Chloé Caldwell's Blog, page 7

U R Creepy

This isn’t really how curtly and gramatically sketchy you should talk to someone you’re writing about in your personal essay collection, but when it’s a friend since age 11, this is how you talk to each other. This is how I fact check. Also most people who aren’t writers don’t remember shit. (Am writing an essay for my new book about giving up singing, after a decade of voice lessons.) I am proud of my creepy memory! I wouldn’t be able to write what I do, otherwise.

hashtag oregon life

I was interviewed about my book WOMEN for Newstalk, a radio station in Ireland. (?)

You can listen here. You can buy WOMEN here.

I’m in Bumfuck, Oregon at the moment, working on my book in a cabin. I hung out in Portlandia for the last week with my 2nd family, the Lindstrom-Strayed’s, and attended the writer Kristen Forbes’s wedding. It’s fun visiting a city you’ve lived in because you know where the good food and yoga is, how long it will take you to walk places, and which thrift stores you want to hit up.

Cheryl Strayed & I, all cleaned up

Kristen, me, Erin, Cheryl, Bobbi

working on my book edits at this desk in Rhodedendron, Ore.

my friend Fran and I on our hike yesterday

my style icon & partner in crime: cheryl’s daughter, Bobbi.

Janie is keeping me company out here

ADULT Diary entries

ADULT Magazine is posting my diaries from 2006-2009 w/ corrections and photographs by Susan Seremota. If you’re my mom or dad or my aunts, maybe don’t read. Hehehehe/// of course now you will.

 

 

 

Catapult Yourself

Seems like we all walked away from the Catapult Nonfiction Bootcamp in high spirits last Saturday. Repost from Milcah Orbacedo: 

I was also happy to meet Joseph Barchi who was like, a big ray of sunshine. He’s 18 and already writing for Buzzfeed, attending workshops, and seeing Noah Baumbach movies. It kind of makes me jealous.

Stay tuned for the nonfiction weekend bootcamp I’ll be teaching in November with Emily Gould.  I’ve really just been looking for an excuse to post this photo of her because I it.

 

Remember I have 2 memoir classes coming up this fall in NYC. They begin Tuesday, October 6th. Sign up here. 

 

 

how i spent my summer

i got this how i spent my summer idea from EE. ever since i read it i’ve had one clanking around in my brain.

i spent my summer enjoying myself in spite of myself. i spent my summer eating chicken apple sausage with greens, chicken apple sausage with eggs, standing at my kitchen counter in my bra and underwear eating peaches off a cutting board with a fork, eating blueberries by the handful and honey by the spoonful, drinking some shit called warrior greens, taking baths and showers at night, reading in the bath, walking the train tracks, walking up and down the hill from the Amtrak and back home again. riding the train and writing blog posts to kill the time, writing emails. splitting thin crusted pizzas with people.  i spent the summer stepping on tiny shards of glass through July and aUGUST after accidentally smashing a framed print drunk one night, not texting people i shouldn’t, not hitting any deer, drinking Vino Verde, sleeping at from 1030p.m. to 7a.m., using half & half heavy handedly, eating whatever i wanted and liking how my body looked despite this, seeing movies alone at theaters i’d never been to in NYC: Bow Tie and Loewes at 66th Street, reading through people’s traumas, reading through more people’s traumas, reading through more people’s traumas. watching 30 minutes of Sex & The City to let my mind rest from all the trauma. reading chelsea martin’s essay collection to help me with my own, reading meghan daum and joann beard and jonathan ames to help me with my own, listening to terry gross, listening to marc maron. always having gladiolus or sunflowers in my kitchen. searching for the ultimate comfortable bra. sitting next to various business men on the amtrak, eating m&m’s and drinking seltzer on my way home on the amtrak, peeing more than i’d like to on the amtrak, listening to music on the amtrak, forgetting my headphones and being pissed on the amtrak, drinking iced coffee, missing maggie estep, listening to the construction workers outside my apartment, cleaning my room, wearing dresses every day, buying more and more dresses, sharing a last glass of wine with my mom after we both have one, sitting at various bars around town with my mom, lackadaisically walking around hudson with my mom, going to breakfast and dinner with my mom, going to my mom’s house and stealing food from her fridge and lettuce from her garden, passing a gray bob dylan t-shirt back and forth with my mom, going wine tasting in the middle of the day with my mom, seeing sheryl crow live with my mom, going on hikes, swimming, hiking at bash bish falls, trying to be excited about my essay collection, trying not to be embarrassed about my essay collection, trying and failing to make my essay collection good, knowing how lucky I am to sold an essay collection, working on my Spotify playlist, meeting people for drinks and coffee and lunch who i met on Twitter, getting into raging arguments with my high school girl friends, going to therapy, not going to yoga enough, swishing coconut oil around in my mouth, eating nicoise salads that make me feel like 100 bucks, getting tan, getting haircuts, people-watching at Fabienne’s in Williamsburg, drinking cafe au laits at Fabienne’s in Williamsburg, buying many pairs of underwear, talking on the phone over coffee in the morning to my  girl friends, sleeping in Crown Heights, in Bed Stuy, at the St. Marks Hotel, printing, printing, printing shit at Staples, sitting on my porch, using three different colors of Le Pens (red, blue, lavender) making friends with my students, watching every interview of amy schumer and tig notaro that exists, seeing Trainwreck and AMY and that Beach Boys movie and Mistress America, watching the Nirvana doc, the Nina Simone doc, Welcome To Me, Diary of a Teenaged Girl, slowly making my shoe collection classier, rearranging the furniture in my living room, eating lavender ice cream cones with my dad, going to west side story with my dad, watering my plants, trying on clothes, writing a bunch on my website to avoid writing other things, listening to old cat power…….

why live in NYC when you can live here????

swimming in spencertown

at brunch w my mama

reading student stuff

gifts from my editors

said sausage

reading and seltzer in the bath

The Strand 09′

I found this video on my old computer and it made me laugh. It’s from 2009 at The Strand. My friend Skye and I were hyper as shit. I was visiting from Seattle where I was living, so was happy to be in NYC. This was our friend Trevor Harran. I like how he says, “I know all the same deals that you guys know.”

the dog ate my book

This past June I visited my friend  Erika Kleinman in Austin, Texas. I was terrified of her dog named Penny. Erika said my face was a mixture of fear and disgust whenever Penny was in the room.

Yesterday, Penny did this to my book. Erika sent me this picture. So the feeling is mutual, I guess. I

The 2nd printing of WOMEN is almost finished. It includes an introduction from Elizabeth Ellen. Here’s a taste. You can buy the first printing before it’s gone through Powell’s or Amazon. Or you can buy one through me! I have about four copies. Paypal me (cocomonet@gmail.com) $14 if you’d like a special signed copy and I’ll mail it this Monday.

Have a great weekend!

CC

nonexistent

I am really depleted. All of my jobs have piled on top of me at once. So unless you’re in my classes right now, treat me as though I don’t exist (unless you want to buy me a meal. Shout out to Andrew Bomback and Milcah Orbacedo).

I might exist again in a week or two. I hope. I have to work on my own book to make sure it doesn’t suck when it publishes in a year. That would be embarrassing.

(As this diary in the NY Mag says, I’ve turned into the woman who only talks about how much work she has. Whatever. I don’t care. Can I pull the, if-I-were-a-man-would-it–matter card?)

***

Really into these little films on BROADLY. They’re 20 minutes and educational and fun. I really enjoyed the one called The Last Lesbian Bars and the interview with the author of King Kong Theory. 

Also David Foster Wallace on NPR from 1997.

Ok bye.

jamaica nostalgia

Miss my friends a little. this photo was taken in Jamaica in October 2013. i was working on my book WOMEN which was called ROLLERCOASTER and only 5 pages and I wasn’t planning on making it a book. We stood in the bluest water I’ve ever been in and talked about heartbreak and obsession. i didn’t know then if ROLLERCOASTER would be anything. I was living in Portland. When i flew back there from Jamaica, I knew I was done with it. I needed to move back to New York.

Chelsea, me, EE

I’m reading in NYC with Chelsea and Elizabeth, Tao Lin, Uzodinma Okehi, and Mira Gonzalez on Tuesday, October 20th at KGB bar. Never read there before. Can’t wait.

Tig & Me

dang, i when my book is compared to tig notaro’s life.

especially because tig once sent me a personalized birthday card. (K fine it was my friend Logan)

From AutoStraddle:  Dating Women: The Most Enticing Romantic Possibility Life Ever Threw Her Way:

Chloe Caldwell’s 2014 novella Women, a beautiful story about the narrator’s first same-sex love affair, manages to address frankly how different it is to be with a woman without making sexual orientation itself the subject or the obstacle of her story. Early in the book, when she’s found herself drawn to this woman, Finn, but hasn’t yet given it a name, Caldwell writes, “I knew I found Finn’s aesthetic attractive, but I hadn’t yet explored feelings of being attracted to her, in part because I hadn’t yet explored my ability to fall for a woman. I figured if I was going to be with a woman, I would have been with one by now. I would know if I was bisexual or gay. Being a writer, I assumed I was at least mildly self-aware.” And then, of course, she falls, quickly and desperately, in love with a woman she cannot have because this woman is already in a relationship with somebody else. It’s unhealthy and destructive. But she falls, and falls, and falls, and this new categorization of affair is approached not with hand-wringing, but with nervous, tentative, flushed excitement and curiosity.

A similarly enchanting narrative begins mid-way in the new Netflix documentary Tig, when out lesbian comedian Tig Notaro becomes fast friends with Stephanie Allyne, a straight actress she worked with on the film In A World. Although Allyne and Notaro are clearly falling for each other — texting nonstop, becoming inexorably obsessed with each other’s every word and move, involving each other in their work whenever possible — Allyne resists to categorize it as “falling in love” because, of course, she’s straight! “I don’t know how to go forward in my life without this person,” Allyne recalls feeling after her and Tig had decided to take a break from their friendship because Tig’s feelings for Allyne were too strong. “I knew if I don’t say ‘yes’ to this in my life then I am not following my feelings and my heart.” I won’t spoil the film for you, but you’re probably already aware that the two are presently engaged to be married, so there’s that.

Ye olde fictional narratives never turned out quite as well as these present-day true stories do. Jessica Stein tried really hard to love her girlfriend as much as her girlfriend loved her, but ultimately she was just too straight to make it work. Samantha Jones quickly grew tired of her relationship with Maria in Sex and the City, and exited with several digs at lesbian relationships in general. InSix Feet Under, Claire’s brief experimentation with bohemian lesbian artist Edie was similarly short-lived, as Edie reminds Claire that “the world’s not your own private fucking chemistry set.”

This is my favorite TIG ever. On Being Present.