page-a-day life
pivot moments + bottled salad dressing will be dead to you after you make this vinaigrette
Bonjour-Bonjour,
When I was in second grade I was in love with my teacher. I remember exactly nothing about her. All I know is that I loved school and I loved her. I loved the SRA reading crates in the back of the classroom where I could read at my own pace. I loved the rug where we flopped on our stomachs to read. When my mother and I had to move, again, I was crushed. On my last day this teacher, who must have recognized something in me, gave me a Five Year Diary. It had a tiny padlock with a key as light as a cat’s tongue. Each day had room for only a few scribbled words.
Today I rode my bike to the corner. Uncle Joe helped me.
Today was not good. I hate chili.
Today I had a Starburst and Karma slept on my bed.
(Yes, my mother named our cat Karma. When she died, with my 8 year old logic I feared it was because I had forgotten to fill her water dish…my bad karma became Karma’s bad karma?)
Soon I lost the key to the diary and had to cut open the leather strap with a pair of pinking shears, ruining the entire thing. Now that it was no longer perfect, I lost interest. However, something about page-a-day stuck with me.
…
For decades, on and off, I’ve written morning pages as directed by Julia Cameron’s, THE ARTIST’S WAY.
In my thirties I leaned hard on Mark Nepo’s, BOOK OF AWAKENING for daily guidance.
Other books I’ve come to love on the daily:
From the poet Ross Gay, THE BOOK OF DELIGHTS, and THE BOOK OF (MORE) DELIGHTS which are both, well… delightful.
Then there was the utter failure of A YEAR WITH RILKE: Daily Readings from the Best of Rainer Maria Rilke – A Timeless Guide to Solitude and the Divine Through His Luminous Poetry and Prose, by Anita Barrows. I just couldn’t. Partly because I felt I had to start on 1 January rather than meet myself where I was on 14 May (Hello ridiculous perfectionism)! But also because the book was too highfalutin for me. I dispatched it to a little free library in my neighborhood.
…
Why am I telling you all this? Because I want to break up with my phone in the morning. I’d like my “first thing input” to be a little more enriching than headlines and NYTs games. More nourishing than instagram. So, just now I’ve started a new morning tradition of reading a page-a-day from two books. They’re just below in the read section.
I’ve also got a bit of writing wisdom from an obit writer.
Finally, a recipe for salad dressing not to be missed!
read:
FEAST ON YOUR LIFE, by Tamar Adler is, like life, hit and miss. Some days I’m very moved by the small delights she has discovered. Adler began this project to fill a need, she’d misplaced joy and contentment in the day to day of kitchening. So, she began to keep a journal of pleasures. Here is a sample from 14 May:
I saw a photo of a thousand-year-old olive tree. I imagined I could taste the milk-green oil its olives would produce. Why is it so hard to honor the duality of age? Of hard wear and sweetness? We do not fault an old olive tree or an old vine for its gnarls and knots. Wallace Stevens wrote: Let be be finale of seem. The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream. I say: Let us drink the milk-green oil and see the tree, and learn something about appearance and worth. And learn something about seem and be.
I love the mystery of her words… of Wallace Stevens’ words. Stevens said poetry should resist intelligence, and the line “Let be be the finale of seem,” for me is just such a tease. In the context of the ancient olive tree, the line seems to unshackle us from expectations of perpetual youth. Let realism, let being, take over for seeming, and by seeming, I mean the false idealism of youthful beauty, which by nature is fleeting.
Isn’t this better than headlines? Mystery and olive oil, value of aging… Read the poem, The Emperor of Ice Cream, here.
I’m finding my own petits plaisirs in reading from the book each morning. Perhaps I will be moved to write my own kitchen diary. If this is your jam, I wholeheartedly recommend Laurie Colwin’s, HOME COOKING, and MORE HOME COOKING.
…
My sister-in-law gave me HOW TO LIVE AN ARTFUL LIFE- 366 Inspirations From Artists on How to Bring Creativity to Your Everyday, by Katy Hessel. This page a day introduces you to an artist and shares a thought to incorporate in one’s own making/living.
6 May brings us Leonora Carrington who said, “I didn’t have time to be anyone’s
muse… I was too busy rebelling against my family and learning to be an artist.”
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I encourage you to read these books (all books!) with a pen in hand. Jot down your thoughts, your inspirations, desires, and yes, worries. Right there in the book. See how you are moved to know yourself better.
Opportunities to engage in the r.w.e. community:
Mentor Book Group— in which we read memoirs, personal growth books and discuss what we might like to adopt in our own “work-in-progress” lives. THE CREATIVE ACT, A WAY OF BEING, by Rick Rubin, will be our May book, meeting on 31 May at 9a pacific time. Love to have you join us.
If you’d like to discuss books with me and a group of smart and lively readers, the r.w.e. book group selection for May is THIS IS NOT ABOUT US, by Allegra Goodman. We will meet Sunday, 17 May, at 9a pacific time on zoom. Want to join in?
The book groups are a perk for paid subscribers. I’d love to get to know you better:
Thank you in advance for sharing your love!
write:
I sat in on an obituary writer’s talk about what makes a good obit. He said, without a doubt, it is uncovering the pivot moment in the subject’s life, the moment that changes everything. He expressed the particular joy of digging in, of speaking to family, friends and associates to find the ‘thing.’
What could it be? The moment your subject realized their parents were not who they thought they were, either genetically or politically? Perhaps the moment the subject discovered they truly had a ticking clock, an illness that limited their life. Or, their sudden and undeniable love of another country, another person, another gender, furless dogs? A mental health diagnosis that explained it all. A marriage. A birth. A fire. An unquenchable yearning. Whatever it is, they recognized that their life was never to be the same.
In your project—be it novel, story, memoir, or personal essay—is there such a moment? How did the moment change the character - even if the character is you or someone you love.
Often in short stories that moment is merely a glimmer or a gesture of the life ahead. I’m thinking here of stories in Allegra Goodman’s, THIS IS NOT ABOUT US, in which aged sisters are torn apart over a recipe for apple cake and refuse to comfort one another at a funeral; in which a recent college graduate, lost in malaise of indecision, is jolted awake over the loss of an heirloom violin; and in another story, a young girl understands something about herself, mid-leap, in ballet class.
In Heather Aimee O'Neill’s novel, THE IRISH GOODBYE, it is a brother’s death by suicide that is the pivot moment for an entire family.
In RAISING HARE, it is the discovery of a leveret on her nightly walk that creates a before and after for the writer, Chloe Dalton, as she chooses to care for the creature and hence changes her entire relationship with the natural world.
I wonder what your pivot moment is/was/will be? Certainly we are allowed more than one!
Care to share?
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To discover pivot points in your writing, to explore ideas, to jump in with both feet, I’m offering:
shoot me a note to sign up!
eat:
Don’t be afraid of making your own salad dressing. Here is a recipe for a vinaigrette that I use nearly every day and you can personalize to make it your very own house brand!
Salad-a-Day Vinaigrette
1 lg shallot, minced
2 T plus 1 teaspoon aged sherry vinegar (more as needed)
1 T warm water
1 c extra-virgin olive oil
1½ t Dijon mustard
1½ t whole-grain mustard
1½ t honey
2 sprigs thyme, wash and strip the tiny leaves from the twigs*
1 lg clove garlic, finely grated
Salt and freshly ground black pepper*
Place the shallot in a medium bowl. Add vinegar and warm water. Allow to sit for 5 minutes, then whisk in oil, mustards, honey, thyme, garlic and a large pinch of salt. Taste, and adjust salt and vinegar as needed.
**Feel free to mix it up with the soft herbs. I’ve been known to add a mix of julienned flat leaf parsley, a pinch of mint, basil, and dill. In general I go heavy on the herbs, adding perhaps 2-3 T. Go wild! See what is growing in your garden (or your best friend’s garden) or beautifully bunched at the farmer’s market.
I’ve also been known to add a splash of soy sauce in lieu of the salt. Just a few drops to make the dressing a wee more complex.
Cheers to you and your first bite!
Stanley, blending in:
If you find yourself regularly reading and enjoying my work and you’d like to show some thanks, you can do so with this charming button:
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…
Thanks for being here with me.
Tell your people you love them, and take care of your skin!
PS:
In case you missed it, here are a couple recent missives:
And, to stay in the loop:
It's always fun to hear about other people's morning routines and their creative journey. And it's a gentle reminder that nothing stays the same, even us.
"In your project—be it novel, story, memoir, or personal essay—is there such a moment? How did the moment change the character - even if the character is you or someone you love." So great - thanks so much for this!