Wednesday evening I’ll be reading from Sparrow at Traditions Cafe in Olympia, Washington. The program begins at 6 p.m. and includes an open mike. You should come!
Or is that 6:30? Here’s the flyer: Bethany Reid–May 2013 flyer
My 13-year-old has been doing art doodles. I have found her at our local elementary school playground drawing them in a notebook. She usually holes up in her bedroom to draw. At one of our homework dates recently she talked me into buying her a cool sketchbook and sharpies. I recently found this photo on Facebook (and the doodles, yes, on her legs).
On impulse I bought her this book: How to Be an Explorer of the World, by Keri Smith. (Check out her very cool blog.) I haven’t decided whether or not to save it for her July birthday. Maybe graduation? Maybe now is a good time.
I am choosing to see this as all good. As Keri advises today, “Keep Calm.”
Here’s a quote I came across yesterday — again — while cleaning my office. It’s from Scott Nadelson’s essay, “What About the Suffering?: the Quiet Power of Minor Characters,” which appeared in The Writer’s Chronicle in December of 2010 (and has been resurfacing in my office ever since).
“[M]inor characters are bearers of possibility, but they also bring into relief the impossibility of knowing what will come, the unavoidable mystery and uncertainty of living….The power of minor characters, then, lies at least partly in their limitations–they offer protagonists nothing concrete, only guesses, intimations. They may reframe a central character’s conflict, but in the end they hand it back to him to deal with himself.” (27)
There’s more (the opening paragraph and what it says to fiction writers is worth copying in full). But now I’m going to put this issue of WC in the recycle bin.
I Could Love You That Way
The way a woman cleans house, tying her hair
in a kerchief, knocking down cobwebs
with a broom. All day gathering clothes
and toys and books from beneath the beds,
vacuuming under the couch cushions,
scrubbing the drains, polishing
the fixtures. I could love you that way,
methodically, thoroughly, offering my body
at day’s end as if it were a house,
as if it were only a place for you to lie down.
This poem has never been published, but every time I’ve read it to an audience at least one person has asked for a copy of it.