Drew Myron's Blog, page 33
February 17, 2017
Thankful Thursday on Friday
My gratitude grows but my attention is short. Let's make a list.
On this Thankful Thursday, I'm thankful for:
1. No knowledge
My new reading trick is to avoid book flaps, blurbs and best-seller lists, and to dive in without preconceptions. This approach worked recently when I read The Girls, an engrossing and engaging novel by Emma Cline. I liked the book very much, and it was refreshing to learn about the backstory and author after I had finished the book.
Is this how we use to read, before fevered promotions and author platforms?
2. Like attracts like
A friend sent me a card. She is "remembering to send handwritten mail every now and then" and I was the lucky recipient.
3. Retread
I rarely watch movies more than once or return to books I've already read. But this week I found myself bookless. In desperation, my eyes darted across cereal boxes and classified ads. Words, any words. Without time for a book run, I reached for my bookshelf and one of my favorite novels: Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner.
Over the years I have gifted this book to dozens of friends and family but could remember few details (I can barely remember the book I read last week, and I read this one 15 years ago).
Much to my relief, I slipped back into those creaky yellowed pages and still liked the book.
4. Pie
Though I dislike Valentine's Day (forced affection and obligatory gifts), I'm thankful that I ditched my sour mood and allowed a sentimental groove. Now we're eating cherry pie and we're both happy.
Sometimes, most times, it's good to get out of your head and into your heart.
It's Thankful Thursday (on Friday, because life gets full), a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places, poems and more. Life expands with gratitude. What are you thankful for today?
February 7, 2017
Consuming
It's a great time to be alove.
That's what I saw. At second glance the word was alive but, really, I prefer alove. I imagine alove is similar to in love but more immersive and inclusive. Weightless through a cloud, a fog, a thicket of feel-goodness.
It's said that creatives — writers, painters, dreamers, dawdlers — need down time to replenish the well (and maybe get new glasses). The garden metaphor is often used: plant, germinate, grow, harvest, or some such. I tried to be a gardener but I dislike dirt and prefer chips to kale.
Still, the metaphor works.
There is a time to plant and a time to sow. A time to write and a time to rest. A time to produce and a time to consume. I fear, though, I may have taken consumption a bit far (see: empty chip bags and me on the couch). But hey, it's winter; I'm sowing.
In my ravenous state here's what I've consumed:
BOOKS
[image error]
The Book of Unknown Americans
by Cristina Henriquez
A moving story of immigrant life, freshly and poignantly told.
[image error]
The Wangs Vs. The World
by Jade Chang
Flip and easy, this riches-to-rags story about a wealthy Chinese family is a funny yet touching observation of vapid American culture.
TELEVISION
[image error]
Call My Agent
An engaging French television series about a firm of agents working with a cadre of colorful, high-maintenance actors. It's light and fun but the subtitles make me feel a little more smart, a little less cheesy. See it on Netflix.
[image error]
Sensitive Skin
Kim Cattrell is best known for her spicy role in Sex and the City but in this Canadian series she shows greater depth playing a widow navigating a new life. Because there are so few shows featuring intelligent, thoughtful, stylish mid-life women, this one has me hooked. Available on Netflix.
FOOD
Oh my gosh, have you binged on (err, I mean tasted) Caramel & Cheddar Cheese Popcorn? Skip dinner. Skip lunch. This is the only meal you need.
Okay, yes, I do sometimes eat "real" meals. Lately, we've been making Pho. This quick and easy version isn't the authentic Vietnamese soup, but it's darn good.
YOUR TURN: What are you consuming? and what's consuming you?
And even more important: Are you alove?
January 30, 2017
With no extraordinary power
[image error]
I wasn't looking for a poem. I was gathering pieces, making a word bank, trying to write my own. But instead, I found this poem. Today as the world feels so ugly with division, these lines seem just right, just now, timeless.
My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
so much has been destroyed
I have to cast my lot with those
who age after age, perversely,
with no extraordinary power,
reconstitute the world.
— Adrienne Rich
This is the last stanza of Natural Resources, a poem by Adrienne Rich that appears in the collection, The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New 1950 - 1984. This is an excellent book. My copy, now over 20 years old, is dog-eared and falling apart. I return to the pages again and again, with new appreciation of an old friend, a firm foundation.
January 26, 2017
Thankful Thursday: Soft Socks
[image error]
The Week in Review
I bought soft socks. Ate too many chips. Got lost in books.
An old woman and I held hands. "I don't know if I'm coming or going," she said. "I don't know why I'm here."
I went to a ranch and met the cows. Wide-eyed, we shared a certain numbness.
Snow met sky and erased horizon. Everything silent and still. I didn't reach for camera or phone. Didn't reach at all.
In the distance a thin ribbon of blue broke through.
It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places, things and more. Some weeks are tougher than others, but every week offers some small thing that redeems and heals. What are you thankful for today?
January 18, 2017
Love that line!
[image error]
“It's not that I have a way with words;
it's that I have no way without them.”
― from Private Citizens, a novel by Tony Tulathimutte
January 12, 2017
Move me
I've been enduring a long stretch of perfectly fine, readable books that failed to move me. I failed to feel. Is it the book? Is it me?
So much of "good" art — books, film, paintings, music — is timing. When we are tuned in, when we are in time, art moves in us, through us. But when the timing is off, it's just a bunch of words, splotches of paint, a dull rerun.
But last week I hit the jackpot. I was moved by a novel, a television show, and music.
BOOK: A Little Life
a novel by Hanya Yanagihara
Everyone was talking about this book so naturally I turned away. I like an underdog. I wasn't going to cow to the crowd and read the latest big-deal book. But I finally did, and "they" were right. This is a brutal, beautiful, moving book. I read it in two days, with minimal breaks (my husband made me eat so I put it down, then scurried back).
Here's a tip: I didn't know anything about this book but the title and awful cover. No plot. No blurbs. No reviews. It was refreshing to enter a book without expectation or explanation.
[image error]
TELEVISION: Good Girls Revolt
on Amazon Prime
This 10-episode show, inspired by the book by Lynn Povich, tells the story of the sex discrimination lawsuit filed against Newsweek magazine in 1970. Though soapy at times, the show captures the era and centers on the young women at the magazine who work alongside male reporters but are given none of the credit, opportunities or financial reward their male colleagues enjoy.
Sadly, the show has been cancelled and will run for only this one season — a decision that was reportedly made without any female input. Still, and again, it seems as much as we move forward, we always have further to go.
[image error]
MUSIC: Lemonade
a visual album by Beyonce
I know, I know, Beyonce? I'm as surprised as you to discover I'm enthralled. Lemonade is both concept album and short film/long music video, and it's gripping. I don't like blockbuster movies or trendy tunes, and so I ignored the hype when this was released last year. Recently I heard an excerpt and the sound was haunting. Watching the film — an elegant and moody hour-long experience — reminded me of watching Pink Floyd's The Wall so many years ago. I didn't understand what it all "meant" but I was moved by the mood. Lemonade stirred me, in large part because of poet Warsan Shire, whose words stitch this album together to create a heightened state of love and ache.
What's moved you lately?
January 5, 2017
Thankful Thursday: Comfort, Joy
[image error]
Hello dear friend.
For the last month, two words have hung in my head, circled my heart: comfort and joy.
A holiday card offers these wishes. A song is sung. And later, I spot the words in huge black letters blazed across a downtown building. Words have power, we know this, and while I can't explain — other than longing — why these words hound me, I know enough to take notice when words won't shake away.
Comfort, in the throes of grief, illness and loss, seems a tall order. Joy, in this state, seems impossible.
And yet. And yet, we spend a few hours together and you shine with a rare smile, laughter even, and the room breathes open. Against our long wall of sadness, for a brief time the air turns light with comfort. And in this small opening, joy.
I'll keep looking. For half-smiles, softness, and slices of light. I don't yet know but want to believe our grip will loosen and love will hold us tight.
Where the Map Begins
A Blessing for Epiphany
This is not
any map you know.
Forget longitude.
Forget latitude.
Do not think
of distances
or of plotting
the most direct route.
Astrolabe, sextant, compass:
these will not help you here.
This is the map
that begins with a star.
This is the chart
that starts with fire,
with blazing,
with an ancient light
that has outlasted
generations, empires,
cultures, wars.
Look starward once,
then look away.
Close your eyes
and see how the map
begins to blossom
behind your lids,
how it constellates,
its lines stretching out
from where you stand.
You cannot see it all,
cannot divine the way
it will turn and spiral,
cannot perceive how
the road you walk
will lead you finally inside,
through the labyrinth
of your own heart
and belly
and lungs.
But step out
and you will know
what the wise who traveled
this path before you
knew:
the treasure in this map
is buried
not at journey’s end
but at its beginning.
—Jan Richardson
It's Thankful Thursday, the first of the fresh year. Please join me in expressing appreciation for people, places, poems and more. What are you thankful for today?
December 19, 2016
Good Books of 2016
As the year comes to a close, I'm looking back at some of my favorite books.
Though I usually spend most of my time in novels, this year fiction left me wanting. Nothing moved me. But non-fiction pulled me in, with several touching, funny, unbelievable tales. And, as always, poetry never lets me down.
8 Good Books I Read This Year
NON-FICTION
[image error]
The Bitch is Back
edited by Cathi Hanauer
In a collection of excellent essays, women in their 40s, 50s and 60s — bestselling authors, renowned journalists, and critically acclaimed novelists — share hardwon thoughts on love, sex, work, family, independence, body-image, health and aging.
Heads in Beds
by Jacob Tomsky
This tell-all is a funny, irreverent and engaging book offering a behind-the-scenes look at the highs and lows of hotel life.
[image error]
Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble
by Dan Lyons
A gripping, entertaining and savage account of the unstable and artifical life in Silicon Valley, written by a journalist-turned-tech insider (who then spent two years as a writer for HBO's hilarious sorta-satire Silicon Valley).
POETRY
[image error]
Bright Dead Things
by Ada Limon
A slim collection of beautifully aching poems.
I'm learning so many different ways to be quiet. . . There's shower silent and bath silent and California silent and Kentucky silent and care silent and then there's the silence that comes back, a million times bigger than me, and sneaks into my bones and wails and wails and wails until I can't be quiet anymore.
— from How to Be Quiet
[image error]
The Tijuana Book of the Dead
by Luis Alberto Urrea
A gritty and honest collection of poems about life at the border.
You, who seek grace from a distracted God.
you, who parse the rhetoric of empire, who know
in your guts what it is but don't know what to call it,
you, good son of a race of shadows—
your great fortune is to have a job,
never ate government cheese,
federal peanut butter . . .
— from You Who Seek Grace from a Distracted God
[image error]
The Cure for Sorrow:
A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief
by Jan Richardson
Though billed as a book of "blessings," these prayers read as tender, unpretentious poems.
Let us agree
for now
that we will not say
the breaking
makes us stronger
or that it is better
to have this pain
than to have done
without this love . . .
— from Blessing for the Brokenhearted
FICTION
You Will Know Me
by Megan Abbott
A gripping page-turner of a novel, tightly wound and wonderfully delivered.
The Guest Room
by Chris Bohjalian
A captivating, chilling story about shame and scandal.
Your turn: What did I miss? What's on your list?
December 15, 2016
Thankful Thursday: Because it changed me
Next week! I just realized Christmas is next week.
No, I haven't been living under a rock (though I have spent some time on the couch in a cocoon of books). In a flurry of planning, shopping and generating holiday cheer, I lost track of days.
In the mad dash of shopping and shipping, the spirit of giving gets lost. I lose the thread of intention. Too often the giving spirit turns into the ugly machine of gotta-get-it-done.
And then I ran across this poem. And then I took a breath.
On this Thankful Thursday, I am grateful for the pause in which I can remember and unrush, in my head and in my heart.
When giving is all we have
We give because someone gave to us.
We give because nobody gave to us.
We give because giving has changed us.
We give because giving could have changed us.
We have been better for it,
We have been wounded by it—
Giving has many faces: It is loud and quiet,
Big, though small, diamond in wood-nails.
Its story is old, the plot worn and the pages too,
But we read this book, anyway, over and again:
Giving is, first and every time, hand to hand,
Mine to yours, yours to mine.
You gave me blue and I gave you yellow.
Together we are simple green. You gave me
What you did not have, and I gave you
What I had to give—together, we made
Something greater from the difference.
— Alberto Rios
It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for the people, places and things that bring us joy. Please join me! What are you thankful for today?
December 8, 2016
Try This: Get a Reference
Desperate for a creative jolt, I often thumb through the dictionary for words that catch my eye and stir my mind.
Wanting to go deeper, this week I pulled out a stack of reference books and discovered a random but flush collection of new words, concepts and ideas. I jotted down phrases that struck a chord: lava tongue . . . meander scar . . . a peatbog is a trap. . . passages allow movement . . . related to pass, a way through a mountain. . . between large bodies of water.
And then I stopped thinking and let my hand and mind loose. Words filled the page in that delicious delirium of a freewrite. I was writing about land and scars and passage. A seed was planted, and grew into "a crumble of breath and bone" and other surprising lines.
I'm not sure what will become of the material from this exercise, but I do know that each time I return to the page, and turn off logic, something shakes loose. Each time I'm closer to making sense, and making something that feels solid and true.
Try This:
• Find a reference book — a cookbook, dictionary, history book . . .
• Randomly scan for "poetic" phrases or inviting passages. Write them down (the physical act of writing is important in this exercise, and helps engage the writing mind).
• After you've gathered a good selection, do a 10 minute freewrite in which you write anything that comes to mind, and keep your hand moving at all times. If you get stuck, simply repeat your line until you become unstuck. Don't worry about punctuation or logic. Just write. See what pours out. See what rushes in.
If you like, share your results in the comment section. Don't be shy — let's share our starts and scratches, our works-in-progress and works-at-rest. Let's exercise the writing muscle, aches and all.
Some of my favorite reference books: Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape, Food Lover's Companion, and books on landscape architecture and design.
What reference book sparks your creativity?
