What would you do?

27 August 2010 | 6 Comments

This made me cry today.

The context is that ABC Primetime set up an experiment in how Americans are responding to prejudice. Do watch it all the way through; there are some amazing moments.

(click though here if the embedded link doesn’t work; YouTube’s being unpredictable).
 

 
Of all my many fears, one of the greatest is that my courage will fail me when I need it, or when someone else does.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under being human, blog, life 

The Cursing Mommy

4 July 2010 | 3 Comments

I very much adore The New Yorker‘s Cursing Mommy, even if she is a man. And so on the Fourth of July — a day when I find myself in special sympathy with Cursing Mommy because I would like everyone who sets off fireworks (which are illegal in Seattle by the way) in residential neighborhoods (specifically mine and you bet your ass I’m territorial about it) to suddenly find themselves in a Cone of Explosive Noise That Makes Them Want To Fucking Die bang bang pow boom bang! — this column from the Cursing Mommy seems like the perfect gift to give to all of my beautiful readers who I am sure would never, never do such hideous things.

I feel better now.

Enjoy your Fourth (bang bang oh look I just lit my own house on fire because I’m a moron who thinks the law is written for other people! Oh, there goes my neighbor’s house! Oops! Boom!).

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, life 

The hope of reconciliation

3 July 2010 | Comments Off

I have written before about my belief in the power of Truth and Reconciliation projects. It comes up towards the end of the long comment conversation on this post, which itself links back to two posts I did about jury duty. The three posts together are one of the most fascinating and most widely-read conversations on the blog. (And if you go read, be warned — I had a database upgrade glitch a while back that whacked out the formatting of old posts, so it might look a little weird…).

Anyway, regarding reconciliation — here is an unexpected example.

When we offer truth and apology without defense in the hope of reconciliation, we take an enormous risk. When we offer reconciliation to people who have harmed us, we take an enormous risk. But look what sometimes happens. Well done, well done to all of these people.

—–

Write-a-thon running total: 3,040 words out of 12,000. Things have taken a sudden new turn. I love the way that writing the story leads me to such unexpected places. One of the benefits of being more experienced than when I was younger is that I don’t need to hang onto an idea just because it’s the one I started with. I feel as though I can “follow my nose” down the trail of a story and know fairly quickly if it’s a path I want to take. I no longer need to have my early ideas be right. Ideas are easy. There are a million different ways to tell a story. What I am doing is finding the story, rather than forcing my earliest notions to become the story.

Back in my early days, writing was a very serious activity (picture me with Serious Face: I Am Writing). These days, writing is serious play. Picture me with How Cool Is That! Face. I am writing.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, life, writing 

Alone

1 July 2010 | 2 Comments

My name’s Lauren, and i just read Solitaire. It made me feel like… i don’t know. It’s ok that you’re alone, just let people you love in sometimes. I don’t think i’m articulating that properly, but I’ve been going through a depression and your book just made me feel good. So, thanks!

And thank you. I really appreciate that you took the time to let me know, and I’m very glad that the book helped in any way.

I think the notion of alone has become so scary in our culture that people don’t really think about what it means. But alone isn’t an on/off switch. Part of the reason I wrote Solitaire was to explore what alone means to me, because I think that we are all alone inside our own skin regardless of our love life or family dynamic or social circle. And yes, I think that’s okay. I think that the whole spectrum is necessary to have a full human experience. There are things that we can only learn, do, be with other people; and there are things we can only learn, do, be with ourselves.

I can be lonely with other people. I can be all by myself and feel like the world in my head and heart are the best possible place that any human could be at that moment. Being afraid makes me feel alone even if I’m surrounded by people who love me. Those people help me look at my fear from a place of relative safety, and help me understand it better sometimes. If I can’t face my fear, then people I love carry me until I can. But I still have to face it and overcome it on my own. I’m ultimately responsible for that. Every choice I make is mine, even the ones that work out badly. If that isn’t alone, I don’t know what is. It can be frightening and debilitating beyond belief. But it is also the source of so much power…. *shakes head*. This is one of the Big Questions, and I’m still working on it.

I do know that the power of being alone only ever really comes into its full strength when one who is able to be alone is also able to connect with others. Love matters. And the real power is not being able to get love, it’s being able to give it. Part of giving love is letting other people in. Other people don’t get inside us because they love us — they get inside us because we love them. Isn’t it a funny old world?

I hope you’re feeling better every day.

—–

If you’d like to start a conversation, please follow Lauren’s lead and use the Talk to Me link on the sidebar.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, life, talk to me 

That’s what it’s like

28 June 2010 | 5 Comments

I really love this short documentary. It’s about writing a novel getting a degree building a marriage building yourself painting signs.

Once the video has started, I recommend double-clicking the image to bring the video into full screen mode. Or you can find it in full-screen mode directly at Vimeo.
 
Enjoy.
 

UP THERE from Jon on Vimeo.

Write-a-thon running total: 2,381 words out of 12,000. Today was about making what was already on the page deeper, rather than moving into another scene. So much of beginning is setting the anchors in place for the important emotional arcs that will play out in the book. And so this deepening I’m doing will, I hope, bring more resonance to some of the key moments to come.

And tomorrow we will meet an Important Character! Someone who will change my protagonist’s life. I’m excited about it. I always like it when the players come together onstage.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, life, writing 

22

26 June 2010 | 3 Comments

Nicola and I met at the Clarion Writers Workshop 22 years ago today.

Our friend Mark, also a Clarion ’88 alum, has posted some of his workshop memories along with photos — one that shows a workshop session in progress, with me waving my hands and looking serious and so young. Another photo shows all of us dressed like idiots for the traditional Locus photo. Nicola, however, manages to make idiotic look powerful and fascinating instead, so there you go. 22 years later, she still fascinates me and protects me and empowers me to be the best that I can. We love each other.

Thanks to Mark for the memories. And thanks to Nicola for the years, this life together that I love.

Write-a-thon running total: 1,850 words out of 12,000. Still swapping words, deleting as many as I write for a net gain that looks small but actually represents a process of seeing that is essential for me at this stage… It’s as if I am circling, circling, handling the story from every angle, trying to find the way in that will open it up most deeply. I’m now at the point of making notes within the text as openings appear: for example, what I thought was a throwaway line is actually an opportunity to introduce one of the important characters, and so it needs to be its own scene. Tomorrow.

Some of these openings won’t lead anywhere productive. And then it’s more sentences off to word heaven, or wherever they go when I delete them. That’s writing. More work, more work, but the lovely thing about being 22 years on from Clarion is that I know how to do it.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, life, writing 

A moment in time…

17 June 2010 | 2 Comments

Have you seen the New York Times new Lens blog of visual journalism? Wonderful stuff. And I am particularly awestruck by this interactive set of photographs called A Moment in Time. Be prepared to spend many, many (many!) moments there.

It’s a big world full of all kinds of people, my friends. So much happens in a single moment.

Enjoy your day.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, life 

Kidnapped, kinda

12 June 2010 | 7 Comments

So there’s a company in France offering a new kind of recreation adventure — for a fee, they will kidnap you. Now you too can experience the thrill of being taken off the street at some unexpected moment, thrown in a van or a car trunk, taken somewhere, tied up, terrorized just enough to get a taste of the “real thing,” and then turned loose after a preset number of hours. Or for a little more, you can even add in the entire ransom negotiation experience. Or customize your abduction (who knows, maybe you can be kidnapped by willing women in bikinis or men in tight pants, or something…)

Have you seen the movie The Game? I really enjoy that film, and I think it’s a cool movie idea. I find that I’m less sanguine about the reality. I’m fine with the general notion of folks paying for adventures in expensive role-playing games — what I don’t like is that a kind of violence that is visited on so many people in the world is now being turned into a Disney ride. Kidnapping is a brutal business with horrible consequences to victims and families. It’s not a game.

If I’m reading various blogs correctly, you can get one of these packages for about 1,000 GBP. Somewhere in the range of $1,500 – $2,000 USD, depending on the exchange rate. If that’s the case, then this moves from the realm of the uber-rich vacation into a realm that most people on an executive salary, for example, could easily afford. And it’s weird to me to think that this kind of “sport” might enter the mainstream/middle-class consciousness as an alternative to, I don’t know, going to the Grand Canyon or renting a beach cottage for a week, or all the other ways that people like to spend their leisure budget.

There are plenty of ways that people use their money that I find personally disturbing, and so I don’t spend my money that way. But when people do things I wouldn’t do, I mostly think Meh or Huh or even sometimes I wish I had the guts to do that too. But those are personal choices that affect only the people involved. This one seems… hmm, bigger than that. This seems like a choice about “visiting” other people’s pain. It feels like a bad idea on a social level.

I dunno. Am I just being a sensitive plant? Maybe it’s all just good fun and I should lighten up. Still, wouldn’t it be lovely if there was a company that could make a profit from taking people by force out of their office jobs and subjecting them to an entire afternoon of picnics and peace?

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, life 

Eye to eye with germs

11 June 2010 | 3 Comments

Okay, can I just say ewww?

I am not the Howard Hughes of my neighborhood: I shake hands and no one has to wear scrubs and latex to step through my door. But I am becoming less patient with other people’s ick. We were in a doctor’s waiting room the other day with a woman who proudly announced to the receptionist that she was pretty sure she had pneumonia (and she had the cough to back it up), but she had come anyway because it was so hard to get an appointment these days. Everyone else in the room spent the next 15 minutes trying to hold their breath. Why didn’t the receptionist send her home? I have no idea.

I am turning into a curmudgeon. I think things like Turn down your music! and Cover your mouth!, and I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before I have my very own You kids get off my lawn! Clint-Eastwood-movie-moment. Is it possible to be more generally accepting of the fact that we’re all human at the same time as being less tolerant of the particulars? Because that’s where I think I am…

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, life 

New Bones

14 April 2010 | 3 Comments

Something beautiful from poet Lucille Clifton, who died in February. There’s so much to say about it that I find I can’t say anything, except that I believe in sun, and honey time.
—-
New Bones
by Lucille Clifton

we will wear
new bones again.
we will leave
these rainy days.
break out through another mouth
into sun and honey time
worlds buzz over us like bees,
we be splendid in new bones.
other people think they know
how long life is
how strong life is.
we know.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, life 

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