No Gifts?

Your Christmas actually sounds kind of peaceful to me, Claudia, very adult and civilized. It is my theory that we should enjoy these moments while we can, as the pause between generations is brief. Just as we get adjusted to nice quiet evenings with a little seasonal music in the background, the unsettled cries of babies and toddlers who haven't yet grasped the joys of Christmas begin to ring out from the next room. Gather ye eggnog while you may.

And speaking of eggnog - does anyone make it from scratch any more, or is it too scary? I have been contemplating eggnog, but somehow, in the interval between when my dad used to make it with many eggs and clouds of whipped egg white on top, and the current moment when it all seems to come pasteurized and homogenized out of cardboard containers in the dairy section, I've lost or forgotten the recipe. Are we still allowed to eat raw eggs?

The holidays just get more complicated all the time.

No gifts, no kids, no fuss, no huzzah

My husband and I will be going to my Aunt's house tomorrow for the holiday. It will be good to see my parents and cousins, but I will miss having any kids around. Mine will be with their father this year in New Jersey. But my girls are young adults--I meant kids as in under the age of ten...somehow the holidays without any wide eyed participants just seems a little flat. I look back on all the years of my girls being girls and it seems like it went by too fast. At the time it was not rushing by. Every day had its tides of small dramas. Ah well, this is middle age, and it is my turn to look forwards and back, to see both shores and know this too is temporary. I also know I am lucky at my age to have parents and even a grandmother around. Lucky to be able to love them all through another year.

Wrong Suitcase

I know that wrong suitcase feeling so well, Hilary - every time I gear up to go on a trip - and especially around the holidays - I am in a complete panic that I will somehow get it wrong. I won't bring the right suitcase, I will forget all the presents, I'll lose my ID or tickets, I'll bring all the wrong clothes - the list goes on.

The funniest part about it, really, is that on those rare occasions when things have gone all wrong - flights missed, baggage lost, medication misplaced, no coat brought and a blizzard in the offing - it always gets fixed. Clothes can be bought or borrowed, doctors and pharmacists can be called, and there's almost always another flight in an hour or six. But we almost all approach trips as if we were in the final scenes of a Hollywood movie, where if the flight is missed, the person not found immediately, we have lost our one and only chance to ever fly to that place or see that person. If you don't catch your boyfriend/girlfriend/fiancee/spouse/master spy at EXACTLY that moment before their plane takes off and they leave forever, you will never see them again. Apparently, in the movies no one has cell phones, email, or even a Post Office Box at which to receive messages about missed flights and opportunities.

And that's exactly how I feel before trips, even if they are to a conference half an hour away on the commuter railroad. Anything I don't remember is lost to me forever. And maybe that is just what Claudia was saying about holidays: if we don't remember, who will?

Is God gonna bring me a suitcase?

I hate vanishing dolls and headlines that print themselves but what I was going to add to Debbie's blog was that 

once upon a time a long time ago, my daughter had a doll named neither Barbie nor Strawberry Shortcake but otherwise was like any other little girl's doll in Istanbul.  I think her name was Vivian?  Megan?  At any rate, my 4-yr-old daughter, Alexandra, was completely satisfied with the wealth of wardrobe enjoyed by her doll, but she had nothing to put all those doll crinolines in when Megan went to bed and so needed -- for Christmas -- a suitcase.  (Megan had written it in her letter to Santa.)  At the same time, Alexandra's Sunday School was preoccupied with the religious story of Christmas, to which end the visiting English padre (bearded as any proper Santa Claus  -- or Heavenly Father, for that matter -- would be) had come to explain to all the children the lovely story of the Nativity --

 & not unnaturally. Alexandra  had all of Christmastime's Principal Players mixed up and that would be all of my comments on Debbie's comments on Christmas, although I might have added comments in re: last week's NYT editorial, commenting upon all the lovely layers of belief upon which Lewis bases Narnia....and all of these comments would have agreed with Deb's excellent comments  as Christmas is indeed, a bittersweet event  -- except I wanted to add

that we are programmed, genetically, I think (Claudia, you are the expert) to take all our holidays with a Grain of Salt, to add  to any expectationa sense of forboding brittle hope, which was mostly in Alex's facial expression not in her words, of course, and --

I don't know what in the world I am talking about....

Except I am panicked, packing for Christmas in Boston, where the youngest among us will be 13 (Alex's daughter, Elizabeth)worried  that we will somehow all be disappointed (like there won't be enough suitcases to go around, or I've chosen the wrong suitcase for one of us --)

MERRY CHRISTMAS , Andrew, Bill, Debbie, Claudia! 

 I love you all, and I will never never knowingly  (aye, there's the rub) bring you the wrong suitcase,

Hilary

Writing through the Holidays

Up until Thanksgiving, I was moving along merrily, working each Saturday on my novel, and on my other works in progress on Sundays and during the week. And then - I was scrambling to get something done for the last workshop - and, truth be told, without the workshop to give me a deadline, almost nothing would have been written before the New Year. And I don't think it was just me - we probably set a record for the shortest River Writers ever this week.

What is it about turkey and trees and holiday lights that slows us down so much? (I notice, for instance, no one has been blogging here either.) Well, unless turkey has long term effects not yet identified by science, I guess it has to be mood and memories. I don't think it's just that Christmas was a time of such great anticipation as a child; I think it is an ongoing sense of loss that settles in as we get older, loss of all the people who are no longer with us as we gather to celebrate. Grandparents, parents, the generations behind. When I was ten years old, I visited a nursing home with my class at Christmas time and met a 102 year old man who was born during the Civil War. I was thinking of him this week, and thinking he was born almost 150 years ago. That's a lot of Christmases. It's not exactly that I miss the Christmases of my childhood - it's that my childhood is receding through time, becoming historical, subject to sentimentalization and ossification. If I had a time machine and could go back and ask that nice man a few questions, one would be if the Victorian Christmases we see on our cards and Christmas windows today have anything at all to do with his memories.

Oh well, this too shall pass, the New Year will arrive, the roar of the crowd from Times Square will wash over us, and writing will become easier again. But it probably won't make next December any easier - maybe we should just declare a writing holiday and dedicate ourselves to consuming cookies instead!

Infidelity

In both of the plays I mentioned in my last entry -- Fifty Words by Michael Weller and Fault Lines by Stephen Belber -- a major crisis erupts in response to an actual or possible act of infidelity. In both cases, the marriages in question are either destroyed or irreparably damaged by the disclosure. For that matter, infidelity is the major marital crisis explored in many plays, movies, and TV shows. Beyond that, we probably all know people whose marriage or relationship ended when one of the partners was discovered to have had sex with somebody else. Now, indulge me in an exercise in fantasy and imagine a world in which the fact that most people (or, at least, many, many people) are incapable of complete fidelity were acknowledged--as well as the fact that sex becomes a decreasingly important aspect of many if not most marriages as time goes by despite the fact that by most other measures these marriages may be very solid and nurturing. Imagine further that people understood and accepted the “biological” aspect of sexuality--that is, the drive to be fulfilled sexually or to experience the release of orgasm--and had tacit permission to go outside the marriage on occasion to seek that fulfillment. Imagine finally that these outside excursions in no way damaged the marriage.

All of what I describe is at play in many marriages--except the part where spouses have tacit permission to go outside. I read a book called Open Marriages back in the early seventies that made the case for relationships that were more open-minded when it came to sex. I don’t remember the details of the book--it may well have been proposing arrangements I might find objectionable--but the central notion of the book has stayed with me all these years. I also see around me the example of many successful gay relationships (and “marriages” by whatever name) in which there is less of an expectation that the partners will be exclusive all of the time. 

In my play, “Conquests and Migrations” (the latest working title for a work in progress), I envision a future in which spouses have a much more fluid notion about the role that sex plays in their marriage. This occurs after the characters in this fantasy play have “evolved” through other periods in which--in succession--wives are simply used sexually whenever their grunting husbands need to get off; the very notion that a wife has had thoughts about another man is enough to cause the husband to lash out violently; and the discovery of a wife’s (or husband’s) affair leads automatically to divorce. The more enlightened future I envision can’t possibly last, can it? Well, stay tuned--I’m in the process of sorting that out right now.

To see more of my blogs, go to:  http://williamfowkes.com/Site/JOURNAL/JOURNAL.html

Ciao

NaNoWriMo post-haste Election Marathon

I have fallen behind in my word count, I will admit that seeing the election in Times Square (surrounded by tourists speaking French, German, Italian, Spanish, and English with other colonial accents) and celebrating took up time and masses of sleep recovery. I will wend my way to a Starbucks, plug joe into me and juice into the laptop, and write for word count sake, quantity over quality. Full speed. Latte. Tap tap tap. Sip sip sip.

I really will have a (bad) first draft by December. 175 pages of raw material. To junk or save but nonetheless to be able to say I did it. This works. Next year all of you should do it with me. Really. www.nanowrimo.org

I Have Seen the Future - Part Deux

It turns out people in the 21st century really don’t want to hear from you unless you are someone they’ve given a nod to already – and if they know you through Facebook, or LinkedIn, or My Space, or Naymz, or any of the 3000 other social networks, you’re okay by them. There’s some thought that one reason Senator Obama, despite having just made the Boomer cutoff, is looking so likely as our next president right now is that all those young people on their social networks really together form one giant social network – and to them, he seems like one of them. Savvy about their world, committed to their ideas, and entering by invitation.

It seems to me our only choice – as writers and artists – is to jump in and join the network – at least as far as is comfortable and not too demanding of the attention we ought to be spending on our art. But it’s certainly an interesting dilemma, as well as opportunity, for the writer who develops his or her work alone, in solitude, to bring it out there to the rest of the world. I guess it’s the 21st century challenge, and only time will tell how well we meet it.

I Have Seen the Future!

I recently went to the Technology in the Arts Conference sponsored by CMU in Pittsburgh, and I’m still reeling a little. (It’s a brilliant annual conference, full of fascinating artists, tech wizards, and arts organization managers, by the way, and I recommend it highly to anyone with an interest in the subject.) By nature, with technology I’m a middle adapter. I was pretty quick to get an email address, and even hosted a long running writers’ chat on AOL, but I was very slow to get a cell phone - but then, I’m a writer, and would rather type than talk any day. The world, however, has apparently moved far beyond email and mobiles. In Pittsburgh, I learned that the future lies with texts, blogs, and social networking.


A number of my sessions were on arts marketing, and although they weren’t directly about writing, it was pretty obvious that in the 21st century, in order for writers to build audiences and market their work, social networking will be key. And this doesn’t just mean building your email list and burying everyone you ever met in announcements of your new books, publications, and readings. Here’s the bad news – 80% of all email never gets opened. Even if people know who you are, unless they think there’s something really exciting in it for them, they just won’t make the effort to look at the contents. And almost no one clicks on internal links, so don’t assume you’re sending them to your Web site from your email. (I confess, that when I thought about it, I realized that this was all too true. Even if the email is from acquaintances, they are really better off putting those publication announcements or reading dates in the subject line – because otherwise I’m just not going to open it. I probably get fifty emails a day, divided between professional, social, and people trying to get me to buy something – and that’s not counting the spam!)

Well, more on this later, as I continue to digest, and in the meantime, as Hilary always says - Keep Writing!

Two poems published in the Marsh Hawk Review

I gave them poems I'm sure you remember...
Please look.

Thanks, C

A Sunday of posting

Going freelance has been good for my blogging. I wrote today to three blogs and raved about some literary graphic novels, why I'll miss designing for print, and here I am at River Writers... I did not make the cut off for the NY arts grants. I just have too much more to do to rethink my next set of poems. I want to explore imaginary cities and other acts of imagination. Also explore how fine art and design can be transposed into poetry. Image to word.

Today was a good writing day

We had a great River Writers workshop last week, and as I sat down to work on the new show today, I had the benefits of everyone's comments fresh in my mind. I knew I had to settle my character's ages a little more firmly, and make sure they knew what they wanted in each scene (aside from coffee, which everyone in the show drinks constantly - not unlike a few River Writers!)

I also had the benefit of a great meeting with my composer/collaborator, Allan Jaffe, who suggested I model one of the scenes on a conversation in one of my recent short stories. This worked out very happily - and it would have probably taken me much longer to think of by myself (if I ever did manage to think of it!)

Now all we have to do is figure out how long the show is going to be. The workshop consensus was one act, to be followed by another one act music theater piece in due time. I guess only time will tell (time, inspiration, and deadlines) - but it felt really wonderful to be back to work.

New York Foundation of the Arts

Deborah let me know in email that the deadline is coming up. Go here: link to NYFA to get info. Poetry deadline Oct 6, non-fiction Oct 10th.

I am thinking a collection of Hilary's Baghdad pieces would work.

I'll put together a poetry proposal.

I have nothing to say

other than keep writing. Wait!

Claudia set up a blog for me called "Meditations in a Diner." Not much more expanded than these notes, but it will be.

First Day

This is my first day on my first blog ever. We'll see how it goes. This is part of the River Writers Group of Manhattan blog. I don't know how a group blog works yet--but I know how the River Writers Group works. It's a great writers' group. I've been a member for about 5 or 6 years, which makes me the newest member by far in what is reputedly the oldest continuing writers group in New York.

That's all for now.
William

The River Writers of Manhattan Blog

begins. I promise to redo graphics and add bios and photos or whatever needs done.