what you find in your mind

I used to read magazines. Friends even gifted me subscriptions, knowing I’d never bother (or couldn’t afford to) subscribe myself. In high school, I read ELLE. When I was in college, I loved Victoria magazine. I used to spend hours going through the glossy pages, clipping photos of empty English gardens surrounding quaint thatched cottages and tables set with expensive china, fine linen, and fancy crystal. The gardens and houses were almost always empty (except for the occasional, wistful, red-headed White woman), and it was the absence of people that made the scenes so appealing. How else could you achieve perfect order—total stillness and silence? I’m not sure I understood that the magazine was name after Queen Victoria, but I knew that my obsession with Victoriana wasn’t something I could share with everyone. After college I got a subscription to Ms. magazine and loved not just the radical feminist content but the absence of advertisements. I read Oprah’s magazine for a while but it was a bit too glossy, too much like the ad-filled fashion magazines I admired as a teen. But there were inspirational inserts in O magazine that you could tear out and keep in your wallet, and for years I had one little square pinned to my bulletin board: “What you find in your mind is what you put there. Put good things in there.”

Lately I’ve been trying to cut back on my news consumption because the news just seems to get worse and worse. I usually listen to NPR for 3-4 hours each morning and then I watch 2.5 hours of news coverage on TV each evening. But endless analysis of neo-Nazis isn’t helping right now, so I’ve been tuning out and binge-watching Escape to the Country. I’m on my 23rd episode and find it really soothing to look at empty, perfectly staged country cottages surrounding by rolling hills occupied only by sheep. I’ve still got one foot in the real world: I’m working on three books at once, finalizing plans for 2018 author talks, and trying to set an itinerary for my birthday trip to the UK in October. And yesterday I woke up with the title for my next novel: The Phantom Unicorn! I dug out a book about the Met’s unicorn tapestries that was given to me by a former student and even thought about going up to the Cloisters today. It’s rainy and gloomy this morning, which is perfect weather for researching a ghost story but I think I’ll stay in and hammer out my plot. I’ve decided the protagonist is a mixed-race (Black/Asian) boy with two moms who feels out of place in his new neighborhood but is eagerly awaiting the arrival of his beloved godfather. But there’s an unexpected change of plans when his godfather gets arrested at a protest. I can hear snippets of conversation between the boy and his new friend Otto: “What did he do—punch a Nazi?” I’ve decided to do what I want with this story because it’s primarily for my upcoming class at Uptown Stories, though I may end up self-publishing it as a City Kids book. I’m still learning about Washington Heights and will be taking my students to the Cloisters on Day 3. We only have 5 days together so I need to show up on the first day with a draft of my own ghost story and proven techniques for writing historical fantasy. I usually ask kids to consider having a magical object in their story and mine is the “looking drop” gifted to me by a friend. It’s round with mirrors on both sides, but what if it became a lens that let you look back in time?

I won’t lie—I’m thinking seriously about how to spend an extended amount of time OUTSIDE of the US right now. I feel myself withdrawing but I’m not ready to lay down my sword and shield. This is how I fight—I write. I hope you’re taking good care of yourself and being careful about what you put in your mind.