April 2007 Archives

So, I'm sure that real writers don't do this. That this is unprofessional and uncool. That people do this stuff privately. That sharing this moment with my little blogosphere is probably the ultimate in dorkishness.

...

Someone's going to have to force me to care. I want to spread this joy around.

I SIGNED THE CONTRACT FOR MY BOOK. The papers came from my agent, Rebecca, with a letter that said, "I hope you have a glass of champagne, a digital camera, and a pen at the ready."

We took her literally on that supply list.

I waited for my parents to return from their trip, then brought the papers over to their house. We popped a bottle of Moet and literally danced around the kitchen, with my mother singing a previously nonexistent song whose lyrics went, "My daughter the star my daughter the star my daughter the star!" She's proud. Dad was having trouble with the cork, so pointed the mouth of the bottle upwards; my mother yelled, "Just punch a hole in the ceiling, I don't care!" and meant it, a fact proven by her lack of reaction when the aforementioned cork nearly made good on her words. It ricocheted around the room like a billiard ball. We laughed, and got champagne all over the table, too.

Then we headed for the dining room, where my parents ceased to exist and were replaced by camera-faced droids. I have literally 40 pictures, from a 1-minute time frame. This is the "before" picture. Unsigned contract. We talked about my grandmother, and how I hadn't known until well after I became a journalist that she had attended NYU Journalism School. I had forgotten until this moment, too, about my great-grandfather's bookbinding business.

I used the pen my Aunt Anita had given me for this exact purpose. My hand shook, and I tucked my head when tears threatened.

There was a line marked "Author," and it expected my name. No joke. It really did. I guess it's official.

And here's the Happy Author Face. It's really Happy Author with a little So Relieved and So Satisfied and So Excited and So Overwhelmed and So Aware of How Much Work Is Left Before That Author Thing is Really True... but a happy face, nonetheless.

I sent them back today, and will get my countersigned contract soon. I will then stick it in a drawer and get on with the work that really matters.

But to ask me to be suave/cool/aloof and not share this? Hah. Right.

Cheryl is doing Poetry Month on her blog, and though I am nowhere NEAR as versed in poetry as she (yeah, I'm the Gtown English major, that's me), there is one poet whose collected works I read as though I were reading an novel. This poet unwittingly gave this blog its name, was introduced to me by a friend, and pulls me into her world by my shoulders every time I dare read a page. So, I decided to share one of her poems with you, and am now sitting among 12 different options of favorites, short and long, deep and ephemeral, about love and ferry trips. It's impossible. Maybe it will be Edna St. Vincent Millay week, and I'll share what I consider essential.

Here's the first essential one. It gives my Web site its name:

To Those Without Pity:

Cruel of heart, lay down my song.
Your reading eyes have done me wrong.
Not for you was the pen bitten,
And the mind wrung, and the song written.

Deceptively simple, as David calls her. And the one I'm sort of in geeky love with, because it's about the Staten Island Ferry (they even pulled a quote from it and plastered it along the wall at the new terminal, which I find impossibly cool):

Recuerdo:

We were very tired, we were very merry-
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable-
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry-
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, "Good morrow, mother!" to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, "God bless you!" for the apples and the pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

Oh what the hell. My favorite of her many sonnets - at least my favorite one about being IN love, as some of hers that are about heartbreak or simple lust are pretty damn amazing too:

Not in a silver casket cool with pearls
Or rich with red corundum or with blue,
Locked, and the key withheld, as other girls
Have given their loves, I give my love to you;
Not in a lovers'-knot, not in a ring
Worked in such fashion, and the legend plain-
Semper fidelis, where a secret spring
Kennels a drop of mischief for the brain:
Love in the open hand, no thing but that,
Ungemmed, unhidden, wishing not to hurt,
As one should bring you cowslips in a hat
Swung from the hand, or apples in her skirt,
I bring you, calling out as children do:
"Look what I have!--And these are all for you."

The use of "Ungemmed" in that poem kills me every time.

Yeah, that was three. Sorry.

All right, first things first:

Jennifer Hudson is on the FRONT PAGE OF VOGUE. Why am I so excited? Because she is a beautiful black woman with big boobs and wide hips who is being celebrated for her freaking TALENT. I saw this at the grocery stand and bought it for the first time ever in my life. A 600-page magazine! A 600-page FASHION magazine! I hate those! But she looks incredible, like she's having the time of her life - and even like she's finding the whole cover-of-Vogue thing hilarious, too.

And yeah, I get it, she's being exploited for exactly all those reasons. You know what? HELL YEAH! Let the voluptuous women be exploited just like the skinny ones. Let them use us for our softness and sexy roundness. Hell YEAH. She's on the front cover because she'll sell more issues - and if that's the reason they also put skinny women on the cover, then that's even closer to equality. Jennifer makes it allllll sexy, and Vogue is using her just like they use Kate Moss. Hell yeah. Do it, girl. Do it with cleavage.

Anyway, the real point of this post: I've been acquiring a lot of music lately, legally of course, and am sort of bored with all the new stuff - or, rather, my workout is bored. And if the workout is bored, the workout is bad. I need stuff with real driving beats, music that makes you feel like you're dancing your way up Mt. Everest. Can't really work out well without it. Can't dance on the treadmill to Easy Listening. So, suggestions?

Also, I'm looking for writing music. This should be a hella lot more mellow, either lyrically sparse or instrumental, cool and smooth, music that can run in the background and not interrupt my thought process. Overly complicated jazz never does it (no Charlie Parker), but a lot of jazz does.

And, what the hell, throw in suggestions for music you like, too. Anything. Throw it at me. I'm in a music sponge sort of way right now. If you feel like sharing the kind of music that makes you excited, helps you work out, helps you mellow out, helps you write, helps you anything, you'll be helping me much. Please, please, suggest away! Maybe I'll post my own track listings later, too, not to be miserly with my own suggestions.