Nina MacLaughlin's Blog, page 25

A pair of keys fell out of a workpants pocket on Friday. I don’t...

A pair of keys fell out of a workpants pocket on Friday. I don’t know what doors they open. People give us keys when we work for them. People give us keys so we can let ourselves in, arms loaded with tools, and lock up when we leave. I forget to return them and my collection is growing. One opens a bulkhead in Arlington. Another gets me into the front hall of a triple decker. A backdoor in Lexington. A frontdoor in Cambridge. All this access, all this trust. Even if I don’t know which key goes with which door, having this collection is a little like having a secret power — I could, if I wanted to, sneak back in like the shoemaker’s elves, like the tooth fairy.

When I dig to the bottom of my top drawer, in corners underneath underwear and socks, I find more keys, ones that belonged to me, that opened doors to old places, other apartments I’ve lived, apartments of old romances. I don’t know which ones open which doors, and I’m not sure why I keep them. Maybe it’s something to do with having access to old selves, of being able, if I wanted, to sneak back to some long-gone bedroom of my past and dance around to the songs I danced around to then.

Keys as openers of time travel treasure chests. Keys as unlockers of old doors in the memory halls of the mind. Keys as ways to get inside a house in Somerville to build a new wall in a basement for a closet taking shape.

I took the woman’s bathmat with me to the hardware store this...

I took the woman’s bathmat with me to the hardware store this morning. She wanted the walls to match the light purple color of the mat. The guy who helped me paused from unloading sacks of salt and told me he’d never been in a blizzard before while we waited for the paint – Lavender Ice – to mix.

I’m waiting for paint to dry right now in this woman’s cluttered home. There are eight pieces of furniture meant for sitting in the room I’m in, and no place to actually sit. Chairs and sofas are occupied by heaps of pillows, a collection of stuffed animals, fire irons, framed art of colorful amoebic shapes and underwater scenes. I’m sitting on the floor.

I like the energy of a coming storm, in the air, in the people, the shared inconvenience and exhilaration of a Snow Day. Talk of blankets, books, safety, eggs and milk. It’s nice to consider as I paint bathroom walls and look out the window at the small flakes already falling. “Bombogenesis is my new favorite word!” my mom exclaimed in an email this morning, the rapid intensification of a storm.  

Of the world being altered by snow, Gaston Bachelard wrote: “As the result of this universal whiteness, we feel a form of cosmic negation in action. The dreamer of houses knows and senses this, and because of the diminished quality of the outside world, experiences all the qualities of intimacy with increased intensity.”

The increased intensity of intimacy. That’s what’s there to be enjoyed these next snowy days in the northeast.

Good news, friends! You want to get a copy of HAMMER HEAD for...

Good news, friends! You want to get a copy of HAMMER HEAD for free? You entered the last Goodreads giveaway and didn’t win? You’ve got another chance!

Enter the latest Goodreads giveaway and you may well end up with a copy in the mail a month before it’s officially out in the world. And why not, with recent Goodreads reviews including:

 “It is not a terrible book by any means.” -Nicole

“It was probably written from the heart.” -Adam

"I loved reading about work, about the world of THINGS. MacLaughlin has an assured voice and she is wise, wise, wise. I want her to move to California and build me a bookcase." -from California author Edan Lepucki, on Tumblr at Italics Mine

Enter! Hammer Head! Goodreads! Yes!

We spent some hours in a bathroom yesterday, putting up a...

We spent some hours in a bathroom yesterday, putting up a ceiling. It involved the sort of rot you don’t want to know about: plumbing above had gotten old, the flange — the waxy ring that seals the toilet to the tubes which swift away your piss and shit — had, over time, over years, disintegrated. The result, a slow, sick, seep.  

The large apartment on the second floor whose ceiling had been ruined belonged to a woman just south of fifty. I didn’t meet her. A parent of hers had just died and stacks of boxes made low walls in all the rooms. Somewhere, an emptied house, echoey in the absence of life and the matter that accumulates around it.

Here, in this woman’s home, so much matter had accumulated, not just the boxes from her dead parent, but a chaotic accumulation of clutter. Antique furniture, tiny sofas, tables piled high with cactus plants and empty cups and little statues, one of Buddha, arms raised in a cheer. I peeked in the rooms (“stop snooping,” said M. as always), and it was unclear which room was for sleeping, for work, for relaxing, each its own messy heap. No way to live, I judged.

On a low bookshelf by the kitchen door, three titles: Self Care; People Skills; Feeling Good.

M. and I sat on overturned buckets and ate our lunch and, looking around, I felt the urge to rid myself of things. I have about twelve chairs in the basement from my grandmother’s house. They go un-sat-upon down there, cobwebs collecting in the crotches where legs meet seat. I put meaning into them, these relics, memory-bringers, links. Maybe I ought not. For some, it’s recipes that get passed on, the secrets and techniques of how to make a meal, a link to what comes before through smell and taste, powerful and intimate. Above ground, I have things on the walls that were made or belonged to people who came before, different than a familiar meal, but powerful still. In their existence backward and forward in time, they aid in trying to understand this ongoing process of disintegration we’re all of us involved in.

A small sneak-preview taste of HAMMER HEAD: the perfect pencil...

A small sneak-preview taste of HAMMER HEAD: the perfect pencil drawings by artist Joe McVetty that accompany each chapter. I’d argue they’re the best part of the book. Pre-order it now.

The branches of our short Christmas tree are drooping. Low...

The branches of our short Christmas tree are drooping. Low hanging ornaments now rest on the floor. There’s a scatter of needles on the rug; a withered leaf of a poinsettia has fallen as well, its bold red having turned the color of dried blood. It’s a matter of water and time, but it’s hard not to think the tree has absorbed the atmosphere, is enacting the mood of this new year. The thought crosses my mind — maybe I’ll vacuum today — and it is somehow the saddest thought I’ve ever had.

[Old Pine Tree, Wen Zhengming, Chinese, 1470-1559]

If you’ve been on the beach you’ve probably played the game...

If you’ve been on the beach you’ve probably played the game against the waves – on the lip of shore, running towards the ocean as a wave retreats, then dashing back towards dry sand as another swells and breaks. You win if your feet go untouched by the water, if the wave doesn’t lick your toes, heels, or ankles before being sucked back into itself. It’s a good game. It’s a good game even as a grownup.

Sanderlings are shorebirds that play this game all day. On stick legs, they scurry back and forth, an approach and retreat towards the waves, at search in the wet sand for sand fleas or crabs or clams or whatever crustacean bits it is they eat. This bird above is supposed to be a sanderling. I carved it while in India. It’s made of cedar from Massachusetts. It looks like a bird. But it doesn’t much look like a sanderling. They’re rounder, maybe chubbier looking, less differentiation between body and head. I left this bird in India at Sangam House as a sort of offering, a token of gratitude. It felt like the right thing to do with this first carved effort.

Writing this now reminds me that winter’s not a bad time for the beach and I can’t remember the last time I saw the ocean. Wave chasing stakes are higher anyway. And the sanderlings don’t fly south.

It’s the way of this part of the year; the days bleed into each...

It’s the way of this part of the year; the days bleed into each other, lost between feasts and laughs and recoveries. Here it is the second day of the year. As Christmas gifts I got two calendars that show the shifting shape of the moon. I was pleased, after an early evening walk on New Year’s Day, that the moon I saw — half-moon plus swelling — matched exactly the shape on the calendar that now hangs in the kitchen. The full moon comes on Monday. Does it take the surprise out of the sky? The fragment of joy that comes with that first glimpse of toenail crescent or fat low full, at glow against the dark and shadowed sometimes by the very earth we’re walking on? We’ll see. It’s nightdark in the early sixes when I wake up and the mornings are pale. A solo star blinked out the window, the first thing I saw when I woke up today. The solo morningstar blinked in the dark, and the time and distance whispered at all the warmth and closeness of the past stretch, and whispered also of loneliness.

"I kept the skirt in my closet for years, and would take it out to try on in my own room, never in..."

“I kept the skirt in my closet for years, and would take it out to try on in my own room, never in front of anyone else, and never outside. I almost wore it to school once and ripped it off, putting my old jeans back on at the last second. I was so relieved, and so disappointed, by my inability to ever be myself.”

-

Sharon Steel is a writer I admire. On her blog, Stereo Stories, she’s been doing a series of posts about pivotal moments in her life getting dressed. They are self-deprecating, self-aware, sincere, funny, moving, and wise. We get a look at New York City in the ’90s through the eyes of a teenage girl eyeing her first pair of Doc Martens surrounded by pals smoking clove cigarettes and thinking about the people they’ll become. She writes about a flowy mystic skirt, the right pair of jeans, the right pair of boots, a Radiohead concert T-shirt. Together, they’re about clothes that mean something and what it is to come into your own. I would read a book of these stories, and I hope one comes of these.

Follow her.

On Friday evening, the plane thudded down to earth in Boston...

On Friday evening, the plane thudded down to earth in Boston after about twenty-five hours of travel from India. It thudded down to earth, I saw the familiar skyline rising and falling against the sky, and small tears of relief welled up in my eyes.

I was in India for twenty-seven days, at a writers’ residency about an hour outside Bangalore called Sangam House. (Writer pals, apply. I cannot speak highly enough of the experience, and would be happy to talk to any of you about it.) About midway through my time there, on a regular afternoon, I was overcome with the sense that I would not make it home. I knew it in every cell of my body. It was a truth and there was nothing to do about it except be cautious about how I talked about post-India plans. (Don’t make appointments; don’t schedule times to see friends; be vague about when you’ll get back.) How convincing the fear centers of our brains can be. This knowledge – the sadness, regret, and fear it brought – bubbled up acutely now and then, and otherwise buzzed at a low-level frequency. I worked and laughed and got to know six other people from all over the earth and I felt lucky and I felt scared.

I took the fear literally. You will not make it home, my brain had me know, but it was code for some other mystery, some other change or metaphor that I’ve not yet been able to figure out. I made it home. I made it home and I can still feel in my body what not making it home felt like. I can still hear it in my head. I made it home and it’s winter here and almost Christmas and the air is cold and the days are short and I’m wishing all of you safe travels and warm hearths over this bright-lit and festive stretch.