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The
Maplewoods Mirror #18 (September 2007 )
Welcome to my monthly newsletter on life and
writing. If you want to see my website for back issues and other
news, please visit www.chrismeeks.com.
One
thing I’m discovering about this monthly “Mirror” is that I rarely
anticipate what I’ll write much in advance. Like putting on a play,
it just somehow happens. All my traveling this summer helped give me
material, both text and photos.
The
fiction at the end is so new that I’d love to hear reactions from
anyone. It’s new ground for me, too, in that I wrote it from a
younger and female point of view. I was inspired by my cousin.
In This Issue:
MINNESOTA ON A STICK
I
flew into Minneapolis early this month on my way to New York. The
Mayo Clinic in Rochester was evaluating my mother, who was having heart
problems. The day I arrived, the doctors determined she had
hypertrophic cardiomyopathy—something a person doesn’t want to have.
It pertains to having a thickened heart wall, which causes the heart to be
muscle-bound, as it were, and thus not pumping enough volume.
She
has since had open-heart surgery to shave down the heart
wall. The doctors stopped her heart, operated for three
hours, sewed her up, and shocked her heart. The organ started back
up. Instantly it was working better than before. This is science
fiction to me.
She’s
still in the hospital, with hopes and prayers running on the wind to her as
well as through e-mail. Slowly she’s doing better.
Before
this, however, when I had just landed in Minnesota, she’d just spent the
day in evaluations, culminating with a mini-camera that had sailed up her
veins. The doctors, not wanting any surprises once the surgery
started, had checked her arteries and heart valves. All systems were
go, and I was able to see her before she went to bed early. I’d see
her in the morning.
With
the evening suddenly open, my brother Stuart suggested going to the
Minnesota State Fair with him, his wife, and two sons, ages two and
fourteen. The state fair, somewhere on the edge of St. Paul, was
something I went to as a kid and as a teenager. Then, Dad would bring
us to barns full of cows, goats, and horses—the boring stuff.
We
just wanted the midway. It’d seem as if we walked forever over the
320 acres past the politicians in their booths trying to wrangle votes,
past tractor and farm machinery displays, past the grandstand where boring
country groups from the South were playing. As kids, we wanted bags
full of mini-donuts made in the Tom Thumb rivers of hot oil; we wanted corn
dogs, a ride on the boat through the dark tunnels of Ye Old Mill, and
where’s the midway already?
Now I
was there as an adult, feeling much like Rip Van Winkle. The place
looked much the same, streets closed to traffic but swarming with
people. Booths and specialized buildings lined each street.
However, there were more people than ever—over 160,000 the day we went, 1.7
million people over the course of twelve days. A lotta birthin’ been
goin’ on in Minnesota since I’d been gone.
A
“now/then” thing overwhelmed me. Hey, there was all-the-milk-you-can
drink stand, now $1 instead of ten cents. Look, Ye Old Mill was still
going strong. It was $2.50 a ride now versus fifty cents. Corn
dogs! They were $3 now instead of fifty cents. I had to have a
corn dog at the State Fair, though.
My brother Stuart Wear and his
wife Kim
As we
walked, I savored the fried cornbread coating around the wiener on a
stick. New food stands showed that now many things came on a
stick. No joke. There was walleye fish on a stick. Cajun
catfish on a stick. There were eggrolls, pork chops and ostrich meat
on sticks. Spaghetti and meatball on a stick (how?). Yikes:
deep-fried Twinkies on a stick. I also came across deep fried cheese
curds, deep-fried Spam, fresh cookies by the half-gallon bucket (oh, the
wonderful smell), ice cream, and nut bars of many varieties (peanut, pecan,
pistachio and more). People were in long lines for these things, all
seemingly designed to thicken anyone’s heart.
The
kids wanted to go the midway, but, man, the cow barns, the horses, the
goats and other animals had a strange pull on we adults. I learned
the Limosin cow, a big one, gave us the name “limousine” for cars. We
saw the winning fattest pig, which was over 1200 pounds.
I saw
a sign that the Allman Brothers Band was playing at the
Grandstand. Wow! Now that would be fun, right kids?
Fourteen-year-old Peter gave me the you-gotta-be-kidding look. “When
are we going to hit the midway?” he asked.
As we
walked down the street where politicians reigned supreme, there was, of all
people, an alum from my small high school running for U.S. Senate.
He’d been a few years ahead of me. We were old enough to be senators
now? His name: Al Franken.
I
said hello, happily took one of his buttons, and promised I’d send him one
of my books. (He’s had four #1 New York Times bestsellers, including
Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Liar, compared to my The Middle-Aged
Man and the Sea, which hits a ranking in the top 25,000 on
Amazon when I’m hot.)
I had
a night. It shows you can go home again.
And
so will my mother.
NEW YORK AND ART
When
I travel, I tend to search for the cool things a city has to offer,
especially museums. For instance, in Bozeman, Montana, there’s the
fascinating American Computer Museum (http://www.compustory.com/). When I’m in New York,
there are so many places to see, it’s overwhelming. For my last two
visits, I’ve concentrated entirely on the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which
is so large, I still have not completely walked through it yet.
On
this visit, I stumbled upon a tour just starting out given by a man named
Jim Spann, who looked a lot like Wallace Shawn in My Dinner with
Andre. I knew this was going to be special when he said, “You
can’t walk through here as if it’s a mall. Some people think museums
are for pretty pictures and statues, and what they’re missing is life.”
He said
people spend less than a minute in front of most work, so there’s really no
way to feel what the artist had felt. “You don’t know a painting
until it becomes a part of you,” he said. After working there for
decades, he still hadn’t seen it all, and so he was going to show us just
seven pieces, “seven clearings in the forest.”
After
the first piece, a Greek statue called a Kuros, which stood over a grave, I
realized this man was pulling me into the art farther than I would have on
my own, so I found a pen and started writing. Rather than go into all
seven works he showed us, I’ll mention three.
“Primordial
Couple,” a freestanding wood sculpture of a seated male and female couple,
was created by a Dogon master in the 16th century. The
Dogon are a tribe of people in Mali, West Africa. They are believed
to be of Egyptian decent and their astronomical lore goes back thousands of
years to 3200 BC. According to their traditions, the star Sirius has a
companion star that is invisible to the human eye. Western
astronomers did not discover this to be true until the mid-19th
century, and it wasn’t photographed until 1970. “How did the Dogon
know this?” Spann asked with a smile. “There are other ways of
perception beyond science.”
The
figures in the piece are unified by the male figure's gesture, reaching his
right arm around his partner's neck and resting his hand on her breast.
This seminal work gives expression to the idea of man and woman as an
elemental unit of life.
Tour guide Jim Spann
He
brought us to “Cow Skull: Red, White, and Blue” by Georgia O’Keeffe,
1931. He gave a brief history of O’Keeffe and her meeting
photographer Alfred Stieglitz, twenty-four years her senior, who quickly
became an ardent supporter and later her husband. O’Keeffe early on
realized she needed to focus on things that interested her rather on what
other people found important. She liked to paint things larger than
life, such as flowers, to show the different shapes and colors
within. The artist said she would make even busy New Yorkers take
time to see what she saw in flowers.
According
to Spann, she also felt that “painting is a way of working into the
unknown…. To see takes time like to have a friend takes time.”
I’ll
add that the same can be said of writing. For me, writing is about
jumping into the unknown and finding things. In fact, that’s what I
was connecting to in this museum. To be an artist of any sort gives
one a special pair of glasses.
In
New Mexico, O’Keeffe found animal bones in the desert as she walked.
She later said, “The bones seem to cut sharply to the center of something
that is keenly alive on the desert even though it is vast and empty and
untouchable...and knows no kindness with all its beauty.” She made
the background in the painting red, white, and blue because the skull
seemed so American to her.
Detail of Gertrude Stein
painting by Pablo Picasso
The
last place Spann took us was to the painting of Gertrude Stein by Pablo
Picasso from 1906. Stein moved to Paris in 1903 with her brother Leo,
and they started collecting modern art, including the works of a young
Spaniard, Pablo Picasso. Although Picasso never painted portraits of
people, per se, he wanted to paint Stein, and he had her pose for him in
many sittings (ninety, claimed Stein, but disputed by art historians),
finally obliterating out her face because he wasn’t happy with it.
Later, after a trip to Spain where he saw statuary that impressed him, he
painted her face more simply and looking like the statues. When
friends said it didn’t look like Gertrude, he said, “Don’t worry. It
will,” meaning people looking at it long enough would get the truth.
He said that “Art is a lie that tells the truth.”
So,
too, fiction. This reminds me of something novelist John Rechy said
at a recent USC faculty meeting. He thought any autobiography was a
great lie. Any biography, less so, but it was fiction that told the
greatest truth.
I
recently read a short book, Picasso and Gertrude Stein, by Vincent
Giroud, which focused on this painting. This again shows there’s much
to learn in any individual artwork.
Spann
ended the tour with a quote from Aldous Huxley: “Experience is not what
happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.”
THE WRITER’S LIFE
Even
though I write, I often think that writers are funny and odd people.
Some writers wear lucky shirts or touch a special rock each morning or have
their cats nearby as they write. (My cat is staring at the screen as
I type. What does she see?) May Sarton liked to listen to music
when she worked, but only eighteenth-century music. "I find that the
romantics don't work for me," she said. Writers obsess over where
their books are ranked on Amazon, and some hope for a book tour as if that
will prove to people they’re writers.
Writing
is not so much about the money. JK Rowling and a small group of
best-selling authors aside, writing rarely brings riches. I do it in
part for the same reason I like going to the movies. It’s a communal
dream. We are the same people.
When
I taught a survey class at CalArts in the 90s, I brought in different types
of writers to speak. I had many come over the years: poets,
novelists, playwrights, film and television writers, reviewers,
journalists, nonfiction book specialists, and essayists. The poets,
the least paid in publishing, tended to be a happy bunch, and the film
writers—the richest writers—tended to have a weight on their shoulders,
mostly fueled by the slights they received constantly in the film industry.
The TV sitcom writers tended to be both rich and happy. After all,
they wrote something one week, it was filmed before a live audience the
next week, then it was aired weeks later to millions of people.
However, they weren’t completely satisfied. They wanted to write
movies.
Screenwriter David Franzoni at
Calarts in 1995
Overall,
however, most writers love what they do. While I’ve worked in
offices where people couldn’t wait for the weekend to party and otherwise
get away from their boring job, I never hear writers complain that what
they do “is just a job.”
I
reflect on this because I was in New York recently to meet with my agent,
Jim McCarthy, who, too, loves what he does. He feels lucky that a
paid internship led to working in an agency, which then led to becoming an
agent. A few months ago, he was invited to a writers’ conference in
Seattle where he spoke on a panel and then “they put me in a little room
where I listened to pitch after pitch, one writer after another.”
In
fact, he did this for three days and didn’t have time to see any of
Seattle. And he’d do it again. That’s someone who loves his
job. I sensed he likes agenting because he loves a good book, and
it’s exciting when he’s the one to find it before anyone else.
I
left the city ecstatic for a couple of reasons. First, Jim liked my
new novel, Falling Down Mt. Washington, which I’d given to him two
weeks earlier. He read it twice and was eager to show it.
Second, after I met with him, I went to the nearby Barnes and Noble
bookstore off Union Square. When I walked in, I saw a kiosk of
computers set up to help customers find books. I was curious if my
book of short stories was still listed on their online site. It was,
but also onscreen came the words, “In Stock.” A map showed me where
to look for it in the fiction and literature section on the fourth floor.
Granted,
this is small and perhaps meaningless to most people, but my book is not
like other books. It’s not returnable to the distributor.
Hence, most bookstores are unlikely to carry it. I had to see if it
were truly in stock, and so I went to the fourth floor. There it was
in a highly visible spot wedged in among other M authors. I had to
photograph it.
Small
moments mean a lot.
MEEKS TO APPEAR AT WEST HOLLYWOOD BOOK
FAIR
I
will be on a panel at the West Hollywood Book Fair this month and signing
books afterwards. The fair is free and open to the public.
Author Carolyn Howard-Johnson will moderate a panel, Reach for Your
Dream: Prepare for Publication the Professional Way at the West
Hollywood Book Fair on Sunday, September 30. at 1:00 pm at the Writer's
Pavilion. She promises, "Even those who are old hands at
publishing will learn something new."
Panelists
include June Casagrande, Ina Hillebrandt, Elizabeth Pomeroy, and me.
Authors and publishers all, we’ll each speak to our experiences publishing
in a different way.
Best
known for her book The Frugal Book Promoter, Howard-Johnson says,
"There is no one right way to publish. Each title, each author, each
pocketbook may demand something different." She is also the author of This
Is the Place, Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered, and Tracings,
a chapbook of poetry. All are multi award-winners. She was awarded
Woman of the Year in Arts and Entertainment by members of the California
Legislature.
After
the 45-minute panel, we’ll each be signing books next to the Author’s
Coalition booth, numbers 51-52 F. I’ll have copies of The
Middle-Aged Man and the Sea and Who Lives? Howard-Johnson
will also sign her newly-released The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book
Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success after the panel
discussion and all day at the Authors' Coalition booth.
The 6th
Annual West Hollywood Book Fair will be located in West Hollywood Park at
647 N. San Vincente Blvd. The West Hollywood Book Fair features over
300 participating authors, 12 stages with author panels and special guests,
live storytelling, theater, poetry and performances and writing workshops,
and over 100 exhibitors hosting activities, including local independent
booksellers and literary non-profit organizations. Parking is across the
street at the Pacific Design Center.
More
information on the West Hollywood Book Festival may be found at. http://www.westhollywoodbookfair.org/ Both the fair and the
presentations are presented at no charge.
For a
schedule of author signing times go to http://www.authorscoalition.blogspot.com
You
can learn more about my books at www.chrismeeks.com, about June Casagrande at www.grammarsnobs.com, about Carolyn Howard-Johnson
at www.howtodoitfrugally.com, about Elizabeth Pomeroy at www.newmoonspress.com and about Ina Hillebrandt at www.inaspawprints.com.
FICTION:
The Wind Just Right
The note from Mr. Bertoni instructed Gwen to be at the beach at 11
a.m. She wouldn’t be leading a hike after all, but probably helping
Mr. Bertoni as a lifeguard. That sucked. This whole summer had
sucked so far. Mom was angry and drank, and Dad, a lawyer, took his
wife’s verbal lashings and stayed quiet. They should divorce
already. Her parents forced her to take a job at this camp.
Camp was fun at thirteen—stupid at seventeen.
“Over here, Gwen,” said Mr. Bertoni on the beach. The light wind,
ruffling off the water, played with his longish graying hair. As the
counselor in charge of swimming at Camp Elsa Linson in Northern Minnesota,
he was perhaps the busiest person at the camp. The first classes
started at nine each morning and went to five.
Mr. Bertoni kneeled down next to a seven-year-old girl in a blue suit whose
arms were crossed, and the girl glared into the sand. Gwen thought
this paunchy kid might punch him in the face at any second. Gwen felt
something similar. She didn’t want to be there, either.
A bird cawed above, and Gwen cranked her head up. A crow flew into
the trees beyond the beach. The woods looked particularly dark that
morning. Between the beach and the woods stood a narrow swamp where
lily pads and cattails grew. The long stems waved in the cool breeze.
“I don’t want to swim!” said Anna.
“It’s okay, Anna,” said Mr. Bertoni to the girl. “Gwen will help
you.”
Gwen, dressed in her red one-piece suit and wearing a Minnesota Twins
sweatshirt, tried to get Mr. Bertoni’s attention with her own look that
said “No way.” Gwen knew nothing about teaching. She had her
Junior Lifesaving card, true, but she had no experience teaching and no
desire to teach.
“Please,” said young Anna, pleading, echoing Gwen’s feeling. “I’ll do
anything else. Make me clean up bear poop or something.” The
girl stared at the ground.
“You’ll be fine.”
Anna shook her head, kicking at the sand. “My grandpa always calls me
a rock. I’m going to sink.”
Mr. Bertoni smiled. “I think he meant you’re reliable. Gwen
will help you get used to the water.”
The girl glowered at Gwen, and Gwen knew the girl probably would sink.
To be frightened of the water—what a silly thing. It was like being
afraid of ice cream or watermelon.
“Mr. Bertoni?” said Gwen. “I think I’m here by mistake. I
volunteered for hiking.”
“I asked for you. I’ve seen you swim here every summer since you were
a little girl. You’re a sunfish. You’ll be fine.”
No she wouldn’t. “Can I talk to you about something?” She meant
alone.
“Stay here, Anna,” he told the girl. “One second.”
He indicated to Gwen to follow him some steps down the beach. About
twenty feet away, he stopped. “What?” he asked.
“I can’t teach her.”
“Why not?”
“You’re mistaking me for someone else. I’ve never taught and—”
“You’re the right person.”
“She doesn’t want to be taught.”
They looked at Anna who stared fiercely at them. “That’s your
challenge,” Mr. Bertoni said.
“But I don’t want a challenge.”
“We’re paying you, aren’t we?”
Her stomach turned. “But I’ve never taught anything.”
He smiled and waved Anna over. She came, recrossing her arms.
“Anna, Gwen is only going to get you used to the water. You’re not
going to swim today, understand?”
Anna stepped back, frightened as if Gwen were some Grizzly. Gwen
shook her head. This kid was going to be horrible.
“Gwen,” said Mr. Bertoni. “As you can see, Anna isn’t sure about the
water. As the Zen master says, to get to China, you have to take the
first step.”
Gwen frowned. China? What Zen master? Zen?
“The first step for you,” Mr. Bertoni told Gwen, “is just show Anna that
the lake is like a talking candle. It can be your friend.”
A talking candle? This guy was off his rocker.
Anna stepped forward aggressively. “My brother says the fish in the
lake are just like my goldfish—they poop and pee in the water. I’m
not stepping into that.”
“Your parents told me they need you to learn for your own safety,” said Mr.
Bertoni. “After all, Minnesota has over ten thousand lakes.”
“And lots of streams and swimming pools,” added Gwen, who then noticed Anna
zapped her with laser eyes. If Gwen had been a talking candle, she’d
be a puddle of wax now.
“Okay, you two,” said Mr. Bertoni. “Stay in the shallows and have
fun. I’ve got to watch the fifth graders swim a mile.” Mr.
Bertoni stepped on the dock and waved toward the group of fifth-grade girls
near the dock’s end, a giant U. Kids would swim between the
arms. Forty-four times back and forth equaled a mile. Gwen had
done it every year for the last five years.
“Let’s just walk into the water a little bit,” said Gwen.
“No,” said Anna.
“How about we walk in just up to our ankles?”
“I don’t like my feet to get wet.”
“How are you going to get used to the water if—”
“You can’t make me,” said Anna. “I’m going back to my cabin,” and she
started walking.
“Mr. Bertoni?” said Gwen automatically, but he was out of range.
Even so, that made Anna pause. “He can’t hear you,” said Anna.
Gwen lurched toward Anna. She wanted to grab the damn kid and just
throw her in. Anna gave a short scream and fell down, shaking.
Gwen glanced at the dock. Mr. Bertoni was busy and didn’t seem to
hear the scream. Gritting her teeth, she said, “Listen, damn
it. Let’s just start. We’ll go in the shallow part and—”
Anna had tears in her eyes. “I’m going to drown,” she said as a quiet
fact.
“No you’re not.”
Anna only shook her head, faster, harder, more frightened.
Rather than yell, more, though, Gwen remembered being just as scared about
horses about the same age. Her teacher had been very patient, letting
her ride the new Shetland pony, which was much smaller.
“Okay,” said Gwen. “I’m not going to throw you in the water, if that’s what
you’re worried about. We’ll barely walk in.”
“I don’t want to walk in.”
Gwen looked at the trees, wondering again what the hell was a Zen
master? She watched the crow take off. It now seemed a graceful
bird. “You know why I like the water?” said Gwen, turning back.
“I love the water because it makes cool patterns. You know what a
pattern is?”
Anna shook her head no.
“A pattern is a design,” said Gwen, but the girl still looked
puzzled. “It’s like the way wallpaper can look, or clothing.
Look out there on the lake, and if you look hard enough, you can see waves,
one after the other. That’s a design. ” The girl looked, and
Gwen smiled seeing that Anna at last had listened to something. “If
we go here on shore where the water is calm, if we look really closely
at the water, you’ll see teeny tiny waves like lines that repeat. You
ever notice that in the water?”
Anna shook her head. “Squiggly at school has a line under his
chin. That’s where he fell on a rock from a wall.”
“That’s a scar,” said Gwen. “This is different. Want to see
lines in the water?”
Anna nodded. They stepped forward to the water’s edge,
but Anna stopped short of the water.
“Do you feel the breeze from the lake?” said Gwen, and Anna nodded
again. “Well, that breeze is what makes the waves and the lines on
the water. You have to get closer to see the lines. Let me show
you.” Gwen walked into the water, but the girl did not follow.
Alright, so maybe this wasn’t going to work.
“There’s another way to make patterns, too,” said Gwen, “and that’s with a
rock. If you drop a rock in, it’ll make little circles on the water—a
pattern.” Gwen stepped into the water, reached down, and found a
stone among the sand. She held the stone high over the water, then
let the rock go. It blurped in, and little rings on the surface
radiated out like an animation of radio waves. “Isn’t that neat?”
said Gwen.
Anna nodded. She walked right into the water, leaned down, stuck her
hand in the water, and came up with her own rock. She let it
go. She watched the pattern intently.
“Look at the pattern your feet make when you stomp your foot down hard,”
said Gwen, stomping and creating a splash. “See, the wave pattern is
sharper.”
Anna did the same, but, being short, her splash hit her face. Anna
froze. “That water is wet,” said Anna as if it were news. “Kind
of cold. What about all the fish?”
“They’re a ways out there,” said Gwen. “They’re no fish in the
shallows. Anyway, fish don’t like people and stay away.”
Anna stomped another time, making a bigger splash and giggling.
Next came squishing sand between their toes. They walked a foot into
the lake and ground their feet in and wiggled their toes. “It feels
like throw-up,” said Anna.
“Throw-up between your toes?”
Anna smiled eagerly, a rebel. Soon they splashed each other with
karate chops. It took a week of such things, never venturing
into the shallows more than a few feet, but then Anna trusted Gwen enough
for Gwen to hold Anna on top of the water, floating. In another week,
Anna was swimming on her own.
“Let’s go out farther,” said Gwen.
Anna stopped swimming and stood in the water up to her waist. She
shook her head vigorously.
“You’re not scared of the deep, are you?”
Anna said nothing. She clearly was.
“You’re it,” said Gwen, tagging Anna on the shoulder. Gwen swam
parallel to the shore, not going deeper, and she swam slowly enough for
Anna to catch her. When Anna did, Gwen shouted, “Not fair!”
“I’m faster than you,” said Anna.
Gwen made a lurch to tag her back but purposely fell short. Anna
would have to swim deeper if she truly wanted to get away. “If you
tag the dock, you’re safe,” said Gwen swimming toward Anna. Anna
aimed for the dock in the deep and swam furiously.
“Not fair, you’re too fast!” said Gwen, which made Anna laugh with
joy. Anna touched the dock and shouted, “Safe! Can’t get
me.”
“Look at that, Anna. You’re in the deep water.”
Anna looked frightened for a second, then beamed.
“You’re a sunfish,” said Gwen, and Anna looked even
prouder.
Gwen thought of this moment as she stared out at the eucalyptus trees in
the wind from windows of the Denver fifth-grade classroom she now ran.
See
you next time,
--Chris
For
reviews or more information on either of my two books below, click on the
cover.
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