BlogLily

We gave out a lot of cacti on our southwest road trip because we saw a lot of stuff we liked.  Here are our ratings on the 1-10 cactus scale, in case you’re interested:

Really Big Saguaro at a Park Outside Tucson dedicated to them: 8 cacti.

This relatively low rating is because it was hot. It was the beginning of our trip. We ate lunch, realized that cacti can be very big and moved on. The best thing here? We bought awesome sun hats.

Silver City, New Mexico: 8 cacti

We arrived the day before Easter. Unfortunately, Silver City was pretty much closed, except for the Buffalo Bar, which was so noisy you could hear it from down the street. Still, we liked the look of Silver City, which seemed very alternative, funky and fun.

Silver City Holiday Inn Express: 6 cacti

[no picture -- you can probably imagine the Silver City Holiday Inn Express, though.  It was the same as a million other such hotels.  But just in case you want a visual, here is a link.]

Lovely people. Really helpful. But we slept in one room with two queen sized beds, all in a row, like the three little bears, except there were five of us and it was just too weird, hearing everyone’s sleep noises at such close quarters. Still, the hotel was littered with easter baskets full of candy. What’s not to like about that?

Gila Cliff Dwellings: 9 cacti. Some gave it an 8 because of the windy drive that made them sick.

We did learn that these might not have actually been “dwellings.” Apparently, there is some dispute about what people did here. Our guide firmly believed they were used for big parties of a religious nature. Okay. I’ll go with that.

Las Crucas, New Mexico, Staybridge Inn and Suites: 10 cacti. Awesome hotel. Two room suite. Very inexpensive. Nice pool. What more can you ask from a hotel that has a view of the freeway? 

White Sands: 10 cacti. Off the charts.

Jumping off white sand cliffs, sliding down white sand cliffs, hiking through white sand cliffs. The whole thing: totally great. Beautiful.

Roadtrip…….. along the Rio Grande, with a stop to look at wildlife: 10.

Driving five hours, with a stop for the 7th best hamburger in the United States (according to GQ Magazine, and wow, shouldn’t THEY know?), and gas, and a quick look around a wildlife refuge where we saw frogs, coots, ducks, and some turtles sunning themselves, we saw the landscape change from a rocky barren, desert-like land to the red mesas and cliffs with snow covered mountains in the distance that are more typically southwestern.

Long drives and children ordinarily don’t mix. But we listened to a great book on tape — Redwall – and the time flew. The adults found the landscape very beautiful, because they did a lot of looking out the window. The children might not actually have noticed the landscape out the window because they were inside the abbey at Redwall, fighting against Cluny (whose name I don’t know how to spell because it was a book on tape), the rat with the accent that might have been slavic and might have been French but was definitely nasty.  The Rio Grande valley is lovely.  So is the English/Redwall countryside.

Sante Fe: 10 cacti. Or 9 cacti, depending on whether you think we are too freely handing out the cacti. 

We walked around. We looked at jewelry. We saw a vigil and hunger strike that seemed to be about Tibet. In the morning, the hunger strikers were gone. We decided maybe they’d gotten . . . hungry. Lovely town, but we did notice a lot of apparently unemployed men hanging out in the plaza, and many disaffected teenagers lounging around too. Also, our hotel, which was swankier than any other we stayed in, didn’t have any water due to some weird pipe failure problem that lasted an entire day. Not a single person 12 years old and younger really minded. One of the adults took a shower at the public pool (cost for entrance: $1.80.)

Santa Fe Skate Shop: 10 cacti.

The apex of the trip for the guys. A very cool older guy showed them a video of, essentially, insane skateboarders doing dangerous things. A few t-shirts, stickers and a hoodie later, all were incredibly happy.

Tonight, I’m flying to Tucson. It’s spring break, and the boys and I are going on a road trip with some friends.

I’ve never been to the southwest, except with Willa Cather, via Death Comes For the Archbishop.

The itinerary involves landing in Tucson, then driving to Santa Fe. Along the way, we’re going to stop at a place called White Sands where, apparently, you can surf. Ha. We’ll see. On Easter, we’ll be going somewhere sacred. Maybe we’ll even get there early in the morning which is the best time to be anywhere on Easter.

Along the way there will be road food and the kind of hotels with buffet breakfasts and a pool.

Maybe the best time to think about change is when you’re on the road, driving to places you’ve never been. I’m bringing my computer and my camera, so I’ll let you know how the trip goes and how change looks from somewhere other than where I live now.

For now, I’m packed — flip flops are the order of the day.  (Except for hiking up to cave dwellings.  That requires something more serious.)

Okay, I don’t actually want you to change my life.  That’s my own problem.  But I do want to know how other people have changed their own lives. 

When I was a child, my parents made huge life changes all the time.  My dad was in the Air Force, and we picked up and moved every three years until he retired to the Pacific Northwest.  They bought and sold houses, and changed jobs, and went back to school, and just expected us to follow along, which we did not always want to do.  (We’re going to move from Europe to a suburb of Tacoma?  Are you kidding me?)  They are still change junkies — every time I turn around they’re doing something like buying land in Tennesse and then changing their minds and moving back to Washington State.  They don’t seem to find this difficult, which is what I think is interesting. 

I have never thought of myself as change-averse.  But when I look back on where I am I see that, in the last ten years, the biggest change I’ve made in my life was to move from the bedroom on the second floor of our house to the one on the third floor.  And that was eight years ago, when William was born.  We’ve lived in the same house since 1996, when our oldest sons were a year old.  They’ve gone to a couple of different schools in Berkeley, so they’ve had a little change.  My husband and I have had the same jobs for the last couple of decades. 

Okay, it’s true that I had that little bout with breast cancer, which was sort of a change.  But it’s not like I’m dying or even sick.  And also, that was a change that came to me, not one I went out and courted to make my life better, so it doesn’t really count. 

Why change anything you might be wondering?  Well, the truth is that I think I’m missing something about how our life is going — we pay a lot of money to live here, don’t manage to save enough for emergencies and college, we’re terribly busy keeping our jobs, our house, our own and our kids’ lives going.  And of course there’s the thing about how if I’m lucky, I write my novel and stories on the train, in 25 minute increments, and I don’t always get to do that because sometimes I have to drive to work, or somebody’s sitting in the seat I want to sit in.   I feel like an acrobat, standing on a little beach ball, trying to keep six plates spinning on the pole I’m holding somewhat shakily. 

I love Berkeley, I really do.  But I don’t really love the pace and shape of our life. 

Charlie told William yesterday when he was saying how much he’s looking forward to going to Jack’s school next year that “the grass always looks greener a long way off.”  Okay, so the conversation then veered into how we need to cut the grass in our back yard, but can’t, because Archie’s dog poops are hidden in the grass like scary easter eggs… 

Still, I’m wondering.  Who’s made big changes?  Slowed their lives down?  Brought their children along with them?  Given up things they love for things they hope will be greener?  How did you do it?  How did it go? Did it bum you out that you couldn’t buy new shoes when you felt like it?

If I don’t get some answers, I’m going to have to tag you.  Be warned. 

And now for something new in my life — I’m going to get back to work.  (sigh.)   

I’ve been sitting inside, at our kitchen table, all day today, finishing a project for work. Archie’s been lying next to me, curled up in his dog bed, the one he’s prodded and pawed into the perfect nest for a rescue poodle. My family never had a dog when I was growing up — or a cat either for that matter, just two goldfish in 1978 (they lived about six months) — so I am not prepared for the pleasure of having a small warm creature lying next to me, happy to be in my presence and not really needing anything right now.

You know what surprises me most about adding a dog to our family? That we all feel so compelled to make up little stories about his past. We don’t actually know anything about Archie’s past. He was found at an animal shelter by Big Dog Rescue in Petaluma and taken to their ranch until they could find someone for him. Nobody knows how he ended up in an animal shelter. But we have one story that we all think must explain his fall from grace. He’s a very cute, poodly dog, and someone must have at least been attracted to his sweet face and bought him. We don’t think those people loved him properly though. They didn’t neuter him until he was pretty old, or at least that’s the theory of a friend, a theory that explains why he barks at dogs who could eat him for a snack in about a second. And when we got him, he didn’t seem to be much of a walker, because he got a little tired after tearing around the block once. He mostly just likes to be at your feet. He is least happy when people aren’t with him. When we get back from going out anywhere, he runs up to us and then lies on his back, begging to have his stomach rubbed.

So, our theory is that he belonged to two little old people who got him as a Christmas gift from their children, and who didn’t walk him much, and figured their kids had dealt with the shots and the fixing thing. All they did was keep him around, and pet him while they watched television and dozed. And then they died, and their children took Archie to the pound because they just didn’t want to deal with a dog, especially not a needy dog (did I mention how he jumps up on us when he hasn’t seen us in a while and THEN does that roll on the back thing?)

And that’s when Archie entered the frightening nether world that no dog should be in, one of cages, and loneliness and other dogs everywhere and not many people. People are Archie’s anchor. Without them he is so unhappy. It breaks my heart to think that he was in that place for even a second. I think he dreams about it sometimes, shuddering and shaking a little bit. He’s such a needy dog, and he doesn’t seem quite connected to us somehow. Maybe he doesn’t trust people not to leave him. I can understand that completely.

I was all ready to give you a post about the fun weekend I spent in San Francisco with three women friends — we stayed at the Kabuki Hotel, had dinner on Fillmore Street and in the Mission, drank martinis, saw that Miss Pettigrew movie at the new Sundance Theater next to the hotel, shopped at high end stores and one of us (okay, me) went to the Presidio Branch of the San Francisco Public Library, but I realize that it is far more urgent to tell you how one family (mine, natch), dealt with Eliot Spitzer’s little escapade.

I figured they’d hear about it, so I just told them. What did I tell them, you ask, reasonably enough? That it’s illegal to pay for sex. And he did pay for it. And he shouldn’t have. Plus, he told a lot of people not to do bad things, so that made him look especially stupid, the way I look when I tell them not to eat junk food and then am caught sneaking their Halloween candy. (But I was just, you know, saving you from it….)

William looked puzzled by the whole thing, frankly. But he did seem interested in making sure he understood the ins and outs of this rule. His question: “What happens if somebody says they’ll have sex with you and you’re just so happy about it that you want to GIVE them a whole lot of money? Is that okay?”

Sigh. It’s important not to get stuff and love mixed up together is what I said, a little preachily, in an Eliot Spitzer kind of way.

And then it was Charlie’s turn to get all U.S. Attorney on me and bust me for my hypocrisy — “But mom, what about that time dad gave you a bread knife for Christmas and you were so mad at him because you thought it was pearls and it wasn’t?”

Sigh.

The conversation moved on to whether we’d sacrifice Archie, our alpha rescue poodle, for a human life. (In other words, if you could save someone’s life by sacrificing Archie’s, would you?) It was not entirely clear that they would give their dog’s life for a human life, which I guess today sort of makes a little sense, given how unevolved humans seem. I kept quiet, given my issue with the bread knife that should have been pearls and my consumption of Halloween candy. (Can you say “glass house” and “he who is without sin”?)  I let them hash it out, because they are far better at what’s really moral than I am, or most adults are, come to think of it, including Eliot Spitzer and those who are up in arms about him today. They decided that they’d never have to give up Archie, but they would if they did, and then the conversation turned to why it’s not okay to call someone “gay” as an insult. I’ll leave that for another day. Eliot Spitzer has totally worn me out.

Today, I bring to you my thoughts on how and whether to use metaphor and simile. That got you running for the advil, didn’t it?

The reason this is today’s topic is because I read recently on the website of a literary agent something about how you shouldn’t use more than two similes/metaphors in an entire work of fiction. Now THAT made me sit up straighter. For one thing, I can never remember the difference between the two. In my defense, I’d just like to point out that it doesn’t really matter if you know the name of the thing you’re doing with words as long as you do it well. For another thing, I don’t use very many similes/metaphors because I can never think of any. When I do think of one, I read it over and over and feel enormous satisfaction at my achievement. In fact, just recently, I began a short story with a simile. I mean, a metaphor. No, a simile.

Here it is, for your amusement and edification. And don’t worry, after we skim over my fiction, we’ll be on to Homer — so keep reading because it gets better. And more ancient and classical.

Here’s me, from a story called The Centerfold Club:

What surprised Emily the most, even more than discovering that she didn’t in the least mind seeing Mark, her husband of twenty years, with his arms around the girl, was how bumpy the girl’s skin felt. Specifically, the skin on her legs, which is where she told Emily to put her hands, after she finished grinding herself into Mark’s lap, and turning around and around, in one suggestive pose after another, like a rotisserie chicken, all heated, bronzed, exposed skin, rotating around them both, for as long as the green light stayed on.

That, dear readers is a simile, I’m pretty sure, because it uses the word “like.” I am also confident that, in the entire history of western literature nobody — and I do mean nobody — has thought to compare an exotic dancer to a rotisserie chicken. Now THAT was a good day’s work.

On to Homer. Homer loved, loved, loved similes. (Take that, literary agent.) They have a life of their own, really, in the Iliad — sometimes, you forget the Argives or the Achaeans or the Trojans (who had other names too, and please don’t get me started on why it is that he couldn’t just stick to “Trojans” and “Greeks”) were even in a big battle because all of sudden they’re bees, or leaves, or cows or something. Here’s a good one:

From the camp
The troops were turning out now, thick as bees
that issue from some crevice in a rock face,
endlessly pouring forth, to make a cluster
and swarm on blooms of summer here and there,
glinting and droning, busy in bright air.
Like bees innumerable from ships and huts
down the deep foreshore streamed those regiments
toward the assembly ground-

Simile! So famous, in fact, that others (Virgil I think) borrowed it and used it again.

There are a million of these things in the Iliad. In fact, there’s an entire web site devoted to them. So, my response to the only-two-similes-per-novel is: bah. I love them (if I could only think of them), Homer, obviously, never met a simile he didn’t like, and Shakespeare clearly knew his way around a metaphor (all the world’s a stage, baby).

Why did they use them? Because simile and metaphor deepen our understanding of what a writer is trying to say, I think. My own modest simile is intended to draw the reader’s attention to the fact that an exotic dancer, the ultimate “chick(en)” is a commodity, an object on display, and something sort of delicious, although not really, because, if uncooked, there’s all that bumpy flesh and, when cooked and displayed, maybe a little too perfect looking. Okay, okay. I totally made that up. The truth is that my own modest simile is in that story because it cracked me up and I happen to like the word “chicken.” (One of William’s favorite jokes is “Why did the baby cross the road? Because he was stapled to the chicken.” This joke is a family favorite because it (a) involves the word chicken and (b) the word staple.)

Really, I think writers use simile and metaphor because thinking up a good simile/metaphor is just plain fun. Wit, as I recall, has to do with combining dissimilar things, in a way that gives the reader (and the writer) pleasure. (That’s probably why I love Donne so much — that flea love thing really gets me, although I know it’s not everyone’s cup o’tea.) So, if you can think of a good metaphor or simile, I say: have at it.

And now I’m off, like a … bad simile!

I’d also like to add that I wrote this post lightening fast (metaphor!), did not check my spelling of things like Argives and Achaean (is it possible that word has THAT many vowels in it?) and apologize in advance if that literary agent — whose name and site I cannot now recall — said three was okay, rather than two. And, finally, I think I might be incapable of short & sweet blog posts because it actually takes more time to write something witty and short — like a simile or metaphor — than it does to write a loooooong post yammering on about simile and metaphor.

What a lot of nice birthday wishes for both me and the blog. Thank you, dear readers from me and the blog.

I went back through my archives (don’t worry, you don’t have to) and realized that I post about five or six times a month. How could that be? I feel like I post all the time. (In fact, I do post almost every day up there in the pages, where I go on and on about my efforts to find an agent to sell my book and a journal to take my stories and natter on about how hard it is to find time to write because I’m so busy living life.)

It occurred to me that maybe I’d post more (twelve times a month instead of five or six) if I wrote less. Every blog post I write is a sort of essay. Okay, maybe they’re not essays, maybe they’re just run-on posts. Anyway, would it kill me to try to be more Wittgenstein-like, more aphoristic? But then I’d have to be wittier, and get to the point. I doubt I can do that. But this month, I’m going to give that a try. New year, new things. Short. Sweet.

In a few days I am going to turn 48. Good god. I was just 12, like, two seconds ago. It is also my blog’s second birthday. Heavens. It was just two posts old a few seconds ago.

I would like to tell you today how to enjoy your birthday. It really comes down to one thing: you must realize that being your new, older, age is much, much better than being any age you’ve been before, mostly because it is different and new and thus has to be better. It is helpful if you subscribe, as I do, to the school of thought that older = better. I’d recommend that everyone mail in their subscription forms to that school, because it is way, way better than the school of older = disaster and much cheaper, because you don’t have to pay for the botox supplement, older being, you know, better.

You have a choice in this matter of how you look at your maturation. I say, go ahead and let yourself enjoy all the things you know now that you didn’t before, things you wouldn’t ever have discovered if you hadn’t grown older.  If you are younger than I am (and my sense is that 95% of the people who read my blog are), I will give you a list of those things so you know what you have to look forward to:

• I no longer feel like I have to change anybody’s mind about anything. I have discovered that minds don’t change when you try to change them. They change only, and rarely, through example. So you can shut up about smoking/voting/watching too much tv/eating crap food/and the fact that somebody never spells your name right. And now you will have time to read more books and maybe volunteer at a soup kitchen.
• I don’t write about my relationships with people anymore. My sad, sad journals — journals I kept religiously for years and years — are full of moaning about relationships with people I don’t even remember anymore. Today, I realized to my dismay when I was thinking about writing a coming of age novel that they are NOT full of things like (1) my first winter in New England (or my first fall, for that matter), (2) what is was like being a poor-ish kid from the Pacific Northwest at Yale — including, what clothes I wore and what clothes they wore, how they talked, how I talked, what on earth I was learning — all things, I’d like to add, that might come in handy were I to ever write a novel about this interesting time and place in my life except I can’t, because I can’t remember any of it, because I was spending so much writing time moaning about a guy who, as it turned out, didn’t even like me. What I know now? Write down how things smell, what people say, how they look, what their noses do when they get the wrong coffee at Peet’s, what the interior of their car is like. If you are keeping a journal that moans about relationships STOP NOW. Put that stuff in a story, one that describes how water beads on the window of the car driven by your mean boyfriend and then trickles down the pane of glass as he tells you why you are stupid and wrong.  And then think of some even better details about that car ride in which you move beyond this horrible moment. 
• I have stopped sewing Halloween costumes and cutting lunchbox food for my children in geometric shapes. You who are just beginning this journey: don’t even start down that road. Your children, honestly, will not really care. They’d rather have small packs of doritos.
• Keep all your pictures on snapfish. Don’t clutter up your hard drive.
• Buy new underwear every year. And when you do? Throw all the old underwear away. If you keep it around, it will make you sad, on a day when you need to be cheerful.
• And, for heaven’s sakes, tell people how much you like them, and appreciate them. Tell them more than once, in fact. And be sure to include strangers, particularly people who work in restaurants and at the post office.

And that brings me to you, dear readers. I am so grateful to all of you for being such good readers — both those who leave comments, and those who read and send me mental comments (I know who you are!). You have made this a very fun couple of years.