Books

July 05, 2009

Because I Shouldn't Be the Only One Crying

I've been downright melancholy lately.  I think it's the hormones.  Nevertheless.

There has been a lot of sighing going on.

I thought a good way to work some of this tearfulness out of my system would be to go and see My Sister's Keeper.  You know, just flat out torture some emotion out of myself in big heaping helpings of release.

What I didn't expect was to be blindsided by the trailer for my favorite book before I had even broken out the tissues:



People, The Time Traveler's Wife is my favorite book.  Possibly of all time.  Possibly period.  I read it when I was pregnant with Q and I remember every moment of it, along with where I was when I read and experienced each second of this amazing love story.

I think our brains are particularly permeable to emotions we feel during pregnancy.  Our hormones seem to embed certain experiences just a little bit deeper.

I can not wait for this movie.  This story tore my heart into pieces and put them back together in a stronger way.

(subscribers click through for video)

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February 27, 2009

Into the Wild with Your Own Tribe

I’m in my studio today, brainstorming for a new writing project that I hope to tell you about soon.  Managing the Blog Nosh Magazine editors list, preparing to launch a couple of new channels.  Food and Race & Ethnicity, two of those channels whose links have been dead-ends since the relaunch so many months ago.

My studio is in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.  Just blocks from the water, but just far enough away from the waves that it suffered minimal damage in Hurricane Katrina.  Bay of St. Louis Bridge I am on the same block as seafood restaurants and gritty little Southern bars.  At night, Lynard Skynard bleeds through the walls and the smell of poboys tempts me into unscheduled breaks.

Thanks to some tumultuous decision making I had to finish this afternoon, I decided to treat myself to one of those very same poboys for lunch.  Fully dressed shrimp poboy on crunchy-yet-chewy French bread, a side of crab balls, and a towering cup of sweet tea.

Rather than mindlessly watch my twitter stream or daydream while I ate, I decided to watch a DVD of Into the Wild, starring Emile Hirsch.  I’ve had this DVD for possibly years now, but never have gotten around to watching it.

Now, less than a quarter of the way in, it leaves me feeling much the same way the book Revolutionary Road did: 

This life of a suburban mom can sometimes be hard to swallow.

I have always wanted to be a mom.  I have always wanted to stay at home and raise the kids.  Though, to be clear, I don’t think I ever kidded myself or any potential suitors into thinking that I would be a reasonable housekeeper of said home.

But now I’m here.  And sometimes I can’t help but want to be there.

We all struggle with where we belong.  Who we are.  Who we want to be.  Who we once were.  Who we could have been.

We struggle with the ties that bind and simultaneously long for the ties that bond.

At the risk of BlogHer stripping me of their offer, I will be speaking at the opening Mommyblogging track panel in Chicago this year on the topic of “Have you found your Mommyblogging tribe?” and will most definitely touch on some of these feelings of dissonance.

BlogHer 09 Chicago Sounds like a barrel of laughs, right?  Well, I promise you, it will be.  But yes, of course I’ll be throwing in a bit of the “threadbare.” 

Identity, knowing where we belong, feeling distinctly as though we don’t…  it’s all part of it.  BlogHer said they selected me for the topic because I have more or less created my own tribe.  To that, I say “Amen.” and “Hell yes.”

And I also say, “You should, too.”

Join me at BlogHer in Chicago July 24-25, 2009.  Early bird pricing ends February 28, so hop to it, sister.

You might even want to get there early.  I bet there are some fun parties the night before…

In the meantime, tell me your thoughts on belonging and tribes.  It doesn’t have to have anything to do with blogging.  My feelings today on Into the Wild had nothing, I assure you, to do with blogging. 

“It should not be denied that being footloose has always exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations. Absolute freedom.”  -Wallace Stegner

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February 01, 2009

Sunday Serendipity: Fortuitous Finds

Sunday Serendipty Velveteen Mind

I know it will be a good week if I wake up in time to watch CBS Sunday Morning on, well, Sunday mornings.  The irony is that Sunday is the only morning on which I get to sleep in. 

CBS Sunday Morning begins at 8 a.m. Central.  That's not what I call sleeping in.

I actually always wake up in time to catch CBS Sunday Morning, but it's the battle of whether or not to open my eyes that the programmers over at CBS don't always win.  On those mornings that I choose to roll over and pray that no one under three feet tall noticed my eyes flit open, I tell myself that this week's program is probably a repeat anyway and proceed to make sure that I don't wake up until an hour and a half later, when the show is over.

Can you tell that I adore that show?

I'm probably tipping my hand to you a bit in revealing my favor for the program because I often find myself thinking that we should cover such-and-such topic on Blog Nosh Magazine after watching an interesting feature.  I hate to be a hack, but some of their stories are just too enticing.  I want to know more and my gut tells me that there's bound to be a blogger out there that's written about it and a handful of readers that would love to read about.  Even if they don't know it, yet.

This morning, though, I felt more as though CBS Sunday Morning had been reading my blog and running with features from there, not vice versa.  If only.

This week is the 30th anniversary of CBS Sunday Morning and as such they featured a couple of retrospectives on the show, as well as one fascinating piece about Sundays in general.  In A History of Sunday, a look at what makes Sundays so special wove a line through the history of observing the Sabbath, lifting of blue laws preventing certain business practices on Sundays, right up to the mention of a now must-have book on my wish list, The Peculiar Life of Sundays by Stephen Miller. 

Granted, much of the book appears to look at the roles of religion and observance on Sundays, but it is more than that.  According to Harvard University Press:

"[Stephen Miller] pays particular attention to the Sunday lives of a number of prominent British and American writers..."

I'm sold.  Because it isn't just me, it is Sunday. 

Hearing your Sunday stories has been a pleasure, so far.  Many of you go to church, most of you stay in your pajamas, all of you try to relax and pretend that tomorrow isn't Monday.  One of you even read my quest to open my eyes to serendipity lurking around every corner and took it up as your own search for serendipity

I would love to think of so many of us taking the big, yet tortured, leap to get out of our pajamas on Sundays and greet the world with a challenging smile that says, "What do you have for me today?  What is waiting to be divulged, if only I would listen?"

This Sunday?  I tried to go to church but found the old country church I favor to be under construction.

My spirit just couldn't muster the heart to attend mass in the school gym a block away.  Yes, my devotion may be just that shallow.  I'm working on it.

I took this stumbling block as a sign that I shouldn't force the worship and, instead, wandered into Bay St. Louis a bit early.  I spent the time I would have been at church wandering around an indoor flea market, eyes open to opportunity.

The faces I encountered showed no interest in playing along in my serendipity game, so I looked to the objects, instead.

Old mirrors, disintegrating into murky darkness, hinted at the master bathroom covered in such mirrors I've always envisioned.  An oversized Florida-retiree grandmother-style woven purse with large glossy flowers tugged at the ironically-cool hipster I sometimes fancy myself as, but know better than to try to pull off.  A newly rented, entire stall of Dia de los Muertos themed items teased me but forbade entrance, as nothing was priced yet.

Which left me in the retro-kitchen stall, fingering Formica tables and kitschy tea towels, wishing I was a wee bit more domestic.  Finally, I saw what I was looking for and for which I had no idea I was looking:  an old screen door, weathered dark green paint, covered in chicken wire.

Perfect.

One of the reasons I moved into this writing studio is that I needed a place to spread out and actually visualize the stories in the Blog Nosh Magazine queue.  Opening 23 tabs will do the job, but is entirely disorienting and ineffective.  I am a pen and paper girl at heart and ultimately need to access the tangible before I can make sense of the intangible.

This screen door is exactly what I needed.  But is it for sale?

With no price tag attached and the imposing look of a treasured display solution, I went off in search of a saint stall manager.  As it happened, the owner of the stall happened to be walking out of the door that very moment and returned with me to consider my inquiry.  Would she sell it?

A minimal amount of storytelling laced with subtle pleading and $20 later and it was mine.  Paired with a handful of wooden clothespins, this fortuitous find is the perfect solution for visualizing stories available for Blog Nosh Magazine on any given day.  Or, as is usually the case when scheduling, any given Sunday.

This Sunday is an exploration of stories at my fingertips.  Stories told, stories untold, stories hidden but hinting at the want of discovery.

What did you do this Sunday?

{those photos are from my studio, though taken with the only camera I have on hand, which is not a still camera.  real photos coming soon...}

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January 14, 2009

In the Absence of a Sarcasm Font: Audioblogging

Audioblog Velveteen Mind Audio Blog



{Audioblog} Listen to or Download 'In the Absence of a Sarcasm Font' read by the author


We recently published a post at Blog Nosh Magazine that suggested the word "sarcasticate" be added to our vernacular.  "Sarcasticate" would be a verb and it would mean "to make something sarcastic" as applicable to writing text. 

"You see, I can make things bold. I can italicize. I can underline. I can even strikethrough. But, I can’t sarcasticate."

Gone will be the days in which people misunderstand your tone of voice when reading your brilliant writing! 

The Nerdist suggested a special font for sarcasm, after a couple of sticks-in-the-mud griped about a recent Wired article of his:

"I think both gentlemen failed to grasp the tongue-in-cheekity of it all. This is why there should be a font for sarcasm."

Hell.  yes.  Ditto.  Amen.

He went on to suggest that allowing such vocal readers to Bloggess Hemingway Commentscomplain probably saves random strangers from being gunned down in the park.  "Gripes Not Snipes, I always say."  The Nerdist and The Bloggess should get together, is all I'm saying.

But unless Chris Hardwick figures out how to get more than just free gadgets out of all of these tech-gurus he knows, we won't be getting a font for sarcasm any time soon and I'm sick of either explaining myself or becoming a better writer.  Humpf.

That leaves us back where we started, with the burden of conveying tone remaining squarely on our shoulders, whispering into our ears, "No one is going to read that in the high-pitched nasally whine you are imagining.  Try harder.  Devices!  Devices, I tell you!"

Writing devices.  All of the little tricks of the trade that we use to convey tone.  You know...  ellipses... 


Blank space.


ALL CAPS!

wordssmushedtogethertoconveyimpatienceorrambling

Um's and er's and pfft's built into our text to help pace the reader.

Yeah, uh...  no.  kthanxbye

Despite our best attempts, we all still end up with comments that take us off guard with their level of misunderstanding.  Those "are they serious?" comments that make you think that someone involved in this equation must have been reading something other than what you wrote because forchrissakes that's not what you meant!

This, people, is why my posts are so damn long.  I try to cover every possible angle, anticipate every possible interpretation and conclusion and then address it before you force me to mutter, "But that's not what I'm saying" or "Yes, I already knew that but it was redundant to spell it out."

Then I don't end up with any comments because there's nothing left to say.  Crap.

(insert ;) emoticon, which is yet another device meant to convey that I'm yanking your chain but that I really hate to use in blogging because are we twelve?)

So...  in the absence of the sarcasm font and therefore the ability to sarcasticate, I have decided to start cheating: 

I'm adding audioblog versions of my posts!

A huge fan of audiobooks, I'm totally putting my melodrama hat on for you.

Velveteen Mind Audioblog Oh yes, dear readers-come-listeners, you can now listen to my breathless tones as I read my posts to you live!  Well, -ish. 

There is currently a delay of about a day before I get the audioblog versions posted because I tend to furiously type and hit publish all within the same twenty minute period.  I've heard I could save things to "draft" until the audio version is done, but I've also heard that you shouldn't send emails when you are angry.  Or drunk.  Now, where is the fun in that?  Delayed gratification.  Pfft.  Maybe for you, but clearly not for me.

I'm also working on an easy link so that you can subscribe to my audioblogs via iTunes, but that takes some planning and I think we've already established my take on that.  I'll get back to you.

In the meantime, I've recorded some of my favorite posts and would love your feedback.  For instance, is anyone even going to listen to them?  Yeah, I'm thinking that would be a good place to start.

On the downside, I can't find anyone else that is doing audio versions of their blog posts, so I don't know how mine compare.  On the upside, I can't find anyone else pretending to be an audiobook performer, so I don't know how mine compare.

Posts with audio versions, so far:

I Am a Have but I Happen to Have Not

Hierarchy of Suffering. Who wins?

Gravel Paves the Road to The White House

The Trouble with Pies

Coffee Cup Lipstick

I Own This

iPod Identity

Be warned that I tried to read them more slowly than I speak so that you can actually follow along in the car (or wherever; that's your business) and I also apparently didn't find it necessary to stick entirely to script.  Before I do any more, let me know if anything doesn't work...  though if you just can't get them to play at all, I probably can't help you.  Gripes not snipes, people.  Gripes not snipes.

Most importantly, I have to say that reading what was written to be read silently was actually more challenging than I expected. 

All of those devices I spoke of earlier?  Yeah, just try to read a strikethrough out loud.  JesusGood Lord.  Man.

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November 20, 2008

I Drank the Bloody Kool-Aid

I am a reader.  Yes, you know that, but I don't just read books-- I voraciously adore books. 

I love the weight of books in my hands, the texture of the paper, the quality of the production materials, the thoughtful cover design.  The way a hardback sounds when you lay it on a table with a decisive thump, the way a paperback gives to your impatience, the way the typeface sets the tone, the way the layout paces your reading.

A good book is a physical guide through the literary realm of the story. 

So you can imagine my sense of defeat when I bought the audio version of Twilight.

Humpf.

When I decided to go to BlissDom in Nashville, it took very little consideration before I chose driving over flying.  Yes, flying would be fast and convenient and virtually the same price as driving...  but planes are far too fast.

I wanted a nice long drive.  Miles of road stretched out before me and my cute little wagon.  Hours to just think. 

But something inside me said it wanted to spend hours thinking about vampires.  Yes, vampires.  I was just as surprised as you.twilight-teaser-poster

After sniffing out the growing interest around the book within my own Twitter community, I was ready to finally give in to my curiosity.

Perhaps it was the thought of a couple of days with a large group of women, hyper-analyzing minute details and stirring up frenzied discussions about virtual passions that put me in the mood to delve into the world of romantic fantasy during my drive.

The fact that it was teenage romantic fantasy would make it only all the more appropriate.  Squealing and the like, if you will.  However, I didn't realize it was about teenage vampires until I went to buy the audiobook.

I felt decidedly hip as I went to our local bookstore, thinking I was on the hunt for the au courant goth novel, probably only known to those in-the-know.  I give those I follow on Twitter much credit, as it happens.

I breezed up to the audio section at the front of the store and was almost pleasantly surprised that Twilight wasn't there.  Clearly, this was a book popular only with my ultra-hip Twitter community, not even to be found in the current audiobook selection.

Tossing my hair over my shoulder and smiling to myself that I was just as edgy as Itwilight-apple expected, I strode up to the help desk, pushed aside the piles of gift cards emblazoned  with a pair of pale hands holding a blood red apple (vaguely familiar...  is that the new logo for the holidays here this year?  sort of bizarre but argh! focus!) and asked the woman behind the counter if they had an audio copy of a book called "Twilight but I have no idea the name of the author."

She smiled patiently at me and then literally blushed.  In the next moment, she switched gears and plunged forward whole-heartedly, her kohl-smudged eyes widening a bit as she began (good Lord!) gushing...

"Oh my God I love those books!  It's Stephenie Meyer.  Stephenie Meyer, she's the author.  You haven't read them?  They are amazing.  I'm obsessed.  Obsessed.  You won't be able to look back.  Are they for you?  They are for you?  Oh I'm so jealous of you reading them for the first time.  Oh, Edward.  Just wait.  Edward!"

edward-car  

"Ah...  Right, wait, the audiobook?  I'm sure we have it.  You looked in teen audio?"

My jaw had dropped open slightly somewhere between her now-clearly-emo eyes spotting an opportunity to talk about the Twilight saga and the second "obsessed."  And, good grief, did she say "teen" audio?

No, I hadn't checked in teen audio.

Damn it.

Evidently, I was on the tail end of a trampled trend, not the black-dyed tips of it.

She handed me the audiobook I desired and a humble sigh escaped through my own twilight-cover emerging smirk as my eyes fell on the cover... emblazoned with a pair of pale hands holding a blood red apple. 

Right next to the words "Now a Major Motion Picture."

Did I say "trampled" trend?  I meant trampled into sticky spilled Coke and popcorn trend.

Sigh.

But wait, it gets better, because...

I was about to find myself holding my own conquered, blood-red heart in my hands at the feet of said Edward.

Because, yeah, he's one of those characters.


twilight-bw-ew

Le sigh, indeed.

...to be continued...

... though, in the meantime, I won't laugh at you if you want to buy the audiobook.  Or the hardcover.  Or the supple Collector's Edition hardcover.  Or the paperback.  Or the whole saga in a fancy box.

Hell, Amazon has a whole Twilight store...  Which I would like for Christmas, thanks.

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  • Mom blogger? Fine.
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