vision 2013

screenplay related.  but i can't talk about the details yet.

emily dickinson book, dark and light sides, luxury snowflake.

i spent the day with two daughters and d.j. and some rad teachers making vision boards for 2013.  it's not new year's eve yet, but i have a super definite idea of what i want to do this year.

an apartment in n.y.c.

or more like a ton of ideas that i tried to reign in, but then decided relinquish restraint (what's the point? it's not in my skill set to do things in a logical or sensible order or with any kind of inclination towards reasonable expectations.)

singing times.

so i went ahead and put them all out there.

learn to relax.

they're kind of embarrassing, people!

luxury snowflake cut by eva.  one side is from a tiffany ad, one from a fur coat ad.  but it's not about things, but about a feeling of luxury and an appreciation of everything that's so intense i can hardly stand it.

they're kind of like a list a seven-year old might have when asked what she wants to be when she grows up:  a professional ballerina, a doctor, an olympic swimmer and a teacher.  all at the same time.


well, i decided to stop fighting the urge to do everything all at once and just embrace it.

dietrich.  big time hollywood.

we'll see how it goes.

i wasn't going to show them publicly, but i changed my mind.  because if i'm going to do any of the things on this list, it's going to require allowing a lot of embarrassment, overcoming shyness (the internet is so beautiful for shy persons), acknowledging what my real goals are, and putting "it" all out there.

"it"?  what are you?  where are you?  

and, to be frank, a year of blogging has brought out the exhibitionist in me.  for better of for worse, it's the truth.

2013 new year's resolutions:

1. complete all of the requirements for my ph.d.

2. find publisher for my book of poems, the gentian weaves her fringes, poems written over the past five years using words form emily dickinson's poetic lexicon.

3. complete new screenplay.  and win academy award for screen writing in a subsequent year.

4. learn to truly relax when i have down time.

5. continue yoga practice.

6.  get shoulders fixed.

7.  wrap the year in a feeling of luxury--i.e. love everything so much that it is more beautiful and more luxurious than a tiffany ring or a fur coat.

8.  sing in a choir or band.

9.  only do things that are in concert with my values or roots.

10.  find a job that will allow me to spend half my time in n.y.c.  have residence in n.y.c. and utah.

okay.

that was embarrassing.

go ahead and laugh.

because laughing makes you feel better, i've heard.

xo

forgive me, dear

emily d.

i neglected to observe your birth anniversary on december 10 (you would have been 182 years old).

thank you for being my daily companion, spectre, spirit, subversive stitcher, maker of little things that got bigger, then bigger, against all hope.

thank you for this poem, as well,

for today, on this bleak & slanted december afternoon:

There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons – 
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes – 

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us – 
We can find no scar,
But internal difference,
Where the Meanings, are – 

None may teach it – Any – 
'Tis the Seal Despair – 
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air – 

When it comes, the Landscape listens – 
Shadows – hold their breath – 
When it goes, 'tis like the Distance
On the look of Death – 

also, here are four poems (look up candland in the archive) and commentary i wrote in conjunction with my own daily emily dickinson reading practice.

T.V. Writer and Pioneer Claire Whitaker

claire whitaker at a celebration for an iconic television show for which she wrote.

my enormous extended family is crowned by a diadem of amazing women who i admire more and more with each passing year of my life.  orma claire whitaker peterson is one of these women.  when i was growing up my mother and her sisters spoke in hushed tones about the sophisticated "cousin orma"--beautiful, brilliant, talented, urbane.  she loomed large in my imagination because she was a professional writer, what i wanted to be when i grew up. so the first time i remember meeting her was at my wedding, and even though it was a big, crazy event more than two decades ago, i still remember her turquoise jewelry and the beautiful gift she gave us from santa fe, her current place of residence.  because she was such a figure in my imagination, my first meeting with her was etched into my brain.  later we struck up some sporadic email and phone conversations and i still remember, seriously, every word she's ever said to me.  two things in particular stand out:  1) we were talking about writing for television, and she told me that she thought the medium had so much potential that it hadn't lived up to.  she was present at the beginning, and has worked on several iconic, important shows in television history.  so she would know.  2) she told me to "find a way to do my poetry."  she advised me not to go into television writing as i would risk becoming a hack.  these words are with me often as i struggle to find a way keep doing poetry in a world that doesn't value it much.  but enough of that.  i'm so honored that claire agreed to write for us.  i want the people in my community to know about this fascinating person, and it is with great pleasure that i introduce her to GITP readers.   --l.c.

Guest Blogger Claire Whitaker:
I am never bored.  Since childhood I have lived in my imagination, which often surprises me.  Sometimes I wonder if I’m not sharing my mind with a stranger – someone more exotic and adventurous.  I am often startled – sometimes shocked – to see what has leaked onto a page.

I am going on 85 and don’t remember when I didn’t write.  The Great Depression was the background for my childhood; it encouraged imaginative play and trips to the library where you formed ideas of alternate worlds that were far more exciting than your own.  I wrote my first poem when I was six.  It began, “I dreamed I was riding a cloud in the sky and saw the moon come floating by….”

In grade school I was editor of our student newspaper. I bluffed my way through high school with theme papers and essays.  I won a college scholarship in a short story contest and after graduation joined the staff of a local newspaper, writing news and trivia.  Under the name of Thalia Boldface I penned a weekly column that somebody told me was boring.  It probably was.

Later I wrote educational films, LDS church films.  I was a stringer for the Deseret News.  I got a job working part-time at an advertising agency.    And there, watching my little dramas of laundry soaps and steam irons acted out in the studio upstairs, I fell in love with television.  It wasn’t an easy segue from a typewriter on the dining room table to an office in Hollywood, not while trying to raise five children, but with a lot of luck and encouragement it came to pass, proving that miracles still happen.

Decades later I discovered the luxury of a retirement that allowed me to continue working.  On my own.  No deadlines.  No network notes or summons to the set.  But here’s where my tight place comes in:  having been reasonably successful I am no longer hungry, and it has made me lazy.

These days I write for my own pleasure -- the ultimate indulgence -- and scuttle fleeting thoughts of sharing my work, except perhaps with family.  Loving the process of writing itself, I am not motivated beyond the final product.  And if I don’t feel like finishing my screenplay I can always move on to that second or third novel-in-progress.  It seems enough to have an audience of one – me – who is enormously entertained by what I write.

But recently I attended the reunion of an ages-past tv show and was touched to have fans approach, old scripts in hand, and ask for an autograph.  If I am remembered for an episode I wrote forty years ago maybe I should try and publish something more lasting.  Something that would say:  this is how and why I lived.  That could be my end-of-year goal -- edit a lifetime of poetry and see if it might find a wider audience.  I’ll think about it.

Meanwhile, life inspires me – every waking day and dream-filled night.  As for legwear, I prefer skin.  I am quite hairless so I don’t even have to shave!  

  

a faint cri de couer

i think that, buried somewhere in the ridiculous number of posts i've written this year, is something about the viral article from the atlantic from anne marie slaughter, but i don't feel i've yet articulated what has bothered me about the fervent discussion of slaughter's piece, so here it goes again.

today i read a response to this article that moved me, that was salient in so many ways, but that i also feel compelled to rebuke just a little bit.

marie myung-ok lee, a writer and professor at columbia university (not exactly a slouch) talks about the limitations she lives with because of her severely disabled son.  here is one of my two favorite parts of her article (the other part is when she talks about how incredibly adequate her '69 hotpoint stove is for cooking three meals a day, despite her realtor's insistence that no one would cook on that stove.  i really hate renovation fever more than almost any of the other insane white middle-class trends of the 2000's):

When I look at friends and acquaintances, many with perfectly beautiful children and wonderful lives, and see how desperately unhappy or stressed they are about balancing work and family, I think to myself that the solution to many problems is deceptively obvious. We are chasing the wrong things, asking ourselves the wrong questions. It is not, "Can we have it all?" -- with "all" being some kind of undefined marker that shall forever be moved upwards out of reach just a little bit with each new blessing. We should ask instead, "Do we have enough?"

i completely agree with her on this.  .  

what should we be asking?  

how do we know when we have enough, or, how can we re-train our collectively disordered thinking to appreciate our blessings rather than despairing out lacks?  

i don't know.  i suck at that, especially today.

but, 

i can't leave without also speaking in defense of slaughter, whose work has been mischaracterized too often, in my mind.

so many responders, including myung-ok lee, seem to think that slaughter mostly cares about the individual woman's ability to fulfill her personal potential and live a life she feels deeply satisfied with.  certainly individual liberty is very important. but

i think slaughter makes a much broader, more encompassing, and more important point:

when we don't have women in the highest echelons of power, all women of all classes suffer.  and so do all men.  and so do all children.  and trees.  and animals.  

without the female perspective in the halls of power, something crucial is missing.  and, if i may be permitted to generalize, one of the things women seem to bring to the boardroom table is bigger, more communal or collective thinking.  thinking that takes into account the needs of the whole as much as if not more so than the needs of individual parts. there seems to be a world crisis looming, if not already here, because we have not been working holistically enough as a human family.

check out the work of valerie hudson for data that convincingly bears up this assertion.

i just wanted to say, and this is today's cri de couer, that getting sisters up there is more than a matter of individual fulfillment. it's necessary for community survival.

it's late, and i've had a rocky day.  a rocky couple of months, really, so 

hope i made any sense, 

or said something meaningful today. 

C'mon Get Happy!

1.  Trying to muster up inspiration for the blog.  Is it because I'm distracted by a visit from an old friend?  Is it because the school year is still limping along and I'm tired of helping kids with homework?  Am I tired of my routine?

2.  Reading Mary Robison's Why Did I Ever.  A novel in fragments she wrote a index cards when she was having writer's block.

3.  On the other end of the quality spectrum, I'm reading David Cassidy's trashy, sloppily written memoir C'mon Get Happy:  Fear and Loathing on the Partridge Family Bus.  There's some good dirt in it (and details of exploits on the level of the Led Zeppelin bio Hammer of the Gods), and you feel sorry for the guy getting sucked up into the star-making machinery before he knew what was happening and had no idea the record company and licensing entities were making millions of him that he never saw, and that he was killing himself with incessant touring and was incredibly lonely, but c'mon, people!  Get an editor!  (Still, I can't put it down.)

4.  Trying to emerge from mental tightness.  Will reading trashy rock memoirs help?

5. Do you think it's possible to get happy on command?

lady times solidarity

solidarity, yes!

in my years of teaching writing and literature, i've heard a lot of b.s. about sexism, racism, classism, (like how they don't exist, are not relevant any more since it's been sooooooo long since the civil rights bill passed, how feminism puts white dudes out of work, etc.)

you know, the people who are responsible for rush limbaugh still having a job.

which utterly defies logic.

sadly, most students are inexperienced and ill-informed, and are looking at the world from relatively priveleged eyes in the global scheme of things.

that's why i'm excited about international women's day on thursday, the vida count, the crunk feminist collective, one of my all time favorite websites woman stats *, and this article today.

this is a good week to get informed.  even if you think you're already totally rad and awesome, becoming more informed will make you even more sexy than you already are.

first fact to know:  ladies find smart people super hot. 

the facts are clear:  violence, poverty, and discrimination against women are still rampant, and, what woman stats makes clear is that where women are not educated, protected, and free, the entire community around them suffers right along with them.

take care of women, you're taking care of everyone.

it's only common sense, but sometimes we need a study to back up what we (should) already know.

p.s.--i'll be reading poetry this thurday at a women's day reading.  here's the info.

legwear:  black tights

inspiration:  getting the facts straight

looking forward: to international women's day

*  here's what woman stats is all about:  The WomanStats Project is the most comprehensive compilation of information on the status of women in the world. The Project facilitates understanding the linkage between the situation of women and the security of nation-states. We comb the extant literature and conduct expert interviews to find qualitative and quantitative information on over 310 indicators of women's status in 174 countries. Our Database expands daily, and access to it is free of charge.

girl power: ode to vida

the shameful numbers at the ny review of books

this blog, vida: women in literary arts, and this group of women writers is one of the most important things to happen for women writers. . . ever, i'd wager (i'd love to hear your thoughts on other important institutions and events that have promoted women writers and artists).

here's a classic example of girls kicking ass and getting out of tight places.

what they did, for those of you who haven't been following them, is start a thing called "the count" where they count how many women are being published, have bylines, are reviewing and are being reviewed in prestigious presses, journals, papers, and houses.

you might be surprised at how huge the inequity is.  or you might not. 

vida hasn't yet figured out the why, but they've got hard facts as to the what:  women are not getting published, awarded, or reviewed at anywhere near parity to men.

fact.

the count was started in 2010, and the 2011 results were just released.

so, cheers, vida, and thank you.

and thank you all you ladies who persist in the discouraging face of sometimes invisible, sometimes explicit, discrimination and keep doing it anyway.

legwear:  what's with the yoga pants?

inspiration:  shirking off discouragement

looking forward:  to tomorrow--got plans for saturday! no lurking about the house getting bummed out for this girl.

oh, and ladies:  you will be so much less prone to discouragement in a pair of beautiful new tights.  six more hours on the west coast to enter the GITP tights giveway.  just do it!