Monday, March 25, 2013

The Next Big Thing




Spring
Hi friends!  It is spring, yes?  A splendid snowy crust lays over the ground.  It is freezing in Eastern Colorado and elsewhere, I hear.   

The Next Big Thing

J.L. Conrad (friend, sister-in-law, sister-in-the-arts) tagged me for a project called The Next Big Thing, in which writers answer a set of questions and link their posts to other writing friends.  It reminds me of chain-letters from second grade, mixed with newfangled promo just for fun. 

While I want to believe the title of the project refers to me, personally, I think it points to what I'm working on.  Damnit! 

I answered the questions in reference to a book I've started writing: Sut Nam Bonsai The Book.  Just kidding!  It is called something else, which you will see below. 

Like, right now.

1. What is the working title of your book? 
You Are the Song Behind the World, from Alice Water's memoir about her chickens.  (She says this to her chickens, which I think is beyond generous, and possibly true.) 

I wrote more about Alice and her chickens here.

2. Where did the idea come from for the book?
From where most of my ideas come from: watching people do stuff and thinking, I want to do that!  In this case, it came from watching my friend Amelia go through the process of pitching a food memoir to agents and reading some of her chapters from that process, feeling totally snuggled into them, devouring the stories she was feeding me.  I have always loved memoirs, and I have been writing a series of personal essays for the past five years.  I finally realized I have been circling the same stories over and over, stories that want to be pinned down somehow.  One essay in particular has been dogging me forever, and I think it is because I've been trying to cram a book-length story into one essay. 

We'll see, when I write the full-length work, if that is true or not. 

Finally, I had a couple of dreams signaling me to work some of the themes I blog about into a full-length book. And while that sounds positively Joseph Smith-ish, taking directions from visions and dreams, that's sometimes how I roll.

3.  What genre does your book fall under?
Memoir and personal essay.  While I am always interested in matters of the spirit, my work takes the form of story-telling more than inspiration or religious inquiry.

4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

I think about this question all the time for a novel I wrote, but I've never thought about it for this book. Hmm. I want to say Emma Stone, because who doesn't want Emma Stone to play them in something?  Blythe Danner is too advanced in years to play my mother but maybe she could cameo in my grandmother's role.  Tim would be played by my newest crush Joel Kinnaman from Lola Versus.  And a more obedient dog would have to play Bear. 

I'd also like Lauren Ambrose to play my sister-in-law Jenny, because they just might be the only women in the world with such voluptuous facial features and striking red hair.  But so far Jenny doesn't have any scenes in my book - which I'm sure relieves her - so that part is pure fantasy.

5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Woman faces adulthood, realizes she's shit out of luck.

But, since that's the kind of synopsis that gets your proposal rejected, how about:

Cancer, poverty, and estrangement conspire to teach one woman who she is, and restore her life to a balance she found impossible before those visitors arrived. 

6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
I hope it will be represented by an agency.  That's the aim, anyway.

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
I will report back on this.  I am gathering the material now - I haven't even started writing yet.  Posting this makes me feel like Miranda July in her film The Future, where she announces plans for an ambitious 30-day video series and then is overcome by crushing doubt and disgust with the process.  I have announced twice before that I was writing a book - one was a book about my grandmother, the other was a novel.  I wrote the novel, but the book about my grandmother stalled out when I realized I couldn't say everything I needed to say in a form she was going to read and also because my interview subject proved taciturn.  (On the topic of why my grandfather was passionate about his post with the Navy, for instance, my grandmother replied, "He just liked it." She then got up to stir her oatmeal - question answered.) Who knows, maybe some of that material will make it into this project but a lot of it, I eventually realized, belonged left at a kitchen table.

8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
I like to think of this as Just Kids without the hunger pangs, drafty studios, abortion, or abundance of famous people.  In other words, they are nothing alike, except that I am mining the events that shaped me as an artist.

I would also compare this to Molly Wizenberg's A Homemade Life, Elizabeth J Andrew's On the Threshold, and Cheryl Strayed's Wild - in that it combines stories of the writing life with an exploration of family, what it means to be a woman in an increasingly busy world, and how creating things can literally save a life. 

9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?
All the authors mentioned above plus Amelia Morris, the author Laura Munson, and especially my boss, who is a great inspiration and friend to me. 

10. What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?
There will be nudity in this book.  Lots and lots of nudity. 

Honestly,
this book is a love story.  I find it increasingly important to create spaces where people can explore their fears and settle into their skins.  Telling the story of how I have been able to do that is the best way I know to open people's hearts to this possibility. 

I tagged Amelia, obviously.

Who Gives A Sh*t - Feminism for the New World Order
Speaking of what it means to be a woman in an increasingly busy world, Roxane Gay wrote a reaction to a New York Magazine story about feminism, post-feminism, and women who like to sew things.  I like Roxane and think you should, too.  (Incidentally, I also like sewing things.) 

Click here to read her beautiful rant, in which she says, "Stay at home, work outside the home, take your husband’s name or don’t, shave your legs or don’t, wear make up and high heels or don’t, but for the love of god, let’s advance the conversation. We can do it."

Also, whoever you are, thank you for reading this.  I wish for your exceptional happiness.  And while I am overjoyed that you have visited this site, I would have wished that for you anyway.

With love,
Kara

 


 

Friday, March 8, 2013

Cake



Good morning little birds!  It is one of Homer's classic rosy-fingered dawns over here today (except, do not say rosy-fingered anything, am I right?). 

I just wanted to say hello.  I have been on February's sweet roller coaster which passed through and by Valentine's, my 35th birthday, many cakes and flowers and chocolate bon bons, and a surgery and teeth cleaning for my old pup who sadly did not get to share in any of the chocolate treats.  I realized yesterday that it is March and I am still in my February pajamas.  Do you know what I mean?  I don't have pajamas for every month of the year, but I dunno, maybe we all should. 

What I'm trying to say is, I've been sleeping a lot.  And eating cheese and bread, and drinking tea with Tim and going to work and writing letters and listening to the same cd in my car for a week and reading in bed. The stuff of February pajamas.  But now it's March and even though it's supposed to snow up to a foot tonight, I swear I feel Spring in the air.  This week, I opened the back door and found a fat robin pecking the needles under our backyard pine.  The robin looked at me.  I looked at the robin, a quizzical pause for everyone. 

Speaking of birds, I am newly obsessed with geese.  I love their perfect glossed bodies and pitch-black necks, their impending attacks and fearsome size.  I kind of want to throw a net around one and put it in the oven, fairy tale style, you know?  Even though I won't because I think it's illegal to do that.  But when a gaggle of them crosses the gas station parking lot while I pump gas, I can't believe people just go about the business of buying their Twix and cigarettes and Gatorade and Lotto tickets without stopping and watching the waddling parade. 

I was swimming in the Poudre last year, which occurs to me now, after a summer of wildfires and ashy run-off maybe that wasn't such a great idea, and a great blue heron circled the trees above my head, cawing and crackling with such prehistoric awesomeness my teeth might have fallen out of my head for a second.  My jaw certainly dropped to the river rocks below. 

What I'm saying here is, miracles abound, and go about their wild, wind-filled business all around us poor suckers on the ground. 

What I'm saying here is, I like birds.

In other news, I wrote a guest post on the blog of a hero of mine!  It was a total honor to be part of Laura Munson's wintertime project, where she goes into the woods to write and hands over her blog space to guest posts centered around a collective theme.  You can find my post, about my husband's bout with cancer and my long-overdue pact with myself, here

Also, do yourself a favor and read Laura's book, This Is Not the Story You Think It Is - A Season of Unlikely Happiness.  It is stunning, and I won't stop talking about it until you read it, okay?


Finally, yesterday I re-watched a Ted Talk by Brene Brown that adrenalized my heart.  You can watch it here, where she says such gems as: 

Connection is why we're here 
What are we doing with vulnerability?  Why do we struggle with it so much?
To feel this vulnerable means I’m alive.

Sending big love from the feet of big mountains
XOXO
Kara

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Summer

Half Eagle Pose

Full Eagle Shirt

 2 Kids in a National Park
When I was little, my brother and I loved Will Smith's song, Summertime.  (Or is it Summa-time?  Just kidding.  Also, Google just let me know it's a DJ Jazzy Jeff & Fresh Prince song.  Sorry, Jazzy!  My bad.) 

Lately, I've been feeling ready for summer.  I know, it's weird.  The winter addict is preparing for raspberry season!  It's true.  And, after last summer's debacles, I find it promising that, as the calendar pages turn, my veins itch a little, no longer clinging to the constriction of cold, but anticipating the swell that heat brings. 

In the spirit of summer, therefore, I give you a Kenneth Rexroth poem, from The Phoenix & The Tortoise:

From "...about the cool water"
by Kenneth Rexroth

"...about the cool water
the wind sounds through sprays
of apple, and from the quivering leaves
slumber pours down..."

We lie here in the bee filled, ruinous
Orchard of a decayed New England farm,
Summer in our hair, and the smell
Of summer in our twined bodies,
Summer in our mouths, and summer
In the luminous, fragmentary words
Of this dead Greek woman.
Stop reading. Lean back. Give me your mouth.
Your grace is as beautiful as sleep.
You move against me like a wave
That moves in sleep.
Your body spreads across my brain
Like a bird filled summer;
Not like a body, not like a separate thing,
But like a nimbus that hovers
Over every other thing in all the world.
Lean back. You are beautiful,
As beautiful as the folding
Of your hands in sleep.

From The Phoenix & The Tortoise.  Copyright 1944 by New Directions.


Speaking of Kenneth Rexroth, who resisted the reputation that followed him as the "father of The Beats" (good for him!  who doesn't want a movement named after themselves?!), I watched Magic Bus recently, the movie about Ken Kesey and his friends' trip across America.  I have a crush on Kesey, I'm realizing.  The movie is pretty silly but worth the watch, and remarkable most of all because they flew an American flag from the top of the bus while doing blush-worthy amounts of drugs.  My heart sort of swelled (there's that word again!  Ready for summer, I tell you) when I saw this - and I think that's what moves me about Kesey so much: his idealism, his willingness to plunge naked into the well of his ideas.  There is an innocence to his muscular actions that I admire. 


I'm not endorsing blush-worthy amounts of drugs, by the way, but I was struck by the fact that the early 60s were crazy innocent, and hatred for hippie ideals wasn't yet cemented in the American consciousness.  I love and identify with a lot of rural spaces and values, but I also believe in some New Age principles that might horrify a lot of people in those spaces. This marriage in the movie of the flag with the wilderness of their zonked-out exploration of life just stuck with me.  
Let's take back the American flag, I say!  Why does it have to stand for weird conservative scariness? 

Although, I did cry at the Budweiser Clydesdale commercial during the Super Bowl, I must confess.

And so.  With all sorts of weird imagery - naked Ken Keseys, dead Greek women, DJ Jazzy Jeff, etc etc - I leave you to your splendid day.  May it be wondrous and full of your wild machinations.

Love,
Kara 

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Shedding Skin

The Language of Sky
Ally Acker

I've moved on.  I hope you can too.
And just like that, I am lost.
It is possible we will not meet
again in this life. Only the naked sky connecting
our far away worlds. When I get up lonely I look up.
How are you feeling?  Are you happy?
Nothing. Blue, blank, benign stare. I plead with the air.
But it's no use. I am like a leaf floating.
A disciple of wind. Devotee of neither branch
nor ground.
Little by little, I learn to take the sky at its word.

~Published in The Sun, January 2013~

I. Marriage



Not long ago, I rode an airport shuttle bus with a once famous yoga teacher who recently became more famous for the kinds of things most people don't want to be known for: sleeping with students, evading financial queries, courting married women.  I had trouble
staying in conversation with Tim, who didn't recognize the famous person.  Sticking out the top of my backpack was my incense-scorched yoga mat (which I have no recollection of ever purchasing - it seemed to be in my house one day, and has stuck around since like one more welcome misfit), but I felt myself prickling in the famous yogi's company.  I thought about the rumors that had swirled, and how I had once taken a workshop with him and had grown numb with boredom, and how he had pressed his foot into one of his older teachers to nudge her into a pose - making the audience laugh, at the teacher's expense. 

When the irritating trill that accompanies the sight of a famous person finally subsided in my skull, I kept thinking about my original thoughts when news of the man's transgressions had first broken in the yoga world.  Aside from the smug, I knew it!! I had allowed myself, I had grown obsessed with recent thoughts the man had shared about commitment, in which he suggested that vows be made and renewed for short amounts of time.  I remembered feeling sad that someone would take what I saw as such a cynical view of commitment, and marveled at how much someone's take on marriage could differ from my own experience of it. 

Photo credit: here!

I had also recently watched Michael Powell's stunning film, Black Narcissus, about a group of nuns living in rustic severity in the Himalayas who renew their vows every year.  Aside from the scenery, the bizarre plots, and safari shorts on the astoundingly tan David Farrar, I had been fairly piqued by this idea that some vows had expiration dates. 


I thought of how, when the famous man's bad news broke, my marriage had just been sneaking up on its two year mark.  I thought about how marriage's demands on my life had already fortified me in amazing ways. 

Around the same time that the yoga world was rocked by this man's scandal, news was also breaking about Seal and Heidi Klum's dissolving marriage.  (If I had to enumerate all the ways that Tim is like Seal and I am like Heidi Klum, we would be here all night.  You'll just have to take my word for it.) 

Some horrible magazine that makes its money on other people's misery (and which I love to read in the supermarket line, to Tim's mortification) had wickedly reminisced about the celebrity couple's festive vow-renewal ceremony, which they undertook every year. 

Normally I was not so quick to say that People magazine had a good point.  I had to admit, though: they kind of did.  There seemed to be something inherently insecure in the need to re-make wedding vows every year.  The whole point of marriage to me was the million and five ways I kept choosing faithfulness, the tiny moments of choice that built into a day and chiseled my relationship.

Sometimes, at the end of the day, my choices have sanded my life into a sparkling little gem.  Other days (and, let's be honest, most days) all I've got is a warmish, lumpen thing.  But it's mine, my one pellucid vessel.  And maybe this is how I'm coming to love my life the most - as a gift, something that is all mine, something of which I get to make whatever I want. 

I can now see, too, how we were all saying the same thing - me, Seal, Heidi, the fallen yogi.  However you do it, it's good to keep things fresh.  Every day, you get to decide what to do.  That is the prize we're all hopefully moving towards.  That is how meaning is made.

2. Snake Skin


On a totally different topic, I went to a yoga class tonight, after being saddled with a cold and my cycle and several weeks of recovering from carbohydrate-laden travel.  In the middle of class, I flew in Crow pose, which has been eluding me for the past couple of months.  As soon as my mind recognized that my whole body was resting lightly on my arms, I came crashing down.  But for a minute, I was all core heat, flying up from my wrists. 

It was a shocking, delightful thing.  After feeling that flight, this quote speaks to me:

"We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.  The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come."  - Joseph Campbell

I kind of love that guy.

3. Risk Being Over the Top


And, in the same vein as flying in the face of pre-conceptions, I once read some advice about writing that I really liked. 

Here is what I liked:


"I believe writers should risk being over the top. Charles Baxter says something similar in his wonderful book of essays Burning Down the House. You don't want to descend into sentimentality, but it's worse, I would argue, if your work lacks sentiment. And in order to get sentiment, you have to risk sentimentality."

I like this advice for writing, and I also like it for life, because I often have the urge to holler ridiculous, devotional things into the phone when talking to my friends.  Most of the time, wild laughter suffices, instead of language.  I haven't hit the age yet where I care more about sharing my heart than about looking foolish.  I'm still guarding things (although I also routinely look foolish - what the heck!!). 

So if you're out there, and you're my friend, know that every time we talk, I'm thinking about how much I god-damn love you, and I'm working up the nerve to say something about it. 


In the meantime, may we all get better at breaking across the fears that keep us from surrendering to our deep, mysterious ways.  I'll be working on it in my little corner, at least.

With love and lingering winter light,
Kara

Thursday, December 27, 2012

Wait for Love





It is a well-documented fact that I Heart Winter.  My inner polar bear, blood-thirsting animal that she is, loves the silence, the arctic space that yawns open when the world turns white.  And, when a drought camps on my state and pins its blonde reeds to their blushing browns, I stare at the geese cackling over head, and beg their webbed feet to bring sheets of ice to the next pond they land upon. 

Winter promises quiet: forest floors heavy with rest.  Cold air pinches my skin, stars glitter in the exposed sky, and buttery, potato-centered meals take center stage.  But how can you explain love?  You can only live inside its body, feel what it is like to live there.

And, sometimes, you can turn to the person next to you and say, Did you feel that?


I re-read Michael Cunningham's story White Angel recently, and loved the lines, Our mother brings out our father...a formerly handsome man. His face has been worn down by too much patience... 

I loved these lines because they speak of too much virtue, of bowing outward for others so much that the radiant self is lost. 

In my life, I have had to learn how to say No, how to speak up for myself, how to be a little unkind.  Some of these lessons were born of battle scars - a boyfriend cheating on me, pariahic friendships, too much time lost serving other people's needs - and some were born out of leaning in to my heart, learning her language, and building the space around her to keep our connection strong. 

Our own space is where we all belong.  
 

Put another way:

Correcting oneself is correcting the whole world. The sun is simply bright. It does not correct anyone. Because it shines, the whole world is full of light. Transforming yourself is a means of giving light to the whole world.
       -
Bhagavan Ramana Maharishi


And so! May you light a candle for your dreams this week, and burn it all year long.

With love & snow-covered tree limbs,
Kara 

  

  

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Ode to Sexuality

Leonard Commits Redeeming Adulteries with All the Women in Town
by Louise Erdrich

When I take off my glasses, these eyes are dark magnets
that draw the world into my reach.
First the needles, as I walk the quiet streets,
work their way from the cushions of dust.
The nails in the rafters twist laboriously out
and the oven doors drop
an inch open.
The sleep smell of yesterday's baking
rises in the mouth.
A good thing.

The street lamps wink off just at dawn,
still they bend their stiff necks like geese drinking.
My vision is drinking in the star-littered lawn.
When the porch ivy weaves to me -
Now is the time.
Women put down their coffee cups, all over town.
Men drift down the sidewalks, thinking,
What did she want?
But it is too late for husbands.
Their wives do not question

what it is that dissolves
all reserve.  Why they suddenly think of cracked Leonard.
They uncross themselves, forsaking
all protection. They long to be opened and known
because the secret is perishable, kept, and desire
in love with its private ruin.
I open my hands and they come to me, now.
In our palms dark instructions that cannot be erased,
only followed, only known along the way.

And it is right, oh women of the town, it is right.
Your mouths, like the seals of important documents
break for me, destroying the ring's raised signature,
the cracked edges melting to mine.

Um.  Hi.  Before we go any further, can I just put this little disclaimer on my reckless post?  I am a supremely happily married woman, and think adultery is a one-way ticket to misery, an idiotic choice to poop where you eat.  I chose Louise Erdrich's poem (and all her work, again and again) for its portrait of desire, and exploration of taboo.  These are very sexy things. 

And I believe in sexiness.  So there.

In the long tradition I have of saying what I was going to do, and then not doing it, I was going to title this post, Ode to Tantra, because I've lately been reflecting on the utter bliss that the union of masculine and feminine brings in the world.  And before we get all off course with that little topic, I mean this energetically - although of course physically it's all pretty great too.  (Horn blow.)



I'm not sure, as a culture, we've traditionally been taught to bring these two energies - which reside in all of us - together.  But I think that's changing.  A lot.  My best friends, men and woman, all accomplish this feat.  My husband is the better cook.  I am the stubborn bull in the family.  My brothers taught me, early, how kind and generous a man can be.  My favorite leaders kneel before their mothers.  The divine Liberty statue is unrolling her great coat.  Waves across the country. 

What else?  I overheard a friend say that Annie Proulx once said in an interview that she writes about men so much because she likes men.  That's right, I thought.  She also said something obnoxious and perhaps true, that she writes about rural communities and men in rural communities do the interesting work: outside the house. 

And I was thinking, yes.  I like men, too, Annie.  I get it.  But you know what I like most?  Men who respect women.  Men who get that there is a feminine part to them.  Female leaders who roar, and let themselves be seen.  My towering coworker who can and does kick the crap out of the men she works with, from whom I'd like a lesson in makeup. 

I think what I'm trying to say is, Life Is Hot.  And I'm glad I'm here. 

XXOO

(xxx)

*Kara


Saturday, November 10, 2012

Ode to My Husband


Love Poem
by Kathleen Raine

Yours is the face that the earth turns to me.
Continuous beyond its human features lie
The mountain forms that rest against the sky.
With your eyes, the reflecting rainbow, the sun's light
See me; forest and flowers, bird and beast
Know and hold me forever in the world's thought,
Creation's deep untroubled retrospect.

When your hand touches mine, it is the earth
That takes me - the deep grass,
And rocks and rivers; the green graves,
And children still unborn, and ancestors,
In love passed down from hand to hand from God.
Your love comes from the creation of the world,
From those paternal fingers, streaming through the clouds
That break with light the surface of the sea.

Here, where I trace your body with my hand,
Love's presence has no end;
For these, your arms that hold me, are the world's.
In us, the continents, clouds and oceans meet
Our arbitrary selves, extensive with the night,
Lost, in the heart's worship, and the body's sleep.




"Art is a flower which opens freely, outside of all rules."  -Odilon Redon


This week, I had the idea to write a post about the man behind my success as a human being - my husband, Tim.  Then I became a horrendous nag, griping about the state of our living room floor (its blond beams perpetually under a foot of hair, thanks to our generous border collie / shepherd).  In addition to making me feel like a real shithead, my nagging reminded me once again how much Tim puts up with / ignores / laughs off - and for this, I'd like to give the kid a shout-out.

I'm not saying I'm an unholy beast to get along with, or that Tim is an angel, or anything like that.  But often when I think about the things I do that take great courage, I know that my ability to leap comes from the stability that my life with Tim provides me.  I have been known to call him the more practical one in the relationship, but the truth is, he is the romantic, too, and an incredible source of adventure in our lives. 

The thing that stands out to me, however, is how much he believes in my strength, and freedom.  And this is something every man should get credit for - because honoring wild beauty in a woman is deep medicine for all of us. 

So...to a man who builds a home with me every day, and reminds me always to make one first in my heart.  To my husband, Tim (aka: Mr. Putt-Putt).
 





To your teachers, however they appear,
Kara