I just took a long walk on the beach. I spent most of that time thinking about how to describe that walk. Which, I realized, is how I spend much of my life–instead of experiencing it, I write about. Or, at least, I think about how I would write about it. Luckily for my readers, most of what I write in my head never makes it out my fingertips.
My 11-year-old daughter has the same habit. She carries around a journal that she writes in obsessively. At the same time, she complains that she has nothing to write about. She came home from the school the other day excited about a pending field trip, because, she said, “It’ll give me something to write about.”
Did I train her to think this way or was she born this way? What do y’all think?
But back to my walk. I saw deer tracks on the beach. Unless they were satyr tracks. But I think goat hooves are smaller than deer hooves, although a satyr’s hooves would have to be large enough to support the upper half of a man. So they could’ve been satyr tracks. I’ve always wanted to meet a satyr. The tracks were at least four inches long, which according to a chart on HuntingNet.com, means they could be the tracks of a yearling doe. Or a large satyr.
(By the way, if you Google “goat tracks,” you get a magazine called “Goat Tracks: Journal of the Working Goat.” Which may be the best magazine title ever.)
For this week’s kids’ issue at Mountain Xpress, I wrote the lead story on local stay-at-home dads. Make sure to read to the end for a hilarious SAHD joke.
Here’s an excerpt:
“Matt Buys admits he had no clue what he was doing initially.
‘The first time I went shopping for diapers, it took me 20 minutes to figure out which kind to buy,’ he says.
Then he mentions the challenge of potty training his oldest.
‘I had no idea how to do it. Finally, I thought, ‘This kid really likes fireworks.’ So I told him every time he used the bathroom we’d go outside and set off a firecracker.’”
Yes, I’m pimping myself. I wrote this week’s cover story for Mountain Xpress on Echo Mountain recording studio’s expanding entertainment empire.
Here’s an excerpt:
Echo Mountain Studios bought the 9,600-square-foot Fletcher School of Dance building in 2006 from the school’s director, Ann Dunn, for $850,000, according to tax records. Scores of Asheville girls (and quite a few boys) danced there during its 34-year tenure at 175 Patton Ave.
The second-floor dance area that endured years of pounding from pointe shoes will now feel the stomping of boots and pounding of drums as musicians perform and record their work in Echo Mountain’s new studio—which happens to be next door to Echo’s original location.
“I was mostly interested in her parking lot,” Wilmans says. “Ann Dunn told me, ‘You have to buy the building if you want the parking lot.’ So I did.”
(I initially wrote this because one of the first things I told the bloggers in my class last weekend was to examine their motives for writing and blogging. I figured I’d better examine mine first. I know this will anger more of you–hell, the closer the election gets, the more hate mail I receive. BTW, NObamaDave, what’s your real e-mail address? Despite the consequences, I believe it’s my role as a writer to put it out there, so here goes…)
I write because my thoughts emerge sharper and clearer through my fingertips than from my mouth.
Writing is how I make sense of the world. Writing is how I examine, explore, and dissect what I don’t understand, what scares me, what confuses me, and what gives me joy. Writing is how I figure out what I really think and feel about things—from talking to my kids about sex to why yoga pants rock to surviving my kindergartner’s first day of school.
Although I would write regardless of who might be reading, I’m lucky to have an audience—you readers who come back week after week, for a laugh and the feeling that you’re not alone in your parenting challenges.
Yet, with an audience comes added responsibility. While my primary goal has been to give you a chance to giggle with me at the absurdity of raising kids, lately I’ve realized I also have a responsibility to tell the truth as I see it, even when that truth’s not funny. I also have the responsibility to offer you words that sometimes transcend—words that create a picture, provide an insight or make you think.
Thus, while I’m happy to oblige with my weekly dramas, I’ve been more serious than usual over the past month. How can I regale you with tales of baby poop and toddler tantrums when the financial world is crashing, people are out of work and out of money, and a powerful woman is irresponsibly using the word “terrorist” against a fellow American?
Therefore, I’ve branched into writing a bit about politics and the world outside my insular North Asheville existence, despite knowing that these subjects can be veritable Afghani minefields.
I recognize that these words can make readers angry. That’s difficult for me. I know how words can hurt—just look at the rhetoric that’s dragging the current Presidential campaign into the swamplands. But I’m not here to keep my mouth shut. Well, maybe my mouth, but not my fingertips.
So let me say right here and right now whom I think will be best for our country. I think Barack Obama has the better chance of rescuing us from the tar pit we’re sliding into than John McCain. Yes, it’ll take time, it will take sacrifices, but that’s ok with me. I’m more than willing to pay now if my kids can have a future with fewer of the debilitating fears I currently harbor about the environment, the stock market, home values, and our future.
So, I, Edgy Mama, am endorsing Barack Obama for President of the United States. While I’m at it, I’d like to endorse Kay Hagen and Heath Shuler for U.S. Senate, Holly Jones for Buncombe County Commissioner, locally-grown food, and every microbrewery in Western North Carolina.
That’s why I write. So I can put down, right here, what I’m feeling and thinking. I can tell the world—or at least, those of you who’ve read this far–whom I believe should be the next President of the U.S.
Thank you, readers, for giving me this platform, this opportunity, and for reading this far.
I also want to thank my kids, because they’ve initiated and even forced my transition from writing from my head to writing from my heart. They also, at the moment, continue to think it’s cool that Mom writes about them.
Finally, I’d like to thank Steve Almond, who has inspired me anew to put it out there and damn the torpedoes, and George Orwell, for this title and never-ending inspiration.
So, go Obama. Right now, my heart’s saying this is “why I write.”
You may have heard already about Mars Hill College English professor, Hal McDonald. He was named the “Next Great Crime Writer” by truTV, and he’ll read from his new novel tonight at the college. The event is scheduled for 7 p.m. in Broyhill Chapel.
His novel The Anatomists was released on March 25 (my birthday) by HarperCollins.
Here’s the great American dream part of the story: McDonald was one of more than 900 authors to submit entries in the TV network’s “2007 Search for the Next Great Crime Writer” competition. His story, “A Simple Case of Revenge,” was a mystery that took place in 1825 London. The grand prize included the opportunity to sign a book deal with HarperCollins. They liked his story enough to move forward, which gave McDonald just six weeks to develop the short story into the novel.
Check it out!
UPDATE: I saw McDonald’s novel at Malaprop’s this past weekend. The book looks like fun, although it clearly was quickly produced without much focus on aesthetics. Guess truTV doesn’t budget much for printed paper.
Today’s Edgy Mama column for Mt. Xpress is all about dental trauma. When I told my pediatric dentist that I’d written about him and my boy’s reaction to him, he posited the theory that no one really likes having their face messed with. Since much of our experience of the world comes via mouth, nose, and eyes, this theory makes sense to me!
