I'll be the boy with the pink carnation
We’ve had a cold spring here in Portland, and a wet one. The wet is to be expected, but the cold dragged on longer than usual. Lots of dreary 40- to 50-degree days. Lots of cold rain, lots of hail. Okay, well...the hail is normal. It’s a whole thing here in April. But the gray has felt...thicker...more winterlike, when usually by now its lifting. Finally, this week, we’ve had some warmer weather and sun, and it’s supposed to stick around for a few more days. Don’t get me wrong—I love the rain. It’s my favorite thing about Portland. But it’s been raining since late September and I’m ready to dry out a bit.
I take a long walk most days, cold rain and hail or not. I need to think, and to be outside, and to quiet the buzzing of my anxiety by getting my feet moving. The various blooming trees have been doing their thing despite the low temperatures, which means that on one walk I’m admiring the cherry blossoms and magnolia buds on the trees, and a few days later I’m navigating the sidewalk beneath them that’s gone slippery with rain-soaked, rotting petals. It’s a whole dance we do, the trees and the sidewalks and the passage of time and me.
When I walk, if I’m not talking to myself to trouble through a book problem or a life problem, I listen to music. On heavy rotation lately has been the new boygenius album. There are lots of great tracks on the new record, but the one that’s been hitting me precisely in the gut these early days with it is “We’re in Love.” Specifically the second half of the song.
Lucy Dacus sings,
“If you rewrite your life, may I still play a part?
In the next one, will you find me?
I’ll be the boy with the pink carnation pinned to my lapel
who looks like hell and asks for help.
And if you do, I’ll know it’s you.
I can’t imagine you without
the same smile in your eyes.
There is something about you
that I will always recognize.
And if you don’t remember,
I will try to remind you
of the hummingbirds.
You know the ones.
And the baby scorpion.
And the winter lunar halo.
And the walk we took in the Redwoods.
I could go on and on and on and I will
go on and on and on until
it all comes back.”
And my grasping little heart that aches for all of my lost loved ones and is terrified of losing the loved ones still here does a little shudder and a sigh.
When I tell my fiction students that we hear music with our nervous systems, I mean this. I mean the way a song can sink into your chest and vibrate there, and rattle around inside you the rest of the day like the most welcome of ghosts.
On Sunday, I was playing that album while I was in the shower, and “We’re in Love” came on. I sang along and when Lucy and I hit the reincarnation bit, I absolutely lost it, weeping and sort of gulp-singing the lyrics. A good old-fashioned shower cry. Later that day, I was driving (through a cold drizzle) to bring dinner to a friend who’s still recovering from Covid five weeks after the first positive test (wear your masks, get your boosters, sprinkle salt in a circle around your feet and never leave the circle), and the song came on again, and that time I also sang along, the car all warm and smelling of roasted chicken, and it hit differently. It still moved me, but I felt the hope in it rather than the loss. Maybe it will be that way. Maybe we’ll find each other again, and know it.
Here we are, moving toward the end of the school year for my kids and the end of my teaching until fall, and everything is poised at the edge of change. But isn’t that always true? The sidewalks are slick with rotting blossoms now, and I need to walk as carefully as I might across ice. And I want to know what happens next in my life, and I want to find all of my loved ones, every one of them, in the next life, whatever that means. I never want to lose anyone, ever. I wrote a whole damn novel about that, and that novel is also poised on the edge of something, out on submission to editors, and I don’t know how things will go with that one way or another, don’t know how the world will receive it, and there is so much uncertainty. SO much uncertainty in everything. I am absolutely full to the brim with uncertainty. But I have my walks and I have the blossoming trees, and when I hit the slippery parts of the sidewalk, I walk carefully across them, and it’s okay. It’s all okay. What choice do we have, but for it to be okay in the end, whatever that means?
Upcoming class!
Revision Strategies One-Day Seminar
Sunday, May 14, 2023
10:30-1:30pm Pacific Time
1:30-4:30pm Eastern Time
Meeting via Zoom
$80
Class size: 15 studentsRevising your writing can be an intimidated, overwhelming experience, but it doesn’t have to be. In this 3-hour seminar, I’ll share the step-by-step process that I use to revise my own novels, stories, and essays. You’ll learn specific techniques to help you analyze your work, so you can see the big picture as well as all of the intricate moving parts, and then revise it to a successful final draft. This is a hands-on experience, with lectures and in-class exercises designed to lead you through the process. Bring a draft of a story or essay, or a novel excerpt that you’d like to work on. We’ll talk about the exercises and there will be plenty of time for questions, but participants won’t be reading their own work aloud to the group, so feel free to bring raw pages you don’t feel ready to share.