True Words
I was watching So You Think You Can Dance and Nigel Lythgoe made the comment, “You’re too focused on the steps, you’re forgetting to dance.”
He was, of course, talking to a dancer, but I coudn’t help but think of true those words ring for writers, as well. Sometimes, we’re so focused on the mechanics or business of writing, we forget the artistry and joy.
Thanks for the reminder, Mr. Lythgoe.
Times Are A’Changin’
So, quick background: my husband is German, I’m not. I’m Chinese, African, East Indian, West Indian, and there’s a good chance there’s Caucasian, too.
Now the story:
Last weekend was Father’s Day, and I always try to do something on behalf of the furry ones. My husband wanted West-Indian curry and roti. And usually, he doesn’t let me anywhere near the kitchen (too many burnings/cuttings/accidents for him to trust me around knives and heat), but curry and roti is the one thing (the only thing) I can actually make better than him (he says–in truth, everything he cooks is better than mine).
I ended up cooking yesterday and he was, of course, completely thrilled and yummified. He went off to work, came back, and as he came through the door, he said, “Man! I love the smell of curry in a house!”
And I realized, again, how much times have changed.
I’m a kid of the 80s, when living in Calgary, Alberta meant I was the only brown kid in my elementary (me and P.S., who was black, were the only visible minorities from kindergarten to grade 3, when M.L, Chinese, came to the school, and then in grade 6, there was a whopping 2 more minority kids who showed up J.M, Chinese, and R.M, Indian), and when people had no problem yelling racial slurs on playgrounds or street corners.
Every Indian family I knew, cooked curry with the windows open. They’d have been horrified to have the smell in their home. Heck, Calgary can reach -60, and my mother always opened a window. Too bad if that meant we had to watch television with our parkas on. She’d burn candles, and light incense. No brown person wanted the smell of curry on them. No one.
I can remember doing the “smell” check with friends: Do you smell curry in my hair/clothes? If so, then you changed.
Fast forward 20 years or so, and everybody loves curry. It’s healthy for you, super yummy, and screamingly easy to make.
I know things are great in the world, right now. We’re still fighting and killing, destroying and self-destructive. But I can’t help but feel hopeful. Maybe we are slow to change, but things are changing.
Today, little girls never question if they can be CEOs or engineers, boys can be dancers or chefs, and families aren’t defined by 1 dad, 1 mom, and x-number of children. The possibilities that lay before humanity are astounding and infinite. I’m grateful to be in this place and time, because I know the same way my grandmothers can look at me and say, “Wow. When I was a little girl, no one thought I was worth educating, but you, my granddaughter, have a university degree.” I know I’ll be able to look at my grandchildren and say…I don’t know what I’ll say, but I know it’ll have the same awe-struck tone of “look how far we’ve come,” as my grands’ voices did.
Today, more than ever, I agree with Louis Armstrong: “And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.”
Some Days…
I want to live in Miami, and wake up to “Thank you for being a friend…”
In honor of some of the funniest lines ever written, a helping of Golden Girls (note: some of the lines are funny in context, like if you can hear Sophia’s voice in your head…)
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Blanche: Well, just tell him you have a lot of work at home.
Rose: I don’t want to lie.
Blanche: When you get home, we’ll make you clean out the garage.
Rose: Oh thanks, I owe you big for this one.
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Dorothy: Blanche, are you sure you’re pregnant?
Blanche: I just did a home pregnancy test – it’s right here.
Rose: It looks like a perfume sample.
Dorothy: Put it behind your ears, Rose.
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Blanche: You know what the worst part about getting older is?
Dorothy: Your face, Rose’s hands?
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Blanche: The Great Herring War?
Rose: Between the Lindstroms and the Johannsens.
Dorothy: Oh, THAT Great Herring War.
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Blanche: No, no, no please. I cannot bear that again. She was listening to her car radio, Big Band, not all talk. There was a contest. Something about a little voice, a lucky number and a dime in a door handle, then Bim Bam Boosh, won the tickets.
Dorothy: Take a lesson Rose. That’s how you tell a story.
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Dorothy: You’ll have to excuse my mother. She suffered a slight stroke a few years ago which rendered her totally annoying.
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Blanche: Is that all you Italians know how to do? Scream and hit?
Sophia: No, we also know how to make love and sing opera!
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Blanche: Rose, you must be confused. You come to me if you have problems with a man. You go to Dorothy if there’s some grammar you need help with.
Dorothy: You ended that sentence with a dangling preposition just to bait me!
Blanche: What would I do that for?
Quote for the Week
Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.
~ Mark Twain
Quote for the Week
“Writer’s block: when your imaginary friends won’t talk to you.”
~ Anonymous
Dentist Decadence
So, I’m lying in the dentist chair, and it hits me again, what a decadent thing it is to visit the dentist. I know it’s part of good health, and hygiene, but when you think about it, you’re really walking into an office, plopping down, and saying, “Yo, babe, brush my teeth.”
And they do.
You do nothing but open your mouth, and these women brush, scale, floss…it’s like a tooth spa…
Snicker
So, I’m a huge fan of the www.ihascheeseburger.com, and www.ihashotdog.com, and this photo cracked me up–mainly ’cause I think that’s the way all writers look when they get a rejection.
Quote for the Week
“Dig until you hit rock. Then take out that jackhammer and go a little deeper.”
~ Allison Brennan
Jessica Fletcher
Reasons I want to be Jessica Fletcher:
1) Top selling author & never seems to have any bumps in the writing road
2) She lives by the water
3) Gets to go to New York (and manages to restrain herself from eating from the cart on the sidewalk vendors)
4) Has loads of friends & family (though a disturbing amount of them get arrested for murder)
5) Great clothes
6) She never seems jaded by all the death (note: the episode always ends on a freeze frame of her laughing)
7) She’s smarter than every detective and cop she meets
8) She’s an older woman (at least, back then, classified as older), a widow who remains active and self-reliant
9) She’s an amazing cook
10) Even if she justmet a person, she somehow becomes their confidant
Reasons I could NEVER be Jessica Fletcher:
1) If my certain members of my extended family were suspected of murder, I’d be more likely to plant evidence than seek their release.
2) I’ve been known to cry at a wasp’s death (in my defence, I didn’t think the death was necessary), dealing with garroted victims, gunshot wounds, and stabbings would most likely lead to my throwing up, than throwing out theories.
3) I have an instinctual submission reflex to anyone who carries a gun, pepper spray, and handcuffs.
4) My husband is not allowed to die until I give him permission.
5) I’ve been known to burn water.
6) I’m really not good at meeting strangers (to recap: in party settings have 1) inadvertantly insulted someone’s career choice (2) inadvertantly insulted someone’s religion (3) been mistaken for someone else’s wife (4) inadvertantly intimated someone’s kid was a thug
Well, It’s a Celebration to Me
We all have our ways of celebrating.
I’m past the half-way point of my lastest manuscript, and I’ve given myself an incentive. If I can finish the draft by June, I’ll take a few weeks in July to redesign my website and learn how to use Flash/Dreamweaver.
I know. Learning code really isn’t a lot of people’s idea of a good time, but for me, it’s “let the good times roll, baby!”
Or, I suppose, more precisely, “let the good codes roll!”
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