Alma not representative of all Swedes

A cool summer, but my heirloom Glaciers have been ripe for weeks. They are a Swedish tomato. I like to imagine someone gathering their tiny seeds and bringing them all the way here to grow in my little garden on 13th Street and to feed my family, who are part Swedish, too. Using Chuck's grandmother, Alma, as my representative Swede, I always assumed that they were relaxed, uncomplicated, easily- pleased people but after a summer of Bergman films, I’ve changed my mind.

And some are heroes

When a woman risked her life to rescue  Deogratias from a banana grove full of corpses during the genocide in Burundi, she told him Hutu or Tutsi didn't matter to her. I’m a mother, she said. That’s my ethnicity.

pretty old

Yesterday a man was killed on the same road we took to the coast. Last night we passed by the place where it happened, and I thought of his family. Today I read an article about the accident. So sad, but at least he wasn't young, I told myself. He was pretty old. Oh, he was my age.

then I have to confess

Maybe my last post was a little disingenuous, considering the fact that I’ve just finished writing a young adult novel.

why aren't you someone else?

At a reading a man asked why I don’t write YA books and I said that I couldn’t because kids scrutinize you and I wasn’t up to it. Which was so phony. I had read that someplace. Really I didn’t know what to say. I was vaguely aware that he was being sarcastic, and told him the first thing that came to me. Why don't you write YA books? It was like being asked why don't you write westerns or why aren't you a poet. If you see what I mean.

Leeann

When we were in 9^th grade Leeann and I wanted to run away from home, so we bought a car for $10. It didn’t have any tires and it was up on blocks in someone’s yard, out on the highway.

my Afro-American club membership

I was in 5^th grade when our schools were integrated. I was in 9^th grade, when the black kids started an AfroAmerican club at our high school, Garrett High, in Charleston, SC.  The adult sponsor of the club looked like Angela Davis.  My friend Leeann and I went to the first meeting, two little white girls. When the other members  elected us  president and vice president of the club, I looked at Angela Davis’  face and realized that she thought  this was a pretty shitty idea.

in a nutshell

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Three pieces of mail yesterday: a statement about my loan for college, a notice reminding me that the State Farm check had bounced and a letter from AARP.

flowers from little girls

The little girls next door are selling flowers and when a man in a red van responds to their calls by stopping, I slow down and note his license plate number, just in case, and one of their mothers comes outside to stand on the porch, pretending to have business there. I feel sorry for men and I feel sorry for mothers and for children and all of us, living in a world where a man can’t simply stop to buy a flower from a little girl.

14

Sandy posted a picture on Facebook of me as a 14 year old. I wanted to go back and say no, don’t! I work in a public school, so I don't think I can be more specific than that. No, don’t do those things.

willy

I picked up a copy of Willamette Week at a taco shop in Portland  and what was my first thought  when I saw Willy Vlautin on the cover? Was it way to go, Willy! Nope. Was it can’t wait to read your new book! Or Yay for the Willamette Week for promoting writing!  No, no, no.  I thought, I want to be on the cover of Willamette Week. I want the excerpt of my new novel in Willamette Week. I want it to be me. Wah, wah wah.  Like a little baby. I hate this about myself.

getting mad

I  heard about this on The Thom Hartmann show this morning. It's from Rosie O'Donnell's blog (can that be right?)

 

 

We had eight years of Bush and Cheney, Now you get mad!?

You didn't get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and
appointed a President.

You didn't get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate
energy policy.

You didn't get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed.

You didn't get mad when the Patriot Act got passed.

You didn't get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.

You didn't get mad when we spent over 600 billion(and counting) on said illegal war.

You didn't get mad when over 10 billion dollars just disappeared in Iraq.

You didn't get mad when you found out we were torturing people.

You didn't get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.

You didn't get mad when we didn't catch Bin Laden.

You didn't get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.

You didn't get mad when we let a major US city, New Orleans, drown.

You didn't get mad when we gave a 900 billion tax break to the rich.

You didn't get mad when the deficit hit the trillion dollar mark.

You finally got mad when the government decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick. Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, are all okay with you, but helping other Americans...oh hell no.

__________________

homeless

Today the homeless advocate visited our school. She said homelessness includes substandard housing which means we were homeless when we lived in the woods without a bathroom, closets, or electricity.I don't think that's right.

ruined by nuns

Someone in the audience pointed out that I have a theme of shame in my novels. Do I? My readers are sometimes much more observant than me. Well. I do think shame and guilt are underrated. The nuns gave them a bad name.

and then the Mediterranean

from last summer, 10 July
on the train 
I was wrong to pay attention to Rick Bragg's disdain for wheels on suitcases.
new goals:
learn about: Lorca, Catalan cooking, the Spanish Civil War, the art of O'rsay. Study my Spanish.

Although I pretended not to, I was able to understand a man who followed me along the waterfront in Barcelona. What is your name? What is your name? Do you want to eat? Where are you from? And then either he said right now or he called me a whore. I couldn't tell.
Much graffiti in Barcelona. Old train. German boys, Asian girls, elderly black couple with French accents and large suitcases, English boy with headphones on. I wonder which train station blew up, and how people could do such a thing. Brick apartment buildings with balconies, big dry hills, small trees, a woman in an orange construction vest washing a big black dog, overcast sky- gray, black, and violet.

I did begin to admire Picasso, after his museum in Paris. I could see that he was trying to show the inside of things, or even sometimes (it seemed to me) the nature of form itself. I hated the displays in The Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona though. Aside from one piece about Fascism and another inspired by Guy Dubord, they seemed purposefully obscure, self referential, pretentious. Hey, I'm an American--my ignorance does not prevent strong opinions.

tourist in Barcelona

9 July
Fighting my way through The Rambla crowd (Lorca once said this was one street he wished would never end, but surely it was different during Lorca's time) to the subway, on my way to #1 must see tourist attraction: Goudi's Church of La Familia, when I turned back and found my way, finally, to this small cafe where I sit now, at a table by the window, drinking a glass of wine and listening to the other patrons talk. I do think there is something sweet about tourists, fascinated by places, examining maps, photographing each other next to beautiful buildings. I want to go home and be a tourist in Oregon, as George says Béatrice is, in Paris. Nonetheless, I truly cannot go to one more tourist attraction, no matter how attractive. Four people sit at the bar, young, European, mostly English, talking to the bartendar. They are quizzing each other in their knowledge of Catalan. Now talking about a bullfighter who was killed by a bull. Whether this was a good or bad thing, they disagree. Janis Joplin on the stereo.

not a very good tourist

3 July, Paris

People have very small cars here, if they have a car at all. Late afternoon, men ride bicycles home, long loaves of bread tucked under their arms.

I have unsuccessfully tried to figure out if a machine near my hotel is a money machine or if it a ticket or a stamp machine.

Today I am going to the park, Parc' des Buttes, to read. I found a book in English, at a used bookstore down the block, although I'm not sure I've figured out the price.

I'm not a very good tourist. I don't like going to many places, only a few. I like sitting and feeling things.

Now I will try to buy that book, The Constant Gardener, by John Le Carré.

full of beauty

2 July

You can walk around a corner in Paris and see an ancient Roman bathhouse, a gorgeous building or monument, a garden, a plaque that says Manet was born here.

I'm in the La Villotte neighbourhood. Parc' des Buttes Chaumont is nearby, with a cave and waterfalls. Our room is too small for the two us, but right now I'm downstairs in the garden where it is pretty and fresh. Four round tables, orange tableclothes, pink hydrangas, phlox. From here, I can see the windows of apartments and balconies. Birds land near my feet, eating crumbs the receptionist has thrown out. Rachel is afraid of birds, but I can't see why.

private property

In England you can cut right through a farmer's field, or go right up someone's driveway to a path beyond it, and no one bats an eye.