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A note from the author: Old love letters are a bit like scars. You wish you didn't have them, but they are useful. They serve as a reminder that you made it through the wound. I survived with scars and old letters. Someone once told me you should burn old love letters, but I prefer to throw them out to sea. If you happen to find this in a moment of need, please remember: one day this will all be nothing more than a scar...and a faded memory.
Sometimes I like to take drives to nowhere. Windows down, radio up, mind clear. I challenge myself to get lost and then see if I can find my way back again. I assign bonus points if I stumble upon one of those little rural Main Street USA towns; the kind comprised primarily of a church and handful of century-old brick farmhouses with ample front porches. (The kinds of porches that undoubtedly display a jack-o-lanterns for every child in the house when halloween rolls around.) The kinds of towns and cities you'd miss if you glanced downward to adjust the radio while hitting the gas pedal. Those towns are some of my favorite country drive discoveries. They make me feel like I've been let in on a secret, a little roadside whisper that doesn't want the rest of the world to overhear.
Today I took a country drive. I made decisions about which turns to take based on things like which street name I liked better. If I saw a tree to the east with a prematurely orangey autumn leaf...I turned to the east. If a saw a jogger with an iPod or someone talking on a cell phone, I headed the opposite direction. I paid no attention to the course, I just went where my heart told me it wanted to go.
When I finally came back down to earth, I found myself on a road called Big Walnut. I was at a lake I didn't know existed, looking at the tiniest island I had ever seen.
I got out of the car to take a closer look. The only other person around was an old black man fishing. He had a white bucket, but I didn't look inside. He looked like something from a movie set in Mississippi; the kind of character that would have been listed as "Wise, Old Fisherman" in the credits (though I have no way of telling if he was really wise). Wise, Old Fisherman was curious about me, I could tell. Probably annoyed someone had found his secret shoreside hideaway, but I was quiet and he let me be. He just tipped his hat and cast his line. I wanted to ask if his name was Charlton.
Off in the distance sailboats were playing with one another. Back and forth, back and forth...as this little island shyly watched on.
Call it serendipity or happenstance or simply unconventional afternoon road trip unmapping, but here is what I know: following my heart lead me to a secret island today.
And every road I take leads me back to you.
Last week I was watching an episode of Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations.” One of the restaurant owners featured in this particular episode made a comment that struck a chord with me:
There’s a difference between saying “good evening” and “welcome.”
MESSAGE MATTERS. The words you choose to use mean something to the people you communicate with.
There’s a Mark Twain quote that I really love. As a writer, it has become something of a touch stone I carry with me for those restless, frustrating moments when a work is *so close,* but not quite there.
“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”
Find your lightning bug, writers. The just-right word is worth the wait.
I drove by an estate sale this weekend on my way to somewhere else. The lawn was littered with jumpy people on a shopping high. In that moment it occurred to me what a strange phenomenon an estate sale really is. Strangers show up to slowly dismantle a life story page by page, bargain by bargain. And just like that, a bowl that was once a trusted partner in birthday cake batter mixing and popcorn movie nights becomes the deal of the century for a stranger at a $1.50 price.
We have all heard the expression “you are what you eat,” but sometimes I wonder if we are what we use, too. I spend as much time with my MacBook each day as I do with any human in my life. My Honda is my favorite rolling escape from reality. I own a set of obscenely expensive measuring spoons, and live in a space riddled with fine point Sharpies. These are just a few of the props on the story of me. To the clueless observer, it doesn’t mean much. To someone who really knows me, it says it all.
What are your daily life staples? And what do you think they say about you?
I have a fairly large extended family. For the most part, our current clan originated in Wichita, Kansas, but through the power invested in marriages, divorces, job transfers and time, we have been strewn out across the country over the years. You'll now find pushpins in our family map everywhere from the Florida Keys to Honolulu, Austin to Wisconsin.
As a result of our geographic divergence, it makes it very difficult for all (or even many) of us to ever come together in the same place at the same time. Years go by and we don't see each other. The younger cousins eternally frozen in my mind as munchkins at the "little kids table" are now high school seniors and sophomores in college. The home I cast as the scene for all family memories hasn't been in our family for nearly a decade. This is just to say - things change, people get busy, time flies.
A year ago my grandmother passed away after a brief battle with cancer. Weddings and funerals. For better or worse, these are the things that finally bring a modern family together. As each branch received the call, they made plans to descend upon the teeny, tiny town of Frederick, Oklahoma - my grandmother's childhood stomping ground. She had elected to be buried in Frederick beside her parents.
Frederick. How do I explain Frederick? It is perhaps best described as a blip town. A blip I fell very much in love with. Frederick is the kind of little place you pass through on a rural highway heading somewhere else. The last census put the population at under 4,000. I'm not sure what industry supports the economy there, I can only guess farming, and I remember reading somewhere that the median income in Frederick was well under $30,000.
In many ways Frederick feels like a land untouched by time. It struck me as the kind of place that could be described (and accurately so) as the heartbeat of America. A place steeped in family, God and the American dream. Unpretentious and hardworking. A welcome smile with a little grit under the fingernails. A land where people know their neighbors - and the value of a hard day's work. Frederick isn't relic as much as it is artifact. It isn't un-evolved, rather it's a place - and a lifestyle - unperturbed. From what I have gathered from my mother's accounts of visiting the sleepy tow in the 50s and 60s, not much has changed for Frederick the past half-century...and that's okay.
My family descended on Frederick like a bit of a storm. If you're going to stay in Frederick, your lodging options are limited to two motorlodge-type hotels on the outskirts of town. If you don't like the first, no worries. The other option is right next door. But if memory serves, one of the signs boasted that they were now offering wireless internet, so you may want to take that into consideration.
Our first afternoon in town, we took a driving tour around the city - and down memory lane. 40-some years later, my mother's memory was still able to trace its way back to the modest farmhouse my great-grandmother (Mimi) and great-grandfather (Homer) had owned together. It is the place where my grandmother grew up. My mother reminisced about the small patch of land my great-grandmother had tended, a vegetable and flower garden, and beyond it, the land my great-grandfather had tilled. She regaled us with stories of Mimi, the industrious wife of a farmer, snapping the necks of dinner chickens and plucking them clean. It was a stark contrast to the gentle, quiet, if not a bit frail, great-grandmother I remembered. In my mind, she was a soul better suited for gently cradling a cup of tea than slaughtering unsuspecting chickens. The image of her strong and fearless doing what had to be done gave me new perspective.
I come from a long line of strong, courageous females, it would seem.
The funeral went as funerals go. The chapel and cemetery set in a picturesque, rural area outside of town. It was a beautiful day, unseasonably warm, and cows were murmuring off in the distance. I suspect our unusual quietness was a bittersweet recognition of the irony that bidding a loved one farewell was the one thing that had a way of bringing the living back together.
After the casket had been laid, we mobilized the troops. We'd need lunch before everyone traveled back to their separate corners of the world. Having had our fill of Pizza Hut (and having no inclination to try Sonic), we ended up at a little local restaurant called The Bomber Inn.
My people are not a small people. At 5'10" I am one of the shorter cousins on my mother's side of the family. As we descended on The Bomber Inn, the staff and regulars looked at us incredulously, but only for a moment before shuffling chairs and tables to make it work. We crammed into booths, shared menus, stormed the single restroom. Clearly strangers, nobody poked or pried. They just made us feel welcome.
I don't recall what I ate that day. A grilled cheese or a chicken-fried steak, who can say for sure? I remember strange things from that afternoon. One of the waitresses asking my cousin to come into the kitchen to reach something on a high shelf. An older gentleman approaching my uncle to tell him he had a "mighty handsome family." More than that, I remember a feeling. A feeling of being acutely aware of the importance of eating together that day.
The truth is we cannot control the ticking of time. We don't get a say in when or how or where things come together or fall apart. We get busy, stressed, preoccupied, but at least a few times a day, life forces us to stop and eat. And we can choose to do that together.
Author Norman Kolpas once said, “Food, like a loving touch or a glimpse of divine power, has that ability to comfort.” That afternoon, crammed in booths at The Bomber Inn, we weren't just eating lunch, we were celebrating a life. We weren’t just nourishing our bodies, we were nourishing our hearts and our spirits, too.
It's unlikely I will ever be in Frederick again. I doubt I'll be back at The Bomber Inn. But I often think of the kindness they showed us that day, and I hope they know that more than a meal, they gave us a rare and precious moment of togetherness in the heartbeat of America. It won't soon be forgotten.
"A city like New York, where everything is moving all the time at this constant driving pace, it’s like a living organism, breathing and changing, and over time your relationship to it becomes like this incredible romance. At first its intoxicating, irresistible and then slowly it becomes comfortable and safe. You have this cellular connection to it, as if you’ve known it forever, like it's you’re oldest happiness. Sometimes you’re on the outs and sometimes you’re making up, and every now and then you catch yourself in this transcendent moment where you think to yourself, “Oh my God, I'm madly in love with you and I always will be.” Those are the moments that surprise me."
“We were a murmuration in a past life,” you said.
The moment you murmured, I recalled.
The feel of a wild wind whipping through my feathers,
a downward view of apricots and almendras,
as we raced westward toward a setting sun.
You and I drew an invisible line
they still call Santiago.
Ernest Hemingway would have been 113 on Saturday. In honor of the grand (and oftentimes irreverent) thinker, writer and life enthusiast, I spent some time digging back through the litany of wisdom he left behind.
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
“The first draft of anything is shit.”
“Write drunk; edit sober.”
“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.”
“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”
“My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.”
“As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand.”
“The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it.”
“In order to write about life first you must live it.”
“It’s none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.”
“There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.”
“Write hard and clear about what hurts. ”
CHIME IN: What’s your best piece of writing advice?
Today’s post is very simple. No wordy paragraphs. No exhaustive prose. Just a simple observation–and a video that drives the point home. WOM is not just something that happens FOR clients, it is something that happens BECAUSE of clients. It happens because they are courageous, bold, daring. It happens because they believe in a better way.
Have the gall to cause a stir…and WOM victory shall be yours.
It’s as simple as that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=nw3zNNO5gX0