Blog

The Pioneer said that she has been “circling” around her novel now, and I find that word suits exactly what I’ve been doing lately with mine. It’s there. It just needs to be finished. Then it needs to be rewritten. And maybe rewritten again after that. But can I finish it without a rewrite? Conversely, could I start a rewrite without finishing it? It’s so BIG. I’m proud that it’s so big, but at the same time it’s like someone who collects, say, hubcaps, and the collection makes him happy, but one day he looks around his small apartment and it’s no longer fun — it’s a health hazard, hubcaps piled to the ceiling and hidden in the suitcases on the shelves, teetering and ready to fall. (I’m talking about pages here, people. Get your mind of my yarn stash.) I have too many pages.

I have this thing in my mind — I can’t really call it an image, can I? But it feels like an image. In it I’ve taken the novel and pared it down and removed all the ways people get places and all the filler dialogue set over cups of coffee or bottles of beer (hell, there go at least 200 pages right there), and it becomes spare and lovely. Did you ever read Carole Maso’s Ghost Dance? It remains in my mind What A Brilliant Novel Should Be. Alarmingly gorgeous. Erudite. Clever enough to make the reader feel special and chosen. She might have been a little too clever for me, actually, since I put it down one day and never picked it back up. But in my mind, my novel sits next to hers in its brilliant spareness. In reality, my fiction writing is a lot more like the everyday prose that I spill here — sloppy, loved, rushed, careless, happy, not overly thought-out. Kind of like my knitting style, too. Okay, kind of like ME.

So why would I want to be Carole Maso-ish? Dunno. But I do, somehow. And that’s what frustrates me when I sit down to do the real work — that inability to breathe on my work and make it come out like hers. I’d have more luck running a marathon. No, wait….

I’m reading (finally) Art & Fear by Bayles and Orlando, and it’s got me thinking. Obviously. A couple of things have struck me from it: “Vision is always ahead of execution…. and uncertainty is a virtue.”

That vision? It’s so far ahead of the execution that it’s literally impossible to force this many pages that are already written into said vision. No matter how much I’d love a slender, tightly poetic novel (Housekeeping springs to mind), I ain’t got one of those. I’ve got one in which cats run up curtains and little old ladies get confused and girls just don’t know what to do about the little things, let alone the big’uns. And lots o’pages. I’m just set for supersized, I think. A&F says, “A piece grows by becoming specific.” The most imaginative part of writing is the very beginning, when the first sentences are being placed. As each subsequent sentence is written, more and more options fly out the window (unless, of course, you’re writing one of those neo-post-modern avant garde beat-the-drums let all the words out and not worry about sentence form or structure or logic kind of books, in which I wish you all the best in your weed-smokin’ quest). In my novel, I’ve painted myself into a corner. Or, since I’m not that good at painting, I’ve mopped myself into one part of the kitchen, and I’m not sure how to get out of it without leaving my dirty footprints all over my nice clean floor. (I know. The floor might need to get a little dirty. Aargh.)

But writing about it helps. Looking at it helps. Just hefting it from table to floor to backpack helps remind me that something must be done. I want to finish it, if only to be able to start something new. I may be able to have lots of different things on the needles, but this novel thing requires monogamy. Cheating would just be too complicated, and I’d say the wrong thing to the wrong book, call one the wrong name, and everyone would hate me. I don’t lie well. It would get ugly, fast.

So, to keep on Finishing. I feel like I’ve been this close for so long. A while longer, I think.

Happy weekend, all. Live a little dream in there, wouldja?

So I’ve set up an “open house” for Saturday. Doesn’t that sound rather tacky? For some reason I’m almost apologetic about it, but my schedule just doesn’t allow inviting the 20 or so people who’ve responded to the ad over in different time slots. So I’m going to tuck myself up on the couch and knit and let people look around. Weird, weird, weird. And I have to work a fourteen hour shift on Friday night, from 7pm to 9am, come home, get a three hour nap, and up at 1pm to do the last bit of tidying. I’m tempted to pull a Mrs. Fields and bake something so the house smells homey and chocolately. All right, now THAT would be tacky. But I might stoop.

Sleepy. Completely uninteresting. My car is making brake-squealing noises (I love how my Petunia has never had one problem in her ten-year life, and only started asking me for money as soon as I started home-shopping) and I need to take it in on my way to work tonight. There’s something in me that actually likes to leave my car behind me while I take off on foot. Granted, it’s only leaving it at the shop and walking to work. But it makes me feel a tiny bit less reliant on my wheels. I am Californian. I have to have a car. I hate it, but it’s true. I asked Em, “Do you even KNOW anyone at home who has a car?” She thought about it and said, “I think I USED to. But not anymore.” Now that’s cool. And responsible. I’m really neither.

(I also really like the feeling I had once where I packed my suitcase, walked out my front door, down to BART, which took me to the airplane, which took me to Italy. It felt like I was walking out of the country. I can’t explain it more than that. But I like to start a trip on my own two feet, not speeding down a highway. Y’know?)

Hey! Bay Area knitters, don’t forget:

Knit-Out This Sunday!

Where: Temescal Cafe, next to Article Pract on Telegraph
When: Sunday, 1pm-4ish.

And Christina from Article Pract has again extended her VERY generous offer—anyone with our group gets 15% off any yarn purchase (sorry, no books). Dude. Even if we DIDN’T have a Special Guest Star coming, that would make it worth it.

Don’tcha wanna know who it is? Don’tcha? Hint: She likes cats. Hah! THAT should narrow it down a bit. Not many knitters like cats, nosireebob.

All right. Off to worry. I just posted an ad for my apartment—trying to get it rented by November 1st so I won’t have to deal with the lease for which I am still responsible. But I think my landlord has just priced it too high…. We’ll see. Sigh. This is going to be a tough month, I think. ** A few minutes later, I’ve had three great notes back about the place: one’s from Mayor Jerry Brown’s aide, and one’s from a sweet gal who’s looking to move in with her girlfriend. All in about ten minutes. This might just work out.

But there’s this part of me that knows that if I rent it to someone, then I HAVE to leave, and that’s the part that makes me stop breathing. Just for a second. And the realtor just called, saying that disclosures are ready for me to read in the office. What the hell does that mean? I am SO not grown-up enough yet to make these decisions. I forget to buy milk. And worse, cat food. Sheesh. Good thing I’m going back to work tonight. Nothing like stress to take your mind off stress.

I need to knit.

** Prelude: There is nothing, I repeat, NOTHING wrong with soccer moms. If you are one, you are a braver and stronger woman than I am, and I bow. I really do. But I ain’t one. That’s all this is to say. No offense meant. Back to our regularly scheduled programming. **

The other day I asked my friend Don (of the Dude Sweater) if he could picture me as a soccer mom. I said it with some attitude, I’m sure. I was positive I knew the response the question would engender. So I was really, really surprised when he said, “Well, yeah.”

Well, what?

I repeated this to the Divine Ms. Em while she was here. And she kinda looked at her feet and said something, “Ummm. You do have the hair, after all….”

The hair?

And then to Lala (why was I still expecting anyone to come to my aid?), I repeated the prior two exchanges. She helped me out by saying, “Well, your hair is kinda… sensible.” Em laughed. (Yeah, but were they laughing later? When I locked them out of the car and made them spell Albuquerque while rubbing their bellies and patting their heads? No, they weren’t laughing then. Uh-uh.)

This just wouldn’t do! Sensibility? Look at my yarn stash and tell me I’m sensible. MY kids wouldn’t play soccer, they’d have to spin fleece, four hours a day, right after kickboxing and just before harpsichord practice. Oh, cripes. That DOES sound rather sensible, doesn’t it?

Anyway, I went to the salon today. I had to. It was required. Enough of this cutting my own hair. I’d have a professional do it. I’d get something a little funky, a little On The Edge, a little punk, just a smidgen of wild and crazy. People would look at me on the street and think, “Hey. That’s a wild and crazy gal. I can tell by her wild and crazy hair. Yep. Wild and crazy, that one.” I can’t afford color right now, but I chose a fun salon, and my hair stylist was nineteen years old, with more than four colors in her hair.

We talked. I told her the whole story. I explained how I was cooler than my haircut would have others believe. She nodded. She said all the right things. She showed me the right pictures.

And then she cut my hair EXACTLY like I’ve been cutting it for the last eight months.

I mean, really. It’s thinned out a little, which is good because my hair is so damned heavy, but otherwise it’s the same freaking haircut. I didn’t know what to say when she spun me around. I think I just said, “Oh! Look at that! Wow!”

So I went to Longs and bought styling products. Because I think I might try that. Styling, I mean. Can’t hurt. Or I might go buy a soccer ball instead. And maybe a kid.

Em, with my George. She thought he was a little plant. She was slightly surprised.

Ahhh.

I’ve had a wonderful vacation. This whole staying-at-home thing is highly underrated, I think. Traveling is one of my most favorite things to do. But I guess I already knew that I’m a stay at home kind of gal. I’m a Cancer. We like our shells. And I’ve had SO much fun staying in mine recently.

Having Michelle here was wonderful. She just left this morning, and I meant to have a post together before she got home, but she’s already called from the taxicab, saying she was almost home, almost within reach of Scout’s little head. Bless this modern world.

Here she is, as seen over the top of Petunia, my car:

She’d never been to the West Coast before this trip, never seen the Pacific, never seen surfers (!), never ridden the ferry from Oakland to San Francisco, never seen the Golden Gate or Bay Bridges. She was such a good visitor, because she took such honest delight in everything. On the ferry to Fisherman’s Wharf I said, “Listen.” She heard the seals barking and her face just lit up.

(Oh, and I loved that while we were walking down the horribly tacky pier, full of stores that would be in any mall and music-box shops, she said, “Let’s go. I hate this. Can we see the seals?” The girl’s got her priorities straight.)

And how. We went from the wharf to the business district, riding the running board of a cable car, swinging from the poles. I still haven’t figured out how the city lets that happen—the liability must be HUGE from tourists dropping off and under Muni busses, but we both survived, even though the tips of my sneakers hit several construction cones. I actually whipped out the camera for a shot.

Where were we going? Why, Artfibers, of course! I like to think that I enable people to buy yarn, but really, I didn’t have to twist Michelle’s arm. Instead, Kira ended up writing ME a pattern while Michelle shopped away. Joanna met us there for a quick hello and actually managed to not buy anything, clever girl that she is. Lala met us there, too, and then we did a tour of Mission Dolores, the Castro, and the Mission where we had insanely good burritos and beer. We were wiped out, but happy.

The next day was for Mills, which Em will cover in her post, and driving down the coast. We put the top down on a gorgeous sunny afternoon which Em seemed to draw right out of the fog. We went and looked at surfer boys, and fondled yarn at Fengari in Half Moon Bay (we could have mixed the two verbs up, had we been thinking fast enough). Then, of course, it was farther south to Pescadero for olallieberry pie at Duartes. Oh. The joy of olallieberry pie. Oh. A moment of reverent silence, please.

Thanks.

On Saturday, we considered our Sunday. Sunday was going to be busy. No lying around on Sunday. So we had to get all our lying around done on Saturday. We did something touristy (oh, yes, looked at redwoods at Woodminster Amphitheatre (remember, Greta?)) and then went shopping for food and videos. We propped ourselves up on the couches with drinks and knitting and plenty of snacks (one of my mottoes in life: Plenty Of Snacks) and whiled the day away together. It was decadent and relaxing and utterly lovely.

Yesterday? Sunday? Yeah. I ran twenty miles.

Dude. Twenty miles. (Or as my coach said, “You didn’t just run twenty miles. You ran twenty fucking miles.” Yeah.) If you know the City, we went from the windmill in Golden Gate Park up the huge hill past the Cliff House and Sutro Baths, into Sutro Heights and back down, down the Great Highway for a few miles, doubling back again to the park, all the way through the park to the end (and around all the lakes), back out to Sunset, up to Vicente, then up to the zoo at Sloat and back to the windmill down the Great Highway again.

It was hard. But it wasn’t actually as hard as I thought it would be. Miles 15-17 were a breeze; I felt like I had just started. The last two miles, though, were exhausting. I thought I’d never see the end. When we passed the Beach Chalet where people were enjoying their Sunday brunch, I yelled “We just ran twenty miles! Twenty! Not ten! That’s like two tens! Together! Twenty!” I waved. They cheered. I don’t think they understood what I was saying, but they were happy. This is what my teammates looked like coming around that last bend, right before we went to play in the ocean:

Then I went BACK into Golden Gate Park to the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass event to see Gillian Welch play. Lala met me there, carting along not only Em, but her brother and sister-in-law and a big bag of FOOD. Lots of FOOD. Food, food, food. No one has ever looked better to me, and that was before the FOOD. Gillian Welch was amazing, as usual, but that brie? Don’t talk to me while I’m eating brie, okay? After twenty miles, you want to eat a lot. I’m just saying. A LOT.

Then later that night we had pizza with the little mama and Christy and Bethany, but I was really too tired to remember any of that, honestly. I think I was lying on the floor for most of it. I might have been twitching, I’m not really sure.

This has become a Very Long Post, and it contains a lot of “first we, then we, and then we” statements, which I sometimes find tiring, so I’ll end here. No news is good news on condo, hoping the deal will close by the end of this week or middle of next. Yow. Still trying not to think about it.

Mwah!

https://rachaelherron.com/em_with_my_geor/

Em‘s first time at the Pacific, ever.

Mwah!

https://rachaelherron.com/_ems_first_time/