Vivid columnist Molly Ivins died last week, too young, after battling breast cancer three long times. I’ve been meaning to write about her for days, but the thing about Molly Ivins dying is that it can render you speechless.
I mean, really, what’s to say about a voice that was so dang good at speaking up for herself, and for all the rest of us? And when I say us, I mean everyone who needed a little hoist up onto the old soapbox. The women and children, the artistic and illiterate, the black and brown, the broke and beaten, the neighbors and nations a long ways away. Us.
Molly Ivins was wicked funny and deeply thoughtful at the same time – a capacity I admire more than any other, I think.
Where plenty of funny folk use humour as an escape ‘chute (and who can blame ‘em), Molly used it to plot a direct path in deeper to whatever pesky, troublesome business was at hand.
And where plenty of deep intellectuals and well-intended political thinkers are solemn (and self-important) enough to shut our receptors down, Molly cracked jokes to keep us on our toes. Hers was a single-handed call-to-action; a plan you wanted in on.
And that’s the thing. Molly Ivins glowed and crackled, not unlike her sister-Texan Ann Richards (whom we also lost to cancer this year). These women politicized other women, they chastised apathetic youth, they shook up the steady center, they triggered movement – and movements. These were voices capable of lighting fires under just about anyone.
I had a grandmother like that – all full of intention and charisma. My husband once said of her, “Mame is the only person I know who makes you feel lucky when she asks you to do her a favor.” If you get a whole family or a whole readership or a whole constituency feeling that way, stuff is gonna get done.
Molly Ivins moved on with that charge in her wake. In her last column, in which she pushes a populist crusade to end the war in Iraq, she says, “Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous.” It’s a call to Shakespeare’s fools, to the emperor’s tailors, to us. Hone your rapier wit. Git ‘er done.
The very idea that the dramatic conflict is the constant striving to write a better poem! Isn’t that delicious?
Myers grapples with all sorts of abstractions — the muse, revision, patronage, and writing a poem for its own sake — with humour and, dare I say, suspense.
My girls love the trickster and the struggle to Get It Right.
I love the reminder that our best work “flows into (us) and out of (us)” and that all the effort in the world won’t impress a fox (or an editor or the madding crowds) unless the act of creation is that natural, that inevitable, even.
Like the moon blooming or a deep breath, in and out words take their places.
Recently around our dinner table, we discussed the relative merits of forks, spoons and knives.
Which are most useful? Most dangerous? Most breakable? Which would you want if you were lost in the wilderness? Which are most portable or smoothest on the teeth?
(I know, I know. But we’d been iced in for days. Cabin fever does damaging things to the rational mind.)
Our conclusions:
The side of a fork cuts… tines stab… flat slats scoop. Very versatile.
A knife cuts and stabs and pokes and slices. Especially good in the wilderness.
A spoon? A spoon shines like a mirror or a moon.
A spoon – little egg-shaped puddle-keeper – scoops and dips and pours and drips.
Versatility and disaster preparedness aside, none is prettier than a spoon.
(When just one person at the table orders a ramekin of warm crème brulèe, the rest of us ask for extra spoons. Right?)
Naturally, this got me thinking about books. About what we want to read, about why, when and where we want to read them. (Remember the cabin fever? It spared none of us…)
So, drum roll please, here are my own literary utensils:
My Forks (versatile enough for airplanes or waiting rooms, beaches or bedtime):
Short story anthologies (preferably with some Alice Munro, Annie Proulx and Jim Harrison)
The summer fiction issue of the New Yorker
An episodic novel or two, to be read in fits and starts if necessary (maybe Willa Cather’s Death Comes to the Archbishop and the new Black Swan Green by David Mitchell)
My Knives (books I wouldn’t want to get caught in the wild without):
A few meaty classics (The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy, Fagles’ translation of The Odyssey, and something by both Dickens and Austen)
Some humour (Essays by David Sedaris, poetry by Billy Collins and maybe a Tom Robbins novel or two)
Some wilderness reading (Thoreau, Annie Dillard, Edward Abbey)
My Spoons (pure pleasure)
Beautiful poetry (by Mary Oliver, William Stafford, Louise Gluck, Marie Howe, Jane Kenyon, Dickinson, Whitman, Basho. How many am I allowed to pick?)
Beautiful picture books (by Cynthia Rylant, Patricia Polacco, Maurice Sendek, Peter H. Reynolds, Jane Yolen. I can’t stop!!!)
Really, wouldn’t it be torture to have to work with one single utensil for the rest of your days? (And I haven’t even gone into my chopsticks here, or egg slicers!)
Choose shmoose. I like the versatile, the capable and the pretty, myself. A well-laid table. What about you?
The rules: Each participant shares five little-known facts about themselves and selects five new folks to be tagged, listing their names and letting them know they’ve been tagged.
So here’re mine:
As a teen, I got a perm. You have to know me to fully appreciate the absurdity of this. Hello, Medusa. There was no need, I assure you. But it was the ‘80s and I was trying to follow that old “When in Rome…” adage to the letter. Fortunately there’s scanty photographic evidence that this took place. (I also tried a Dorothy Hammill haircut once. Ditto everything above except it was the 70’s rather than 80’s. Trends should have gatekeepers, don’t you think?)
In 5th grade, I wanted to play the drums but the band teacher told me, “Girls don’t play drums; you can choose the flute or clarinet.” I choose flute, polished it a bunch and got the only solid F of my academic career. These days I mostly clap and hum.
I read Love Story every summer from age 11 ‘til age 16 and each time I thought Jennifer might not die this time. Oliver thought so, too.
My lucky number is 4. To note: my birthday (4/4); number of people in my family (4); number of people in the family I grew up in (4); the terminal number of many of my addresses over the years (674, 124, 324, 604 and two Apt. #4s); not to mention elements on earth, arrows on a compass, quarters to a dollar and seasons in a year. OK, maybe not in Texas. But technically, right?
Once, I pulled away from the gas pump without taking the nozzle out of my tank and I pulled the hose off with me. Did you know that those hoses are designed to disconnect? Still, I’ve been trying to pay better attention since then…
Now, how about some of my peeps? What’s up with youse guys?
That’s what they say about half marathons, even though it really doesn’t feel like half of anything.
Quibbles aside, 13.1 miles is the perfect middle distance — far surpassing your average 5- or 10K, in training regimen and sense of accomplishment, but without a marathon’s joint torture or Saturday suck.
I cannot imagine the wife mother writer teacher sleeper getter-upper driver neighbor citizen I’d be without the fresh air, exercise and endorphines of a good run. I mean, really. Duck and cover. It’s a bad day without exercise.
Yesterday was Austin’s 3M Half Marathon, my hands-down favorite run of the year. (Okay, mine’s more like a jog than a run, but who’s timing?)
Here are highlights:
The good folks at Embassy Suites taking pity as we waited at the start in the cold, cold dark. They seemed not-at-all frazzled by the thousand-some runners stretching hamstrings in their lobby and lining up to use a bathroom that wasn’t a bright blue tippable box.
Turning the corner at mile 2 so that headwinds became tailwinds.
Friends and family at mile 8 with a big ole’ sign, hugs, whoops and hollers. Even my running partner (who’s benched with a hip injury) braved the morning chill to cheer me on. Talk about a second wind. Some folks suck on a little tube of goo to recharge, but who needs it when you get a dose of love this palpable?
The perfect playlist my husband built for my iPod (aptly titled Run Liz, Run). Warmed up to Elaine Elias, Zap Mama and Culture; moved onto a podcast of This American Life; and finished out with Fountains of Wayne, ABBA, Jane’s Addiction and other delicious stuff. One particular strong spot had me singing I Am Woman (out loud) with Helen Reddy — while running downhill, no less. Crossing the finish line to Passionate Kisses wadn’t bad either.
Meditating (or hallunicating — I’m not sure which) from mile 9 to mile 11. “I love this. This feels good. I’m so happy. I’m so lucky.” Repeat. “I love this. This feels good. I’m so happy. I’m so lucky.” To those who weren’t in my altered state it may have looked as if speedier folk were passing me by but I know better. I was flying…
The bagpipe player, jugglers, cowbell ringers, brass band and steel drum afficianado scattered along the course. On a cold morning, for no good reason but the joy of it.
Finishing up — a few minutes quicker than I’d hoped for, with a few songs left on my playlist. (Actually, just finishing, period, felt dang good. Like putting the final touches on a final draft.)
Nothing could dampen the spirits, not even the sinewy soul who said to me, right after the race, “That was so short and easy compared to the ultra marathons I’ve been doing!”
Short and easy? Mmm hmmm. Kind of like writing literature for kids. Who’s hallucinating now?
For those of you still suffering the chills of winter, a little ditty from our old pal A.A. Milne:
If I were a bear And a big bear too, I shouldn’t much care If it froze or snew; I shouldn’t much mind If it snowed or friz — I’d be all fur-lined With a coat like his!
Today I received a really smashing little packet of thank you notes from some of the students I worked with recently at an Austin elementary school.
Here are some excerpts from their letters, which lay to rest the ridiculous notion that children hate — or are afraid of — writing (especially poetry):
You’re always talking about how to use your senses.
I now write good and I am INTO poetry!
Thankyou for teeching me how to do poutree.
You have opened up another job possibility for me when I get older. Thank you.
I learned so much. Like what vivid meant.
I am as brown as bark. Good one huh?
Now I know how to be a great writer. So keep writing your books and I’ll keep writing my best.
Can’t you just feel them buzzing? The kids I engage with consistently love working with words, find endless possibility in the world of metaphor, and proudly read their writing aloud.
I truly believe that creative work is a necessary counter-balance (or even an antidote) to the more circumscribed academic challenges these kids face everyday.
My manifesto: Art belongs in the schools. Vivid enough for ya?
This weekend we received a letter from our friends at Tecolote Farm. (For years now, we’ve been grateful recipients of their organic and imaginative vegetable baskets, delivered all spring and summer to our front stoop.) I imagined it would be their annual call-to-action, with details on this year’s pricing and delivery schedule, but instead I read that Katie and David and their team are taking a sabbatical, for the sake of themselves and their land.
Needless to say, I’m bereft. It’s because of Tecolote that we understand the beauty of eating locally and within season; that I learned to cook mustard greens; that our daughters love arugula and beets. When it’s basket season, we step out of our rut and appreciate the surprises on our table each week. We spend less time at the grocery store. We make gazpacho. I like to think we glow a bit. This spring, we’re going to have to go it alone – hit the farmers’ markets and try to recreate the bounty for ourselves. We’ll make do, of course, but Tecolote will be sorely missed.
It got me to thinking, though, about letting ground lie fallow, about recovery, about that little pause in between inhale and exhale when things go completely still.
I think about how my family delights in those occasional Sunday mornings or Wednesday afternoons when things stop spinning – no birthday parties, no home repairs, no take-home work. We come together restfully, reflect on the day or the week, play cards, curl up on the couch and hum.
And teaching – those semester breaks that always seem to arrive the day before I’ve been completely wrung out of energy and inspiration.
And writing – I am not a steady-as-a-clock artist, writing for four-hours-every-morning-of-my-life-so-help-me-god. There are months when I’m awash with ideas, and driven – absolutely driven – to get them down in ink. Other times, I chastise myself for being less than attentive to my work.
But in my own defense (and yours, if you can relate), I think there are periods of our lives as people or parents, writers or wives, when we are depleted and stuck in cycles of less-than-optimal productivity. My own inclination is to try to pick up the pace when I feel like that, kick it in gear, snap out of it. I wonder what would happen if I did the opposite.
Katie and David say that their soil needs nourishment and their irrigation lines need repair. That just sings to me as I move through this first month of the new year. Today I am healthy and energized with a new project in hand. Tomorrow or next week or someday in March, things will be different. To sustain myself now and then, I need good sleep, long runs and vitamins. But I also need to sometimes lay fallow, quiet, still.
My very astute husband discovered this weekend, while poring through some of my research material for that budding work-in-progress, that the acknowledged expert in the field LIVES IN AUSTIN, TEXAS, as do we. Is that lovely serendipity, or what?
Now I just need to load up on enough knowledge and courage to give him a buzz.
