Storm Tree

It was rainy and stormy yesterday.  There were a lot of, what I'd call, storm trees- branches flailing desperately in the wind.  It was really beautiful.  Today is sunny and dull.  It's a Joanna Newsom kind of day, that's for sure.  When I'm having a down day, when the kids are running me ragged, or when I've gotten some disheartening news, all I want to do is sit and listen to Joanna Newsom.  Her winding, jarring, searching melodies are the best thing for a mind disturbed.  Today is definitely a Joanna Newsom day.

Rejection.  Cold and impersonal.  Empty space where once there was a thin and hopeful bridge spanning a wide ravine.  I doubted I would ever cross it, but the hope was there.  And now I'm sitting firmly on a grassy patch, looking across to the other side, wondering if I'll ever get there.  The sun is beating down.  And I'm listening to Joanna Newsom.  That crazy voice, how it calms me, balms me.  If only it would rain.

Maybe someone will throw another rope bridge across to me again someday.  Maybe I'll write something so amazing that the second I touch the ropes they will solidify into stone, a sturdy stone bridge with cobblestones paving the way to the other side.  I'll prance across with my head thrown back, Joanna Newsom playing triumphantly, rain pouring joyously, storm trees waiting for me on the other side, trembling majestically in the wind.

Storm tree, thrash and writhe for me.  Keep the dream.

By all means, call me carrots. Please.

Remember that part in "Anne of Avonlea" when Gil proposed and Anne said no and a collective groan echoed throughout all womankind?  "Anne, what the heck is wrong with you?" we all shouted at the TV.  Remember the look on Gilbert's face when he whispered "Please say yes?"  That hopeless/hopeful, heart-wrenching look?  I mean, come on, who (besides Anne, with her ridiculous barrier of an imagination) could say no to a face like that?  That's the face I wish I could send to the two agents currently reviewing my manuscript "Strange Bloom."  "Please say yes" I'd whisper, and their hearts would melt.  "Of course, of course when you put it that way we'll give you a chance, work with you, make your dreams come true."  Too bad I'm not Gilbert Blythe.  If only.

Ramen noodles and writers are not as different as you might think.

My husband thought I was a nutjob the first time I made ramen noodles for him.  We were college students, hence the choice of food, and I was making him lunch.  "Wait, what are you doing?" Ryan asked worriedly when I pulled the steaming pot of noddles and broth over to the sink to drain.  "You're not dumping all that broth down the drain are you?  That's the best part!"  Indeed I was, because, unlike he, I did not think the broth was the best part.  In fact, I thought the broth was nothing more than an extra, sub-par component of this dish; the noodles were obviously the only part worth eating.  I tried to explain this to him.  "No, it's ALL good," he tried to insist," but I stubbornly held my ground.  I'm happy to say, six years later, on the very rare occasion we take a trip down memory lane and indulge ourselves in a steaming bowl of ramen noodles, we now both only eat the noodles.  Ryan now agrees that they are the only good part.

Why the long story about ramen?  I'll tell you.  It has been brought to my attention rather forcefully as of late that writers are a lot like ramen noodles and ramen broth.  There's a whole giant cooking pot of ramen stewing constantly on the great stove of the publishing world.  The beefy hand of mainstream taste is constantly stirring that pot, waiting for the noodles to be done.  At any given time, a huge flock of writers will submit their work to literary agents and wait with bated breath for a response.  Alas, how many of us would-be authors turn out to be merely broth.  Bullion flavored water for the lucky writers- the marketable right-place-right-time noodle writers to cook in.  And relatively quickly, just as it only takes a few minutes for ramen noodles to soften in water, the cooking process is done, and the dreaded strainer of rejection is brought, with the pot, to the sink.  Woosh.  Down the sink we, the collective rejected, go.  And the noodles are served onto the plate, the appetite of the general masses is appeased.

Was I wrong, all those years ago, to insist that the broth has no value?  No.  Taste is taste.  And broth had better get used to it or find a way to turn into a noodle.  That's the breaks, baby-cakes.