Quote For The Weekend (The “I Totally Forgot” Edition)

Posted on September 3, 2012 by PB Rippey
Finally going to read the book.

The daily act of writing remains as demanding and maddening as it was before, and the pleasure you get from writing – rare but profound – remains at the true heart of the enterprise. On their best days, writers all over the world are winning Pulitzers, all alone in their studios, with no one watching.

—Jeffrey  Eugenides (on winning the Pulitzer Prize)

 
I don’t know where the weekend went. I do know tar pits were involved, tiny dogs with whiskery faces, no trips to the toy store, dashes of revision, a crazy suspension of gigantic boulder, not having to turn on the A/C until the afternoon instead of 8a.m., a sociable labradoodle on Montana Ave., the Batcave, giant sloths and robotic mammoths, a new front porch light, Dover sole drizzled in balsamic glaze and honey and sprinkled generously in macadamia nuts and then baked, the movie Shame (still showering it off my brain), the movie We Bought A Zoo (ditched it for bed), continuing Big Sur withdrawals and family, family, family. Doesn’t Jeffrey Eugenides resemble Shakespeare? Or is it Francis Bacon? Definitely not the Earl of Oxford. No, I won’t go there. I promise…

May your holiday Monday be filled with cookouts and fun and, most especially, naps. And hopefully a Pulitzer moment (or several) of your own.

Rock on.

Right before I dropped the camera and ran after him in case I had to push him out of the way of the rock falling due to a sudden earthquake–sudden earthquake–is there any other kind…

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What Beauty Gets You

Posted on August 28, 2012 by PB Rippey

Candle, wine, deck—listening to the river’s endless monologue, grateful for that natural continuity.

I returned from Big Sur with a line in my head that needed to be inserted into a poem I’m working on. I am lucky the line didn’t leave me, creative synapses firing long and repeatedly enough for me to take care of business. I blame this firing on my receiving a mass infusion of beauty for 4 days, pretty much from Morro Bay’s sea otters bobbing in the shadow of the infamous rock, to Andrew Molera’s wild beach, and back to (okay, I’ll be generous) the southern outskirts of SLO. I blame this mad bout of memory-retaining on the wild turkeys, the Steller’s Jays and the deer I caught with my eyes when I happened to glance into the wilderness flanking our trail. She froze, all of us hikers froze, even the preschoolers and the toddler in the toddler backpack. About 20 feet from us, she stared at our little party, we gazed at her with soft gasps, moving on only when she did. When your eyes feast on beauty, it’s impossible not to hear muses.

Here is the line for my poem:

An idea popped in his pistons

Just kidding. My son is eating “organic” jello and watching a Thomas The Train episode. It’s nice, though, isn’t it, when ideas pop in your pistons—as long as they don’t pop out your pistons.

Here is the line for my poem:

The city’s loose, casual permanence: I am changing.

That’s it. That’s all! But it needed to go in. Whether it stays or not or is axed or brutally revised is another story.

We stopped off in San Simeon to break up the drive home. Elephant seals. An incredible sunset viewed from cold beach. That night I woke up around 3a.m., convinced a tidal wave was coming. As I waited for the tsunami sirens to wail, I plotted our escape—head for Hearst Castle and their gate? But would the castlekeepers remember to drive down and let fleeing types in? Head South, then, to Cambria and promptly inland—but could we make it before the ocean surged over the highway? Head straight up, then, up the road with the “mini-mart” full of shot glasses and sweatshirts and magnets promoting Highway 1. But how far back did the road go? And where was my trusty map of my golden state? I may be a 7th generation Californian, but I am not enough of a native to not need a map! Stop. Breathe, I told myself. Trust life. Oh my god, babe, my husband told me when I heard him sigh at 5a.m. and immediately started talking to him. Oh my god, why didn’t you just wake me up?

We returned home to the news of the earthquake swarms in San Diego…

Trust life.

Back in our own king size bed vs. the rustic cabin’s mounding mini-queen, I dreamed a mildly famous, creepy poet I used to know blasted off to Space and lost his lifeline and for some reason I was designated to be the rescue team. Oh, I don’t think so, I said. I have a little boy. I will not be going. Bye-bye poet.

Letting go can be so cathartic, but sometimes it’s challenging to let go of trails and heart-pounding vistas and rocky beaches inhabited by creatures we rarely see. Yes, it was comforting to bring home photos and magnets and a sea otter Christmas ornament and several t-shirts proclaiming BIG SUR (since my husband forgot his suitcase, the t-shirts were purchased for practical reasons) and a line soon to be part of a poem, most likely, once I am back in the writing chair this evening, procrastinating, or not, remembering, believing—but of course nothing compares to actually being there. Go! Get there. And have a good time. When you report back, remember the deer and what the river told you. Don’t ever forget.

Posted in Fiction, ocean related, Poetry, Writer's Angst, writing, Writing Progress, WTF | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Quote For The Weekend: Robinson Jeffers (Early Edition)

Posted on August 23, 2012 by PB Rippey

To feel greatly, and understand greatly, and
express greatly, the natural
Beauty, is the sole business of poetry.
The rest’s diversion: those holy or noble sentiments, the intricate ideas,
The love, lust, longing: reasons, but not the reason.

—Robinson Jeffers

What is our relationship with the natural world? Are we capable of admiring greatness and rejoicing in beauty on a daily basis–no matter where we live? Is this admiring and rejoicing the key to everything? Or does it go hand in hand with tragedy? Or hand in hand with a self-fulfilling sort of pereptually crescendo-ing, lovely, addicting sort of bliss?

Do you know where your copy of Cawdor And Other Poems is living?

Tomorrow we head north to Big Sur, Jeffers country (to name one of many writers who loved/lived/visited/understood that particular bit of magic coast). When I stand on the deck of Nepenthe, the Kiva Cafe, the patio at Ventana, or windy Pfeiffer Beach and watch the sun fall—I get it, a feeling of celebrating our big, gorgeous world. I feel tiny, and brimming with hope whenever I gaze at the ocean (instantly mesmerized) from the edge of Big Sur’s California. I feel: the recognition of the transhuman experience providing magnificence for the religious instinct, especially when night swoops in and the stars flicker into reality through the oaks and redwoods—my need (sadly, surfacing when I’m faced with spectacular views and inspiring coastline, yet never when I’m stuck in traffic) to rejoice in nature, because of nature: satisfied.

Posted in Fiction, ocean related, Poetry, Writer quotes, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Dear Lucky Agent Contest

Posted on August 22, 2012 by PB Rippey

I’m going to enter. Are you? Follow the link below for complete details.

Link: Lucky Agent Contest

CONTEST DETAILS

  1. This contest will be live for approximately 14 days—from Aug. 13, 2012 through the end of Monday, Aug. 27, 2012, PST. Winners notified by e-mail within three weeks of end of contest. Winners announced on the blog thereafter.
  2. To enter, submit the first 150-200 words of your book. Shorter or longer entries will not be considered. Keep it within word count range please.
  3. This contest is solely for completed book-length works of middle grade fiction.
  4. You can submit as many times as you wish. You can submit even if you submitted to other contests in the past, but please note that past winners cannot win again.
  5. The contest is open to everyone of all ages, save those employees, officers and directors of GLA’s publisher, F+W Media.
  6. By e-mailing your entry, you are submitting an entry for consideration in this contest and thereby agreeing to the terms written here as well as any terms possibly added by me in the “Comments” section of this blog post. (If you have questions or concerns, write me personally at chuck.sambuchino (at) fwmedia.com. The Gmail account above is for submissions, not questions.)

PRIZES!!!

Top 3 winners all get:

1) A critique of the first 10 double-spaced pages of your work, by your agent judge.
2) A free one-year subscription to WritersMarket.com.

Posted in Children's Books, Fiction, middle grade, writing | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Tribute To Mike deGruy

Posted on August 22, 2012 by PB Rippey

Blanket Octopus

Mike DeGruy loved the ocean. He wrote about it, filmed it, lectured on it (all over the world, to all ages), explored it. He died last February in a helicopter crash, in the midst of doing research for a film he was working on with James Cameron. Crazy. He left behind his wife and two children. Now his wife, Mimi deGruy, has published a tribute to him and whether you are familiar with Mike deGruy or not, I encourage you to visit the site and read the post: Love Radiating From A Life Well Lived.

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Status: Guest Blogger

Posted on August 20, 2012 by PB Rippey

My happy place.

Today I am the guest blogger over at M For Mommy. M asked me to write about relaxing and having to write that post made me think: do I relax? Ever? An interesting question to ponder, if not slightly challenging. I’ve just assumed that I do relax. How wrong I was. Go on, ask yourself, see what happens. And then: breathe.

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Quote For The Weekend (Saroyan Edition)

Posted on August 18, 2012 by PB Rippey

The Man.

How do you write? You write, man, you write, that’s how, and you do it the way the old English walnut tree puts forth leaf and fruit every year by the thousands. . . . If you practice an art faithfully, it will make you wise, and most writers can use a little wising up.

William Saroyan (1981)

I obsessed on W.S.’s use of man when I first read this. Was he wielding it—the word man—earthily (as in eyes half-lidded, Birkenstocks on his feet and pen held between fingers like a joint) or in a British (I blame the English walnut tree reference for this next musing) pip-pip manner (as in he’s wearing one of those Brigadier General ribbed sweaters with patches on the shoulders and sleeves and there’s a giant, slightly burnt banger on his fork that he’s waving in your face)? No, no. Neither. I know it. You know it. Saroyan. Man. Saroyan. What ho! He’s right. He also advised writers:

Try to learn to breathe deeply; really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell.

Ha ha! Merci, W.S. Sleep well.

 

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Snow White Revisted (Part II)

Posted on August 15, 2012 by PB Rippey

The bar Ddazzle’s queen’s knees graced.

I drove up to Santa Barbara by myself, for a change. High school reunion—the first I’ve ever been to, but not the first my friends have been to and it’s only because of Tdoll and Ddazzle and our nearly life-long history that I left my sweet little family in our heated valley, trading bathtime and storytime and lullabies for a chance to mingle with people I haven’t seen in over 20 years, at the only honky-tonk-ish, country joint Santa Barbara posseses, I think. I was surprised to remember so many souls—and have them remember me—considering I took the GED in 10th grade, passed and fled straight to the local city college. Only one reunioner queried me about this fleeing. He was polite and embarrassed as he posed his questions. What he didn’t know was that I was prepared for anything that evening and attending the reunion on my terms, which was simply to be myself—mother, wife, writer (never in that order) interested in how others are faring as we all experience what inevitably happens to every single person on this planet—aging. And I was grateful for the chance to dance with my friends. I lost touch with Tdoll and Ddazzle for a weird little white-space of time. Never again. Wow, I’m so sorry, honey, the reunioner said, his face concerned. Hey, man, I responded, squeezing his shoulder. Thank you, but everything I went through to get to this point? It’s okay. All is well. He gave me a hug.

Ddazzle was out of this world crazy with stress and pressure and she drank way over any limits and talked and raged and I was so happy to be there with her in that strange honky tonk joint, to wipe the tears from her face, whoop at her whoopings, scream-sing My Sharona with her, or whatever Van Halen the DJ played for us that evening (not a country song in sight), and join her at the bar, the wrinkles in her forehead resting against the wrinkles in mine as she confessed the torture. We got a few looks, but all I felt was, So what! Let her be. We’re all old enough to comprehend the surprise visits of world-shattering-freakiness. Hello? How freaky is a school reunion! Look around. We’re all different, we’re all the same. Accept it. Get over it. Be real.

Ddazzle became my best friend in elementary school. I can say with certainty that she is not the type to lie listless in a glass coffin, waiting for a kiss. She would  have snatched the apple from the witch’s claws and hurled it into the magical distance, yelling FETCH BITCH as she shoved the crone off the doorstep. Marching into the forest, she would have bellowed for her prince to hurry the hell up because she had plans that needed a forest fire lit under them…It’s not always easy to live with your huge, dazzling heart on your sleeve…I turned to tell the local Norm to please stop pulling on my arm and asking me to dance, that I wasn’t going to dance with him, ever, sorry, that he must move on, and when

I turned back, Ddazzle was on her knees on top of the bar saying something I couldn’t catch to the two hipster lady bartenders. Their eyes were riveted on my friend. With a jolt of surprise (and relief) I realized they were listening to her. Whatever she said touched them, because they didn’t yell at her to get off the bar. The bored expressions they’d had on their faces all night as they obliged drink requests cracked—they  laughed. They got her. And just like that, in true Ddazzle style, my princess with the lungs of a cheerleader and a Farrah Fawcett smile, had fans. That’s right, I thought, assisting her back down to the cheesy barstool. Right on. She was scream-laughing, rocking the stool so violently its legs thumped the wood floor. I placed my hands on her knees, anchoring her just a little. Fuuuuuuuck, she said, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands. Have you written about me yet?

Ddazzle and I, tender teens.Or—tweens? Time continues to baffle and amaze.

Posted in Avoiding My Writing, Faction, Fiction, Santa Barbara, writing, WTF | Tagged , , , , , , , | 12 Comments

Snow White Revisited (Part I)

Posted on August 13, 2012 by PB Rippey

The red book…

And just like that, 2 hours of sitting in traffic was replaced by the type of couch that swallows you in a smooth, nerves-loosening manner, windows looking out on lush greenery, walls hung tastefully in my sister’s collection of California plein air, and an ocean breeze swooping in through the open front door, fluffing my hair, cooling skin. Twilight. The magic hour. I sipped chardonnay from a heavy glass with bas relief-ish bees on it. My sister’s friend chatted enthusiastically about Santa Barbara poets we both know and how cool it was for him to have a poem in a Snow White revisited sort of book by those local publishers who aren’t around anymore, you know, who were they, those publishers, my sister’s friend mused aloud. Well, he said, you must remember, you’re in that book, too. I blinked at him. I am? Yeah, you know, the Snow White book, he insisted. I have that book, my sister said, entering the room with a pizza that smelled like a gourmet chef just dropped it off for us. It’s a thin book, red, on the shelf. The three of us looked for it. I found it. They never told me, I said. I assumed they’d either rejected me, or never published the book. I paged through to my poem, one I haven’t thought about in 9 years. I plopped on the couch, the breeze fanning the pizza’s aroma through the artsy bungalow, and read. I felt like a local. I felt good! Huh, I said. There’s a typo.

I used to do things like use the word “post” in poems and repeat words unnecessarily. Growing up is so good.

Posted in Faction, Fiction, Poetry, poetry reading, Santa Barbara, writing | Tagged , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Quote For The Weekend (Make Believe Edition–Or IS it)

Posted on August 11, 2012 by PB Rippey

If you haven’t read “Waltzing The Cat”, give it a go. Wonderful, interlocking stories of self-discovery. There is danger, romance, an insane boating experience, and some of Pam’s best writing. 

When it was decided (When was that again, and by whom?) that we were all supposed to choose between fiction and nonfiction, what was not taken into account was that for some of us truth can never be an absolute, that there can (at best) be only less true and more true and sometimes those two collapse inside each other like a Turducken. Given the failure of memory. Given the failure of language to mean. Given metaphor. Given metonymy. Given the ever-shifting junction of code and context. Given the twenty-five people who saw the same car accident. Given our denial. Given our longings. Who cares really, if she hung herself or slit her wrists when what really matters is that James Frey is secretly afraid that he’s the one who killed her. Dear Random House Refund Department: If they were moved, then they got their twenty-four dollars worth.

—Pam Houston (from the essay Corn Maze)

A provocative essay  in true Pam Houston style. She weaves, she states, she conjures and reports back…or does she? A couple of reader comments following the essay are also provocative. It’s a nerve-tingling subject, writing truth, or truth and writing, truth in writing, writing the truth—I mean: creative non-fiction—I mean: faction—I mean, oh whatever works, I suppose. The mind reels. Indignant feelings swooped in as I read Corn Maze, then dissipated. I mean, I’m not lying when I tell you I’m not lying about not lying when I blog and don’t lie. Or am I?

Currently on the nightstand.

Posted in books, Faction, Fiction, Writer quotes, Writer's Angst, writing, Writing Tips | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

All Heated Up (With Spiders)

Posted on August 9, 2012 by PB Rippey

Skip the thunder and go straight to the deluge. Please?

We are experiencing triple digit weather. Triple digits means hatchings and unwelcome visitors indoors. Cloth-eating moths. Black widows. Giant waterbugs, which I call cockroaches, which my husband insists are waterbugs—regardless, they make the cats crazy in the middle of the night and startle the holy heck out of me. I don’t like killing things, even spiders, but I have reservations when it comes to black widows. It’s the Rikki Tikki Tavi in me. When I saw the black widow hanging out at the bottom of our living room bookcases yesterday, only a few feet from where my son played with his herd of toy dinosaurs, I sucked in my breath and quickly reminded myself that children survive in far more perilous terrain than mine. Usually the most dangerous things in our house are books (Farenheit 451, Silent Spring, Origin Of The Species, Dante’s Inferno, etc.). No malaria here. Baby-swallowing cobras. Rabid dingos. We have smallish spiders and wasps and plenty of leggy things that look deadly, but aren’t—so why worry? Why search for the best book to smash a poisonous spider with (Elizabeth Peters’ He Shall Thunder In The Sky, in hardcover) when I don’t have it in me to smash a spider, anyway. Although I would punch a shark in the nose or spear it without hesitation if it was after my son. That being said, I’d also smash the darn spider if it was crawling anywhere near my boy’s perfect skin, no regrets. There’s a Chick-fil-A about a mile from us. This morning, the postlady told me my married neighbor came on to her and now she drops the mail into his box and runs. At the elementary school around the corner, signs on the chain link fence bordering the grounds warn students they will be expelled if they come to school with weapons. What to do? How to live peacefully with danger? Books and blog rants and cans of Raid are temporary (illusory) fixes. It doesn’t feel good to dislike things in this big, beautiful, amazing world that my son is just getting to know. Nor does it feel particularly good to use the difficult living situations of children in other parts of the world to calm my own personal spider fears. And I hate using Raid.

I distracted the boy with a snack and the Qubo channel on TV, removed the black widow from the house without uttering screams my son could hear, rolled the vacuum into his bedroom, and checked for anything with legs (not made of rubber). After examining every corner in our house, I placed one of the most dangerous books in the world (besides the the Harry Potter series and anything Aesop, of course), Charlotte’s Web, on my son’s nightstand for this evening’s bedtime reading. I felt better. Empowered, even.

Before we left for the mall and its bookstore, kid’s obstacle-course-in-marvelously-cool-A/C, and ice cream shop, I asked my son to wait for me on the front porch. I dashed back inside, grabbed the can of Raid and sprayed—one, quick spray—the corner of the bookcase where the black widow had been.

My little warning. Protest. Objection. Hopefully it’s an effective one. Sans death.

Posted in books, Children's Books, Fiction, Me and Us, writing, WTF | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

Quote For The Weekend (Gore Vidal Edition)

Posted on August 5, 2012 by PB Rippey

You can’t really succeed with a novel anyway; they’re too big. It’s like city planning. You can’t plan a perfect city because there’s too much going on that you can’t take into account. You can, however, write a perfect sentence now and then. I have.
—Gore Vidal

One twilight in the early 2000’s I sped from work to Bunker Hill in downtown Los Angeles, making it just in time for a friend’s poetry reading. Entering the slightly posh conference room, I was immediately struck by the view from tall windows—rainclouds (anomalies in my part of the world) puffed around skyscrapers with greenish tints, giving the city an Oz-like hue. Slipping behind the crowd, I found a free chair by the raw food bar and sat there for the next hour as my friend and two others read from their new works. For my friend, it was a reading celebrating his first book of poetry published in America–beyond exciting for him. When the reading was over, my friend was mobbed. I dallied by the food, hearing voices I recognized from NPR/KCRW radio shows, listening to authors congratulate each other and namedrop away as they sipped wine from plastic cups or filled plates with raw vegan wraps. I kept my eye on my friend, waiting for my opportunity to congratulate him. One of the radio voices refused to stop flirting with me, and since I wasn’t a fan of his show—a good show, I just didn’t like how he never let his guests finish their sentences—I pushed politely through the crowd until I was at my friend’s elbow. His smile was alive. He was feeling the love (rightly so) and enjoying the praise and compliments. I gave him a huge hug and told him how proud I was of him. He held me at arm’s length and said, eyes shining, voice edged in disbelief, “Gore Vidal is here! Gore Vidal heard me read! Gore Vidal wants to meet me!” And he indicated an elderly man in a wheelchair surrounded by admirers. “Go,” I told him. “Go now!” “Want to come with me?” I shook my head. “Oh my God, go!” And before the crowd closed around them, I watched him clasp hands with The Vidal. I left the building, annoyed with myself for not recogizing one of America’s greatest writers the second I entered that room. Sitting in the last residue of rush hour traffic, I went from annoyed to furious I hadn’t stayed to actually meet one of America’s greatest writers.

But I wanted to get home to my little place in the hills of Echo Park and the soothing writing view from my windows—Los Angeles, spreading from my hood to Venice Beach, twinkling inspiringly. I was in the middle of writing a novel. I was in the middle of a strangely prolific period I wanted to honor. I craved food that wasn’t raw and a glass of decent wine in a real glass. I needed to be at my computer, working, listening to the rain wash my dusty city.

“Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.”

Around 3 a.m. I woke up in a panic and called my future husband. “WTF! I COULD HAVE MET GORE VIDAL!”

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Links Time

Posted on August 2, 2012 by PB Rippey

Guilt-free links? Um…

It’s been a week of discovering useful blog links. I’ve hopped from link to link and then some, pausing only to drop the boy off at summer camp, pick him up, play Batman & Dinosaurs, fix dinner, twist myself into a yoga pose, etc. I am now going to share the joyous timesuck I’ve experienced, with you.

Beth Hull (who always has her finger on the latest and greatest news and links) popped out of her revision cave to blog briefly (lucky for her readers). Thanks to her I visited:

Pub Rants
And was riveted by a certain post’s topic. If you grab photos for your blog that are not considered Public Domain, read this  at Pub Rants, then whip around and make sure no irate photo owner is biting you in the a**. Ow.

If you’ve been bitten, apply Neosporin (we use it a lot around here)—or, not—and follow these helpful links (from same Pub Rants post) like the happy monkey you know you are:

Creative Commons and find pictures and other content to use sans worry
Wikimedia Commons

Or, as Pub Rants so wisely advises, take your own blog pictures and rant at someone else for making off with them. Or, praise those who make off with your silly, slightly unfocused photos taken by the tiny digital camera you dropped 3 times at the zoo. You know. Whatever rocks your rhino.

As always I am given oodles of helpful information by the YA Muses. Talia Vance had me linking to the ever-prolific and informative:

Alexandra Sokoloff (warning—here you will live for hours—in bliss)
Whatever your writing beef (or lack of) happens to be, Alexandra will help you rediscover your enthusiasm, your vivre, your writer-self capable of using index cards.

YA Muse Victoria Rossi had me linking to:

YA Highway
Okay. WHY have I never visited this site? It could also easily be named Writers’ Highway. I urge you to go and see why.

I must stop now. I could lose myself all month in the above links alone and never get any revising done. Besides, I bought a panini maker and the boy is hungry. Who knew I’d enjoy making paninis so obsessively (um—and so creatively), and I certainly never dreamed my picky eater son would actually love eating paninis (creativity and hidden green ingredients and all).

Happy revising!

Yours in future strawberry, brie & basil paninis (next up on the growing panini recipe list–er, thank you: Pinterest, and all your fabulous stolen photos w/links),

PB

Posted in Avoiding My Writing, Children's Books, Fiction, middle grade, writing, Writing Tips | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Anteater Elegance

Posted on July 30, 2012 by PB Rippey

What a tail.

At the Santa Barbara Zoo, a fellow mother and I gazed at the anteater flicking its tongue at grass and slowly waving its unbrushed, showhorse-arched tail. Behind us, our 4 ½ year old boys practiced “Ninja” moves and tested their vocal chords.  A couple older than my friend and I, but not by so much, wandered past the anteater’s home. The man said: Jesus Christ. I don’t have anything against kids, but I’m really glad I’m through all that. The woman offered a brief, monosyllabic agreement.

The man was less than a foot from my head when he made his comment. The part of me used to people not holding doors or elevators for sleepless mothers managing strollers and wailing babies, used to people and their looks of disgust at public tantrums by little ones, used to cars in crowded parking lots honking at mothers for taking too long to belt their kids into carseats—a certain conditioned part of me so didn’t care about yet another stranger’s insensitive comment.

And yet—part of me wanted to take him down like a lioness presented with the great white hunter. I wanted to say:

Yo! You! Look at us! Moms with high-energy boys. We have not plunked them before TVs or video games. We have brought them here, where they are surrounded by glorious beasts as they practice Ninja moves in sunshine and breezes. You realize you and your lady friend are outnumbered by kids at this child’s paradise called the Santa Barbara Zoo? Screaming, excited children everywhere you look. Everywhere. Right? Okay. Know this, man: even when I’m 80 and visiting the Mars zoo with my grandchildren, watching them play and scream in the virtual animal pod playground, I will never say what you just did. This does not make me better than you. But it does make me less of a bonehead than you. At this moment.

Suddenly, the man was next to me. Either he was an inch from my shoulder because I had the best view of the most fascinating anteater in the world, or he was super-close-next-to-me because he was a pervert, or he was close because he knew I’d heard him and he felt something I will never pinpoint. Bottom line: he invaded my space, shrugging, sighing as he pondered the shuffling animal. And I held my ground in the manner of Mr. Bean, who thinks everyone is playing his game when no one is, ever, playing his game, they’re just being normal (human). I held my ground and I shook my head, too. But not at the man. And not at myself. I shook my head at the great anteater and her beautiful tail, her two foot long tongue, her ambling, unbrushed magnificence. I shook my head in awe.

“Have a good day,” I said.

And then my friend and I signaled our Ninjas.

And we moved on.

Posted in Avoiding My Writing, Santa Barbara, WTF | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Quote For The Weekend (Yet Another “Revision” Edition)

Posted on July 29, 2012 by PB Rippey

See how good we have it now?

I work hard, I work very hard. All the books at leat 30 revisions.
—Ha Jin

In working on a poem, I love to revise. Lots of younger poets don’t enjoy this, but in the process of revision I discover things.
—Rita Dove

I rewrote the ending of Farewell To Arms, the last page of it, 39 times before I was satisfied.
—Ernest Hemingway

Half my life is an act of revision.
—John Irving

In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
—T.S. Eliot

Half my life is an act of revision, the rest is parenting in heatwave after wave. Hooray for mini-escapes and the muse-like qualities of garden fountains, crepe myrtles at midday and imagination spurred by ocean for all those in attendance of the waves.

Call me Neptune.

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Deep Summer Checkpoint

Posted on July 25, 2012 by PB Rippey

The Elusive Palomino—and friend?

Two summers ago I wrote:

I create escape beneath my yard’s wind-
bent gazebo, books on spread gingham,
the shrunk house I dragged
into our shade, ticking stove,
stranger’s voice in the toy wall
phone he refuses. Create with a rake
and a cracked hoop and a mound
in the sandbox, blue bucket sunk
in the little dirt stained pool, marbles,
kite’s tail, rubber fish swallowing
a clown’s naked torso. We play
on, into shadow-reach cueing
the rough-pink twilight.

Not much has changed, except that the tiny pool is quite big and silly and faintly green as I struggle for chemical balance. The (elusive) palomino  still graces our street some summer evenings, usually just when darkness is about to relieve us from swelter. The bulk of my “valley” poems have progressed, but remain unfinished. And I am still revising.

The pleasure is the rewriting.
—Joyce Carol Oates.

The rewrite is very satisfying, because I feel that everything I do is making the book a little better.
—Ken Follet.

The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.
—E.B. White

Today I erased some clouds and made the book a little better. And then we threw things into the silly swimming pool, marveling at our shiny-pink (scary-pink) suburban sky.

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Quote For The Weekend (Heatwave Edition)

Posted on July 21, 2012 by PB Rippey

The Exquisite Author And Her Book

Have we fallen into a mesmerized state that makes us accept as inevitable that which is inferior or detrimental, as though having lost the will or the vision to demand that which is good? Such thinking, in the words of the ecologist Paul Shepard “idealizes life with only its head out of water, inches above the limits of toleration of the corruption of its own environment…Why should we tolerate a diet of weak poisons, a home in insipid surroundings, a circle of acquaintances who are not quite our enemies, the noise of motors with just enough relief to prevent insanity? Who would want to live in a world which is just not quite fatal?”

—Rachel Carson (and Paul Shepard), Silent Spring, 1962

An author who changed our country, despite the chemical companies/industry trying to discredit her. So cruelly. “Spinster”. And much worse—as DDT seeped into just about everything, including humans. Sadly, she barely lived long enough to note the success of Silent Spring. I hate that she died so young and at the peak of her career—at least she knew her book was working as an instrument of change—at least she didn’t die not knowing she’d made a difference. We’ve come a long way since 1962, we’re paying more attention to our environment, but how far above water are our heads—or, since Mother Teresa would suggest I focus on my own doorstep instead of everyone else’s, how far above water am I? The silly upright swimming pool’s water. Which has an obvious green tint to it, one suggesting DON’T GO IN THERE. Okay. I’m listening…

Saying it’s hot here is understating reality, is moot, tiring. We’re off to the pool place with our pool water sample. We’re thinking about ice cream and global warming and swimming pools that sparkle appealingly (good thing we’re getting more chemicals). Shuffling along in our flip-flops, little gent between us, we know we care about what we touch, smell, ingest. That’s why we Google things constantly and attempt DIY around the house. We’re just tired today. And a little cranky. So tired we might visit Walmart. We might forget our canvas bags when we visit the grocery store. And it’s possible I still have some melamine ware in our dishes cupboard(s). But our vegetables are organic. Ha ha! We’re chronic recyclers. We don’t use products that test on animals. Coconut oil is big around here. See? Life in this broiling valley that’s just a little too far from the ocean is anything but: “just not quite fatal”. In fact, it’s not possible for parents of lively 4 1/2 year old boys to experience any kind of life other than the toes-above-water variety. Right on!

Good. I feel better now. Still hot, but better! Ice cream. Yes. The kind no whales were sacrificed for.

Yours in frozen waterbeds (hmm—and frozen watermelon margaritas),

P sweating B

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When Agents Call (Others)

Posted on July 19, 2012 by PB Rippey

Take that, you—stove!

If you’re agent hunting, you’re going to want to click on over to Beth Hull’s website for installments 1 and 2 of how she procured her literary agent. I find such stories fascinating. And Beth’s pieces are accompanied by drawings that always make me giggle into my coffee mug. She also offers pertinent links for readers on the hunt. Speaking of which, tally ho! Back to it.

Happy hunting.

And if your bit of the world, like mine, is an exploded stove, keep cool.

Yours in ice cubes, pink dresses and slightly greenish swimming pools,

PB

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Deadwhat?

Posted on July 16, 2012 by PB Rippey

Just another morming meeting deadlines in the pool.

Deadlines, deadlines, self-imposed deadlines. Sometimes, while the boy attends summer camp,  I sit in a small boat in the silly above ground swimming pool and deadline-away. Floating, bumping into pool sides and ladder and capsized toy boats titillates the creative side of the brain, apparently. Sometimes I look up from my slightly moistened manuscript and peek over the port or starboard sides of my ship, checking for sharks. Often, a tiny, sunken batman meets my eyes. And there are plenty of sharks, but luckily not real ones. Still, I might shiver, imagining…J. Cousteau would never have been proud of me.

If you’re looking for a good children’s picture book, try CORAL REEFS, by Jason Chin. Gorgeous illustrations for those parents trying to brainwash their children into growing up and founding dolphin rescue centers and building highly effective mini-subs with built-in DVD players, surround sound and convenient inflatable beds for those long trips down to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Or deeper. Also looking forward to receiving Rachel Carson’s SILENT SPRING in the mail, which I still can’t believe I haven’t read. I just finished NEVER LET ME GO, which is touching and brilliant and frightening in an Orwellian manner and made me yearn for a Hollywood ending because I came to know the characters so well, or felt like I did. Many HOW DID HE DO THAT moments happened for me in this book. Kazuo Ishiguro is a master, though, of course, as you know. Diabolical when it comes to characterization. At least, he is for me.

And it’s back into the boat—oh! Look! It’s dark outside. Ha ha. I was speaking in (a) metaphor and didn’t even realize it.

Or did I?

Good night, and may your dreams be shark free.

Sincerely,
P (dolphin sounds) B.

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Quote(s) For The Weekend (Beach Edition)

Posted on July 8, 2012 by PB Rippey

Refugio Beach, July 2012

The cure for anything is salt water – sweat, tears, or the sea.
–Isak Dinesen

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.
–Mother Teresa

 When anxious, uneasy and bad thoughts come, I go to the sea, and  the sea drowns them out with its great wide sounds, cleanses me with its noise,  and imposes a rhythm upon everything in me that is bewildered and  confused. – Rainer Maria Rilke

Deep into the summer beach experience.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a  me) it’s always ourselves we find in the sea.
– e.e.  cummings

My soul is full of longing For the secret of the sea, And the heart of the great ocean Sends a thrilling pulse through me.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The sea, the great unifier, is man’s only hope. Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning: we are all in the same boat.
-Jacques Yves Cousteau

So busy being relaxed…and inspired

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Not San Diego (Luckily)

Posted on July 5, 2012 by PB Rippey

Not San Diego, but San Diego’s crowds. They kept on coming.

Might have resembled the veeeeeery beginning of San Diego’s “show”…

Resemblance over! We had color, we had smoke. But then we had more color. A spectacular exhibition. Sorry, San Diego.

Poetry in the sky.

Look at them. This is why we came, why I squelched my fear of crowds (kettle corn also helped). Completely worth the chaos.

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Phases (Moon)

Posted on July 3, 2012 by PB Rippey

When the moon is full, it’s high tide in your brain.

As I drove myself and the dog home from dropping the boy off at summer day camp (where they create 4th of July art, squirt water at each other, learn how to play Red Rover and build Lego creations all before lunch), I was engulfed by a vision—of myself. I reclined on the living room couch in a summer nightdress and I just knew I was freshly showered. Night stuffs melted into my skin so that I glowed (pleasantly) in the lamplight as I typed on the laptop, the dog snoozed nearby on his bed, a cat was stretched along the back of the sofa, a glass of wine (red, recent gift from my father-in-law and useful for counteracting any full moon’s high tide in the brain) was perched on the coffee table. In my vision, I worked with a smile on my face as the boy snoozed in his bed, his dad passed out next to him—a common occurence during storytime—the house open-ish, cool night air roaming the rooms; crickets, peace. Ah, I thought. Me in 12 hours.

…

The dog arrived to collapse, but I was gagging on the smell of cat pee and cleared the room of pets so I could stick my face to the floor and sniff without the shedders rushing over to investigate. As I sniffed, my husband emerged from our son’s room, staggered to all open doors and windows and shut them. I’m freezing, he protested and I reminded him (absolutely no rational basis for this reminder) that he was freezing because he was in the pool with the boy for almost 2 hours prior to bathtime—during which a succession of mini-meltdowns occured, the new cat attacked our old cat, I first smelled the cat pee, and the fire alarm sounded because everyone who lives here forgot to turn off the heat under the kettle, which has forgotten how to sing, and a tiny piece of pancake which must have flown off the griddle this morning ignited, flaming impressively before becoming the charred bit I deposited into the trash.

… 

I am concave on the couch, in the same running shorts and shirt I attempted yoga poses in this morning. My hairclip has dematerialized, the source of the cat pee remains undiscovered, something cobalt stripes my left arm and I’m probably entering peri-menopause because all I feel is hot, hot, hot and not in a fancy way. Hup! Wait! Look! There is the glass of red wine. Why don’t I take a sip and make a tiny fraction of the morning’s vision a reality. I don’t hear any crickets—but we do own our house. The moon is full! Old blank page, scratched sequin, crushed shell, spectacular misprint…

If I don’t take a shower now, I may never write again.

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Quote For The Weekend (N.E. Edition)

Posted on July 1, 2012 by PB Rippey

I don’t have much of a routine. I go through periods where I work a great deal at all hours of the day whenever I am around a typewriter, and then I go through spells where I don’t do anything. I just sort of have lunch—all day. I never have been able to stick to a schedule. I work when there is something due or when I am really excited about a piece.

—Nora Ephron

It was a death my husband and I wanted to talk about the second we heard the news. He was at work, I was in the minivan, driving the boy home from the park. All day we were jolted by WHAT! WHAT??? moments and separate reflections on favorite movies and books and quotes, plugging in to any handy newsface for information and to absorb the reflections of others, trying to make sense of the shock Death never fails to deliver. Finally, after the boy was in bed and the dishes were loaded in the thing and the coffee grounds that I spilled and which formed a small mountain on the floor were swept up and chlorine was added to the silly above ground pool and we may even have been in pajamas by then, we met in the hallway or the kitchen or possibly it was the living room couch and we let loose. I KNOW, RIGHT? CAN’T BELIEVE IT. WHAT THE…And we shared, passionately, and for probably more than a little while, what we had received from her pioneering movies and books. Thank you, Nora Ephron. I love what you bring out in people, the magic you conjured from your actors, your wise, peering words.

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Askew In The Valley

Posted on June 26, 2012 by PB Rippey

As you can see, many fine poets in this issue.

My poem is out in Askew Poetry Journal’s Issue #12 Spring/Summer 2012  (here’s the link to Askew in case you’re interested in submitting or subscribing). They also have a Facebook page with samples of poetry from this issue. Dorothea Grossman’s poems are a delight and a reminder that less can definitely be worlds. Holly Prado’s ‘sonnet’ is fun and jolting. No, fun is not the right word. I’d tell you the right word and give a little review of this issue, but I haven’t slept much lately…Far easier to bite a marshmallow and watch an episode of Doc Martin, Season 5. And convey that once Louisa’s brain clears from the sleeplessness of new-motherhood, she’ll move out of the surgery and move on. The Dr. is not evolving, he is regressing. Damn those writers…2 poems in this issue of Askew contain the word askew. And the journal’s motto: Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—by, of course, Emily Dickinson, is used in a contributor’s poem…After the 4th cup of coffee I usually realize caffeine is not going to help—still, sometimes I ingest a pick-me-upper cupper around 3pm—and can be counted on to discover, too late (very late), that it was not a good idea…How Prado uses both my bougainvillea-arm and coyote air to end her sonnet made me want to read the poem again. Then again. And Prado’s reason for why sonnets can’t stand Los Angeles I quite agree with. Although I don’t believe the answer is meant to be agreed or disagreed with…True story: I once knew someone who renamed herself Ellipsis, because she thought the word sounded beautiful…There are many quotable lines from Holly Prado’s sonnet. I recommend subscribing to the journal just so you will receive that poem in the mail—oh, yes! Askew is a poetry journal you hold in your hands, your morning coffee standing by, steaming promisingly as your fingers turn pages smooth as cornsilk. They’re not cornsilk pages. But they are very smooth..Nora Ephron died today. I’m quite sad about it. She forged, she smote, she conquered. One of Dorothea Grossman’s poems is titled, For The Newly Bereaved: It doesn’t matter/whether you open the door/turn on the music/or stand up./All you really have to do/is feed the cat…I didn’t know Dorothea Grossman died last May…My poem is not a sonnet, does not contain the word askew (although the speaker is definitely off-kilter), has nothing to do with terminal illnesses or heartbreak and it does not contain an ellipsis. Since rights revert back to me upon publication, here it is. Goodnight and may your dreams be quiet little canters, not even the tiniest image of Legoland tainting their gauzy borders.

Run

Sun the fog’s ball snagged by a suburban barrier
of giraffe-necked palms. My lawn in recess: churched
(this formal stillness, fog-tuned).
My lawn is Winter’s readied bride, her chill-
wrap tight over tips, her delicate sweat.
Here, the deciduous
mutter off leaves by the evening’s folding light
as I watch 2 boys chasing impulse

in cold separating the fog, setting the moon
risen so early in her hypocrisy of flaws
(O pocked resilience).
Run, run.
Their rocket gasps, blood-worked,
tidal energy
pushed the length of my yard’s
walls of safe. I search for comfort

in time-traveling domesticity and grippable
martyrs: books I resented others
owning until I arrived
in this swatch of breathy Eden, clueless.
Cold frills the air. I watch
the Cyclops bent on counter-
clockwise logic, its eye’s glass-cuts
old trickery I won’t translate. Won’t.

Run. Run.
Sun shatters into anemone sky.
My speck-titans so suddenly famous:
they in their pink hides, I in my cloak-bane,
howling
with half-sight, knocked (I get: you),
ever on the chase.

—PB Rippey


 

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Quote For The Weekend (Solstice Parade Edition)

Posted on June 24, 2012 by PB Rippey

Pig with wings alert!

I love a parade…

—Anonymous, Arden & Ohman and pretty much everyone who has ever stood on a curb with family and friends and cheered for utter fabulousness. Also: overheard all over town June 23, 2012, Santa Barbara.

Just a dude and his homemade sea dragon. Novel fodder!

He clearly loves this parade–especially since he was right behind the cowgirl fairies.

Every parade needs Samba dancers! Really fun when you know the dancin’ darlin’ at the back of the pic there. I don’t know how she did it. zzzzzz

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