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total constant order - LiveJournal.com
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where I live: day six (flower-works)
purging cassia
royal poinciana
The summer skies explode with color. No fireworks required. When I look at their blazing petals, I hear crackles and sizzles in my head. If you listen carefully, you might hear them, too!
where I live: day five (bird on a wire)
When I was little, I'd pretend that the birds were spying on me. I'd see them perching on the power lines like notes on a scale...so still, they might've been robotic. My best friend, Suzanne, would look for spray-painted codes in the sidewalks---surveyor-speak (I know now). We would make up stories about trolls tunneling under the pavement.
Back then, it felt like the entire world was keeping secrets from us.
where I live: day four (the Chinese Bridge)
We used to call it "Thrill Hill," back when cars zoomed at shriek-inducing speeds over it. Now the Chinese Bridge has been restored to its original colors: blue, yellow, and red to represent the sky, the earth, and fire.
When I bike across it, I can't help raising my hands (roller coaster-style).
where I live: day three (lines in the sand)
So I was going to post a picture of a modern day Stonehenge--all the construction taking place in South Florida. I stumbled across this odd-looking pattern in a church's freshly mowed lawn. Now I'm not sure what to call it. A crop circle? (minus the crops) Or a landing pad for vacationing extra terrestrials? You tell me!
where I live: day two (land crabs are blue)
Florida land crabs remind me of spiders, their distant cousins, with their stalk-like eyes and slitty mouths. They march across the backyard in a conga line and plunk into the pool. After a hard rain, their holes fill up with water. Once in a while, they will even climb a tree.
where I live: day one (roots)
The author, Cynthia Lord is posting a picture a day of her hometown. She invited all of us in cyberspace to do the same.
For my first photo, I'm showing my roots. Here's a banyan tree hugging a coral rock wall in Palmetto Bay (once known as "unincorporated Miami-Dade County" when I was a kid...just a few miles south of the city). The trees remind me of a home for Mowgli in the Jungle Book. I walked barefoot on their massive branches and swung from their vines.
Sometimes I still do.
swimming behind my eyelids
I took a walk under the feather-duster palms and spotted a pair of manatees swimming in the Deering Estate park. They looked like tires bobbing in the water (and sounded as if they had caught a cold, judging by their phlegmy snorts).
Storm clouds bubbled on the horizon. A group of men in tuxedos were setting up for a party at the Deering mansion--hustling around with silver trays and bottles of wine.
I stood under the porch and looked up (not at stars...but at conch shells pasted into the ceiling)...
...and petals twisted into wrought iron.
"You have to leave now," said one of the tuxedo-dudes. So I turned and walked up the path. A silver fox darted into the bushes. I looked for him on my way back, but he had vanished with the breeze.
He keeps his secrets and so do I.
revise/reprise
"What are you doing over the break?" one of my students asked me. (She's writing a screenplay about vampires).
"Revising," I told her.
She smirked. "Really?"
"Yeah. Just like class."
Only now it's just me and my agent's notes. I flip through page after page and squint at her handwriting. "Huh?" she'll scribble in the margins. "Not clear."
When my head needs clearing, I hop on my bike and cruise. The royal poinciana trees have smeared the sidewalks with their lava-colored blossoms. I cruise over the Chinese Bridge, down to the People's Dock.
"Beware of Alligators," reads a sign tagged with crablike graffiti. It's low tide and the air smells like rain. When I peer over the water, I spot a pair of puffer fish nosing through the seaweed.
I turn and head back toward the road. As I hit the brakes, a truck swerves around me and parks in the dirt. A boy in a Marlins hat jumps out. He sets a metal cage on the ground, slides open the trapdoor, and a possum waddles into a thicket of ferns.
Once in a while, I'll spot a guy in pleated shorts and a golf shirt, practicing the bag pipes (it sounds like a flock of geese slowly dying). Or the middle-aged man who performs tai chi in the grass. Or the box turtle who nibbles dandelion weeds (I always think of him as Tea Biscuit, my childhood pet who ran...or crawled...away. I haven't seen him since the brushfire a month ago. I hope he scooted off with the peacocks). Someday I'll write about these mental postcards. For now, I'm taking notes in my head.
I haven't bonded with my bike in ages, thanks to the rain. Instead of daydreaming on my wheels, I hid inside a movie theatre. I caught a stunning film that my students have been drooling over. It's called The Fall and it's a story about storytelling...the way we recreate events in our minds and how every person sees it from a different angle.
A little girl listens to a bedside fable and creates a fantastical world in her imagination, at times pausing to correct the details ("He doesn't talk like that!") or casting real life people in her fictional universe. The narrative skillfully weaves between the adult and child's perspective of key events, allowing the audience to play along as they connect the threads.
As I watched, wide-eyed, I couldn't help thinking, "Isn't this just like writing...or reading...a book?"
Watch the trailer here
sequins and banjos
A week ago, I sat in my agent's office. Above her desk, a row of books towered like a shrine. I spotted my pastel-tinted hardcover, tucked in the corner. We chatted about a couple new projects in the works. It felt a little surreal, hearing someone else talk about the people in my head.
I held my breath. She told me two things. Although I'm working on something a bit different from my first novel, it's still a "Crissa book." I busted out a grin when she said my "girl characters" have their own thing going on. That's so important. I refuse to write a hot pink novel (though dreamy pastels are cool with me).
I think back to last weekend, when my boyfriend and I visited the Maritime Building next to the Whitehall Ferry. Talking Heads frontman, David Byrne, had transformed the cavernous second floor into a "sound sculpture." People stood in line, waiting for a chance to play the bulding...or rather, hunch over an antique organ connected to a spiderweb of "metal beams, plumbing, electrical conduits, and heating and water pipes" (according to the Creative Time website).
The Maritime Building hummed like a living thing. I stood near a clanking radiator and shot a video of a girl tickling the keyboard. Behind her, sunlight spilled down on another girl, who trotted around with a red umbrella. An old man with a mustache chased her with his enormous camera (He told us that she was the subject of his photo project. Yeah. Whatever).
That night, I slipped into a sparkly dress (which made me look like a mirror ball) and we slipped into a 1920s costume party called Shanghai Mermaid at a dusty factory in Red Hook. Everybody was decked out in sequins and sipping absinthe. I noticed a chick dressed like the Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy--not to mention, a few fabulous drag queens. At midnight, a woman dropped out of the ceiling and performed a sash dance (similar to the booty-shaking fan dance she had performed earlier, only this time, suspended in mid air). I clapped so hard, my hands burned.
On the way out, a retro band strummed banjos and ukuleles. I recorded a few seconds of bleary footage on my digital camera.
Now I've got an avalanche of finals to grade and revisions to tackle. In the basement of my mind, plotlines simmer. New characters speak to me. I dream about them and sketch them with Pigma pens in my notepad.
For the moment, they are all mine.
home again
After months on the road, the book tour has finally ended. A big thank-you to HarperCollins, my agent, and my PR team, Karen and Tracey!
The day after I arrived home from Chicago, I woke early to teach a class. I walked to my car and found a pale dusting of ash across the windshield. Fire had swallowed the Everglades. Smoke thickened the breeze. I rubbed my eyes. They never stopped stinging.
When the Florida Center for Literary Arts invited me to teach a teen writing workshop, I thought: Man, this rocks. And I wish that something like this had existed back when I was in high-school, pestering my English teachers to read my Xeroxed novels-in-progress about swashbuckling elves.
The workshop lasted until late afternoon--a bit long, but the kids hung in there. At the end of the session, we shared their narrative poems about secret kisses behind the lockers (and boys who smelled like vinegar), knife-wielding murderers running through the woods, and the first time a boy sniffed glue in kindergarten (my favorite line of the day: "The walls started shaking.")
On the next Saturday circled on my calendar, I spoke with a panel of authors at the Barbara Seniors Harkins Foundation, which strives for the betterment of schools in South Florida. Beside me sat C. L. Freire, who writes fantasy for tweens. We passed the karaoke-style mic back and forth while the kids asked questions ("Do you know Chris Brown?"). Once they spotted my bouquet of lollipops, they stampeded down the aisle. A blue-eyed boy grabbed a sheet of paper and showed me his tag: Abstract. ("Where do you hit that up?" I asked. He said, "West Palm Beach.")
Now my calendar is empty. My only responsibility? Grading finals in a few weeks. It feels a little strange...like I should be doing something more for my book. But at this point, I have done everything I can do. My characters are wandering out there in the world, finding their way. They will come back and tell me what they've seen.
One last thing to write = the answers to this meme, which floated along to me a couple days ago.
What were you doing ten years ago?
Studying film in the UK. And chopping off my hair, shortly after this photo was snapped in the Irish countryside (one of the horses was an extra in the movie, Braveheart. Since he could only see out of one eye, he didn't flinch when the arrows flew through the air).
What's on your to-do list for today?
Write a letter to my friend in Norway (or maybe I'll record it on a CD), ride my bike and take a picture of the burning trees.
What are some snacks you enjoy?
I'm more of a savory kid than a sweet girl...but I can't resist Japanese candy. Here's the stash I brought home from San Fran.
What would you do if you were a billionaire?
Buy a brownstone in Brooklyn. Or maybe just a room with a view (as long as the view is in NYC). Also--my friends and I have this fantasy about creating a sanctuary for stray cats.
What are three of your bad habits?
Um. I'm way too obsessive. But you already knew that. I think four-letter words are funny and I drink too much coffee.
Where you have lived?
I was born and raised in Miami. During college, I lived as an exchange student in Prague, as well as Paris. I hope to live abroad again someday. I keep all my journals in a wicker chest in my bedroom (my version of a hope chest...the hope of traveling again).
What jobs you have had?
In my twenties, I wrote a weekly film column for a newspaper on the beach.
One summer, I worked as a production assistant (fancy phrase for "person who fetches things on the set). I tossed rose petals at the girls modeling spring dresses in a TV commercial. But man, I could get used to "craft services," (endless supplies of treats) and the lady who walked around with a tray of cafe con leche every morning.
I worked as a script consultant (fancy phrase for "person who reads fifteen feature-length scripts a week and tells the producer that they suck). I still remember some of the ridiculous lines from those awful pages, like, "Her stomach jumped like a tuna." (How does an actor perform that feat?) and "He was all over her like a wet noodle."
I was a journalist for many years. I interviewed crazy DJs during Winter Music Conference and high-rollers during Art Basel. Worst interview ever = A certain Icelandic triphop band which shall remain nameless. During our "chat," one of the dudes asked if my boyfriend could buy weed for them. The dude ignored all my questions. Instead, he dropped lines like, "Miami is a girlfriend who never stops smiling." Then he pretended to snort coke off the table.
Taught college: screenwriting, summer theatre camp, creative writing, you name it. Still do.
And my favorite job of all?
Exactly what I'm doing right now.
Last Stop: Chicago (Again)
Rain pounds the sidewalks. I duck into a pizza place on the corner of North Winchester Avenue. Across from me sits a scruffy kid, thumbing through a paperback about African Gray parrots (the same birds that decorate his sweatshirt). I lean back in a booth and dig out my Moleskine. In the past few months, the pages have swollen twice their original size.
As I scribble, I notice someone gawking at me: a boy with a trucker hat and a bandanna looped around his neck like a bank robber. Tattoos swirl down his pasty biceps (I spot a portrait of Edgar Allan Poe carved in his skin.) He hunches in the corner, talking to a clump of people about an "ex-friend."
"He was drinking all day," says Poe Junior. "I was like, 'Can't you come out for an hour?' I mean, I was only in town for the weekend. I'm so over it, man."
Seems like I've heard this conversation before...in another city...weeks ago. I can't remember anymore.
Poe Junior storms out. He jumps on his bike (fixed gear, of course...the handlebars strapped together with tape) and pedals into traffic.
I think about all the stories taking place around me. Stories with no ending...
During this trip, my PR team booked several events on a single day. The events took place in different suburbs (in different directions!) I was staying in Wicker Park, at a sweet little spot called The Ruby Room (like chilling in your own secret apartment above a Zen-like spa!) I woke before the sun and hopped in my cab. It took about an hour to reach Joilet (pronounced like the Shakespearean heroine, not "Jo-Lee-Hey," as I'd been mumbling with a French accent).
I wandered through the halls, lost as usual. As I passed the auditorium, I heard muffled voices. ("Maybe they have another speaker?" I wondered.) No worries. I always arrive early. I finally found the main office and an English teacher lead me back to the auditorium.
"They've been waiting," she told me.
Wait a second. I checked email on my cell phone. "It says I start at nine?"
"Uh...no," the teacher said.
Somehow...something got mixed up.
I asked, "How much time do I have?"
"Fifteen minutes," she told me.
I glanced at the stage, which swarmed with metal chairs and music stands. The teacher told me to project my slides on the burgundy curtain because they couldn't lower the screen, due to the stuff on the stage. It took a few minutes to set up my laptop (luckily I'd brought my VGA display adapter). As I sped through my presentation at light speed, I noticed Kathleen from Anderson's Bookshop, looking just as confused as me.
The students asked a couple questions ("How much money do you make? Have you met Oprah yet? What's your book about?") and then, they marched out.
"Sorry I missed everything," Kathleen said, as I sat cross-legged on the stage, signing books for the library.
"I missed everything, too," I told her.
"Wasn't it supposed to start at nine?" she asked.
The teachers ushered us outside. They kept talking about a "vampire book club," and the upcoming prom. A skater boy with a chain belt wandered past us, looking lost.
"Where are you supposed to be?" the teacher asked him.
He gawked at a crumpled sheet of paper. "Uh..."
She snatched the paper away. "Go to Attendance," she said, sighing. "See," she said, turning to me. "That's why we're working on our literacy program."
Kathleen drove me back to the bookstore in Downers Grove, where I caught the lunch hour train and rode back into the city. Next stop: Evergreen Park Library.
I spent the afternoon teaching a creative writing workshop for teens. When I finally had a chance to rest, I chatted with Gigi, the teen librarian, and she took me on a tour. I'd never seen a library with its own fireplace...all the bookshelves arranged at right angles, so you never feel lost. A gleaming display case featured a collection of mermaid toys.
"I started collecting anything Little Mermaid when I was a year old," said a handwritten note. "We have Ariel in every room of our house, on my walls, in the kitchen, the bathroom, and covering my bed."
Back downstairs, I spoke to a group of families with special needs kids. They asked a lot of tough questions, and I talked about the experiences that gave birth to my book. After the presentation, I chatted with the librarians as I waited for my cab. They cracked jokes about the characters who hang out all day in the computer lounge (like the woman who "talks to outer space" through the internet).
I hopped in a cab and sped back into the city. I closed my eyes, half-sleeping as we bumped over potholes. My boyfriend was waiting in Millennium Park. He wanted to swing by the Holiday Club, a Sinatra-style, old-school watering hole.
In our free time, we nibbled goodies at spots like Earwax (once a record store, now a veggie joint), and Avec, (local chef hangout), and combed the boutiques of Bucktown, where I snagged this Midwest t-shirt, courtesy of Campfire Goods.
At the Theater On The Lake, we saw, "As Told By The Vivian Girls," based on the stories and collage paintings of Henry Darger. Instead of simply watching the performance, we interacted as characters in Darger's fantasy world, in which several stories take place simultaneously in different rooms. The audience must wear paper masks and wander through the hallways and staircases in the sprawling theater, exploring multiple narratives, much like the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books that I devoured as a kid.
The performance was designed by Dog and Pony Theatre Company who managed to translate Darger's 15000 page novel, "Realms of the Unreal," into a ninety-minute glimpse inside an alternate reality.
I left the theater in a daze...the same dreamy fog that lingers after reading a favorite book. After all, I don't read books to "watch" a story. I read books to "become" the story.
We had become the story.
Upcoming Event: Evergreen Park, IL
Shout Out: San Francisco (and FBA)
A week ago, the kids at Capuchino high-school invited me to chat with their book club (aka "You Say Read, We Say Party"). I hadn't seen San Francisco since I was fourteen. All I remembered were the seal lions barking for their breakfast at Pier 39, and a street dude popping and locking beside a boombox on the sidewalk.
The school was perched on a hill, layered like a wedding cake (not a coffee cup, as I'd imagined). Out of all the schools I've visited, this one reminded me of my own--due to the "al fresco" atmosphere instead of the closed-in corridors of chillier cities. But my school never had a book club like this...or a culinary class (the F.E.A.S.T. program, which provided us with cobb salad and rhubarb pastries. Rock on!)
I shared the event with another newbie Y.A. author, Cecilia Galante. The protagonist of her debut novel, The Patron Saint of Butterflies, shares a lot in common with Fin. Both girls struggle to maintain control as their worlds spiral into chaos (Fin counts numbers and Agnes murmurs prayers).
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