Too hot,” I whined on Wednesday when it reached 83 degrees (87 at the airport!) and we took to the shade. Last week I was putting on wool socks and whining the other direction – “Too cold.”  Weren’t we just looking out the windows at the rain and feeling sorry for ourselves?

Yesterday, my husband got out the garden hose and watered the clematis vines running along the rail fence: “Too dry!” he explained. Last week, my aunt and I were both talking about Seattle gardens looking like jungles this spring, with dandelions growing as high as the peonies: “Too wet!” we said, shaking our heads.

Death Valley: Too Dry. [photographer unknown]

The Hoh Rain Forest: Too Wet (Photo by Kevin Muckenthaler)

Have you ever heard of the Goldilocks Principle?

Don’t laugh. This is a term that psychologists, biologists, astronomers, engineers and economists (hot = inflation, cold = recession) use to describe an ideal state where “something falls within certain margins as opposed to reaching extremes.” In September of 2010, astronomers said they had discovered a “Goldilocks planet” circling a star in the constellation Libra, at a distance “just right” for the presence of water and possibility of sustaining life.  In our solar system, Venus is too hot and Mars is too cold. Earth is just right.  Earth is the eatable bowl of porridge.

What Planets Need In Order to Be Contented – That Middle Star

Babies, according to some cognitive scientists, provide examples of the Goldilocks Principle, too, paying most attention to activity that is neither too complex nor too simple, but somewhere between the extremes, somewhere “just right.”

Even bloggers are asking people to leave effective “Goldilocks Comments” – not hot and bothered, not prim or abstract.  Instead, “just right.”

“Just right.”  It sounds like a term from a fairy tale – aha, it is a term from a fairy tale!  Like that other condition that eludes us called “happily ever after”?

How does anyone ever reach that cool center, that point of equilibrium? Maybe reaching the fairy-tale’s “just right” is about zoning out.   Maybe it’s a zen thing.  And maybe it’s no coincidence that Carnation Milk, which started in Carnation, Washington, first came up with the advertising phrase, “Milk from Contented Cows.”

Carnation Milk’s Contented Cows

See in the background, behind those cows? That’s Mt. Rainier on a perfect day. No wonder they are calm and contented, those cows. No wonder they aren’t wondering or obsessing about anything, just slowly munching the grass. The day is just right.

But I find myself wondering: Is the Goldilocks Effect something artists subconsciously avoid, since contentment might be counter-productive when it comes to producing good work (or producing any work at all)? Are we most energetic when something is just slightly – not horribly, just slightly – off? When something bothers us – like the porridge being too hot, the bed too soft? When we sit down on baby bear’s chair, when people are too complicated or not complicated enough, and the chair breaks and we fall to the ground. Too big, too little – is that where we get our stories?

John McPhee suggests in his recent article in the April 29th issue of The New Yorker that revision is the way to produce good writing. You revise when you are dissatisfied. There are ways to work hard, and then harder, to make the writing perfect. McPhee’s own writing is all about revision and perfection, not about writing in a way which falls between “certain margins” of acceptability.

John McPhee – Hot, Cold and Just Right

I wonder if he is a calm man? He doesn’t look obsessive. He looks calm and kind. How can that be? How can a perfectionist be anything but a nervous wreck? If you read the article, Mr. McPhee sounds like a nice guy, a sweet dad, but also like someone who has learned to strive toward perfection. Does he ever say, “This is good enough?” I doubt it.  But I wonder what he thinks about the maxim of “all things in moderation” – nothing too anything? I would like to hear John McPhee talk about the Goldilocks Principle.

I like the possibility that a life-sustaining element exists in me as it does in a planet that is “just right” in relation to the star it orbits. But I have the feeling I’m hurtling through space a little too hot or – sometimes – a little too cold. I whine a lot. Does discontent inspire me? Do I strive for perfection? That’s what I’m wondering on this hot day in Seattle.  One thing for sure: I wouldn’t be satisfied living in a barn in Carnation, coming out in the morning, chewing the green grass and going back into the barn at night.

Cows – Everything Is Good

Of course, something about that little scenario does sound sweet and appealingly simple. But no. Zoning out is not my thing. I failed at my first and only official attempt – a meditation class at UC Berkeley in 1968. I couldn’t keep out the metaphorical and literal noise of people protesting in the streets. Berkeley in the 60′s – talk about  a hot planet. Since then, I have not tried to meditate.

So – another hot day today.   If you have a logical mind, you’ll see that I’m contradicting myself, because I long for the weather to be just right. Shouldn’t I be loving the extremes? Shouldn’t I want heat so hot it makes me write a poem? Rain so wet I write the great American novel?

Oh, contradictions, schmontradictions. When it gets above 80 in Seattle, I sit in the shade and fail to make sense. I hear cows mooing from 50 miles off.  I fall asleep and dream that I am calm and kind.

Too Hot in Seattle

Maps: Textiles, Textures, Texts

“Lost Boat” – Leah Evans

I love the Smithsonian. Visiting it several years ago was one of the highlights of my traveling life, and I am feeling the pull of it again. I subscribe to the Institute’s magazine, I get their newsletter emailed to me, and I am swooning this week (I have prolonged swoons) about this exhibit of the work of Leah Evans.

Imagine: Quilt maps! Abstract charts of of soil surveys, lost boats, cranberry farms, satellite photos. All made out of fabric. How do artists do it, keep finding their voices in the most unexpected places?

I admit to loving maps. No matter what material they are made of – from parchment (think Magellan, think terra incognita, think Here be dragons) to satellites in space  (think Google Earth) to textiles (think Leah Evans) to wood (think State Park and “You are here”) to the voice on the GPS device (“In 200 yards turn right on Northeast 75th St.” – if you don’t follow directions think  “Recalibrating….recalibrating…”) maps give us a sense of where we stand – at times literally, at other times metaphorically -  in the world.

I once gave a lecture at the Vermont College of Fine Arts about maps in books (it was really about the importance of setting, but I focused on those wonderful maps on the endpapers) and then I followed the lecture up with a special workshop where we made maps of our works-in-progress. You can read a tidied up version of it in the May 2010 issue of The Horn Book. In the workshop (for writers, not quilters) students studying in the Writing for Children program made maps of their works-in-progress, down to the smallest details possible (“Draw a house plan of the house in your book. How far away is the parents’ bedroom from your protagonist’s bedroom? Through which window does the morning sun come in? Where would the protagonist stand to watch a sunset? How does he or she get to school – what neighborhood places are passed each day? What color is the house at the corner?”)  I’m a great believer in developing setting as a character in a book, asking what the setting wants or demands or begs for from the human characters. Just think of the writers for whom setting was essential: Eudora Welty, Robert Frost, John Steinbeck – it’s impossible to imagine them without Mississippi, New England, the fields and flophouses of the Monterey Peninsula.  Beverly Cleary’s Ramona – how could she live any other place than Klickitat Street? How could Octavian Nothing be anywhere but Boston during the Revolutionary War?

Here is  a stanza from Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Map.” (You can read the whole poem here):

The shadow of Newfoundland lies flat and still.
Labrador’s yellow, where the moony Eskimo
has oiled it. We can stroke these lovely bays,
under a glass as if they were expected to blossom,
or as if to provide a clean cage for invisible fish.
The names of seashore towns run out to sea,
the names of cities cross the neighboring mountains
-the printer here experiencing the same excitement
as when emotion too far exceeds its cause.
These peninsulas take the water between thumb and finger
like women feeling for the smoothness of yard-goods.

No matter what the medium- yard-goods or words – and no matter what the peculiar genius of the artist/writer, maps bring our focus squarely in on the sixth sense: that of our own bodies in physical space. I think interesting art art is made by people who explore that physicality.

I would love to go see the Leah Evans exhibit at the Smithsonian. As abstract as her quilts seem to be, they converge with maps we are familiar with – we can almost see the satellite photo that the quilt below is based on – is it Manhattan? Is it Cuba?We can puzzle it out, or we can go with just an impression. Art provides a wide berth. When we look at both photos, we “take the water between thumb and finger/ like women feeling for the smoothness of yard-goods.”

————————————————————————————————–[P.S. If you're interested in that Elizabeth Bishop poem or poetry in general, you can head over to Anastasia Suen's blog, Booktalking, to see what people are posting for the weekly round-up on Poetry Friday.]

“Green Satellite” by Leah Evans

Satellite Photo of the Caribbean

The Pleasure of Flying Crooked

A Cabbage butterfly….

April is not just  ”the cruelest month” (according to T. S. Eliot.) And it’s not just the “Oh-to-be-in-England” month (according to Robert Browning….) It’s also National Poetry Month ( according to whoever names these things.) In honor of NaPoMo, I offer up this poem by Robert Graves. It’s not just about how a butterfly flies, but how poems and poets do.

FLYING CROOKED

The butterfly, a cabbage-white

(His honest idiocy of flight)

Will never now, it is too late,

Master the art of flying straight,

Yet has – who knows so well as I?-

A  just sense of how not to fly:

He lurches here and here by guess

And God and hope and hopelessness.

Even the acrobatic swift

Has not his flying-crooked gift.

###

 

My advice this month if you’re just starting out with poetry? Lurch a little. Come at the world hiccup by hiccup, fly sideways, fly crooked. It’s a gift.

Skinny Books, Dust, Dandelions, Sneezes, Apple Cake and Inspiration

Books…

The other day, with many tasks calling to me, I decided to spend the afternoon doing something that is a ritual task-avoidance activity of mine, something not on any of my To-Do lists: I decided to move books from one place in my house to another place. I do this from time to time; my husband is used to it and he just rolls his eyes and ignores my sneezing (dust) and my talking to myself (about how silly I am to be doing it when I have so much else to do.) Several months ago, we had to eliminate an entire set of bookcases to make room for french doors out to the deck. Total chaos! It seems I’m always carrying big bunches of books from one place to another.

and more books spilling over….

When I say “big bunches,” I mean big. This time around, I moved my collection of poetry (about 400 books) from the living room to my study. Why? Well, I didn’t want to do anything on my To-Do list, that was probably the biggest motivator. And I had been looking for some time at how messy the poetry books were.

and some of the poetry books….

Minus the Collected Works of someone, and minus anthologies, poetry books are a skinny lot – many don’t even have 1/2-inch spines, and they’re visually “busy”  compared to fiction (which took poetry’s place in the living room.) Fiction is less cluttered, less multitudinous, less random in its trim sizes. The effect of a house over-filled with books is not always calming, and I was going for calm.

and more poetry books in stacks and more books on chairs…

No matter what the motivation was, I found myself with stacks and stacks of books, wondering yet again (as I do periodically) about how to organize the poetry. Fiction, no problem – I do it alphabetically. But with poetry I wonder if the  alphabet of last names should prevail.  There are other possibilities on any given shelf of my poetry bookcases:

1. Poets I love 2. Poets who loved each other. 3. Poets by the century in which they lived. 4. Poets by the places they lived – England, France, Russia, Spain, (maybe a shelf of everything in translation?) and the American South, New England, the American West – poets known as “regional.” 5. Poets who have won the Nobel Prize or have entered “the canon.” 6. Poets who are private little discoveries of mine, or so I think. 7. Poets who are friends of mine. 8. Poetry reviews in which I have poems of my own. 9. Poetry criticism by poets. 10.Poetry criticism by non-poets. 11. Big anthologies. 12. Miscellaneous (sometimes, my favorite category – unclassifiable.

In the end, after all the pondering, the alphabet prevailed, except for a few I like to keep handy on my desk.

and more books on a messy desk….

When I’m looking for something, I want to find it fast, so practicality won the day. Admitting this makes me feel slightly ashamed, but there it is. I do manage to keep a few special old books around the house.

and old books next to old hands….

For one afternoon of carrying great bundles of books from one room to another, thinking about ways these writers related to each other (Should I put Ted Hughes’s Collected Works next to Sylvia Plath’s? Raymond Carver’s next to Tess Gallagher’s? Should I make sure the Welsh and Irish poets do not get mixed in with the English?) and ways I related to them (Do I really love W. H. Auden enough to add him to the shelf with Seamus Heaney and Richard Wilbur? Do I love Walter de la Mare in the same way I love C.K. Williams or Robert Graves?)…for that time of pondering, I was gloriously lost in the world of poetry.

and a lion and a foot and complete set of The English Poets, of course……

I opened quite a few books and read a poem or two or ten. And I was inspired. How wonderful to be a poet – that’s what I was thinking at the end of the day.

So I sat down and wrote a poem.

Moral of the story? Avoiding your To-Do list (“Write!”) does not always mean you’re being unproductive. It doesn’t mean you’re wasting time, not always, not if what you have in front of you (a good book…or 400 good books!) inspires you. And inspiration doesn’t always come from something intellectual – not always a book. It could come while your surveying the almost-spring garden, Sometimes it come when you’re in the kitchen – the color of an apple or the smell of an apple cake makes you feel creative and makes you sit down to write a picture book (yes, Julie Paschkis, I mean you.)

I honestly believe that everything a writer does is a source of inspiration. Moving books from one room to another, baking a cake, playing the ukulele, drawing, reading a personal essay in The Threepenny Review (oh, it is so good),  pulling dandelions, pruning a tree, taking a walk, talking to a neighbor. Don’t feel guilty when you spend time not writing. Eventually, the desire to write will overwhelm you – when it does, pay close attention. Heed the call.  Do it. Write. Let it take you over completely.

And an author and his book (Gordon Lish, photographed by Bill Hayward)

You might not be prolific if you follow my advice. But you’ll stay engaged with the world of real people and real objects. Engagement – that’s a good goal, and I think it’s what makes for good writing – and a good life.  Touch things, move things, make music, bake things, get your hands dirty, unsettle the dust, sneeze.

…and books that need dusting! – on my To-Do list!

Then come back to your writing, inspired.

———————————————————————-

Through a Child’s Eyes

A couple of weeks ago my husband, my daughter, my son-in-law, my grandson and I all took a trip to Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico, to visit my husband’s family. I was thrilled to go – not only to meet all the new little grandnieces and grandnephews (in Spanish, I’m called “Tia Abuela” – Aunt Grandma!) but to do so with my daughter and her family in tow. The world is a whole different place seen through the eyes of a five-year-old, and that’s why being with Mary and Jackson is such a pleasure. Watching her look at him with delight, and watching him look at the world with wonder – well, there’s nothing better.

I’ve never seen much of note in Hermosillo – it’s not a beautiful old Mexican town, certainly not a World-Heritage site like some of the colonial towns in southern Mexico. There’s a pretty cathedral and a plaza with a bandstand. There’s a government office that’s been fixed up and looks like it might fit in to a tourist town.  But I’ve always thought of Hermosillo as Tucson South – strip malls, flat-roofed businesses, failing infrastructures, barren desert – not the moist, green landscape I’m used to in the Pacific Northwest. So when I go, I only care about seeing family (well, that and eating the wonderful food they put before us while we’re there!) But aesthetically, no, I’ve never seen anything I’d call exciting.  Hermosillo passes before me in a blur.

On the other hand, what you see above are the lists Jackson made of “Special Things” he saw. The long list was made on the drive over to Kino Bay – about an hour away from town, due west through the Sonora Desert to the Sea of Cortez. The short list was made during a quick car ride through the center of town.  Jackson has all the markings of a good writer – a sharp eye and desire to record what he is witness to. He keeps his head up and his eyes open.  I’m not going to explain everything on the lists – let some of them remain a mystery to you. But I can testify to the fact that he saw them.  If I told my students, “Write a story with five things on these lists,” I bet they could come up with some doozies. I made a copy and have it near my computer now – it reminds me that good writers always see the world with fresh eyes.

Below is a slightly more legible account – I was transcribing as we rode around, and we hit a LOT of bumps, so the handwriting is wobbly:

Around Town: 1. Crazy blue car. 2. Yummy food. 3. Fountain of mountain goats. 4. Blue truck with flames. 5. Palm trees. 6. Double long truck. 7. Dollar sign $$. Ostrich.

List of Special Things on the Way to Kino: 1. Buzzard on a light pole and two more on the grass. PAJARAZOS! 2. Heron 3.Vermillion flycatcher. 4.Cactus bush. 5.Mountains. 6. White rocks that say “I love you.” 7. Millions of orange trees. 8. Flying hawk. 9. Saguaros. 10. Seagull on top of a cactus. 11. Beach! 12.Shapes in the clouds. 13. Dead cow.

Vermillion Flycatcher

Zopilote (Buzzard)

Orange Grove in the Desert

Kino Bay on the Sea of Cortez

Shells on the Beach at Kino

I’m going to keep the photo below as my new screensaver. It was taken in the plane on the way down to Mexico. This one reminds me that all a writer needs is a pen.  And a napkin.

The Word “Distinguished” – A Mock Caldecott Discussion

College Hall, VCFA

I’m writing from lovely Montpelier, Vermont – more precisely, from the lovely (and snowy) Vermont College of Fine Arts Winter 2013 residency.

We’ve had some brilliant lectures by faculty (special among these was Sarah Ellis’s opening lecture about classic books with different kinds of “flight” – including flights of fancy; Kathi Appelt’s Singing the Blues; and Alan Cumyn’s Inhabiting Your Character, during which we all sang Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”) But an unexpected pleasure was the Mock Caldecott presentation by faculty-member emeritus (aka for life) Leda Schubert, who brought in a stack of picture books, all of the Multiple-Starred-Reviews variety.  Leda read us the set of guidelines given to judges of the annual Caldecott medal, a few of which involve nuanced understandings of such words as “distinguished.”

The Caldecott Medal

What does “distinguished” actually mean? Does it suggest that the artwork follows in a rarefied tradition; that it is somehow Serious Art with a capital S and capital A; that it is imbued with importance due to the subject matter around which the “distinguished” illustrations orbit? Or does “distinguished” imply freshness of imagination and technique, originality of vision?

We looked at several books. Granted, the list was limited to books Leda had at home on her picture book shelf. You might not see your favorites, but here are the books we discussed:

Green – written and illustrated by Laura Vaccaro Seeger

Inside illustration from Green

Unspoken – written and illustrated by Henry Cole

Cover of Unspoken

We March by Shane W. Evans

Inside illustration from We March

And Then It’s Spring by Julie Fogliano, illustrated by Erin Stead

Inside illustration from And Then It’s Spring

A Home for Bird – written and illustrated by Philip C. Stead

Inside illustration from A Home for Bird

Island: A Story of the Galapagos written and illustrated by Jason Chin

From the Endpapers of Island: A Story of the Galapagos

Z is for Moose by Kelly Bingham, illustrated by Paul Zelinsky

Cover of Z Is for Moose

Homer by Elisha Cooper

Cover of Homer

Extra Yarn by Max Barnett, illustrated by Jon Klassen

Inside illustration from Extra Yarn

Apparently Caldecott committee members have to speak up and make a strong case for their favorites, fighting to get that medal for the books they love. But what a lot of things to think about! Though the medal doesn’t go to the text, you have to consider whether anything about the text diminishes the accomplishments of the illustrator – in other words, it can’t JUST be about the pictures. And do judges consider quality of paper, quality of jacket art, words on the cover flap (all yes) and the history of publication by the artist (no)?  We talked about double-page spreads that had gutter problems, and about how humor is a difficult sell when the word “distinguished” comes into play.

Our winner? The 2013 Mock Caldecott Medal for Vermont College of Fine Arts goes to Unspoken by Henry Cole. Congratulations, Henry!

Readers, what do you think deserves the Caldecott Medal this year?

Inside illustration from Unspoken

Extremes

Bells Tolling in Georgia

Two things happened today which took me to the extremes of sorrow and delight. One was the tolling of the bells all around the country in remembrance of the lives lost at Sandy Hook Elementary School a week ago. The other was a lunch meeting with my Books Around the Table friends and fellow writers, and the realization once again that I am so, so lucky to know them and to spend time in their creative company.

From grief to gladness in just a few hours. It’s hard to keep our balance in today’s world, isn’t it?  Extremes like this – too many of them casting deep shadows – bring into relief the complicated outlines of our lives.

Maybe this wide swing of the pendulum began yesterday, when I went to The Hutch School in Seattle (a public K-12 school sponsored by The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center) to talk with the students about what being a writer is like. As wonderful as the visit was – filled by the kids’ tremendous energy and their capacity & desire to share stories – I was unglued upon arrival to realize that I had to be “buzzed in.” Security measures don’t allow people to walk in off the street, and this was the first time I experienced such a precaution. The whole time I talked with the kids, I saw their eager faces and felt the weight of the year 2012 and the Newtown shootings pressing down on me. When I was in first-grade in 1954, I’m quite sure no one -  from administrators down to kindergartners -  thought even once about whether they were secure from “intruders” in their own school building.

First-Grade Class 1954

The more light the kids at The Hutch offered up to me, the darker I felt inside. Hard to handle, hard to process, these extremes. I came home mid-afternoon and went straight to bed.

The idea of addressing this sadness of mine in my last blog post of the year made me hesitate.  After all, the holiday season is a time of celebration, and the coming New Year’s Day is a time of hope.  And our blog is about writing books for children, not about political or social policy. But I found that the need to express my feelings here, in this blog, overwhelmed my hesitations. I believe strongly that writers for children have a responsibility to be advocates for children as well.  No matter what solutions you feel are appropriate to our problem with guns in America – and that problem is huge -  I hope you will write to your representatives and senators and urge them to be brave and to enter into the search for solutions. It doesn’t take long to compose a quick letter to your elected representatives. And not long at all to email it. Barely more than it takes a bell to toll 26 times.

Leftovers

Leftovers….

It’s Leftover-Turkey Day, and I’m still thinking about things I’m grateful for, not the least of which is leftover turkey. I did some thinking about gratitude  yesterday, of course. I made a mental list of things I’m grateful for, and the list got quite long. Primarily I feel dumbfounded by how lucky I am to be loved by the people I love.  Most of yesterday, in fact, I thought I would write about that today – the mutual admiration society that reigns supreme in my family – for my Books Around the Table post.  I wanted to look at how strange it is that some writers write from the discontent brought on by a lack of love, and other writers (the lucky ones) write from the safety and  joy of an abundance of it.

Whether longing for love or nurtured by it, writers often create characters searching for some kind of love and acceptance. That longing is “the desire line” of a story. The need for love makes the world go round, and it’s certainly the engine of the carousel that literature spins around on.  So love – withheld or generously given -  was on my mind yesterday and lingers there today. And there’s no doubt those mirrored generative forces are an acceptable topic for a blog about writing and (tangentially) about where creativity comes from.

But I also spent a lot of time this last week thinking about Eleanor Roosevelt.

Eleanor Roosevelt at a family Thanksgiving….

…and Eleanor Roosevelt voting, 1936

She’s been on my mind since the election – what an active, bright, caring, conscientious woman she was – and since seeing Ken Burn’s thought-provoking new documentary on PBS about the Dust Bowl.  Even before watching that, I had been turning over and over in my mind what Maria Popova quoted over at Brain Pickings from the book Roosevelt wrote titled You Learn by Living: 11 Keys for a More Fulfilling Life.  I especially like the line from Don Quixote which was a favorite of Roosevelt’s (“Until death it is all life”) and the long passage Popova quoted in which Roosevelt expresses her thoughts about happiness:

Someone once asked me what I regarded as the three most important requirements for happiness. My answer was: ‘A feeling that you have been honest with yourself and those around you; a feeling that you have done the best you could both in your personal life and in your work; and the ability to love others.’

But there is another basic requirement, and I can’t understand now how I forgot it at the time: that is the feeling that you are, in some way, useful. Usefulness, whatever form it may take, is the price we should pay for the air we breathe and the food we eat and the privilege of being alive. And it is its own reward, as well, for it is the beginning of happiness, just as self-pity and withdrawal from the battle are the beginning of misery.

The problem is, I can’t quite figure out how to tie that in to writing, which is what this blog is all about, except to say that I believe everything we ponder makes us better writers. We are, after all, writers in the world. It is just as valuable to ponder honesty (well, actually, honesty makes us better writers) as it is to ponder point of view.  It’s valuable to thinki about doing our best (yes, again,  better writers) and about loving people (isn’t that what empathy is about? and doesn’t empathy make us better writers?) and a sense of usefulness (which gets us out of our heads, sends us out into the world, and makes us better people, which makes us better writers.)

Am I’m stretching to make a connection? Maybe I just wanted to write about Eleanor Roosevelt, no matter what. I tend to like adding a lot of ingredients into every soup I make.  I do know, on this day after Thanksgiving,  that I’m still revising my what-I’m-grateful-for list, making it just a bit longer. Today, I’m adding Eleanor Roosevelt, Ken Burns, Don Quixote, and Maria Popova to the list. I’m grateful to be list-inclined.  I’ll add that to the list.  I’m grateful I’m a writer – well, that was on my list already.  And not to bring the tone down, I hope, I will say I’m grateful there is both leftover gravy and leftover stuffing  – yumm. And when I eat my leftover-turkey-on-leftover-dinner-roll sandwich later today (and leftover turkey soup for weeks to come) I’ll probably still be adding to my list. I’ll have come up with a few more leftover things to be grateful about. Thanksgiving is just as much about leftovers as it is about the main course, because Thanksgiving is all about abundance, whether it’s food, or food for thought.

…and more leftovers!

Be Alive, Horse….

“A stitch in time saves nine….”

I guess my fascination with proverbs began when I lived in Mexico and had  what I felt was a good command of the language but no familiarity at all with a whole new set of “dichos” – that is, wise little “sayings” and colloquialisms that people learn in their own native languages from a very early age. “Nothing borrowed, nothing owed,” for example – a fine proverb in the land of Puritans. “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” and “A stitch in time saves nine” – two cautionary proverbs that advocate for the Practical Life.  ”Nothing ventured, nothing gained” appeals to me more, since it allows for a little wiggle room and more adventurous territory.

“A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”

The point is, I get the gist and purpose of these proverbs I grew up with. But proverbs from another culture sometimes seem to be out of whack – disarmingly so. Since I love words in general, and love the strange way they convey meaning when the object of their attention is indirect (aka poetry), I also love proverbs in other languages, some of which – when I lived in a country where the language slowed me down just enough to pay attention – seemed entirely mysterious to me in terms of  meaning, but charming in terms of the images conjured. My favorite proverb ever – in any language – comes from the Yiddish tradition: A person should want to live, if only out of curiosity (how much nicer than “Curiosity killed the cat.”)

“A person should want to live, if only out of curiosity..”

If you are an aspiring writer, I encourage you to explore translated proverbs. They open you up, as all translation can, to new perspectives.  I dream of returning to Italy someday and speaking Italian well enough to use ANY of the following proverbs:

“Campa cavallo, che l’erba cresce.” [Be alive, horse, because grass grows.]
“Fatti maschi, parole femmine.” [Facts are male, words are female.]
“A buon intenditor poche parole.” [Few words to the good listener.]
“Traduttore, traditore.” [Translator, traitor.]
“Tra il dire e il fare, c’è di mezzo il mare.” [Between doing and saying lies the sea.]
“Se non è vero, è ben trovato.” [If it's not true, it's a good story.]
“La morte mi troverà vivo.” [Death will find me alive.]

Be alive horse, because grass grows.

A Writing Lesson at the Museum

Artisans Preparing the Moroccan Courtyard at the Met

Is it true for many of you reading this  – as it is for me – that when you travel, it’s not places on the pre-planned itinerary which your remember longest, but the small discoveries presented to you by serendipity – rounding a corner or two, you see them there, unexpected and mesmerizing?

I just got home from a ten-day stay in New York City – purely tourist time, not professional development with editors – filled to the brim with inspiration. I did everything on the Master Plan: Saw the Delacorte Music Clock at the entry to the Central Park Zoo, went to the West Side greenmarket, saw two Broadway musicals (Wicked and Newsies), one serious play titled Grace - got Michael Shannon’s autograph at that one), bought dumplings at Prosperity Dumplings in Chinatown after visiting the Eldridge Street Synagogue, visited the 9/11 Memorial (those layered and sunken waterfalls which just keep going down and down, inspiring thoughts of Dante and the nine levels of Hell), walked into Grand Central Station simply because I can’t be in New York without re-visiting and re-viewing the stars on the ceiling there….

Grand Central Station

So many things on the list – the Jewish Museum (thrilling exhibit of Vuillard paintings), the City Museum of New York (candid street shots of people in NYC and London), went to the Main Library near Bryant Park (special exhibit detailing Lunch Hour NYC – this was my favorite of the pre-planned items) and the Folk Art Museum (exhibit of tinsel painting, along with a mid-day concert by jazz guitarist Bill Wurtzle and singer Sharon Fisher), saw “The Adoration of the Magi” at the Museum of Biblical Art, had some great meals (including Turkish, French, Szechuan and – oh, yes, a hot dog from a street vendor)….

Hot Dog Vendor of Yesteryear – New York

….and – of course, absolutely – visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art several times. Saw the Guggenheim again, love the building, didn’t care for the exhibit. That’s okay – not everything has to inspire us. Rode city buses the whole time, much more fun than the subway or taxis, because you meet talkative New Yorkers on a bus; they love to ask where you’re from and love to express their opinions about EVERYTHING – what they think of Seattle, the cost of living, old age, having the guts to live in NYC, poor street illumination, your shoes, you name it.  What a wide-open town it is! I love New York and New Yorkers.

But to get back to serendipitous discoveries, I have to say that I was lucky to be at the Met on a day when one of the exhibits I had on my Master Plan (the Temple of Dendur – at night)  closed for renovation, and an eager guard (even museum guards in New York City have opinions) suggested I spend my last hour in the museum that day seeing the Moroccan Courtyard up in the new Arts of Arab Lands galleries. “You’ll love it, it’s wonderful,” he told me, and he was right. I did love the courtyard itself, but I also loved the videos of the artisans at work on the courtyard. The Met flew these artisans in from Fez, Morocco, and had them work with tools and material comparable to those which would have been used in the 1300′s. Don’t fail to watch the videos (one of them pans all over the room – you can see everything) here and here.

At Work on a Carving

Oh, my. Oh, oh, oh. Oh, wonderful!! And this wing of the Museum was not even on my list. It had been closed eight years for a total re-imagining. As I stood and looked at the small fountain at the center, the elaborate patterns of the tile work, the magnificently carved arch, I made a couple of notes about processes and techniques to look up (marquetry, carved stucco, zillij/mosaic tile) and notes about what this kind of craftsmanship takes. It’s not unlike writing, in some ways. Here are my notes – read them in terms of writing and you’ll see what I mean.

1. Negative space, positive space: What gets removed just as important as what gets left. 2. Patterns – for the eye, for the mind. Surface pattern. Spirit pattern.  3. “Mosaic” – from the Latin word “musaicum” – meaning of the Muses. 4. Precision – “One tap at a time” 5. Eight years to renovate the Islamic Arts wing of the Museum – entirely re-imagined. Not chronological, but geographical.

Precision, Pattern, Patience, Structure

Of course, rationalizing the reason I loved it came after the fact. I just knew it was wonderful. Sometimes, with travel and with writing, you have to trust your plans – you stick with them, see how that works. Nothing wrong with having a plan. Other times, you have to trust luck and stray off the path.  You have to listen to someone else’s advice, stay flexible, revise the Master Plan. Sometimes you’re patient and you respect tradition. Other times, you peek around the corner, see what you see, and love what you love, even if you’re not quite sure why you love it.

The Nejjarine Fountain in Fez