Advice for a. Double Digit daughter

Advice for a Double-Digit Daughter by Kelly Suellentrop Dear Daughter, Welcome to the double digits. Turning ten is considered a milestone, celebrating the first decade of your life. But becoming the mother of a ten-year-old for the first time, well, this birthday is kind of terrifying for me. And not just because finding a gift for you is a real b*tch...since you feel you are too old for toys, and I feel you are too young for just about everything else. (You also likely know the word b*tch and how to properly use it. Thankfully, age ten does not seem to come with the courage to say it in front of me, only they eyerolls that imply it.) The simple addition of an extra digit to your age has suddenly made me feel like I am intensely under the gun. It is somehow as if turning ten is the gateway to adulthood. I know by most respects, you are still a child. But you don't feel like a child anymore, evident by your refusal to order off the kids' menu and your desire to steal my shoes (which actually fit you) for real life instead of to merely play dress up. This means my window for helping you cram for the exam that is your whole life ahead of you is closing. And my syllabus is full of lesson plans still untaught. Sadly, you are already beginning to doubt that I know anything at all. My friend Emily of The Waiting recently wrote an achingly beautiful post about how we mothers are continuously pushing, in the sense that we give birth to our children over again each time they move onto something new. Well, now that you have turned ten, my instinct is to stop pushing. Because you are officially on the downhill side of your journey here with me as your guide. Any push I might give will only send you careening to the bottom even faster. But you are going down this hill one way or another whether I like it or not, mostly due to physics. Don't ask me to explain. All I remember from my Physics class is that you will stay warmer if you towel off inside the shower with the curtain closed than outside on the bath mat. Again, don't ask me why, but I've tried it. And it's a sound theory. But I will leave those types of lessons to your teachers and professors. I have my own wisdom to share, and I feel as if I need to catch you now, before the momentum of your descent becomes so forceful that my voice simply sounds like a fleeting distraction. Buy Into "The Deodorant Effect." We have already talked about the whole your body will be going through a lot of changes thing. But it really does creep up on you. And you just can't predict anymore when you're going to smell and when you won't. I'm not saying it would be right for other kids to shun you if your armpits were ripe, but there is no point in giving them ammunition on a silver platter. So just do that quick preemptive measure every morning. This "deodorant effect" applies to life in general: any time you can do something simple to ward off a problem down the road, do it.  It gives you your best chance to come out smelling like roses...or at least not like b.o. Speaking of Your Body, You're Going to Hate It. Everyone is going to tell you not to, while simultaneously sending you unspoken messages that you should look differently than you do. So then you get to feel bad about your body AND feel bad about feeling bad about it. Welcome to being a woman. What I can tell you is that you will likely be your body's worst critic, so try to remind yourself that no one else is scrutinizing you as much as you do to yourself. And your body doesn't have to be perfect to be amazing...or lovable.  As far as I'm concerned, no one can hold a candle to your body because it is the vehicle through which God sent me the daughter I had always dreamed of. I have never wanted you to look any other way. And Speaking of Hating Things, You're Going to Hate Me. I am pretty sure you have already had experience with this one. It is probably going to be a more frequent feeling in the next few years to come. And I won't lie; it is going to crush my heart every time we are at odds. But I am stubborn, as are you, so we WILL fight. Yet I am not stubborn enough to let you think I don't love you. If you only remember one thing, let it be this: my love for you can never be wiped away by any words or actions. But damn it, I'm going to prove I'm right sometimes. You Know Best, Except When You Don't. Trust your gut. In most situations, it will lead you to the right decision. I know this because I have witnessed what a good, decent heart and perceptive, intelligent brain you have. But your gut can't exist in a vacuum. Make sure to listen to what others have to say, because it is impossible for you to be the utmost authority on everything. By the same token, you should never consider yourself an expert on anything, for somewhere in the universe there always exists knowledge you haven't yet learned.  No one has a monopoly on good ideas...except for your mother. (Hate me yet?) The Only Name That Matters Is Yours. People are going to try to tell you that it matters which name is on your college diploma...or the label of your athletic gear...or the street sign where you live...or the building where you work. And yes, some people are going to judge you on those names. But those names do not really say anything about you, at least, not anything important. The thing that matters most is what comes to mind when people hear your name. What do you want to be the first thing to fall from others' lips when you are mentioned? If you place too much importance on associating yourself with certain names to create an image, those names may just end up defining you to the world. But if you simply live your life in a way that does justice to your own name, THAT becomes who you are to others. When someone hears your name, would you rather them think Harvard grad with a high-powered job who is always in the top fashions and lives in that exclusive neighborhood or kind, generous, compassionate, and sincere? I already know how you will answer that question, so just make sure to be true to it. My sweet girl, you have one decade down and so many more to go. I don't know if I made the most of our past ten years together, but I can tell you they were better than I could have ever imagined. I have a suspicion the next ten will be the hardest on you and me. They usually are for mothers and daughters. But I have faith we can weather the stormy attitudes in the forecast, and I will love you fiercely through it all. I am in this for the long haul. And I have a stockpile of deodorant. Love, Mom

EARLY PRODUCTIVITY

Early Productivity by Liam Wood I know I haven't posted a lot of writing tips lately, and I hope to get back to that soon, but today I'd like to focus on my second favorite topic of conversation: productivity.  Writing is great, and all these techniques are useful and fun, but it's useless if you can't sit yourself in a chair and do something.  Productivity gets your story written.  Productivity dies when you get writer's block.  An enormous part of learning how to do art is learning how to be productive. My life has a lot of deadlines in weird places through the day.  I might spend six hours of the day out of the house, driving, meeting people, whatever needs to be done.  In all that time, I am physically unable to produce.  Those hours are black holes that devour the three-second flashes of inspiration that come with menial work.  I might be ready to write in the middle of the drive home, but when I get there, that urge is gone. Doesn't it make sense, then, to make the time at home extremely productive, and the time away my recharging time?  I'll think a bunch, talk to people, glean ideas from my surroundings, and come back ready.  But that means the time at home has to use that creative energy, or else it goes to waste.  I need to be productive when I have the opportunity, and allow myself to rest when I can't be productive. One cool thing about productivity is that it breeds productivity.  You've experienced it before.  You have an hour until you have to leave the house, and you haven't done any work yet.  You sit down, put your hands to the keyboard, start forcing words out, and suddenly you're flying along.  You look up and you have five minutes, but you've never typed faster.  If you had three more hours, you could get so much work done— but the deadline comes in the way.  Productivity breeds productivity. But it's hard, isn't it?  You get all your other tasks done first and clear your schedule so you can write, but when you sit down to work, you start procrastinating. Read more of this post

WHAT THE WALLS AROUND US MEANS TO ME

What THE WALLS AROUND US Means to Me by Nova Ren Suma My new book, The Walls Around Us, was published today! I would be so thrilled and honored if you considered buying it this week from your favorite independent bookstore or ordering it through your local library—first-week sales do help authors so much, that’s the truth. But most of all, however you may get your hands on it, from a good friend, from an enemy, from an amazon, or from a Dumpster, I do hope it speaks to you somehow. I hope you like it. This is a book that I wrote for myself, wholly and completely. I wrote it for the girl I was, back some time ago, and the person I am today. I wrote it because I needed to. I wrote it because I reached an ugly place inside myself full of itching doubts that made me question every single idea I was having and every single line I was writing, and I wanted to free myself somehow. How ironic, then, to write a book that takes place mostly inside a prison to make yourself feel free. But it did. It shook something loose in me. Last night, if you happened to be at my launch event at my favorite local bookstore McNally Jackson, where I was being interviewed by one of my favorite authors and people, Libba Bray—damn, am I lucky, damn—you may have heard Libba call this my “middle fingers book.” She says this because she witnessed me at the café table talking about writing whatever the hell I wanted without boundaries or censors and raising my middle fingers high to the ceiling while saying so, a funny image, yes. But also, it’s true. That’s what this book is for me. (Libba Bray and me at the launch of THE WALLS AROUND US on March 23 at McNally Jackson) Sometimes you have to stand up for yourself in the face of all that doubt and so-called expectation and write the book you most want to write. Even if—especially if—you’re scared to do it. The book you’d go out with in a flash of fire and smoke if you could. The book that has no regrets. The book that is as weird and wild and yourself as can be. That’s The Walls Around Us for me. I risked a lot—and now here I am, with it out in the world and no take-backs, and I feel good, I feel proud, I feel pretty OK. One of the strangest things to realize is: When I gave myself permission to write simply for myself… When I told myself to go wild, go crazy, go all-out and see what happens, THIS is the book that seems to get more attention than my previous books. It was named the #1 Kids’ Indie Next Pick by the American Booksellers Association for Spring 2015! An Amazon Best YA Book of the Month for March! It has gotten five starred reviews! ??? Isn’t that some kind of life lesson, you think? That we should be honest and brave and so completely ourselves with the novels we’re putting out in the world. That we shouldn’t try to write what we think other people want us to write, what the industry is looking for, what readers supposedly want from us, what the world at large says. We should tell our own stories, with conviction. We should be fearless and risky and wild and true. Even when we’re scared. I’m so grateful for everything that’s happened with The Walls Around Us so far. (And stunned. And flummoxed. And thrilled. And… and… and I could go on!)

TWO FILMS ABOUT SADO MASOChISM

Two Films about Sado-Masochism: Who’s you’re favourite Martinet? by cobrunstrom We don't have a regular baby sitter do we don't get to see real films, 2D films, until long after all the clever people have already had their say.   I didn't get to see Whiplash, or Birdman, or Imitation Game until a few days ago when I flew to Los Angeles and back. Whiplash is a very taut and very entertaining meditation on sado-masochism.  Simmons, as jazz band leader Fletcher is one of the greatest drill sergeants ever to appear on screen. R.Lee Ermey from Full Metal Jacket has a more restricted register of expression - something which is not his fault but which is implicit in the role he's playing. Ermey, of course, really was a drill sergeant, and knows enough never to break the ingrained discipline of his staccato professional identity.   Simmons, on the other hand, is able to build rather more tension ahead of his outbursts since he can offer soft-spoken geniality to punctuate the suddenness of his outrage.  At one point he offers avuncular encouragement to a young boy who has just started piano lessons by saying "would you like to play in my band some day" just a semi-quaver before bursting in on his actual band whom he addresses simply as "cocksuckers". Both films provoke a version of the same question.  How does an older man dominate a collection of much younger men?  Well, by telling those young men that they are nothing in themselves, by telling them that they are works in process, on a road to becoming something better.  Eventually, the more you inflict punishment, the more they will compete to absorb it.  Competition to get into Fletcher's band is intense - the more extreme the punishment, the better the musician you must be. R. Lee Ermey's drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket is blown to pieces half way through the film (a strange diptych of a narrative which loses energy in its second half).  The jazz band leader survives.  If the test of maturity, the test of "becoming something" is a test of how much punishment you can absorb then the martinet will not be quicker to deal out punishment than the discipline is to absorb it.  In Whiplash, Fletcher and his tutee Neiman are locked in a kind of combat whereby Neiman can defeat his nemesis by embracing every form of pain that being offered. Furthermore, this kind of formative sado-masochism is generationally self replicating.  Fletcher reminisces about the horrors that Charlie Parker experienced during his tutelage.  One can be sure that Fletcher himself was brutalised himself, as was Sergeant Harman as played by Ermey.  The cruelty, once absorbed has to be passed on to a new generation, because otherwise the cruelty would have been wasted.  If there's one thing worse than being brutalised when one is young and vulnerable, it seems, it is feeling that all that brutalisation was stupid and unnecessary.  Brutality has to count for something.  Apparently. Hence the expression "it didn't do me any harm" when referring to corporeal discipline.  The "any harm" rarely discusses the compulsive need to "pay it forward". And now that I've finished this, I discover that Peter Bradshaw has already made the Whiplash-Full Metal Jacket comparison.  Bradshaw is just about the sharpest and most hilarious film reviewer I know.  Ah me.

LONDON BRIDGE

London bridge by Mandy Collins "London bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down..." It's a refrain that has echoed across schoolyards since the 17th century, if Wikipedia is to be believed. I love looking up the history of childhood chants and games - so much so that I once began (but didn't complete) a Master's degree in sociolinguistics about the clapping games little girls play. But that's a topic for another day. As I read through the Wikipedia entry, and saw that London Bridge is accompanied by an arch game - like Oranges and Lemons - it got me thinking about children's birthday parties and how they've changed since I was young enough to attend one as a guest. When I was a kid, birthday parties were a simple affair. You came home from school clutching an invitation, your name carefully filled in on a pre-printed sheet you could buy by the pad at the stationery shop. On the appointed day, you sat on the back seat of the car carefully balancing the present on your lap, and your mum dropped you off at the gate. Inside, a predictable set of activities awaited you, all organised by the birthday girl or boy's mother: Pass the Parcel, Oranges and Lemons, I Wrote a Letter to My Love, and perhaps a game of Red Rover or Pin the Tail on the Donkey. There was one prize per game, if the game had a winner. You ate some crisps and some fudge and sometimes (shudder) there were lamingtons too. You drank some fizzy pop - a treat, at the time, for special occasions only - and the boys had a burping competition. And then candles were blown out, there was singing, and you were given a square of birthday cake, carefully wrapped in a paper serviette, to take home and eat after dinner. And then we come to the parties of today. We, like the shopaholic sheep we are, have gone astray. Because there are clowns, magicians, funfairs, craft parties, dance parties, cooking parties - an endless list of options, making a whole new industry. I know because I've paid a fair amount of money over to those people on behalf of my own children. Party tables groan with what passes for food - most of it is junk, and there's always far too much of it. Children plant themselves next to bowls of sweets and shovel the stuff in, making Roald Dahl's August Gloop seem positively restrained. And it horrifies me. Children today go to parties with an expectation. They want to be entertained for the entire length of the party - and the entertainment had better be up to scratch. They want co-ordinating decor. They will discuss among themselves which parties are cool, and which aren't, and contrast and compare their various experiences. They will demand a 'party pack' when they go home, and look extremely confused and disappointed if one is not forthcoming. In addition, don't think you'll get away with doing parties for 10 to 12 years - oh no. Thirteen requires a special party, as does Sweet 16. And then when they're 18, and simultaneously able to drink and drive legally, there's an all-fall-down-drink-yourself-silly party, naturally, because we South Africans are sensible like that... And don't forget that a lavish affair for their 21st is almost certainly required. I feel like a Mother Grundy just typing that. I've heard all the arguments, and they can be persuasive: it's a different era! Kids just want to have fun! Isn't it lovely that some parents are able to afford to do that for their kids? But no. In the long-term I think we're short-changing our children, who should be able to arrive at a friend's house with a bunch of others and get stuck in to just being children. They should run around and play their own games, and be rowdy and get dirty and maybe stop for a drink or a snack before they carry on with being children. Children who expect to be entertained and plied with food, drink and gifts at someone else's birthday, and who demand a prize just for participating in a game, are not the kind of children I want to be around: they're good, old-fashioned spoilt brats. And we, as parents, are responsible for making them so. * Dave Luis and I are posting a series of tandem blogs. We write about the same topic at the same time, and publish our posts without seeing what the other has written.

A ROOM OF TEN

A Room of Ten: Interfaith Immersion by Teri I’m going to do something weird,” Malak whispered to Katie, her bunkmate for our six-day interfaith immersion trip to Chicago. Malak slips into her cotton prayer robe, its royal blue flower print covers her head, her arms to her wrists, and hangs to her feet. She begins her prayers, facing Mecca, alternating positions of standing and then prostrating herself with her forehead to the floor while silently praying in Arabic. When she finishes, Katie, a Christian, intentionally takes a moment to say, “I don’t think it’s weird, Malak. I think it’s beautiful.” I wasn’t sure what would come of this interfaith immersion trip. I’d never led one before. But I knew I had a good group—three Muslims, six Christians, and one Naturalist, all living and learning together in one large hostel room stacked full of ten bunk beds. During the week we visited a variety of religious communities. We listened to Father Pfleger whoop at St. Sabina Catholic Church, gazed at the“O Glory of the All Glorious” in the dome of the Bahá'í Temple, soaked in the smooth sounds of jazz worship at Fourth Presbyterian Church and sat in meditation at the Shambala Center. We giggled embarrassedly with the Sikhs when we didn’t know what to do with the pudding they put in our hands, dined on delicious Turkish food provided by our hosts at the American Islamic College, and swayed to the undulating music of the Hare Krishna chants and drums. Each experience was unique, each community welcoming and willing to answer our many questions. But it was the conversations on the bus, subways, and sidewalks in between these visits that made the experience meaningful. After a long, full day on Monday I called my husband to say goodnight. Laughing over the phone, I described why I was so exhausted. “I’ve spent the whole day trying to explain the Trinity to our three Muslim students while also trying to navigate the Chicago subway,” I told him. “So, I got us lost multiple times and I’ve decided the Trinity doesn’t really make much sense.” While worshipping at Fourth Presbyterian Church, I was confronted by an awkwardness I hadn’t felt before. When I realized communion was being served, a debate quickly began in my mind as I thought through what I wanted to do in this worship moment. This was my church and my sacrament. Should I go forward to receive it, leaving my Muslim and Naturalist students behind in the pew? Would they feel awkward and unwelcome? At first, I decided I would skip communion to sit in solidarity with those who were not Christian. But as the service proceeded I realized that later in the week I would be the Christian observing a Muslim prayer service—and I would think it odd if my Muslim friends refrained from participating in their service for my sake. That was their thing. This was mine. So I went forward to receive the sacrament of Christ’s body and blood. Later, when I was the one sitting to observe the Muslims in prayer—the men in one line, the women in another, standing shoulder to shoulder, all their movements in sync—tears welled in my eyes. I’d observed Muslims in prayer before, but these weren’t just Muslims. This was Malak, and Mirna, and Hind—my Muslim students—three of our room of ten. Here they were doing their thing. And it was beautiful. At the end of the week, we packed up our bags, leaving behind rumpled blankets, sheets, and trash cans full of shopping bags and snack wrappers. Left behind in this mess, though, was also a quality, an air, that something holy and heavy happened in that space. In a day when religious tension is globally at a six year high, we need more people to have such positive interfaith experiences—experiences through which the “other” suddenly has a name, and a story, and a path that often intertwines beautifully with your own. We knit together a new kind of community in that room of ten; a community where religious difference does not prove to be divisive, but rather mutually enriching; a community full of human grace.   *Special thanks to Jem Jebbia and the Interfaith Youth Core for helping us plan and coordinate this trip!    

postmodern ASECS

Postmodern ASECS, Final Day of Eighteenth-Century California by cobrunstrom I missed the final two sessions.  I had to fly back home to give a Brecht lecture on monday morning, and the only flight that could make that viable for me involved two whole conference sessions being lost to me.  I will never get them back.  Never ever ever. The day began with a panel on the Scriblerus panel which dramatised a nicely simmering controversy regarding whether or not "Scriblerus" or the club that bore his name was any kind of coherent entity.  There was a discussion.  And  I think there was a winner.  The extent to which later entrants like Fielding (self-styled Martinus Secundus) and even Laurence Sterne, can shelter under a Scriblerus aegis was also treated. The perfect start to a day.  And it just got better and better.  The next panel was another Richardson panel, a panel on Richardson and Materialism.  John Toland's name was invoked - and that's always a good sign.  Everyone in the world interested in the clash between Idealism and Materialism, Religion and Secularism, should read (ideally re-read) John Toland's Letters to Serena.  Suffice to say that at the end of the panel, I realised how I should have concluded the paper I gave on Thursday.  But I do now know how to conclude a possibly publishable version of the paper.  The panel concluded with a philosophical rhapsody from the very special Profession Margaret Doody, who as the respondent managed to kick everything up a notch and made everyone in the room excited about the meaning of life, the universe and just about everything. Then we had our second plenary, an address by Ann Bermingham.  The talk, on the "Coffee House Characters" of G.M. Woodward was a tour de force which explained the difference between Hogarthian "characters" and "caricatures", illustrating how Woodward helped invent both the comic strip and the comic book.  A whole new economy of expression was being invented around the beginning of the nineteenth century, one that we live with today. Then, for me, sadly, was just a series of too long goodbyes.  As usual, whenever I say a proper and heartfelt goodbye to someone I see them immediately around the next corner. Checking in dutifully at LAX the proper three hours in advance, I found that beyond the security checks and around the gate are there was nothing.  No bookshops, no giftshops - no nothing.  Three hours of almost complete sensory deprivation served only to heighten the sensory overload I'd enjoyed over the past few days. Now I'd been tired and sleep deprived for the duration of the conference.  The aching feeling under my eyes never abated.  But I began to ponder the idea that perhaps the real joy of a conference is the rapid transition of moods you experience from suddenly feeling extraordinarily clever to feeling breathtakingly stupid.  One instant, you feel that there's a great deal that you know, and the next, you feel like Newton, that the ocean of truth still lies before you.   You flatter yourself and prostrate yourself with each passing moment. And that is perhaps the most specific reasons why academic conferences are sublime.