Basket Case

A few days ago, I went disc golfing for the first with my very patient coach, tutor and son. Like anything that involves aim, a flying object and a receptacle, there is an art to disc golf. You can’t just fling the thing anyway you please and expect to hear the lovely rattle of clanging chains.

You have to hold the disc just so. You have to have a proper thrust and sweep to your throw. You have to let go at the right time. You have to practice.

I wasn’t a total loser on the course. I stopped keeping track of my score when it was obvious it didn’t matter. I learned a few things about what not to do. And I got a little better with every throw. But of course sometimes I would make a huge digression and chip the disc in the netherworld of the rough and it was almost as if I was taking my first shot all over again. Frustrating, that.

Along about Hole 5, we were getting ready to throw our discs and the strangest of moans floated across the grass to our ears. A pathetic lowing like I’ve never heard. Animal and yet not. Human and yet not. We followed the source of the sound with our eyes and there on the grass some 30 yards away was a woman – or maybe a man – writhing and wailing – like a toddler who wants his way and hasn’t yet learned sometimes you just don’t get it.

We worried for a moment that this person needed a 911 call. But there were two people standing over him or her, their hands on their hips, watching this person and waiting. Almost as if this kind of behavior was one they had seen many times before and they knew it just needed to run its course.

This person probably suffers from some kind of mental illness and I suppose when you care for someone with a mental illness you learn to adjust your life to the quirks of theirs. But it unnerved me greatly. Grown-ups don’t wail like that unless they are in the horrors of fresh grief or excruciating pain. This person didn’t appear to be afflicted with either one of those scenarios.
They just couldn’t mentally handle the disappointment of the day, whatever it was.

We made it past the hole – three above par for me – and thankfully out of earshot of this person. But I felt tremendous sadness for them. I guess they don’t know or don’t understand that you have to hold onto life’s ups and downs just so. You have to have a proper thrust and sweep to your throw. You have to let go at the right time. You have to practice.

And sometimes you make a huge digression and chip your disc in the netherworld of the rough and it’s almost as if you had never learned anything about anything. Frustrating, that.

And you can’t even roll around on the grass and wail about it. I mean, you CAN. But everyone will think you are crazy. . .

Back to school!

My days in the writing cave for the current novel-in-progress are nearly ended; the last page is in sight, hallelujah, and I still have a week left in the month to contemplate how best to make the reader think the house in my story is the ghost in my story. Ponder that if you will.

Emerging from the Cave . . .

I am in the dark netherworld of the last 22,000 words of a book due to my editor at the end of the August, which I hope is a grand enough excuse for not feeding my blog child. I will emerge again next Monday, hopefully 10,000 words closer to my finish line. So until then, no long, pithy blog posts. Actually, you won’t even get one next Monday, either. It’s looking more like September.

An no loose button-sewing or tortilla soup making or assistance with cleaning out your closet. Come back after Labor Day and we’ll talk.

In the meantime, do read my friend Lisa McKay’s blog today. She and her husband just moved to Laos and her blog posts are divine.

I have a an understandable awe for novelists who can craft a great story so densely it covers 500 pages or more of text. I find that feat quite remarkable and am pretty sure I lack the the wherewithal to pull it off myself. I am always a little worried when I am writing a book that I will find myself writing “The End” twenty-thousand words before I am supposed to. Brief is good but so is inclusive. Brief and incomplete is bad just as comprehensive but unmanageable is bad. I think something in the middle is what we like best. I admit I get kind of snarky when a good book ends too soon.

Elizabeth Kostova’s The Swan Thieves is a tome of respectable proportions and I must say, despite its heft, I couldn’t wait to crack it open each night before bed, even at the risk of it falling into my face as sleep pursued me and giving me a shiner.

Kostova’s The Historian (which I shamefully admit is still on my TBR stack along with far too many others) was a New York Times bestseller and won her all kinds of acclaim. Her Swan Thieves is a wonderfully told story with a unique plot. I especially liked the story construction since it is similar to what I have employed with the book I am writing at the moment and am half way through: a contemporary story that intersects with a historical thread through a collection of very old letters.

The synopsis from the publisher: “Psychiatrist Andrew Marlowe has a perfectly ordered life—solitary, perhaps, but full of devotion to his profession and the painting hobby he loves. This order is destroyed when renowned painter Robert Oliver attacks a canvas in the National Gallery of Art and becomes his patient. In response, Marlowe finds himself going beyond his own legal and ethical boundaries to understand the secret that torments this genius, a journey that will lead him into the lives of the women closest to Robert Oliver and toward a tragedy at the heart of French Impressionism. Ranging from American museums to the coast of Normandy, from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth, from young love to last love . . . a story of obsession, the losses of history, and the power of art to preserve human hope.”

Some reviewers, especially ardent fans of Kostova’s debut novel have said it moves too slow and they compare it to The Historian, a thriller with a vampire theme. There are no vampires in The Swan Thieves, hence no one is being chased by the undead, so I would venture the pace is indeed a horse of a different color. I suppose this is one of those times it’s good I haven’t read the debut book first, because I really enjoyed the calm pacing of The Swan Thieves, it is a story about flawed people and their struggle to rise above their flaws – and most of the time there is no ticking clock with a story like that.

I especially liked the idea that a man could fall in love with a woman in a painting. Love at first sight with a huge twist. The object of his affection is a woman born over a hundred years before he was. She is already dead. He is in love with a memory that doesn’t even belong to him. I also liked the twist at the end that I cannot tell you about with out spoiling it. Motivation is everything when you are writing a story that is completely character-driven. And that motivation needs to be intensely satisfying to the reader when you get to the last page.

I recommend The Swan Thieves not for its pacing or its thrill factor but for its exploration into human character and the idea that art is more than just paint on a canvas. It communicates truth. Just like good stories do.

But I think I shall move The Historian up to the top of the stack . . .

No more half foods

With the arrival of the summer months comes the arrival of crispening temps and the lovely putting-away-of-all-sweaters-and-hoodies. Yay! Out come the shorts and tank tops!

And out flops the arm flabs and belly blobs.

Yikes. I used to be one of those girls other girls wanted to sneer at because I could eat whatever I wanted and it never showed. I never sneered back or in any way used my happy metabolism to slight anyone so it seems unfair that I am now forced to be highly aware of what I eat.

Over the past 10 years I have slowly come to terms with the middle-aged body’s blatant refusal to compensate for careless calories of any kind. I now wear 20 pounds I didn’t have 20 years ago. A pound for every year I’ve failed to understand metabolism is a fair-weather friend, there for you only when you are young and lithe.

So I did what I had to do. I stopped enjoying a long list of favorites: No more Little Debbies. No more Lay’s. No more mochas with whipped cream. No more Fig Newtons, which I love, no more toaster strudels, no more Alfredo Anything, no more Twix bars.

And do you know what happened? Absolutely nothing. I stopped eating all that stuff and NOTHING happened. I didn’t shed one jiggling ounce.

This is because, I have now learned, I must also give up everything that comes in a box. And everything made with white flour and everything which contains sugar. And cheese. And bananas, for Pete’s sake, which don’t come in a box, but holy cow, do you how much sweetness is in a banana?

I have finally come to realize that I have to change how I eat, not what I eat. And if I really want to lose the jiggle I am going to have to say no to once-harmless menus like crusty French bread and lasagna made with plain old white pasta noodles.

It doesn’t seem quite fair that the staple of all cultures – bread – has to be the first thing I must scrutinize. If it doesn’t look like its made of wood chips I shouldn’t eat it. Good bye ciabatta. Good bye baguette. Goodbye focaccia. We had become such fast friends, too. I thought you were good for me because I dipped you in olive oil like a good girl.

It’s going to take a re-education of the way I live, hence the book at the top of this blog post. I bought it on Saturday after perusing the whole shelf of books on this topic at my local bookstore, which was right next to the shelves of how to make storybook cupcakes.

What a world, what a world. . .

This morning for breakfast I had an egg and a grapefruit. No toast. No sugar on the grapefruit. So far, so good. If only I could squish the hankering I have for a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch. . .

The History of the Book in 6 minutes