As It Was Written

Diva Licks a Head

2010-03-23T10:26:00.000-07:00

I am completely busted tired. I am not even certain I will be able to finish this blogpost, but I am going to give it my best try. I hope I don't blather on. The reason I am so tired is because I was dogsitting for my neighbor's mutt Diva. Diva is a Beagle/Great Pyranees mix. This is something I don't like to think about. But so you can picture her, she has the coloring of a Beagle and the appearance and size of a Great Pyranees. They call her Diva because she likes to have her face in the place. She is quite beautiful and of a pleasing temperament. She likes strangers and she never barks except to say hello. I think she would also bark to protect her loved ones, but thankfully she has never been tested. The only really gross thing about Diva is she is a drooly dog. Her tongue is always hanging out and she drips slobber everywhere and it makes me gag. I know...this speaks ill of me, but if it is any consolation, I didn't like it when my kids were drooly either. I'm not down with drool.

The problem really is that I don't have a dog and so the whole drooly walking of them is something I am really not thrilled about. It was raining yesterday like the Holy Flood and there I was with Diva out in it and you know what they do when they get wet right? They shake. And when a drooly dog shakes it's water, hair, drool, ugh. It is not pleasing. This drooling and walking of dogs is the entire reason I don't have one. I don't even walk my daughter to the busstop in the cold and rain. I wave from the door and watch from the window. I figure the whole rest of the neighbhorhood is out there anyway and so I'll be the bad mommy. I watch for Mrs. M and when her green van pulls up, I send my child out. Mrs. M is a dutiful and good mommy. She's out there in all the weathers. If she had a dog, I'm sure she would be one of those who walked it 5 times a day and fed it organic. I forget to feed my children. I wish they could filter feed like whales but from the air.

On Saturday I took Diva to the outdoor Mall and like I said it was a really beautiful day and Diva is a really nice dog, she smiles and everyone stops to smile back. My kids are like that, too. So together, we weren't getting very far, a few steps and then we stop and on and on. L asked if she could hold the leash and being that we were moving so slow, I figured what harm? This is why I have not been picking up the phone or answering email. I am hiding out still after the incident on the mall...

Diva, being a diva, likes attention best. After that she likes frisbees, white socks, and sunglasses. She talks to us. L, being quiet and watchful, really does seem to understand what she is saying. Which is why when Diva started bark and whine and to to run pulling L along behind her and when L started shouting, "NO, DIVA, NO, THAT IS NOT A FRISBEE. NO!!! HE DOESN'T WANT TO PLAY!! STRANGER DIVA STRANGER!!" I should have reacted faster. But, Diva is three times faster than me, even pulling L, and I was wearing these stupid sandals that were slippery and my heels kept sliding off the sides. K is twice as fast as me, which made him nearly as fast as Diva pulling L, but by the time he caught them, Diva had mounted the brick wall and was partaking of the man's head. They could not pull her off of him. K and L together do not weigh as much as Diva.

So Diva had pulled L along the brick walk, jumped up onto a brick wall that separated the restaurant tables from the central walkway and was licking a bald man's head as he sat at the table having a plate of pasta with his horrified family. Well, the family wasn't originally horrified. They were normal until Diva planted her front paws on his shoulders and began a thorough slathering of his head. She was fondling the sunglasses he had perched there while her tongue went to work. As I ran toward them crying out, "DIVA NO DIVA NO," I had to note that his sunburned head with its narrow rim of reddish hair looked like a frisbee and that his sunglasses were the added temptation.

The man was unable to move because Diva weighs something like 160 lbs and she had nearly her full weight on his shoulders and he was in a seated position. His luncheon companions were fussy old ladies who just scream and are of no use. My children were leaning back pulling at the leash and I ran up and threw my arms around Diva's hips to try to yank her down, but imagine it: it's a big brick wall which Diva has leapt atop and on the other side of this wall, peaking over the top was the man's red, bald head. I can't get up on the wall, my kids can't get up on the wall, Diva isn't moving.

So I have to run AROUND the wall leaving my kids to hold the leash, I push through the bald man's fussy tablemates and pull and push at Diva to get her attention. She looks up and says something that sounds like a creaking door. From over the wall, L shouts out, "She says, 'What?' "

The man of course doesn't know what to say and he's sputtering about suing!! I'm wondering if he has just cause, because you know...I'm not litigious, but I'd be pissed too. Likewise, what are the rules for dog behavior?? Can I be fined for letting Diva be held by my 8 year old daughter in a public place? Can I be fined for not noticing any frisbee shaped heads, any accessible sunglasses? It is quite obvious, I felt anyway, that K, L and I were doing our best to rectify the traumatic situation.

It didn't help that as I looked at this man, my eyes kept drifting up to his pate which was not only glistening with slobber, but which also had great white foamy patches, like he had been put through the car wash but not rinsed off. I kept gagging. This is not within my control. I have a shallow gag reflex.

His sunglasses were askew, but still perched up there. His collar was wet and bent. I noted...his collar was white and rolled and looked just like a pair of sweatsocks resting over his shoulders. Trifecta. I pulled my eyes away and began rummaging around in my mommy bag and brought out some tissues. I began to pat his head while L called out from over the wall, "Now she's saying, "Can I have one."

"Tell her she's had enough."

"She doesn't mean head, she means tissues."

"L, please control the dog."

"Got it."

I reached into my bag and gave him my whole tissue pack and then laughed nervously pulling at my sleeves. "Well...okay then."

"Can I have your contact information. In case there is any follow up required."

I laughed nervously again and handed him my business card, which I accidentally printed sort of upside down and backwards. It has my jacket cover on one side and my face and website and a review blurb on the other. If you hold it so the cover is right side up and flip it, my face is upside down. I made them myself. I hoped he would find them charming and that it would show how silly and innocent I am.

This is true. I am silly and innocent.

He said, "I'll make an appointment with my doctor and be in touch with you. Your dog needs discipline."

I said, "She's really very sweet. I am sorry. It is awful that she licked your head."

"Your children need discipline too."

From over the wall L said, "Diva wants to know if she should come up there and lick him again." Suddenly Diva was looking better and better.

The man looked alarmed.

I called over the wall, "Thanks, L. I'll let you know if that becomes necessary."

She called back, "Diva says, okay."

I said goodbye to the bald man and tipped my head. He tipped his head forward to. "Your daughter is a regular Dr. Doolittle."

"Indeed. It's a wonderful talent. Don't you think?"

He grudgingly nodded and sat back down and I went back around the wall and the four of us went home.

So far the guy hasn't contacted me. Keep your fingers crossed.

Retraction

2010-03-16T13:10:00.001-07:00

I have deleted my last post...Poopoo and the Hair...some of you know why and others may not know why, and I will leave it like that. If any of you who don't know why want to know why, drop me an email and I will tell you. Well, I might call you to tell you. No paper trail. So be sure to leave me a number where you can be reached. In fact...I will personally call anyone who writes asking why I deleted Poopoo and the Hair.

This does have to do with potential retribution by Poopoo, who is still dating Morton Huseman and who still lives in my basement amid the pumpkins. It is remarkable what a good jack-o-lantern carver she has become. She looks up from her gourds and huffs that her creativity is the spawn of love.

And seeing her adept fingers wielding her scalpel, I do fear for my jugular, as I have no doubt Poopoo would draw blood and worry later about the loss of life.

So I have deleted the blogpost Poopoo and the Hair. Let her carve her masterpieces while sitting on her mushroom-shaped stool in the dung, amid the pumpkins. I have things to do and I can not spend the rest of these days watching my back.

The Incident in the Lunch Room

2010-02-08T09:32:00.000-08:00

First, let me apologize for my long bloghiatus. I just regained use of my fingers after the incident in the Lunch Room. Second, I would like to interject that with all the taxes we pay, we really shouldn't have to volunteer in the Lunch Room at all. There should be enough money to pay for adequate numbers of Lunch Ladies. But apparently there isn't, so they have us on a cycle. I always end up on duty with this Lebanese guy whose daughter is in my son's class. He's always saying we need to get them together to play. My son's 11. She's 12. It's no longer a suitable suggestion, even if I were inclined to pursue playdates. The problem would not be my boy, who still only wants to play football with boys and covers his eyes if they kiss in movies. The problem would be with his little Lebanese hussy daughter who, along with a whole bevy of girls, is constantly rubbing my son's hair saying, "It's so thick and curly, it's so thick and curly." I've seen them because I cycle in. My boy asks me, "MOM, why do they DO that?" I answer, "because they are hussies."

The little Lebanese one is the worst. And she looks like Kim Kardashian.

Anyway, her dad is always on my Lunch Room rotation. He has a tic. When he gets excited or scared, he squeezes his eyes shut, shrugs his shoulders up and down three or four times, and waves his open hands in front of his face real fast. And then, he opens his eyes up wide and shouts "CHA-CHING!!"

If you pause here and take a moment to do this, you will see immediately how distracting it is. I find that, even though I am expecting it, when it happens I gasp and my head moves back a fraction of an inch. I have never run away screaming or even shunned him. This is because I am exceedingly kind. And because he already has his hussy daughter to deal with. Why make it plain that I think he's a freakshow? He named his daughter...wait...I shouldn't tell you that. It's inappropriate. But let's just say her name suits her appearance and personality. (Imagine a name where one syllable ending in a vowel is repeated twice. Imagine that there is a consonant involved which we linguists call a post alveolar fricative...ya...that is never a good decision. And at the first sign your child might look like Kim Kardashian, it is time to find a diversionary nickname, like Mary). My Lebanese friend is heading for a long, hard stretch. Squinting, shrugging, waving and shouting CHA-CHING will not help. So I choose to be kind.

So anyway, we were volunteering in the Lunch Room and we were seated beside one another, because as soon as he sits down everyone else leaves, and the things is that I really can't get up when I am the only one sitting at the table with him because it is just so rude and he has his whole soon-to-be-slut daughter to deal with, like I said. So we've arrived the mandatory 15 minutes prior to our Lunch Room service for the Orientation, and all of us are on time, because of Mindian and what she does if you are late. They always make us sit through the 15 minute safety and procedures Orientation even if, like me and my Lebanese friend, we have volunteered for Lunch Room duty fifty times.

But the thing is Mindian doesn't care if you are a smartmouth, she only cares if you are late, so I say, as I always do, "Has anything changed in the duties? In the set up? Have you moved the ketchup? Have you rearranged the order of the cutlery? Is it now forks, knives, spoons instead of spoons, knives forks?"

"Mrs. Hampton, if you ever paid the least attention when we address this assembly, you would recall that we have long ago switched to the spork and certainly only a Cretin would think that knives were allowed in school in this dangerous age."

"I was only being funny."

"No. You were not." She narrowed her eyes. (They all do that to me). "Knives are very dangerous Mrs. Hampton. Very."

We are countrymen. She can not forgive me my levity and I can not forgive her her gravity. It is the natural state of the Indian to be at odds with other Indians.

Anyway. This is always happens because they think I am a smartmouth and I think they are mean. I think the kids are on my side. There is ample evidence. For example, Mindian is their nickname. For Mean Indian. Genius. I like to think of myself as the Shindian. Super Hot Indian.

When I arrive, the Greeter Lunch Lady who sends us to our seats always narrows her eyes, too. Before I've even crossed the threshold. I narrow mine back. I will not be intimidated. Despite their scissors.

The Lunch Ladies wear scissors around their necks on festively colored lanyards. They say these are to open ketchups, but the tale will tell. This time, when she narrowed her eyes and pointed to my table I stretched out a hand and swung the scissors. I've been wanting to for years. They just dangle there. It's like they're calling my name.

My Lebanese friend must have had a sense that this was a mistake because I heard him shout "CHA CHING" and when I looked back in line, he was shaking his head back and forth back and forth and flapping. Usually he shrugs. I knew this particular gesticulation was directed at me. I opened my eyes wide and smiled. I looked back at the Greeter Lunch Lady and said, "You know I was only playing right? Sometimes, its nice to have fun, right?" I smiled. Now let me tell you, you can't actually see me, but I have a great smile, its all lit up and my teeth are really big and white, really, trust me. I've heard it's infectious, my smile. But Greeter Lunch Lady just narrowed her eyes and she narrowed her lips too, and they started out pretty narrow. The whole effect was very scary. From somewhere behind me I heard, "CHA CHING! CHA CHING!" I chose not to look back.

I took my seat at my table and soon the Lebanese friend joined me and everyone else left, as usual. He leaned over and said, "Sujatha, I believe they are discussing you. I believe it is conspiratorial."

"How can you tell?

"I am Lebanese."

"Of course."

He nodded. He lifted his chin and raised his eyebrows. I looked the direction he indicated and there they were, the whole group of Lunch Ladies with their heads bent together, in their white uniforms, their scissors swinging ominously in and out of the circle. I could see the glint of the metal between their heavy upper arms and pendulous bosoms. For the first time, a shudder went through my body.

They turned around and Mindian took center stage as she is the Lunch Lady Leader. She gave the same announcements as always, the times in and out, the grade levels and what order they would come and go, the procedures for trash bags and dismissal from the cafeteria, the protocols for handling 1. lost lunch, 2. bathroom breaks 3. sharing food 4. talking in line 5. talking at the tables 6. cleaning tables 7. getting condiments/napkins/plastic ware, and 8. opening condiments. And when she said "Opening Condiments," she looked directly at me, and only at me. Until that moment, she had addressed the entire crowd and had decidedly ignored me, which was great for me, because I was composing a chapter in my mind and that's easier without scrutiny.

Suddenly, I shifted my eyes to her chest where her scissors hung on a green lanyard. Green. Slytherin. Of course. I raised my eyes up to meet hers. We stared at each other with equal contempt, but Mindian's eyes shone with malevolence. Have you ever looked into the eyes of a mean Lunch Lady wearing scissors around her neck? Then you know what I was feeling.

Before long, we could hear the shouts and feel the rumbling in the floor of stampedes of children heading for the cafeteria. My Lebanese friend and I took our stations. We had been assigned the eastmost trash can as home base. This is the one they use for fish.

"We stand beside the fishy trash can because of your irreverence."

He was right, there was nothing I could say.

If you have ever done lunch duty you will know it is like herding cats while balancing slobbering dogs on your nose and opening milk cartons. Milk cartons are designed to keep us in our place.

Throughout the whole afternoon, Mindian and the Greeter Lunch Lady were harrassing me.

"Move faster, they are waiting."

"Mrs. Hampton? You were extremely sure of yourself, ready to shrug off Lunch Duty orientation, and now I see you struggling with milk cartons."

"And spork wrappers."

"And thermos lids."

"And the table over there, they need their...condiments opened."

I saw the gleam in their eyes and yet I went over to open condiments, and they followed. And what happened next is in dispute and I am not trying to get any Lunch Ladies fired, as I do not want to...shorten the duty cycle...but we all know what happened. We just choose to be quiet. Even the kids know. I have heard that lunch is an entirely silent affair now...since the incident.

I approached the table of first graders with their beautiful little faces and red lips all open, waving their ketchups in the air, "Me! Me! Me! Me!! Mrs. Hampton, open mine." They know my name because I am famous and kind. The lunch ladies, trailing behind, noted their fascination with me and it displeased them. I could practically hear their indignation, "This one is disrespectful of Lunch Duty and a scofflaw and yet they love her, is there no justice in the world?!"

I reached out for the first ketchup packet, and looked for the notch indicating where to open, but it was unnotched! I looked on the other side, and no, no notch, so I struggled. The sweat began to run down inside my blouse and I looked left and right for help. I caught sight of my Lebanese friend, but he was struggling over a milk carton. I was on my own. I looked behind me and the legion of Lunch Ladies stood smugly by, smiling.

Finally, I said, "I can't open it, honey, let me get you another."

"There is no TIME for that, Mrs. Hampton. Weren't you listening to the briefing on opening condiments? We are not speaking to hear the sounds of our voices. The information is crucial. Crucial."

And that is when it happened. All of them lurched forward with their scissors raised on their long lanyards, and they came for me. And before I could put down the packet of ketchup, or hand it over, they proceeded, all together, to cut it open.

I believe, as I fell to the floor, I saw the boy whose ketchup it was, faint as well. The last sound I heard was "CHA CHING!" I can only hope the others 6 year olds thought it was ketchup, not blood.

Because it was blood, not ketchup.

The bandages just came off yesterday, and this is the reason for my long bloghiatus. 200 stiches over all my fingers on both hands. 100 stitches a hand. 20 per finger.

And yet, I will not press charges. Because I am kind and good. And like I said, I do not want to spend one day longer in that lunch room due to lack of Lunch Ladies.

The Year-long Jack-O-Lantern Supply

2010-01-21T10:49:00.000-08:00

I have a big problem. I big, big problem.

Today started off okay, I mean, considering how it ended up. Like, when I woke, the sky was not purple, so I figured no more houseguests would arrive. Also, I didn't have the tingling feeling in my lips that often precedes particularly odd or dangerous Pepe behavior. Like when Pepe decided, around Christmas, that he would help me by installing a yard sale antenna on my roof and I came home to find him standing in a tree beside the garage hammering this Pleistocene, multi-limbed monster into the very precarious limbs of an old Bartlett Pear, all while singing Chinese Opera with a Spanish accent. When he heard my car pull in, he shouted down, "SEE MISS! I'M PUTTING THIS ANTENNA ON THE ROOF FOR YOU BECAUSE I LOVE YOU! IT HAS MANY ARMS! IT WILL SEE EVERYTHING! EVEN IN MY COUNTRY!" And I gently shouted back, "BUT PEPE, YOU'RE IN A TREE. THE ROOF IS BEHIND YOU!" And he turned to see, even though he is blind, and fell out of the tree pulling the pterodactyl antenna down with him, and landing, luckily if you choose to see it that way, in a giant bank of snow. He cried out, "OH NO, OH NO! NOW YOU WILL SEE NOTHING LIKE BEFORE!" (It astonishes me that he believes we all see on television what he sees on television, and that this is due to a failure of reception. Nothing we say convinces him otherwise, not even the simple, "Pepe, you are blind.")

That day, I felt my lips tingling right when I woke up. And the day he considered bathing, so locked himself in the bathroom, removed his clothing, turned on the water and then had a panic attack and began to scream, in some bizarre mix of Quechua, Spanish and Chinese, but was so terrified by the water that he could not unlock the door and I had to remove the doorknob to rescue him, but not before the tub overflowed. And I had to see Pepe naked, and in fact had to dress him because panicking blind men with hydrophobia can not dress themselves (just so you know if you are even in this situation). That day too, I woke up to tingling lips. So now, when I wake up, I do a labial scan before even getting out of bed. And the day seemed safe. The only annoying thing was this very close by beepbeepbeepbeep, that went on for a while, and the relatively close hum of a truck, which I figured was someone's lawn guy or some moving van, though it was pretty early. I didn't pay any attention to it and when I look back on the day, this is where I went wrong. I need to remember to take everything seriously. Every sound. Every instinct. Everything I notice means something, possibly. Probably. Because now I not only have Pepe, but also Morton Huseman. And I am not certain about the bodily clues of Morton's Mischief, though I have a hunch. And until I am sure, I need to be hypervigilent.

So I went about my day. It was a particularly busy day. I had neglected to iron on the Brownie Badges for LH of the red lips and white skin, the dark eyes and the able hands. She is like Snow White. Yes. You read right. I have a child who looks like Snow White and is also assiduous in that same Snow White-like way. Anyway, I digress. So I had neglected to iron on the badges and it was Brownie Day and I am that mother. The one who makes bad Shepherd's Pie on purpose and forgets to iron on the Brownie Badges. I really only want to read to them and write novels. I also enjoy their company for I have raised them to suit me perfectly. Because I am that kind of mother. Anyway, I continue to digress. So I woke up, did my lip check, and got crackin'. Brownie Badges, papers to sign, breakfast to make, kids to shuttle, research to conduct, meetings to attend etc etc. And when I got home, I exited the car and smelled manure.

Now here is the thing. It's not unusual once spring hits to exit the car in the suburbs and to smell manure. Because everyone is mulching their yards. But it is January. It is January. I looked around. My neighbor's neighbor (who must not have a job)was out there, he waved. I waved back. I opened the garage and went in the house and the smell of manure was stronger. Yes, you read correctly. I entered the house and the smell of manure was stronger. My heart began to race and then suddenly...my ears went deaf and dingy, you know...that airplane thing. It happened to me once over Dubai, my ears went completely thick and were wracked with needle-like pain. At the time, I considered that death would be preferable. That was an indulgence of youth, that I would die rather than suffer the momentary needle-like pain in my ears. I have kids now, so I suffer these things mutely without contemplating suicide. But that is what I felt, the simultaneous deafness/needles pain in my ears. Very unpleasant and a clear harbinger of doom.

I put down my handbag and my grocery bags and scanned left and right. I bent over to take off my shoes and I could swear that as I bent forward, the manure smell was stronger, so I thought, with relief, that it was my SHOES, that I had STEPPED in something! So I picked them up to check and no manure. It wasn't my shoes. I dropped to my knees and definitely the smell was stronger closer to the floor. So I began to crawl, through the kitchen, into the living room, through the hall and as I approached the basement door, the smell grew overpowering and I knew whatever it was was in the basement. I stood up and opened the door and the stench threw me against the wall. There was a blinding white light emanating from the stairwell and there was absolutely manure in the basement. Yes. You read correctly. There was manure in the basement. I walked slowly down the stairs and peeked around the corner and there were Morton and Pepe, on their knees in the middle of a plowed field, under a ceiling suddenly strung with thousands of white bulbs. They were examining with rulers something they held in their hands. Seeds. They were measuring seeds, both of them. And Pepe is blind.

My basement carpet was missing, or underneath the 20 cubic yards of manure. I looked around. There were my walls and my teeming bookshelves, and my windows, looking outside...meaning I was definitely inside. My mouth dropped open and Morton and Pepe looked up, as though the sound of my thudding heart had interrupted their measuring.

Morton looked back at Pepe and then swiveled his head over to me again. He said nothing and blinked. Pepe grinned, stood up, ran over and threw his arms around me and shouted, "MISS, OH MISS! WE ARE GROWING PUMPKINS! PUMPKINS MISS!"

They are growing pumpkins. Yes, you read me right.

It seems Morton Huseman, in addition to his online Chinese Opera Instruction, also runs a year long jack-o-lantern supply with a worldwide market. He grows pumpkins through a self perfected pumpkin-forcing process and when they are the right size, he carves them on demand into whatever his customers order. He assures me he is a "Pumpkin Artist." He showed me his albums.

He said, "I can make you in pumpkin."
I looked at him with my mouth open. My ears, remember, were popped, "Did you say, you have made me into a pumpkin?"
He swiveled his eyes over to Pepe and then back at me. He stared and waited, "No. No I did not say that. I said, I can make you in pumpkin. I can make a pumpkin into you." He smiled his microdontic smile and blinked his penguin eyes. I shuddered and chose not to pursue it.

"Why don't you grow them outside?" He swiveled his head over so fast I thought this time for sure it would spin off entirely leaving me with this shit to clean up, but it didn't. He just stared especially long.

"You can not grow pumpkins year long in an uncontrolled environment. I am not even sure your basement will work." He looked around at my basement with some disdain I thought.

Pepe chimed in, "OH MISS'S BASEMENT WILL BE PERFECT FOR ALL ENDEAVORS. MISS HAS MAGICAL POWERS!" Pepe is convinced I have magical powers. He makes me lay hands on his eyes every day. I do it. Who knows...maybe I do. I am left handed and and I have an odd spot on my tongue.

I didn't exactly know how to respond. You see, the problem is that the manure is already there. It's a problem I never imagined handling. I'm not so good at confrontation. I said, "You put manure down on my floor."

He swiveled his head and stared and finally said, "How else can I grow my pumpkins?"

I answered, "But there is manure. On my floor."

He replied, "I put down trashbags."

I am not sure what do to...I've seen Pacific Heights. I am afraid of Morton Huseman. He has penguin eyes, and an online jack-o-lantern carving business. Jack-o-lanterns! It's just not natural. I am afraid, this is the truth. And I need your help. I do not know what to do. All I know now is that my preternatural signal of Morton Huseman's madness might be Dubai Ears.

So I am simply asking, after you read this, if you have any thoughts, please feel free to send them to me, because...I just don't know what to do.

The Morton Huseman Mystery Solved

2010-01-12T14:53:00.000-08:00

I solved the Morton Huseman mystery. He scares me, though I am trying not to send too much energy to the cold feeling in my spine. Morton Huseman is a friend of Pepe's. This would be reason enough for alarm bells to go off, but it's creepier. Morton Huseman has an unnatural way of swiveling his head from one side immediately and directly to the other side, 180 degrees, so that you are caught unexpectedly in his stare. It is this mechanical swivel that causes the chill in my soul.

He swivels and then says nothing for several seconds, during which time he neither blinks nor moves his mouth. Then, suddenly, he will begin a swishing motion with his jaws, swallow, smack his lips and say, "Aaaah." Pepe of course, can't see this, and all he hears are Morton Husman's affirmations as to his talent and vocal agility, his intonation and accent. Morton Huseman compliments Pepe, swivels his head over to me, and then: silence, stares, swooshes, smacks and aaahs, while Pepe, with his head blindly bobbling, shudders with glee like Richard Simmons and grins at the recent words of praise. It is frightening; Morton Huseman has penguin eyes. You know what I mean.

The universe forewarned me, but I paid little heed. We have grown cynical and unbelieving of signals...The day I came home to find Morton Huseman sitting at my kitchen table eating corn with Pepe, I knew something weird was going to happen. It was one of those days that starts with a purple sky and ends with a tsunami. But none of that matters anymore because as of this past Saturday, Morton Huseman is Pepe's Chinese Opera coach.

It seems Pepe filled out a form online using his little braille keyboard and his faulty voice technology, and he listed me as his reference, which is why I was getting calls for a Sloofa Mansion. I had spent days shouting into the phone, "There is no Sloofa Mansion at this number!!" I didn't know I was Sloofa Mansion. How could I have known? But if I had...perhaps I could have intervened... But after I turned everyone else away...finally there was only Morton.

When Morton, who apparently is exclusive, did his own personal research on Pepe, to determine if he was worthy of his fake-Chinese singing lessons, he found my blog. And I suppose to demonstrate his Authentic Chinesieness, he made a comment about my Authentic Medieval Shepherd's Pie, in Chinese. You can scroll down and see it in all its unintelligible glory, like an ancient Chinese secret. He obviously wanted to be coy, because let me tell you, Morton Huseman is NOT Chinese. He is a red-faced Caucasian man with white hair he wears in a twist behind his head like a skein of yarn. In a corn-induced stupor, he accidentally let on that he grew up in Iowa, NOT Beijing which is what his promotional literature says, and when I ask him about that now, he denies ever sitting there behind a tower of corn talking about his boyhood in Iowa, eyes glazed, face slick with butter, yellow kernals wedged between his small, backward-leaning teeth. I turn to Pepe, who is not deaf, for confirmation, but Pepe will bite the hand that feeds him. He knows I won't throw him out; he's blind, unpleasant and yeasty. And it's January. Pepe needs Morton Huseman's praise for his Chinese Operatic efforts. And Morton Huseman is not a nice man, he would surely withold his gentle kindnesses for any disloyal utterance of truth. Pepe has the sensitivity of the long blind and I know I can not win here.

You might be wondering whether I am scared to publicly denounce Morton Huseman as a fraud as far as online Chinese Opera instruction goes, but I am not afraid. I do believe that he was being coy with his Chinese message on my blog. Because there is no message there that had anything to do with Shepherd's Pie, or using my neighbor's neighbor's name on the label, or Christmas Cookies or even Pepe. This is what his message means:

Difficulty is not a new concept, but rather to avoid the old concept.

???

So I can think of only two reasons for Morton, the online Chinese Opera teacher, to make such a comment. Either he was playing the Chinese card, trying to look mystical and authentic and lacking a public enough forum so he inserted said coyism into my blog comments so that my vast and rapt cyberfollowing would see him as Confucian and want to learn Opera from him, OR he is saying that my blog about Medieval Shepherd's pie is hackneyed. Something he has read again and again. An old concept. You know...the "gross Shepherd's Pie passed off as a neighbor's cooking" concept. That my difficulty will be in finding a NEW concept to blog about. Or that in general, my difficulty will be with being fresh. As a writer and a person.

Either way, I believe Morton Huseman's purposes could be served by my turning the spotlight on him. Suddenly he has the forum he craves, because my vast and rapt cyber-following will know where to turn for all their Chinese Opera Instruction, and also it is certain that a blog about Morton Huseman showing up at my kitchen table before a toppling tray of boiled ears of corn in January with my blind houseguest Pepe is definitely NOT a played out concept.

So I am not afraid. Except for that swiveling head and those penguin eyes. Which are scary. Perhaps I subconsciously blogged about him so that if anything happens, you will know where to begin looking: in my basement, because for a short time anyway, Morton Huseman, who is apparently down on his luck, will be living with me.

Authentic Medieval Shepherd's Pie

2010-01-03T19:10:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was the Medieval Festival at my girl's school. Apparently I signed up to support this event by bringing a dish. I do not remember doing this. I think it was my neighbor's neighbor's wife who put my name in. She resents my saucy attitude and the effect is has on her husband who, ever since the fishtank episode, slows his Volvo stationwagon down when he sees me to wave. He sticks his hand in front of her face and leans forward. His car often veers off course toward my mailbox. I wave back and I think she thinks it's cheeky of me, because I do not remember volunteering to cook. They sent home a slip before the winter break with my food item. Shepherd's Pie. Apparently they sorted the parents into vegetarian, non vegetarian, vegan, lacto-ovo, celiac, peanut allergy and omnivore and then drew names. They clearly were not fooled by the Sujatha. I look like an omnivore. It's the teeth; they're huge and would be wasted on vegetables and eggs. So I got Shepherd's Pie. Like it's the Festival of Medieval England. I went to England when I was 10 months pregnant. I survived on Pop Tarts I brought from home and Indian food, which is delicious in England. I did order Shepherd's Pie there, because even the English should not be able to mess up meat and mashed potatoes baked in pastry, right? But yes. They can. To the English, who invented the dish, Shepherd's Pie tastes like lasagne but substitute Worchestershire Sauce.

So I found myself in a bit of a dilemma. It was a moral dilemma actually. What was my duty to the school? Should I create a dish that was edible, or one that tasted English and worse, Medieval? I was staring out the back window at the snow covered yard pondering the right course of action when Pepe came into the room. I could see him through the glass. He is particularly visible these days as he has taken on the shine of the demented. He sidled over to the kitchen and took a handful of sugar cookies from the plate. He bit into one and announced, "OH MISS! (he calls me Miss; I let him because it makes me feel young) These cookies are so delicious. Now that you have given them out to the whole neighborhood, everyone is going to keep asking you to bring them to every party! You'll never get a minute's peace!" He giggled, and sidled out. My brain zinged. Just that morning my neighbor, one from the other side, called and left me a message that I should be sure to bring those fabulous Christmas cookies to the jewelry sale she is hosting. Hasn't she heard that I am crazy?

It occurred to me that if I were to make a delicious Shepherd's Pie, I might be asked to contribute to all the school's food-involved events. I might have to make Shepherd's Pie every year until L graduates! The PTA President, whose daughter is in class with L, would probably go on and become PTA President at middle school, because that is what these people do, and she would just see my name and automatically insert Shepherd's Pie and then drop me a note. She lives in my neighborhood. It would be Shepherd's Pie and cookies.

So I pulled out the Worchestershire.

Have you ever recreated a dish? I am not the most skilled in the kitchen, but I've done this a few times, tasted something in a restaurant and come home and tried to make it again. I have had only marginal success. I do not have a reliable palate. But in this instance, I was dead on. I have never ever recreated a dish with such singular accuracy as English Shepherd's Pie.

I used Worchestershire soaked Lasagne Noodles molded to the casserole dish for the crust and brocolli and sweet potatoes for the filling. And I prepared my meat using a salt-free burrito recipe from the internet site Cooking for Congestive Heart Failure. A Four and Twenty Blackbirds Baked in a Pie philosophy of Medieval cooking except everything was already dead when I cooked it. And then I covered it in ketchup and baked at 250 for three hours. It was lightly wilted, but crunchy too!

Then I wrote in my best calligraphy, which is akin to the scribes of yore, "Authentic Medieval Shepherd's Pie provided by: and I used my neighbor's neighbor's wife's name on the card! Legend!

I brought it in, waved hello to everyone and smiled my big omnivore grin, got marked off the PTA President's list as Sujatha Hampton, set up my Shepherd's Pie in its designated spot, checked to make sure no one was looking and put my calligraphed card down beside my dish! And here's the best part: it was a foil baking tray from the grocery store! I don't even have to worry about getting my casserole dish back!! Brilliant!

When L got off the bus I asked her how it went and she said, among other things, "We voted and Mrs. K's Authentic Medieval Shepherd's Pie was the grossest." Epic! "No wonder Mr. K is always scowling and never waves. He's probably hungry." Bonus! And then we went into the kitchen where I whipped up a fresh batch of Christmas Sugar Cookies, this time cut out to look like angels. And by the time my boy got home from practice there was a warm plate of glossy beatific looking cookies ready and they both looked up at me and blinked gratefully, "Mommy, you are the best mommy and the best cook in the world." Which is just as it should be.

The Dead Fish

2009-12-27T20:22:00.000-08:00

My neighbor's neighbor just came by to "see the fishtank." I stood in the doorway with my bathrobe on and smiled and blinked. Really I couldn't believe he was standing there asking to see my fishtank, and he was wearing a smug look. His look said, "I know you don't have a fishtank requiring a snow shovel, I know you were just being nasty." He was just smiling and blinking, but that look was there, between the blinks. I spread my smile a little broader and responded, "Oh...didn't you hear? I thought M would have told you. The fish died. That was why I needed the snow shovel, well eventually that was why I needed the snow shovel. Not at first. They weren't dead at first, but after the incident...well...they didn't survive."

Oh yes, that smug look just sort of...leaked off my neighbor's neighbor's face. I could see his wheels spinning. He was thinking of something to say, and I was ready. He doesn't know who he is dealing with. I am a novelist, a professional liar.

Now this neighbor? He is not among my favorites. First off, he never waves hello. Ever. It leaves you feeling like you have germs. And I don't have germs. And a few months back, I was watching out my window for my son to come up from the bus and this neigbhbor drove by and I saw him slow his Volvo stationwagon and lower his window and I saw the boys, who had congregated on my lawn, all turn to face the car, and I saw their faces turn fearful. I opened the door as the neighbor drove away and called down and my boy and his friends ran up to the house to tell me that the neighbor had admonished them not to throw gravel at the street sign that he paid for with his tax dollars. And here's the thing: I am not a supporter of vandalism of public street signs, but if they were throwing gravel, I didn't even notice it and I was watching.

Since then, I've been waiting to put some sand in his underpants.

He said, "Your fish died? Convenient, isn't it?" I just stared at him and my smile faded; I was just blinking now.

"Convenient? What could you possibly mean?"

His eyes turned steely and his mouth was tight. "You know what I mean. Isn't it convenient that when someone comes to see your purported giant fishtank with who knows what manner of aquatic beasts within, that they have mysteriously died and are not available for viewing?" He raised his eyebrows. "Convenient."

My mouth dropped open. He thought he had my number, but again, he doesn't understand that I have created a story where 5 enormously fat girls are the greatest sex symbols of our time, and where an ancient Brahmin curse can fell one child in every generation. I found my penchant for grandiloquence coming on, but I held it in check in favor of a more punchy dialogue.

"First off, Mr. K,"
"Please, call me J"
"I'd rather not, I find that I do not like you."
"Excellent, because I do not like you either, Mrs. Hampton."
"Excellent, indeed."
"You were saying, first off?"
"I do not need reminding of my place in the conversation."
"Continue then, please. I'm all ears."
"You are not all ears, that would be far more innocuous. You are mean and heavyhanded. Coming to my house to mock me in my grief, are you not aware that there are small children here? Do you know what it takes to raise Trevally from the Great Barrier Reef in your own home? It is a labor of love Mr. K. A labor of love." (Now the Trevally I got from my novel, there are Trevally in there, so it was right on the tip of my tongue and I had already done a bit of research in case of questions, and I figured if he read my book, he might understand why I would have put them in my novel, being that I owned a pair, even though I didn't really). I then brought up some tears and turned my back.
He was silent for a while, but I did feel he wasn't done yet. And he wasn't.
"What were their names?" he asked suspiciously.
"Polly and Delilah."
"Unusual names for fish."
"Unusual? Sir, please tell me what usual names for fish are?"
He was silent. Because his comment was stupid.
I continued, "Polly comes from Penelope, her name was actually Penelope but we called her Polly and Delilah...well...she was a powerful woman. Penelope too. I named them for powerful women." I turned around dramatically and pushed my hair back from my face; I was hoping that my eyes were shining in the light from the front door. There was still snow on the ground so the light was particularly bright but not harsh. Good light. I had noted this earlier in the day. "You know, Mr. K, I have a love of naming things. Well...I guess you wouldn't know this. You don't really know me, but I think that is one of the best things about being a novelist, I get to name everyone and everything." I sniffed lightly and wiped my eyes, "I do miss my fish." I swallowed.
Mr. K, in the doorway, unprepared for Trevally and Polly and Delilah and the Great Barrier Reef just blinked and stood. He didn't believe me, but he wasn't sure.
"Where did you put the tank?"
"Well, I had to have a special pick up. It broke...you know...during the incident."

He coughed and hemmed and turned to walk away and turned back. Haltingly he asked, "What...actually..you know...happened?"

I looked him straight in the face and answered. "Polly was larger and more aggressive, she always was, but this time when I threw in the chum, she was at the bottom of the tank and Delilah got there first. Well...something snapped. In Polly. I mean mentally. Emotionally, you know. She came up from below and ran her teeth along Delilah's abdomen. I had gone to get the snow shovel because my own feeding jug had a little crack in it. I had thrown in the first bit of food when I noticed and I didn't want to make a mess, so I went to M's to borrow the shovel so I could finish feeding them, and when I got back...well... it was a red sea of pain in there...and I tried to use the snow shovel to break them up but...well..Trevally are strong, prehistoric creatures. They have seen worse than snow shovels." I gathered my lips together and turned them in. I thought it probably looked like being strong.

"Oh my GOD!" Mr. K was overwhelmed.

I nodded and sighed deeply.

"Is there anything I can do? For you? For your family?"

"Oh no, no thank you. We are doing well. I might get some new ones eventually. Not yet. When we have recovered and are well again."

Mr. K turned and walked down my front steps. He turned at the bottom and looked up at me, "Look...I'm sorry for coming over here like that. I just...sometimes I get wound up."

I smiled and waved like it was nothing.

"Okay then," he continued. He waved. He waved. "Good bye. I'l see you soon."

"Good by J." I called him by his first name. He turned around and his eyes were tearful. "Good by Sujatha," he replied, and walked out of sight.

I closed the door and turned back into my house. My reputation was safe. I was still crazy in a good way.

Perpetuating The Myth That I am Crazy

2009-12-21T20:22:00.000-08:00

Today I had to dig out the car. Well, the car was in the garage, but I had to dig out the driveway. I spent nearly an hour looking for the snow shovel. I didn't find it and I went up the street and borrowed my neighbor's. She was kind and generous with her snow shovel. I trudged back down the street. On the way I saw her neighbor. He's my neighbor too, just further from me than from her, which is probably all for the best. He said, "You gonna dig out?" I said, "No, no, what would make you think that?" He smiled and blinked at me. I smiled and blinked back. I wondered if he would continue, you know...answer my question, 'cause I was in the mood for more of this. So, I just stood there in my boots and my big coat and my hat and gloves, two pairs, and holding a snow shovel, just smiling and waiting. Like it was a conversation rather than a bit of neighborly bullshit after a storm. "Sure did come down out there, didn't it?!" "Boy, makes you want to be a kid again." Another neighbor said that to me yesterday, the one about wanting to be a kid again. I said, "No. It doesn't. I was an immigrant child. We weren't allowed out in the snow." And then I just did the smiling and blinking thing.

This was true. We were not allowed out in the snow. Because it would be cold. The risk of pneumonia, frostbite, gangrene, malaria, genital herpes, who knew what could be living out there in that snow. Spores. Just waiting for the warmth of our innocent bodies to come to life, breed and spawn inside the swaddling of our bundled bodies. My neigbhor also just smiled and blinked. I know they think I'm crazy. I'm perpetuating that myth. It keeps it quiet during the day and there are fewer "playdates."

But this other guy, my neighbor's neighbor, he's a bold one. He answers me, he says, "Well...the shovel." So I looked down at my shovel and said, "What this? This isn't to dig out. This is for the fish tank." And his mouth actually opened, which was what I was going for. I smiled and batted my eyes, prettily I hoped, and said, "Bye then!" And continued down to the house.

And the only problem then was that he was still out there and he had stopped his own digging out to watch me walk back down the street, which was a problem, because I really needed to dig out, but I kind of liked the whole concept of the fishtank needing the snow shovel. My writer's mind was whirring with the details. Like...obviously this is a HUGE fishtank and perhaps it even has small sharks in it. And what on earth would have happened that would make me need a snow shovel for sharks...a dead shark maybe? Maybe to break up a shark fight? Anyway, I liked the idea and so I liked the idea of my neighbor's neighbor really wondering about it. And I knew the whole tale would unravel and I would just look mean spirited or even crazy in a bad way if I simply got to work on my driveway. So you see how I had gone and gotten myself in a situation. What a tangled web we weave... So I went inside and spent the next hour or so watching through the window for him to leave his driveway, but he was just working and working like a dog out there. I'm not sure about him; it seemed a little excessive.

I considered calling a service to come do the driveway, but that struck me as a bit much to perpetuate both the shark myth and the myth that I am crazy but in a good way. So instead, I just waited until nightfall, when I knew he would be inside eating or sleeping or something, and dug out the driveway in the dark.

Tyrone the Houseguest

2009-12-19T11:41:00.000-08:00

Tyrone is my new houseguest, and I believe he has Pepe in a twist. Tyrone is not blind so I will not talk about his pelvis, which isn't bulgy anyway. Oh. My apologies. Tyrone would like me to take that back, he insists his pelvis is bulgy, but in a very good way.

Tyrone is my friend so I do not peek at him through the refrigerator. Though he has been my Bikram instructor, and therefore I have seen him in skimpy clothing, I honestly have not peeked. Tyrone is my friend. He is my houseguest only because there are 24 inches of snow outside, not because he was put out of other lodging in the cold of December. He is always welcome here. He is Fun in a Snowstorm. FIAS.

Today we made Jazz Hands cookies and ate soup and bread. I looked up and caught Pepe peeking at us through the crack between the refrigerator door and the box, but of course Pepe is blind. I don't know why he bothered. I asked him to join us, even to decorate cookies in his own, Braille-infused way, but he just sidled out of the room, blushing like a girl, tittering like a fool, and ambling like a crab. Sideways. If only Pepe could see himself, he would know how ridiculous he looks behaving like that. Just sit down and have some soup Pepe, Tyrone will not bite you!

I believe if I had told Pepe that Tyrone would bite him, he would have been at the table lickety split. How he knows that Tyrone is 6'4" and looks like Mr. Clean is beyond me. Perhaps the blind use a particular proprioceptive process to discern the heights and girths of those who are speaking.Using this logic: Tyrone's voice falls from above=tall. Tyrone's voice is resonant like a bell=powerfully built.

There are also these Mr. Clean-like aspects of Tyrone: Black, double earrings, shaved head. So, though I do not believe Pepe has felt Tyrone, he clearly knows. And he is blind, so there are other sensors at work.

Frankly, it intrigues me. Pepe grows more outrageously mysterious day by day. And his subwaist/superthigh fermentation process continues. I believe now that some of the bulginess is gaseous, rather than solid. An emission of his yeasty regions. I find myself wondering if his jeans will explode like a soda bottle left in a hot car, or if his skin will rise like dough, puffing him up...a blind Violet Beauregarde...

If Tyrone is trapped here again tomorrow, we are planning on writing the score for our show: The Tip Tap Trifecta & Cavalcade. When Pepe hears the music, he will not be able to resist joining in. And then our show will have not only horses, leprauchauns, **jazz hands** and fanfare, but also a rolly polly blind man tittering, tottering and sidling like a crab. Mayhem will ensue. Hilarity. Hijinx. A show for all ages, performed by land and by sea, in retirement homes and elementary schools. Around the globe.

And if Tyrone is trapped again the day following, we will formalize our plans for world domination; Tyrone has a Mac.

Pepe the Houseguest

2009-12-14T07:45:00.000-08:00

I have a houseguest whose names is Pepe. This is ridiculous enough, but it's worse. He wears pants that are too small in the entire pelvic region, front and back; really too narrow describes them better than too small and if you can imagine, this makes his name, Pepe, even more ludicrious. Somehow, he does not have a muffin top in these pants. I think that it is because his pelvic region is bulgier than normal human proportions. So his waistband suits his dimensions. It is an unusual body. I have examined it furtively, through the crack between the refrigerator door and the box. It is so odd, this narrowness of pants and waist, yet bulgy, feminine pelvis. His legs are thin too. He is only pelvically bulgy. I have caught my children looking at him oddly. For them it might be other things. His tendency to sing songs he claims are Chinese opera, maybe... The songs sound like Spanish, but they are definitely not Spanish. They just have a Spanish sound with Chinese operatic qualities. This is very unpleasing. My daughter, she of the long eyebrows and deep silences, makes a dramatic face and archly leaves the room, trailing her crochet yarn behind her. My son, of the decidedly more joyful cheeks can barely contain himself. He looks at me first, his face near bursting, runs away and is howling all the way up the stairs. I smile and stick my head back into the refrigerator to examine his odd physique. In fairness, he sings his Chinese opera this way because of the poor voice quality on his computer. He doesn't know better.

It is not my fault he is here. Okay...it is my fault he is here. DH tells me so, and he is right and being a real sport about it. I think he finds the juxtaposition of himself and Pepe as working in his favor. Which it is.

But it is not my fault he is here except that I told him he could stay. But at the time, I only thought he had a bulgy pelvis and really who cares? I did not know he ate only at 1am and 4am and that he was unable to get wet. Any part of him. Unable to be wet.

I think this is why I am so fascinated with his bulgy pelvis and narrow pants, just the thought of what is going on in there piques my curiosity as a storyteller. Frankly, this is why I don't tell him to leave. I am waiting for him to ferment completely, just to see what happens.

You might be wondering how I dare to write a blogpost about Pepe, considering he is my houseguest. Well, on top of everything else, Pepe is blind, which is why I had to say he could stay when he found himself without alternatives in a cruel December. Pepe is blind, and he has a computer, but the voice quality of his reader is so poor that it sounds like his Spanish/Chinese opera, which is why he sings as he does. He doesn't know any better.

Today, Pepe is making dinner. I plan to feed the kids on the way home from school and then just come home and see what happens. Their directions are not to eat anything Pepe gives them, but to smile and nod and say, "mmmmmm." We can do this because Pepe is blind.

The Future of the Bold and Audacious Novel

2009-12-04T07:15:00.000-08:00

There is an audacity in writing that I admire and aspire to. It is a particular touch that really is very moving to me. We see it very rarely these days. It is clear that American publishers, responding to American readers, are extremely cautious in fiction. Books that go on too long can not be published, certainly not until you have a tried and true following. This is sad on many levels. Writing to satisfy an audience whose tastes are whetted by Real Housewives and whose attention spans grow shorter and shorter from more and more instant gratification will only give the literary novelist an ulcer. It won't be pretty. We will lose the magic.

Already I wonder if it would be possible for Salman Rushdie to have published Midnight's Children in today's market, as a debut novelist. It was actually Rushdie's second novel, but his first novel, Grimus, was largely ignored, so he surely didn't have a big following yet. I really doubt such a sprawling, exceedingly long, abstract novel (which also won the Booker Prize in '81 and the Best of the Booker, as well) could be published now by a relative unknown. The absence of that book from our literature would be a terrible void. I fear we are on our way to a literary world with patulous holes where the lasting magic would have been.

I have read a lot of beautiful, beautiful books, but there are few that throb with the kind of bold audacity I am referring to. There will always be beautiful books but it is those raucously courageous ones I fear for. Right now, off the top of my head I can think of three of this specific genre: Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin (which absolutely, beyond a doubt changed my life and made me a writer), A Confederacy of Dunces (which I read when I was quite young and ought to reread just to be sure I am right...but I know I am right), and The Yiddish Policemen's Union (which I didn't know I was going to love in the beginning, but which turned into one of the most wholly satisfying, fantastically robust, gigantic, prodigious and overall amazing reads of my entire life). These authors took great literary leaps and wrote books that will resonate forever. So here's the thing: John Kennedy Toole committed suicide because this book was rejected and rejected and rejected. After he died, his mother found the manuscript and sent it in with a long letter and it was published to great acclaim. Helprin? I read an interview with him once where he was asked why, as a highly educated man, he chose to work as a dishwasher while writing this book. He replied to the effect that it is better to work as a dishwasher and to retain your literary integrity than to work on an advance for an unfinished book which then your publisher gets to weigh in on and demand changes to. Once they have paid you, they own your work. He said that now publishing houses have even less integrity and that the author who works on an advance is almost certain to have to make these types of concessions. At least that is how I interpreted what he said. It really struck me as a pearl to hold on to. Chabon is Chabon. He won the Pulitzer Prize, he has written successful screenplays; maybe he no longer has to worry about hearing, "No. You can't write a book that is purportedly in Yiddish about a fictional Jewish town in Alaska which has one fabulous riff after another and which amounts to a literary crime novel of Jews." Maybe they just don't say no to him anymore. Maybe Chabon has earned carte blanche. Thank God he has earned it with beautiful work, not just work that sells a lot of copies. He might be one of our few corners of refuge.

I can say that when I finished As It Was Written, it was nearly 800 pages. Too long, I guess. But it was THAT book that I always say was driven by Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale. I worry that one day he might read that he inspired me so and therefore go pick up my book and read it and wonder..."in what way could my book have possibly inspired this one?" Though I hope he would like it all the same. But the truth is that all that wackiness, all that tangential audacity, all those riffs for the sake of riffs, (because I love to write), gone. One after the other after the other, CUT AWAY GONE. And it was those elements that made me cry with ambition when I read Helprin, that he wrote like someone who just loved to write. I believe there is beauty and worth in that kind of bold storytelling, literary explosiveness and vigor.

Anyway, it is a fear of mine, a horizon with no books that make us shriek in disbelief. "HOW DID HE DO THAT??!! WOW!" Maybe I am one of the few who reads that way, who looks for that in a book. But for me and those of my ilk, I do worry about what the future holds.

Just a thought for today.

Peace, and as always, send the muse!

S

Book Covers

2009-11-30T09:27:00.000-08:00

So here is my long anticipated book cover. I hope you like it. I must say I do like it, despite my having some thematic arguments against the Taj Mahal style windows. I think in the end, the image is quite lovely. For a long while, it had a different font, multicolored block print; and a Bollywood looking woman where the sari now is. I took HUGE issue with the Bollywood woman, and large, if not huge, issue with the mulitcolor pastel font. And Thomas Dunne did change it and I am grateful. I quite like the fonts and colors for the title and my name now. Especially my name. AND I like the lower case letters. I think they look more magical and interesting. This was the original cover:

Note the Bollywood girl, her silly, red costume jewelry, her simpering expression and her purple eyeshadow. She begged the shopper to ask, "I wonder which of these five daughters is the stupid one..."

Of late, all my angst over this subject has really made me consider what makes a compelling book cover. There are absolutely some covers that beg you to pick up the book and read it. Frankly, I don't think this one does that at all, though it is beautiful. I can't say that I would not pick up this book based on its cover, but I do think that my novel is full of mysteries and images that begged to be depicted, which weren't depicted. But that is the question: is it better to make a cover that depicts images described within, or is the magic something entirely different?

I wonder what it is that makes the perfect book cover...

Like this one for Zadie Smith's White Teeth: It is not a particularly interesting cover, though it is among my favorite books. It's another one with so many themes within that would have been great to see on the cover, but none of them is there. And I really don't remember how I came across this book. Perhaps it was just recommended to me, or perhaps it was the jacket flap description, because it couldn't have been the cover. Which in the end makes the point of not judging the book by its cover. But then...there are many books I absolutely did buy because of the cover. But I can't remember a single one. Right now, I am sitting here thinking of my all time favorite books: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, A Prayer for Owen Meany (which has an armadillo on the cover, which totally makes sense, but is absolutely the opposite of a compelling image) by John Irving...even if I think back to my younger days (John Irving does belong to my younger days) when I would be much more likely to judge a book by its cover, I don't know which of those books I loved I bought for their covers. Isabel Allende's earlier works, Amy Tan's earlier work, Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible. None of their covers make me gasp.

Okay, I just went in to find a picture of The Confederacy of Dunces to illustrate my point, but the covers are WONDERFUL. There are tons, and I have no idea where my copy is so I can't tell you that I didn't buy it because of its cover. I really don't remember. But here is a great cover for a great book: This book was published in 1980, 11 years after the author committed suicide, and it won the Pulitzer Prize and has been through many printings. I know I read it in high school. I imagine that back then, it would have been the cover and what was written on the back of the book that moved me.

I have noticed as I have gotten older a distinct shift in my reading from popular to more exclusively literary fiction, so one might think then that the cover would matter less. Readers of exclusively literary fiction tend to be more compelled by the jackets descriptions and the reviews, by the awards etc. Like I always buy the Booker Prize winning books and always the Pulitzers, and rarely are those marked by the complete fabulousness of their covers (except this Confederacy of Dunces maybe?--though mine was probably from the library cast off sale) but there is something magical about that glowing golden medal there on the cover. A Newberry, a National Book Award...check it out:

I don't know how people resist. So that is the next goal. To get a book cover, inspired or not, that sports one of those beautiful golden medals, and to let that medal be inspiration enough for someone to pick up the book and read it.

If you have any favorite book covers, let me know and I will post them here. I'd love your opinions on what makes a great cover.

Peace, and as always, Send the muse!!

S

Blog of Lies

2009-11-28T12:30:00.000-08:00

There's a guy named James Gurney who writes a great blog. I found it the other day in my search for great blogs to model mine after. There is no chance I can make one like his because he is an artist. He is the author/illustrator of the Dinotopia series of children's books, and he is an artist. And I think James Gurney writes a wonderful blog because he sees like an artist, so he understands instinctively what is too much and what is too little. And he fills his pages with stops and starts, places to land your eyes and rest for a while. It's a talent.

In general, I find blogs tedious, mine included. I really don't care to know everyone's every little thought, and neither do I care to share every little thought in a medium like this. I'd rather talk you to death than write you to death.

Also, being that this is such a public forum (google me and there it is) I can't just share everything, like about the certain someone in my family who has this personality that makes you want to take a 2x4 to his head every time he simpers how he doesn't want to eat too much and then loads his plate like the Himalayas, complaining all the while about how he is eating too much. Or the other dramas that are more poignant than ludicrous. How do you share those things in a forum where everyone can see everything.

And if not that, then it has to be something that can not hurt anyone. Or I could just tell you a story. Story after story after story. Perhaps you wouldn't be able to tell what is real and what was just a story.

I have been considering that. A blog of lies. A fictional blog. One that is disguised as the truth. And sometimes I would just tell the truth. And the reader would have no way of knowing one from the other. This idea holds promise. It is, perhaps, the very best foil for a novelist who has a real life that is just like anyone else's: full of the mundane rhythms of reality, and also its blood and guts and its great, shimmering glories. But I am a woman who doesn't want perfect strangers to know what she ate for dinner, because it is rarely glamorous and rarely thoughtfully prepared, and not at all worth mentioning.

But what if instead I apologized...told you that I was sorry for being away from the blog so long, but I had just been released from the hospital where I had been admitted for food poisoning. One might think it was just from my own negligence, that I poisoned myself with this habit of thoughtless preparation, with my failure to believe that the contents of the tupperware in the fridge was suspect. That indeed it had been in there for weeks and weeks, that in fact no one remembered when it had been prepared, but that I insisted it looked and smelled like perfectly good spaghetti sauce. Considering how little I like to think about food, one might think that I got food poisoning because of budget shopping, buying meat that was "a bit off."

But it wasn't that.

I got food poisoning because of a houseguest. It was my hospitality that nearly killed me. The Obamas recently held their first State Dinner, as you will recall, hosting the Indian Prime Minister and his wife. Well, my stay in the hospital was not due to iffy food preparation and handling, but rather because I am not skeptical enough by nature, and when DH suggested to me that I should think twice about inviting Kannan Chattarji and his entourage to the house for dinner in the days following the State affair, because of Chattarji's heavy dealings in the Indian Mafia, I should have taken him seriously. He is a shrewd and wary man, DH is, and I am a rather gullible and Pollyanna sort.

How could I have known that there would be a plot to kill him that would unfold at my own dinner table? How could I have known that when the madness played out, I would find myself eating from the wrong plate, falling apoplectic to the floor, and spending days near death in Reston Hospital?

In the end, I survived to tell the tale, but so did Chattarji, and so did whomever it was who tried to kill him. DH believes that it has something to do with the Real Housewives bound State Dinner crashers, Michaele and Tareq Salahi, but I do not. I prefer to think it was a plan wrought from internal conflict in the Chattarji hierarcy. One of his own, a climber caught up in a crime of ambition.

These things do happen, and they happen to regular people, just like you and me. When we let down our guard, the forces of evil enter and wreak havoc on our calm and peaceful lives. These moments are the grains that sow into stories. That time that something happened, and it seemed that it was not important, but in the end we discovered it was.

Maybe I won't have to lie to share those with you. Or maybe I will. Either way, if I do it well enough, you will never know.

Peace and, as always, send the muse!

S

Return to the Blogosphere

2009-11-20T12:21:00.000-08:00

I am back. I went on a blog-hiatus of sorts, to begin my new novel in earnest; to attend my very first writer's residency; and, really, as it relates to the blog itself, I suppose I took a hiatus to think about what I wanted to share in this space.

I am not exactly sure I have come to definitive conclusions...

But I am back anyway.

I do have interesting things to report. In no particular order:

1. We have finally come to accord on the cover of my book! They went with a sort of Taj Mahal Window kind of theme, sort of stonework and Mogul windows, with things inside like: my title AS IT WAS WRITTEN; my name SUJATHA HAMPTON; a novel; and then a couple of images which I will leave till later to tell you about. We argued over these. Well, we argued over a lot of things cover related. I had very different ideas, but in the end, it's very pretty. The thing with the windows is a little funny, because the book is about Malayalees and the windows are totally Taj Mahal, which is...a different kind of Indian. But I think that Americans tend to see Indians as one way, with one kind of window, and with Bollywood looking women inside. But Malayalees have square windows and different looking women. But they know about selling books and I know about Malayalees, and in this particular case, knowing about selling books is more to the point. Like I said, in the end, it's a pretty cover and the Bollywood girl, peeking foolishly from her Mogul window with her purple sparkly eye shadow and her simpering expression, is gone. But to quote my dad, "Why did they put those windows? Didn't they read the book? It's about Malayalees." Still, it is pretty and I hope you like it. Many thanks to Karyn Marcus who fearlessly put her neck under the guillotine to make me happy.

2. I went to a writer's residency where I holed up in a little room in the Catskills and worked on my novel for three weeks. It was intensely gratifying. No interruptions, no distractions, nothing. I have never done anything like that before and all I wished was that I was in the middle or the end of my book, because if I had been, I would have finished. I was rather at a research stage and I spent a lot of time reading and thinking, which is important, yes, but...pages down makes you satisfied in a more...meaty way. I thought of a new title, I like it more, but I can't share it yet. Bad luck.

3. I donated a character in my novel to Capital Hospice where it went at live auction for $1900! I was thrilled. I know, its an odd concept to wrap your head around, but they approached me with this neat idea: would I be willing to donate a character such that someone could bid for the right to be in my new book. Basically, someone bids, and I name a character after the winner, and the money goes to support Hospice in the DC area. I thought about it and decided that, a. it's good karma, and b. even narratively, this is a good novel for it, because the story crosses international and generational lines. There is a war and I am writing about the most multinational/multiethnic/multilingual theater since perhaps the days of Ancient Rome, and so I figured even if...Ping Chou Lin bid and won, I could make it work without a problem. As it happened it is a lady named Judy Rhodes. We will see what I do with her. I did reserve the right to kill her if I needed to, and to basically do with her as I pleased. She is very nice though, so I might want to keep her around.

4. I have enlisted the help of a movie making friend of mine, Dennis Hare, who enlisted the help of his friend Pamela Schott, to create a book trailer for AS IT WAS WRITTEN. More on that later, but it is a very interesting prospect and I look forward to seeing what Dennis puts together.

5. My cousin-in-law, Alice offered to develop a website for me. She is an immensely talented Mistress of Many Trades, and she came to me a few months ago offering much assistance with marketing ideas and strategies. I know nothing about these things and I am so grateful to her for her help. She is planning on using my book jacket as a backdrop and working everything out on there. It is exciting to consider building a website, because frankly it is hard to believe that I actually have need of one. Once it's built, it will be sujathahampton.com. But its not there yet, so stay tuned.

So, I have reentered the blogosphere and hopefully I can keep you entertained with cool things happening as I gear up for the February release of my novel, AS IT WAS WRITTEN, and as I go through the agonizing and exhilirating process of writing a new novel, yet unmamed, which will feature the lovely Judy Rhodes who is so delightful a lady as to make herself hard to kill.

As always,

Send the muse!

S

Today I Interviewed Andrew Davidson

2009-09-22T20:43:00.000-07:00

I interviewed Andrew Davidson today and it was wonderful. Well, I can't say that the interview was wonderful, but I can say the conversation was wonderful. I've never done an interview before in my life, and I already know I have a lot to learn from listening to the audio of it.

A. I have a weird voice.
B. I talk to loud.
C. I laugh too much.

This is all probably stuff my vast and rapt cyberfollowing already knows. This is even something I know. And yet, I didn't do anything to try to prepare for that.

I was really excited.

Andrew Davidson is the brilliant author of The Gargoyle, which came out in August of 2008. It is a beautiful story of universal love that transcends time, place and even social barriers. He writes with lurid confidence and then a gentle touch. The language is beautiful, the story is compelling, the images are beyond vivid. I really loved this book. So I was excited that I was getting the chance to talk to him, so I forgot that my voice is weird, that I talk too loud, and that I laugh too much. I will remember this for the next time.

I had prepared some thoughts, a few questions, noted some sections I wanted to ask him about, but I learned something else when I went back to listen to the tape.

4. When I get really excited about what I am talking about, I go out of order and I get sidetracked.
5. When he got sidetracked, I was thrilled to go wherever he went, which means I may or may not have remembered to ask the question I meant to ask.
6. I think the audio of the interview/slash conversation might sound like two really geeky bibliophiles talking about how jacked we get when we think about Tess. Okay, Andrew, no dis intended, I think geeky bibliophiles have it all going on and I was SO JACKED when you knew what I was talking about when I mentioned Tess and the "blighted star."

Meaning, when I do my first interview, I will have to remember to be poised and dignified. I was neither today. Andrew was very poised and dignified, but as he told me he has done thousands of interviews by now. Me? This was my first. As will be evident should you choose to listen to the audio. I will edit out my "Yah!" "I KNOW!" and "uh huh"s out of the written transcript.

So again, I get that wonderful feeling of having arrived at yet another place I always wanted to be. I found Andrew Davidson online and asked him to blurb my own novel, because I so loved his novel. To this request he very sweeetly responded and told me that he hadn't time to do that now, and through some further correspondence we agreed to do this interview. I really can't believe that I too am an author and I get to reach out to other authors (even authors whose books are really amazing) and ask them if I can talk to them. And that they might even say yes! Because I belong to that club!! And really there are only two clubs I wanted to be in: The Mommy Club, and The Author Club. And by God's grace, I got into both. So again I am replete with gratitude.

I will tell you more about the interview itself in a later blog, and I will publish the interview when I get it transcribed. It was really a great conversation for me, to talk to another person doing the same thing I am doing: writing books, struggling with similar problems and similar frustrations and having similar epiphanies. He was gracious and kind, and very forthcoming about his process and his literary muses, though I could have stayed on that subject for the whole hour and fifteen minutes we spoke. It was wonderful to talk with someone else who reads like I do, dissecting and stealing, lingering on a particular turn of phrase, a particular concept that was so perfectly put. Like I said earlier, when we began talking about books, Andrew mentioned Tess of the D'Urbervilles, which is one of my all time favorite novels, and I mentioned a particular line where Tess says they are "living on a blighted star." And he knows exactly what I mean, in fact it was he who reminded me of the exact quote. I told him that line informed one in As It Was Written, but I did it the opposite. In describing Dr. Raman Nair, I say he was born on a blessed star, and that choice of words was to oppose precisely the sentiment we feel when Tess is talking to Abraham, her brother. Her hopelessness versus Dr. Raman Nair's constant and abiding sense of good luck. I loved telling that to someone who understood how a line can last in your mind for decades, finding itself a reference point for all misery and hopelessness you have seen along the journey. Likewise, he understood how I have never since reading Tess, walked through a field of wildflowers and weeds without thinking of her.

It was a great conversation, and I can't wait to tell you more about it and to share the interview with you here. In the meantime, if you are looking for a beautiful book to read, go get The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson. It's another one that will last in your heart.

Peace, and if you are reading this, send the muse!

S

The Middle of Things

2009-09-06T21:11:00.000-07:00

I started writing something and I just erased it all. I can't jump in like you know me, and though some of you were so kind as to come and tell me that indeed you DID give a rat's ass, I think I need to start at the beginning. There is a beginning, a middle, and an end to things. And sometimes, they get jumbled up and it's okay, and sometimes it is just time to tell the beginning. I think this might be one of those times.

My name is Sujatha. I was born in Albany, NY a little over a year after my mother arrived here from Kerala, India. My father saved his money for one year to bring her. My father arrived in Albany in January without a coat or any boots. This injustice appears in my second novel entitled The Beginning of Everything. I say injustice, because you'd think someone from the postdoctoral fellowship he was coming to join might have clued him in on the weather. And you can't even buy a coat in Kerala. Someone should have met him at the airport with one of their old ones out of the closet. Maybe that's just me; I'd have done that. So would my father. My parents were married two weeks after they met. I was raised by the best of people.

Many moons later, I find that I am living my dream. I'd say this is the middle, because, though a lot happened in between my birth in October in Albany and living the dream, it had better not be the end, because I have a lot left to do. So we will say that where I am right now is the middle. So this blog is about the middle. I think that is a fair representation of things as they stand.

I had a job I liked well enough, but all I ever wanted to do was write novels. It took me a long time to build the courage to go for it, and when I began, I used to write from 10pm to 2am, because I worked, and I had two babies, and my husband was in Iraq. So I can say I began my first novel writing three paragraphs a night. Many of these paragraphs sucked. So that is where i began, sucking in the middle of the night. There is a particular taste to your day when you spend your very worst minutes on the things that mean the most to you. For me: my kids and my book. It tastes like something washed up from your stomach, and it tastes like that all the time.

Shortly after my husband came home from Iraq I quit my job to write my book and I finished it in 7 months. Then I got an agent, then I sold the book. I'll tell you those stories one day; they're good stories.

That book, my first novel, is called As It Was Written. It releases in February, 2010 from Thomas Dunne Books. I like to say that it is the story of Dr. Raman Nair and his five fat daughters and the ancient Brahmin curse that follows them from India to the States. It is a literary fiction with a broad cast of characters, a big family of beautiful girls and all the craziness that erupts as these girls navigate their way through love and life. There is a story within a story, an ancient tale woven into the modern tale. It is a story about the redemptive power of love, I suppose. Certainly it is a story replete with love, but also betrayal, loyalty and family, the ties that bind through time. I'll tell you more about it. And if you buy it, I promise to find a way to sign it for you.

So there is the beginning and some of the middle. The middle is an ongoing story. I think that is what the blog is about. The middle.

Peace and love,

S

Test: This Is Only a Test

2009-09-05T21:10:00.000-07:00

This is only a test. Could it be possible that people could give a rat's ass what I am thinking and doing? I can't imagine that could possibly be true, so this is a test. It is only a test. If I were to tell you that I am sitting here, a few minutes past midnight, pondering the possibility that there are people out there who care to read my random thoughts, posted a few minutes past midnight (meaning they are probably not even lucid thoughts, not even well formulated, certainly not pithy or entertaining), is it possible you would chime in and say, "I care! I care, Sujatha! Please, blather on and on! Tell me the color of your nightclothes. Tell me whether your curly locks are all down your back or twisted into an unattractive knot atop your head like a young Punjabi boy! Tell me if your children are asleep and what brilliant thing you read to them tonight. Tell me, what was for dinner, Sujatha? Please...what was for dinner?"

And in case there is anyone who cares, the answers are as follows: I have not yet put on my nightclothes, but I am wearing entirely too much brown, which is always a mistake, because I myself am brown; my hair is indeed in the unattractive top knot, but, at the moment, I am not nearly as cute as any little Punjabi boy; my children are asleep and I read Mean Margaret, which is actually quite delightful; and we went out to dinner at Old Ebbitt Grill with DH's old college roommate and his family.

If anyone cares at all, I promise to be more entertaining in the future.

Peace and love,

S