We made it!

I couldn't resist doing this.

If I have this figured out right, everybody who comes to this blog has automatically found their way to within the requisite six degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon.

Check this out. . .

We learned yesterday that one of our blog friends used to live in Bloomington, IN. where the Dalai Lama's brother lives. One night, our friend had the DL's brother and his wife over for dinner. Okay, so that puts the rest of us at two degrees of separation from the Dalai Lama's brother, which puts us three degrees away from the Dalai Lama, himself. Which puts us four degrees away from Richard Gere. :)Which puts us, I'm guessing, five or at most six degrees away from Kevin Bacon, because surely either Gere knows him or Gere knows people who know him.

We made it, and with possibly even a degree to spare!

Now we can relax and go on about our lives. ;p

Did I do that right?

Writing is like. . .

"It's like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way." E.L. Doctorow

That famous piece of advice about writing sees me through many a tough place when I panic because I don't know where my story is going. At those moments, I put myself behind the wheel of an imaginary car on a road at night--just like the one above--and I think, "Okay, I can't see very far ahead, but I *can* see this far." Then I advise myself, "Write to the end of the headlights." Sometimes the car and the headlights keep moving on down the road, revealing more of the story bit by bit. That's a great relief. I can keep writing like that. Sometimes a deer bounds across the road, figuratively speaking, startling me. Sometimes the car keeps moving but the headlights mysteriously go out. That's scary! Sometimes, everything breaks down. And my cell phone won't work. And here come a rough-looking pair of guys in an old pickup truck. But now and then Doctorow's advice works really well for me in a straightforward and simple fashion. So I pass it along today in case there are any writers reading this who need it as much as I do today.

Karl and Kuan-Yin

Goodness, big political news to wake up to!

Seems like a good day for a visit to Buddhism. :)

I'm not a Buddhist, I just play one on teevee. No, seriously, I'm not, even though I did spend a year attending services at the local Tibetan Buddhist temple. I just love that form of that religion, even if it does make my Zen friends gag. I love the gaudy colors, the orange robes, the red prayer flags, the "gold" statues, the red and black meditation mats, the incense, the bells, the funny bald lama who tells great jokes, the visiting high mucky-mucks. I loved chanting in Sanskrit without understanding a word of it. I love the mysticism of the Tibetans, and I grieve for their tragedy. The only bumper sticker I ever had--until Howard Dean--was a little square one in support of Tibet. When my son saw it the first time, he laughed and said, "Mom, that is so you." But then, I was greatly influenced by James Hilton's novel, Lost Horizon, at an early age, lol. No, seriously, I was. And I love Buddhist stories. Their parables. They tend to have endings that make people laugh when they "get it," and which instantly make me think of times I could apply them to my own life.

So on a day when a certain politician is getting down off our backs, I think I'll tell one of my very favorite Buddhist stories, about the two monks and the woman at the river.

One day two monks were walking somewhere and they arrived at a river where there was a young woman who was very upset. "I need to get to the other side!" she exclaimed, "but the current is too strong for me to walk across by myself! What will I do, what will I do?"

Whereupon, the elder of the monks volunteered to carry her across on his back, even though as monks they were strictly forbidden to touch females. She climbed on board, and off they all went through the lively water.

On the other side, he put her down, she expressed her gratitude, and she and the monks went their ways. The monks walked for several more miles. Finally, the younger monk could stand it no longer and he burst out with, "You shouldn't have picked her up! You know we are not supposed to do anything like that!"

The older monk looked at him in amused surprise and said, "Are you still carrying that woman? I put her down two hours ago."


I love that story. It cracks me up every time I hear it.

(The photo is of a bigger-than-lifesize, painted, wood statue of Kuan-Yin, or Guanyin, the Bodhisattva of Mercy and Compassion. The statue lives in a reconstructed Chinese temple in the Nelson-Atkins museum here in K.C. It is my favorite room in the museum and "she" is my favorite work of art there.)

Sunday Bulletin Board

Why, hello there, Saturday

And when we put down the book at last,
lean back, close our eyes,
stinging with print,
and slip in the bookmark of sleep. . .


from a poem by Billy Collins

Ghost Post

I'm going to let a dead poet write my post for me today. He is--or was--Richard Hugo. These quotes are taken from his little book of lectures and essays, The Triggering Town.

"I hope you learn to write like you."

"At all times, keep your crap detector on."

"Don't start arguments. They are futile and take us away from our purpose. If you don't agree with me, don't listen. Think about something else."

"In a sense, the next thing always belongs. In the world of imagination, all things belong. If you take that on faith, you may be foolish, but foolish like a trout."

"Never worry about the reader. When you are writing, look over your shoulder and you'll find there is no reader. Just you and the page."

"If you feel pressure to say what you know others want to hear and you don't have enough devil in you to surprise them, shut up."

"Finish the poem first, then worry about being right or sane."

"Don't worry about morality. Most people who worry about morality ought to."

"To write a poem you must have a streak of arrogance--not in real life, I hope. In real life try to be nice. It will save you a hell of a lot of trouble and give you more time to write."

(Following one of his early poems) "I don't even understand that one anymore."

"I believe that it is only in periods when you can transcend your competitive instincts that you can write."

"What endures is your feelings about your work. You wouldn't trade your poems for anybody else's. To do that you would also have to trade your life for his, which means living a whole new complex of pain and joy. One of those per lifetime is enough."

"I've come to believe that one learns to write only by writing. Years ago in the comic strip 'Pogo,' a bear appeared, a creature who could write, but couldn't read. Granted the joke, I'm not sure anymore that the concept is that farfetched."

See you in the comments. Maybe something Richard Hugo said will trigger some conversation in our town today. :)

How to Bake a Book

If you had asked me an hour ago--me, the author of 17 novels--"What's a subplot?" I'd have told you and I'd have been sure of my answer. And I'd have been wrong, as I just learned 59 minutes ago. According to one of my favorite writing gurus, Donald Maass, "Subplots are plot lines given to different characters; layers are plot lines given to the same character."

Layer cakes and cupcakes, in other words.

This makes so much sense! Why haven't I ever known this before?

Well, who cares why, or even that I didn't, because now I do, and it makes marbles tumble into slots for me, if you'll pardon the mixed metaphors. A Marble Cake? lol. I'm excited about how I'm going to spend my morning thinking about layers and subplots.

Today is a day for what the Buddhists (bless them for their useful terminology!) call "Beginner's Mind," a state I'd like to maintain forever.

May you, too, be surprised and blessed today by learning something that you thought you already knew.