Walking the Way

This may seem a bit random, but with my birthday tomorrow (25 is terrifying) I've been doing some re-evaluating and made some decisions about what I'd like to do with my life by the time I'm 30.  There's the usual suspects like marriage, children, and home ownership, but there's one other thing that's been on my mind in a heavy way for the last few months.

When I was about 12, my dad bought me a book from a used bookstore. He hadn't read it and didn't really know what it was about other than what he read on the back cover but that summary merely told him that his middle school aged daughter would probably like it. At the time I was obsessed with historical fiction (specifically the early English Renaissance/Tudor dynasty but I was also loving ancient Egypt and American Colonial stuff) so he made a good call. 

That was 13 years ago and I still have the book. My copy is worn and tattered and close to falling apart but I still have it. It's the story of a teenaged girl and her betrothed (just returned from the Crusades) whose parents arranged for them to join their estates in order to lend stability to their region (there was also an issue of money). In order to help them bond before their marriage, their priest sends them on Pilgrimage from their home in England, across the English Channel, through France to Paris and then west to Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain. Their journey takes them a few months and (because it is set in the year 1300) they face many obstacles including hunger, injury, injustice, and threatened kidnapping. It's an exciting story about imagining people complexly - especially people we think we know or who we've known a long time - and over the course of the story the two main characters eventually come to view their impending marriage as a way for them to unite their communities and do good for the people they will be responsible for. It's a great story even if - as a Catholic - there are moments that are a teensy bit problematic. Some comments are made that are critical of the Catholic Church which make it obvious that the author does not think highly of Her. (I just reread it and these comments don't feel obvious to me, but I may be biased because I love the story so much.)

Source: Giacomo Cantelli de Vignola, 1696 {{PD-1923}}

In any case, I've read this novel probably close to a dozen times in the years that I've possessed it. I just reread it again about 2 months ago and this is where things get a bit weird.

I finished reading it and was in this kind of book hangover (the kind you get after reading something wherein you're still living and breathing the stories and characters) and I started thinking, I wonder if people still make pilgrimage to Santiago. Spain has been on my bucket list for years anyway, maybe when I finally go someday I'll stop in Santiago... And there the train of thought ended for a while. 

Until it came back when I was babysitting and saw clearly a scallop shell in their seashell collection. This reminded me of the scallop worn by the pilgrims on the road to Santiago. The thought of someday going to Santiago became an internet search that turned into a dream on my Someday-Maybe list.

1896, Author Unknown, Public Domain Image {{PD - 1923}}

There were other little things: scallops for dinner, the feast of St. James the Less (and talk of St. James the Greater) in my Confirmation class, conversations with my mother about the book and how much I still loved it, and so on.

Then. On the drive up the mountain for my sisters' 2nd year Confirmation retreat, I rode with a young man I knew of but didn't know well. We got to talking about our families and family history and it came out that my family ancestry traces back to Spain and that I dream of going there someday. He said Spain is also on his bucket list because of a movie he'd watched recently. The film, he said, was about a man whose son (somewhat estranged) went to Spain and died on his first day there. So the man had to go to Spain to retrieve his son's body and chose to cremate the body. Then he decided to do the walk through Spain that his son had planned, all the way to -- 

Here I interrupted and asked him ecstatically if the movie is about the man walking the Pilgrim's Way to Santiago. We shared a look of awe at God's timing and bringing us together and we got very excited because yes, this film was all about the Camino, and yes, we both had been daydreaming about someday-maybe going on pilgrimage. We spent the next hour of our drive talking about the film and I told him about my book and this shared dream became a strong bonding point for us. 

After the retreat weekend I went home and found the film on Netflix. It's called The Way and stars Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez and I've watched it 3 times since Christian told me about it and I cry every time. The film tells a complicated story about love, loss, redemption, anger, and how sometimes, grief looks like a really long walk. It is secular but shows reverence for the Pilgrimage and the people along it and the Church and isn't sappy at all. I recommend it. I plan on buying the DVD so I can watch it with my mother. The film was actually inspired - in part - by a book by a man who walked the Way, called Off the Road. I'm currently reading it. While I think the author is a pretentious jackass, the book is pretty good so far.

All of this transpired about 2 months ago and since then I've done lots of research. I've been reading lots and lots of travel sites and doing lots of math and I've been praying about it a great deal.

I think I'm going to Spain in 2 years.

Church of Santiago, Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain. By Vasco Roxo.

Source

I've calculated that it will cost me (at a very rough estimate) about $7,200 to get there, complete my pilgrimage, and get home. Airfare is going to be the most costly part of this adventure and there is also the issue of having at least 1 month's worth of rent and things covered ahead of time because walking the Way (all 500 miles of it) takes about 5 weeks. I'm budgeting 6 because I'll want to spend a couple of days in France getting used to the time difference and then I'll need a few days once home to take care of tidying my house and sleeping and generally recovering.  

All in all, I'm going to have to save about $300-$320 each month if I'm going to head to Spain in May of 2017.  That's my goal: 2 years. Two years to save the money, work out the logistics, dream, plan, and train. Yes, train. My intended path goes from St. Jean-Pied-de-Port in France through northern Spain to Santiago in Galicia. That's just shy of 500 miles. To do that in 35 days (with rest days, of course) I will need to practice walking up to 25 miles each day while carrying a 15 pound backpack. It's a lot more likely that I'll be doing 15-20 miles each day but I'd like to get comfortable walking up to 25 miles a day. I imagine the next two years will be good for my health, as well.

So that's my dream as I turn 25: spend the next 2 years saving and preparing so that within days of my 27th birthday I will be on a plane to Spain (more likely to France then a bus and a train to the Franco-Spanish border but you get the idea). I've made out 24 little envelopes which I intend to fill with cash earned babysitting, house sitting, dog walking, and parts of my paychecks and each will be put into a jar. I've used the image below to decorate the jar as a bit of motivation.  24 months, almost $7,500, and 500 miles. 

I think maybe part of not being afraid of getting older involves taking a very, very long walk.

Some European pilgrims on the road to Santiago de Compostela
by Oula Lehtinen (cropped by me)
Source

Happy birthday to me!

See you in Santiago,

*Author's Note: All the images in this post - with the exception of the purple one - are from Wikimedia Commons and are either in the public domain or used under the GNU Free Documentation License. The original authors have been credited as requested and the Wikimedia source page has been linked to. I have no legal claim to them and make no money from them.*

 

Book Review - Hemingway's Girl

I'm on vacation in New Orleans so you get a book review while I'm gone!!! Isn't that exciting? You know you're excited.

Please excuse the chipped nail polish in the photo
 

 Stats:
Author: Erika Robuck
# of pages: 321 (plus 15 page Reader's Guide including acknowledgements, bibliography, conversation with the author, and questions for discussion)
Publication Date: September, 2012
Publisher: New American Library, a division of Penguin Group
My Copy: First Edition paperback with reader's guide

The book I read in March (of 2013 - shhhh) was Hemingway's Girl by Erika Robuck.

It's another Target find. (Seriously, I find so many interesting things when I casually wander through Target's book aisles, it's crazy.) It sat atop my dresser for several weeks and then I started reading it for March. But I did what I seem to have been doing a lot this last year and a half: I took my time.

When I was younger, I would race through books because I wanted to know the story and be in that world and didn't want to come out of it until I was done with it but something changed sometime two  years ago when I stopped reading as voraciously. I started having a hard time staying focused, and I started having a really hard time remembering what I had read. Even now, the details are fuzzy on some of the things I've read this year and that's never happened before. I can remember details of Harry Potter and the Pendragon series and books I loved as a child but the things I've been reading lately don't seem to stick. I don't know if that's because I'm not reading as much, if it's because my life has devolved to 9-5 clerical silliness and I'm not learning anything new so my brain isn't retaining information or if it's just because I'm getting older, but things don't seem to stick as well anymore. And I don't like it.

Anyway, back to Hemingway's Girl. It's fiction - the main character and her family and the events of the book are drawn from the author's imagination. The hurricane and the fact that the Hemingway family lived in Key West during the Great Depression is all factual, and the author did a great deal of research on Hemingway, his family life, and general personality/habits because he absolutely came alive in these pages. I don't usually read historical fiction set anytime after the Victorian Era, and even then, I don't like stuff set in the U.S. or the American Civil War and prefer it to be British. Usually the historical fiction I get excited about is Tudor/Elizabethan/Shakespearean Europe or even ancient Greek and Roman stories. But the 20s? The Great Depression? World War I and II? Boring. (This is why I studied Classic Civilizations in college instead of just being an English/History double major. I would've had to write essays on stuff I could talk about with people still living. That's not history, that's current events in my book.)

But this one captivated me. Mariella's struggle to help her family survive the Great Depression was reminiscent of Katniss from The Hunger Games: younger siblings dependent on her, mother despondent and depressed after the death of their father, doing things and going places that were dangerous or rough out of desperation to make some extra money, a community of sad, hungry people wondering when things (specifically, the economy) were going to get better. There were no intense political overtones, though, just setting the scene that made it logical that a young woman such as Mariella would want to improve her family's situation by getting a job as a maid in the Hemingways's house.

Then there's Gavin. Gavin is a young veteran with a friend living in the Keys while he works on the Overseas Highway.  He makes no secret of his attraction to and affection for Mariella, but he really can't compete with wealthy, charismatic Hemingway - or can he?

The "love triangle" here was really, really convincing and it was - mercifully - brief.  What I know - historically speaking - about Hemingway is that he was extremely charismatic and could be the definition of charming when he felt like it. He was also prone to mood swings and losing his temper when he didn't get his way, and all of these characteristics were expertly portrayed. Gavin was real, flawed, and tries to get to know Mariella and get in with her family, but also has the issues that go with being a veteran - some symptoms of PTSD and being responsible for other vets who are in worse shape than he is.

There's also a bit of a mystery in this story. When Mariella's father died, there was some question about the circumstances, especially because his boat was never found. Mariella grew up on the water with her father, fishing and taking out the tourists, so his death is a bit suspicious. It lingers in the background and really isn't central to the main storyline, but it adds depth to the characters and the situation they're in.

The one real criticism I have with this book is after the climax. I wanted to see a bit more of Mariella's life after the hurricane and the events that came after. Also, the very last paragraph of the book is kind of sappy, like it's trying to do that misty-eyed thing to the reader. The epilogue was really well done and I thought it made a lot of sense and felt very real. The whole ending just worked and successfully conveyed a lot of information to wrap up the story from the first few pages, but I still wanted a bit more denouement before the epilogue.

This author also wrote Call Me Zelda, a novel about Zelda Fitzgerald's time in a psychiatric hospital and the (fictional) nurse she develops a friendship with.  It's got some good reviews, despite how many other books about the Fitzgeralds and that time period came out at the time. I got a Kindle version for Christmas so hopefully I'll get to it soon and review here.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars. This book wasn't bad, but it wasn't brilliant. I'm tempted to give it 4 just for the color and the way the setting and the period absolutely come to life, but the void between the ending and the epilogue was such that I can't give it that last half a star.

Recommended Reading Level: 16+ for some super brief sensuality, sexual references, alcohol abuse and violence. I gave it to my almost-16 year old sister to read because she doesn't read too much into things and probably missed most of the sexual references but is mature enough to discuss the things she was concerned about. I'm still waiting to hear what my mom thought about it.  **UPDATE: My mom enjoyed it! She liked the story and the characters and thought the relationships were all well-written.*

Who Should Read It: people who loved Katniss and want to read historical fiction featuring a really strong, female, young adult character; people who live in (or want to visit) Key West; people who really like Hemingway; people who like fishing; people who like books set during the Great Depression; people who love the ocean; people who like colorful stories about growing and carrying on after a difficult loss; people who like a tiny bit of mystery and drama in their historical fiction. I realize I don't really fit into many of these categories but I did really enjoy this book.


Further Reading to Consider:
The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway
also by this author, Call Me Zelda
www.erikarobuck.com 


**DISCLAIMER: I am not now and never have been an agent of Penguin Group, Inc. or any of its imprints and am no acquaintance of Ms. Robuck. This is an unpaid, unsolicited review of a novel I genuinely enjoyed and wished to share. The photo above is property of Whitney Miller as is all text in this review with the exception of those excerpts used for review purposes.**

A Holiday Adventure

Howdy, Blogverse!

(Seriously, people, I know you're out there - I have a counter on my dashboard that tells me that you've been reading so you can hide in the darkness of the Internet all you want, I know you're there.)

Anyway, I hope everyone had a lovely 4th of July (almost a month later, what is wrong with me!?), celebrating the fact that none of us have British accents or a real royal family by blowing shit up and eating disgusting amounts of food. I stayed in, cleaned my house with the AC blasting and only ventured outside to watch the fireworks from the alley with my neighbors because drunk people in the park is not my idea of fun.

ANYWAY. The "fun" part of my holiday was a real adventure (kinda? There were no bad guys with guns, car chases, or mega mysteries to unravel) in our own town! I've lived in the LA metropolis area my entire life, even lived in the city itself for 3 years, but only did a handful of touristy things in that time. SO last friday (July 5) my parents decided it would be fun to go on a historical tour of old Hollywood/Beverly Hills/Los Angeles. I'm thinking old buildings, film trivia, classic films and how El Pueblo de Los Angeles became the big bad LA we know and love.

We were so. wrong.

The Art Deco facade of the Pantages Theater. Photo by John O'Neill from Wikipedia Commons

Meet us on Hollywood Blvd., a mere two blocks west of the Pantages Theater. The Walk of Fame, Grauman's Chinese Theater, The Egyptian Theater, "Hollywood & Vine," - you get the idea? So we're walking to the meet-up spot (this adventure was so ghetto in a hilarious way, I'm not even kidding), and we're passing all these HOLLYWOOD SOUVENIRS shops. You know: cheap t-shirts, postcards (yay!!!), ugly trinkets, key chains, and the creme de la creme, miniature Oscars. Cheap, plastic, made-in-China, miscellaneous sizes of those fancy Academy Awards that look like somebody's Uncle Oscar.  We passed one with a huge display of this tourist trap fodder and my dad turns to me as we prepare to cross the street and says, "We should buy a bunch of those, and distribute them to opposing experts after their depo or trial testimony."

What you need to know is a) my dad is an expert witness in trucking litigation, b) he has several specific other experts against whom he regularly testifies, and c) some of them (I will not be naming names) tend to stretch the truth a bit to the point where if it wasn't so funny they'd be outright liars.

So he suggests we start handing them Oscars after their "performances"?  I started laughing so hard I almost didn't make it across the street. (Maybe it wasn't that funny and maybe you had to be there, but I thought it was the funniest thing I'd heard in a month.)

Moving right along. We get there early, are told to come back in 20 minutes. We go in search of smoothies. Smoothie fail. Smoothie success, then running to catch our fancy, double-decker tour bus. No. No no no no. Janky, craptastic, not-enough-seatbelts, broken awning, open air, van/golfcart. To carry 12 people and a seeing-eye dog. I wound up scrunched between my youngest sister and a large man who was very kind but fell asleep halfway through the tour. I was also asked repeatedly to take iPhone pictures for the vision-impaired woman sitting in front of me. But the dog was very well-behaved. He sat on the floor in the front seat very patiently.

The van/bus/cart/thing starts moving and we dart in and out of traffic on Hollywood Blvd., and head to the Hollywood Bowl and the 101 (apparently these are tourist attractions?) and up to Mulholland Dr. for a decent view of the city and the Hollywood sign. (There were a number of European and East Coast tourists who were bitching about "all the smog" when in reality it was the marine layer that was keeping us cool combined with some low cloud cover because it RAINED a bit later that day... Oh well, maybe they'll leave sooner.) Then it was a tour of the Hollywood Hills and guess what: Celebrity houses. I got to see Nichole Richi's house (sp?), Eddie Murhpy's abode, Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel's pad, JLo's place, and so on.

NOT our bus. Shamelessly stolen from TripAdvisor

So I'm thinking, This is not history, this is a TMZ tour.  Then we passed a very swanky open-air van which actually WAS the TMZ tour. Uh-huh. Then we went to Beverly Hills! And drove around the 4-mansion complex that makes up the Playboy Mansion. And saw Paris Hilton's home. And Wolfgang Puck's house, and Jackie Chan's mansion, and made stops at every place Lindsey Lohan got arrested or caused a scene. We drove by the Coffee Bean where celeb blogger Perez Hilton has an office. (That's right. He has an actual office in a Coffee Bean near Rodeo Dr.) We drove up Rodeo Dr. and past Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie's favorite restaurants. We drove by Michael Jackson's house and the hospital where Whitney Houston died. NOT a historical Hollywood tour. 

Two hours later (and severe suspected whiplash - the driver was a freaking maniac), it was over and we were dumped back onto the sidewalk from whence we first embarked. I mean, it was funny and amusing but distinctly not as advertised. So we wandered back to the car (as it started to rain, WHAT) and decided that Chinatown was our destination of choice for lunch. (This was at 2:26 - we left the house at 10:36. We were operating on what was left of our 11:56 smoothies. Yes, I actually remember those exact times for things. There were lots of sixes.) Mom kept going on and on about how she and Dad used to go to Chinatown all the time, and since I have no actual memory of going with them (which she also insisted happened more than once), determined that it had been far too long. Certainly at least 20 years since they'd been there.

So to Chinatown we went. And got lost along the way, because Los Angeles. But we finally got there and found a place to park and were looking for a place to eat. We thought about going to Joe's Italian Restaurant, because a big Italian restaurant in the middle of Chinatown is a little too fantastic to pass up, right? We couldn't find the entrance. Not even kidding, the front door wasn't a real door. It just looked like a door. That wouldn't open. So we kept walking.  A few blocks down we saw a sign for "Chinese BBQ & Seafood." Seemed safe enough, so we ambled over and let me tell you. It was just like you imagine wandering the back alleys of Chinatown would be (I? Am I the only one who imagines these things?). The outside of this restaurant looked tiny and dark and dingy. It was called Hop Woo BBQ. (I can't make this stuff up.) We walk in, and it's brightly lit, huge, and lovely. We sit at a big table in the middle of the room and get a big (okay, little) pot of green tea (which was fantastically delicious, by the way) and are left to peruse the menu. I had to remind my little sisters that this was actually Chinese food, not Chinese take-out. And M--- (ever the picky one who won't eat fish) searched for orange chicken while the rest of us debated the merits of shrimp in lobster sauce over some other thing I couldn't pronounce.

In the end, we got amazing food, including the best, most delicious shrimp and asparagus I'd ever tasted. I could rave for weeks about how fantastic that shrimp and asparagus was. As in, for my birthday next year, we're going to Hop Woo BBQ so I can have the shrimp and asparagus.

Also, as we were leaving, we passed a lady on the corner selling 2 aquatic/marine turtles for $7. In a tiny aquarium. My sisters and I almost talked our parents into getting 2 or 6, but when the turtles get bigger we would need to put them in a bigger aquarium and that's a lot of work. I'm still holding out hope for an alpaca, though. (The alpaca thing is a WHOLE other blog post...)

My very own solar-powered Luck Cat!!!

Then we wandered around because on our first pass, we walked through a little shop and I saw a LUCKY CAT. Sherlock fans, you remember the Lucky Cat Shop!? THEY ARE A REAL THING. And I wanted one. I also wanted postcards because I have penpals to send postcards to now. After I explained to my mother the significance of the Lucky Cat, she (in a very rare show of good moodedness) made it her mission to secure an arm-waving Lucky Cat for me.  We went into that first shop and my sisters looked at embroidered fans and my dad looked at giant paper lanterns and my mother looked at sake sets and I, dear readers, went straight to the back of the shop to the Lucky Cat display. They had little, one inch high ceramic ones for a dollar, but I didn't see the larger, arm-waving, gold colored style I wanted. But there, on the register, was a solar-powered, gold colored, plastic Lucky Cat! The shop owner was so nice and pulled a boxed one from under the counter and even checked to make sure it worked. He then engaged in a conversation with my dad about how his shop was featured in the Nancy Drew movie that came out a few years ago.

My sisters and I got a bunch of postcards and a few fans, I got a set of real chopsticks and they each got a tiny lucky cat. Then we went into a plaza place and looked in a few other shops, took some pictures,  wondered what the heck the Ooga Booga Store is, looked at a giant bronze Bruce Lee statue, and threw pennies in the most interesting wishing well I've ever seen. It was set up like a waterfall/pond water feature, with a few statues of Buddha and other deities I'm not familiar with, and it was tiered. On the different tiers there were bowls and signs like "Luck" or "Wealth" or "Love" and other things that people might wish for. It was really lovely, and there were dragonflies, honeybees, and butterflies and tons of flowers all around it, and kids throwing pennies and adults sitting on benches and it was almost like I was in Munich again, discovering beautiful little things in unexpected corners.

 Then we headed home, happy and full and chatting about our adventure, already becoming a happy memory in which the rough parts are smoothed over with hindsight and the happy parts are made more special but less clear.

But do you want to know the best part of the whole day, reader? The best, most precious part that I'm almost afraid to speak out loud? The whole day, from leaving at 10am to getting home at 5pm, we didn't fight. My mother didn't snap at my sisters, my father did not complain to my mother, my sisters and I laughed and joked together and my parents and I did not clash. Not once. The only time we grouched was when we had smoothie failures and when we were getting on the van/golf cart/bus thing. That was it. But we weren't upset with each other, we were upset with the circumstance - circumstances which we were able to look back and smile on only hours later.

It was an adventure, AND it was someplace I'd never been before. Which means that in one day, I was able to cross TWO things off of my New Years' Revolutions. Isn't that wonderful?

In other news, Gary comes home next Friday, I have some book reviews coming (finally, I know!), and my newest penpal in Missouri is quite a lot like me and writes deliciously long letters.

See you soon!

 My lucky cat waving goodbye. He usually sits on the windowsill where he can get lots of sun, but he's hard to photograph there.

 

Have you ever been a tourist in your own town? Ever gone on an adventure that started out awful and ended up awesome? Ever had the best shrimp and asparagus of your life after a day of NOT fighting with your family? Tell me all about it!



**Unless otherwise noted, all images in this post are copyright Whitney Miller. If you wish to re-use one of my shitty iPhone photos, please e-mail me via my Contact page 

Stretching these Wings

Hmm... I've been complaining an awful lot these last few days. Granted, it's been a shit-show couple of weeks, and it doesn't look like it'll get any better any time soon, but I had an interesting train of thought a few moments ago.

Languor. Delicious. Luscious. Delectable. What beautiful words to describe the simple act of stretching. I've been lying in bed at my computer for a couple of hours and pushed my laptop off of my lap for a moment to stretch out a bit as I'm still sore from yesterday (babysitting after attempting an old dance routine without stretching = worst idea EVER) and the idea of how delicious a stretch it was occurred to me. I swear I'm turning into a cat.

But it was such a lovely, luscious stretch...

"Do you know what I need? To escape into the mountains, surrounded by tall trees, I will lay on the moss, and breathe in the scent of mushrooms, flowers and wet soil."
~Le'echappee

Yesssss. My escapism is showing again, but this time instead of desperation, it's a sweet longing. I'm not sure how they're different as phrased, but go with it. I want to go back to Europe and wander Munich or Paris. I think I want to give Paris another chance, since the one time I was there was a bit... Well, let's just say we didn't get off on the "right foot." (There's a story there, for later.)

(erroneously attributed to St. Augustine - anyone know the real source?)

I could come up with a reason to run away to Salem again but honestly? I need something more exotic. Salem has become comforting and familiar and I need something just a little bit dangerous. Maybe I'll plan a trip to Turkey - I do so love their music - and see what life brings me in the next few months. Maybe I'll go to Turkey, maybe I'll go to Salem, and maybe (just maybe), I'll end up somewhere a little more exciting than the crawlspace at the back of my closet where I've built a nest for hiding in. Maybe.

But for now, I'll settle for a walk in the park, even though it's almost 11pm. The air will do my brain some good, I think.

A Page of Thoughts, Loud and Quiet

That's it! I'm quitting! I'm dropping out and saying a proverbial "Fuck it!" to the universe at large. I'm creating my own world and you aren't invited! (Okay, so maybe some of you are invited. That is entirely dependent on who you are and how I know you and whether or not you're on my shit list today. Some of you are permanently on my shit list, in which case I cannot help you. Sorry. For the rest, read on!) Besides, as the late, great Alexander McQueen said, "The world needs fantasy, not reality. We have enough reality today."

My world will be very sparsely populated by people who I'm not tempted to murder. (So we're talking a total population of about 40-45.) But these people will be artists, writers, philosophers, la Boheme; poets and dreamers, stargazers and the ones who wish on stars and pink cars. I call you home, silly-hearts and lovers. I summon you, all Right-Brained Peopled! I'll "wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant" (Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Considerations by the Way").

Instead of churches, we will have holy libraries built like cathedrals. We will worship at the altar of the Written Word and our saints will be the great writers of the past, present, and future. Henry David Thoreau, J.K. Rowling, Edgar Allen Poe, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Dr. Seuss, Leo Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Tolkein, C.S. Lewis, Lewis Carroll, the Grimm Brothers, Roald Dahl, Paulo Coelho, Patricia Polacco, Beatrix Potter and others will be among our leading saints. For wasn't it Thoreau who said that, "Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations"? Our preachers will be literature professors and writers, children and their daydreams. Our prayers will be written, sung, and whispered. After sermons we will walk in the parks and think and daydream and hunt for wishing weeds and fairy rings. We will "never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them" (Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid). Peter Pan will reign supreme. (With me, of course.... )

We'll take the great works of art out from under glass and put them in pretty frames like touch-&-feel under natural light. Our children's museums will feature classic illustrations from children's books, statues they can touch, visual artists, dancers and street performers; whole galleries dedicated to art created by the children themselves. Imagine a massive kitchen fridge - the place of highest honor. Bubble baths and bedtime stories will be sacred rituals and lullabies will be our hymns. We'll write our dreams down first thing when we wake up and share them with our lovers at the breakfast table over coffee.

Instead of TVs, we'll have personal libraries and writing desks filled with enough quills, ink, fresh paper and blue pens to satisfy the writing of a lifetime. We'll have magical, automatic teapots that keep tea warm but not scalding, and pour each cup to the liking and preference of the intended drinker. For example, should my aunt and I share a pot, hers would come out with just a bit of cream, while mine would pour out full of milk and sugar. Instead of harsh, "eco-friendly" fluorescent lighting, we'll have lights that look and feel and glow like candlelight. No, I don't mean those stupid electric candles. Our "candles" will flicker, and burn down and be warm and smell nice and infuse our rooms with coziness and a hint of romance (with and without the big R). We'll work with frantic energy and the calm of a Sunday afternoon, taking turns of peace and chaos. We'll have jobs we love that don't destroy our souls.

Our graffiti will be beautiful, like the graffiti of Europe and occasional small places in America. We'll have artists making statements that aren't too politically charged but make you think. Mosaics, spray paint, stencils, brushes, and a message: that's all we'll need to beautify our city walls, buildings and alleys.

You and I will go to the beach on Wednesday afternoons to listen to street musicians and interview tattoo artists. Taylor Swift, Andy Grammer, Jack's Mannequin and Missy Higgins will be the soundtracks of our lives. You'll ask about my poetry and play your guitar while I sing my most recently composed song. You'll wrap your arm around me and I'll take your hand and drag you through the sand. We'll sink our toes in the surf and stare up at the sun and get lost in each other all over again.

I'll be a whirlwind of color and music and clouds and springtime and teacups and good books and yarn and late night conversations, train rides, cigarettes and cheap, satisfying booze.

This is the world I've dreamed up. Are you coming?

Home, or Something Like It

I've been in Oregon for a week, and already I'm torn. I absolutely love it here, but I miss home terribly. The funny thing is, I miss home in all the wrong ways and for all the wrong reasons, except one: I miss Kenzie. I miss her little voice in the morning and taking her to dance class and watching Tangled or Thumbelina with her on repeat. I really miss what a little love bug she is when she's tired - so snuggly. Yeah, I miss my baby something awful.

But I miss my old haunts more than the rest of my family. I mean, honestly, the distance is a godsend, we were on the road to killing each other. But my car, the park, the parking structures, Denny's, Rose and Kara... Those are hard to do without.

Mostly, I miss the inherent California-ness of SoCal. The smell of jasmine exploding into bloom everywhere you look, the warmth of the sun and the constant dry heat as familiar as an old quilt - irreplaceable. There aren't jacaranda trees here, either. Tons of roses and flowers we don't even have names for at home, but no purple trees, and no jasmine. Tomato plants here are pathetic to behold and the beaches!? Quaint, but cold and empty. The concept of beach weather is nonexistent (though the drive there and back is far more fun than at home).

Salem has plenty to offer, though. For once, my relatives actually treat me like an adult (thank God), which means I can use the car as-needed, run errands without being interrogated, dictate my own work hours (within reason, of course), and generally do my own thing provided I meet my responsibilities and am not offensive or destructive; easy. The bus system is also incredibly user-friendly, and "town" is so fun to explore. From zillions of coffee shops and tiny little boutiques to big stores like Khol's and Macy's - and everything in-between - this town really has just about everything (even a Trader Joe's!). The very heart of downtown is prime people watching and did I mention all the funky coffee shops? The Beanerie, Governor's Cup, IKE Box, on and on and on, I love it.

We've got a pretty good routine built up, too. I drive my aunt to work in the morning, wander around town for an hour or so, go home and work with Margaret, spend afternoons writing and then go pick up my aunt before Margaret and I make dinner. Then we kick back with a glass of wine and a pot of tea, and spend the evening watching comedy news programs and British dramedies (love the BBC!) before bed. So... it's not quite home, but it's definitely shaping up to be something like it.

Write On,

Willow

Small Town Characters

I work and (sometimes) live in a small town. You've probably never heard of it unless you also call it "home." But, like all small towns, we have some small-towny things that often turn into stereotypes.

We have a million "mom&pop" shops. Technically, I work in one. Scary, I know. Antique stores, one-of-a-kind restaurants, novelty shops, places full of really random collectibles, an ice cream place, a pet store, nail and hair salons where all the old biddies in town gather to gossip and where the high school homecoming queen gets all done up for her big night - it's all here. The downtown area, especially.

But what I think makes small towns special are the characters that inhabit them. Think back to The Andy Griffith Show, where you had the sheriff, the deputy, the village idiot, the millions of mom&pop shops, the Boy Scouts, and Aunt Mae. When walking down the street, everybody knows everybody. It's actually a little scary. There are more elementary schools and churches than stop signs and lights combined, and there might be 1 bar within the city limits. It's still an article of contention between the neighboring towns and our own. Not even kidding.

But back to characters. I'm a writer, and as such I have a couple tenets in my writing I tend to focus on. Primarily, I tend to focus and emphasize characters, relationships, and character development. So, naturally, every person I see is a character. There are people I see every day, like my family and my boss, the people I only see at work, the people I only see at school, and the people I've only ever observed but never really talked to. I don't feel like delving into the categories specifically, but I will go over some highlights for you.

Since my family is a blog entry unto itself, I'm going straight for the people that tend to walk by my place of work whom I often watch through the windows as they pass. (Trust me, the grammar in the previous sentence is impeccable.)

One of my favorites is a man named Dean. He's in his late 60s, and stoops a bit even though he's really tall. He's got longish white hair and a long white beard, a deep voice and a standard uniform of Hawaiian shirt, khaki shorts and athletic shoes. According to my sources, he's something of a Jack of All Trades. He worked primarily as an artist for a long time, then got into writing for school-age kids, started a few businesses, and even owned the local castle! (More on that later.) Now he owns the Pirate House up the street (no really, it's a house designed to look like a ship from the outside, and is decorated with pirates at Halloween. It's amazing.) and spends most of his days with a group of about half a dozen other men his age and type sitting at the restaurant next door drinking white wine and reading newspapers. They make the rounds around the Village, stopping at every restaurant in the neighborhood over the course of the week. Keep in mind, these are rich old men. Nice, rich, old men. Something like that. But every time he walks by the shop, I find myself wondering what he's thinking, what goes through his mind when he passes my window, what he's really doing staring off into space with a wine glass in his hand. Things I wonder...

Then there's Ate (AH-tay), our window washer. He plays guitar and I think really wanted to be a rockstar but grew up to be a window washer instead. It's funny and sad how strange the hand Life deals us can be. Ate has an opinion about almost everything, from the weather to spirituality to my taste in movies. Politics never come up. I have suspicions but no definite answers about that where he's concerned. It doesn't really matter, anyway. But he always smiles and waves at me when I pass him on the street and notices when we've used Windex on the never-ending stream of fingerprints our windows suffer. Really, I don't think he minds being a window washer. I mean that in the way that I wouldn't mind being a window washer. As in, he knows everybody, everyone likes him a lot, and he has interesting relationships with everyone he meets. He's in the prime occupation for a people-watcher, dealing with windows all the time.

Of course there's the whole gang at Classic, the coffee shop I'm in love with. No really, I'm gonna marry it someday. They're mostly college students, trying to make a living. It's funny to watch through the seasons who the seasonal ones are and who actually lives and goes to school here. They're all great, though. And know my drink by heart. That's a major plus to them.

There are other odds and ends, of course. One of the gals at the restaurant next door, Colleen, drives a convertible, dark blue VW Beetle and sometimes gives me free Dr. Pepper (in exchange for cupcakes). The ladies at the pet shop are mother and daughter, and the grandson of the owner comes in and plays sometimes. Chip, the Village Cat, lives there and basically owns the entire street of "Downtown." And, for some reason, I mistakenly called her "Merlin" for years. I have no idea why. The FedEx guy and the mailman are both really cool, but our UPS guy is usually different. Once, someone even tried to deliver dog treats to us and almost didn't believe me when I told him we were a bookstore and the pet shop was two doors down. Crazy...

We have a little stationary store down the street, too, with a post office annex in the back, where a little old man will take your packages and stamp them in front of you, and then walk you out to hold the door open, even if you're only carrying your purse. Of course, the streets are crawling with unsupervised preteens, wreaking havoc on scooters and skateboards. But what else is new? I know most of them by name, and if I don't, I know their parents. That's the kind of small town I'm talking about. More often than not, though, I know a kid's name but have no idea who his/her parents are. I'm affectionately known as "the bookstore girl" while my boss is the beloved "bookstore lady." No lie. We're full on You've Got Mail here, and we're all characters.

And I wouldn't have it any other way.

At least, not until Tom Hanks decides to come and sponsor us personally because we're just as cute as The Shop Around the Corner....

Love all, trust few, do wrong to no one. ~ William Shakespeare

--Willow

Diners, Dives, and Late-Night Food Fiends

Sorry for the excessive alliteration in the subject, but it made me laugh.

But yes! So about two weeks ago, I was down in San Clemente with my bestie, Miss Victoria. When I visit her, we've taken to visiting a certain restaurant called Harbor House. Harbor House is one of those quirky, one-of-a-kind places that's open 24/7, and all available wall space is covered with old movie posters and framed (sometimes signed!) pictures of old movie stars. You know, the good ones. You can get anything on the menu at any time - you want pancakes with a side of french fries and a chocolate malt at 4am? They'll do it. It's one of those places. It's popular with high school kids after football games on Friday nights, or on Saturdays at 1am after Prom. It's one of those places that families go to on Sundays after church, or where college kids go get coffee and omelets on Monday mornings with dear old friends.

I'm not sure when I became part of the latter instead of the former.

Everyone should have one of these places.

For me, it's been Denny's. I know, soooooo original, right? But it's really the only place in/around town that is open 24 hours and lets dumbass broke college kids dominate a booth for 6 hours when we order nothing but 2 cups of coffee and fries. It's not as original as Harbor House, but it's the 50's diner "shiny Denny's," which makes up for its otherwise distinct lack of originality.

Then there's Jerry's. It's a hip - rather pricey! - and delicious 24-hour restaurant that has great food, a great atmosphere, and is usually a prime star-stalking ground for the "Are Youuuuuuuu Famous!?" crowd. (You know who you are.) Jerry's is great if you had a free movie ticket and have extra money for food afterwords. It's also good for sharing the enormous desserts they have. Don't bother with coffee here - go straight for real food. It's good, but like I said - on the expensive side. Still, with 6 or more friends sharing a table and food and generally having a great time, it's a blast.

We need these places. We desperately need these kinds of places where we can just run away at 3 in the morning and have a cup of crappy coffee and just be somewhere other than where you used to be. If that makes sense. We need these places where we can write songs with roommates, take pictures with boyfriends, celebrate the end of a show with theater friends, and celebrate missed birthdays and all-nighters in the summertime. Maybe I'm blowing a tiny, tiny subset of a subculture out of proportion and making it a bigger thing than it actually is. Maybe I'm not. Maybe it's something we all need at certain times in our lives, and then grow out of, or back into. Or maybe we just come to them when we need them, and float on by the next day like nothing ever happened at all. Maybe.