Opening? Closing?: New Year's Eve Reflections

I'm not one to make New Year's resolutions; I've never been. I chase each day with the desire to get it right. I mourn each night over failures. It's about all I can handle.

I do, however, have this aspiration: To see in every door that seems to close a door that in fact opens. Many, many times this past year I allowed myself to dwell on endings, when in fact a new beginning was stirring elsewhere. An unforeseen virtual party for a book I feared no one would notice, for example. A new publishing home for a novel that I was afraid had run its course. A fear that clients gone quiet signaled clients who had forgotten—but that wasn't it, as it turned out, that wasn't it at all, for the clients are back, the friendships stronger than ever.

Wait. Wait and see. I'm taking that forward in 2010. In the meantime, we're headed out for dinner this night with friends we've come to love. They are part of the old. They'll be part of the new. And they'll make us laugh in the meantime.

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Dance Lesson: A Poem

And I felt then the easing away of the dance,
the not knowing a lien against,
you giving in to my giving up,
and the battle for the samba lost.

We will dance the fox trot like old people, then,
you said,
your feet suddenly sunk into a clobber pose
and your lips pulled in over your teeth.
Remorse was the mood:
yours, mine,
the victims we make of ourselves.

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The Music Room by William Fiennes: Some Thoughts

Almost 7 PM, and the skies, awaiting a near-full moon, are dark. Within this pervading stillness, I read the final pages of William Fiennes's memoir, The Music Room.

Do you know this story? Have you heard about the castle in which Fiennes grew up, and how it shaped him? Have you heard about his brother, Richard, who suffered from severe epilepsy, lived for Leeds United soccer games, exalted the wing work of herons, and erupted, often, into the smithereening hands of fury before he retreated—confused, ashamed? There were other siblings and other tragedies in this ancient place. There were also two parents who honored Richard for what he could be and gave him everything he was capable of receiving. Two parents who, in Fiennes's telling, emerge as parents in memoirs rarely do—which is to say supremely good, outrageously gentle, never self-glorifying, never self-pitying, and still, despite so much, utterly present and in love with life.

There is hush throughout this book—a tumble through past and present, a drift across here-we-were and here-we-are, time in a collision with time. There are long slides of description regarding a castle that cannot be contained by words, or mapped, and then, embedded, are scenes of aching, particulate precision (Richard tracks a heron, Richard skates on a frozen moat, Richard burns his mother with a frying pan, Richard sings, Richard smashes ancient glass, Richard accuses, Richard lays a heavy (loving) hand upon Mum, Richard will not bathe, Richard celebrates Leeds, Richard recites a poem from memory, Richard suffers, William is there, William watches, William wonders). Then, like marks of punctuation (something solid, something fixed), there are episodic histories of epilepsy science, the scarred and fuming brain revealed.

One senses no opportunism in this story—only the need to tell it. Only the need to let it be known that a castle was a home, and a brother was loved, and parents did their best, and a boy became a man who became a writer who wants to remember, and does.

It's that simple. And it isn't.

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Why I Buy Books (and always will)

Every now and then (as you know), I step back from the somewhat obscure titles with which I surround myself and read what the world is reading. This past month I read (and you know this as well) Lit, The Help, Nothing to be Frightened of, Half Broke Horses, The Piano Teacher, and The Music Room (in addition to a series of visual art books). I loved Lit (Mary Karr), and Nothing to be Frightened of (Julian Barnes). I have great respect for the suffused hush and intelligence of The Music Room (William Fiennes) and will write more of that tomorrow. I had reservations (some of them extremely deep) about the other titles.

Nevertheless, with the exception of Looking In, the compendium of Robert Frank photographs, I bought every book that came into my possession this past month—all but two were still in hardcover. I bought these books and I bought a dozen more for family and friends, and then I went and bought some more—not because I was living in personal economic boom times (quite the contrary) but because this is the only way that I know of to support this business we writers are in.

I believe in books, and I will pay to keep them coming. For in that pile on the floor, on the desk, by the chair is a sentence that, I trust, will turn my head, a point of view that will adjust my own, a scene I'd have never imagined, a deviation explained. In that pile is possibility, and I can't live without that.

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Appreciations

When I write of the chimes that float down toward my mother's grave, I am writing of the music that emanates from this church, Washington's Cathedral at Valley Forge National Park. On Christmas Eve, after spending time by my mother's grave, my son and I entered the stone church and sat. We were the only ones there, the sun enriching the stained glass.

I close this year with the quality of reverence that a place like this cathedral stirs within me. I have been moved beyond measure by the goodness of the many of you who have become frequent travelers to this blog. You have elevated a quiet career into one blessed by fellowship, intrigue, humor, and succor. You have shared your own stories, debated my tastes with diplomacy, gone off in search of titles I've recommended and come back with your own impressions. Though I no longer respond here to your comments (preferring to travel to and comment on your own blogs when I can), I cherish every one of them, as I cherish you.
My deepest thanks to those of you who are mentioning my blog in your year-end round-ups. You know how much that means. You know how it matters to have someone to write to and for.

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Nieces, Nephews

We called our mother's brother Uncle Danny, and he meant the world to me. He was tall and a bit Hollywood-esque, a beachcomber and an antiques expert, a maker of the most exquisite Christmas ornaments and a wit who held his smile behind his hand. He was someone who brought us the craziest presents wrapped in used paper bags, and yet it was those gifts that I waited for each year, for my gifts were always crazy in the way that I once was crazy, and sometimes, too, they were dear. Pearl earrings. Something reminiscent of Betty Boop.

I am an aunt to five young people whom I love enormously. I have watched them grow into a mathlete, a photographer, a track star, a star swimmer, and a pianist. Or: a physicist, a fashion plate, a cat- and llama-loving wit, a fisherman, and a gymnast. Or: a debate-team judge, a softball player, a writer/artist with a talent for chemistry, a lovable heart, and a talk-a-mile-a-minute show stopper.

Anyway you look at them, they are rather beautiful in my eyes (their eyes are all manner of color—a variety of blues and a deep hazel). I'm not sure if I'm the crazy aunt—too quiet, too reserved, the one who rarely talks but always listens—but I hope that looking back someday, years from now, they will know how I loved them.

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Cat Sweet

We drove the nearly three hours to my brother's house yesterday and settled in for a terrific day of Peru by proxy (what glorious photos they have of their trip there), Wii resort battles (I swear I beat my nephew at least one time; I swear I did), and a meal prepared by a gourmet chef (that would be my sister-in-law).

With us at all times were the family's three adopted cats (and by adopted, I mean rescued), who did not seem to mind our intrusion.

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Asylum and Looking In: Two Glorious Adult Picture Books

This morning I'm celebrating two extraordinary picture books.

The first, featuring photographs by the exquisite Christopher Payne and an introduction by Oliver Sacks, is called Asylum. Presenting some of the most moving images I have ever seen, this book takes us on a tour of the institutions that have served as home to this country's mentally ill. There are no people in these photographs—just a wall of toothbrushes, say, or canisters of ashes, or beleaguered ward hallways lit up by sun. Taunton State Hospital, Matteawan State Hospital, Concord State Hospital, and Springfield State Hospital are here; so is the operating room of Norristown and the coffins of Fergus Falls. Every single photograph is breathtaking; I bought the book two months ago and I still don't have the words to express my deep respect for the artistry of Payne.

The second book I'm celebrating today is Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans/Expanded Edition. We had seen the Americans exhibition at San Francisco MOMA, and I'd fallen in love with Frank's depiction of America, mid-last century, with its spewing politicians and its through-the-screen-door barber shops, its movie stars and its road trips. This compendium is graced by in-depth Sarah Greenough essays, context-proving contact sheets, and truly interesting explications of Frank's approach to maquettes and juxtaposition. Looking In was my big Christmas present this year, and it is big—so heavy, so wide that I have yet to figure out how to perch it on my lap. But it should not be/cannot be relegated to coffee table status. It demands to be studied and read.

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Dancing with Natalie Merchant in the Morning Sun

and wondering where she's gone, whether she's by the river of which she once sung. If she is, I will find her.

well I will go to the river
from time to time
wander over
these crazy days in my mind
watch the river flow
where the willow branches grow
by the cool rolling waters
moving gracefully and slow

—Natalie Merchant,
"Where I Go"

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Blue Sky, The Piano Teacher, and The Kid Gets a Raise

It is hard, sometimes, to remember just how blue skies can be when you are hunkered down in the midst of a storm. But the skies bloom blue today, and I have no major meal to prepare, and so I have been reading The Piano Teacher, a book that, if at times feels rushed (surprising grammatical miscues, dialogue pitching toward explication, secondary characters that do not always find dimension), has much to teach about life in Hong Kong during World War II and is often punched through with vivid hues—sunflower yellow, rose red, jade, emerald.

Late yesterday afternoon, while the rain kept on, my son came home from the theater where he works whenever he is at home from school.

"How was your day?" we wanted to know.

"Not bad at all," he said. Sherlock Holmes had sold out, It's Complicated, too, and beyond all that, his boss had taken him aside for a performance review—a meeting that concluded with the awarding of a substantial raise.

"Did you even know you were up for review?" I asked.

"I wasn't even thinking about getting reviewed," he said.

"So you got called into an office, and there it was—this really great news?"

"That's the way it worked," he said.

I like stories like this one—moments that are unanticipated and rich at the same time.

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Crow slipping through wet sky

The snow has been dissolved by a rain that will not stop. The rivers and creeks are high on their banks. There was this crow in a tree out front. I caught it in mid-slide.

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The Hands of He and Him

One is an artist who spent yesterday seaming together fabric that he designed with the software called Maya (a virtual process, keyboard and screen, undertaken in a workshop that seems far away during winter rain).

The other is an advertising major who sat with me on a couch on that rainy Christmas day looking at a book of iconic ads and explaining the theories behind them, the jokes at play, the double or triple entendres. "You're incredibly good at this," I said, after listening to him talk. "I like it," he said. "That's why."

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Half Broke Horses: A True Life Novel/Thoughts

So of course I'd read The Glass Castle (Jeannette Walls) and of course, therefore, I expected so much from Half Broke Horses, the "true-life novel" that serves as prequel (of sorts) to Walls' bestselling memoir. It's the story of Walls' maternal grandmother, Lily Casey Smith—a plain speaking (oh, is she plain speaking) woman of hardscrabble beginnings who is breaking horses by the age of six and riding 500 miles, alone, across the desert, by the age of 15, and sleeping on the floor of the schoolhouse where she teaches before she's even turned 20. Lily's best friend is killed in gruesome fashion during her Chicago years. The first man she marries is a two-timing fraud. She bootlegs to make ends meet, she races horses, she learns to fly a plane. She whips her daughter, Rosemary, when she has a lesson to teach.

It's the stuff of a very good story. But it is not, sadly, a story well made. Walls writes the book in her grandmother's voice—a voice she describes, in her author's note, as "distinctive." But I did not find distinction in the way the voice is rendered here; I found (and perhaps I am the only one?) a simple one-thing-after-another voice, a now-I'll-tell-you-this-thing voice, a voice unmeasured, unlifted. One expects to hear, in a woman who had lived so wildly, so bravely, something idiosyncratic about the speech, some oddly tied-on metaphors, some regionalized expressions; they aren't here. One expects to find momentum and drive; the book is instead matter of fact—designed to prove, it seems, that all the strange events Walls captures so masterfully in The Glass Castle could never have been anything but. Consider this final paragraph:

"With the way Rex and Rosemary's life together was shaping up, those kids were in for some wild times. But they came from hardy stock, and I figured they'd be able to play with the cards they'd been dealt. Plus, I'd be hovering around. No way in hell were Rex and Rosemary cutting me out of the action when it came to my own grandchildren. I had a few things to teach those kids, and there wasn't a soul alive who could stop me."

Every author needs to know where she or he is headed, in general fashion, when starting out. I wondered, as I read Half Broke Horses, whether the book would have benefited from being far less purposeful, so that it might be more fully felt. I stand, I know, in a minority here, as I also stood with The Help. I'm eager to hear from those of you who have also read the book.

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Christmas Day

"Dad," I'd said, the day before, "do you ever see owls?" (We are the bird watchers in the family, by which I mean, we watch for birds.)

"Just once," he said, "that I remember."

Then, yesterday, I took my son to Valley Forge National Park, where my mother is buried beneath the stone that my father and I designed. She is buried in a place that my father visits everyday, in a place that receives the chiming of bells. I went, as I always do, with something to leave behind—this time a miniature instrument, in memory of the carols we had sung, and this red silk amaryllis. I lay the silk into the snow. I heard a call and looked up; an owl was flying overhead.

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My Friends, Travel Wise

As I lit these candles yesterday, I allowed myself a moment to reflect on the many and varied emails that have come in these past few days. There's Mike Y. sending Where in the World updates from his trip to China and Hong Kong (snake brandy, he says, and three-story tall Buddhas). There's B.B., with reports of "decadence" in Turkey. R.R.R. is in the Bahamas, sand on her feet, and J.S. is at home, a father to sons. J.P. is planning for Las Vegas (then Arizona); my student, K.E., is at home (which is Manhattan), finishing up her screenplay; I.G. is settling in again with her short stories; and Alyson Hagy (okay, so I'll use her name) just returned from New Mexico, where, she reports, the University of Wyoming team won "one of the wildest football games played all year (or ever in the case of UW)..." and where Alyson herself ran toward the mayhem following the double-overtime win—an earned gambol given all Alyson does in her dual capacities at the university on behalf of literature and athletics.

I love my friends. It cannot be helped.

I'll take the red silk amaryllis to my mother's grave in a few hours. I'll tell her a few stories when I get there.

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Betty Boop

I was the kid whom they called Betty Boop, and she's been with me ever since—big cut-out dolls and ornaments, cartoon cards and a little light-up version that a friend picked up while on her way to (visit a) prison.

When I hung this one on the tree last week, I stopped, for a moment, to study those eyebrows. No botox there, from what I can tell. Just a big say yes to life.

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From my Kitchen/Scenes from Today's Meal

(blood oranges, red onions, cinnamon, mint, an orange dressing)

(wild rice, red pepper, anchovies, green onions, Italian parsley,
sherry vinegar, red wine vinegar, olive oil)

It was a good day. The turkey cooperated, the baby spinach was sweet, the blueberries and gorgonzola were on more than speaking terms. The brownies were moist. And the two dishes above were full of color and zest, but few calories.
Tomorrow I tackle the paella.

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Nothing to be Frightened of

I am frustrated by a life that leaves me far too little time to read. Frustrated. Determined, though, I have carried Julian Barnes' Nothing to be Frightened of with me from client to client. I've sat with it in the dentist chair. I've read it while on hold for conference calls. I've stood there stirring a pot, the book in hand. You'd have thought I'd have finished it by now.

And why am I fighting so hard to find the time to read a book that is, indeed, a meditation on death and dying—on how people die (which is of course bound up with how people live) and on what people think along the way? Fear or acceptance? Defeat or glory? Ungainly irony or something worse? Well, to begin with, this is Julian Barnes, and he's riotously talented—stewing memoir and wit and philosophy and literary biography and fine vocabulary into a chapterless not-outright diatribe, not-clinical exploration, perhaps controlled rant is the term, that is nothing if not (and you know this matters to me) brilliantly choreographed. He's assaulting you. He's appeasing you. He's on your side and then he's all caught up with himself, as if he may be the only one facing ultimate extinction. No such luck, Barnes.

If I were reading that paragraph above I'd think, about myself, Someone should tell Kephart that it's Christmas, the season of birth and winter wonder. That right about now is when a poor fool like her should be curling up with some light holiday fare. But the thing is this: It's a privilege to watch a mind like Barnes' work over, around, and through the inexplicableness of death. It's exhilarating, as a matter of fact. Intelligence is never overrated.

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The Art of Looking Sideways

"... the larger part of the labour of an author in composing his work is critical labour; the labour of shifting, combining, constructing, expunging, correcting, testing."

This is T.S. Eliot, quoted on page 424 of The Art of Looking Sideways, the final present of perhaps five dozen presents that I now wrap so that it might be slipped beneath the tree. This Alan Fletcher compendium of ideas—visual and other—is as extraordinary in its way as the ladybird I found this morning and photographed against a window leaned upon by snow.

We must, as writers, seek our own path, our own stories. It is the only way.

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Chatting it up with readergirlz

My time as author in residence for readergirlz has reached its near end. I've had a truly blessed journey along the way—coming to know this incredible (award-winning) organization even better and interacting with the younger readers/writers who have participated in the writing contests. One last contest remains, with a December 30 deadline. Shortly on the heels of that, I'll be participating in a live chat with the readergirlz on January 6, 6 PM Pacific/9 PM Eastern @ readergirlz.blogspot.com. I hope you'll join us.

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Fox Cities Book Festival

A few months ago, my agent forwarded a note that launched a series of conversations that ultimately resulted in (I know, this is starting to sound a bit like an office memo) what I can today announce is my participation in the 2010 Fox Cities (Wisconsin) Book Festival, to be held during April 11 - 18, and featuring (since I am now writing a preposterously long sentence, why not extend it?) Mary Karr, David Wroblewski, Kim Edwards, Chris Crutcher, Ted Kooser, Jane Hamilton, and others. I'll be touring through Wisconsin for those days, speaking at various schools and libraries, conducting workshops, and eating (I hope) cheese, because anyone who knows me knows that I love cheese (and also apples and chocolate and really fine bread).

In any case, I'm really looking forward to it, and I'm hoping that any of you who live in the area will come out and mix with this incredible slate of authors.

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All Day Long

we felt the snow up around our knees.

Today, I urge you to visit My Friend Amy (a place you should already be visiting every day). She's posting stories about favorite Christmas songs. I had one to tell about my fourth-grade desire to perform "O Holy Night."

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White Knight. Shining Armor.

At this point in this day I'm giving this blog post up to Nick Daniels, once the neighbor boy-wonder who cut all our lawns, now out on his own working with his dad in a thriving auto shop by day and still taking care of the rest of us by any other available hour. In the summer, Nick helps me reach the branches of the trees that have grown too tall for my own pruning. In the fall he takes away the leaves. In the spring he helps me mulch, if I need mulch, for a garden that (I admit) is ambitiously sized. Once I had a new front door put onto the house but it had a mind of its own. Nick stopped everything to help me get it closed. Took screws out, put them back in, joked around the entire time.

Yesterday, the snow, as you might have heard, came in high and heavy here in the east. This morning, having finished the first draft of a client project round about 9:30 a.m., I trekked outside to begin the business of clearing the path and the drive. An hour or so later, Nick drove by in his plow-outfitted pick-up.

"Hey, lady," he called. "What do you think you're doing?"

"I need to get the car out," I said. "Snow's in the way."

"Well, then," he said. "You step aside."

I was willing. Believe me, I was.

"Don't go anywhere, Nick," I told him, after a moment of watching him work.

"Why not?"

"I'm going in the house, to get my camera."

"What for?"

"So that people don't think I'm imagining things. So that they know you are real."

Those of you who read House of Dance and encountered a certain blue-eyed, car genius named Nick? Same guy, just grown up now.

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Our Family Holiday Card (and greetings)

One of my favorite parts of the Christmas season is creating a card each year with my artist-husband, Bill. This year, Bill has been working with Maya and ZBrush software to generate a new kind of image, and this star-spangled wanderer was one of the first images to emerge from his workshop, which is, in fact, the old garage shed that was converted years ago for his artistic purposes. (Bill walks about 75 yards to work each morning; my commute involves walking through the living room to my office.)

I never know what image Bill is working on. He'll appear (sometimes sooner than later) with something lovely, and then it is my turn to write the words. They're rather tiny in this rendition, and so, for those who wish to read, I put them here.

It wasn’t enough, all of a sudden,

to stand beneath the skies—

to only look up, to only watch the endless glide.

It was the season of hope, after all,

when every dream was bright, alive,

and the night was her silk

and the stars were her shine.

Wishing you peace and light,

Bill, Beth, and Jeremy

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Snow Falling: A Christmas Eve Excerpt

The promised snow is out there, falling, and I am feeling melancholy. This morning, before a long corporate-work weekend kicks in, I read the novel for adults through one last time. It is going, now, to Amy Rennert, my agent. Come the new year, we shall see what we shall see.

In the meantime, this from a final scene in the asylum. The year is 1955.

Someone had brought in a Collaro hi-fi and plugged it in with Christmas blues and we sat there, the crazy and the no inch short of sane, while Jimmy Butler sang “Trim your Tree” and Felix Gross sang “Love for Christmas,” and when Sugar Chile Robinson sang “Christmas Boogie,” Wolfie took up Virgin Mary’s hand in hers and a space was cleared on the table top and the two of them danced, Virgin Mary’s eyes a million miles away, but something close and near on her lips, something like a blessing, with Wolfie just laughing, Wolfie hollering a good time, and no more giggling, for that single minute, from Liesel, who wore holiday trim in the rolls of her hair and teeth in the pink of her gums. I kept Autumn near all dinner long. I suffered in my thinking about Baby.

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Christmas in Stereo: House of Dance and the Taysha List

Nothing would interfere with our collecting our son—we drove miles, we drove them quickly, and then we parked. He was waiting for us in the bitter cold, and when we saw him, we began to run. He's that kind of soul, that kind of beautiful, and he was joyful; five finals were done. Over dinner we talked and after dinner we drove, and it was very late and dark. Beyond us, the snowy valleys were filled with candy cane lights and rooftop reindeer, with pinpoints of white and blue, of blinking green. It's Christmas, I thought, a complete thought now that our son was near, with us.

Seven corporate projects have come in over the past few days—months of work to be completed in a few weeks' time. I was on my computer late, to take care of a few things, when I noticed a comment on my blog. I will repeat it here for history's sake—an extraordinary gift to me at Christmas:

Dear Ms. Kephart-
It is my pleasure to inform you that your book, House of Dance, was selected to be on the 2010 Tayshas High School Reading List. The Tayshas reading list highlights the best fiction and non-fiction books for Texas teens. It is one of the most respected state reading lists in the country and generates millions of dollars of sales throughout the United States for the books selected to be on the list.
If you would like to see which other books were selected for the 2010 Tayshas High School Reading List please follow the link below.
http://www.txla.org/groups/yart/tayshaslists.html

Congratulations and thank you so much for writing such a quality young adult book.

I'm not sure who to thank for this. Renee, if you are reading: thank you.

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A Few Smile-able Things

1. I've been working this morning on the copy edits to Dangerous Neighbors. I have a feeling that I'm going to be saying this a whole lot come 2010. But Egmont USA—the entire team—rocks.

2. The Christmas tree is up. I swear. It actually happened.

3. Part two of my interview with Serena Agusto-Cox has gone live. Boy, does that Serena ask good questions.

4. I am heading out the door right this very instant (truly) to collect my son from college, even though my hair is wet and there are at least 30 emails that I've yet to answer (I'm sorry!). Yes. The word is ecstatic.

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The Beth Kephart Reading Challenge (I Know, I Can't Believe It)

When My Friend Amy named her blog My Friend Amy, was she anticipating that she was going to meet me? That she was going to change my life with such force that whenever I talk about the trajectory of my writing career, I talk about her? She's the one who threw the Nothing but Ghosts virtual launch party. She's the one who got me involved with her tremendous Book Bloggers Appreciation Week. She's the one who, every day and often several times a day, helps direct us, her fans, to new books, new shows, new concepts, new issues, other bloggers and writers.

My Friend Amy. Indeed.

Today Amy has posted a Beth Kephart Reading Challenge. But beyond that, she has given me the opportunity to put my eleven years as a book-published author into perspective. I began this journey by publishing memoir. I moved into history and poetry, corporate fable, young adult novels, and I'm currently finishing my first novel for adults. I have learned a lot along the way—about how memoirs, for example, inadvertently freeze people in time when in fact (and for example), children grow up, they evolve, they overcome, they teach us more and more each day. They deserve to be recognized and seen for who they are right now.

Amy has given me the chance to say this, the platform, and she has done this within the context of a contest that has, as its prize, an ARC of Dangerous Neighbors, my historical novel that, as of this moment, only Laura Geringer (my editor), Amy Rennert (my agent), Robyn Russell (Amy Rennert's assistant), and the extraordinarily good people of Egmont USA have seen.

I encourage you to head over to Amy's.

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The D.C. Literature Examiner Interview with Serena Agusto-Cox

This is how I felt when the entirely thoughtful Serena Agusto-Cox invited me to join her on the virtual pages of the D.C. Literature Examiner—emulsified by blooms. It's a two-part interview, the first of which posts today. Take a look to find out, for example, who some of my own literary heroes/heroines are.

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Philadelphia at Dusk

Philadelphia, through the bridge window at Cira Centre.
The lights go on.
The taxis urge toward home.

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Light Speed

"Wait," I said. "How much longer do you think we'll have this light?"

"Not long," he said. "Light moves quickly."

So I grabbed my camera because I thought I'd have something to say—about shadow selves, about near identicals, about black and white.

In the end, all I had was the light.

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Books Beneath Trees

I buy books en masse each year for Christmas, and this year was no different. And because no one for whom I buy my books actually reads this blog, I feel safe in divulging some of my now-wrapped presents.

Here we go:

For a certain dancer with a talent in the kitchen: Clean Food: A Seasonal Guide to Eating Close to the Source. For a southern California writer: Lit: A Memoir. For a nephew who isn't just an extraordinary swimmer, but also one heck of a fisherman, the gorgeously illustrated FISH: 77 Great Fish of North America. For a niece who is off to college in a year or so, pursuing her passion in science (and likely physics): The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science. For my dad, a former chief executive and still active consultant who yesterday brought me the loveliest planted gift (but more on that later): Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World. For my artist husband now working in new media: ZBrush Character Creation, Mastering Maya, and Ghostly Ruins. For my son, firmly ensconced in the advertising world: Read Me: A Century of Classic American Book Advertisements and Creative Advertising.

Finally, should my schedule afford me reading time, I've got Nothing to be Frightened of (Julian Barnes), Half Broke Horses (Jeannette Walls), The Piano Teacher (Janice Y.K. Lee), Something Must Happen (Ned Balbo), Eiffel's Tower (Jill Jonnes), The Perfect Square (Nancy M. Heinzen), and my own great-grandfather's Smoky Mountain Magic (Horace Kephart) stacked up near.

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Speed

There was her cane, flying fast ahead of her, and there was her left foot, flying, too. Nothing would keep her back, nothing would assert itself against her, nothing would dare. I understand living at that speed. I understand eternally running. But right now, right this very instant, the novel is written and the presents are wrapped and the clients are happy and the bills are paid and there's even a tree on the back deck and there's no dust in my office, only the new, gorgeous, nearly blooming succulents that my dad brought over this afternoon. My boy will be here come Thursday evening. I've been flying fast ahead of myself so that I won't need to rush when he is home.

To those of you whom I've not visited lately, I extend my apologies. I will be back. I nearly almost am.

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Dream Tangle

In my dreams, the scenes are gravity defiant and emotionally untrue, and yet I cannot take my eyes off them, talk myself out of them, disbelieve them.

I awake on the couch in the dark stunned, a victim of the movie in my head.

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Bright Lights

In Wayne, PA, you either look for stories or trust that stories will find you.

Yesterday, while yielding my often ill-behaving hair to the tres-talented MacKenzie of the always -superior Cole Wellness Spa (which sits directly in the square heart of Wayne), a certain Sean Guiney walked in. "He looks like Sting, don't you think?" MacKenzie said, and when I cocked my head slightly to the left, the guy kind of did.

Soon we were joined by Liz, the receptionist, and soon stories were flying, and soon Sean was talking about this organization that he founded in April 2009, Kids and Hope Foundation, Inc. He was talking, in particular, about the families who—no longer willing to live in their cars—have taken up residency among the tall trees and wild wolves and myriad deer of New Jersey's Pine Barrens. Without running water or electricity they live. Within the plastic walls of tents. Sending their children to school, or waiting for children to be born, and hoping, most of all, for a way out.

The rain comes down, the snow falls, there are floods, there is a freeze, there is the thick dark of long nights, there is a fiesty dog keeping the wolves at bay—and this, to many families, is home. Sean Guiney, a former auto mechanic, is doing all he can to raise $30,000 a year to help those in that needy place with everything from food and school supplies to the possibility of affordable housing.

That was some story—a story that left me thinking about gifts and Christmastime.

Just a week or so earlier, I'd encountered another story in Wayne. This time I was in a boutique buying a bracelet for a friend when Sharon McGinley looked at me and said, "Beth Kephart, right? Radnor High School?" Yes, I agreed, and she reintroduced herself—a former classmate who had, as it turned out, spent some time getting to know those now too old for foster care, but unprepared for life. "I heard the stories," she told me, "about those who needed bridging between childhood and adulthood, and about all of those who fell through the cracks. It seemed like something had to be done, and so I decided to try to do it." Eddie's House: Doorway to Adulthood is the pretty amazing result.

It's a bleak day here. I've been up since shortly after midnight, working. The rain is gray and the earth is brown, and no one I know wants to be outside. But there are many out in this weather today who don't have choices like I do. There are also, thankfully, those who have decided to assert themselves against the status quo.

This blog post is for them.

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Holding Up

As I walked the Penn campus on Monday I was struck by images of endings. This is a close-up of a campus information kiosk—all the advertisements, slogans, promises, queries snatched out from the rust-grip of staples. Come January, it will all be new again.

Here, in between corporate projects and Christmas shopping, between the tree I haven't gotten yet and the countless gifts I have, I am at work on a final round of edits for my adult novel. Come Monday, the book will be ready for prime time, which is to say, for its submission to editors. There's no telling what will happen after that. All I can say for certain is this: Rahna Reiko Rizzuto read it closely, and so did my agent, Amy Rennert. This book is already far better for the time they took with it—for the questions they asked, for the themes they parsed, for the way they told the story back to me.

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Blog Famous

He wanted to sell me a hat.
I countered with a deal.
"How about if I promise," I proffered,"to make you blog famous?"

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Garden Lights

If I happen to live on the storied Main Line, I happen to love the things that fall outside the history books, the guide books, the local gossip. This, for example, is the garden shop just down the street, which lights my way during evening strolls and heralds, always, Christmas.

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Returning to Work

From the train platform at 30th Street Station, I always had this view of Cira Centre—of the offices, in particular, of Brandywine Realty Trust, a once and sometimes client. Waiting for the train on Monday evenings, I'd watch my friends across the way, huddled in meetings or hurrying back and forth, sitting alone with a pen in hand. I'd wonder what they were up to now, how their next buildings would shape the cityscape, what they would think of me if they turned and saw me—a teacher for a spell, not a consultant.

Yesterday I left academia and returned to the world of corporate work. I sat with my good friend (and co-author) Matt Emmens in the offices of Shire. Turned my thoughts toward an annual report and a news magazine. Buckled myself in for the ride. The thing about the life I live is that there are friends at every turn—people I am genuinely eager to see, stories I can thread my way into. Everywhere in this world, people are dreaming. They are putting up buildings and launching new drugs. Sometimes I stand by their side.

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English 145 (11): Tea

Today, taking the train to Penn, I watched my world going by. Twice herds of deer—if you can call four, then five deer a herd—were scattered by the oncoming locomotion and made a heady dash for the margins. Near Rosemont a fox was nearly caught by the tail. Near Overbrook a hawk got mired in some kind of mid-air scuffle with a bird half its size and twice as fast.

Once in the city, I walked, as I always do—through 30th Street, toward Drexel, then west and south, toward Penn. I was followed, it would seem, by that hawk (or that hawk's cousin), which finally rested in a thorny tree and did not protest against its portrait.

Later, I would sit with my class at the Bubble House, where we poured variously tinted pots of tea (and one coffee) and shared a long, long lovely lunch. How do you say goodbye? Maybe you don't. That's how I'm figuring on it.

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Holding On

Sometimes when I come to this computer and choose a photograph and settle it into its place on this blog, I only know what mood I am in, not what "what" I have to say. That is the case this evening. It has been a slow Sunday, one that has left me feeling awkward in relationship to myself.

For example: At church this morning, a perfect stranger approached me suggesting that I must not get much sleep; it was the darkness beneath my eyes, she said, that gave my insomnia away. But. I wanted to say. But: I actually slept last night. Five hours, I wanted to say. Five. Whole. Hours. Logged. Last. Night. It occurred to me then how truly frightening I must be on most days, how I am the only one who does not see me.

In the absolute still of the afternoon, I pondered a revision to a novel. I asked myself, What do you have left? I did not yield (unto myself) a sufficient answer. Sometimes, it seems, I don't have all that much left.

Then, tonight, my student, K., sent in her final words about the class I've taught at Penn. Her words were so smart, they were so honest, they were so earned that I just read them through, and cried. K.'s words should make me happy, and in many ways they do. But they signal the end of something I have loved—those particular students, this particular year, our together journey of discovery—and there is no cure for that.

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She Man

"Now, would that be a snow man or a snow woman you've got there?" I asked, as I strolled by.

"It's a girl!" she said (emphatic). "She's just missing her hat."

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The View from Here

The view through my north-facing office window this morning.
White, but for the pink replacing gray.

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Purple Slash

Because it's gray outside, and the day wants color.

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Lit: A Review

I've titled this post "Lit: A Review," but on this blog, I don't write reviews; I save that voice for the Chicago Tribune. Here I write about a book's impact, about where I was and how I felt when I read it.

I read Lit while lying on the slender black couch where I spend most sleepless nights. I read it pulled up under the blue blanket that snuffs the perpetual winter chill. I read it in three sittings and would have been happy with just one, but life (my life) got in the way. I heard voices in my head: This is an artist working. This is a woman resurrected. This is a mother who genuinely loves. This is a poet-teacher who, within the pages of Lit, is teaching us how a book like this gets made. There are so many extraordinarily fine sentences in Lit. There are fragments torn from Heather McHugh, Terrence Hayes, and Don DiLillo; words of advice from Tobias Wolf; stories about good-hearted addicts; revelations of a gorgeous sisterhood. There is a lot of soul searching, a lot of desperate need, no small share of triumph, and—this is, perhaps, the biggest thing—no accusatory fingers pointed. Mary Karr has lived one hell of a life. There would be blame enough to go around, but no one gets blamed in Lit, which is to say that no one emerges as caricature.

Last Monday, in Room 209 of the Kelly Writers House, J.—in endless pursuit of a deeper knowing—asked if I'd heard the Mary Karr interview, if I'd read any of the book's excerpts on-line. I said that when I got home that day, Lit would be waiting for me on the doorstep. J.—no romantic—actually sighed. "You're so lucky," he said, and J., I am. But we're all lucky, as a matter of fact, that books like these get written.

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A readergirlz Winner

I felt a bit like an elf today, slipping through the halls of a local high school and delivering a copy of Nothing but Ghosts to Kiera Ingalls, the talented young writer who won the third readergirlz writing contest. I meant to stay for a short while, but my hosts—Katherine Barham and her class of aspiring writers—were dear and gracious, giving me room to talk about the extraordinary enterprise that is readergirlz and asking intelligent questions about the writer's life. Where do stories begin? How do titles erupt? Can books really build an audience through word of mouth? Why do so many embrace and celebrate books that don't appear to be immensely well written? These students had just, at Ms. Barham's prompting, written their own books and designed their own covers; they'd rounded up blurbs and crafted their bios. What, they seemed to be asking, is the future of books?

The future is you, I thought. And you. And you. It's Kiera, pictured here with the fabulous Ms. Barham, and with me, who felt so proud to meet her.

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