Smokelong Quarterly Issue #15 is hot off the presses and ready for you to read and enjoy. It features the work of such fine writers as: Aaron Burch, Nadine Darling, Elizabeth Ellen, Anne Elliot, Stephen Elliot, Kathy Fish, Pam Mosher, Joe Young, and many more! Don’t forget to read the author interviews at the end of each story–they are typically enlightening.

Last but not least, congratulations to Beth Thomas who has been awarded the 2007 Fish Fellowship Writer in Residence.

1) VOTE for Robin Slick‘s blog, damnit! Hers is the last on the list and my favorite of them all.

2) LISTEN to Kathy Fish read her delightfully hilarious story “Delivery”.

That about covers it!

I was raised Catholic. Well, actually, I was raised Catholic until I was ten and my father died and my mother remarried but was not allowed to marry in the church because she and my father were in the process of getting a divorce. They didn’t divorce, but that they were separated when my father died was apparently enough for the magnanimous Catholic church to consider my mother unworthy of being married there (it all comes out in the wash anyway as it turned out her new husband had been married once or twice before and had children scattered around–but no one knew that at the time anyway).

So after this, we did not go to church on a regular basis and since we moved I was no longer in Catholic school but in public school, which meant that the only time I learned about growing up Catholic was every Monday morning when the Catholic kids (which was 97% of the kids in the school) went to the church for CCD. (I wonder if the school still does this? It strikes me as a violation. And I felt bad for my non-Catholic friends who were left back at school–although I suppose they got the last laugh because they were not trapped in a dank church basement being lectured about Jesus by someone’s mother).

What this means is that for most of my life I’ve found myself in some sort of religious netherland in a country (world?) where nearly everyone identifies him/herself with one religion or another (or identifies as atheist or agnostic). When asked, I say, “I grew up Catholic.”

What does this have to do with Jane Kenyon? My spiritual quest actually has a lot to do with her–though I did not realize this when I started, late this past summer, reading her Collected Poems.

For my first Holy Communion, my godmother and godfather gave me a Children’s Bible. I loved this bible. Loved the stories. In fact, tortured my family by insisting they listen as I read the stories aloud. Still, the stories, to me, had very little to do with my sense of what God was and more to do with my sense of what makes an interesting tale. What’s not to love about an enormous boat with two of each animals on it (especially when it has a happy ending)?

But this love of the Children’s Bible was pre-not going to church anymore. Afterwards, my sense of God and church was something like dread. Church was okay for Christmas Eve and for weddings and whatever, but that’s about it. I was a teenager living a bleak existance from which there was no escape. God did not exist for me, except to be prayed to in hopes that he would smite the man who tortured me and my family.

I prayed to God that he would let my stepfather die from leukemia. And when he did die. I stopped praying for good.

Why, I wondered, did God give me what I asked for? So that I could live with the guilt of feeling as though my prayers meant someone’s death? Was this what God was about?

But while I felt God was not there for me, I knew that Nature always was. It was the one constant (outside of books) that removed me from corporal self and allowed me to experience life on another plane. Nature was my religion, my spiritual existence. And it still is: No scripture has ever made me feel the same way as I feel when I hear the white-throated sparrow.

And yet I seek meaning. There are things I want to know. And I find them in the words of Jane Kenyon.

I find understanding:

Dusk is eager and comes early. A car
creeps over the hill. Still in the dark I try
to tell if I am numbered with the damned,
who cry, outraged, Lord, when did we see You?

I want to know what will happen after I die:

All afternoon I hear the blunt
shudder of limbs striking the ground.
The tree drops its arms
like someone abandoning a conviction:
–perhaps I have been wrong all this time–.

When it’s over, there is nothing left
but a pale circle on the grass,
dark in the center, like an eye.

I want to feel connected:

The hermit gives up
after thirty years of hiding in the jungle.
The last door to the last room
comes unlatched. Here are the gestures
of my hands. Wear them in your hair.

Mostly, I want comfort:

Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come

All this is to say that I get it now. I understand why so many find solace in reading The Bible, in going to church, in finding that they are not alone in their fear, their love, their humble, humble love.

I’m not saying that I’m about to head back to church, rather I’m saying that in loving words and nature as I have, I have not been so far off-base in my quest for spiritual understanding. In reading Jane Kenyon’s Collected Poems, I have found a text that is my bible. There I find the comfort, the understanding, the knowledge I need to not feel so alone in the world. This is not to say her poems are “religious,” rather that they speak to me in a language I understand about loneliness, fear, connectedness and, especially, about love.

Have you seen An Inconvenient Truth yet? Read the book? Did you watch Al Gore on Oprah yesterday? I’ve seen the movie but I still watched him and was THRILLED that Oprah had him on because, as you know, more than anyone else in this country (possibly anyone else in the world?)–that woman can call people to action. I especially liked what Gore said about this message providing us an opportunity, as opposed to letting it paralyze us with fear.

And what was the action Oprah called her audience to? See the movie or read the book (buy them if you can–100% of the proceeds go towards a fund to stop Global Warming). Learn what you can do to decrease your family’s CO2 output.

Now is not the time for complacency. You owe this to yourself, your family, the world.

I enjoyed this intelligent interview with Gina Frangello:

Well, the reader has the last laugh. In the sense of who gets to define reality as soon as the book gets published, the reader can dissent with whatever the author intended—the reader can decide that the characters were wrong about everything. In literature the reader ends up being the only one who really matters.

I’m back! That didn’t last long, did it? Slowly, slowly, I’m climbing back into the world of the living and so I will be posting again–though I don’t know with how much frequency. So thanks for all of your kind thoughts and wishes and thanks, as always, for hanging out.

Here are some interesting bits for today from the latest issue of Other Voices:

The guest editor’s notes: Looking beyond the moi (about writing in first person and why this editor chose to have stories in this issue that were not)

and, an interview with wonderful Dorothy Allison (Love her!)

In other news, I’m reading Flannery O’Connor’s Collected Works right now. Got it from my husband for my birthday. I’ve read Wise Blood and A Good Man before–but not the others. Shame on me!

Instead of starting with the fiction, I decided to read through her letters first. There are a ton of them and one is more fascinating than the next. Also, there are many writerly gems in them. Here’s a bit where she is giving advice to a fellow writer who just had her novel rejected:

I hope the novel proves to be retrievable. I enjoy retrieving mine better than I do writing them. Perhaps you finished it under a strain. Try rearranging it backwards and see what you see. I thought this stunt up from my art classes, where we always turn the picture upside down, on its two sides, to see what lines need to be added. A lot of excess stuff will drop off this way.

On symbolism:

When you start describing the significance of a symbol like the tunnel which recurs in the book, you immediately begin to limit it and a symbol should go on deepening. Everything should have a wider significance–but I am a novelist not a critic and can excuse myself from explication de texts on that ground. The real reason of course is laziness.

And this:

What personal problems are worked out in stories must be unconscious. My preoccupations are technical. My preoccupation is how I am going to get this bulls horns into this womans ribs. Of course why his horns belong in her ribs is something more fundamental but I can’t say I give it much thought. Perhaps you are able to see things in these stories that I can’t see because if I did see I would be too frightened to write them. I have always insisted that there is a fine grain of stupidity required in the fiction writer.

Last but not least, today I want to wish my dear friend Stephanie a Happy (belated) Birthday!

It’s been great. Really. And I really, really like you. You’re funny, smart, attractive. And trust me that you do NOT look fat in those jeans; you look PHAT!

Anyone would be crazy not to like you. But… it’s just that I need some space. Some time. To think. I need some time to think. About us.

And so, I’m taking a hiatus from blogging on this blog. I’ll be back at some point, but right now something’s gotta give and what’s giving is me posting here.

I’ll miss you, but we can still be friends, right?

Okay, in all seriousness, I’ve got some personal stuff (nothing bad!) going on right now that is making it difficult for me to find the time to post here and so rather than posting sporadically, I’d rather not post at all for a while. So thanks for reading and I hope to reconnect with you in the future. It’s been great.

Honestly, from the first time I saw Helen Mirren as Jane Tennison I was completely, utterly smitten with her. She is my kind of character–hard, honest, determined, smart, and deeply flawed. Here was a woman who was unafraid of living in the world of men. Indeed, she led them through an intricate maze to find the bad guy again and again.

Last night, Jane Tennison came back to life in the first part of the final episode of Prime Suspect. Man, she did not disappoint. Was it depressing that Jane’s nightly nip of scotch has led her to become an almost non-functioning alcoholic? Sure. But it was also as real as real can be. I had to watch from behind my hands when she nearly crashed her car with the young girl as her passenger. And when she got called out for stinking of booze! Whoa!

I liked, too, how I was given a view into her family life and found the scenes between her father and her quite touching (indeed, the whole father/daughter theme throughout was interesting–the potential touch and go of the relationships, the potential sexual overtones, the desire to protect). All of this hovering over the main plot which is a missing 14 year old girl who ends up dead on the heath. What killed her is a single stab wound to her stomach.

Next week the show will wrap up and we’ll find out who the killer is. And we’ll learn whether Tennison is going to take her pension and retire as she has promised.

I will miss Jane Tennison (but then I never thought we’d see her again after Prime Suspect 5) and hope that she finds a fulfilling life in retirement–though my gut tells me she won’t.

I suppose you probably think it’s odd that I would bother to speculate about the after life of a fictional character, but, you know, that’s what I do. There’s a fine line between real life and fiction, one which I balance every day.

Libraries are no longer places for quiet contemplation or READING.

Instead: they are for random people with measuring tape to walk from spot to spot measuring things LOUDLY.

They are for children to run around screaming.

They are for library workers to speak at the top of their voices and drop books on the floor repeatedly.

They are for copy machines to beep continuously.

In short, if you plan on getting work done at the library, bring your iPod!

my cable modem is on the fritz. Coincidence? I think not.

Actually, it probably is a coincidence brought to you thanks of the fine people of Adelphia soon to be Comcast. When I called about the outage yesterday they told me that they couldn’t send someone out until Saturday between 11-1PM. Super!

No problem, though, because I’m sure we’ll be credited for the days missed.

So now I’m at the town library where I appear to be the only person sucking up the free wireless. However, that does not mean I’m alone. Since when did people start talking in regular voices in the library? Where has the WHISPER gone? Where?

I feel like I’m in college again–working in the library. Except then I wrote my papers and stories out longhand and then went back to my house or apartment to type them on the typewriter and later on my Brother Word Processor. Those of you who have only written on computer have no idea how trying were those days pre-being able to type without fear of whiteout. Especially if you are like me and your handwriting is illegible.

I remember the Christmas that my boyfriend gave me the Brother for my present. It must have been 1989. I gave him a portable CD player, which I thought was a killer present. Until I opened my present and my whole world split open! I could type directly INTO the thing and SAVE it on a floppy disc! My god! Does the sun look shinier to you? Do the bird songs sound songier?

A revelation. Nothing short of it. I still have the thing and despite the fact that my husband would like to “lose” it between now and the next time we move, I’m hanging firm. It’s a relic, sure, but that machine has a lot of heart.

Okay, over and out from the library. And let’s all count down to the 17th when Mercury is no longer in retrograde.

Do you want your child to be teacher’s pet this year? Ellen Meister is offering a great opportunity to let teachers know how much they mean to you: Teacher Gift Promotion