Reconnected

In what felt like stolen time (it was stolen time), I found the novel I'd been writing again—only for one half a day, but still, the time was something. Too many weeks had gone by without some kind of communion with my characters and their story—some research, some finagling, some thrown-to-the-page metaphor that I'd toss in despair the very next day, but that's the size and shape of the writing work, and I was missing the size and shape of the writing work.

So I returned to the novel.

Why does it always surprise me—the calm inside the eye of writing? How could I have forgotten how necessary it is, in my own strange world, to be there with the stories in their ill-formed, half-inebriated state? My whole physiology turns around books (I'm calmer, my feet don't ache, my heart is not doing that strange pounding thing), and those are just the facts, and I can't help them.

And also, of course, I'm not alone. And so, as this old year ends and a new one dawns, let me introduce you to yet another literary web wonder—something that is called the Red Room. It's not just a place where writers virtually live, and where readers can find them, but it's a place of good where, as the founders write, they "give back to the community we aim to nurture with our commitment to the Causes We Support." Red Room launches officially in March. I'm very honored to be part of it.

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A Day of Remembrance, and No Words

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Wicked

We joined the rest of the world in New York City yesterday—made ourselves as small as possible and got carried away with the crowd. Up Eighth, partway, then Seventh and Broadway, where the snaking lines for the double-decker bus tours swamped the sidewalks and where, when you looked up, you saw not the neon and marquis signs you knew were there but cellphoned hands snapping blind photographs.

You could breathe a little past the David Letterman theater. You could push your hair into its place, throw back your shoulders, recollect your own variety of composure (and no, I've never looked like this storefront mannequin, but since most of you have never met me, I can pretend), and make your way to the head of the street-crossing crowd.

We were on our way to Wicked, at the Gershwin theater, but now that we were through the crowds we had time, first, to step inside the lobby of the phenomenal Hearst building, to climb the rocks of Central Park, to ride the escalator up to the second floor of the Time Warner building for lunch at Bouchon, my very favorite lunch place ever (my son's, too—get the chicken soup with the herb dumplings, get the chocolate chunk cookie with ice cream, break your diet). Then back Eighth to 51st Street, to Wicked, another crushing crowd, another escalator ride, and then a show that in every single way lives up to its impeccable reputation. Brilliantly conceived, this pre-Oz story is. Magnificently acted by every monkey, witch, goat-man, Munchkin. And what can seem more breathtaking and impossible than the set, the costumes, the lighting of Wicked, where monkeys swing across the heads of the audience, and actors rise from the bowels of somewhere, and emerald is the color.

On the train home, I kept thinking about those actors—giving us the show as if we were the only audience they'd ever had and ever would have, as if this were their only moment on that stage. Tell me, please, where you find the emotional stamina for that? Tell me how you go on, every day, summoning your best? No chance to throw away a lazy word or overwrought analogy, to go back and do it better.

If only I could bring that to the page each day. That force, that intensity, that now or never ferocity.

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Lost in Translation

Funny things happen as ZENOBIA, that crazy corporate fable, begins to make its way not just out onto U.S. bookshelves, but through publishing houses around the world. Questions float in from translators: What does it mean, they write, when you describe a person as "certifiable"? Or, could you better explain your character Wizzy, for we can't fnd a Brazilian Portuguese equivalent. And what do you mean when you call that man Snort? And what about this woman, Trenchy?

And might the Italians, Maria Jesus of Berrett-Koehler wants to know, change the title of the book to something that translates more along these lines: The Importance of Believing; The Will to Search.

I love these questions. They force me to stop drawing lazy conclusions about words, remind me of the power and push of other languages, foreign ways. I love the final products, too—love holding the foreign editions of these books in my hands. The Korean edition of GHOSTS IN THE GARDEN, for example, in which black and white photographs have been turned sepia-tinted pinks and greens. The Italian version of INTO THE TANGLE OF FRIENDSHIP, with its bright red cover. An early book rendered Japanese.

Thank goodness for a world that stretches beyond my own. Thanks to all those who do the stretching.

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Moonlit

After the paella last night we went driving in search of light. Over back roads to country roads to fox country. The horses had been stabled for the night. The big trees that had split with the last wind storm were exposed. In the car music playing, three-quarter time, so that there was not much need for talk, and through the windows of the big old houses you could see the spires of pines, the flames wrapping fireplace logs, two or three still lingering over meals. Most of the houses were fringed with white lights, quiet and unboastful lights, and we drove south then west then north, and only finally east, where we found the light I suppose we'd been looking for—the moon, which had leapt like a fish to the sky. She was salmon colored and low when we found her. She grew gold and more distant as she rose. I thought that if I drove faster I might catch her, but, no, she was up there on her own.

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Merry Christmas

This is the New York Public Library lion in holiday repose, and this, my blogging friends, is my wish for you over the next few days: A cozy chair, a full moon, a favorite story or a brand-new one. Sometimes I think that all the rushing around we do each holiday season is designed to make us grateful for the pure sitting down we have earned for the afterwards. I plan to get reaquainted with a few dear poets—Stanley Kunitz, Mary Oliver, James Wright, Ted Kooser. I'll finish this week's New Yorker (this week it's the piece on the dramatic editing of Raymond Carver that haunts). I'll sneak inside my favorite independent for a few new titles before it closes today at noon, and perhaps I'll read The Legacy of Ashes, just to keep up with my CIA-fascinated son.

I have earned my stories. You have earned your stories.

Peace be with you.

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Em's Bookshelf Interview

So here I am relaxing now that nearly all my Christmas gifts are bought and wrapped, and all but one client project put to bed, and college application angst a thing of the not-so-distant past (okay, not really: my skin was never porcelain, my lips were never pouty full, my nose doesn't sweep toward perfection, and I can't find my pearl-encrusted bathing cap). Here is me, I should say, in my own mind's eye. A little less crazed.

And then, in the midst of a sigh, I receive an email from a really wonderful (extraordinarily generous) reader and writer named Em, who reports that a conversation we had over email has now been posted on her blog.

Boy, has she done an artful job of arranging the text and the images, and truly, she is very kind.

Here is the URL if you'd like to check it out for yourself. She asked good questions, made me think hard.

Thank you, Em. For being one of the very first to read and celebrate UNDERCOVER, and now perhaps the first (outside the editing circle) to have read HOUSE OF DANCE. You may never know just how much that means.

http://emsbookshelf.blogspot.com/2007/12/my-very-first-author-interview.html

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On Letting Time Go By

I set my historical novel aside a while ago. Took all the old newspaper clippings off the floor, cleared my desk of the 19th century fashion tome, stuck nail files and useless pens inside the research books I had only just begun. I didn't go cold turkey on it. I'd try to sneak in a sentence or two, a note on character—4 AMish, or close to midnight. I'd take my walks, and as I was walking, I'd think, What is Katherine, my heroine, doing just now? How weary is she growing of the heat? What does she yearn for, and how does she yearn?

But I couldn't hold onto her. I kept losing her inside errand lists and desperate client deadlines. Inside the mall, where I'd gone to shop for holiday gifts. At parties, where the talk was tomorrow, not 130 years ago. Among the kids at the ballroom dancing competition. In the lights. In the memories. In the call I made to my son's future college home: Thank you, I said to the admissions counselor. Thank you. Thank you.

I couldn't hold onto Katherine.

And so I decided not to torment her any longer, not to torment myself. I have decided (again, for I am always newly deciding this) that life must first be lived before it can be written. That stories rise in us and insist on themselves according to their own clocks and measures. In January, when the snow sets in, in February, when it is gray, in March, when the frost clings to low fringe of my windows, Katherine will walk herself back into my room. She will say, My time is now, and I will say, I've been missing you.

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The Dream Dreamed, and Answered

Today is my 90th posting on this blog, but there will never be a more important one. That's because I am celebrating my son, who learned late last night that he has been accepted into the college of his choice—a prestigious communications school far enough away, but not too far from home. Years ago this guy started writing—has written a screenplay a week since sixth grade. He's got a jazzier style than I'll ever have, conjures sweeter dialogue, and if he isn't keeping you on the edge of his seat with his plotlines, he's got you bobbing your head at the rap songs he funnels through, behind the scenes. He wants to write, my kid, but he wants to do way more than that. He knows the power of media. He feels at home behind a camera. He's mastering the technology of sound.

But the school of his dreams got overloaded with applications—this school, the only one he could imagine himself enrolled in, going to, the one whose sweatshirt I'd been wearing like a talisman since August. The admissions folks didn't announce on Saturday, as they thought they would. Too much to sort through, they said. They needed time. And so the days ticked on, the hours, and it was clear, increasingly clear, that this journey could split into many roads, that we had to be prepared for any answer.

So that when he received an email in his bin at 8 o'clock last night that a decision had been posted on a certain web site, his first response was, I don't think I'm ready to know; let's have dinner first. We did. When the chicken was cleared away, he said, I'm going outside. He went. Only after he'd finished doing whatever talking to himself that he needed to do did he come back inside. Only then did he run upstairs, leaving my husband and me in suspense. The door closed. The door opened. He was running down the hall.

Every child takes a journey, and I do believe that the right doors open for the right reasons, that we can't always know the greater plan. I am simply grateful today for the dream that was dreamed and answered here. I send my heart out to all those who are living through the wanting, the waiting, the not knowing, the knowing this season.

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Introducing PoemTalk

I'm taking a moment here to pull the remarkable Al Filreis onto my own small blog stage. He's the Faculty Director of the Kelly Writers House located down at the University of Pennsylvania—a remarkable program about which you might have read in the pages of a recent New York Times. He's also one of the most popular and beloved teachers of poetry and story on any campus anywhere, and he's so ridiculously inventive and innovative that it is frankly difficult to keep up with all that he gives straight back to the world. (Plus he answers his emails at 5 in the morning, in one half of a millisecond, as if he's been waiting for your note all night long.)

This morning's emails carried a message from Al about a program I am so happy to share. It's called PoemTalk, it's a podcast, and it's the product of a collaboration among Kelly Writers House, PennSound, and the Poetry Foundation. Here's the tagline straight from Al's note: "Four colleagues in the world of poetry collaborate on a close (but not too close) reading of a single poem." First up is a fascinating analysis of the William Carlos Williams poem, "Between Walls."

Here's how you can log on (below). The image above is one of the reasons why you should: Because it's cold outside, and because words are fire.

[] program notes: http://poemtalkatkwh.blogspot.com/
[] ITunes: http://poemtalkatkwh.blogspot.com/2007/12/were-on-itunes.html
[] at the Poetry Foundation: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/audio.html
[] RSS feed (subscribe): http://www.poetryfoundation.org/podcast_poemtalk.xml

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Making and Roaring

The weather is all bluster here—not ice and snow, like they've had a few hours north, but a fierce, chilled wind. Perfect weather, really, to sit and read The New Yorker by, and yesterday that's some of what I did—reading from the back forward as I always do and stopping for a long time for "Day of the Dead," D.T. Max's haunting piece on Malcolm Lowry. Lowry spent a decade writing UNDER THE VOLCANO, as his many biographers have told. He wrote it in every direction, was brought back to the page by his wife, lived through its rejection, wrote it once and forever more, and was finally made desperate by its success, for could Lowry ever, he wondered upon VOLCANO's publication, equal himself? Could he ever write past it? The answer, as it turned out, was a long, spiraling-toward-dying no.

These tortured writers terrify me. I go in many self-persecuting directions, wondering, on the one hand, if I can call myself a writer if I don't live in a shack and wash my hair in the sea and depend on the generosity of a crab hunter for my meals, but wondering, as well, whether greatness really does require such desperate sacrifice—whether it was necessary for Lowry, or Fitzgerald or Faulkner or Mann or Agee, for that matter, to suffer so extremely.

Is it the writing that did them in, or would they have drowned inside themselves no matter what they chose to do? Was the roaring there from the very first, inevitable, unstoppable, ineffable?

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On Beauty

Yesterday beauty prevailed as the finalists in the exquisite Dancing Classrooms Philly took the stage at the Merriam Theater. They wore scarves for skirts and sequins on their faces, glittered shoes and borrowed suits, flowers in their hair, red lips, gentlemanly expressions, and when the music played they danced.

Some of them take home gold medals, some of them silver or bronze, and maybe they will wear them about their necks for a day or slip them inside a jewelry box or over the knob of a door, or perhaps there is already a medal hanging from the bough of a dancer's Christmas tree. But we all know that this was never about winning or losing. It was always about the embrace. About the way we touch one another.

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Gratitudes

Well, the tree is in the house now, and it shimmers. Gift boxes are tumbling from my closet shelves (there are only a few shelves, and it's not a big closet). The cards are at the printer. I have my hostess gifts and the nice lady at the department store wrapped them so that they'll actually LOOK like hostess gifts. Tonight I'll dance that cha-cha and may or may not fall off my three-inch heels, but whatever happens, it will have already happened by this time tomorrow.

(If only I could finish that mega-gigantic corporate web site for my client. If only they'd stop adding sections!)

So today as I sit down at my computer and think about the world outside my door (fog enwrapped, at the moment), I think about how grateful I am for the conversations I've found myself having with those of you who have generously spent some time hanging out on this blog. You just don't know what is going to happen when you open yourself up to the world, and I've had luck on my side. What is the real world? It's an obvious question. For sure my real world includes you.

Tomorrow I'm off to the finals of that citywide ballroom dancing competition, where the fifth graders of Philadelphia will no doubt put on one heck of one fabulous show. These are stunningly beautiful children (one of my photos of the semi-finals above). If you are anywhere near the Merriam Theater on Philly's Broad Street tomorrow, do yourself the favor of seeing such beauty on the stage.

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Nothing But Ghosts

A few moments ago, Laura Geringer, my editor at HarperTeen, called with the extraordinary news that NOTHING BUT GHOSTS, my fourth novel for young adults, has found its home with her. HarperTeen will publish GHOSTS next year (HEART IS NOT A SIZE will be published fourth, due to the emotional connection that GHOSTS shares with my first two novels). Thank you, Laura, Jill, Lindsey, and the entire team at HarperTeen for believing. Thank you, Amy Rennert, my one and only agent since 1997, for staying on this journey with me and for seeing all these wonders through.

GHOSTS took form in my head shortly after my mother passed away, when a persistent goldfinch began to rattle against my office window—drilling at the glass with its beak, hovering like a hummingbird. It came only in the early morning, when I was the lonesome soul awake and disappeared during the rest of the day. I took this photo of it through the window screen. I began to think that it was my mother checking in, and with that thought, NOTHING BUT GHOSTS was born.

So, Mom: Here's to you, again. When Laura called, I had your favorite Rod Stewart CD on. At that very moment, he was singing, "Thanks for the memories."

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An Ode to My Great Grandfather, Horace Kephart

I have, I will confess to this, been feeling exasperated, rushed. I've gotten myself too deeply into too many things; we all do that, this time of year. But did I really have to sign up to perform a complicated cha-cha Friday night, in the midst of finishing a massive corporate web site and launching four new client projects? And can I really think about anything coherently until I know whether my son will be granted his early-decision wishes at a fabulous university? And why is the Christmas tree sitting out on the porch in the rain, and not here, in the house, where it belongs? And have I bought a single hostess gift this year? No. Not yet. Of course not.

But today, running from my house to the mailbox and back, I stopped—realized that I had in hand a package from my dear friend Katrina Kenison, who edited Best American Short Stories for years and who now at last lives in a house that she and her family literally loved into existence. (And you should see the views at night.)

In any case, there I was, running, and there, of a sudden, was this package, and before I knew it, I was holding in my hands an original copy of a book called CAMP COOKERY, which probably doesn't ring a bell for you, but which was authored by none other than my great grandfather, Horace Kephart. He was a bit of an odd bird, this man, but a genius, too. A brilliant librarian who had a Virginia Woolf-quality breakdown at the age of forty-two. He was already the father of six, the husband of one, but he left everything he knew behind and traveled to North Carolina, where he fell in love with mountains and bears and local lore, drank moonshine, authored books with names like OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS, became mayor, and fought for the creation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. He won the last battle. The preservation of that land as whole and true has a lot to do with him. (I hear that Ken Burns is making a documentary of great national parks. Oh, I hope that he remembers Horace.)

CAMP COOKERY, Katrina wrote, had been in her personal library for years, acquired, her letter informed me, "back when I was sure that, someday, I'd be living part-time in a rustic cabin by a pond." I'm not sure that we knew each other then. I'm not sure that I've ever even told her my great-grandfather's complete story, but here was this book, this perfect, sanctified, preserved treasure, and not just the book, but old newspaper recipes kept inside.

Are there better gifts than these? Are there dearer friends? Are there more succinct reminders of what this season means?

Horace, I hope you're up there listening, you strange and wonderful man. You may have left your family for a mountain, but family continues to swell around you.

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My Own Best Ofs

Walking toward the New York Public Library early that same early Saturday morning, I stopped and read each and every embedded plaque. You think of New Yorkers not being able to stop for a thing, and then here these lit jewels, demanding attention.

In any case, I kept being reminded of some of the books that I read or re-read this year, and loved. Here they are, in no particular order. Here's to a good year of books:

Four Seasons in Rome (Anthony Doerr)
Run (Ann Patchett)
Our World (Mary Oliver and Molly Malone Cook)
Snow, Ashes (Alyson Hagy)
The Uncommon Reader (Alan Bennett)
Five Skies (Ron Carlson)
The Madonnas of Leningrad (Debra Dean)
Brief Encounters with Che Guevera (Ben Fountain)
The Welsh Girl (Peter Ho Davies)
The Maytrees (Annie Dillard)
The Florist's Daughter (Patricia Hampl)
The Secret River (Kate Grenville)
The Night Watch (Sarah Waters)
Coal Black Horse (Robert Olmstead)
Dancer (Colum McCann)
Zoli (Colum McCann)

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Dawn in New York City

I went early Saturday morning to see the Lord and Taylor holiday windows on Fifth Avenue. It was just past dawn; I was alone. In a few hours I would walk through New York City with my father, returning to the places that my mother loved (the fish tanks at Barney's, the vestibule of the Pierre Hotel, the lobby of the Four Season's). But right then, the smoke was rising off the streets, the lion at the public library slept with a wreathe about his neck, and it was just me.

I breathe most deeply in the early mornings. I see most acutely when the sky is changing colors.

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The Death of Photography? The Rise of Newsvine.

A recent Newsweek article asks the question, "Is photography dead?"—asks whether, in the words of writer Peter Plagens, "the entire medium hasn't fractured itself beyond all recognition." It is possible, Plagens goes on to say, that the medium (now so digitally ripe, so easily manipulated) has lost its soul, lost touch with truth. Says Plagens: "The next great photographers—if there are to be any—will have to find a way to reclaim photography's special link to reality. And they'll have to do it in a brand-new way."

I bought a new camera recently, and it's one incredible piece of equipment. I didn't read a novel last week because I was reading the manual instead, and every time I think that I've got one of the functions down, I trip up against another button and wonder what it does. In the end, however, I want the same thing from this camera that I have wanted from any camera, including the little pin-hole oatmeal carton version I made in elementary school. I want to preserve things. I want to be able to study—at length, later—something that I've only glimpsed at in real time. I only want the truth from my images, but I know that that does not mean that I have necessarily captured soul. No function button is going to give me that. Only my ability to bear witness. (I'm still working on that; I'll always be working on that.)

On another topic altogether (but one that feels related), I was interviewed by Scott Butki last week, about two recent books, UNDERCOVER and ZENOBIA. Over the course of the interview, I learned a little something about what Scott does with his Newsvine, and it's fascinating. "Newsvine is a place with more than 100 writers writing about everything from the best current music to suggesting drinking games for the election debates to talking sports," he explains about this site, which was bought three months ago by MSNBC. In addition to interviewing fascinating people such as Roger Ebert, Robert Parker, Mary Higgins Clark, and Stewart Copeland of the Police, Scott himself writes frequently about media ethics and (at this very moment) the writers' strike.

In any case, as one who can barely figure out how to embed links into her own blog (wait, that's right, I haven't figured that out yet, despite the best efforts of my friend Nettie Hartsock and the incredible blogger Toby Bloomberg), I'm very impressed with what Scott has created and grateful to him for including me in the process. You can visit Newsvine at http://sbutki.newsvine.com/.

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Architectural Narratives

And so I made it (at last) to the Big Apple, and to the Waldorf Astoria, where this photograph was taken this past Friday night.

I've written previously about this grand hotel and the man, my great uncle Lloyd Morgan, who designed it. This time, as I walked through the lobbies and stood in a ballroom and photographed clocks, mosaics, fireplace mantels, I was thinking about the narrative that good architecture always is, the stories that my great uncle left behind. The stories that are possible because of spaces he created—secret stairwells, rounded balconies, processional-sized hallways. Clothes dress us. Architecture moves us through itself. A man long gone is still and always provoking the possible and untested.

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ZENOBIA: The Curious Book of Business

Today ZENOBIA, that very curious book of business, rolls off its Michigan presses. The making of ZENOBIA has been a two-year odyssey that took me back to such classic books as Little Prince and Alice in Wonderland, not to mention Calvino's Invisible Cities. My husband designed the book and produced its 15 illustrations. My co-author, Matt Emmens, Shire Pharmaceuticals CEO (and long-time friend), was just last night named Life Sciences CEO of the Year by the Eastern Technology Council.

So this is a risk, this book—a literary fable about the role of the imagination in corporate America. It's full of characters named Vert and Hedger and Nod (have you met them out there already?), and it stars an intrepid young soul named Moira, whom, I might add, is modeled after a wonderful young woman I mentored a few years ago when she was a senior at my alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania.

We had fun with this. It's a new genre, something that taught me so much more about writing.

Thanks to the team at Berrett-Kohler for having faith in it, to my agent, Amy Rennert, for making it happen, and to the always inspired Nettie Hartsock.

And, Mr. Emmens: Congratulations on this, your first book.

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Kirkus Reviews Best Young Adult Books 2007: An Excerpt

http://www.kirkusreviews.com/kirkusreviews/images/pdf/Best_Young_Adult.pdf

Undercover
Beth Kephart
Laura Geringer/HarperCollins
September / 9780061238932 / $16.99

A successful memoir author, National Book Award nominee Beth Kephart turned to young-adult novels after a conversation with Laura Geringer. “On the train ride back from my meeting with Laura, the voice of a character rose up in me. I wrote the first ten pages within that 45-minute ride. I couldn’t stop myself after that,” says Kephart. Teaching teen-writing workshops and reading 160 books as chair for the 2001 young people’s literature jury for the National Book Awards also birthed her YA voice. Undercover is the story of Elisa, a high-school girl outside the “in crowd.” Elisa loves words and is the “Cyrano de Bergerac” behind several of the school’s popular couples, including Theo, who touches Elisa’s heart. Although he encourages her to pursue her love of ice-skating, he keeps his distance—and the girlfriend he captured with Elisa’s words—until Elisa captures his heart. Elisa’s love of words is similar to the author’s. “I love the shape and sound of words,” says Kephart. “A single word, well-considered, can launch a story or a poem.” Like Elisa, Kephart keeps a Book of Words, started in her 20s, which she still keeps today. In writing for young adults, Kephart feels she has tapped into something deep. “When I sat down to write my first YA novel, something very essential happened to my idea of pacing. A different kind of energy got injected into my narrator’s voice,” she says. “I have never had so much outright fun writing…and it’s because I am enjoying myself so much with this that I have written so furiously, so fast.” Empowering and using the beauty of language and movement to connect with readers, Undercover is the first of four novels scheduled.

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Danger

Tonight my elephant ears lie collapsed and buried beneath first snow. The world is more quiet, and the urgency I feel comes from some place deep within.

I am thirty pages into a new novel that is being told with a chorus of voices. Everything hinges on intersections and conjunctions, rail lines and hubs.

If you give yourself the challenge, with each new book, of doing what feels like the impossible, then you walk around with this buzz in your head, this place of danger that draws you near. I've published in numerous genres now, and with this novel I again sink into the unknown. I realize just how vulnerable this makes me. Still, it seems my only choice.

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Breath Taken

Today I have few words. The kids of Philadelphia have pretty much taken them away. Because how do I even begin to explain what it is to find yourself surrounded by fifth graders who are eager to put on a show—to perform the rumba, fox trot, tango, swing, and meringue they've been learning two afternoons a week, these past ten weeks. They had their hair all done up and glittered. They stood with their partners and teams. They swirled on their heels after their teachers pinned on their color sashes. And when the DJ filled the air with paso doble music, these young dancers seized the stage, then turned, then stood, and you couldn't stop the audience from screaming pride if you'd wanted to. You couldn't erase that mood.

One girl lost a slipper and a sash. One lost a painted flower. But above these losses their skirts still flew, their feet still found the music.

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Urban Renewal

Today I'll be down in the city with the hundreds of fifth graders in West and North Philadelphia who have been learning the magic of ballroom dancing. It's the semi-finals of the Arts in Schools Collaborative/Dancing Classrooms Philly, and the kids have been at work for weeks, partnering with one another, preparing.

I'll have my camera. I'll have my notepad. I'll be doing everything I can to keep the moment forever alive.

A longer blog post tomorrow, after I return.....

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In Passing

I have been thinking about how long people live, even after they're gone. In the songs that bring them back. In the gifts they'd given, long ago. In the emails that still sit in your bin, all full of nobody but them.

Yesterday I was at a party honoring a friend who had passed away so suddenly a year ago. The party was the party that Sandy herself had always thrown; now it was being thrown in her memory by daughters who have found their way forward since her passing. Everything Sandy would have done was being done, and in that way she was there in the room. Her friends were where she'd want them to be, making advent wreathes, together.

And then there's my mother, who loved Christmas more than anything and bought presents all year long—stuffed them in secret places and often forgot to find them in time for the holidays. My father spent part of this past weekend in those places, opening boxes that my mother had meant to give. Finding her inside what she had chosen for us and him. She's still there, wide-eyed and surprising. We're still discovering her.

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Not Knowing

Last night, late, as my husband drove us home from a party in the city, I kept my eyes on the river beyond the expressway, lying black and low, with the moon on its back. I have loved that river—written about it and to it, stood above it and walked beside it—and yet so much of it remains mysterious to me, unknown. For all that the Schuylkill River has endured, she still retains her privacy. As do we all, I think.

We write so that we might know; isn't that true? Isn't a writer's first job to set aside the pre-supposed and to unwrap each story slowly? And isn't it true that, even after a book is done and being read by strangers, we drive in silence through the dark at night, full of not knowing and wonder?

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