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The
Maplewoods Mirror #27 - July 2008
Welcome to my monthly newsletter on life and
writing. If you want to see my website for past issues and other
news, please visit www.chrismeeks.com.
It’s the fourth of July weekend—have a blast!
Whenever I think of the words “Independence
Day,” I can’t help but think of Bruce Springsteen’s song of that
title. It’s one of his darker, more somber songs. It’s about
leaving home at eighteen and the things he wasn’t able to communicate to
his father. The lyrics, in part, go:
So say
goodbye it's Independence day
Papa now I know the things you wanted that you could not say
But won’t you just say goodbye it's Independence Day
I swear I never meant to take those things away
For me, this weekend is a blessing, but
there’s a touch of sadness to it, too. So much is positive: I’m at
home with my family, barbecuing on the fourth, and I’ve done a little
gardening as well as writing this day and working on a new book. My
book Months and Seasons was published two weeks ago and made a
splash, thanks to my friends. Almost everyone I know is healthy,
including my father at eighty. What gives me a twinge, though, is my
mother and stepfather are each having huge challenges as they age.
I focus on this and more, below.
(If you want to see Springsteen sing this song
in 1978, click here.
He was amazingly young then. Weren’t we all.)
IN THIS ISSUE:
A Whirlwind Day
The Reading
My Big Fat Greek Campaign
Minnesota in May
Downbound Train
A Whirlwind Day
I must start with a thank you. Thanks to
the readers of the Maplewoods Mirror, my new book Months and Seasons went
out of the gate very fast. Each of you who bought the book, you’ve
helped it compete in the marketplace. Thank you.
If you read my message on Friday, June 13th,
publication day, then you know that at 6:10 a.m., the book had a ranking on
Amazon of #1,763,891—very low on the best seller list. Considering
that Amazon’s ranking goes down to about four million—that many titles—I
started the day better than half the titles out there thanks to a few
presales.
By mid-day, the book was ranked at #10,636—a
huge leap. I could see people were taking my suggestion to buy the book on
publication day, and by midnight, it was #9,305. Breaking that
ten-thousand barrier felt like a huge victory. My first book never
made the rankings as well. Two days later, on Sunday morning, it was
still strong on the list at #26,853.
To give you an idea of rankings, The
Middle-Aged Man and the Sea ended up being bought on the weekend, too,
starting the day at just over a million, and it had improved to as strong
as #108,000 on Friday. Within two days, it was at #336,778.
How many sales came that first day? I
have no idea. Amazon doesn’t say—they only give rankings. I’ll
get a sense when the distributor gives me my first report in a few
weeks. To look at the rankings (under “Product Details”) is
addictive. I must... stop... looking...
The Reading
The reading at the Beverly Hills Public Library
was also the same day. I learned that Friday nights are not
necessarily ideal for readings. Not only are people tired after
working all week, but then there is Los Angeles Friday traffic to contend
with. But what night is ideal? Saturday? The traffic is
better, but people have plays, movies, barbecues, and graduations to attend
or perhaps illicit affairs to conduct, so Saturdays aren’t ideal.
Sundays? That’s ribs at Guy’s Barbecue
Night. Face it—there’s no ideal night. That’s why some authors
have a couple of readings. I was having just the one. Next time
I’ll aim for more.
Even with just the one reading, the auditorium,
which had two sections, became populated and electric. I had little
to do with the actual event. The New Short Fiction series producer,
Sally Shore, had asked me two-and-a-half years earlier for permission to do
an evening of my work, and we coordinated it to be the publication day for
my new book. It gave me time to write the book.
At the reading, at least eighty people braved
the city streets and arrived with smiles. That was the number I told
Sally to expect. Others told me there were a hundred attendees.
The place was well populated, and I was pleased to see everyone, including
Lonnie Lardner, Preston Rose, and Jody Serkes, who hail back from my
undergraduate days at the University of Denver. There were neighbors,
students and former students, friends from online classes, and many
more. My Aunt Barby flew in from Denver. And my wife Ann was at
my side. Thank you all for coming!
Christopher Meeks greeting Tom Tighe
At intermission, I signed over fifty copies of
the book, so that was great. I recognized everyone, but I didn't
always have everyone's name on my tongue. My head was buzzing.
I loved watching the actors. Each story
came off like a one-person play with each actor becoming all of the
involved characters. Each performer used an array of voices.
Stevie Johnson
I have favorite moments of the evening.
Stevie Johnson started the night out reading “A Shoe Falls,” about a man
awakened from a deep sleep by his cat shoving a shoe on his head. The
character decides to leave his wife that day, and as Johnson mimed typing a
speech for later, his realizations brought much laughter.
Rod Maxwell
Rod Maxwell presented “Dracula Slinks Into the
Night,” and I gasped in delight when Dracula fell, and Maxwell thrust his
arms out to the side, making us all see the fall in detail. The humor
came off well. One of the great things in hearing someone else read
the stories was my being able to see the audience watching and listening
intently.
Sally Shore--who also directed most of the pieces
Sally Shore enacted “The Wind Just
Right.” One of the challenges I gave myself in this collection was to
have more female characters than in The Middle-Aged Man and the Sea, and
I wanted them to be three-dimensional. Two of the stories have a
female protagonist, and this is one of them. Sally, wearing a
Minnesota Twins baseball sweatshirt just like her 17-year-old character,
pulled out the story’s nuances.
Matt Ferrucci
The last story of the evening, “A Whisker,”
offered a challenge to the actor because the main character’s initial
behavior is less than stellar, yet Matt Ferrucci gave the young man such
life, drive and passion that one can’t help but love what happens.
Until this series, I’d never heard of an
evening of stories presented by actors. I learned a lot from this
experience, mainly to dive into my characters when I read aloud. I
happened to present the title story, “Months and Seasons,” at the Skirball
Cultural Center two nights before the Beverly Hills event. After I
had seen what actors can do, I tried being more outgoing and daring myself
in reading. Acting, like writing, requires one to take chances and be
willing to be vulnerable.
To my students and fellow writers for when you
read your own work: emote. Be the characters. It’s fun.
The next short fiction that will be presented
at the Beverly Hills Public Library is by Tracey Ruby on July 11, 8 p.m.
My Big Fat Greek Campaign
After publication day, I found myself
stumped. What next? This is the exact moment that stops many
authors. Once a book is out, how do you get people to discover
it?
With each book, I learn more about publishing
in this century. With The Middle-Aged Man and the Sea, I
absorbed that attention to detail is everything if you hope your book will
get any attention. With Who Lives?, I discovered that
publishing a play gives a permanent record of it, and perhaps it will be
performed again.
With Months and Seasons, I appreciated
how a reading gives an event, a meaning, to publication day,
and a reading generates word of mouth.
That’s made me think how else can I get
word-of-mouth going. Why not use the same power of those e-mails that
you get from friends--those notes where good things happen if you
send the e-mail onto ten friends?
Do you want great karma? Would you like
to call the forces of nature in to help you? How about if you try one
of the following?
1) My interview for my
book is on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JGhhxgmvPA.
How about if you cut-and-paste this link and send it to ten friends to
watch?
Click on the above link or this photo to
see the interview
Everyone likes to watch videos. Today,
July 4, it’s been watched 80 times in the two weeks it’s been up.
That’s not exactly viral. Maybe we could send the viewings into the
hundreds. Every bit helps.
2) Feel free to forward
this letter or any of the previous ones to friends. Subscriptions are
free. The previous newsletter, with a picture of me as Joe Cocker at
Woodstock, can be seen by
clicking here.
3) If you have a blog,
please mention the book. Two of my friends (who also happen to be
amazing novelists) wrote about my book on publication day and you can see
what they said by going to the following sites:
Click
here for Jessica Barksdale Inclan.
Click
here for Caroline Leavitt.
Word-of-mouth requires passing on
information. I’m hoping for the My Big Fat Greek Wedding phenomenon.
That small film bucked the normal distribution model when people who found
it told others.
4) If you want to read
the book and don’t want to buy it, ask your local library for it.
Each library has a fund for new books, and librarians listen to suggestions
and order.
5) If you haven’t
bought it and want it this instant, try here. If
you’re feeling flush, buy copies and give them away.
6) You can also order
from any bookstore. If you are at an independent bookstore, recommend
it. Maybe they’ll even stock it.
Pardon if I sound obsessive. That’s how I
finish books, and now I want to blow on the little flame that’s started on
the book’s publicity. It’s the American Way, no? The little
person can find success with perseverance? What better thing to do on
Independence Day.
To those who have bought the book, enjoyed
it, and perhaps found truths: tusind tak (Danish for "a thousand
thanks.")
Minnesota in May
We all carry images in our head of our
parents. If we’re lucky, the images are strong, helpful, a
balm. Our lives are not unlike that of Billy Pilgrim in Kurt
Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. We’re all, in certain moments,
unstuck in time. The past is alive there in our heads. We see
things.
I see my mother, Sidney, for instance, in
scenes or still flashes from the past. There she is at LaGuardia
Airport in the sixties, one of the few female executives from Minneapolis,
and she has taken me along on her business trip. I’m eleven.
The Beatles landed in America only a year earlier. I am not used to
traveling by plane, and now we’re returning from a three-day trip.
I had been nervous much of the trip, though I
had tried not to show it. New York had felt overwhelming—skyscrapers,
hotels with super small rooms, and people everywhere. My most difficult
day was when I had to spend an afternoon with my mother’s friend from
college, a total stranger to me, who took me to the Central Park Zoo.
The zoo was sad. The monkeys looked as if
they were crying, and the zebras smelled as if no one had washed them in
years, their white and black stripes melding toward gray. It was the
Lost Hope Zoo. When my mother returned for me that day, I felt
elated. Apparently her meeting had gone well, and she was upbeat,
laughing. How could she laugh when I’d been stuck in Animal
Auchwitz? I was eager to return to Minnesota.
The plane after we took off soon became
smoke-filled. No, nothing was wrong. In those days, there was a
smoking section and a non-smoking section, which had never made sense to me
because the smoke went everywhere. My mother smoked as did everyone
else except me. I got gum.
My mother, Sidney, on visit to L.A. in
2007
Another image: my stepfather, Phil, dark-haired
from a strong Irish clan, used to mow our field in those years walking
behind a farm-sized Gravely mower. The machine, though
self-propelled, took a lot of strength to hold in line on the hills.
He wanted my three brothers and I to stay far from him when he mowed.
“The Gravely,” he said, “could take a rock the size of your skull and throw
it fifty feet.” There were rocks the size of my skull out there in
the field? I’d stay away. He mowed with his shirt off, his arms
beefy and muscular.
Last month, I went back to Minnesota to see
both of them. They’ve been divorced for over twenty years. My
mother until earlier this year lived alone in the same home that my
brothers and I had grown up in, the field now mowed by a man on a
go-cart-like mower. He does in twenty minutes what had taken Phil
hours. If a skull were out there, it’d be mulched.
Phil had remarried despite his post-divorce
feeling that his life was over. He’d met a childhood friend, Della,
and they had mutual interests and found they’d loved each other. They
traveled together, despite his never being a traveler earlier in
life. One morning, after a week of having the flu, she stood, said,
“I feel much better,” and went to take a shower. She died in the
bathroom from an apparent heart attack while my stepfather was
downstairs. Her death had devastated him for years.
Now he lives alone in a condo on a bluff, his
memory fleeting often. I told him there were drugs to help with
memory loss, and he said, “If there are, I won’t take them. My
memory? Good riddance.” He’s completely gray, stands bent
despite his life-long determination to stand straight, and he’s very thin,
120 pounds, when he used to be strong and firm at over 180.
Last year when he came to Los Angeles to visit,
I’d pointed to where Ann and I used to live. He said he’d never seen
it. I told him he’d stayed with us there two years before.
“Really? I don’t remember that.” That means he didn’t remember
walking the dog, meditating in the Huntington’s Zen garden, or eating
Mexican food at El Cholo. Also last year, when we had zipped to Palm
Springs one day, he said he’d never been there, either. Later I’d
learned that’s where he had spent his first honeymoon.
My stepfather, Phil, in Los Angeles in Palm
Springs in 2007
My mother in January was struggling at home in
trying to recover from open-heart surgery. She was only barely
eating, pulling in just over 300 calories a day. No wonder she’d lost
fifty pounds, and she hadn’t been overweight. Five months before her
operation, she’d been in Los Angeles visiting, her breath often short if we
walked, but her laugh just as strong as ever and her observations,
sharp. She had read a draft of one of my stories on her visit and
given me great notes. After her operation, she could not read a
thing, her mind, anxious and hyper. She was not the same woman.
Last month, I visited her in the assisted
living home that she had checked herself into once she had realized she
needed more physical therapy. It’s a house on the edge of a golf
course and otherwise surrounded by woods. Five other residents also
live there, and they each have their own bedroom. One woman turned
100 the week before I visited. This house is a new approach to assisted
living, “homey” versus institutionalized. There are two aides, one a
nurse, during the day, and one at night.
My mother intended to be there just a few
months to get her stamina back, but her breathing remains a problem.
Thankfully, her ability to read returned last month. Now that her
heart works well, though, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) has
reared its head, thanks to her fifty-five years of smoking. She
experiences bouts of “air hunger” and gets panicked. An aide will
sweep in to help her relax and get her breathing better. She has an
oxygen machine in her bedroom, too, to help in these times and when she
sleeps.
The difference in a year is dramatic.
She’s now thin, frail, and often worried. I had expected for her
something along the lines of Katherine Hepburn, swimming into her final
years, debating and gardening.
This is why I’m thinking about what our culture
says of aging, what we expect for ourselves, and what I’m witnessing.
I realized I’ve expected the golden years to be vital—that we’d be like the
people in the Ben Gay commercials: good teeth, shimmering gray hair, and
our muscles sore on some days, which an ointment can cure and bring smiles
once more. Or consider the Viagra commercials, with men gray at the
temples, distinguished looking and great teeth (everyone has great teeth)
whose wives are pulling them off to the bedroom. I want to live in
that universe.
Rooted in my expectations is my former neighbor
Ben, from nearly twenty years ago. He was eighty-five and forever working
on his house: reshingling the roof himself, painting, and trimming his
trees. One day he helped me build my son’s bunk bed, and the next day
he had a massive stroke and died. It was a shock and has made me wary
of building more beds—yet in many ways he’s epitomized old age for
me. You’re vibrant until the clock strikes twelve.
My father, George, who lives not in Minnesota
but up in the wine country of Sonoma, just turned eighty—“Eighty!” he says;
“a Meeks has never lived this long”—and these same thoughts on aging and
mortality are on his mind, perhaps more acutely because his father died in
his early sixties, and his father’s father died at fifty-six. So my
father has become, as he says, “a farmer,” putting in a new vineyard on his
property and tending the grapes daily. He also takes power walks
three days a week—so fast, I have a hard time keeping up. He works
out in a gym a few days a week, golfs up to five times a week, and, thanks
to his wife, Abbie, eats a high-fiber, low-salt diet.
Hence, he fits in with my hopes of how to age
well, versus my mother and stepfather, who are living scenarios not in any
songbook I want to buy.
My father, George, in Los Angeles in 2006
Last week Phil, convinced he was supposed to
pick up one of my brothers from the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport, was there
ten hours when an airport employee noticed him wandering and confused
looking. The employee was able to get enough information from Phil to
call my brother, Stuart, who, indeed had landed earlier that day.
Stuart hadn’t asked Phil for help nor given him a flight time. Stuart
said he’d come to get Phil, but Phil said no, he wouldn’t wait for Stuart
but would drive home. I later heard Phil couldn’t remember where he
parked his car, but the employee helped him find it.
Today, Independence Day, I spoke to Phil, and
he’s moving to an assisted living facility tomorrow. Thanks to his
doctor’s urging, Phil decided to stop driving as well as move. “It’s
a good place to retire,” he told me. “You might like it for yourself
someday.”
That has to be hard: realizing you cannot be
independent anymore.
We all hope for dignity, and COPD, memory loss,
and a host of other illnesses just don’t afford that. When it comes
down to it, there aren’t many easy ways to exit this earth. We come
into the world screaming, and we battle illness or surprise at the
end. How we will go is the question mark that hangs over us like an
ax.
The good thing about memory—those who can keep
it and use it well—is that it’s there to remind us that indeed we’ve had
good times, and that many people are important. Our parents can remain
special, whether they’ve passed or not. They can show us the
way.
Downbound Train
I have three other subjects about which I want
to write, and I’ll save for next time, including the Alison
Krauss–Robert Plant concert I saw at the Greek Theatre—talk about an odd
and interesting pairing.
I'll also write about reviews and
reviewing. So far, I'm lucky to get good reviews. Here's one of
the latest: click
here for it at Rebecca's Reads.
Another Springsteen song is sailing through my
head at the moment, after thinking about aging: “Downbound Train.”
The lyrics include:
Now I
work down at the carwash
Where all it ever does is rain
Don't you feel like you're a rider on a downbound train?
Bruce Springsteen in concert 2008
You can see Springsteen perform this song in
1985 from his Born To Run tour, when he muscled up for a short
time. Click
here for it.
Park LaBrea and Greater Los Angeles 2008
See you next time,
--Chris
For reviews or more
information on my books below, click on the cover.
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