Good Night California...again, and again, and again.

I've read Good Night California 1,253,682 times to my daughter.  It's a cardboard, or "board book," meaning it's designed to withstand the strangely powerful destructive capabilities of members of the toddler persuasion.

Whatever.

Tonight, while Evie sleeps, I will be mending this book for the second time.  She's successfully removed the back binding, torn a chunk from the front page, and frayed one of the corners with excessive sucking.  Luckily, the folks who make board books understand that the binding is apparently annoying to toddlers (because they remove them), so the pages of the book have been reinforced.  She's close to removing the back page for the second time.  The only thing holding it to the rest of the book is a strip of packaging tape and fleeting hopes of a strand of paper linking the tape to the cardboard.

I can repeat the book by heart:  "Good morning, Pacific Ocean.  Good morning, surfers and pier.  Good morning, gray whales, spouting in the distance.  Are we ready to share a wonderful day?"

Last night, Evie and I went through her nightly ritual (brush teeth, wash face, play with sink faucets, disrobe, change diaper, put on pajamas, read three books, rock in rocking chair).  She usually picks which books she wants me to read to her.  Good Night, California is always on the reading list, but the other two books vary.  Sometimes we read Good Night, Moon, then Noah's Ark, then The Belly Button Book.  It changes. No matter what, Good Night, California is on the list.  However, last night Good Night, California was nowhere to be found in her little box of nighttime books.  I swear, I had nothing to do with it.  Maybe her babysitter hid it from her because she was just as sick of reading it to Evie as I am.

Evie went on the hunt.

She searched high (well, nothing over two and a half feet) and low for her beloved book.  I had no idea what she was doing.  She looked under her crib, around her toy chest, by her diaper pail, and in her closet.  It was no where to be found.  The funny thing is, she didn't complain.  There was no whining, no pointing to the air, no grunting in expectation that I'll understand what she wants.  She was methodical in her search.  She squatted to look underneath things. She got on her tip-toes to look on top.  And I just sat there in the rocking chair, no help at all.

Finally, with her chubby little hand on my leg to help her steady herself, she squatted next to me and ducked her head low enough to peer beneath the rocking chair.  She bobbed up and down a couple of times, then walked around the back of the chair one way, then the other in search of the best way to capture her prey.  Turns out, the best way was through the front.  With all the might her little body could muster, Evie pushed my legs out of the way, got down on all fours, and retrieved her beloved book.  There was no ceremony, no particular celebration to recognize the capture. She simply placed the book on my lap with a grunt.  I lifted her into my lap and we read her tattered Good Night, California, again.

Strunk & White's Rule #17: Omit Needless Words

"Vigorous writing is concise.  A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.  This requires not that the writer make all sentences short, or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell."
-Strunk and White, The Elements of Style

The trouble is, how does one omit needless words when one has been unable to write?  I'm working on it, but finding the time has been difficult.  I forgot how exhausting the first week of school is, particularly in Fall Quarter.  The inevitable amount of loafing that occurs over the summer atrophies all of those mental endurance muscles built up during the academic year.  The compartments in which one sorts duties to work, family, and sleep weaken.  I've done myself the huge favor of adding an additional responsibility:  blogging.  What I really need to do is find balance.  A warning about this came this week:  Find balance, or your body will stop you.

I woke up at 1am this Thursday with the sensation that a grain of sand had wedged itself between my left eyeball and eyelid.  I took out my contacts immediately (I know, I know...you shouldn't sleep in your contacts, but my O.D. gave me these nifty "Night-Day" contacts and said they'd be fine) and tried to go back to sleep.  Instead, I spent an hour alternating between flushing my eye of whatever foreign body was trapped in there, and trying to convince myself that I was just imagining things and my eye was perfectly fine - just really dry from wearing my contacts for too long.  Eventually, I did fall asleep, but spent the next hour of sleep dreaming that my eye was somehow keeping me from getting something accomplished.

My daughter woke me up twice that night - at 3am and again at 5am - and each time I checked my eye in her bathroom mirror.  I must have been rubbing it in my sleep, because each time it was progressively pinker.  By the time my alarm went off at 6:30, my eye was a bright shade of scarlet.  Foolishly, I put my contact in (the grain-of-sand sensation was the same, with or without the contacts) and went to school.  Ten minutes after I logged onto my computer, the pain became nearly unbearable.  I ran to the bathroom to check my eye yet again.  This time, I noticed something off:  two cream-colored spots on my cornea right in front of my iris. 

So I called the doc.  He took a picture of my eye.  It looked something like this: 

Corneal ulcers, otherwise known as the reason you shouldn't sleep in your contact lenses.  And, just like an ulcer, corneal ulcers are exacerbated by stress.  There was no balance this week, thus I have two ulcers on my eye.  They are also a pain in the ass.  I have to put antibiotic drops in my eyes every two hours.  My eye hurts if I stare at a computer screen for too long.  It's also incredibly sensitive to light, and when I look too quickly in another direction, the entire left side of my face hurts. 

Lesson learned.  I can't wear my contacts for a week or so anyway.  Long story short, this is one of the many reasons why my writing hasn't been as normal as it should be.  It's all my fault - no one to blame for this temporary handicap but me. 

Take care of yourself, take care of your eyes, and find balance.  I'm sure there are plenty of words in this blog that should be omitted, but my eye is tired.  I'll edit later.

I love Andrew Bird...and you should, too.

First, you can't write about Andrew Bird when you're listening to the Boss.  So, allow me a moment to change my playlist...

That's better.

I love Andrew Bird, and I think you should, too.  If you don't already own any Andrew Bird, open a new tab on your search engine and navigate to blip.fm.  Search for any of the following songs:  A Nervous Tick Motion of the Head, Imitosis, Tenouousness, Anonanimal, Masterfade, Opposite Day, Armchairs, or Tables and Chairs.

My adoration for Andrew Bird can be expressed best by the words of my husband, who said the following when he described a play by the Steelers during the opening game for the NFL season:  "It's complex.  It's complex.  There's complexity there.  There's lots of layers."

Layer 1- Lyrics.

Andrew Bird can use the following words and phrases in any one of his songs:  proto-Sanskrit Minoans, Uralic syntaxes, cephalopods, radiolarians,  kewpie dolls, and/or onsies.  That's right:  Andrew Bird used Uralic syntaxes in a song.  What are Uralic syntaxes you ask?  According to my trusty iWork Dictionary and Thesaurus (yes, I had to look it up...not ashamed to have done so, either), Uralic means "of, relating to, or denoting a family of languages spoken from Scandinavia to western Siberia, comprising the Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic groups."

I ask myself, as I ask you:  What does it all mean?  Bird himself has admitted that he's still discovering the meaning of some of his songs, so the field for interpretation is wide open (Bird's Blog for the New York Times).  The fact that Bird also includes coprophagia (to eat poop) in the lyrics may cause the unconscious scratching of one's head.  Don't shy away!  Deny any urge you may have to run quickly in the other direction.  Bird challenges the rules of conventional song writing.  Ask yourself, "when was the last time I had to use a dictionary to understand a song?"  When you find yourself saying "never," thank Andrew Bird for giving you an opportunity to raise your IQ by a couple of points.

Layer 2 - Imagery
You may argue that imagery and lyrics have a lot to do with each other.  No disagreement here.  That doesn't mean they can exist on two layers for the listener.  Not only does Andrew Bird engage in clever wordsmithing, he does so with a craft and precision that makes it dangerous to drive or impossible to walk a straight line when I listen to his music.  From clown fish drifting through sea anemones in Anonanimal, to two people navigating their way through a relationship in Armchair, Andrew Bird tells a story with every song full of scents, sounds, and memories.  Even whimsy.

Layer 3 - Instrumentation

Violin.  Guitar.  Whistle (his lips, not the instrument).  Loop pedal.  Sometimes he even uses a glockenspiel. 

Check out this link to Pitchfork TV.  Bird performs his song Anonanimal in a church...alone...no back up (you may need to navigate to this...it's page 3 on the list of "other videos").  I realize that the use of a loop pedal is nothing revolutionary, but the orchestral delight of Bird mixing layer upon layer of violin riff, whistle, and guitar chord is a reminder that this form of performance art is more than just the words and the notes; it's the texture of the sound as well.

Layer 3 - Message and Meaning

Dark Matter is one of my favorite Andrew Bird songs, and here's why:  Dark Matter, Operation, Action Toys, and a question of where our souls find their home.  Divergent?  Not really.  Bird weaves the concepts together in a delicate tapestry that aches with nostalgia and the universal theme of faith.  Do you wonder where the soul resides?  Is it in your head or between your sides, and who will be the one who will decide its true location?

Andrew Bird has read Silent Spring.  Maybe he's just read the intro.  I don't know...I don't have the man on speed dial to ask him.  But it's obvious from Spare-Ohs that he's thought a lot about the use of pesticides and other industrial chemicals in today's commercial culture.  Maybe he's just seen The Story of Stuff.  Who cares.  What's important is that he cares about message.  He asks big questions in his songs; he critiques; he points fingers.  Move over, Ani Difranco (actually, one of Bird's first solo albums was released by Ani's label, Righteous Babe Records).

Layer 4 -Andrew Bird is a genuine NERD.
And I love him for it.  The man is gawky, skinny, angular, whimsical, awkward, and adorable.  He's obsessive about his music...many of his songs are reworkings of previous attempts - I for Imitosis, for example. He worked GPS and binary language into one of his songs, for crying out loud! Can you guess what Scythian Empire is about?  Awesome song.  Haliburton makes an appearance.

I've droned on long enough.  Listen to some of his music.  Learn for yourself the genius of the crush my husband tolerates.  I leave you with the lyrics to Fiery Crash.  Take what lesson you will from the words...especially given today's date:

Fiery Crash, from Armchair Apocrypha
Turnstiles on mezzanine
Jet ways and Dramamine fiends and x-ray machines
You were hurling through space,
G-forces twisting your face
Breeding superstition
A fatal premonition
You know you got to envision the fiery crash.

Oh close your eyes and you wake up
Face stuck to a vinyl settee
Oh the line was starting to break up
Just as you were starting to say
Something apropos I don't know

Beige tiles and magazines
Lou Dobbs and the CNN team on every monitor screen
You were caught in the crossfire
Where every human face has you reaching for your mace
So it's kind of an imposition
fatal premonition

To save our lives you've got to envision
and save all our lives you've got to envision
the fiery crash

It's just a formality
Why must I explain?
Just a nod to mortality
Before you get on a plane.

Oh close your eyes and you wake up
face stuck to a vinyl settee
Oh the line was starting to break up
What was that you were going to say?

Going public...the door really is open

In On Writing by Stephen King, King quotes one of is first editors, John Gould:
"...write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.  Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out.  Once you know what the story is and get it right - as right as you can, anyway - it belongs to anyone who wants to read it.  Or criticize it."

So, here it goes.  There isn't much here, yet.  I don't know if I'll be able to post with any regularity.  Be kind, and don't keep the door shut for too long on what you write.

A New Regimen for a Right-Brainer

What begins as a noble effort to stick to a regimen of regular writing may, in the end, have the same fate as my past attempts at stick-with-it-ness when it comes to writing.

A few of years ago, my lovely dad passed the role of family record keeper to me. He gave me a black bag full of family records - which he still stores at my parents' house - and a red, leather, bound standard diary. Once a day, he told me, write down what happened.

The diary has college-ruled pages and one date per page, with a few pages at the back for notes. Whenever I look at those narrow lines, I picture my dad's perfect, pencil-written script. Always a mechanical pencil. My handwriting is legible - barely - and I've always had trouble keeping my pen within the lines. Always a pen. Blue ink.

I buy a new red diary every January with a new resolution to write a few lines about what happened in our lives each day. And every January first, I end the day with a diary entry.

I rarely make it into March. Sometimes, around mid-June or July, I decide to try again. This valiant attempt to resurrect my promise to my dad doesn't last more than a week.

But I still go to OfficeMax or Staples every December to buy a new red diary. Sometimes I even buy a special pen (special, as in it comes in its own package and isn't one of twenty-four).

So, as I embark on this renewed attempt at cataloging the bits and pieces of my somewhat vanilla life and my journey toward published authorship, I shall promise myself one thing: at least once a week, I will log onto this blog and spew a few thoughts. Who knows what the various topics will be...at this point, it's anyone's guess.