Want to dig deeper into the sandbox? Explore more at these links:
–The definition of lunula (which was the Dictionary.com Word of the Day on August 19, 2018)
–Save the Sacred Albino Moose (this old story from 2013 was recently brought to my attention, thanks to The Front Gallery of Montpelier)
–The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. A must-read.
–This is why bananas smell like nail polish.
About Sandbox Notes. Collections by Cameron Finch.
A few weeks ago, I had the great pleasure to pal around with the exquisite musician and composer Carla Kihlstedt during the MFA in Music Composition residency here at VCFA. Over cans of Conehead IPAs, we talked about anything and everything. Favorite books, social and language development in children, Carla’s latest project “Black Inscription,” the Borges lectures, Mary Ruefle, etc.
Later, Carla mentioned Marina Keegan’s lists of “Interesting Stuff.” I don’t recall the context around why she brought this up, but I remember being afraid to say I didn’t know about Keegan’s lists. I, of course, did know about Marina Keegan and her posthumous book of essays and stories, The Opposite of Loneliness. Curious to know more about the “Interesting Stuff,” I scoured the internet and found this beautifully genuine and heart-wrenching tribute written by Anne Fadiman, one of Keegan’s professors at Yale. On her application to take Anne’s creative writing class, Keegan wrote: “About three years ago, I started a list. It began in a marbled notebook but has since evolved inside the walls of my word processor. Interesting stuff. That’s what I call it. I’ll admit it’s become a bit of an addiction. I add to it in class, in the library, before bed, and on trains. It has everything from descriptions of a waiter’s hand gestures, to my cab driver’s eyes, to strange things that happen to me or a way to phrase something. I have 32 single-spaced pages of interesting stuff in my life.”
I continued reading the article, to the part where Anne retells how she received an email from another student, breaking the news that Keegan had died in a freak car accident, five days after graduation. Below, a smiling girl in a mortarboard was shown in a photo with her mother and father. I couldn’t read any further, suddenly blurry-eyed and sobbing alone in my tiny studio.
It’s odd, isn’t it? Staring at a photograph of someone about your age, who is no longer alive. It’s a much different thing than reading, say, Charlotte Bronte or Virginia Woolf (someone you know lived in a very different time than now. We have come to accept the fact that they are no longer living.) But Keegan should be here. I couldn’t stop thinking about her all that day. I was so moved by the stories of Keegan, her curiosity, her realness, and something clicked for me. Marvelous things are all around us, brimming with stories and captured detail. I wanted to capture it too. I don’t want to let all these hints of stories pass me by.
So beginning this past Monday, I decided to pretend 10,000 eyes were covering my entire body and opened my whole self to whatever the world wanted me to pay attention to. I carried a sketchpad with me everywhere I went, and recorded every marvelous thing, thought, wonder.
It was also Carla who told me that she often encourages her music students to take the first two months of their semester for playing “in the musical sandbox.” She explained the sandbox phase to me as “a period when you’re just playing with your materials to see what they want to do before you ask them to jump through flaming hoops with bows on their heads for the paying people.” The sandbox is just as applicable to any art, but especially to writing.
Each grain of sand contributes to the fullness of the sandbox. The more sand, the more castles and faces and cakes you are able to create. Simple, right? It also isn’t lost on me that some of our best development and thinking as a kid happened in those sandboxes. Time evaporated, dripping off your head with all that sun sweat. This was where we went to focus in the extreme. For many children, this is still the loci of their first go at creative flow.
That being said, let me introduce you to Sandbox Notes.
Sandbox Notes is an experiment in observation and openness. In just one week, I’ve already found the value in this level of awareness. Writers frequently talk about keeping their “writer’s notebook” which always seemed to daunt me. I suppose this is my own way of keeping a kind of practice, one I know I can sustain. After a particularly difficult and down day yesterday, feeling guilty for a lack of productivity, a friend told me: “You processing life and your emotions is helping you to create what you will eventually create.” Perhaps Sandbox Notes is one potential way for me to process, discover, and absorb. After all, in order to write and create things, we do need to get out there and experience life. This practice serves to encourage me to be a witness, a detective, a collector of EVERYTHING.
Each Monday, I will post a photograph of the sandbox collection from the week prior—always right here on the blog, so stay tuned!
I’ve had a lot of fun this week digging in the sandbox, and I hope it continues to be fun to both collect & read as it goes along and as the project evolves.
Comments and suggestions are always welcome! 
A few months ago, I wrote a post about “why I write” which I concluded may change as I go through my days, and that’s exciting to me. Reflection, self-awareness, and self-love is something I’m really trying to work on this year. I’d suggest that all of us could benefit from constantly working to improve this aspect of our lives, this listening to ourselves. Especially writers and creative minds – who are not always inside our own brains or bodies at any given moment, but may be inhabiting characters, dreamscapes, rhythms, trances of flow, colors, etc—we’re always confronting reality through a complex lens that wavers unfailingly between hyper-connection and ultra-detachment.
I created this brief writing prompt for the students at the Fuente Collective Youth Studio, but I hope that you are able to take what you need from it. (This is geared toward the writing field, but feel free to bend and shape it in any direction you need it to go):
***
Writing Prompt: Why We Write
It can be very exciting to talk about all the ways we can get published, but it’s also important to know WHY we want to get published. And this answer can be different for each person. What do you want to get out of your writing experience? It’s easy to look at JK Rowling, and think wow, her life seems pretty great, right? But not everyone WANTS to be JK Rowling and that’s okay!
This exercise invites you to reflect on why you write now, and to project into the future of your career as a writer. Spend a few moments, or however long you would like, thinking through these four questions below, jotting down notes. Remember you can come back to these questions at any time. Keep them with you. Return to them often.
1.
I write because…
(A few prompts in case you get stuck: Why do you write? What draws you to creating stories and putting them on paper? Do you love characters? Do you love how delicious certain words sound in your ears? How does writing help you think and process your life and the lives of others? What does it mean for you to be writing “in the zone”? Do you remember the person or experience that first got you interested in writing?)
2.
In the future, I see myself….
(A few prompts in case you get stuck: What does your writing life look like in the future? Would you like to publish a book? Do you want to get paid to read other people’s books and write reviews? Do you want to give readings and do public tours? Do you see yourself as a private writer who doesn’t want to be famous, but just wants to share work with people? Do you want to make your work free and accessible? Do you see yourself as an editor of a magazine? A teacher? A writer, although writing won’t be your day job? Anything is okay. This is your chance to dream.)
3.
My audience is…
(A few prompts in case you get stuck: Who are you speaking to through your writing? Who do you want to connect with? Who do you envision reading your work? Are they people in your hometown? People with an interest in sports, in food, in animals? Do you want to teach your audience something they don’t know, or share a new perspective? Is your work for people older or younger than you; is your work ageless?)
4.
I’m interested in writing about…
(A few prompts in case you get stuck: What are the topics, themes, ideas, places, people, cultures, subjects that make your writing uniquely yours? Write a list of nouns. A block of text. A word scramble, map, or tree, perhaps. Just write what comes to mind. What are you obsessed with? What are you curious about? What do you not understand but want to try? What are you afraid of? What brings you joy?)
This is a community space – so please feel free to share your answers and comments below! I’d love to see the diversity in thoughts, in why we write, in what we want to do with our writing, in what we want to write about. Perhaps I’ll even share my own answers, too!
Yesterday, I Skyped with Fuente Collective, a Houston-based writing center for both young and adult writers, to talk about Hunger Mountain and debunk the mysterious world of submitting creative work, but mostly my aim was to emphasize the importance of literary citizenship and how young writers can start being active in their own literary communities now. The talk went really well! The 14-to 18-year-olds are in such a great space, what with the support and generosity of their instructors Layla Al-Bedawi and Tayyba Kanwal, and the opportunities for writing and growth that FuenteCo provides. I’m very excited to work with Fuente again in the future!
In preparation for the talk, I put together a tear sheet for the group, including a brief overview of Hunger Mountain, and information about our current submission call.
Also included on that tear sheet were a few “words of encouraging advice” that I collected from my fellow students and a few of the professionals I’ve had the pleasure to work with. The blurbs I received back ranged in topic from encouragement to follow one’s passion, tips for the act of writing itself, engaging in the literary community, and advice on how to send out work and get published. I think these words of wisdom are great reminders to keep us on our heart’s path, no matter your age or years of experience. I know I will print these words out and paste them on my wall above my writing desk.
Enjoy these heartfelt blurbs below. Let them inspire you, speak to you, and stir up your creative juices:
Encouraging Advice from VCFA Students and Faculty:
Everything I’ve ever learned about writing came from my mother and my father. My father taught me that nothing beats working hard. And that is exactly true with creative writing. The only way to be a successful writer is to make writing something that you do often and ferociously. But you cannot just work hard and become a great writer, and this is where my mother’s advice comes in. My mother taught me to be passionate about what I do. And for a writer to be great, they need to not only work hard but also love to work hard. They need to love the act of writing, the act of thinking about writing, the act of revising, the act of sending work out into the world. So write hard and love writing hard. ~ Sean Prentiss, author of Finding Abbey
Someone told this to me when I was young: Keep writing and always believe in the wilds of your imagination. ~ Kayleigh Marinelli, VCFA student
Don’t procrastinate. If you want to be a better writer, read carefully and pay attention to what others do and how they do it. Ask questions. Go to classes. Write as often as possible. Play with words. Enjoy telling stories. Find out as much as you can, read widely. And yes, don’t put it off for another day or year, but claim it now. ~ Sarah Leamy, VCFA student
Don’t wait for inspiration to write. Simply write regularly and often. Sometimes, the work will fall apart. Sometimes it will come together and surprise you. It’s not so simple as “journey over destination” or “practice over product…” nor is the point of writing in the finished product alone. The point is that you weave writing into your life and let it become your inspiration. And do this with your reading to. Read. Read. Read. And keep reading. ~ Lizzy Fox, Associate Director of the MFA in Writing and Publishing program
There are two things that every writer needs: willingness and a community. Willingness is the ability to just make yourself start writing: even if you’re not feeling it, even if you think you’ve somehow lost any talent you might have once had, even if you’ve convinced yourself that your current work-in-progress is a worthless dog’s breakfast. You may need to fill a page with nonsense before you start to flow, but flow you will. The other thing you need is a community. We can get lost inside the hard bone casques of our skulls, and having trusted friends around keeps us grounded. When one of us is doing well, it gives the rest of us encouragement to push on. When one is having a hard time, there’s probably at least one other of us who just finished a story, or solved a vexing plot puzzle, or at least just learned a great new macadamia-nut cookie recipe. Find a crew. For writers, who are often temperamentally a solitary lot, this can be the biggest challenge. But it always, ALWAYS pays off. ~ Paul Daniel Ash, VCFA student
You are not alone. There are billions of people in the world and some of them need to hear your story, and this will only happen if you tell it. ~ Valentyn Smith, VCFA student
Gah…in my move back to Vermont, I’ve really fallen down on the blog job. So here I am, attempting to redeem myself with a mostly photo essay (with some words, too).
You know you’re back in Montpeculiar when the trees warn you they are for panda purposes only: 
Last Wednesday, I went to see Won’t You Be My Neighbor, which was a delightfully magical film about the life of Fred Rogers. It encapsulated an era so dearly. When the credits started, we as a collective theater not-so-furtively wiped our soggy eyes and stepped back out into the mundane Main Street dusk. It was so bizarre to leave that theater and go on with our lives, partly in that Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood has never had a reboot, has never been overtly commercialized, has never transformed into a pop culture consumerist ploy. It is so wholesomely what it was for the time that it had: a dedicated space and time for the sole purpose of engaging, encouraging, educating, and loving children. Please do go out and see this film, if you have a chance! (Of course, writing this post did jog my memory to the time I found this mug for sale at the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas.) 
What I’ve been reading : In my latest trip to the downtown library, my eyes were apparently larger than my reading stomach can handle in a two-week checkout period. Nevertheless. she persists! Stack includes The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry, Sacre Bleu by Christopher Moore, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami, and yes, studying up on the Grammar Bible itself: The Chicago Manual of Style. 
Through pure spontaneity, I hitched a ride with two friends last weekend to attend the 10th Annual Bookstock Literary Festival,where I stocked up on books by Gabriel García Márquez and Maira Kalman (I’m having a bit of a Maira Kalman moment lately; totally enamored), sampled Red Kite Candy’s salted caramels, sat like a fangirl student in the first row of Robin MacArthur‘s reading of Heart Spring Mountain, and heard the legendary Eileen Myles read (and share a story about their false tooth.) What an absolutely incredible poet performer! 
On the writing front: I’ve been on a bit of a flash fiction writing stint, thanks to the photo prompts provided by Midwestern Gothic. (I was a finalist for their 2015 Flash Fiction Prize here with this photo below!)
I find that flash fiction and photos pair so naturally together, because a photo in its essence is a bound moment in time. Yes, in that moment, the future and past seep in, stored in the collective memory and experience of that place and its people. But there’s a border cropping the photo to its size, just as flash fiction word limits (e.g. 500 words) imparts a border on the told story. Which details are seen and which details are just outside of the border are decisions that have to be made by the keen eye of the writer—almost as if we are writing our story with the disciplined filter of a camera lens.
This weekend, a few of us from the cohort are heading down to a rural New Hampshire camp for a two-day homemade writing retreat. At least writing is the goal…but the mountains, the lakes, the trails are always calling.
It’s my final week before heading back to Vermont to ride out the rest of the summer until the new semester begins in September. Can’t believe it’s already Year 2 of my MFA at Vermont College of Fine Arts!
This past weekend was Trey’s birthday, so the wild rumpus included watching the World Cup, Cammie’s introduction to the world of Fortnite, Indian food, riverside bike rides, and culminated in the game that Sherlock and Watson play in The Sign of Three where you write a celebrity’s name on a slip of paper, attach it to the other player’s head, and then ask questions to help you figure out the name attached to your own forehead. We literally spent hours playing this game, which goes to show either how dedicated or completely loony we are.
I’ve been enjoying writing some flash fiction pieces (thanks to Midwestern Gothic!) to break up the slow-going thesis. I did recently watch Shohei Imamura’s A Man Vanishes, which gave me great insight into the phenomenon of Japanese johatsu (the 100,000 citizens a year who “disappear”) and the people who are left behind. I find that delving into other mediums greatly jumpstarts my inspiration to continue longform projects.
Here are all the delicious books I’ve been reading lately: Blindness by José Saramago, The Space Between by Kali VanBaale, Hiroshima by John Hersey, Maira Kalman: Various Illuminations (Of a Crazy World) by Ingrid Schaffner, and The Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami.
I have this strange desire to rearrange all of my books by color. Maybe because I’ve always wanted to tuck a rainbow into my bedroom corner and give it a welcome home. (Note to myself: turn my books into a rainbow one day.)
Yesterday, I volunteered at a Creative Writing workshop put on by my undergraduate program. I was a student of the Residential College at University of Michigan, which is a small, liberal arts learning community heavily focusing on the arts, foreign languages, and activism. I knew that the workshop, intended for 15 incoming freshmen, was going to be informal and simply a way for them to explore the major and opportunities at the Residential College. Still, as I walked through the campus, my heart beat the same pitter-patter of three slammed cuppas. (I was later humbled to find out that the other facilitators, some who were long-time professors, were also battling a few nerves of their own). After introducing myself as an alum of the Creative Writing program, I read the first few pages of my currently unpublished novella called All the Facts You Need To Know About My Mother’s Oil Spill (Side note: I’ve been sending my manuscript to a few novella contests, but I’d love some advice on potential publishers who’d be interested in a story that is part mystery, part fabulist tale, part coming-of-age exploration, part queer love story, part environmental credo, and illuminated in the style of House of Leaves, The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, and Bats of the Republic, meaning it combines integrated text and images, innovative typography, lists and asides and sticky notes and flyers, and “found scraps of writing.”) I love reading aloud, but find that I am often nervous about sharing my own work verbally with the world. However, I feel such a kinship to this particular character I’ve created, that it wasn’t me up there on stage reading. I was her, the great Miss Sylvia Mariner. The response from the students was definitely encouraging — one young lady even gave me her email and asked how she could read the rest of the story because she needed to know what happens next, which is pretty much the greatest thing a reader could tell an author. For the next part of the workshop, we had the students read Sandra Cisneros’ evocative vignette called “My Name,” which is really an excerpt from her novel, The House on Mango Street. The students then tried their hand at writing a piece about their own name, its meaning, how they think people see them, what they are reminded of by their name, etc. After sharing in small groups, the students had to work together to weave all of their names/written pieces into a short skit to perform on stage. The other facilitators and I stood by in case the students got stuck, but our services were not needed. The students were proactive, imaginative, and quick on their feet. Quite frankly, they were amazing!!! I almost wish I could work at the Residential College just to see how these students I met yesterday progress throughout the year. Perhaps one day…
In other miscellany news:
And here’s a Sak pic for you, because how can you resist this face:
The first thing you should know is that I am now the proud owner of a t-shirt with the following quote printed on the back: “You must thole” ~ Colm Tóibín
What is “thole” you ask? (Don’t worry, I had to ask the same question!)
First appearing in Beowulf, migrating to Scottish, then Gaelic, and most surprisingly, leaping to the American South, “thole” roughly translates to “You must suffer and endure to make meaning out of life.” However great a word “thole” is, I don’t think that “tholing” is an activity that we must seek out. It comes naturally to all of us. When we are born, an invisible “thole” stamp is embedded into our foreheads. It is in our destiny to thole. Everyone’s tholing experience will be unique, but thole we shall do. This is a great reminder for writers. If we are to craft stories of the “real” human experience (even if our stories are populated with fictional characters), then we must let our characters thole.
This is just one of the great lessons I learned during my week at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, which was indeed a challenging week, but oh so rewarding. I produced four (rough) first drafts of short stories, and one piece of journalism, in which I interviewed a sweet local Gambier, OH resident name Deb, who works part-time in the local clothing boutique. I met the poet Carl Phillips, who coincidentally was the high school Latin teacher of one of my current VCFA professors. Most of all, my workshop group was the best class I could have asked for. Our group of ten writers, all ages and experience levels, was immediately comforted and encouraged by our instructor, Ghassan Abou-Zeineddine. Whenever I attend a class/workshop/conference, I make note of the structures, discussion questions, etc—anything that could inform my own teaching styles in the future. I was very impressed with Ghassan’s workshop structure:
I feel very grateful for the experience I had, spending a week geeking out over words and books with so many wonderful writers. And now it’s back to the everyday summer grind.
I am working on the thesis—slowly. I’m finding I am in a deep research mode, wanting to read anything that could be relevant. Yesterday, I read the entirety of John Hersey’s Hiroshima and am now in the deep throes of learning about the mysterious johatsu. Each time that I read something, I understand my characters that much more clearly. Of course, with the World Cup on all day, I am currently at my most distracted state.
Can you believe it is already July?! Here are some flowers that have tholed through the elements and are all the more beautiful because of their strength: 
I first read The Bell Jar back in high school (let’s face it, because Rory Gilmore read it), but I don’t think I was really ready to read it at that time. I recently picked up the book again, this time buying my own beloved blue and pink copy from Bear Pond Books.
This book swallowed me like a whale and down there in the deep, dark belly, I did not want to come out. I spent most of the last three days hula-hooping on the porch or riding the stationary bike reading Miss Sylvia, oblivious to the clock running its minute hand endlessly. I won’t even tell you the number of coffee cups I let grow cold.
Unsurprisingly, I love this book! And I think this was the most perfectly timed reading of this book I could possibly have managed.
It’s true I’m a Libra who frequently has difficulty making decisions. It’s true I also have so many interests, I often want to do all the jobs at once. This is exemplified in Plath’s analogy of the fig tree, where each fig represents a different choice or path in Esther Greenwood’s life, such as a husband and children, a career as a poet, an Olympic crew champion, a prestigious professorship, a renowned magazine editor, etc. With such an array of decisions, she is afraid she will end up choosing nothing, and what a waste of good fruit that would be. She says:
I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and grow black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet (77).
After next year’s graduation, I’ll find myself standing at the crux of my own forked paths, just like Esther. I, too, have many visions—many figs—of myself and my future. I, too, can see myself pursuing similar paths as Esther, although substituting tap dance for Olympic crew. However, one thing marks a stark difference. I am not a woman growing up in the 50s. I have been taught and mentored by women of the 21st century who manage to juggle all their figs in the air without dropping them, without blotting the ground with seedy pulp. Sure, these women have also mastered the art of stopping time: freezing certain figs mid-air to allow other figs to be caught first. But nevertheless, the figs remain intact. I have some great models in my life who have proved that in today’s world, a woman can sit in the tree and gorge herself not on one fig alone, but on all the figs she can reach. But first, she must make the initial climb into the tree. That’s the first step.
In her introduction to the paperback novel, Frances McCullough reveres Plath’s ability to write about mental illness in such vivid and rational prose, especially during a time where such issues were not entirely socially acceptable to talk about. While Plath led me by the hand into the world of the asylum—a world which seemed like a very sterile alien world to me—Esther’s behaviors under the gaze of doctors and psychiatrists were not completely foreign. I know well the pleasure of telling people “what I wanted to, and that I could control the picture [people have] of me by hiding this and revealing that.” I know the anxiety that comes with attempting to walk across The Bridge of Perfection. At any moment, you could fall up or down – floating stagnant in a gravity-less air or plunging into a teal and coral earth pool. Without wings, without fins, without goggles to help eyes see, falling and failing really can be terrifying. Esther Greenwood understands that terrifically, which is the real beauty of art –how we can connect so intimately with people we’ve only met through words.
Even though the book grapples with grave topics, Plath’s voice can be hilarious. Her dry humor sweeps in just when you are feeling low and creates tender moments of levity. The word “Ha!” even makes a few appearances in my green-inked marginalia. These are just a few of the reasons why The Bell Jar earned a permanent spot on my list of most favorite books.
***
On the topic of falling and failing and releasing perfection’s hold, I’ve found this video from Granta very inspiring. I will surely return to Mohsin Hamid’s words again and again to remind me that writing (or attempting to write) can happen in a myriad of ways, and who’s really to say that your writing process is wrong, as long as you are attempting to make progress on something.
This advice also came to me at a brilliant time, as tomorrow, I’m off to Kenyon College for a weeklong fiction workshop, led by Ghassan Abou-Zeinnedine. Photos and stories and creative tidbits will be shared here on the blog when I get back!
Cue the Billy Joel radio and take the Hudson River Line; it’s time for the recount of my latest adventure where one may get a New York state of mind.
Last week, the Bot* and I went to NYC for a couple of days.
It was Trey’s first time in the city so we hit all the highlights: we donned our red hunting hats and did our best melancholic Holden Caulfield impressions as we walked around The American Museum of Natural History; tried to solve the mystery of ‘where do the ducks in Central Park go in the winter’ and got lost in the woods on the way; walked The High Line; pressed our noses against the technicolor SeaGlass Carousel (just seeing this beautiful contraption made me giddy!); saw my favorite verdigris vixen, Lady Liberty; rang doorbells and sang about incredible things at The Book of Mormon; crossed the Brooklyn Bridge by foot; was mesmerized by the sheer genius of the Upright Citizens Brigade improv performers; browsed through hundreds of chapbooks at Berl’s Brooklyn Poetry Shop; and time traveled back to the groovy 60s at the Public Library’s rotating free exhibit.
What a wonderful tiny-holiday!
Now I’m whiling my days back in Ann Arbor. As much as a workaholic that I am, being home reminds me that while writing stories is one major aspect of my life and who I am, it’s not the only thing. There’s my family, my friends, my health, my daily enjoyment of being alive. All of which are important to me and contribute significantly to why I am able to write the stories that I do.
It’s tough though, because I often feel like I am always living two worlds at once. Like no matter how hard I try to stay present, a part of my mind is a little helicopter leaf in the wind, swirling into the bodies and lives of my characters, which always leaves me anxious to get back to writing. It’s a good thing I am not a gymnast, because I feel like I am majorly falling off this balance beam sometimes.
Perhaps the best antidote to this problem is reading. Reading (unlike writing for me) can be done in public spaces. Therefore, I can be “present” with others and deeply absorbed by another character simultaneously. I’ve currently been obsessing over reading Exit West by Mohsin Hamid, Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman, Seventeen and J: Two Novels by Kenzaburo Oē, and sending literary postcards (via Bibliophilia) to friends…because I am all about saving the handwritten letter.
And of course, there is always Saki to the forever rescue.
*For those of you new to the blog or new to me, I frequently call my boyfriend Bot, although neither of us can recall how this nickname came into being. Perhaps that will be a sleuthing project one day on this blog. However, today is not that day.
The past few days I’ve been trapped in the cave of end-of-the-month deadlines, full of writing and editing and pulling together interviews and media galleries. Though I am biking more, which brings me great joy, and at least I know where my towel is (I hope you haven’t forgotten yours!)
I’m attempting to be a very hoopy frood and trying to get everything done before Trey and I go to NYC over the Memorial Day weekend. It will be his first time in ze Big Apple, so we have plans to walk The High Line, discover Brooklyn, time-travel in The Met, and watch the sunset silhouette Miss Liberty from the Staten Island Ferry. Oh, and we have tickets for The Book of Mormon, too!
Until then, I have this cat and this book to keep me company.
