A few remarks.

It’s evening here, right about solstice time, and it is still just as light as it can be:

circa 9 p.m., good grief

I am going to revise and/or make notes on a poem or two before I start reading and I hope fall asleep with relative ease and very few hiccups. Sleeping is, on this side of the Atlantic, not without its little ordeals. I’ve had a few blissful nights, but more where it was hard to fall asleep and then too easy to  wake up too early. I’m still working with all the potential variables: drawing the shades for the windows, hitting the right mix of the hour when I lie down, what to read, how long to read, and what about a snack? And don’t forget to do the dishes! &c.

I have reached the following points in my retreat trajectory:

1. Get things organized and tidy. Articulate an agenda.
2. Recognize that the agenda you have articulated is your placeholder agenda, are you kidding? Your real agenda has to emerge, from reading and writing &c &c.
3. Recognize that the “manuscript” you thought you had is basically worthless and almost all the poems are dross.
4. Recognize that you are a hack and everything is stupid and basically nothing you’ve ever done is any good.
5. And that’s where we are, currently.

Dispassionately, I know that this is par for the course. I don’t even have to have a retreat in Ireland to experience this delightful sequence of events. I basically experience it every single summer, which I know, because I’ve reread the journal I keep of such things.

On the plus side, the hedgerows and gardens are filled with stuff like this:

Pink.

I made a note to myself yesterday to try to sink into this place a little more. I took a longish walk yesterday, then did the same walk today, but in reverse. The road, which is a big circle, is mostly narrow, so it means paying attention to cars approaching from both directions, on the side of the road I don’t expect, but who’s counting.

Last week, my daughter proposed that a bunch of us make Spotify playlists of our top ten (plus one, potentially a ‘guilty’ pleasure) songs of all time. The big bonus of this is several playlists that have given me an intense hit of the person who made it, and that has been a real pleasure to me. I listened to two of those playlists today. (Here’s mine, in case you want to know). Anyway, I took my walk on the narrow road whilst listening to music and simultaneously remaining alert for cars, and that kept me going, I’ll tell you what.

The chickens are in their coop, and a few minutes ago, a magpie strolled up, to troll them, I think.

If I were in America right now, I would be planning which movie to see and also probably planning some guacamole for dinner. I would also have full access to my sweaters. But I wouldn’t have access to the full and extravagant range of my emotional world, vis a vis being a writer, and all that that implies. So, you know. On balance, it’s good I’m here.

It really is, though. I wrote a draft of something that is currently pretty lousy but is on the trail of something I think is productive. It would be much harder for me to have done this at home—to get started down a new road, narrow and full of unexpected approaches, because I would have been planning that movie and guacamole and would have had a whole mad wardrobe of sweater choices to distract me.

Well, all right. The goings on around here are mostly related to (a) flowers, (b) fowl of the barnyard, water, and song varieties, (c) strange noises in the night, (d) donkeys, (e) light sobbing, or (f) snacking. In regards to all of these, This is, such as it is, my report.

Guacamole-less in Ireland,

HTMS at your service.

Bulletins from the outposts of writing.

Perhaps I haven't bumped into you lately, and so you have not heard me recite the saga of the Summer of 2018 and Its Epic Activities (most of the activities still to come--it's only June, yo). Oh boy can I regale you with this story, which has the following key plot points:

• Summer has come, by which I mean 'the cessation of winter semester and the academic year,' and lo the Season of the Little Lows has crept upon us, even though it so creeps every damn year, and still it surprises me
• My esteemed colleagues and I got a big ol' NEH grant, and lo in little more than two weeks, the two dozen participants in our Institute will be arriving in Salt Lake and whoa.
• My roses are blooming their heads off!
• I am going to learn SO MUCH from this NEH grant and all the things that will happen in the four weeks that our two dozen participants are here.
• After the NEH extravaganza, there will be a family extravaganza, with children coming into town from far and wide and across an ocean!
• Man, that NEH extravaganza seems massive. And awesome! (also: massive.)

I think academics have mythologies about the summer, which usually include stories of writing and research and progress on projects, etc. I know I do. I always imagine that there will be loads of writing in my summers, and this belief is both a promise and a little whip I flagellate myself with when it proves harder than I thought--again, happens every summer, and still it surprises me--both to set aside the time and to make the time pay.

All this is to say that this week, I found a way to lay hands upon three days without commitments, and thus I committed myself to write. 

Here how it went:

via GIPHY

To be more specific:

• On Monday:  

 ...which I did.

• On Wednesday, I felt vaguely like I might be coming down with a cold, or, like a cold was on the doorstep, or maybe it was driving by the house. Yes: a drive-by cold that also was making me feel sad. Sad and tired. Making me feel like the best of mylife was over for me, and all the people I loved might love me back, but probably they had better things to do. Better things than, you know, being present at this very specific moment, making me feel less lonely. Also, I felt lonely. I sat at my laptop and wrote in a desultory fashion, some lines that had flowers and a balcony in them, and a pink house (the balcony was part of this pink house), the kind of crap writing that is basically just going through the motions. The poem I felt simultaneously calling to me, rather sternly, and simultaneously signaling that I probably wasn't up to writing it--the poem leered at me, and suggested that I was probably a failure, and without discipline, and a lazy writer, to boot. So I lay down in my bed and reread a novel I have read one billion times, then fell asleep. And then cried about it.

Oh boy.

• Today, I put on some smart-ish clothes and went out to the new Roasting Co. (verdict: nice new place, much less food, the new second story makes one long for the old second story), and wrote some notes toward the forbidding poem. 

In between Wednesday and today, though, I went to therapy, which was useful. I have at this point in my writing life had loads and loads of experience with The Zero, which is what I call the feeling that I'm starting again from scratch, I know nothing, and various even more judgmental versions of these ideas. Judgmental of myself, of course. 

What I know now is that I am currently gathering what I need to write this poem. I might be gathering for awhile longer. And this summer might not have all the space in the universe for writing in it, but writing will still be there when the various splendid, massive, challenging, unpredictable and superb projects and delights of the summer have passed. Writing will be there, and so will I, and I will have gathered more of what I need to write this poem, to imagine this next manuscript, and even to align my life so that future Lisa will have more time to write, to gather and to deploy, and time to lie down with her feeeeelings, too. Because writing, for me, calls for all of that. 

My accomplishments.

My Accomplishments: A report by lisab

Okay, spring break,

it's now time to show us your hidden passageway that will take us to the secret wing where you're keeping your extra week. Because I need that extra week right about now.

Sigh.

Well, here's my progress report so far:

• massively behind, still, in my online grading.
• making progress on my lecture/presentation.
• dramatically over-writing the script for one of my digital stories.
• reading reading reading lots of interesting stuff re the above.

In addition, I have

• watched two thirds of House of Cards with the historian.
• eaten pancakes for breakfast and an omelet for breakfast and leftover buttermilk blueberry muffins* for breakfast.
• and leftover enchiladas for lunch.
• taken many restorative walks with the historian and the big bad Bruiser.
• gone to the library with a couple of grandsons and my daughter-in-law.
• done piles of laundry.
• sorted through lots of stuff and put lots of it away and culled out lots of things to give away.

I feel that, in the interests of science, I should report that I felt considerably more relaxed on Saturday last than I do tonight, Wednesday, at 11:07. Also in the interests of science: I woke up this morning at 5:45 a.m., thinking about all the stuff I have to do. And also, I had a dream about mice.

Tomorrow will be the attainment of the digital story and the further embellishment of the presentation/lecture notes. And Friday, more of the same. Plus grading, I guess. Who can say?

*Buttermilk Blueberry Muffins.

I read a recipe that I adapted. These were sublime, so don't hesitate to try them. They made an unbelievably lovely Sunday breakfast.

1 1/4 c. white wheat flour
1 1/4 c. unbleached flour
2 t. baking soda
3/4 t. salt
1/4 c. raw sugar

Mix the above ingredients together.

1/2 c. butter, melted
2 eggs, beaten
1 c. buttermilk
1 ripe banana, mashed

Mix the above ingredients together and pour all at once into the dry ingredients. Mix until the dry ingredients are just moistened--as always with muffins, you shouldn't beat the batter until it's smooth. The banana adds sweetness that's not sugar, but it doesn't overwhelm with its bananarama.

Add one cup of blueberries (you can use frozen ones if you're like that) and stir them through. Dole the batter evenly into twelve muffin cups. Sprinkle the tops with cinnamon sugar. Bake at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes, or until the tops are golden.

So. Good.

Mole poblano.

[So: I am making mole poblano with turkey for a family party. I have never made it before. I will be reporting in stages. Rick Bayless is my guide.]

[Note to anyone who is coming to the family party: this will be delicious, I promise. But do not pay attention if you don't actually want to know what is in the dinner. I mean it.]

Stage 1. Toast the seeds and toast some other stuff as well.

But first, put 3/4 of a 15 oz. can of tomatoes in a bowl. Or, guess how much is the equivalent portion of a 28 oz. can, and put that in a bowl.

Then, crumble 2/3 of a tablet of Mexican chocolate into the tomatoes. Try to think of this as a step and not something really disgusting.

Then, assemble all your ingredients for the toasting before you start the toasting. Or, if you are me, toast and scramble for the next item in the list: sesame seeds, coriander seeds, chile seeds (see note below). Then almonds and raisins. Then onion and garlic, a tortilla, and two slices of stale bread.

The toasting seeds is aromatic and not something you should do whilst scrambling for the next item on the list. Happily, there was no scorching. Toasting chile seeds is a heady--not to see cough- and sneeze-inducing--experience for the 30 seconds it lasts.

A note on chile seeds: For this recipe, you are supposed to tear apart piles of dried chiles, taking out the stems and ribs and reserving 2 t. of the seeds. Except I did not find the proper chiles at my store which has a pretty well-stocked Mexican grocery, which even so did not have: ancho, pasilla, or mulatta chiles. I thought to myself, well, I will just get these other kinds of chiles and we'll figure out which ones will approximate. But The Bayless says: "Mole poblano calls for the triumvirate of ancho, pasilla, and mulatta chiles. If you can't find these chiles at your otherwise well-stocked Mexican grocery, pick up your marbles and go home. You are not making mole poblano." So that means I need to go to a real Mexican grocery. Tomorrow. And find ancho, pasilla, and mulatta chiles or die trying.

Anyway! I decided that my inferior chiles could still yield chile seeds, so I tore some up and got the seeds, and toasted them. Heady, cough-, sneeze-inducing. Etc.

Also, I ground up some spices (aniseed, cinnamon, pepper and maybe one other thing), and I toasted the almonds in oil (delicious!) and also the raisins, which, how curious is that? But kind of fun, to watch them puff up, and some onions and garlic, and finally a tortilla and the bread. Toasting toasting toasting. All of this stuff is in a bowl now, each thing getting acquainted with the other.

Tomorrow, assuming I find the illustrious tres chiles, I will fry and soak them, and then blend up the chiles with all of the above along with a lot of broth until it is the mysterious, the ineffable, the awesome mole. I will report how it goes.

Writing lessons.

Some things I learned at AWP, in no particular order:

1. from Michael Chabon, on the question "How do you get your ideas?": "Ideas are the easiest--hence the least interesting--aspect of the job [of the novelist]. Ideas are like the one pound of insects you [apparently] unwittingly ingest every year. They're like the air that we breathe. The hard part is sticking with the ideas when they start to lose their luster."

2. Lidia Yuknavitch, on writer's block, advises ritualizing every minute of every day. She also says she doesn't believe in writer's block. She suggests that what we call writer's block is usually something else--and that if we experience such a thing, we should ask ourselves better questions about what's going on.

3. On digital storytelling, part one: the ur-story for digital stories appears to be, "I never really had a friend--truth be told, I didn't even know what one was."

4. On digital storytelling, part two: "most of our photos are lies--'please look back into the camera and smile.'"

5. On digital storytelling, part three: at the beginning, most digital storytellers want to make "a one-t0-one correspondence between the image and the noun."

6. On the relationship between creative and critical work: "creative work *is* theoretical practice."

7. From Don Stinson's painting "The Necessity for Ruins": ruins are necessary.

8. From Keith Jacobshagen's landscape painting "By June the light begins to breathe": "Face it, landscape painting is a cliche. It's a long history of cliches. The best landscape painters are the ones who have done something interesting with the cliches."

9. From the Denver Art Museum's collection of Decorative Arts: furniture elucidates and enacts a vision of the human body and of human activity.

10. From Campbell McGrath, on the elegy: Elegies are not for the dead, they are for the living, and elegies are really about life.

and a bonus:

11. Nick Flynn, on the elegy: "Looking at the art is cathartic, but writing it isn't. Aristotle doesn't promise catharsis for the makers."

And today, my observance of National Poetry Month resumes.

The conference that ate me alive.

Officially Day 2 of AWP was a good one. Here is the data:

• I cruised the book fair for a good period of time, and bought some chapbooks for the Publication Center, collected a massive amount of witty, arty, or informational postcards, bought a broadside, also for the Publication Center, and got ideas of places to send my work.
• I went to a session about digital writing. It was great. One thing that was great about it was I realized that I had, effectively, taught myself how to do everything that was in the session last year on my sabbatical. Another great thing, however, is that I learned there is an organization that will teach you how to both make digital stories/essays (i.e., video essays), and how to teach others how to do it. Thirdly, I realized that I could do this at my own institution, and easily. I could set up workshops teaching teachers how to make their own and how to teach their students to make them. And now, I have a few more resources to call upon.
• [there was another panel in here that has stimulated my thinking about another thing or two, but other than demonstrating my session-going diligence and virtue, I am too tired to explain it. British blah blah critical research etc., many important outcomes will derive and the world will be a better place because I went to this panel.]
• I went to the University of Utah faculty and alumni reading. Dr. Write was, it must be said, the hit of the program. She was excellent, reading the story that appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, and reading it very well.
• I ran into two former students of mine, both of whom went on to finish B.A.s in English and then MFAs. It was nice to think that perhaps I played a small role in their development as writers.
• Rather than fleeing the social scene of the hotel bar, this time I stayed, and did some world-class schmoozing, at least in my league. That would be the Pee Wee League, but still. A girl has to start. Anyhoo: I think there may be a panel proposal for next year in the offing, I have been formally introduced hither and thither, and reconnected with some writer friends from the days of yore. The kind of thing, you know, that is supposed to go on at conferences. Whoo hoo!
• AND THEN there was a reception given by the U of U people, and again, rather than fleeing, I stayed, I socialized, I reconnected. AND THEN there was dinner with friends at a French-ish place:

Our Party (charming! high spirited!): How long for a table for four (with a dozen manifestly empty tables surrounding us, and it was almost 9 p.m.)?

Our hostess: Oh (surveying her table chart) that will be 30-40 minutes, or maybe never. Let's just say: when hell freezes over. [not what she really said, that last part]

Our Party: Wha????

Our hostess: (faintly starchy) Well, don't expect to come to our happening boite with no reservation on a Friday night and get a table, hicks/rubes from out of town. [not what she really said, that last part--or any of it.]

Well, once we actually got a table, it was great.

BUT, the people, that was an exhausting day, what with all the schmoozing and the socializing and the extending myself beyond my comfort zone. And today? Today, Officially Day 3 of AWP, it was a full-on conference exhaustion situation.

I will tell you all about it later. Because it's time to pack (WOE) and go to bed (cue: sound of angels singing).

Accountability.

In the spirit of transparency, I would like to ask for a full reporting of all the data on the following trend I have recently observed in my household:

We are currently suffering a dearth of treats.

We have butter. We have sugar of many kinds. We have chocolate and eggs. We have almonds and various types of flour.

But can we scare up a cookie around here? No.

A piece of cake? No.

Pie? Forget about it.

The people, there is not even a gum drop.

This cannot stand.

L.A. Report.

This chapter of the Los Angeles Project started in the Moronga Valley, which is west of the San Bernardino Mountains. The reason for this fact is a slightly not well written book that I read in my book group, which was all about the marriage of Raymond Chandler to an older woman, and their peripatetic house-moving, through parts of Los Angeles, Pasadena, La Jolla, and--here's the relevant part--Cathedral City, which is just next door to Palm Springs, which is not too far from the Twenty-Nine Palms Highway, which is where Joshua Tree (the town) and Joshua Tree (the National Park) is, which are all in the Moronga Valley. (Which, also a few years ago, I read a true crime book about a murder that occurred in Twenty-Nine Palms.) All of which led me to figure out if there was a place to stay in Cathedral City or Palm Springs or . . . what's this? a little house right next to Joshua Tree National Park? A little house called Quail Mountain House?



And, the people, this beautiful little place had no television, no internet, no phone. Let me reiterate, and this time with bullet points:

• no television
• no internet
• no phone.

Which, honestly, usually would not be recommending points. But here's a novel fact: both nights we stayed there, I fell asleep at 9:30 p.m.

NINE THIRTY in the evening.

Which I frankly did not think was possible. Literally, as in, I could not go to bed that early unless I was at death's door, and also if I took a Nyquil. At death's door. Woozy and on the verge of death: that was the only way I believed I could fall asleep at nine thirty. I don't think I've fallen asleep like that, at nine thirty, since I was like five years old.

Sorry, it still stuns me.

The better thing was that I woke up with the sun--the desert sun, which is somehow sunnier than all other sun. At six in the morning. And it was glorious.

Los Angeles: the report.

Part 1.

We left at a ridiculous hour, because I didn't want us to spend part of one of our days traveling, and true to that desire, we arrived at LAX at about 8:30 a.m., got our car--a stylish Suzuki something or other, black--and drove confidently down Sepulveda to Hermosa Beach, where we got a burrito at Java Man and then went to the beach.

Exhausted and exhilarated. I loved this beach because it seemed to me, in the seventies, that it was countercultural in a way that the two beaches closer to me, Torrance and Redondo, were not. I probably went there like three times, but it is utterly vivid to me. Its symbolic value is somehow huge. Some of what I loved about it has changed, but not all.

You can see the Palos Verdes Peninsula, where I went to high school, in the distance. To the north, Manhattan Beach, El Segundo (where my dad worked), then LAX and parts north (more about this later). I know: those of you who grew up there, you know this. Those of you who live there, you know this. But I lived there for four years, and made only the sketchiest mental map of the place--the place broadly construed, the Greater Los Angeles area. I think of each trip as penciling in a few more details.

We came back down to this beach each day at one point or another, in our little meterological, demographic, naturalistic and oceanographic studies. We learned a lot:

Productivity report.

Today, I had breakfast with my friend Ann at the Blue Plate (Greek omelet, sourdough toast). I woke up with allergic eye, a phenomenon that is, if the evidence is to be trusted, going to be an annual occurrence. It starts with an itchy eye, which I then rub, and then I sleep, and voila, I wake up and scare myself in the mirror. When this happens, I like to worry about it incessantly. Today, I put a warm washrag on it and massaged my tear ducts and used eyedrops and checked it out a million times. Also, took healing naps. It's better, but I hated having to alarm my breakfast companion. However, we talked about everything under the sun while I wore my hair Veronica Lake-style, except curly. I'm pretty sure this helped.

Today, I read the book for my book group, Women as Lovers, written by Austrian, Nobel-Prize-in-Literature-winning Elfriede Jelinek. I bought this book months ago. I kept track of its location, since books in my house have a tendency to wander. When I received the book from Amazon, I read a page or two and thought, sweet holy Lord, this book is damn depressing, then laid it aside for a week or three months. And I thought about picking it up. And then this morning, I did. I picked it up and I read half of it. Here is my verdict: damn depressing. Scores 11 on the Depress-o-meter (out of 10).

Today, I bought a birthday present for my granddaughter. Don't tell her, but it is a family of horses playing on a playground. Actually little plush horses, with an actual plastic playground. It is the cutest thing ever and I wish I had had some tiny horses on a playground when I was little. Too bad all they had was rocks and Bubble-head Barbie back then. Lucky granddaughter!

Today, I had my book group at Martine and ate several expensive yet delicious little plates of food. The excellent salad had a Bleu d'Auvergne dressing that was subtle and suave. The shrimp was on a spring pea risotto cake and was bathed in some sort of divine jus. The desserts included grilled gingerbread as well as a peach-cherry jalousie. Yes. Jalousie. Are you jaloux? Because you should be. Jalousie is good.

And now I am going to bed. My eye is ready for it. Also, now that I have put away Women as Lovers, I can finish my L.A. detective novel. It is heating up and it is good.

The Organize Yourselves, Prepare Every Needful Thing Report.

First, I took everything out of my room.  Well, almost everything.  Enough so I could move my desk to face the wall, and my chair in front of the window.  As a strategy, this was to increase the likelihood that I would go through stuff and get rid of some of it.  Which worked pretty well, as it turned out, until I started to feel sick.  Is it a virus? Is it an allergic reaction to all the dust I stirred up?  Who can really say?

Here are some things I still need to do:  

• reorganize all my books.  
• probably buy new bookshelves for downstairs.
• take stuff down from the closet in my study and get rid of it.
• perhaps follow running son's advice, in response to my own dithering that maybe I would have to make an arbitrary decision, like getting rid of everything that's brown: "hope you can get organized and possibly get rid of some things, perhaps your magazines need to go?  You already have way too many.  Get rid of pink before brown, brown is a better color, nonetheless good luck on figuring that stuff out."
• actually sort through my clothes instead of just putting them away.  Although putting things away is a good start.   
• accept the fact that all the artifacts of all my projects and activities cannot fit into one room, and therefore, I will have to move things from here to there and from there to here. (It is shocking to me how much I need to just put things away.  What am I, in kindergarten?)

This leaves out the other rooms I need to organize.  One thing at a time.

As I noted before, even doing what I've done so far has made my study so much more hospitable to me and my work that it makes me feel good every time I look in there.  The only downside is that I feel a tiny bit less motivated to scour the earth and chasten the closets.  Still, it's progress.  I just need to not feel like lying down morning, afternoon, and night, and then some writing might actually happen in this awesome, scholarly, tidy space.