Nom de Plume

Mother’s in Julian fighting to get the house built. Steve’s downtown fighting to get the condos built. As for me, I’m happily sitting in Starbucks with the coffee jitters and an internet connection. (What more could a woman want?) Yesterday was gorgeous and warm, but thank heavens we’re back to our cold gray gloom. Much more satisfactory, especially since I simply HAD to finish Dodie Smith’s “I Capture the Castle,” which I pulled off the library shelf yesterday. It was so much better than the movie.

Talk about a small world. So here I am, sitting in Starbucks and shamelessly eavesdropping on a conversation at the other end of my table. Guy’s looking for a writer. I introduce myself, we exchange cards, and before you know it, he’s looking at my web site, sees I worked at Publicis–and tells me he was one of the original founders of Floathe Johnson, which then was taken over by The Evans Group, and then by Publicis. Yikes.

And yesterday, I met a woman whose mother is in the Foreign Service, and who was also USIA (before it was subsumed by state)–and it turns out that my mother knows hers.

All this synchronicity makes me feel I’m on the right track and in the right place.

We may not wear bhurkas, but the rights of American women continue to erode.

I love the news today.

Bush’s information withholding tactics go public not once, but twice, and it’s finally acknowledged that “no atheist can get elected to office.” (Not, of course, that anyone in office will buy the fact that the humans became humans because of a mutated muscle.)

I am awash in rejection slips. Steve has started posting them on the fridge, where they stare at me balefully as I cook dinner.

All lovers of GW, put this in your sniper and shoot it. From scare tactics to censorship, it begs the question of what this country is coming to. A presidential election, that’s what. Let’s get him out of office.

Here’s something that made me scratch my head in sheer wonder.

I’m excited about the trashy novel again.

Got a book from the library called One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers, by Gail Sher–and I would recommend it to anyone who struggles with the love/hate relationship with writing as I do.

She applies to principles of Zen to writing, and many of her observations made me want to jump up and shout, “AHA!” One of these was the statement that writers don’t feel complete when they’re not writing regularly–and there are lots of reasons why they don’t. Approach a daily writing period as a meditation; when you start, clear your mind and when you finish, offer it up. Release it into the universe.

Awwww

I just spent pretty much the entire day fighting with my web site. Still have samples to get up–by far the hardest part because I don’t HAVE a lot of them. I mean I have the samples, I just don’t have them in a digitized form.

ARGH. My engine’s revving really high again. I’m terrified I need a new carburetor. The last time this happened, Hurless Brothers walked me through checking stuff–and it went back to normal through the wiggling process. I’m going to do that again and hope it works.

And of course it has to happen when I have an interview on Monday.

This is the kind of literalism that drives me crazy: The Boston Archdiocese has instructed Catholics attending Opening Day at Fenway Park not to eat meat because it’s Friday. (For a link to the article, click here.)

Eating fish on Friday is not, contrary to popular belief, a tradition that dates back to Christ. Back in the day, the Thames was a rich source of fish. At the same time, cattle and sheep began to be cultivated in large numbers. The result was that beef and mutton were in demand, and fish (as is the case with most plentiful things) was considered “poor people’s food.” The Church intervened, in order to help out the fishermen, and dictated that Catholics should only eat fish on Fridays.

Economics, pure and simple.

Anyway.

Interview with an agency on Monday. Also got a letter from the other place saying thy were reviewing applicants and would get back to me next week informing me of their decision.

Steve met with a realtor, and she’s been e-mailing him houses in our price range. So he’s not about to kill himself over the thought of living in a slum. It’s all coming together. Speaking of Steve, I never mentioned that his job site was hijacked by an environmental group. Full details (and a partial shot of Steve’s shoulder and head on the right) can be found here.

Also finally did my biz cards, and am very pleased with the results. Used an image of an antique fountain pen, which I found online (defunct pen company). Lee Sherry from Ad Attic (in Puyallup!) was kind enough to rescan for me.

Other than that, it’s another gray, rainy day–which I seem to prefer. It makes me want to snuggle inside and write.

So I will.

This Week’s Casualties of the PC war

If we rename it, it’ll just go away. And if doesn’t, we can always fire it.

Ever notice how people have kids and some switch gets flipped? I mean, come on, your kid screaming at the top of his lungs in the library is NOT charming.

Bush is concerned about gas prices, but does nothing to reduce our dependence on oil. General Electric may now sue the EPA, the budget’s out of control, and using painkillers is about to become a federal offense.

But on the positive side, the lowly nickel’s about to get a facelift.

Had third interview with the president of the company on Monday–haven’t heard back yet. Hmmm. When he asked me what I thought of Bush, I probably should have referred him to this blog.

How green are you? Find out.

And how green is the current administration? How honest? Not very, as it happens …

The astrologer slipped through the bougainvillea into the hushed stillness of the courtyard. He had nothing to do; the charts had been drawn up, every possibility written down. Now, he just had to wait to deliver the proclamation for a long and happy life. The peacocks screeched their dusty protests against the dying of the day, and the astrologer absentmindedly reached up to rub a papery bougainvillea rasps between his fingers. Except for the peacocks, no movement; in the zenana, the women hushed the sultana with words of comfort and rosewater as she strained and pushed; in Bangalore, the sultan waged a bloody battle with clanging swords and shrieking horses. But here, in the silent indigo light, he was uneasy with expectation and its enveloping hush.

He surveyed the dusty courtyard, and suddenly constricted by its walls, opened the small wooden door leading out to the river. He kicked at one of the peacocks as it ambled across his path, and the bird jumped back, squawked and fixed his persecutor with a beady glare. Ignoring it, he pushed past the walls onto the banks of the Yamuna River.

It, too, was silent. The lazy current wafted by, swirling up packets of mud from the shallows. He sank to his knees. The coolness of the water was clammy, and made him shiver. Leaning forward on his hands, he searched in the water, though he knew it wasn’t just mud clouding his vision. The truth was that he wasn’t sure what he was looking for, and knew that he wouldn’t have been able to see anything in the deepening light anyway. He was an astrologer not because he read the stars (in this he was a fraud), but because he knew things, as surely and inexplicably as others knew the sun would rise or that the moon would wane. He knew that a large carp swam in the waters directly beneath his nose, jealously guarding his watery terrain and chasing off any finned interlopers. He knew a woman would weight her clothes with stones and throw herself into the river a long time in the future. He saw her face, wide-nosed and dark, the terror in her black eyes.

But these visions were mute and still, filled with neither sorrow nor happiness, and his present remained closed to him. Surely, if he looked deeper, if he opened his eyes wider, he would see something. Because when he closed his eyes, he saw death. And what was worse, he saw his own soul’s uneasy march on its path.

But he saw nothing. Nor did he hear it. In the zenana, at that moment, a baby began to wail.

Rafiq Zakaria’s book on Razia is perfectly dreadful. Even though it’s a good source of information, it’s a letdown.

Yesterday, after visiting the Chittenden Locks, wandering around Pike Place Market and sundry other places downtown and seating ourselves at an Italian restaurant in Pioneer Square, Steve and I decided that we should try our respective hands at writing a guidebook.

Another project, you groan. I admit, I’m full of them, but we’d be great at it. As he says, we DO get out and see all sorts of stuff. Our own Seattle guidebook is starting to get a little tattered, and we have check marks on all the bars and restaurants we’ve been to. For the length of time we’ve been here, it’s an impressive list. (On the other hand, our girths are impressive as well.)