Shopping with the Commies

There are many things I have loved about this island forever.  For example, there are stores here that have existed for generations and still have their original signs.  People still have mailboxes on the side of the road, and many are decorated with hand-painted fish or squiggles or whatever the kids feel like.  Lobster rolls.  This list of things I look forward to year after year is endless.  But now I have a new thing that I love:  the farm co-op (affectionately known around my house, at least, as the commies).  At the beginning of the season we "buy" our share of the Co-op, then every Friday I toodle off in my straw hat and clogs to buy whatever veggies are on offer that week.  Here's the picture:

a large expanse of farmland, a small dirt turn-around where you park your car (keys, of course, left dangling in the ignition, doors unlocked), a wooden shelter painted red and open on one side, a piece of paper on a table where you sign in with the pen hanging off the wall by a string.  Against the back wall are tilted wooden crates full of whatever and labelled by crayon on brown paper bags.  On the blackboard hanging from the wall has been written what you are entitled to take that week.  Today it was

4 cucumbers (any sort)

2 squash (enormous, though -- each one would feed a family of vegetarians for a week)

6 tomatoes

3/4 bag of mixed leaf salad

2 heads of lettuce

handful of radishes

8 potatoes

Out of that list you take as much or as little as you want and you put it all in one of the brown paper bags recycled from somebody's supermarket shopping (although it's even better if you bring your own bag).  And then as if that wasn't enough, each week you can go pick your own something. Today it was

3 sunflowers

half a bucket of green beans.  

Picking the green beans is my most favourite thing of all.  You walk down a long row between hundreds of plants, crouch down, spread apart the leaves and voila -- long, fat, bulbous, sweet-enough-to-eat-right-then-and-there beans.

 Nobody checks you out.  No one makes sure you haven't taken too much of anything.  Nobody asks to see i.d.  It's all about trust, man, each according to his need, everybody's cool.  Then you get back into your car, turn on the local radio station which is inevitably playing a track from The Grateful Dead, and you're off.

Now remind me....why do I go back to London?

A Common Language

Whenever I come back to the States for any long period of time, I am faced with having to deal, once again, with this crazy joint language my two countries seem to have.  It isn't getting any easier over time; rather, just more complicated. (It's so bad that now even when I hear a waiter say "I'll be your server tonight" I can't stop thinking "and what will you be tomorrow night?"). Of course there are the well-known vocabulary differences like elevator instead of lift, line instead of queue -- but those are just quaint, maybe even charming in the right circles. Norman Schur wrote a very funny and useful book on the subject called British English: A to Zed which for a while became a family dinner table favourite (oops -- there's the nasty issue of spelling, too).  But as I sat on the beach yesterday, eavesdropping on other peoples' conversations, I realized that the longer I live in Britain the more self-concious I have become about which words pop out of my mouth when I'm trying to express whatever feeble thoughts have arisen in my head.  I suppose I've become more aware of the real and important differences these word choices make.  Let's face it -- the words you choose to use are a reflection of who you are and the culture you live in.  And sometimes, making the wrong choice in the wrong situation can get you into trouble.  For me, it has become a bit like deciding which side of the road to drive on.  Sometimes I just have to stop and think and notice what others around me are doing before I can accelerate.

So, just for fun, I've created a short list of words and expressions that I have stumbled over in the past for your amusement and edification (the American version comes first):

bangs fringe

parking lot car park

bathroom toilet

john lou

bathing suit swimsuit

vacation holiday

vacuum hoover

saran wrap cling film

tin foil foil wrap

pants trousers

underwear pants

rubber condom

eraser rubber

is tap water okay?    still or sparkling?

you're kidding         you're joking

go to the movies       see a film

figure it out              suss it out

buy a newspaper    take the Guardian/Sunday Sport 

have a nice day       bugger off   

Not Quite the Woman of Mystery

After posting my last blog, several of my blogfriends wrote saying, "Hey -- are you in Martha's Vineyard?"  Well, you found me.  Yes, it's one of the great pieces of luck in my life that, through my husband and family, we have a home on Martha's Vineyard.  Why didn't I say so in the first place?  Well, I had/have this awkward notion that a certain amount of anonymity ought to be maintained on the internet.  It's silly though, since my name is prominently displayed up above and both my website and work are easily accessed.  So really, how anonymous can I be?  I was thinking about this when I was trying to decide what I would blog about today, and then up popped an email from Tania Hershman of The Short Review fame tagging me with a list of questions about who I am and what I have done over the past ten years.  And, just as I was eager to read about her background, so am I eager to write about my own.  So much for anonymity, but I wonder what others of you feel about this issue and the internet.  Hmm....

But in the meantime, here are my answers to Tania's questions:

1.  What were you doing ten years ago?

1998: I had already been living in London for eight years and I was deep into the demands of childrearing.  My elder son was 14, my younger one, 7. We were beginning to look down the long, dark tunnel of adolescence.  I was very much involved in various volunteer committees at my kids' school, and was beginning to find the courage to start taking this writing thing seriously.

2. What 5 things are on your to-do list today?

1. Drive my parents to the ferry after their weekend visit (which I've

done and which is always sad).

2. Write my blog (ta-da!)

3. Write the next segment of the new novel (fingers crossed...)

4. Start organizing the book signing of Tangled Roots which I'm

having here on the Vineyard next month.

5. Take a shower

3. What would you do with a billion dollars?

To be honest, after putting a bit of it aside into a fund which would

allow me never to have to fly economy again, I would probably give

most of the rest of it away. I'd give some to my parents, so they never

have to worry; I'd completely endow CurvingRoad so the staff could 

get paid and we'd never have to worry; I'd put a big (but not too big)

chunk away for my kids so they never have to worry; then I'd open a 

foundation so I could fund whatever seemed important at the time. Oh,

and I'd keep enough for myself so that my husband could retire

whenever he decided he'd had enough.

4. List the places you have lived.

1. Long Island

2. Middletown, Connecticut

3. Chapel Hill, North Carolina

4. New York City

5. Boston, Massachusetts

6. London, England

5. List the jobs you have held

1. Salesgirl in a fruit store (the worst of them all)

2. Copywriter for an advertising agency ("Spring into Fall Sales!")

3. Administrator of a small academic research company (alone in a

little building out in the country with snakes under the steps)

4. Reporter for the Wesleyan University publications office ( I often

covered sports, believe it or not)

5. Teaching Assistant in the Classics Department of the University of

North Carolina

6. Development Director of The French Library in Boston

7. Development Coordinator for The Acting Company, New York

8. Executive Director of The Thyroid Foundation of America, Inc

(weird, eh?)

9. Running poetry/writing workshops for all age kids and especially

those with learning issues

10. Writer............now guess which ones made me any money :-))

6. List the People You'd Like to Know More About

I'm a nosey sort. I'd like to know whatever anyone wants to tell me. So

I'll leave this one open to whoever wants to take up the challenge.

And thanks, Tania. This really was fun. Obviously, I'm always happy

to talk about myself.......

Lost and Found

Over here in the States, July 4th is best known for its fireworks -- but not for its fires.  A horrible fire started on Main Street in our little town at 9.00 in the morning, and burnt wildly for most of the day.  One of our best restaurants was completely destroyed and my heart goes out to them.  But I must comment mostly on the fact that the fire also spread to the store which really has been the heart and soul of the town for 35 years -- the bookstore, A Bunch of Grapes.  This is where everyone in town meets, year-round, to chat after their morning coffee, to grab the paper after the morning workout, to listen to authors from all over the world read from their work, to sit on the bench and argue about local politics, to thumb through the enormous display of works produced by local authors (we're everywhere here -- you can barely pick a shell up off the beach without finding another one of us scrambling underneath).  So for days, all of us have been walking around in shock.  Everyone's first greeting is "have you heard?" with a hand covering the mouth as if to stop the dreaded news from being  uttered and, so, being true.  The repercussions are also horrible.  Just imagine what it does to all the small, struggling, seasonal businesses when the entire street is closed down for the biggest shopping day of the season, when the shop that helps drive an entire economy, an entire community, is suddenly stopped short. Think of all those smoke-damaged books. Think of all the writers reliant on the summer sales of those now destroyed books.  As you can tell, my heart, along with everyone else's, is breaking.

But the owners are determined to open again.  The community is already banding together to help rebuild both of these devastated buildings.  Coffee cans for donations are in every window.  Charity concerts will certainly be held.  Everyone will do what they can to get both of these businesses back on their feet.  And that's the truly wonderful thing about community.  We all spend so much time screaming about the horrors in this world, we forget that it is community -- one single person helping his neighbour -- which really shows our capacity for civilized behaviour.  I think it is our sense of community, be it as small as an island or as big as a continent, which can give us the greatest hope.

A bookstore (temporarily) lost.  A book found.  One of the unexpected joys of becoming a part of this blogging world is the way I have met authors I might never have come across and have  become familiar with their work.  One of these authors is the talented and funny,

  Debi Alper and one of those books is her novel, Trading Tatiana.  This is neither Debi's first nor most recent book (which is why I chose it, to be honest).  It was published in 2004 and has everything a political crime thriller should have: drug-addicts, Eastern European thugs, S&M devotees, mysterious foreign women, oppressed single mothers, dangerous and ruthless men.  It is fast-paced, expertly constructed, written with an acute eye for detail and facile use of language.  In short, it was great fun to read.  I, quite literally, couldn't put it down.  But there is something else about this book which makes it more than a terrific beach read and I believe it is the heart and soul of all of Debi's work and, probably, Debi herself.  Trading Tatiana is steeped in the difficult political issues of our urban community back in the UK -- political asylum, the plight and exploitation of Ukrainian refugees, the abuse of women. It is about how one single person can change the world and be changed by it by refusing to turn a blind eye.  And so Trading Tatiana is more than "just" a great read with a terrific plot.  It creates a world of living characters and forces them to do what so many of us "real" people refuse to do, namely, "the right thing."  At the heart of this work is an investigation of the problems and power of political activism, and so Debi's work becomes not only exciting and captivating, but also challenging to us all, to the way we live our own lives and the roles we are willing to play in our own communities.  An excellent find indeed!

How New Age Am I?

 Not so "new age" to believe that weird "coincidences" are set in motion for some fated reason.  But perhaps "new age" enough to put the word coincidence into quotation marks to begin with, and to notice and think about them when they happen.  And they do.

Here are several such events that happened when I was writing Tangled Roots:

* during one summer when I was very much deep into the first draft, I met a young artist who was exhibiting her work for the first time.  I was immediately drawn to her style of painting mixed with collage, and then I saw one specific piece...it was a pastoral farm scene obviously inspired by the island's farmland around us, but connected as well with a small collage of notations and equations taken from the journals of a leading physicist she had known well as a child.  The island landscape, the unintelligible scribblings of theoretical science -- it was a "sign" and, of course, I bought the piece and have it hanging in my writing shack behind the house.

* once, on my way to visit family in New York, my plane was delayed and I ran into a woman I barely knew, but who was quite close to several of my friends. We spent the long hours waiting in the lounge together and forged our friendship.  Who was she? A Russian scholar specializing in Chekhov, full of wonderful stories about Moscow and personal connections which later became very helpful in my research.

* another summer, and I was putting the final touches on the "final" draft.  My head was full of physics and I arrived on the island to find that the local playhouse was performing a play about the life and work of the physicist, Richard Feynman.

And now, as I begin to get back into the creation of my new novel, set in Cambodia, I realize such things as these are beginning to happen again:

* I was driving down into town and came upon a "trunk show" run by a woman who designs and sells clothes made in Cambodia of Cambodian and Thai silk.  I stopped in and found myself suddenly surrounded by jewellery, statuary, scarves, long skirts and close-cropped jackets that thrust me back into that world I am now trying so hard to recreate.  And again of course, I bought a few little things to keep me grounded in that world.

* The woman who organized the trip I took with my family to Cambodia several years ago now happens to be heading back there for a return trip, and she's keeping a blog and posting photos that are already reconnecting me with all those sensations and images that affected me so deeply when I was there myself.

* And I can't help but be aware that 2 of the first people to find my blog and become "blog buddies" are JJ and Carol - expat Brits living in Thailand.  One of the first blogs I ever read was Carol's series about her own trip to Cambodia, again full of wonderful descriptions and photos.

So what does this all mean?  Yes, it's helpful for research.  It helps me get back into that creative frame of mind that book tours and pr pull me out of. But it also somehow reassures me that the book I am writing now is, indeed, the book that I "should" be writing, that I am "meant" to write.  And even more, it shows me that I am getting back into my writer's head -- a head that looks at the world from one step off to the left, that is open to so-called 

coincidences in a new way, and that finds meanings and connections within a world beyond my to-do list, beyond my front door.

Arriving

After a long day of travel, I arrived at our family home on the Island.  Here's what I found:

* Incredible humidity. Everything outside felt wet and mildewy.

* The furniture in the house rearranged because we had had the floors refinished.

* 97 messages on the answering machine, all left sometime over the last 7 months, most from telemarketers.

* Petrol at nearly $5 a gallon and, needless to say, lots of complaining about it.

* An enormous list of to-do's imminently needing to be done to get the house up and running.

* A screen full of emails to be answered including notification of a new review of "Tangled Roots" to be found here in The Fringe Report.

The reviewer also actually quotes from the book in her article on New York here, which is, to be honest, pretty cool. (Reading the review was scary, though.  It's generally very, very complimentary but with some negativish bits in the middle. But I'm taking the fact that I was able to read it all the way to the end as a sign of creeping mental heath).

On the Island I also found:

*Beautiful flowers everywhere.

* Quiet.

* A world of slow-moving people

 (and even slower internet connections).

* People walking barefoot in the middle of the street.

* Sand dunes, fishing trawlers, sailboat riggings clanging in the breeze, those diamond sparkles of sunlight on the water.

*And the statue we bought in Cambodia of King Jayavarman VII still  safely guarding our home on the backporch. (This photo here isn't of our statue although the face is the same.

I took a great photo of it to show you, but although I bluetoothed it to my computer from my phone, it won't upload onto the blog.  The little spinning wheel just goes on forever.  Actually, this happens to most of the photos I take on my phone and try to put here. And ideas?).

Clearly, it's going to take me a while to unwind and get back onto "Island time."  But I'm hopeful.

Hot Fun in the Summertime

As I look towards this weekend, I see that it is all about making that leap to the new adventures that always seem unique to summer. On Sunday,  #2-Son heads off for a 6-week tour that will take him along the old Silk Road into the depths of westernmost China. He's off getting his last jab right now, and tomorrow I teach him how to pack all his worldly possessions into the type of old-fashioned backpack I remember using during my time bumming around Israel and Europe.  I wasn't much older than he is now when I did that, and my own trip still feels -- well, not like yesterday, but not like decades ago either.  Amazing.

And #1-Son is just starting rehearsals for a terrific new play he will be acting in this summer up at the Edinburgh Festival.  He's been at the Festival with a play once before, but this time it's a big deal venue and a prime time slot.  As a young, up-and-coming actor this is a great experience, putting him in front of a much larger audience than ever.  

Poor husband's adventures are more crammed in amidst the daily grind of dispensing his wisdom in offices worldwide, but still, he'll get his holidays on golfcourses and eventually on the beach back in the States.

Ah, the beach.  That's where I'm headed.  This is normally a schizophrenic time of year for me.  I'm lucky enough to have an island home that I go to each summer, where I can work, rest, see family, cook too many dinners, entertain too many guests, spend too many hours in the sun, and generally just have some hot fun in the summertime.  But the transition is always difficult. I'm always reluctant to leave the city, worried about all the work I have to do, and afraid of all the events and people I'll miss.  And then when it's time to come home, I have to forcibly pry my clinging hands from the door post crying "why oh why must I go back to that god-forsaken vortex of too many people and too much commerce and too much...everything?" 

 And this year is even worse, because this year I also have to toss away my "retailer's fedora" and dig up my dusty "artist's beret."  This year I've done far more selling than writing, and the great adventure -- and the great challenge -- of this summer is trying to get back to doing what I supposedly am all about in the first place...creating.  Time to stop selling and start producing; to stop explaining about Moscow and start wondering about Phnom Penh; to stop looking outside of myself and start excavating those places inside that most people happily let lie unnoticed.  And, to be honest, I'm frightened.

Just because I've written one novel doesn't mean I can write another one, does it?  Just because I once discovered those hidden images and unexpressed emotions doesn't mean I can find them again.  Maybe all that creativity got tired of waiting and upped sticks to find some other, more attentive mortal.  Now, if any other writer said this sort of crap to me I know exactly what I would say.  I'd say (and have said) don't be silly, you are who you are, whatever talent/craft/wisdom was there before is there now.  Just get on with it.  But, as you know, your own crap is harder to let go of (so to speak) and I am now plagued by a bad case of the "what if's."

JJ has wisely talked in her blog about writing 100 words a day.  I suppose it's like taking baby steps -- you just put one foot in front of the other and eventually you've walked a mile.  I need to keep that in mind. And listen to this -- just as I wrote that last sentence, a clap of thunder reverberated through an otherwise cloudless sky, coming out of nowhere.  Really!  It's true!  It's the weird sort of meteorological electricity you get on the island all the time in the summer, but which I rarely see here in London.  A wayward flash arising from who-knows-where.  Okay, it's not a particularly original metaphor, but a metaphor it is nonetheless, and maybe

 it's a sign that the writer in me is closer to the surface than I had feared.

So my family and I will all be a bit busy with packing and travelling over the next few days, and then I'll be heading off to the island for the rest of the summer.  I'll still keep blogging, but it might be a bit more sporadic for a while.  Please keep checking in, though, and I'll check in with all of you.  Come to think of it, this year, in all of you, I have a bit of my "real life" that I can bring along with me to the other side of the planet.  It's a real comfort and I'm grateful for it. I won't be gone long.

And in the meantime, what's the summer without some good ole' music.  Take it away, Sly.....