Meagan Macvie's Blog, page 2

All the modern things: a cautionary tale

I did a big dumb thing today. Bigger than regular, I mean.

Today was busy. I’m still adjusting to my new job–this is week four–and every day my brain is rapidly recording new names and faces, the organization’s processes and systems, and all the little things:  how to make the printer staple, where the bathrooms are on each floor, and why my badge gets me into here but not into there WHERE I NEED TO GO.

This day was a regular flurry: driving my daughter to school, feeding the dog and cat and goats, and on my way to work dropping my daughter’s homework off at the school because she forgot it at home. Then I get to work and because it’s legislative session there is NO PARKING in the garage that’s a ten-minute walk away from my building. I find a spot and rush to a meeting. The meeting ends, and I rush off to workout during lunch. I rush back to another meeting. I try to do good work. I rush out to get home.

Everything is undone. The dishes, my bed, laundry. My daughter wants to read fan fiction instead of the book on which she’s supposed to be writing a book report. My animals want to be fed. I’m hungry. My driver’s license is expired.

I choose to start with my license. It’s been five years since I’ve renewed and in that time I’ve heard you can do it online. I grab my phone, type in “renew driver’s license wa” and pull up the site. The form looks vaguely familiar and includes all the security assurances: VeriSign, Truste, and a bunch of logos that are designed to make a person feel better about an online transaction.

I start filling out the form: name, address, phone number, gender. Pretty straightforward form. I thought the mobile site worked well…better than many government sites.

OF COURSE IT DID BECAUSE IT WASN’T.

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This is a fraudulent site.

So yeah, I get to feel stupid and shameful because in my wanting to get something checked off my list, I wasn’t careful. I didn’t read close enough. This site telling me it was for driver’s license renewal was actually for scamming me out of $22 and adding my chumpy self to their database. Likely the latter is worth more to them.

Where I used to only have the task of renewing my license, now I get to add calling the site to get them to refund my money, cancelling my credit card, and generally feeling inept. Also I get to lie awake at night worrying about who’s using my personal information for nefarious purpose.

Hrmph.

Tomorrow’s a new day, I guess. I’ll just figure out a way to schlep my physical self into a licensing office, old school. I need a new picture anyway.

 

 

 

God Thoughts

This post describes what I’m feeling today, expect the cat hasn’t pooped in my chair (yet). Sooo…for the first time in the history of me blogging, I’m reblogging one of my own posts. Fittingly, it’s about God. Also, I think I should edit out the word “millenniums.” Pretty sure it’s “millennia,” but I REALLY like the repeated m’s. Now say millenniums five times fast. Takes you back to your thespian days, doesn’t it? “Tip of the tongue, teeth, and…” Nevermind. Without further ado, let’s talk about God. I’d love to hear your thoughts. — M

How Disney’s Magic Kingdom is like Publishing

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No, this isn’t Magic Kingdom. It’s the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. And I want that magical mess remover.

I try not to make a habit of wanting things, especially the desire-in-my-loins-can’t-sleep-until-I-have-it kind of want. Because wanting something THAT bad creates the possibility of profound disappointment, and like most humans, I’m averse to being let down.

Take my recent trip to Florida. I kept my expectations for Universal’s Wizarding World of Harry Potter in check—that portion of the vacation was all about my daughter and just the fact that we would be there, in the flesh, meant I had delivered the goods.

But in the most secret-est-est corner of my girl heart, I was gaga with wanting to see Disneyworld’s Magic Kingdom.

Look, I grew up in the 80s, okay? I drank Disney like breast milk…or formula…whatever.  My first movie was Bambi, at which I cried, of course, because FIRE. Subsequent years of cartoon propaganda firmly established my indomitable longing for castles and princes and pirates and never growing up, so after two amazing days spent with my family casting spells in Diagon Alley and escaping from Gringott’s bank, we schlepped over to Magic Kingdom so that I could set sail on my favorite ride (at least the one in DisneyLAND), Pirates of the Caribbean.

[image error]That morning, we rode the ferry through the perfect Florida sun across the shiny water to Magic Kingdom. I barely noticed the gathering crowds on my sprint to Adventureland. I could feel the zing in my belly when the pirate boat whooshes down in total darkness and suddenly the world is “alive” with animatronic ruffians dancing to player piano tunes.

Oh, happy day! No line!!

But wait…the entry was roped off. Several dejected pirates milled about holding signs explaining the ride was experiencing technical difficulties. I flailed my arms and cried out to the heavens. “Oh! The humanity!” Clouds slunk across the sky and smothered the Florida sun.

“Sorry, we don’t know how long she’ll be down,” said a lady pirate who didn’t even bother to add, “Yar.”

Tiny tears gathered in the gutters of my eyes. My 12-year-old daughter petted my hair. “It’s okay, Mom,” she said. “Remember how you love Splash Mountain?”

Disappointment, like a Death Eater, sucked at my soul. “We’ll come back,” I sniffed.

My daughter held my hand and pulled me along toward Splash Mountain. But when we got there, dead leaves collected in dirty clumps where water usually flowed. Closed for refurbishment. 

“It’s okay, it’s okay.” My daughter squeezed my hand. “Let’s do Big Thunder Mountain.” We shuffled along behind an old couple toward the orangey rock peak. This time, combative Wild West gunslingers held the closure signs.

“But when can I use my Fast Pass?” asked a red-faced woman driving a scooter.

“We don’t know!” a fake outlaw answered. “They don’t tell us!”

[image error]“Oh, Mom,” said my daughter, letting go my sweaty hand. We kept walking. Lines were queuing everywhere. People were rabid with Black-Friday-like frenzy (before Cyber Monday existed). Wait times for most rides already were an hour. I spun around in Liberty Square cursing the forefathers. What madness had brought us to this point?

Then a question formed in my mind: Why did I even want these mechanical contraptions to fling my body around in this old, sun-bleached park? I couldn’t intellectually puzzle out the answer. For some reason, my heart was still going all squeezy. I wanted—REALLY wanted—the pirate ride to whisk me away. Not only from the current Magic Kingdom disappointment, but from another, more omnipresent one.

Before leaving on our much-anticipated family vacation, I was consumed by a burning desire brought about by the recent completion of my first contemporary Young Adult novel (tentatively titled Conspiring to Be Mary). I had become infected with The Want of publishing. The Want of seeing a dazzling cover wrapped around the pages of my words. The Want of knowing readers would experience my story of a dreamy teen girl struggling to escape her isolated Alaskan town.

When I describe it—all this unrestrained wanting—I feel Roman-vomitorium-barf-so-you-can-shove-more-in-your-face hedonistic. Selfish. Narcissistic. Why do I even want this? I don’t remember wanting publication so badly when I was writing the novel. I just wanted to write it. A real story. A real book. With complex characters and love and sex and hurt and humor. Why in the aftermath of completion did The Want grow so strong that after only four unresponsive agent queries, crushing disappointment looms larger than a broken pirate ride?

Back in the Disney park, the pirate ride never opened. We did, however, take a brief spin around Big Thunder Mountain that turned out to be a small success because, similar to almost every other aspect of Magic Kingdom, BTM Florida was way lamer than the Disneyland version. We also survived The Haunted Mansion, though we were stuck awhile next to a ghostlady carrying a hatchet when the ride broke down, and stood in line for two hours to ride the worst ride of all time: The Jungle Ride. I still don’t get why people take pictures of fake safari animals. Those three rides concluded our visit and cost us about $100 each.

My point here isn’t really to dog on Magic Kingdom (well, maybe a little), or to whine about my first-world problems (which I’m totally doing). What I’m trying to understand here is the nature of Wanting and Disappointment. How do people cope with such heart-squeezing? I can’t be alone in feeling so terrible when metaphorical doors close. Or rides break. Or agents say, “Pass.”

To let myself feel all bleak and Death-Eaterly is embarrassing, not to mention pathetic, absurd, and pointless. How can I teach my daughter to manage through real failure, if I act like such a wreck over a closed ride? GAWD.

I remember watching an Oprah back in the day. There was this woman who believed that to want a thing wasn’t enough. To make a desire come true, you had to push reality to do your bidding. Like forcibly make a thing real. Let’s say she wanted to own a nicer house. She’d cut out pictures of the house and pin them up. She’d buy paint for the new house, as if she already owned it, and get fabric swatches for the drapes she’d have. Maybe I’m exaggerating, but what I remember is how The Want only served her as motivation for The Doing. Action. Moving the levers that were in her hands.

Okay, so the Oprah lady was a bit extreme, but the simple idea of taking charge seems reasonable. I sometimes angst around feeling all powerless, yet I know that’s not true. I DO generally believe people have far more control over their lives than they exert.

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Remember how great it was in Diagon Alley??

While standing in our final interminable Magic Kingdom line, my daughter suggested, “Look, let’s just cut our losses and go back to Harry Potter Land.” To which I argued, “No. No. No.” My mind dark, funneled down to one tiny pinhole of light, could see just one waterway to happiness, and it only existed inside the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.

Eventually though, I gave in to the practical wisdom offered by my twelve-year-old.

“We were having fun at Universal, remember? Remember, Mom, how fun that was?”

Yeah, I guess I did remember. Vaguely.

In my hands were the keys (not literally, since we’d taken a cab) to our happiness, and that happiness did NOT include pirates. Wizards, as it turns out, are WAY MORE FUN.

Here is where I’d like to reveal a deep kernel of insight gained by comparing The Story of How I Got over Disney to the inherent disappointment in agent-finding/book-publishing. But see, I’m still all sad and snivelly. I’m stuck in that Hoping Phase, loitering longingly in front of a pirate ride that could open at any moment. Maybe one of my four already-queried agents, guided by the hand of God, will dip her polished NYC fingertips into the famous Pile-O-Slush, pull out and read my submission, and email me something along these lines:

Dear Meagan,

My life was forever changed by Mary’s story. I laughed. I cried. I booked a cruise to Alaska. Please let me represent you. The world should not be denied the experience of this book.

Sincerely,

Amazing Agent

Go with me here. How would that Oprah lady suggest making this letter and my subsequent book publication a reality? Perhaps I could collage my own book cover, start referring to “my agent” in conversation as if she really exists, or email the electronic copy of my book unsolicited to everyone I know. I dunno. These all seem pretty lame (read: CRAZY), especially my  faux agent response letter.

Here’s the thing. Wanting isn’t bad, really. But wallowing kinda is, and maybe I’m *slightly* responsible for my own disappointment. It’s POSSIBLE I could spend less time obsessing over my rejections (which could actually just be not-yet-acceptances) and spend more time writing. Yes, duh. There’s no real lesson here, other than, I guess, to have fun. To find fun? To decide to have fun?

I’m working on two new projects, and all I know is both are way more fun than incessantly checking my email for agent responses. At some point, I may get sick of waiting, like I did with the pirate ride, and move on. On the other hand, some rides, like Big Thunder Mountain, eventually open.[image error]

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The Theory of Brilliance

[image error]I’ve come to greatly admire my daughter’s cello teacher. The woman is unrelentingly positive. And good at playing cello. During the teacher’s lesson my daughter’s fingers move deftly over the cello’s four strings, as if under a spell, and I’m shocked at how the sounds often don’t match those made at our house.

I don’t know squat about playing an instrument, but I do know a great deal about how to criticize. If there were levels to criticism-givers, I’d be Super Platinum. You know, like good albums or those rankings given to philanthropic donors in the back of event programs? No? Well, trust me.

Even if, as I said before, I know zilch about playing an instrument, I’m all, “Can’t you stretch your hand a little wider?” Or “Your pinky’s not quite on that finger-placement sticker.” I can be a real ass.

But honestly, neither my assholery nor my knowledge (or lack thereof) about music-playing is the point here. The point is my daughter’s instructor, St. Cello Teacher, who every week I watch for thirty minutes as she brilliantly bows her way through Concertino, The Birch Canoe, and Chorus from “Judas Maccabaeus,” coaxing music from the blooming heart of my twelve-year-old.

Here’s what I’ve learned from those weekly half-hours: brilliance, though less frequent, is present from the beginning. What I mean is that even when you very first begin to learn a thing, you will experience moments of brilliance. These moments will be separated by vast unbrilliant stretches, but they are there, amidst dark and frustrating ignorance.

Why does this matter? Because in the short months she has played with St. Cello Teacher, my daughter has improved by leaps. And she’s more willing to practice. Her limited moments of brilliance—when the bow slides over the strings perfectly and the notes ring out true and soulful—occur more often. It is as if St. Cello Teacher has taught my daughter to sniff out brilliance like one of those truffle pigs. Actually, I don’t know squat about truffle pigs either.

My grandmother could sense the presence of water. A water witch. This was a bad thing to her, being a fundamentalist Christian in a small Idaho town. She worried about the rightness. Even so, to sense a thing so potent, liquid shifting beneath earth, is a kind of brilliant magic.

My grandmother rarely used her ability. Why would she? It could be a trap set by the devil. When you are afraid, everything looks like a trap set by the devil. Believing in magic is scary. People might laugh. You might feel ashamed. You might feel undeserving. Maybe it doesn’t really exist. It’s like believing in the possibility of your own brilliance.

How could anyone possibly be brilliant when they are learning? When they are young? When they make mistakes? At any moment they will certainly be swallowed by the great whale of human failure.

But is that really true? Can’t we be both brilliant and imperfect? Can we train ourselves as practitioners—musicians or artists or writers or whatever we are—to sniff out our own moments of brilliance, snatch them more frequently from the ether, tie them together so close that the brightness of each moment obscures the dark and shines in near-continuum?

When I criticize, my lazy eyes bobble onto blackness, observe the wide not-yet-learned spaces, and trigger my mouth to spew pure dumbness. Intervals of still-learning are obvious, including to (perhaps most acutely) the practitioner. What we are often most blind to is our own brilliance.

St. Cello Teacher has trained herself to ferret out those tiny flares where my daughter is brilliant. To point them out so my daughter knows them, can sense them and pull them to her more and more, so that those stretches of darkness—the unlearned—fade away.

Me focusing on what my daughter has not learned teaches her what? I watch her face scrunch and fall after I criticize, the energy she was using to find her brilliance suddenly redirects. Her fingers fumble. The magical realm of music making fades away. She is back in the physical world, frustrated by her small hands and still-developing childmind.

My criticism is useless. That I am afraid to take the same risk St. Cello Teacher, a near stranger, takes with my own daughter every freaking week KILLS ME. Anyone can identify what is yet to be learned. The greater task is to see what is already there, brilliant and bright and ready to burst. The rest will right itself along the way.

Because I’m selfish and want to feel thankful

Things are happening in my country. Bad and probably good things, but mostly big and heavy and hard to carry things. Everyone’s “taking a stand,” posting rants and heartfelt messages and quoting dead people. A few are actually doing something—walking in marches and holding candles.

But not me. I’m just sitting here grinding my gears.

Today, I’m home with my family. The rain beats at our windows, but we’re inside, so it’s okay. Firelight and lamp light and oven light brighten the dark spaces, and yeah, I’m feeling guilty about being all First World, but still, I’m grateful. Light makes me feel safe.

When I was young I was afraid of the dark. Oh, who am I kidding? I’m still afraid. Darkness is scary!

The phrase “she’s in the dark” means she’s ignorant. Likely this accounts for my obsessive light craving. Also November. Ideas are bright, but right now there’s not a single spark in my braincave.

The other day I sat down at my kitchen table and started listing things this past year that made me happy. I’m selfish. I want to focus on these happy things and less on the big heavy things—the things a grown woman should understand, yet I don’t.

I’ll get back to it—I promise—but I’m putting it down for now, taking a break from being all dark and hopeless and whatever. It’s not doing me or anybody else a damn bit of good. Not this minute, anyway—maybe the future me will be stronger (and smarter?) for the lifting, but today I’m lightening my load. Today I choose happy.

13 Things I’m Thankful for in 2014 (an unordered list)[image error]

Vitamin D (and how it’s available in pill form).
My gym, which includes my two workout buddies, Heather and Brenda.
My dog. Okay, she’s actually our whole family’s dog.
Logsplitters. That they were invented and that I don’t need a special license to use them.
The non-cancerous nodules on my thyroid.
Hats, especially when they’re made by people I like.
Carmel Cone ice cream.[image error]
Graduation. Specifically mine this past August. The MFA is cool, but better is my crew of swell friends from the Rainier Writing Workshop. Potty Mouth Girls and RWW14: you know who you are.
My rad husband and rad daughter and the rest of my family (when they’re being nice, that is).
Adventure Time. For lines like, “You’re grounded! Underneath my butt.” – the Ice King
My aeropress.[image error]
Second chances. I’ve needed plenty this year, and I plan to be better about giving them.
Nail guns. These make you feel powerful and also speed up jobs, like roofing.

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On Flying

A show about planes aired on PBS last night. Images of early wood-and-canvas aircrafts flashed on the screen. A black-and-white still of a World War I general. The narrator’s deep voice captured the general’s sentiment without irony: These flimsy flying contraptions have no place in battle! One hundred years later, the general seems so distant.[image error]

I can’t stop thinking about her. I bought her book, Distance and Direction, but forgot when last I saw her to have her sign it. Another time, I thought. In the book, Judith writes, “The time that’s gone inhabits a realm of its own.” Where? I wonder. How distant?

Humans are beholden to so many things: oxygen and calories and water. Our flimsy corporeal contraptions always crash in the end. But flying—this modern ability to move through the air—tips the balance in our favor. In flight, we get to say, “Screw you, Big Bad Unyielding Law of Gravity. No hollow bones, but looky me up here!”

Last Christmas, my husband gave me a flying lesson. I waited until July to take it. The helicopter was a tiny glass bubble with a whirly-gig hat and tail. The instructor and I barely fit inside. First he tried teaching me to hover, but kept having to take the controls so I didn’t crash our glass bubble. Hovering is the hardest part—like holding a mass of whirling air in one place.

She was diagnosed with interstitial lung disease then breast cancer—only just this morning I read the diagnosis in an old interview. Why do these details matter to me now? Why do I search for “interstitial lung disease,” as if the definition—a disease that makes getting enough oxygen into your bloodstream (that is, breathing) difficult—is equivalent to understanding something important about her. As if breast cancer is a reason.

My home state of Alaska is an enormous landmass 2,000 miles from the continental United States. We had to fly most places. The loud and shaky twin engine turbo prop was, to my kid self, a familiar machine. Take off was the fun part: the rising up, wheels bouncing off the airstrip, until the plane swayed and the ground zoomed away. There is probably more to this, but that’s all I can remember.

[image error]“This is not dream,” Judith writes, “but memory. Time set in motion, swirling in its own vortex.” I’m not sure what she means, and now I can’t ask her to explain. Writing memory is like hovering. You have to keep coming back. As a writer, Judith is a deft pilot. She lets memory unfurl and gather. She brings it back, considers it. She hovers. “The time that’s gone inhabits a realm of its own.” I try to hold her meaning in my mind as it swirls.

When did I first defy gravity? I’m not sure. Defiance takes time. I do remember leaping from our cement retaining wall, hovering a moment before our patio smacked the breath out of me. The day I found out she died was like that. Smack! “This is not dream, but memory. Time set in motion, swirling in its own vortex.”

A vortex is a mass of whirling fluid or air. Above the trampoline in my old gym, a blue practice belt dangled from two ropes. My coach used to have me belt up, put aside my fear, and jump as high as my muscled thighs could take me. He jerked the ropes through the pulleys. My body became a whirling mass. His body, a counterweight, gave me extra time in the air to flip and twist.

I don’t want to write about flying or death; I want to write about this brilliant and defiant and generous woman. This woman who inhabited a realm of her own, who defied gravity, and who encouraged so many of us.

But loss ha[image error]s made me as sensitive as helicopter controls. The real possibility that I might fail her has kept me doubting myself, and this essay, for days.

I remember Judith teaching a class on writing essays, pushing us to risk. “Meaning will happen,” she said. Or something like that. She was always saying smart things, always encouraging us.

Encouragement, I think, is a counterweight to failure. Just a little can steady you, keep you from crashing, and give you space to discover. I hear her say, “Trust yourself,” and I feel something rising.

*

Quoted excerpts are from Judith Kitchen’s essay, “Displacement,” in her collection, Distance and Direction. Judith and her partner, Stan Rubin, founded the low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University. She believed a writing program should be about community, not competition, and the program stayed true to Judith’s vision. As a graduate of the Rainier Writing Workshop, I feel honored to be part of that special community.[image error]