I Will Choose Free Will

Who reads the horoscopes every day? That's right. I do. While I am officially an Aquarius, I make a habit of reading other people's horoscopes, too, just to keep track of how they're doing. You know, according to the stars. Do I read yours? If you're reading this, I probably do.

The daily paper runs short ones, which makes it easy for me to catch all the latest on how my planets and yours are aligning. But I especially enjoy Rob Brezsny's syndicated weekly "Free Will Astrology," which acknowledges that a person can shape the meaning as they see fit. (As we do anyway.) The one below, though a week old, seemed like a good point to meditate on while I take a little break from writing:

"You may still be gnawed by a longing for your life to be different from what it is. You might fantasize that you're missing a crucial element that would, if acquired, usher you into a Golden Age. But I've been analyzing the big picture of your destiny, Aquarius, and here's what I see: This year you're being offered the chance to be pretty satisfied with the messy, ambiguous, fantastically rich set of circumstances that you've actually been blessed with. The first half of 2010 should have inspired you to flirt with this surprising truth. The second half will drive it home with the force of a pile of gifts left anonymously on your doorstep." Rob Brezsny, Free Will Astrology

Rob knows me so well! And so do the stars, planets and constellations, which may be aligning as we speak.

Summer Reads/Make Me Feel Fine

The spreadsheet of books I've read so far this year is kinda sparse compared to the last two years. And the summer months, my dependable downtime for reading, have been busier than usual: I'm cranking out pages on a new project, taught for a few weeks in June, and have gone out of town for several long weekends. I've also been reintroduced to my love of badminton, which, as you may know, requires serious training and dedication.*

I've managed to read 16 books, less than half of where I was last year at this time. (Alas, this is just not going to be a 70-book year.) One book I finally finished is Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. It's a biggie. I renewed it from the library five times. They will be glad to have it back.

So: soon I'll be taking a break, and I'm looking for suggestions for summer reading. I nearly always pack too much to read on vacation, and so far am thinking about Chuck Palahniuk's Choke, Elinor Lipman's The Family Man, and Sarah Dessen's YA novel Dreamland. But there's room for more: mayhaps something lighter than Wolf Hall (2.5 lbs!) and heavier than Sweet Valley High** (do carrot sticks, like, weigh anything?).

What say you?

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*The round robin tournament is sporadic and ongoing. Now booking court time and future tournament seedings. Serious inquiries only. Please keep in mind that my crowning achievement in high school was being the individual badminton champion of ninth grade gym/1st period.

**I read all the SVH books growing up. Obsessively. Over and over. I received 100% on this quiz. Don't hate.

Indy Underground Reading Series

Do you live in, or near, or have means to travel to the greater Indianapolis area? Then you should come to the Indy Underground Reading Series next Wednesday, June 30. It's going to be fantastic.



Writers, rock and roll, and Sun King beer. Eight o'clock at the Irving Theater, a great place to see a show. I can't remember if it was there or at The Emerson, but it makes me think of when I saw Social Distortion in the early '90s and was nearly trampled in the mosh pit. I didn't intend to be in the mosh pit: the lights went down, the music started, and all of a sudden I was riding a wave, then I was under it. A burly flannel-clad early-90s lumberjack picked me up and set me down outside of the pit. (This a story I drag out as an attempt to seem less lame to my students. Likely I seem lamer when I reveal that I had a cardigan tied around my waist when I inadvertently moshed, and all night I watched it sail from one side of the room to the other. Also: my friend's dad - a wonderfully patient man, a military man - waited outside for us the whole time. In a minivan.)

The '90s! Suddenly I want to be back in high school, being angsty about boys at the all-ages show.



(but only for like five minutes. and then I would like to get back to the garden and my book, mmmkay.)

The last person on Earth to see Avatar

That would be me. And I somehow rounded up three other people who also had not seen the Movie Everybody Else in the World Had Already Seen to watch it with me. (The same group, incidentally, that gathered to watch "The Hurt Locker" earlier in the spring, a film which beat "Avatar" for Best Picture at the Oscars.)

I did not want to like Avatar. I'm not a contrarian by nature, it's just that the movies getting all the hype are generally disappointing to me for predictable reasons: behind all the style, there's no substance. Nothing to sink your teeth into besides popcorn, nothing to leave you thinking. And besides predictable reasons, these movies are predictable in and unto themselves. Man fights great battle, enemy vanquished. Blahdy blahdy blah.

But I DID like Avatar. Kind of a lot. For one, the style was innovative and cool enough that the lapses in substance were forgivable, though still worth noting. Mr. James Cameron beats the viewer about the head and chest with his anti-war message: Humans who've ruined their planet head to the lush and magical Pandora, light years away, and are miffed when the blue-but-sexy natives reject their advances. Turns out there's a load of highly-prized "unobtanium" under their sacred tree that the Americans - I mean, humans - want to swipe. Yes. UNOBTANIUM. And the humans go so far as to create avatars that look just like the blue n' sexy folk, complete with a sick hip-to-waist ratio, so that they may infiltrate and propagate. Until, of course, somebody gets a conscience. "This reminds me of 'Dances with Wolves'," said one of my astute movie companions. Or '"Last of the Mohicans." Or fill-in-the-blank. We all agreed, my movie-watching companions and I, that while the "The Hurt Locker" wasn't perfect, it portrayed war as complex, not good/bad or black/white.

And still, the movie unexpectedly made me think. Among the native Na'vi people, they respectfully address someone before speaking by saying, "I see you." Such a simple and beautiful gesture, to acknowledge that one has been seen, made visible, that a person is worth noting and recognizing. I see you. You exist. Your matter matters. This was a small part of the movie, but perhaps my favorite part, aside from being on another freaking planet for nearly three hours (what is watching a movie but being an avatar, getting to walk around in another life, another place?) and the floating jellyfish-thingies and flowers-but-not-flower thingies and the flying quasi-pterodactyls. And the humans who'd seal themselves in a pod at their space station and mind-meld into their avatars, being able to see through new eyes and run on new legs.

Perhaps it'll look dated in a year, but all things do. And maybe should.

It turns out I'm not the Last Person in the World to see this movie. When I mentioned my theory recently, none of the five people I was hanging out with had seen it, either.



And because I would now like to beat you about the head and chest with this word, let's say it one more time: Unobtanium.

It's not like you don't have a calendar

One of my favorite books that I read last year, Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, has an entry about days of the week, and the importance of not stating the obvious about Fridays (yay!) and Mondays (boo).

I originally started writing this on Friday, in one kind of mood. And now it is Monday, and I'm in another kind of mood.

It is important not to state the obvious about these moods. Hence it is worth reporting that I am maybe feeling the opposite about Friday and Monday at the moment. This seems like a landmark happening, as if my mental outlook has realigned in some fundamentally important way. But maybe it just means that it's summer and my calendar is all whopper-jawed.

Por ejemplo, as we say en espanol: Last Friday I wrote, then spent five hours in a school-related meeting, afternoon into the evening. By choice. And enjoyed it. And today, Monday, I taught, will soon write, and am strangely motivated to cross items off a list I compiled a month ago.

Whopper-jawed for sure. Or maybe I've just got a close eye on the calendar, and I know this summer won't last forever. Deadlines, people. Things to write. Items to cross off lists. And days of the week that I will neither complain about nor celebrate, that merge together to a point where I realize that I'm doing what I want to be doing.

Now, the trick: how to turn summer into the rest of the year. I'll get back to you on that one. (I suspect it will involve alchemy. And a chalkboard full of formulas.)

Go outside, already

Sunshine's here.

Ain't No Sunshine. Not even a little.

Is this a good version of the song? I have no idea; my computer is still without sound, a problem I have not tried very hard to fix. But it's Bill Withers, so it must be good. "Use Me" by Bill Withers is also excellent, and there's a pretty good cover from some years back featuring Mick Jagger and Lenny Kravitz.

Now that your daily musical needs have been met, let me report there ain't no sunshine in Indianapolis. That's a problem. Tomorrow is Pole Day at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, a chance for ladies who've embraced the latest exotic fitness craze to showcase their -- what? No? OK. Apparently it's pole as in Pole Position, as in qualifications for the Indy 500. And it's rainy. The last two weeks have been gray and rainy. The drivers are probably playing many games of checkers in their trailers, waiting out the storms.

Maybe there will be sunshine for next Friday's Carb Day, a chance for everyone to eat as many donuts as possible, and -- what? No? OK. Carb Day as in carburetor and the final day of practice before the race, though from a fan perspective it seems mainly to serve as a giant pre-party. Sponsored by Miller Lite. Featuring a concert by ZZ Top on the Miller Lite stage. ZZ Top, people! Beer flowing like urine! Shirtless people of all ages!

It's not quite as fun to have a super-long beard and twirl your guitar in the rain, or to attend a concert and drink beer shirtless in the rain. The day is billed as "a tradition of rock and roll excess crowning a day of beer, engines, and sun." All the pieces are in place. So come on, sun.

Speaking of cars (weren't we?), I have a new car-related short story up at Booth, Butler University's innovative literary journal, called "Collision Physics for the Math Averse." The story will be up until next week, then archived. Booth, named after Hoosier writer Booth Tarkington, provides a little bit of sunshine amidst the dreary. Booth the writer won Pulitzers for The Magnificent Ambersons and Alice Adams. His home, not too far from my own, also seems worth a visit: it is oft-featured in the newspaper for being handsomely decorated. I was going to suggest a tour of the home if Carb Day gets rained out, but the current owners might have other plans.

And now, a cheerier song about no sunlight, from Death Cab for Cutie. Click for Black Cab Sessions video. I am forbidden to embed.

At least, I think I remember it being "No Sunlight." I had to read their lips.

First impressions

The Internet is quiet at 4 a.m.

The dream about desperately needing to find a bathroom means: get up and find one.

I read about strangers' lives and feel as if I know these strangers. When it's fiction, I feel comforted. When it's blogs, I feel creepy. The kids now say "creeper" instead of "stalker." I feel as though I'm repeating myself on that point. But it clearly made an impression.

8:30 a.m. is too early to ring the doorbell (three times) and bang on the door asking for someone who doesn't live here, man with a cross tattooed next to his eye. Really, there's never a good time. But the "Thank you, ma'am," was a nice touch. Appreciated.

The dream about introducing my friend Terry to my other friend Terry -- they both looked the same but one wore glasses and the other didn't, I couldn't believe they hadn't met yet, in my mind they were totally separate people -- and non-glasses Terry said something offensive and glasses Terry got up and left, means: ???

Good morning to you, too, birds. But how about we exchange greetings after 4 a.m., from here on out? You don't know about daylight savings time, I take it.

Awkward silences can last months.

The Internet is quiet generally before 9 a.m., when people arrive at work and begin not-working. Digital selves are standing in for our real selves, said the woman looking at a screen with a picture of herself on it. People are very, very upset that the free online service they've opted into where they publicly share private details wants to make those details more public. The free online service is meeting NOW, like right this minute, to discuss the outrage of their clientele.

I just misspelled "publicly" as publically. D-.



I predict the introduction of online warning labels. Put yourself out there in the vast Internet void, but do so privately. Open the door, peer out, and then hide. Be forewarned: a man with a cross tattoo next to his eye is gonna come knocking one of these days. And he'll still have the wrong place.

And then the Universe said HA HA!

I recently learned that two articles I wrote for NUVO last year won awards from the Society of Professional Journalists' annual Best in Indiana Journalism contest.

-“Unite! Hotel workers fighting to unionize” won first place for Social Justice Reporting
-“A different kind of chance” won second place for Social Justice Reporting

And yesterday, after receiving a rejection from a lit journal for a short story, I sat outside re-reading the wonderful Olive Kitteridge, finally relaxing into the sudden done-ness of the teaching semester. And then a bird shat upon my bare leg.

Universe, subtle you are not. But you do have a way of reminding a person that today's news is tomorrow's fishwrap. Onward, yo. It's time to write another novel.

Poems for Sale

Whenever my husband and I pass a vacant storefront in the neighborhood, we jokingly discuss the logistics of renting it to turn into a writing shop. There I'd sit in front of the plate glass window, writing on demand. A While-U-Wait operation, perhaps with a laundromat nearby so customers can pass the time or buy a soda. In this scenario, I'd sell short profiles for fifty cents, and a poem for a quarter.

Turns out I'm selling myself short. Molly Gaudry came up with the idea to charge one dollar American currency for a poem written just for the recipient, but is willing to accept donations beyond that modest fee. And this smart cookie set up shop on the Internet, bypassing that whole "rent" issue.

Of course I felt compelled to support another writer, and promptly placed my PayPal order. But I didn't necessarily want to dictate what she wrote about. (Come to think about it, that is one thing that sullies the idea of my imaginary writing shop: having assignments.) Molly will work with or without guidelines, and here is what she wrote for me: O.K., O.K.?

I love free enterprise. Does this make me a patron of the arts? I suddenly want to commission a painting.