One Writer’s World

My kitchen is a mess in the summer. Always. The floor has bits of dried leaves and things that all three of us (husband, dog, me) track in from the garden, the countertop always has some dirt-filled things, like garlic drying or onions. Right now there is a bowl of raspberries left over from breakfast, to be snacked on until they’re gone (before lunch).  Soon, I hope, the perpetual bowl of tomatoes will be there.

We live as much outside as inside during the summer, and while my winter kitchen is spotless and everything is in its place, the summer kitchen tends to be a riot of seeds,  plants, and rooting cuttings, compost for the worm bin and on and on and on.  Sometimes it bugs me, and I get busy, cleaning, cleaning, but the next day it’s back to its normal summer state. And I guess I’m growing to love it.

When the tomatoes are over, the pickles are in the pantry, the rest of the produce in the freezer, my kitchen will again be clean and ready for the winter. And then I’ll miss the chaos, and I’ll miss my summer kitchen.

Meanwhile, I’m kind of enjoying the mess.

Four of my books are now available for the Amazon.com Kindle. Suspicions, Black Leather, Lizard Wine, and Candyland can all be downloaded and read on their electronic reader.

NPR’s Morning Edition had a great story on the Kindle last Monday.  I love mine. I like reading books on it, but my favorite is magazines. They’re so cheap and downloaded automatically, and on Sunday, I can get the NY Times Sunday edition for $.75 without even getting out of bed. Sweet.

Anyway, another way publishing is changing, and, I believe, for the better.

I’m learning a lot about anger and resentment at Serenity Lane.

Holding a resentment, I heard, is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. So true. Resentment and anger is spirit poison, and the person toward whom we hold the resentment can be going on about their life, blissfully ignorant of the evil intentions we brew in our hearts. Who does that hurt?

I learned long ago that all resentment and anger stems from one thing: fear.

And fear can only be one of two things: fear of losing something we have or fear of not getting something we want.

I don’t have any control over either of those things. What I get to keep and what I get to lose isn’t really up to me. I only have control over my attitude about it all.

So the old way of dealing with resentment and anger was either to engage and escalate, or to walk away and seethe. But now I know there is a third way. One can take a pause, discover how we’re threatened, and realize that it’s nothing to be afraid of.

Could this really be the key to world peace? First, we’re peaceful within our selves, then our families, then our communities, then our country, then our world?

It all begins with me. Today.

I’ve been a practicum student at Serenity Lane this summer, a drug and alcohol treatment facility in town, working with the chaplain as she ministers to the spirits of the patients. What an education that has been! Yikes. I see myself in so many of them — their eyes, their stories, their fears, their shame. I identify and empathize, and yet I know the other side of that misery as well. If only they will stick with it, if only they could glimpse what I know to be true about a clean and sober life…

If only that insecure but talented writer could keep the faith and keep putting the butt in the chair and keep pumping out the words. If only they could glimpse what I know about successes as a writer…

If only that young married couple could stick it out, reach deep and find the reasons they were attracted to each other in the beginning, and rekindle that respect for each other. If only they could glimpse what I know about the sublime pleasure in a long satisfying marriage…

These are the pleasures of age.

I am one of the extraordinarily fortunate ones, and I am grateful every second of every minute. The question now is how to share the knowledge in a meaningful way. Other than walking the talk–which I try to do, and accomplish with varying levels of success–that is the current quest.

But more will be revealed, if I suit up and show up, and that’s what I’m doing.

What a summer.

The publication party for The Northwoods Chronicles will be September 26, 6pm at Tsunami Books, 2585 Willamette St. Eugene, OR 97401.

There will be food and drink and lots of writers and all manner of book-interested and book-interesting people.

Please come!

Okay, so now I have to brag.

I spend enough time on this blog discussing my shortcomings, so I feel entirely justified in passing along this exciting news.

Publisher’s Weekly gave my new novel a star review this week!

Exciting stuff.

The Northwoods Chronicles can be preordered from Amazon.com here.

I have a new webpage. The address is the same: www.elizabethengstrom.com, but the page is worlds away from the one that was up yesterday morning.

I wrote my first website in HTML. It was basic indeed. Then I got a copy of Microsoft’s Front Page and did another. Did two others, in fact, one for me and one for my independent press. I got pretty good with Front Page, but it had some weirdnesses that I could never figure out. Didn’t have the patience. And so my web presence had all the content I wanted, but looked kind of schizophrenic, with all the fonts and colors and total lack of design.

And then Pam Herber, long time friend and excruciatingly good writer, started designing web pages, so I commissioned her to redo my sad site. After a couple of weeks of back-and-forth, she pushed the button yesterday and her fresh design went live.

I couldn’t be happier. The site now is streamlined, homogenized, artful and pertinent. Personally, I think she’s brilliant. It might look a little weird if you’ve not updated your browser recently, so you should do that. You should do that anyway.

So thanks, Pam. This fresh web presence makes me feel more professional.

Garden walking, for one, waters mine.

Yesterday, my good friend Keri and I visited seven magnificent open gardens which was a fund raising event for our local symphony. These gardens were magnificent. Not all enormous, professionally-designed and maintained, although a couple of them were. Some were tiny back yards, artifully done.

If you can’t tell, I’m an avid gardener. I don’t exactly have a green thumb, and my heart is broken more often than not when I fail to recognize what a favorite plant is trying to tell me as it expires. But I do love it and thrill when plants find their right combination of things to thrive. I can grow a mean tomato. I’ve learned how to do that, and slowly, the garden at this house is becoming beautiful.

But seeing new plants, trying to identify things I’ve never seen before but are remniscent of others, noting new foliage combinations, as well as what people have done with rock, trellis, wall and arbor… it all waters my spirit. Especially in the company of a good friend and particularly if that Sunday includes a good girl-talk lunch. 

We all spend enough time tackling our “must-do” lists, and spend even more time than that on our “should-do” lists, and not nearly enough time on our “would-love-to-do” lists. In fact, I think one item from the latter should be included at least every week on the first list.

Our spirits need nourishment, too, just like the clematis growing on the trellis next to my rhubarb. My clematis will be ablaze with flowers soon, and I’ve already had two rhubarb pies this year.

I’m sure each of us has felt our spirits wilt. That happens to everyone occasionally. But we should carefully tend the garden of the spirit so that it will bear fruit abundantly and thrive. 

Rarely have I gotten so involved in a television series that I feel absolutely connected, in an emotional way, to the chracters and their lives.

St. Elsewhere did that to me. So did Chicago Hope (what is it about hospital dramas?), and China Beach. Other series have come and gone — good series like The Sopranos, which was fascinating like driving past a train wreck, and currently Boston Legal, but as much as I enjoy it, it’s a little too silly to become too involved with.

Today I went to see the movie Sex and the City.

We didn’t get HBO when the series first started, so I rented all the seasons from Netfix, and became more and more emotionally involved with these four friends and their trials. This show had the smartest writing on the tube.  The mark of good writing is when the reader (or in this case, the viewer) can step into the skin of the characters and say “Is this what I would do if I were in her place?” If the answer is yes, we see what would happen to us from the comfort of our own living room. If we say no, we can watch what might have happened if we had taken the risk. Either way, the characters and their dilemmas have to be so realistic and so well drawn that the reader/viewer can believably be in those shoes.

This was the case with that series, and this was the case with that movie. It was brilliant.

I laughed out loud, I shed a couple of tears, and at the end, I felt as though I had just had one of the most satisfying film experiences of my life. Not that this was the best movie I’d ever seen, just one of the most satisfying, given my history with those four spectacular women.

Bravo, I say.

If you haven’t seen Sex and the City, watch the series first. I can’t imagine watching the movie without the history.

And then see the movie. Wow.

I just finished reading Revolution by Ron Paul, and it has rocked my entire worldview.

He doesn’t just bash the current administration (I’m kind of sick of that, aren’t you?), he discusses the Constitution and what we’ve done over the years to ignore it, circumvent it, and discount it. He talks about the fact that our downward spiral is not inevitable and what steps he thinks we need to take in order to correct our course.

This book gave me hope.

I try not to get too political on this blog, but this is back to basics. If we want to change he Constitution, there are ways to go about it. Until those steps are employed, every elected official ought to abide by it. Period.

We’re going to get a fresh face in the White House next January, and I hope it is in the form of a Constitutional scholar who will lead us back to the basics. We desperately need it.

Meantime, everybody who is interested in the direction of this country (and aren’t we all?) ought to add this book to their reading list.