Beth Kephart's Blog, page 349

The Question of Beauty

Last night, at a dance party full of gorgeous women in hot-rocked dresses (women with behaving hair, women who learned from women how to color-wrap their eyes), I wondered (I with my jeans on, I with my humidity hair) whether it would make a difference, ever, if my husband spontaneously said (spontaneously, once), "Beth, you can really dance." Would I feel somehow less unlovely? Would being able to dance (really dance) compensate for an ordinary face? Do tomboys ever grow up to be real girls?

The Long Habit of Color, and a Laura Geringer Note

Ever since I started writing poetry (I was nine years old, I was a tomboy, I was a loner), I was color obsessed. Not that I could name all the colors, and not that I could paint, but I found that I could not write a poem into my blank journals unless I'd watercolored the whole page first—given the poem a bed of molten color to ride on. This made for some rather soggy poetry journals, some deeply porous word choices, and a whole lot of feeling to go along with not-so-much story or depth. Still

Scenes from the Day

Laurel crafting beauty at Chanticleer, in Wayne, PA, and the future stars of So You Think You Can Dance, at Dancesport Academy in Ardmore, PA.

Work in Progress and the Hummingbird Arrives

After a difficult night, a page was born, and I was scrolling through the book again, as I do, looking for clues to next moves, when from the corner of my eye I saw a hummingbird hanging in the window, as if from a puppeteer's string. I had been waiting all summer long for this elusive bird, my longing pinned to the trumpet vine that my father helped me plant by the front door. But the hummingbird came at me from the north, and she came not alone but with a friend. She was silver bellied and g

Morning Breaks (2)

Often, not wanting to disturb any other with the restlessness of my dreams, I spend the night on the downstairs couch waiting for the darkest hours to peel. Eventually, always, they do, though some nights feel longer, darker, less willing to recede. Last night was such a night.

Yet.

Morning came. The swamp heat of yesterday rinsed off by rain and leavened by a breeze. Each day advances its own possibilities. Today I will try to write a page.

In Memory of Her

A few moments ago, Jan Shaeffer, the executive director of St. Christopher's Foundation for Children and a friend, called with stunningly sad news about a beautiful young woman—this young woman—whom I'd interviewed and photographed last fall. She had been living in the Ronald McDonald House adjacent to St. Christopher's Hospital, and as part of an annual report project, I'd sat with her a few days shy of Halloween and talked about her life and the ways in which it had been shaped by cancer. Sh

Living on the Margins, Writing Alone

Sometimes things just hit you—obvious aspects of yourself, known territories, that suddenly swoon large in your own self-opinion. Last night, watching the crowd gather at the bookstore, watching that community of authors engender and inspire that community of listeners, I was smacked about inside my head with this commonplace observation: I really am an outsider. I really do live on margins. The center of things eludes me.

Genetics? Circumstance? I do not know. I know only that my life as a

Book Life

Tonight a bookstore hosting six writers at once brought out an aisle-busting, chair-exhausting fervency of fans. There were revelations throughout the evening—of voice, of diction, of storytelling purpose. There were stories, snatches and fragments, that I'll be thinking on for a long time now—the lyric Sri Lanka of Ru Freeman; the caretaking of Lise Funderberg; the terrible and lovely grab at connection in a Josh Weil novella; the searching for Christ in a Jim Zervanos church; the disconnecti

Be Happy

Anna Lefler and I were having one of our freewheeling phone conversations when living emerged as the topic at hand. Lazy summers. Long meals. Deck sitting. Novel mapping. She wondered (out loud) if I'd ever read Barbara Holland's Endangered Pleasures. I confessed (a mumble) that I hadn't. Three days later (count 'em) Holland's book arrived at my door. I heard the box hit the stoop. I thought to myself, Oh no she didn't.

But she had.

Anna had also, this being an entirely separate matter an

Still Ness

To stand utterly still.

To see.