thank goodness I stuck around long enough to change my own mind!
+ comfort pasta, comfort books, and softening at my writing desk
hey-ho,
First thought best thought? Not always. In fact, often an emphatic no.
When everyone else in my tween cohort was lit up by Ziggy Stardust, I clung tight to my three record set of Fred Astaire music! Not that Astaire is a slouch by any means, but, come on, he did nothing to advance my cool credibility. I was such a dork. I eschewed David Bowie, instead choosing to tap dance and sing along with Mr. Astaire. Particularly I loved this:
So suave! So debonair and agile. I wanted to be like him. A confident cool cucumber who never got riled up and always had a dance in his back pocket.
Thank goodness my knee jerk rejection of David Bowie wasn’t permanent. As soon as I discovered Hunky Dory, he took permanent residence on my portable record player.
I wasn’t tap dancing to David Bowie. I was lying on the cruddy indoor/outdoor carpet on my bedroom floor, earnestly singing with my eyes closed, feeling so seen!
I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream of warm impermanence and
So the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware of what they're going through
Yes! I was quite aware of what I was going through, thank you very much!
…
And, it wasn’t just first thoughts about music that steered me wrong. I remember hating coffee, mushrooms, and hiking at first brush. I disliked Sherlock Holmes, soft boiled eggs, flannel sheets, documentaries, and tattoos.
When our daughter was around 17 she wanted a tattoo. “Please not a tramp stamp!” I blurted. (Not proud of that one. So much ugly judgment and condescension wrapped in that comment.)
It’s permanent, I thought. What if she changes her mind about her choice? Of course she’d change her mind about her choice! And of course because it is her body (hello autonomy! hello agency!) she got a tattoo. A delicate blue spiral on her forearm. When I asked her what it meant she cocked an eyebrow at me… okay, fair. It really wasn’t my business. But then said something along the lines of, “I like spirals. They’re beautiful. They are how I sometimes think.”
My daughter’s tattoo is beautiful.
This week I learned from
that spirals were carved in cave walls around 3000BC. She also quoted one of my favorite artists, Louis Bourgeois, who said:The spiral is an attempt at controlling the chaos.
With my daughter’s tattoo, with my opinions about David Bowie and coffee and hiking, my first thought wasn’t my best thought.
And here’s something else about first thoughts. We are conditioned by family culture, by stereotypes, by our experiences, by the news we consume, and by prejudice. If you find you have an ugly response to someone’s hairstyle or piercing, the way someone voted, who they love, nascar, what bathroom someone uses, a graffiti artist’s work, or a person living rough, your first thought may surprises you, maybe you’re super judgmental in your head, maybe you’re embarrassed by your own harsh inflexibility, how about offering little empathy for yourself in the moment. Please, don’t beat yourself up for your knee jerk response. Certainly don’t speak your first thought aloud, don’t act on upon it, just notice it. Wonder where it came from. Stick around in your head long enough to ch-ch-ch-change. (See how I quoted Bowie there!) Show yourself some grace, and then act on your second thought. Say your second thought aloud. I wish I hadn’t expressed my judgy opinion about tattoos to my daughter. But I did. I’m learning.
What about you? What is something you thought you disliked that you came to love? When did you change your own mind?
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read:
I would never arrange my books by color, but/and the books I’m reading right now happen to all be yellow, just like my favorite mug.
MARTYR! by Kaveh Akbar is already a wild ride and I’m just ten pages in. Why do I feel compelled to push it into your hands already? Well, because of this review from NPR:
Engaging and wildly entertaining, Martyr!… focuses on very specific stories while discussing universal feelings. It celebrates language while delving deep into human darkness… It brilliantly explores addiction, grief, guilt, sexuality, racism, martyrdom, biculturalism, the compulsion to create something that matters, and our endless quest for purpose in a world that can often be cruel and uncaring.
And because of this opening line:
Maybe it was that Cyrus had done the wrong drugs in the right order, or the right drugs in the wrong order, but when God finally spoke to him after twenty-seven years of silnce, what Cyrus wanted more than anything else was a do-over.
DO ONE THING EVERY DAY THAT MAKES YOU HAPPY, A Journal. This little journal is full of quirky, sometimes corny, mostly inspiring quotes with a tiny bit of space for you to respond.
“Just because you are happy doesn’t mean the day is perfect, you have looked beyond its imperfections.” -Bob Marley
“Happiness is a thing to be practiced, like the violin.” -Sir John Lubbock
“The best response to feeling sad is to learn something new.” -T.H. White
“No one in this world needs a mink coat except a mink.” -Murray Banks
I’m rereading THE SOUVENIR MUSEUM, by Elizabeth McCracken. Why, you may wonder, am I rereading a book when my TBR pile of unread books is massive? One word, comfort.
I love McCracken’s work. She’s original, lively, and so so human(e). I yearn for the moral universe of her stories. She is also very funny. Her sentences crackle! Consider please:
Imagine a life in which you could approach a minibar with no trepidation or guilt whatsoever.
Gravity is hilarious until it kills you.
Indeed, she could hear the barking dog of his heart, wanting an answer. Her heart snarled back, but tentatively.
Also, her characters are complicated people who want complicated things like family, acceptance, home. You cannot go wrong with this short story collection.
…
Do you have a book you return to for comfort? Please, do tell!
Want more community in 2025? We have zoom r.w.e. book group! Every month we discuss a novel or memoir on a Sunday morning. I’ve got something exciting up my sleeve for February, including a visit from the author.
The book group is a perk for paid subscribers and let me tell you we are a lively bunch!
Go ahead, upgrade to paid and claim your spot. I hope to get to know you better!
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write :
I’ve been thinking about a soft approach to hard times. The year ahead… it’s already challenging… those horrendous wildfires and massive losses in Los Angeles, January 20 looms. I feel like a creme brûlée, just crack my outside with a spoon and you’ll discover I’m pretty gooey.
How, you wonder, does that relate to writing? Well, along with giving up a 12k daily step count goal, and a 52 books a year reading goal, (I just want to walk and read for pleasure, not to tick off something on my to do list), I’m giving up my word count goal for a writing session. I want to take time to cultivate a higher state of awareness when I’m at my desk. I want to maintain an open mind and empathy for my characters. What will that look like? I’ll strive to more fully inhabit them. Maybe keeping these questions front of mind:
Where are the characters in space and time? What does the setting mean for my characters? When I know this, the setting comes to life.
What are they touching?
What do they want?
Who are they with? Who do they want to be with?
What are they afraid to say?
How does it feel to be them in this moment? How does it feel to be inside the experience unfolding on the page?
For that last one, we have to exercise three important muscles: OBSERVATION and CURIOSITY and PATIENCE.
The writer Willa Cather says:
“A writer is at her best only when writing w/in the character and range of her deepest sympathies.”
What does this mean to you? To me it means we must strive to be receptive and to understand. If we’re speeding along to meet an arbitrary word count goal, how will we get beyond our ‘first thoughts’ to discover something deeper about motivation and conflict and desire. How will we remain open to a new and better understanding?
I’m not saying our characters have understand their actions and be evolved, but we writers have to be evolved. We have to sit with our characters and love them for their human foibles and their selfish gaffs, especially if they’re assholes! As a reader I love to hate an asshole in a novel. But we writers have to love and understand them, after all, they’re our assholes!
Speaking of… Ernest Hemingway said, “The job of the writer is to seek to understand.” How in the world can I understand my characters if I’m rushing? My advice then, go soft. Take time. Lift your hands from the keyboard, close your eyes. Put yourself there. How does it feel, for each character in the scene, to be inside this thing that is happening?
💫💫💫If you enjoy r.w.e. will you kindly pause to hit the ❤️ at the top left or bottom of this post? It sure does help in the substack scheme of things and gives me a lift! xoNatalie 💫💫💫
eat:
Speaking of returning to an old favorite for comfort. I LOVE this pasta recipe
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