On Idol Worship

They have everything your bones ache for. You want to consume them. You want them to be your friend. Your mother. Your father. Your lover. You want them to see brillance in you, because their approval is the validation of your entire identity as an artist, writer, human being.

You think it'd be something to eventually grow out of. But as an artist, or someone with an artistic pursuit, I find myself falling into idol worship all the damn time. I can fall in love in a sentence. Fuck that, I can fall in love over a word so perfectly chosen it feels like it's grabbing me by the spine.

Then, if you're lucky enough, you get to meet your idols. If you're luckier still, you get to talk to them, take classes with them, learn from them -- the lighthouses of your dreams.

It is a humbling weakness. I want to be confident in my abilities, in my talent, in the results of the hard work I've put into my reading and writing, without needing the affirmation. I'm terrified people will think I'm a hack, a shitty, talentless writer, or worse yet, a dilettante. I don't want them to see the insecure, approval-seeking wannabe hiding behind my ambition. It is a painful reminder of my immaturity as a writer, as a person.

Approval seeking is a big part of that fear and the high you get from it is fleeting. It lasts as long as the moment lasts if not just a moment longer before you're aching for the next fix. More affirmation, more approval, special treatment.

I know enough to understand that gaining approval shouldn't be important. Having something to say is what is important. Putting in the hard work to say it in a way only I could is what is important. But it's still there, sitting in my chest, my pilot light of hope, waiting for you to love me.

On Finding Inspiration.

I looked for inspiration and when I found it, it looked annoyed.

“What do you want from me?” Inspiration said.

“The usual,” I said. “You know, what everyone wants.”

“Everyone wants something different,” Inspiration said.

“Okay,” I said. “Give me something sad.”

“Something sad? I can do that.”

Inspiration changed into the shape of my old dog. She wagged her tail at me the way she used to when I came home from school. I thought of the last time I saw her and felt sick.

“That’s too sad,” I said. 

Inspiration changed back.

“You want something happier?”

“Happy is boring,” I said. “Give me something different.” Then I had a thought. “Show me what inspires you.”

“What inspires me…”

Inspiration changed into a scene. A quiet morning, or maybe it was night, one small lamp glowing on a desk, and a person writing in a notebook.

I watched the scene for a moment. The person wiped their eyes, drank from a cup, and continued to write.

“What is it?” I asked the tableau.

“It’s Dedication,” Inspiration said. “It’s Discipline. It’s you.”

Being patient in suffering

More thoughts on unemployment.

When you're a child you can't wait to grow up. You want to be able to do whatever you want without your parents correcting or controlling you. But what children don't understand about being an adult and making your own decisions is that liberty means you have to find your own way without a safety net. As an adult, reprimands and punishments no longer come in the form of time outs and groundings--they come as traffic violations, DUIs, pregnancies, illness, jail and death. Uplifting, right?

So in order to protect yourself from life's injustices you get a job. You compromise. You do something that isn't important to you so that you can collect a paycheck, pay rent, buy things. And if feels like you live your day-to-day as an investment in your future. You invest your money for retirement. You plan your children's lives in order to give them a successful life. You live to benefit other people. You live for another time.

I've been in such a hurry for so long--sprinting towards my goals wanting more money, more accomplishments, more of everything. I'm finally coming to realize that the wanting has brought me to a place of dissatisfaction. If I'm always looking ahead to what I don't have, I'm not looking around to appreciate what I do have. 

I have a luxury that many others who are without work do not--I have savings, and a husband with an income that provides us with enough for now. I'm collecting unemployment which also helps. So I'm not going to compromise on my next job. While interviewing I'm going make sure that the company is the right fit for me instead of only thinking about selling myself to them. I'm not worried about finding a job, I know it will come.

So my goal for the remainder of my unemployment, and really something I hope to do going forward is to slow down. I want to take time to do things mindfully, and to let the passion and eagerness and ambition that sparks white-hot inside me settle into a slow, sustaining burn. I'm going to take the time that I so willing shucked away as a child right now. I believe it will make me a better writer. And my hope is that it will also make me a happier person.

Sartorialist Inspiration

She tiptoed through the snow, watched it float around her, down to the grit of the New York City sidewalk, under her shoes. She'd been walking, marching, teetering on the balls of her feet all night and into the morning since Simon gave her the address at the party.

Are you sure? He asked, pressing the card into her palm. I’m sure, she said. She squeezed the thick card stock into a ball, hoping the pointy corners would hurt her—drive the ache to one fixed point of pain.

It had been six months since she learned Maria was alive and living in New York. Six months of looking for her on every street corner and in every cafe window. She wasn’t going to wait a minute longer. 

What would happen once she got there? Would Maria welcome her inside? Pour her a cup of cocoa? Would she allow the hot tears building up in her throat to roll down her cheeks or would she swallow them? 

She wanted her to see the person she’d become. She wanted to say, "Look at me, Mom. I did it without you."

I Love Old Books: Boris Pasternak

I love old books, and was so delighted to learn about abebooks while visiting Professor Braunmuller at UCLA a couple years back.

Just recieved this $3 copy of Boris Pasternak's Selected Poems. It's in great condition and has a lovely message written on the inside.


Click to enlarge


Click to enlarge

The message reads:
30/5/60
Biddy,
With my fondest love and the happiest of memories.
Dick

How would you describe a pear?

An excerpt from Beatice and Virgil by Yann Martel. So good I had to read it twice.

(Virgil and Beatrice are sitting at the foot of the tree.They are looking out blankly.Silence.)

VIRGIL: What I'd give for a pear.

BEATRICE: A pear?

VIRGIL: Yes. A ripe and juicy one.

(Pause.)

BEATRICE: I've never had a pear.

VIRGIL: What?

BEATRICE: In fact, I don't think I've ever set eyes on one.

VIRGIL: How is that possible? It's a common fruit.

BEATRICE: My parents were always eating apples and carrots. I

guess they didn't like pears.

VIRGIL: But pears are so good! I bet you there's a pear tree right around here. (He looks about.)

BEATRICE: Describe a pear for me. What is a pear like?

VIRGIL: (settling back) I can try. Let's see . . . To start with, a pear has an unusual shape. It's round and fat on the bottom, but tapered on top.

BEATRICE: Like a gourd.

VIRGIL: A gourd ? You know gourds but you don't know pears? How odd the things we know and don't. At any rate, no, a pear is smaller than an average gourd, and its shape is more pleasing to the eye. A pear becomes tapered in a symmetrical way, its upper half sitting straight and centred atop its lower half. Can you see what I mean?

BEATRICE: I think so.

VIRGIL: Let's start with the bottom half. Can you imagine a fruit that is round and fat?

BEATRICE: Like an apple?

VIRGIL: Not quite. If you look at an apple with your mind's eye, you will notice that the girth of the apple is at its widest either in the middle of the fruit or in the top third, isn't that so?

BEATRICE: You're right. A pear is not like this?

VIRGIL: No. You must imagine an apple that is at its widest in the bottom third.

BEATRICE: I can see it.

VIRGIL: But we must not push the comparison too far. The bottom of a pear is not like an apple's.

BEATRICE: No?

VIRGIL: No. Most apples sit on their buttocks, so to speak, on a circular ridge or on four or five points that keep them from falling over. Past the buttocks, a little ways up, there's what would be the anus of the fruit if the fruit were a beast.

BEATRICE: I see precisely what you mean.

VIRGIL: Well, a pear is not like that. A pear has no buttocks. Its bottom is round.

BEATRICE: So how does it stay up?

VIRGIL: It doesn't. A pear either dangles from a tree or lies on its side.

BEATRICE: As clumsy as an egg.

VIRGIL: There's something else about the bottom of a pear: most pears do not have those vertical grooves that some apples have. Most pears have smooth, round, even bottoms.

BEATRICE: How enchanting.

VIRGIL: It certainly is. Now let us move north past our fruity equator.

BEATRICE: I'm following you.

VIRGIL: There comes this tapering I was telling you about.

BEATRICE: I can't quite see it. Does the fruit come to a point? Is it shaped like a cone?

VIRGIL: No. Imagine the tip of a banana.

BEATRICE: Which tip?

VIRGIL: The end tip, the one you hold in your hand when you're eating one.

BEATRICE: What kind of banana? There are hundreds of varieties.

VIRGIL: Are there?

BEATRICE: Yes. Some are as small as fat fingers, others are real clubs. And their shapes vary too, as do their taste.

VIRGIL: I mean the regular, yellow ones that taste really good.

BEATRICE: The common banana, M. sapientum. You probably have the Gros Michel variety in mind.

VIRGIL: I'm impressed.

BEATRICE: I know bananas.

VIRGIL: Better than a monkey. Take the end tip of a common banana, then, and place it on top of an apple, taking into account the differences between apples and pears that I've just described.

BEATRICE: An interesting graft.

VIRGIL: Now make the lines smoother, gentler. Let the banana flare out in a friendly way as it merges into the apple. Can you see it?

BEATRICE: I believe I can.

VIRGIL: One last detail. At the very top of this apple-banana composite, add a surprisingly tough stalk, a real tree trunk of a stalk. There, you have an approximation of a pear.

BEATRICE: A pear sounds like a beautiful fruit.

VIRGIL: It is. In colour, commonly, a pear is yellow with black spots.

BEATRICE: Like a banana again.

VIRGIL: No, not at all. A pear isn't yellow in so bright, lustreless and opaque a way. It's a paler, translucent yellow, moving towards beige, but not creamy, more watery, approaching the visual texture of a watercolour wash. And the spots are sometimes brown.

BEATRICE: How are the spots distributed?

VIRGIL: Not like the spots on a leopard. It's more a matter of areas of shadowing than of real spots, depending on the degree of maturity of the pear. By the way, a ripe pear bruises easily, so it must be handled with care.

BEATRICE: Of course.

VIRGIL: Now the skin. It's a peculiar skin, the pear's, hard to describe. We were speaking of apples and bananas.

BEATRICE: Yes.

VIRGIL: They have smooth, slippery skins.

BEATRICE: They do.

VIRGIL: A pear does not have so smooth or slippery a skin.

BEATRICE: Really?

VIRGIL: It is so. A pear has a rougher skin.

BEATRICE: Like an avocado's?

VIRGIL: No. But since you mention avocados, a pear is somewhat shaped like an avocado, although the bottom of a pear is usually plumper.

BEATRICE: Fascinating.

VIRGIL: And a pear becomes thinner in its top half in a more pronounced way than an avocado does. Nonetheless, the two fruits are more or less similar in form.

BEATRICE: I see the shape clearly.

VIRGIL: But you cannot compare their skins! An avocado's skin is as warty as a toad's. An avocado looks like a vegetable with leprosy. The pear is characterized by a thin roughness, delicate and interesting to the touch. If you could magnify it a hundred times, do you know what it would sound like, the sound of fingertips running over the skin of a dry pear?

BEATRICE: What?

VIRGIL: It would sound like the diamond of a record player entering a groove. That same dancing crackle, like the burning of the driest, lightest kindling.

BEATRICE: A pear is surely the finest fruit in the world!

VIRGIL: It is, it is! That's the skin of a pear for you.

BEATRICE: Can one eat it?

VIRGIL: Of course. We're not talking here of the waxy, thuggish skin of an orange. The skin of a pear is soft and yielding when ripe.

BEATRICE: And what does a pear taste like?

VIRGIL: Wait. You must smell it first. A ripe pear breathes a fragrance that is watery and subtle, its power lying in the lightness of its impression upon the olfactory sense. Can you imagine the smell of nutmeg or cinnamon?

BEATRICE: I can.

VIRGIL: The smell of a ripe pear has the same effect on the mind as these aromatic spices. The mind is arrested, spellbound, and a thousand and one memories and associations are thrown up as the mind burrows deep to understand the allure of this beguiling smell — which it never comes to understand, by the way.

BEATRICE: But how does it taste? I can't wait any longer.

VIRGIL: A ripe pear overflows with sweet juiciness.

BEATRICE: Oh, that sounds good.

VIRGIL: Slice a pear and you will find that its flesh is incandescent white. It glows with inner light. Those who carry a knife and a pear are never afraid of the dark.

BEATRICE: I must have one.

VIRGIL: The texture of a pear, its consistency, is yet another difficult matter to put into words. Some pears are a little crunchy.

BEATRICE: Like an apple?

VIRGIL: No, not at all like an apple! An apple resists being eaten. An apple is not eaten, it is conquered. The crunchiness of a pear is far more appealing. It is giving and fragile. To eat a pear is akin to . . . kissing.

BEATRICE: Oh, my. It sounds so good.

VIRGIL: The flesh of a pear can be slightly gritty. And yet it melts in the mouth.

BEATRICE: Is such a thing possible?

VIRGIL: With every pear. And that is only the look, the feel, the smell, the texture. I have not even told you of the taste.

BEATRICE: My God!

VIRGIL: The taste of a good pear is such that when you eat one, when your teeth sink into the bliss of one, it becomes a wholly engrossing activity. You want to do nothing else but eat your pear. You would rather sit than stand. You would rather be alone than in company. You would rather have silence than music. All your senses but taste fall inactive. You see nothing, you hear nothing, you feel nothing—or only as it helps you to appreciate the divine taste of your pear.

BEATRICE: But what does it actually taste like?

VIRGIL: A pear tastes like, it tastes like . . . (He struggles. He gives up with a shrug.) I don't know. I can't put it into words. A pear tastes like itself.

BEATRICE: (sadly) I wish you had a pear.

VIRGIL: And if I had one, I would give it to you.

(Silence.)

Buy the book here.

The story that spawned the story, "American Widow Project Born From Grief"

A while back I wrote a short story called, "They Washed Him Away." Thanks to my intern Rachel, I was reminded of the story that had inspired it. Read the story below, and read my short story here.

'American Widow Project' Born From Grief



November 11, 2008
Taryn Davis was just 21 years old when her husband was killed in Iraq. As a young widow, she felt bereft and very alone. She channeled her grief into the American Widow Project. It began as a documentary and transformed into a national support group for other widows.

On this Veterans Day we bring you a story about wives who've lost their husbands in war. Taryn Davis lost her husband in Iraq. She was bereft and, as an uncommonly young widow, felt very much alone. Gloria Hillard has this story on what she did to channel her grief.

GLORIA HILLARD: At Taryn Davis' home in Buda, Texas, there are a pair of combat boots near the front door, right where her husband, Corporal Michael Davis, always left them.

Ms. TARYN DAVIS (Founder and President, The American Widow Project): You know, when he'd come home, he'd leave his boots there. And so I leave them there. And actually, I have a pair in my bedroom, too. Because every day I wake up and I would think, you know, it was just a dream. He wasn't dead. But then you'd hear the people outside in your living room talking and bringing in flowers and...

HILLARD: But eventually the people and the flowers stopped coming. It was the spring of 2007. Taryn Davis was 21 years old and a military widow. She wondered where were the women her age, women whose husbands were killed in combat. One day she picked up a camera and went looking for them. The voices of six different widows, all young, became a poignant documentary called "The American Widow Project."

(Soundbite of documentary "The American Widow Project")

Unidentified Widow #1: I remember that I heard the dogs bark, and I looked out the window. And I saw a white van, and there were two soldiers in it. And I knew.

Unidentified Widow #2: I had never believed that the world could actually, like, spin before your eyes, and it did.

HILLARD: The film gave birth to the nonprofit organization of the same name. Today more than a hundred and fifty women post their stories and pictures on the group's Web page and chat with each other on a MySpace page offering support and inspiration.

Ms. NICOLE HART: And this is us on our last vacation with...

HILLARD: Twenty-three-year-old Nicole Hart of Burbank, California, lost her husband Sergeant David Hart earlier this year. She says without the women she's met from the American Widow Project, she doesn't know where she would be today.

Ms. HART: It's helped me in healing, knowing that I'm having a hard time waking up this morning, and I know without a doubt that another widow is too.

HILLARD: Hart met her husband when she was 12 years old. They were best friends even then, she says.

Ms. HART: And the next shadow box has his medals...

HILLARD: Framed pictures of the petite, dark-haired Nicole and her six-foot-three, red-headed husband share wall space with some of his cherished possessions. Everything he owned in Iraq was sent back in eight black boxes. That's what happens when your husband dies in war, Hart says. You receive his belongings in small black boxes: his favorite watch, the letter that he hadn't sent, his clothes.

Ms. HART: And what goes, if it's foremost in your head, are the clothes because you can't wait to smell him. You know that they're going to smell like him. And you open it, and it smells like Tide. Everything was washed. Everything sanitized. Everything was wiped down.

HILLARD: Besides the black boxes, you also get a large black binder. Taryn Davis remembers it was entitled "The Days Ahead."

Ms. DAVIS: Which has everything from the different caskets to choose from to the different urns to, you know, numbers to call.

HILLARD: But there's not much in there to deal with the emotions of the days, weeks, and months ahead. Davis hopes to change that.

Ms. DAVIS: Our overall goal is that one day that our DVD is in there. And when they're handed that binder, we know that they are going to have six widows in their house sharing their story.

HILLARD: Next month Taryn Davis and Nicole Hart will be packing up an RV and taking their message on the road. They plan on traveling to military bases and towns across the country to reach out to the hundreds of newly war widowed, listening to their stories and sharing their own. For NPR News, I'm Gloria Hillard.