Month: May 2012

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But if you try sometimes, you might find

You get what you need.

Rejection. So, I was having a conversation with someone yesterday who was in the process of rejecting me. It was obvious to me that the situation was much more awkward for him as it was for me. This guy actually felt bad about not being able to give me what I wanted. In the moment I said, “I’m completely comfortable being rejected.”

Since then, I’ve given that statement much more thought than I did at the time. And today I stand by what I said. I’m fine being rejected. In fact, I think I handle that whole thing pretty well. I have a fairly long track record with it.

There’s always a sting of disappointment. I’ll give any agent/publisher/director/employer that. I am, in the moment disappointed. But I’m self-aware enough to know how fleeting that feeling can be. I’m not a sulker. I’m a move-on-er. (Now, I also know there have been times in my life when I haven’t moved-on. And I think I can safely say nothing good has ever come from behaving badly in those moments. And for that, I’m truly regretful.)

Here’s the point: I know enough about myself to understand that if I put my manuscript out into the world, if I audition, if I apply for the job, if I venture into the unknown, I’m strong enough to absorb the message that the decider in these circumstances can always choose to go another way.

I’m fine with that.

I’m even better if there’s something I can learn along the way.

So, all you potential rejectors out there … give yourselves a break.

I’m a big boy. I can take it.

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Something of worth, part two

It was a common problem between the two of us. Neither of us were good at deciding what to do for birthdays, special occasions, or holidays involving gifts. Our first foray into Christmas resulted in what I call “The Misadventures of Green Leather.” On a lark, I purchased a large, green, Dooney and Bourke bag as my first real Christmas present to her, and she purchased a pair of green Birkenstock loafers for me. When the unwrapping was finished, we agreed never to stress about the activity of gift-giving. Both of us returned the gifts for cash, and we used the pooled funds to buy a vacuum cleaner. For the past twenty years, we’ve rarely surprised each other with gifts, but we do manage to be generous.

So when she said, “I know what you can do for my birthday,” my guard went up. “There’s a ring there on the counter,” she said. “My grandmother gave it to me when I was a girl. I had to have it cut off my finger. Can you take it to the jeweler and see if it is valuable, and if it is, maybe have it reset in a larger size?”

There, on the counter (as she said) was a tiny little diamond chip in a princess setting. Well, a broken princess setting. The pieces of the ring had been taped together with a piece of cellophane tape. From the days when tape was cellophane. It looked exactly like the kind of ring an ordinary grandmother would give to an ordinary granddaughter.

But I knew immediately, nothing about any of these players — grandmother, granddaughter, ring — was ordinary.

I never knew the grandmother, Rachel (pronounced RUCK-hull, which sounds more beautiful than it looks, and even more beautiful when someone says it with a Yiddish accent). She was a gifted storyteller. Her oral history, recorded for the ages and transcribed with loving care by her daughter, is as rich in detail as it is in plot. Born a poor peasant in pre-Soviet Russia, the resourceful, mother-praising Rachel would find clever ways to feed her eight siblings, keep their spirits up, and somehow rise about these meager means to land a job with a big, wealthy family in the city.

It was there that she caught the eye of an awkward, aging heir who would lavish her with jewels she would sell to buy material to make clothes for her family, so they didn’t look poor at her wedding.

The gifts would continue.

Rachel was shunned by her husband’s rich relatives, never really fitting in, yet somehow raising above the fray to be the only gracious, well-bred person in the mix. During the revolution, when the family’s factory was being assimilated by the socialists, Rachel’s husband moved to America. True to her nature, Rachel held close her daughter, Chava (pronounced KH-ava, which sounds more beautiful than it looks, and even more beautiful when someone says it with a Yiddish accent). When tensions rose between Rachel and her in-laws, she would use baby Chava as leverage. In that dynamic, she held all the power by holding close to her only daughter.

Rachel used that power to convince her husband to pay for the safe passage of all her siblings. Once they were settled in America and Canada, only then did she allow her husband to pay for her and Chava’s passage to America.

The stories of her childhood were as dramatic as they get. Near-starvation during the winters, near-extermination by the Bolsheviks, near-death from sickness. Rachel makes Angela McCourt look like a self-obsessed pansy. During one particularly dramatic passage in the oral history, Rachel buries her jewelry in the courtyard of the big house, to keep it safe from the marauding bands of soldiers looking to overthrow the aristocracy.

It’s a spell-binding, page-turning, wish-you-could-have-written-it, kind of story.

Rachel settled in America and raised a large, tight-knit family. She became Rachel, the matriarch, Rachel the storyteller, Rachel the corsetiere. Her daughter became Chava, the ransomed, Chava the stage beauty, Chava the doctor. Chava’s only-born daughter, Alana, became Alana the upstart, Alana the scholar, Alana, the actor/director.

To that granddaughter, Rachel bestowed a ring. A tiny chip of a diamond in a princess setting.

Too tiny to be fake, the stone is most-likely genuine, probably of little or no value.

But the ring itself could have escaped the careful eye of the socialists, the fellow passengers in steerage, the immigration officials who quarantined both grandmother and mother upon their arrival in America.

The worth of that ring? It’s too high to even guess.

_________

Happy belated birthday, my darling girl. You are the bread and the knife, the crystal goblet and the wine.

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Something of worth, part one

I’ve been carrying around a couple piece of jewelry for the past few weeks. When I cleaned out my backpack before heading out to the beach for the week, I stumbled across them, and put them in a safe place. My intent was to take them to the jeweler to be repaired. I still haven’t done that.

Funny how hard it is to recognize classic writing exercises when they are staring you in the face. (Or you are holding them in your hand.) It’s an old saw. Find an object and write a story about it. The fact is, though, these two objects have been rolling around in my mind for three weeks. Maybe my amendment to the exercise is to find an object, carry it around for three weeks, and THEN write about it.

Both the objects are rings. One belonged to my father, one belongs to my wife. Both are shrouded in stories.

My dad wore an azure-blue star sapphire, set in a manly silver setting with two diamond chips on both sides. I don’t know why my mother bought a ring like this. Nor why she gave it to my dad, but I do remember he loved it, and that was rare. My dad took delight in many things, but seldom cherished anything.

Sapphires themselves are kind of native to Montana. During one of our few family outings, the four of us went to a sapphire mine and picked over a bucket of stones. My mom threw a chunk of what she was convince was Coke-bottle glass over her shoulder and we spent a good part of the afternoon sorting through road gravel to find it. Turns out, it was a blue-green hunk of corundum, which my sister now wears as a cut stone in a setting my mom chose. Given their relationship, I’m pretty sure that ring irritates my sister from time to time.

We didn’t find my dad’s stone. Maybe my mom gave the ring to my dad one Father’s Day. She might have said something hokey about the diamond chips representing my sister and me. I really don’t remember how, or why, that ring came into the family. I do remember how the depth of the blue jumped off my dad’s chubby fingers. And the milky-gray, sparkley star inside the stone mimicked my dad’s eyes.

In doing a little research, I’ve found that real star sapphires are rare. They are most likely blue. They are cut in a way that a six-pointed star appears to be inside the stone, and that star shape will move, but continue to show up, no matter how you hold the stone. Star sapphires are also frequently replicated or faked. There are many stones in the world with the star “painted” into a less-valuable material, like agate. One of the tests for authenticity is to make sure the image of the star remains, no matter how you move the stone. But clever counterfeiters can create synthetic material that mimics the star and sell it as real. So taking the stone to a gemologist is the only way to tell.

I came across the ring when we were culling through my mom’s stuff in preparation for my eldest sister Cherie’s move into the house I grew up in. I remember that day as being busy, and filled with strongly concealed emotions. My sisters were mostly concerned with my mother’s shoes. I sat on the living room floor with my week-old neice strapped into a car seat nearby. She had recently discovered her feet, and she squealed with delight every time she managed to snatch one up and pull it to her chest. My dad’s stuff was down to a few boxes. This was stuff my mom had saved, having parceled out the rest the year before. It contained my dad’s dog tags from WWII, his discharge papers, his wedding ring, a photo of his high-school track team, a copy of the speech he gave at his graduation, and a few other things my mom couldn’t bear to part with.

I’d never wear the ring on a daily basis. I’d probably never wear it even for special occasions. I did wear it recently in a play. (I had to wrap the band with tape … my dad had huge fingers.) Not an everyday ring, but something the King of France would wear.

The stone is loose.

And I have been reluctant to take it to the jeweler for more than a handful of reasons. Practically, I don’t have any reason to wear the ring, so why pay to get it fixed? And I don’t have anyone to give the ring to, once I’m dead, or ready to give my stuff away. Emotionally, I don’t want to know if the stone is fake.

Mostly, I don’t want to let the color of the star out of my possession.

Even to get fixed.

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A month away

Those of you familiar with blogging know this. I didn’t. Tons of spam. So, in an effort to get real about the actual numbers of authentic people visiting, I stayed away for a month. My idea here is it will give me a vague notion of how many honest-to-god people in the world are reading what I’ve written.

When I was a student at the University of Montana, there was a visiting choreographer in the dance department. His work was inspiring, and devoted to including spoken text in his pieces. One I remember was an evocative, slow moving piece with dancers moving through space simply saying “I’m sorry.” Sounds stupid, I know … but it was incredible. The choreographer in residence worked on a similar piece. It wasn’t as grounded, or as artistically sound. (Why would it be, it wasn’t her idea?) At any rate, her dancers kept kneading the air repeating “Dough is a living thing. Dough is a living thing.” But there was a refrain in her piece that has resonated with me for almost thirty years. Out of this repetition, one of the dancers would explode with movement and shout “When I can’t dance I’m a nasty old bitch!” It was both funny “ha ha” and funny “peculiar.”

If I were to sum up my behavior this past month, I’d have to conclude that “When I can’t write, I’m a nasty old bitch!”

There are some learnings to be had here. The good news is, there seems to be quite a few of you real, honest, readers! The bad news is, I haven’t been able to write.

And it’s made me a nasty old bitch. So, here’s a list of stuff I jotted down while I was away.

  • There’s nothing like a little bit of sunshine. Really. There’s nothing like it.
  • Taxes, in the overall scheme of things, are still a good idea.
  • Speeding is bad for the world, I’m not going to do it anymore.
  • There’s no sense in eating cheap cheese. (Or to put it another way, expensive cheese is worth it.)
  • Most people have two muscles in their calves that look almost exactly like tiny ass cheeks.
  • Having a nagging, whooping-like cough as a child doesn’t mean you are immune to it as an adult.
  • People can be challenging, but mostly they are just trying to be good.
  • A clean car runs better than a dirty car.
  • There’s really only a few things I’d like to do over, and most of them happened in Missoula.
  • When given the opportunity, I’d rather teach than perform.

So, as you can see, there’s quite a bit happening for me. As far as the book goes, my plan is to dive into the edits like a madman when I go on vacation in a couple of weeks. I did, however, send my first page to an agent. She gave me a nine out of ten. (I think that’s good, but I wanted a ten.)

But I’ll take the nine and keep working. At least I’ve got that going for me.