Friday, February 4, 2011
Associated Writers' Palace (a.k.a. AWP)
The photo above is the view from exiting the elevator on the way to my room. Shouldn't we writers be housed in garrets or quaint cottages or cabins with a view of some pond?
Poets heard: Stephen Dunn, Marie Howe, Gregory Orr, Bob Hicok, Kevin Young, Elana Bell, Curtis Bauer, Tyehimba Jess, Aracelis Girmay.
Conversations with poets: Lee Ann Roripaugh, Allison Adele Hedge Coke, Natalia Trevino, Jen Lambert, Matthew Shimoda, William Trowbridge, Art Homer.
Superstar Author: Joyce Carol Oates reading from her new book--a memoir about the sudden death of her husband.
Panels attended: 2--one on teaching creative writing, one on writing abroad.
Fabulous meals savored: 3
Hours worked at my MFA program's table: 4
Books at the Book Fair: 5 bajillion.
Number of bedbugs in our room: zero
Inspiration: unfathomable
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Who are you and what have you done with Denise ?
I've been enjoying the world of linked blogs. It's a whole new world when you dip into a stranger's blog. I've participated in Blog Gems a few times. And have again this week on their vacation theme.
http://hisbigfatindianwedding.blogspot.com/2010/05/everything-will-be-fine-i-said.html
I don't think I have the ability to channel Pollyanna every week. But I am looking at the Reasons to be Cheerful linky from a blogger in England.
http://mdplife.blogspot.com/p/reasons-to-be-cheerful.html
Really, it's me here. Really.
And here goes.
1. I am visiting my mom. Time and money have allowed me to do so.
2. My brother took off work today to drive her to the doctor even though I am here. He did so because I was uneasy about driving his truck in unfamiliar territory in iffy weather. And he did it with good cheer.
3. We had pizza for dinner and sat around the table talking about all the dogs we've ever had and I think my mom really enjoyed the conversation.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Real Estate Queen
In the dream I’ve bought a house. Its paint job is the color of the “flesh” crayon —but I can change that, I think. Inside it’s just plain weird, but in sort of a good way. The sellers are middle-eastern, perhaps, and they’ve gone nuts with mosaic type effects in all the wooden surfaces. The kitchen floor is wavy tiger stripes of different woods. There are actual tiger-in-the-jungle murals composed of wood on a couple of the kitchen cabinets. Other patterns, too—harlequin and checkerboard, but those are more muted, and it’s all so weird and exotic that it might actually work if we can just get rid of the tigers, I think.
I want to show the house to my friends, so they follow me through the hills in a separate car to get there. I’ve seen these hills in other dreams. They wind around and around, and there are mansions tucked away where you can barely see them, but I always get lost. I’m lost again, and I’ve lost my friends so I get out of my car and walk to a high point on a little path that turns out to be someone’s yard. “Hello,” I call to the man I see below me. "I’m lost, but I’ve bought a house somewhere around here.” The man and I talk for a minute, but I can't remember what we said.
Despite being in the hills, my house is on a wide street. There’s some kind of plateau around here—if I can just find it. When I look over the edge from the path, I see Tina and the rest of my friends puled over to the side of the road standing outside their car. I know she’d like to get un-lost because she probably wants a cup of coffee. I call down to her, “On the very bottom shelf of my freezer, there’s a large zip-lock bag. It’s got some Starbucks Christmas Blend in it,” I say. And then I figure they'll get back to my place on their own. I want to go to my new house.
Finally I find it. There are four or maybe even five bedrooms. I choose the one with an east-facing window. C. and M. won’t want the sun waking them, I think. Now I’m so excited that I get some of the things I've packed into my car and begin to move in, but then it occurs to me that we haven’t actually closed the deal. We’ve only made an offer. I don’t think of this until I’m about to set my jewelry box in the room. I think about hiding it in a drawer, and then I realize the sellers are only leaving some of the furniture--not all of it. When one of the daughters of the seller appears, I greet her. She’s thin with black hair and has a hijab pulled off her head and resting on her shoulders like a cowl. When she smiles I see that her two front teeth are green porcelain outlined in gold. It’s off-putting at first, but I get used to it. The green is almost translucent and I begin to find it beautiful. I tell her I’m jumping the gun, but I’m so excited about the house, and I hope she doesn’t mind. She doesn’t seem to mind at all. Soon I’m puttering around in the room again and find a religious cloth of some sort. Woven in blue and black. There are symbols and maybe the Blessed Virgin. Ooh. I hope they leave that, I think. I’m more and more excited about this place. The floors are beautiful with all their colors of wood. And my room has a curving built-in couch. It faces the windows and the bed is set above the rest of the room on a platform. It's a beautiful place. I've got to call Bob (my real estate agent) and close the deal.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Notes from the Treehouse
As I lay in bed with the man who loves me, light poured into his kitchen as the sun lifted its head over a far hilltop and settled itself just above the hill he lives on. The Treehouse (my name for his place) feels combustible in the pre-coffee hours of the morning, but we were safe in his dark narrow bedroom I call "The Bunker." I need a bunker these days. "I can't forgive him," I told the man who loves me, turning the conversation to Mr. Ex after we'd discussed a recent betrayal by a friend of mine. I was wounded by my friend, but we'd talked about it. She apologized. I forgave. Chapter closed. Happier pages await in our story. Not so in the three-and-a-half-year divorce saga with Mr. Ex.
Yesterday the barrage of emails from my attorneys left cartoon character dollar signs imprinted on my eyeballs. We're into the land of six-figures now. Spent in the struggle to get my half of the community property. Thirty years of marriage. A third of it with begged and borrowed furniture, our first meals cooked in a donated and dented electric frying pan. I put him through UCLA Law School. Supported him with love and money. I want to hate myself for staying home and raising our daughters and trusting him, but it's hard to hate the memory of that. So I hate him, the way he Bernie Maddoffed me. The way he secretly plotted and schemed for months to leave us and then dropped his bomb just before M. left for college. Not even the courage to let her know before she committed to a school far from home. I hate him for delivering his message of doom by cellphone to C.---a thousand miles away when she'd just been home and he could have told us all when we were together. I hate him and his ruthless conniving Little Missus who, in my mind, deserves to have her family destroyed. I hate him more with each passing day and dollar.
"Something could happen that might change everything," said the man in the bunker. "If he gets sick, say." Oh, there could be a deathbed reconciliation, I suppose. But I don't really see myself in that scene. Even if my daughters are there, I see a hole as big as a bomb crater. A hole with years lost. Years that can never be found.
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