Butterfly’s wings

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Why I don’t pay my bills online

January 26th, 2012

 

There is enough misinformation about me floating around and I certainly don’t want anyone starting to think I pay all my bills on time.

 

Honestly, I don’t like the idea of paying my bills online for the following reasons:

 

1. What if I don’t have enough $ in my acct which let’s face it, I usually don’t.
2. What if I want to support the Occupy movement by closing my BofA account? –Would the Occupy movement know or care?  Probably not.  Would Bank of America care?  Definitely not.  They wouldn’t even notice.  I am one of millions for them, I am a mini thread on a pixel in their universe.
3. I like envelopes and stamps
4. I like pretending to be in control.
5. Most of all, I want to know when $ is being taken from me.

 

However, whenever I can, I like $ to be automatically put into my account.  Whenever there is a check coming my way, I try to have it fall swiftly as rain into my empty account so that I can soak up the moisture.

 

I also do not use credit cards.  Okay, that’s a lie.  I have an Amex for emergencies,  but I don’t use it.  I have one other credit card I use once a year or so—the Victoria Secret card.  Every girl’s friend.

 

I signed on for both Gilt and Groupon thinking that something would come up that I just had to have.  Some restaurant I had to try.  Something pampering or spa service. Shoes.  The perfect dress.  So far, many months later.  Nothing.  I lack the proper interest in shopping.  I was at Ross today for quite a while helping my son pick clothes for a job interview.  While I waited I found a shirt.  For my husband.  And three dollars worth of dish cloths.

 

I’m not really all that frugal or virtuous.  I simply lack the shopping gene.  Plus, I look simply rotten in almost everything I try on.  I am a size ten.  Clothes that look good are sizes 2-6.  Six is the top you can still really say you look good in.  But I am working out like a maniac this year so all that is sure to change.  Maybe I’ll change it all up.  Shopping won’t seem like a nasty chore, but more like walking or drinking wine or anything else you look forward to.  Doubtful.

 

But back to the online paying of bills.  I wouldn’t think it would work for me unless I had a much bigger income.  I do pay my bills like many people on payday.  I pay almost exactly the same amount every month and then have whatever left for the month—never enough.

 

As soon as I have some real money in my account, then I’m going green, the money for the electric bill, gas bill, cell phone etc will just sift out of my account like dust off a butterfly’s wings.  I’ll keep floating on, knowing there’s more where that came from.  This would also free up the part of my brain that is always sweating blood on whether we’ll make it to think about other things—stories, nests, feathers.

Don’t Yuck on My Yum

January 25th, 2012

 Ever since five year old Zachary told me that, I’ve been giving it some serious thought.  People do it all the time, and Zachary has a real point when he says it’s just not necessary.

I’ve blogged about this before but I keep thinking about it.

You see someone walking down the street in pink pumps, a boa and skin tight leopard clothes?  Hey, you’re not wearing it.  So don’t yuck on their yum.   You see some guy with aTexashat and a gal 30 years younger than him with acreage front and back hanging on his arm?  Hey, that’s his style.  Doesn’t have to be yours.

 

What’s normal?  It’s whatever you do.  Remember, a nymphomaniac is someone who has more sex than you.

 

So here is my definition of normal.  In case you want to know if you are normal.  Here is my list.  I do all this stuff and to me, I’m normal.

 

1. Have chickens.  I’ve had chickens all my life.
2. Have enough books that you would need a 15 foot truck to move them.
3. No television.  I’ve never had one.  You don’t need one.
4. No radio.  Not necessary.
5. Do something creative every day.
6. Tell yourself in the mirror every day, You rock!
7. Have long hair, there’s no reason to cut it off.  When your aunt tells you that you would get a job if you cut your hair, don’t sweat jobs.
8. Drive the same car until the wheels fall off but at least 300,000 miles.  If you have a car that wouldn’t last that long, it’s the wrong car.
9. Have a hammock if at all possible.  I never use mine but I like the hammock idea.  The dream of being in a hammock.
10. Always keep theatre as part of your life.   Theatre is important.
11. Read books.  Read poetry.
12. Keep listening to music that you don’t understand, it keeps you young and awake.
13. Don’t worry too much about money.  Just live a sustainable lifestyle.
14. Don’t stay at people’s house if they make you anxious.
15. Have a few good friends and try to keep them.
16. Don’t panic.  When things seem really bad, they might get better.
17. Do not be afraid of other people even really mean people.  Feel sorry for them.  They want you to feel afraid because that makes them feel more powerful. They are miserable sons of bitches and that’s why they are mean.
18. Spend a lot of time walking and running.  That’s what gives you time to think.
19. Keep a journal.  Figure out what you want to change about your life.
20. Have a lot of sex.
21. Have a sport that you love and keep at it.
22. Always have some dreams that you might never achieve but that depend on you, not someone giving you money.
23. Raise your own vegetables.
24. Travel to a Third World Country at some point in your life.
25. Swim in ocean, pools, rivers, streams and waterfalls.

What you should say to your independent publisher.

January 24, 2012

Think about it like this.  You have a child.  You are taking your child to a free daycare center.  The daycare center is run by a small group of parents who also have children of their own.  Unfortunately they cannot have their own kids at the daycare, so they are currently looking for a daycare for their children.

 

Why did they set up this daycare in the first place?  Well, they believe in children.  And that’s good for you because you want your children to be in a safe happy place.

 

You want to have the daycare people love your little pumpkin and take good care of him/her.  You want the children to be loved and fed, sung to and carried forth into their young childhood like the angels you believe them to be.

 

Here’s how most people start with their indie publisher/editor, “How much do you like my book?  How hard are you going to work on my book?  What else can you do for my book?”

 

I’m not suggesting that you have to be friends with the people running the press any more than you have to be friends with whoever runs your kids’ daycare.   But I am suggesting that you think about this.  Why is this writer spending any of their time producing, publishing and promoting your book when they could be working on their own?  Probably because they love books as do you.  But pretend for a moment if you can that it isn’t all about you, that you are not the center of the literary world.

 

Most writers when they contact a press are very eager to know what that press can do for them.  They start making requests, issuing orders and camping out.

 

We writers collectively want books to survive.  To do that, writers need to work with their publishers.  And that means first of all taking into account that the publisher is a person, very often a writer, with his /her own life.  Respecting and acknowledging that can only help you as a writer.  You’re part of the world of writing, not the most important part, just a part.

 

What I would do?  I would want to know the following:

 

1. If I am lucky enough to be published by your publishing company, what would you like me to do to make the book successful?
2. Is there anything else I can do to help?
3. How are you?  And mean it.  For a moment at least, mean it.

 

Come up with one thing you can do for your publisher every year.  Seriously.  Do something for the publisher that isn’t about you.

 

The writers I am most excited about working with work to promote their own book, fill out their questionnaire, are easy to work with on editing and don’t seem to think that I work for them or that anyone at the press works for them either.  A writer is working for their own book.  It’s my job to write my book and to run a press.  That’s what I’m doing every day, building a press that rocks the world.

Zorse

http://www.readthesmiths.com/articles/Images/Humor/zorse.

Interspecies Sexuality

January 23, 2012

 

My students don’t like rainy Mondays, but really, should they complain about rain when we get so little of it in the So Cal?

 

I like the feeling after rain, the wet air and the clean shine look of the sky and air.  Of course, it doesn’t last long.

 

I think on days like this about how I would love my life if I could do anything I wanted.  I would still write and edit definitely and probably still teach some.  Things I would do more if I had the time:  Yoga, dance, cook, garden, write, walk, run, swim, read and definitely and absolutely—sleep.

 

This morning it took me two hours to drive to work in the rain, so that is the bad side of rain and driving.

 

My chicken, the one with PTSD after seeing her fellow hens mutilated by raccoons, (the raccoons ate the heads and left the bodies and feathers scattered,) that hen is now living with our one rabbit, Snowy 42.  Snowy 42 because our kids’ friend Wendy Vanessa Gomez used to name all our white animals Snowy 7, Snowy 8 and there was a small white parakeet named Snowy 4 ½.  That parakeet needed therapy too.  Who calls a parakeet by a fraction?  It’s enough to drive you to drink.  And drink that parakeet did.  Snowy 4 ½ was in the water bowl day after day.

 

But back to Snowy 42 who is living with Red Hen 8.  They are intimate.  Now you’d think that any quacking or clucking would throw you off your game when you went for intimacy, you’d think if you had really long ears you wouldn’t like the clucking.  She does cluck into the long bunny ears and then they get cozy.  Behind the bamboo hutch, the bunny slut gets her move on.  It’s a bit disturbing so thank god we have no small children around.  I don’t even like to have the puppy see this sort of thing, but her eyesight is quite poor so she may be missing all the action.

 

Never think that interspecies sexuality is a myth.  It’s a reality in my backyard.  Gay animals and birds abound.  We had a couple doves, Bruce and Bruce who were deeply in love.  German and Japanese zoos report homosexual penguins.  There are many questions we could ask like why are the Germans and Japanese so interested in whether their penguins are queer or not?  And are there LGBT awareness classes for the young penguins coming up or are they just left to their own devices?

 

Bats will masturbate.  Fruit bats have a higher rate of homosexuality than other bats.  I knew that!

 

Sadly penguins even in a committed relationship will trade food for pebbles for their nests and chimpanzees will trade food for sex.  Most American female prostitutes won’t do it for pebbles or food, but want small green pieces of paper with pictures of old men.

 

Well, that’s enough to show you that my chicken and rabbit aren’t that abnormal.  They fit right into the wild animal kingdom.

Yaddo, now that would be a place to write

Is writing ever easy?

January 22, 2012

 

Well, I’m not saying it’s ever easy.  But there are definitely times in one’s life when it is easier.  The easiest times to write are when you’re in grad school or at writing retreat.  The reason is that you are accountable to someone when you’re in grad school so it feels like a job and when you’re at a writing retreat, well, there’s nothing else to do so you might as well get to it.  Besides you’d feel like an idiot if you came back from Yaddo and said, “Well, what I did for three weeks at Yaddo is sleep and watch birds.”  I’ve never been to any of those retreats, but I hear good things.

 

So there you are in an MFA program, or at a writing retreat, writing your brains out.  Your dreams pouring out onto paper.  But then you come home.  To whatever your life is.

 

Now in an ideal world, as a writer, one of these things is true for you:

 

1. You are already famous enough as a writer that you do not need to worry about money.   The money is just flowing in from your previous New York Times Best selling books, hopefully detective stories, mysteries, or huge commercial books in which women are tortured in strange cold Scandinavian countries.
2. Your parents are giving you enough money that work is a four letter word you simply don’t have to deal with.
3. You have a patron. Herman Scherchen and Rilke both had the same patron.  Scherchen had five wives to whom he eventually owed alimony and there were several other women too.  Rilke suffered because his mother named him Maria and dressed him as a girl until his father sent him to military school.  Rilke had problems his whole life with his health and depression and that’s why getting a real job was out of the question.

 

But what about if none of these things is true for you.  What if you need to, god forbid, work for a living.  Well, it would be nice if you were a poet.  As Billy Collins says, the great thing about being a poet is your biggest problem is what to do with the other 23 hours of the day.  Yes, the fact is, if you are a poet, you could be a damned good poet and still have a job.  T.S. Eliot did it, Wallace Stevens did it.  Some of the best poets of the 20^th century had to report to real jobs.

 

But if you write prose, that’s another matter.  For most writers, that requires time.  Prose requires some kind of time/space and focused attention.  For most prose writers, nothing is going to happen unless you’ve got 10-20 hours a week to focus on the writing.  And with nothing making you write, this is not easy.

 

The most difficult thing about writing is getting yourself in the chair, turning off your email, phone, Facebook etc.

 

So how does anyone do it?

 

1. Get a teaching job at a college or university which means that you’ll have extra time and be expected to publish.  Of course, the catch is that you won’t be able to get one of those cushy teaching jobs unless you have a book out.  Catch 22.
2. Kill yourself writing in all your spare time for a few years get a book out and then hopefully get a teaching job.
3. Have no social life, no internet life and no TV.  When you are not working, you write.  You write for an hour morning or evening and you write on weekends.  Who needs a family?  You’re a writer.

 

The point is that there is no easy solution.  But, if you are going to write, you’re going to have to develop the discipline.

 

What I do:  I make a writing schedule at the beginning of every week which gives me 10-15 hours of writing time.  Sometimes I don’t get all of it, but most weeks I get 5-10 and gradually, slowly, I get something written.  Not enough but something.

Magnolias

What to do when it rains

January 21, 2012

 

Rain rituals are not very important in Southern California because we only get about 15 inches of rain a year.

 

There is a place in South America, inColumbiathat gets over 500 inches of rain/year.  And there is an area in Chile that gets less than an inch of rain a year.  So, the Columbians must have some serious rain rituals.

 

My rain rituals:  Hot chocolate with marshmallows and whipped cream.  Popcorn is always nice but isn’t necessary.  I like the house to be very warm.  Who wants to be a in a cold house?  Especially in the rain.

 

Rain is for music, hot chocolate, blankets, a warm house, and cooking.  An ideal dinner for a rainy day is a turkey stew or a chicken soup.  Biscuits are also good.

 

As a writer, it is very important is it to know what climate your characters live in.  When you read Marquez, you know you that you are in a hot country.  You feel that heat suffusing the pages.  You feel it very thick and while.  You feel the heaviness of the heat in Love in the Time of Cholera and Hundred Years and of course, Chronicle of a Death Foretold.  In Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky, you feel the heat, the dry sand getting into everything and of course, the hugeness of the sky.  You can imagine the largeness of the sky and the many stars.

 

In The Lover you can feel the small streets, you smell the Chinese food, the Vietnamese food, see the light coming in through the tiny slats into the room and across the unmade bed where the sheets are rumpled and tossed.

 

The setting should be a character in your story.  The rain, the sweat, the heat, the clouds, the thick heat, or the thinly lit forest floor.

 

You should feel hungry when your characters are hungry.  You should feel an intense sense of weariness when they are tired.  I am reading the stories of Lydia Davis right now and I love how spare the stories are, yet still I can taste the wetness of them.

 

At some point, the setting of the story tangles into everything.  You can’t imagine your life without having read The Handmaid’s Tale, without being Offred on your way to the village to shop, knowing that you might be hung in the bright North American sunlight.

 

In the end, you need to know if your character is walking in snow, whether he played with icicles or sugar canes as a child, whether she had Barbies or sticks.  Does your character step out of the house into rain?  Is it a wine growing state?  Or a tequila producing country?  Is it an island?  Are there huge flowers opening in the heat or do bulbs push up in the snow.  Know this, and you know everything about the character.  You must know the way water freezes, you must know the way of flowers and the way of stars.  You must know how the ocean tastes.  You must know if the air feels heavy and weights you down or whether you’re high on a mountain where the air is thin and you gulp oxygen.