Month: February 2013

Regular maps have few surprises: their contour lines reveal where the Andes are, and are reasonably clear. More precious, though, are the unpublished maps we make ourselves, of our city, our place, our daily world, our life; those maps of our private world we use every day; here I was happy, in that place I left my coat behind after a party, that is where I met my love; I cried there once, I was heartsore; but felt better round the corner once I saw the hills of Fife across the Forth, things of that sort, our personal memories, that make the private tapestry of our lives.
— from Love Over Scotland, by Alexander McCall Smith

Today’s Writing Group prompt: Show us a specific Google map location and tell us about its significance to you.

I have a good one:

That’s the Praça do Comércio in Lisbon, Portugal. Go ahead, zoom in.  I’ll wait.  See that statue of the guy on the horse?  The base of that is where I ended what I laughingly refer to as the worst day of my life.

When I studied in Salamanca, Spain, during my junior year of college, we had a 10-day mid-fall break.  My dad had colleagues in Lisbon, and they were kind enough to let me stay with them for part of the break.  I took the train from Madrid. (On the train on the way back, in the middle of the night, I met some Spaniards on their way to Paris to work in restaurants.  They told me they loved me and asked me to come with them.  God, I love Europe.)  I arrived on a weekend, but my first weekday there, my hosts had to work.  Manuela dropped me off near the water, not far from that statue, and I commenced my adventure.

At first I wandered around near the water, looking in shops and people watching.  Around lunchtime, like any good American abroad, I found a Burger King.  In my defense, I don’t speak Portuguese, which is shockingly unlike Spanish, and the Portuguese are big on seafood, which I don’t eat.  I figured, on my own, BK was a safe bet.  I had a Whopper with cheese, fries, and a drink, just like I would have if I’d been home.  Afterwards, I hopped on a bus.  I don’t remember my destination now, but it doesn’t matter anyway.  I’d never make it there.

As I was riding the bus, my stomach began to rumble.  Clearly, Portuguese Burger King did not agree with me.  I thought about trying to get off the bus, but it was so crowded and I didn’t really know where I was.  I concentrated on taking deep breaths and trying not to think about what must have been in my burger.  Um, that didn’t work.  I threw up on the bus.  I was in a window seat, and I vomited on the floor by the wall.  I don’t know if anyone noticed, at least at first.  At any rate, no one asked if I was ok.  I kept my head down, too embarrassed to look at anyone or get up to get off the bus for fear of being discovered.  I can’t remember, but I’m sure I was crying hot tears of shame, too.

Stop after stop after stop, and no one helped me.  Finally, the bus stopped for good.  We’d reached the end of the line.  After everyone else got off the bus, the driver announced more loudly that it was the end, so I looked up, looked out the window, and realized I had no idea where I was or how far we’d come from where I’d gotten on.  I was utterly and completely lost.  I got off the bus and tried to get my bearings.

I started walking in what seemed like the direction of the water, but I really had no idea.  No one I ran in to seemed to speak English, and I didn’t even know the name of the location I was trying to reach and I didn’t have the Portuguese words to describe it.  I had no map of the city and no Portuguese-English (or even Portuguese-Spanish) dictionary.  I kept walking, but I was in a totally residential neighborhood and there weren’t very many people out.  At one point, I ran into some police officers and asked them for help, but we just had a complete language barrier.  It was comical in its inefficiency.

By this time, it was starting to get dark and I was starting to get worried.  This was, of course, in the days before ubiquitous cell phones (1996), and even if I’d had one, I couldn’t have told Manuela where I was.  After what seemed like forever, I finally stumbled into an area that seemed familiar from my visit to the city the previous day.  It was a street lined with shops and restaurants.  I went into several and mimed a phone with my thumb and pinky.  The first couple of people all shook their heads no, but the last one nodded and pointed to the back.  I nearly collapsed in relief as I put a coin into the slot and dialed Manuela’s number.

She picked up, worried because she hadn’t heard from me.  I told her I had been lost all day and didn’t really know where I was but that I thought we were close to where we’d been the day before.  She told me to ask the waiter for directions to the Praça do Comércio and wait there and she would come find me.  I managed to make out the directions, which turned out to basically be, “Go straight down the street til you see the guy on the horse.  You can’t miss it.”  I sat at the base of the statue, resting, catching my figurative breath, and scanning the cars that passed for Manuela’s.

All of a sudden, a tall, young African guy sidled up to me and sat down.  He started making conversation, asking me where I was from and what I was doing in Lisbon.  Then, out of the blue, he asked, “Would you like to come back to my apartment and smoke pot?”  You could have knocked me over with a feather.  Before I could think of how to Just Say No, Manuela pulled up in front of us.

“That’s my ride.”

An ordinary man can . . . surround himself with two thousand books . . . and thence forward have at least one place in the world in which it is possible to be happy.
— Augstine Birrell
Yesterday’s Writing Group prompt: What character would you like to be from a work of fiction?
Whoa. This is hard. I read a lot. Like, a lot. And I read even more when I was younger, so I’ve read a lot of fiction in my life.
I love Laura Ingalls from the Little House books. When I was a kid I read them all over and over, and I loved imagining Laura’s life on the frontier. I wanted to make maple candy on the snow and help Pa build the smokehouse for the ham and run my hands over the bolts of calico Laura and Mary picked for their new dresses.
Another book that immediately came to mind was In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson. I haven’t read this book in probably more than 20 years, but I still remember Shirley Temple Wong and the summer she spends listening to the (then-Brooklyn) Dodgers on the radio. Her family has recently emigrated from China to New York City, and the book chronicles her efforts to fit in and learn a new language. She feels a kinship to Jackie Robinson, the first black man to play in the major leagues, because she feels they share the same struggles.
Cannie, in Good in Bed, by Jennifer Weiner is another favorite. The highest compliment I can pay Jennifer Weiner (and I’ve told her this, actually) is this: In the book, Cannie gets unexpectedly pregnant, and much of the story is navigating the pregnancy while dealing with an ex-boyfriend, a weight problem, and a difficult family. I read this book at a very hard time in my life, shortly after I lost my hearing. At the time, when I slept, I slept HARD. I would read this book every night before bed, and there was more than one morning I woke up entirely surprised to find that I myself was not actually pregnant. That’s how deeply this book worked its way into me. A lot of people dismiss Weiner as chick lit, but that severely underestimates her and does not do justice to the kind of books she actually writes.
Also, I basically feel an affinity for every protagonist Elizabeth Berg ever created.

If I could have, I certainly would not have chosen this particular form, given the bony ideal of our society.  Mine would have been taller, leggier, skinnier-armed.  But since I wasn’t consulted in the matter, and since I walk around in these curves every day, sleep with them every night and wake up with them again, I’ve had to make peace with them.  Consequently, I’ve come to think my body is quite lovely and womanly.
— Geneen Roth*

Today’s Writing Group prompt: Tell us about a skill (other than writing) that you’re currently working on building in your daily life.

So many.  Mostly, or most importantly, I’m working on my health habits.  This means that I’m trying to make making healthy choices a habit.  This means that I’m tracking my food intake and trying to pay attention to my hunger cues.  This means I’m going to the gym or otherwise exercising more days than not (right now it’s 4, so I’ll take it), even when I really don’t want to.  This means I’m learning to recognize that surge that happens after something stressful that automatically makes me think, “I must eat to fix this thing I don’t want to feel anymore, and don’t give me any of that carrot stick shit.”

This also means that I am exhausted.  And resentful.  And hungry. But I keep trying.

* I’m not there yet, but this kind of acceptance is what I strive for.

“Place settings (not plastic; all forks must have four prongs).”
– Van Halen 1982 tour rider, via The Smoking Gun

Today’s Writing Group prompt: Name 5 items you’d demand to have everywhere you went if you were famous enough to do so.

How fun is this?  I love to read the stars’ riders and I wonder if it’s really true that, for example, Jennifer Lopez demands an all-white dressing room, right down to the flowers, or whether there’s any truth to the “only ___ colored M&Ms” rumors I’ve heard about any number of people.  So, let’s see – what would I demand?

1. Cheese, obviously.  Lots of cheese (I’m a simple girl – cheddar, smoked Gouda, Swiss – nothing too smelly or soft) and assorted crackers.

2. Champagne.  Ever drink champagne straight from the bottle?  Try it – it’s SO fun.

3. Chocolate fountain with assorted things for dipping – pretzel rods, strawberries, marshmallows, graham crackers, etc.  I once went to a conference with one of these and a huge buffet of stuff to dip.  It was, uh, not my finest moment.

4. Massage table with warming device and a massage therapist on call.

5. Game room – ping pong, pool, air hockey, puzzles, board games, cards, etc. – fun for all ages!

(I write each day’s post without looking to see what others in the group have said so far so as to avoid any undue influence.  This was the first day I was sorely tempted to look first.  I didn’t, though, and so I suspect my list is a bit pedestrian, but I’m really looking forward to seeing what everyone else came up with!)

I’m not afraid of heights, but the idea of falling from them, well, that I’m afraid of.
–– from Cerulean Sins, by Laurell K. Hamilton

Yesterday’s Writing Group prompt is a visual one (I have no idea why it’s so small; click to enlarge):

I’m not a big fan of heights (though I wouldn’t say I’m afraid of them), so this kind of freaks me out.  It’s Photoshopped for sure, right?

I don’t know what it is; maybe because I’m clumsy and fear that I’d make one wrong move at the top there, trip over myself, and fall all the way down.  I do love scaring myself by thinking about it, though – that sinking feeling in my stomach imagining the free fall. But the crunch at the end makes me shudder.

I’d love to go skydiving.  Well, I say I’d love to, but I wonder if I’d chicken out before I ever got in the plane.  I think if I got in the plane and up in the air and strapped to the tandem guy, I’d do it for sure.  If I made it that far and chickened out, I know I’d regret it.  I know a bunch of people who’ve done it and they all say it’s amazing.  Maybe one day.  With a friend (David will never, ever go, and might disown me if I do).

(Sorry this is late and so lame.  Yesterday was my birthday so I was busy having a great day!)