I got married!

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I’m happy to report that the wedding is not (necessarily) the climax of a couple’s relationship.

My wedding in January was great.  And life with my husband is even better.

I had worried that after that big party, which we’d spent months planning for and looking forward to, settling into regular life together would be a little anticlimactic, underwhelming, and frankly, sort of boring.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

There was so much pressure to enjoy the wedding.  And I did enjoy it!  But every little thing that went slightly wrong got me thinking, this isn’t how it’s supposed to be.  It’s supposed to be perfect!

Now that it’s behind us, we can look back and laugh together at all the ridiculous family dynamics that reared their heads, all the weird mishaps, and more importantly, we can enjoy ordinary life together.  We can work on the project of building our home and strengthening our relationship.  It’s not always glamorous, in fact sometimes it’s downright messy.  But hey, that’s love, and marriage.

Circus

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This is the first in a new category of posts: Perspectives.  As an author, the myriad perspectives of both real and imagined characters of the world(s) ;-) are basically a giant playground to me.  But I admit that I am doing more than just playing here.  I aim to help give a voice to the voiceless, and to raise awareness about issues that are deeply important to me.  After all, I am not a writer who lives in a bubble, but rather one who lives in, and who is profoundly sensitive to the world around her.  So here goes.

Circus

The lights are terrifying.  The sounds are roaring.  I wish I could just go deaf already.  Blind.  Numb.

They’ve painted me in something, put costumes on my form.  I don’t care.  I’ve learned not to fuss.  Just do the tricks.  Do what you’re told.  Even when it seems ridiculous and even though it should be impossible.

http://www.bornfreeusa.org/a1a_circus.php

Minutes of ‘entertainment’… a lifetime of misery. Learn more about this sadly non-fictional cruelty at http://www.bornfreeusa.org/a1a_circus.php.

There is no refusing, and there is no escaping.  There is just trying, and failing, and getting beaten, and crying, while trying, and trying, and failing again.

Tonight I open the show with the ball trick.  I know because it’s out there waiting for me when they push me, and I am supposed to tip-on-aching-toes.  So I do, I tip, and then I tip face first, so close to the ball it looks like I will smash it.  And then I catch myself on it, I flip my feet up, and hold myself up with an arm that burns like fire.  With my other arm I am now supposed to balance in the air and swivel myself around, and I do, trying not to think about what happens if I fall.  About which punishment they would choose this time.

Trying not to think, to ignore the ground-shaking noises, I propel myself up and do a twirl, landing on my two feet with a spasm that sends a shock through me.  And I look around the enormous room, once more beseeching with my eyes.  Why do I do this, yet again?  I ask myself…  Why do I get my hopes up?

I should know by now, after all.  The aliens don’t have mercy.

Grown-Up Lessons

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file9751272655027Some things I’ve learned– some merely practical, some more profound– over the years, as I (supposedly) transition from child/adolescent to adult:

  1. If you leave celery out for a few hours, it takes on the consistency of Harry Potter’s arm after Professor Lockhart accidentally made the bones disappear.  And no amount of time in the fridge will undo the floppiness.
  2. If you get syrup ‘fresh from the maple tree’ rather than good old preservative-packed Aunt Jemima’s, DO put it in the fridge after opening.  Trust me on this one.
  3. And now for a more serious lesson that has been gaining on me for years and which I think I have finally caught up with and distilled…  You know the things we loved about life as kids?  The way time stops on birthdays, holidays, snow days, in a way that makes you cherish the very air you breathe?  The way family and friends gather around a seder table and you know this is what life is about?  How the rest of life seems to lead up to moments like that?  These things– those moments, and the appreciation thereof– take effort as we grow up.  Not because we are less capable of feeling that joy, but because we now have to work for it all.  When we are kids, if we are lucky, things are done for us.  Birthday parties are made for us, holiday events are planned for us, hot chocolate is waiting for us when we’re done making snow angels.  When we grow up, making the snow angels and making the hot cocoa, as well as cleaning up the piles of clothing we strew on the floor, are all on our very own, never-ending, and terribly un-glamorous to-do list.  We don’t get to just do the fun parts anymore.  Time doesn’t just stop for us, because we’re the ones who have to keep up with it.  If we don’t plan a seder, there won’t be one.  If we don’t buy a birthday card, our friend will not receive one.  But the lesson is this: don’t fight it, don’t resist.  The lesson is that it’s okay to let go of the aching nostalgia of those bygone, simple times.  Growing pains are worst when you demand that life be perfect.  Truly, the idea of perfection is a big ugly bully that will paralyze you if you let it.  Yet this shouldn’t depress us, the knowledge that there will never be a point at which everything is perfect from here on out.  It shouldn’t sadden us because the lovely, freeing truth is… life doesn’t have to be perfect to be wonderful.

Window

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The window and the

opening

to an end.

Ten stories,

one for every hundred

fears and frights and

versions

of her,

and who she must be, must still

try to be.

Tears from nowhere

she has ever dwelt before

spring suddenly and stream

and stream

and stream while she goes

about the day.

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“Hello there,” she says while dabbing

at eyes that yearn to close,

but just for a while! Still,

“see you soon, in an hour,”

she says, continuing errands,

dreaming of windows.

What sanity she once had,

it bade so long,

somewhere in between

distractions’ hope and

obligations’ pull and strain.

 

-Liat Segal

 

On calling our grandmas more often

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I’ve been digging up old pieces I wrote from writing classes at Barnard, such as the one that follows.  I truly feel blessed to have studied with the incredible Shira Nayman- masterful author, wonderful woman, and now my mentor and friend.  This, as well as the “Nothing Else” post from last week, are both products of writing prompts she assigned.  I feel indebted to teachers like her, for opening me to aspects of myself and the world that I never could have found otherwise.file0001440452984  While I can’t find the wording of the prompt/assignment, I remember that I felt the need to write in the mind of a character I would not want to be- to enter a mind that scared me.  I remember knowing right away what character I needed to be.  I remember not wanting to do it, and crying as I wrote it, and feeling like this had been marinating in my mind for years, waiting to be written.  This is part of it:

  1. The sight of birds coming to pick at the bread crusts has always made her heart leap.  The way they chirp, fluttering their little wings so joyously… it makes her feel she could indeed be someone’s hero.
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  2. She hears the crying before she sees the boy.  It’s the kind of crying that always used to make her feel the sky was falling, that the world was an awful place, when her children were young…. the low whimpers that came when they had no energy for anything louder. Fortunate is she who has never heard the cry of a hungry child.
    She looks through the window and sees him there, in the middle of the quiet street.  He is looking around helplessly and when she comes bustling out of the house, and through the gate, he begins crying a bit harder, staring fearfully at her and backing away further into the street.  ”Boy,” she says in Hebrew, “come here, come out of the street.”  She walks as she speaks, knowing instinctively that he will not listen to her words alone in any case.  When finally she reaches him, frustrated by her slowness, she reaches out and takes his hand though he tries to pull it away.  ”It’s okay, child, I’ll walk you back to your school.”  He suddenly begins crying louder and runs away behind a tree on the side of the street.  Ora stares after him, and then calls out, “okay, boy, stay there, don’t walk back into the street.”  He ignores her, continuing to whimper, as she turns and walks into the nursery next-door to her house.  And when she watches the young teacher come out and scoop the boy up effortlessly, Ora curses nature for making her look like a wrinkled monster.  Children used to love her, when she was beautiful.
  3. She pushes the door open and slowly descends the single step over the threshold.  Ada will be surprised to see her out, and this bothers her a little, but she goes anyway.  She needs to talk to her about the heat wave.  She needs to talk to her about the construction on the corner. She needs to talk.  She realized earlier today that she had not heard the sound of her own voice in four days, since the last time her son called on the telephone.  They’d spoken for two minutes, about how she was feeling and how the kids were doing and if she needed anything, and then she was alone again, and all was silent.

P.S. I call my grandma a lot more often since writing this.

Nothing Else

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I did this exercise in one of my Barnard writing classes about 2 years ago, where the prompt was to write in the ‘collective consciousness’ of the class.  I read it at an open mic last night.  I hope you all enjoy it.

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There’s nothing else to do. That’s all we want to hear, all we ever want to hear.  From everyone.  Our mothers, our teachers, our friends.  The strangers on the street who catch our eyes for split seconds, the waiters in restaurants who rush to take our orders.  The boys, the boys, the men, the boys.  The kids look up at us and we remember that view.  Looking at the older girls, pretty women with long soft hair, the kind we used to love braiding, if they let us.  We remember how we saw them as though from a window, on a porch.  A window that was too high for us to reach, but soon we’d grow tall enough, and we’d be standing with them that way.  Flowing hair, graceful movements, knowledge of the beauty of our lives and romances.  And now we’re here, inside.   We sometimes get the fleeting notion that there are people out there, little girls with their happy smiles and dances, who have their faces pressed against the windows, their breath fogging up the panes.  We take a break for a tiny moment, to quickly meet their eyes.  And then we look away, because we can’t take the flames there.  We can’t take the fire in them that burns to be just like us.  Perfect.  Strong.  Finally Living.  We look away, go back to our work, afraid, as always, that we will fall behind.  And that’s when we remember the fear there, in those little girls. We remember how we were afraid, holding, in spite of ourselves, the painful knowledge that we would never be like that, like those ideas we had of the Perfect Women.  They were perfect, but we never would be.  We’d always be behind, trying desperately to catch up, to reach the women through the window.  We’d keep trying so that someday we’d be okay.  Someday there would be nothing else to do.  Nothing left to enslave us.

We look outside to the girls with their noses pressed to the glass, and we try to whisper that everything will be fine, but our voices catch in our throats.

Ahem… What I MEANT to Say

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Face palm!

Face palm!

Hi friends, let me tell you a story.

A month ago, I had the AMAZING opportunity to participate in a panel at my beloved Alma mater, Barnard College.  I was so excited when I was invited- it was like a dream come true!  (Me at Barnard writing/publishing panel!)  Now I hate that this story has a ‘but’… but it does.

The panel was about publishing in today’s world, and I was in a tricky position.  I was the token self-published author, and some people there made it pretty clear that they looked waaay down on that.  And if that weren’t enough… I had published through Amazon.  The other panelists viewed Amazon as the big bad wolf, stealing clients and customers from them.  And like any good person, I empathized!  Which is fine, I mean, I’m proud of being an empathic person.  But… and here’s that ‘but’ again… empathic quickly turned into apologetic, and that?  That I’m not proud of.

I found myself saying, well, I had tried to publish traditionally, and it wasn’t my fault Amazon was taking over and traditional publishing was dying, and… by the time I left, I felt like I had come across as completely insecure.  It sucked.

I turned to a virtual mentor of mine, Marie Forleo, who, right around that time, had put out this video, as if she had known I’d need it: Marie’s fix-it video.

She suggested being proactive, and creating the chance for yourself to make it right.  So I’m following her advice, and telling you what’s on my mind: I think that last month, I came across crazy insecure.  What I really meant to say was… file0002021971112

I KICK ASS.

I am glad I self-published… self publishing was exactly right for me with this book.  I am glad I had the guts and brains to utilize the amazing tool called Amazon and their publishing company Create Space, which let me do what traditional publishing would have been too pompous to let me do… publish my words, my own damn way.  And what’s more, I have a confession: I didn’t try very hard to get published traditionally.

I sent queries to a few agents- maybe four or five, which, as anyone in publishing will tell you, is basically the same as not having sent any at all!  Why did I stop so soon? Because I sensed something very quickly: if anyone else had a stake in this book, they’d require me to compromise on the truth that I needed to communicate.  And I wasn’t going to let that happen.

When you get down to it, my book is about freeing yourself from the burden of wanting other people’s approval.  It’s about being you, even and especially at your weirdest and most unique.  And, true to form, my book is not like any other book you’ve read.  It does not adhere to many of the norms that many agents and publishers would try to impose.  However, it does follow the ideas expressed beautifully by Etgar Keret here… radical ideas such as, “write like yourself”– what a concept!  See, I didn’t censor myself when I wrote this book.  Don’t get me wrong, I (with the help of people I trust) edited the hell out of this thing.  But the way I wrote it was an expression of the reason I was writing it: to use my own voice, without tailoring that voice to what others want to hear.  I also felt that writing it my way could encourage others to do the same: to share your truth however the hell it wants to be shared.

I know self-publishing still has something of a stigma… it may be considered vain, or maybe not as ‘legit’ (and by the way, neither of these things are necessarily true- self publishing is what you make of it).  But I chose to self publish despite- or in fact, specifically because of the stigma.  I forced myself to face the music- to face the threat of disapproval and judgment, and to laugh in its face.  I forced myself to feel the fear and do it anyhow.  Because my book, The Gods She Chose, isn’t only the journey of Ayala, the protagonist, trying to defy expectations and be herself… it’s my journey, too.