Painting the Closet

Hello readers! I have been off line for a few days. I almost started that sentence with "I am sorry," but then I realized women in general apologize too much, and then I stopped. I read somewhat that proper blog etiquette is to tell your readers when you are taking a break, but this one just sort of happened. I am so rusty I am having to remember how to type, which is crazy frustrating. I digress.  -- Lauren

It is summer here in the great Pacific Northwest, as we are told by the Summer Solstice and not the actual weather, which is gloomy. It was lovely in April and May when the kids were in school, but now it is Sucksville. Anyhow, my kids are home (or were home--Claire Adele left last week for a month at camp) and I have had less time to write. The Boy is having a hard time managing his screen time and I have a hard time telling him to get off his screen while I am sitting at my desk working on a blog. This is the first year he has had so much digital access, and like a kid in the candy shop, he needs to read every meme, see every YouTube video, read every Instagram post and play every game. I feel like the parent with a cigarette dangling from my mouth and a beer in my hand telling my kid not to smoke or drink. Yet, unlike my son, I know the difference between work and play and I feel bad for not writing. Not bad for you, dear readers (all six of you whom I love and adore!) who don't get to read my posts, but for me because I love to write. Yes, this is a selfish blog. It is all about me.

I read a really neat blog post by Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal called Creativity is Like Breathing. In short, people in need to live in order to write. Not everyone is like Victor Hugo who can hole himself up for fifteen years on an island* and come back with Les Miserables. Unlike Hugo in Guernsey, I have been living these past few days connecting with my family.

I also have been painting. Not painting and drawing like Matthew Inman does in his very colorful blog, but painting the walls of my house. Anita** has been helping me and I want to use her up before she finds a real job.

The Boy is tired of me painting the upstairs. "Put down the paintbrush,” he said yesterday while I was thinking of other projects Anita and I could work on before she finds a full-time job. While the Boy enjoys sleeping in my studio office in the backyard (a.k.a. “The Shed”), I think he wants the upstairs of our house back.

Yesterday, Anita and I finished painting Claire Adele's room. I am learning lots of new things about our house by digging in the corners. Her room has lumpy stucco all over the walls. In one corner, there was a part that wasn't stuccoed. I deduced that underneath the plaster was wood paneling circa 1970 under that matches the wood paneling in her closet. Egads. Why couldn't I find the gold treasure in the corner? I complain to Anita about our crappy little house.

“I guess it isn't that crappy,” I say to Anita trying to be upbeat about my abode until I find phone wires that aren't attached to anything. “Okay, I guess it is crappy."

Anita and I painted the downstairs stairs/closet to the basement yesterday. One side of the stairwell has what was once nice v-edge tongue and groove wooden paneling until a previous owner slopped over it with one coat of white paint. The paint didn’t fill the dark cracks and the grooves in the v’s were still the same color as the original wood. The other side of the stairs/closet had unpainted drywall. Both sides were filthy beyond cleaning. Only paint could make it look nicer. Since Anita is willing to do anything, she cheerfully agreed to help me paint the stairs/closet.

What is a stairs/closet? you ask. This is like a German word where I mashed two words together to make one word. Since we do not have a real closet on the first floor for coats and other stuff, we use the landing of the stairwell to the basement as a storage place for brooms, mops and random tools like gardening gloves, a hammer, and a screwdriver. The Boy’s collapsible soccer goal stays there, along with my gardening gloves. When I have guests over, it is really convenient to dump crap (soccer balls and stuff) on the landing behind the door. The basement is unfinished and had a dirt crawl space which is unusable for anything but storage. Technically, the entire basement is a crawl space since the ceiling is about 5’11’’ inches tall, which is okay for Jack since he is 5’10.’’ I have to keep the stairs/closet clean enough so we can go down the stairs when we need to get a new roll of toilet paper or paper towels. The stairs/closet is like the tide on the beach that ebbs and flows—sometimes it is more closet, other times more stairs.

Did I mention we have a crappy house? Really, it isn’t that bad. It is just a little “interesting,” like the distant cousin who can’t get a job, plays too many video games and reads about conspiracy theories on the internet. This cousin might have great stories and can talk about movies and books, but something is a little off about the whole thing, but nothing criminal or evil, so they kind of grow on you but still find them somewhat annoying at times. The same goes for my house.

So Anita and I painted these horribly dirty walls with super primer that covers all dirt*** and then gave them a coat of very pale pink paint I found in the basement which we mixed with the leftover “Old Lace” paint that I used in Claire Adele’s room.

The stairs/closet is too nice now. I thought I’d be happy to see the dingy stairs/closet all bright and shiny, but no. I somewhat regret painting it, in the same sense there is loss when you lose twenty pounds and have to get rid of that great old sweater that was the prefect color and fabric, but it just doesn’t fit anymore. You’d rather not have those extra twenty pounds but you still miss the sweater. The fresh coat of paint hides the oldness and quirkiness of my house, as the plaster hides the paneling in Claire Adele’s room. I liked the fact that that I had a corner of my house that was hidden from public view that was old and dingy, reminding me of what the house was like years and years ago, pieced together in a hodge-podge manner.

* Hugo was actually exiled to Guernsey. It wasn’t exactly a vacation.

** Anita is a recent college graduate who is looking for full time work. She is wonderful and Anita isn't her real name, but if you want to hire her full-time in your global health non-profit, ping me and I'll get you in touch.

*** Wouldn’t it be great if real life came with super primer that covered all of the dirt?

"Hamilton" Addiction and Seeing it First

My son has gotten me a new addiction--worse than Lego!--and I have it worse than him, I think. I have found a new minor obsession: Hamilton.

I am big fan of live theater and musical theater. When I was a kid, I was in the children's choir for a local production of Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat by Andrew Lloyd Weber. We did the show back in 1980 before he wrote Cats and Phantom of the Opera. I saw Chorus Line when I was a tween. I loved the dancing and music, but most of the plot was above my head. Jack and I saw Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables when we were college students living in Chicago. Jack got me tickets as a Christmas present when we started dating.

For those three shows, I didn't know much of the music before I saw the show. It was all fresh, new and surprising. Sometimes it goes the other way with a musical. I took my daughter to see Les Miserables one summer when it was touring in Seattle, and she was unimpressed. After listening to the soundtrack on my iPod when we took on car trips, both kids loved it. When we saw it live last year, they were fairly familiar with the music and enjoyed the show. Now she is a diehard fan, playing and studying the music on the piano. We just saw Billy Elliot cold a few weeks ago. Aside from the family drama on our end, the show was good.

I am worried about Hamilton. My son is memorizing the lyrics to his favorite songs "My Shot" and "You'll Be Back." I am listening to the music, reading about it, and watching every interview of Lin-Manuel Miranda ever recorded. (Damn you, YouTube!) I watched videos of him performing at the White House in 2009 and then this year. I've seen the little selfies videos behind the stage. I saw the CBS Sunday Morning video before the show made it to Broadway. I ordered a copy of the book by Ron Chernow that Miranda based the musical on. I am addicted. This is a problem. (I'll spare you the links. If you get addicted to Hamilton, you can blame yourself, not me.)

I am jealous of Stephen Colbert. He saw Hamilton in previews. He said the first fifteen minutes were interesting, and he wondered if they could keep it up for a whole show. In the middle, he was thinking, yes, this works. At the end, he was crying.

I want that. I wish I could have that fresh, unexpected experience of seeing Hamilton unknown like Steven Colbert did. What if I scrape together to get tickets and fly to New York and by then I've heard it all a thousand times and then I am bored or unimpressed or disappointed, thinking the whole thing is overhyped? That would be hell. That is one of the beautiful things about seeing plays when you don't know much about them: they are a surprise, and surprises can be wonderful.

I remember the first time I saw Mamma Mia. Jack and I were in St. Louis and we went with his boss. I was a massive ABBA fan growing up in the 1970s, and I own almost everything they recored on vinyl, plus the CD ABBA Gold, which had a primary slot in the CD player in my car a few years ago. I thought the plot of "Guess who the dad is?" was stupid and a little absurd. And then as it the story unfolded, I loved it. I took my daughter, Claire Adele, to see the movie with Meryl Streep when it came out, and she loved it too. She had a Mamma Mia birthday party when she was ten, and the girls got the karaoke version of the DVD and sang along. One of my favorite memories of her childhood would be Jack and I talking in the front yard, hearing the ten girls singing at the top of their lungs. (In my childhood, we would sing and dance to Barry Manilow's "Copacabana.") Later that summer, Claire Adele and I went to London where we got first row seats to Mamma Mia in the West End. Claire Adele sat mesmerized, glued to her seat, unable to move, she was so in awe. I was so jealous of the performers who got to go on stage every day and sing and dance and party. What a life!

While Claire Adele had the magical feeling of seeing her beloved show live, I still dream of the fresh experience. Jack, the Boy and I saw Come From Away when it was playing in Seattle last winter. Come From Away is a musical about the town of Gander in Newfoundland, Canada when seventy transatlantic flights were diverted there after 9/11. A few friends highly recommended it, so we got tickets, and it was amazing. The show is scheduled to go to Broadway this fall, and I feel personally invested in seeing it do well. I hope Hamilton's star may cast a light on Come From Away, not overpower it and block it out. Hamilton is different with hiphop, while Come From Away has more of a folk music feel, the music that would be played in small towns in faraway places, not in the center of New York. Come From Away isn't about oppression and gaining freedom, it is about how a small town in the middle of nowhere helped thousands of people in the largest crisis in recent times.

The scary thing about seeing something first and loving it is that I hope other people love it as much as I do. The people who saw Hamilton first were lucky.

"Hamilton," "Les Miserables," and Duels

My son has taken a recent interest in the smash* Broadway musical, Hamilton. Like most middle schoolers who do not live in New York City, my son has not seen the play yet, but he has downloaded and listens to the music on the bus with other middle schoolers. My high school age daughter Claire Adele has no interest in Hamilton--she is a devoted Les Miserables fan, and anything else is less than. As John Seabrook writes in The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory, teen tastes change rapidly and kids won't like what their siblings like just because they need to be different. The Boy and Claire Adele are Exhibit A.

Would they fight to the death over which musical is better, Les Miz or Hamilton? Very likely, but they might also fight to the death over who gets to sit in the front seat of the car on the way to dinner. Which brings me to the topic of duels. As you may recall from your American history class in high school, (spoiler alert) Alexander Hamilton died in a famous duel with Aaron Burr. (And so ends the musical, I gather.)

So why a duel? I don't recall exactly what the Hamilton-Burr duel was about, but why did duels exist? What was the purpose? I looked it up on Wikipedia, and it said that people would believe so strongly in an idea that they would be willing to die for it. When the Boy first heard about duels to the death, his comment was "And the Europeans thought the Native Americans were savages?"

Duels brings up an interesting concept that I hadn't considered: believing in an idea so much you are willing to die for it. I suppose that is why soldiers go to war, or why suicide bombers exist. But to take a singular idea and fight another individual in an organized way with rules and protocols? That seems a little bizarre.

Or maybe not? Did it serve a higher purpose? Could there be good in duels? Consider this a hypothetical or philosophical argument. I do not suggest we return to this practice. Look at the current polarized political climate in the United States with the conservative Tea Party on one side and the uber-progressives on the other. Would people be more flexible in their thinking if they had to die for their opinions? Or would people let go, and listen more carefully to the other sides arguments? Would both sides have to come up with solid arguments as to why or why not? Did they seek a third way where both parties could be understood?

Would people be willing to die so transgendered people can use whatever bathroom they would like? "Because it is gross" is suddenly does not seem to be such a valid argument for a reason to die. "Because transgendered kids get bullied when they have to use the boys locker room in high school and they don't want to get beat up" might be a better argument. What about "Let's stop harassing transgendered kids regardless of what bathroom they use," also seems a bit more civilized, but that might not be sufficient for a transgendered kid who is trying to pass as one gender then has to use a different bathroom. "But was if a pervy old man tried to get in the girls' locker room?" "What if that man is wearing a bra and lipstick?" "How many transgendered people do you know? How many currently use the bathroom they identify with and we don't notice?" The dialogue night evolve more before people get out their swords or pistols. People might discuss things a little more thoughtfully and thoroughly before assuming the other side is completely wrong. It might be talked to death, by which I mean discussed about until all major points and perspectives have been exhausted. Maybe empathy and rigorous debate would reign. Respect of various positions would be necessary so that effective points and counterpoints could be made. Maybe the voice of those in the minority would have a reasonable chance of being heard.

The other interesting thing about duels in that both parties were consenting to participate. We are going to France this summer, and my father is worried about terrorist attacks. Last night at dinner, my daughter said that CNN said Europe might not be as safe as people think it will be this summer. I asked my kids what they felt about it.

"I think we will be okay," the Boy said, "but I don't want to die in a mass bombing. I'd rather have an individual death or be directly murdered by an ISIS person." This was an interesting conversation on death as we were at a restaurant where we had to wait for a table at 6:20 p.m. and the average age of the patrons was 75.

Claire Adele agreed with the Boy. "I think it is okay for terrorists to kill an army base," said Claire Adele. "Those people signed up to fight, and they are serving their country. That would be an honor death. People in airports aren't signing up to get shot."

Would duels stop terrorism? I don't think so. Instead, terrorism is just a variation of the concept. But what about my teenage kids? Is all of this arguing and bickering serving a higher purpose? Is it teaching them to stand up for what they believe in and argue in a safe spot? That it is okay to be different, where Les Miz and Hamilton can peacefully co-exist? And in the end, aren't they both singing similar songs?

* I just finished reading The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory by John Seabrook. It is a great read and now I know the difference between a "hit" and a "smash." A hit is something that is really popular. A "smash" is something really big and changes the rules of the game. Hamilton is a smash.

Present Tense, Torture and Bicycles Wheels

I am digging back into writing my book about my brother's battle with schizophrenia.  Hooray!  Not.  The story is actually tragic and hard to write about.  It got me pondering about the idea of a tortured writer.  Are writers tortured to start, or is the process of writing torture, causing anguish and angst?  I am voting for the latter.  Would I be happier if I didn't write?  That I cannot say, but I know I might be  better off floating in the cloud of denial instead of looking into the belly of grief and despair.

One nice thing about this blog is that I get to write in the present tense.  In the memoir, it is mostly about digging up the past.  I feel more alive writing about the immediate yesterday, today and tomorrow.

One nice thing about the blog is that I get to keep my bicycle wheels.  A writer friend asked me to review something she had written for her book.  It was a lovely piece, but it didn't fit in the scope of her story.  It was a bicycle wheel -- it was perfectly functional for a bike, but she was building a car.  They bike wheel wouldn't work, so she had to get rid of it.  I think one of the hard thing for writers is ironically to get positive feedback.  Sometimes, something can be well written and compelling, but it might not fit as part of a larger work, so it needs to go.*  They need to get rid of the bicycle wheels.


*  Unless you are Victor Hugo, which no modern writer is.  He could fit anything into the scope of Les Miserables, and he did.  The scope of the story is about the miserable ones: the orphan, the slave and the prostitute.  I just finished reading twenty pages of an essay on slang in the middle of his masterpiece.  He discusses slang as to how it unifies subgroups of society.  And yes, bizarrely, it fit.

Marius and the Middle: More from Les Miserables

I am still reading Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (Julie Rose translation).  I have just finished Part III on Marius.  Here are a few of my favorite passages.

"Misery is like anything else.  It reaches the point where it is bearable.  It ensues up taking shape and assuming form."  (p. 562)

"Misery, we will say again, had been good for him.  Poverty in youth, when it succeeds, has this magnificent effect:  It turns the whole will toward effort and the whole soul towards aspiration.  Poverty immediately pares down the material life and makes it hideous; hence those inexpressible yearnings for the ideal life.  The rich young man has a hundred brilliant and vulgar distractions, the horse races, hunting, dogs, smoking, gambling, wining and dining, and the rest; occupations for the nether regions of the should at the expense of the higher and more delicate regions.  The poor young man has to toil for his daily bread; he eats, and when he has eaten all he can do is dream.  He gets in for nothing to the show God puts on for him; he looks at the sky, space, the stars, the flowers, children, humanity among whom he suffers, creation in which he shines.  He looks so hard at humanity, he sees its soul; he looks so hard at creation, he sees God." (p. 565-6)

"When his job is done, he returns to ineffable ecstasies, to contemplations, to sheer delights; he lives with his feet in affliction, in impediment, on the cobblestones, in the brambles, sometimes in the mud, but with his head in the light.  He is strong, serene, gentle, peaceful, attentive, serious, content with little, benevolent; and he praises God for having given him these two riches that are lacking in many of the rich: work, which makes him free, and thought, which makes him worthy."  (p. 566)

I love that last line.  As the great-great-granddaughter of pioneer women from Minnesota, I like the idea of work making you free.  Having just wrapped up a full-time volunteer job last year, I am struggling with idle time.  While I am looking forward to finding a new endeavor, I am having a hard time waiting.  I don't like being between or being in a cocoon waiting to come out.

"To be between two religions, one you have not yet emerged from, the other you have not yet embraced, is unbearable; and such gloomy half-light only appeals to bat like souls.  Marius was open-eyed and he needed real light.   The crepuscular* light of doubt hurt him.  Whatever his desire to stay put and to hold out, he was invincibly compelled to move on, to advance, to examine, to think, to go one step further."  (p. 557)

It appears Marius was not a big fan of the middle parts of life, the parts between here and there.  I feel like I am in the twilight, not in terms of approaching death, but not certain what the next few months will contain, let alone the next few years.

I read in the footnotes that Marius most resembles Hugo himself in terms of biography.   I thought that was interesting.  While I know Hugo didn't steal a loaf of bread and go to prison for 19 years, I would have thought Hugo most like the mighty Jean Valjean.

* Crepuscular is one of my daughter's favorite words.
crepuscular |krəˈpəskyələr|
adjectiveof, resembling, or relating to twilight.• Zoology (of an animal) appearing or active in twilight.