Purple America

And other meditations on Overcoming Differences, Relationships, Politics, Fear, and Peace.

I’m starting up blogging again with a vengeance. This is the new me. The blogging me. The blogging without fear me. I am going to try something new for the rest of 2009. I’m going to get over my need to polish my work before I publish it, if only for a blog. I know it might seem odd to y’all that someone like me, who has published a book about her personal life, would be reluctant to “reveal” herself, but there it is.

The truth is Love in Condition Yellow is actually a fairly polished view of my private life. By polished I don’t mean “gilded,” but rather that I worked long and hard to get it “right,” in the sense of tone and three-dimensionality.

But I’m not going to worry about that here! You will get to observe the process of me honing down to an idea I might write a longer piece about. (There is a saying by Confucius related to sausage-making that may apply here…)

But enough blowing smoke. The writers among you know that one way to figure out what you want to write about next is to do “morning pages.” These may or may not happen in the morning, but morning is a good time to do them. Actually anytime you can get your sorry butt to do them is a VERY GOOD TIME to do them. Morning Pages are a sort of data dump of your thoughts. You put on a timer for five or ten or fifteen minutes and then you type. There is only one rule. You are not allowed to stop typing. You cannot lift your fingers from the keyboard. You cannot let them stop moving. Even if you are typing, “blah blah blah.” Or “oh my god, who wants to hear this? this is so naïve, what are you thinking, going into the maw of American politics, and talking about Purple America, trying to explain the left to the right and the right to the left. Girl, they are going to chew you up and spit you out!”

From the blog I will refine a nugget or two for a column that I am hoping they will still want me to do over at www.military.com. The Editor invited me but that was back in July and although I notified him I couldn’t start till September, I haven’t heard back. ‘Course out of about twenty emails I sent Ed., he only answered one or two and both of our phone conversations got cut short because of calls from the White House. BTW, Ollie North will be my fellow-columnist. But (I'm pretending)I’ve got no fear. Purple America, baby!

Fantasy Writing

Oh what a bad blogger I've been. Too many ups and downs. Too many urgent small things to attend to. But more than anything, I've been too busy desperately trying to crank my actual experience of publishing my first book over to the fantasy experience I've been subconsciously tending lo these years as an emerging writer. You know the one - where I go on Oprah and the book rockets to the top of the best seller list?

I had such an amazing launch party: Kitty at Books Inc is a totally class act; there was a standing room only crowd; my talk went well. Kitty told me afterward that we sold more books in relation to the number of folks attending, than she has ever seen in her ten years of bookselling! The former Oakland Police Chief was there. Police and Army friends were there. My old friends from Stanford protesting days were there. I couldn't have felt more launched, and in a very post-partisan fashion.

Writers have a joke about the anticipation for one's book to launch: they call it "the calm before the calm." Which is not to say that I am calm. In my heart it's been more the storm before the storm. I have been waiting for the paparazzi to start banging on my door. I don't know how many people have told me I belong on Oprah. And I don't disagree. I think the book's story of a post-partisan love affair between a peace activist and a soldier/cop is particularly relevant right NOW in our post-Bush world. I think "love in condition yellow" is a great personal philosophy and not a bad basis for our foreign policy either. But Oprah, alas, is not calling back. She is in fact, on summer break. And here's the reality my book has launched into:

Many bricks-and-mortar book stores are closing their doors.
People are reading less books.
There are more and more books being published.
Newspapers are being shuttered.
There are fewer and fewer outlets for book reviews and features.
The internet is providing some outlets but it is more fragmented than in the days of yore.
The vast majority of books sell a small amount of copies (average: 2000 copies), while a tiny few sell an enormous amount.
There is almost no middle ground.

I have dutifully checked my NYT Book Review, and oddly, I am not on the best-seller list. The truth is, I don't really know how my book is selling. There are still hundreds of bookstores in the U.S. and they order books but can return them if they don't sell. So we won't really know for months the true numbers. The sometimes frustrating thing about bookselling, is NO ONE CAN PREDICT WHEN A BOOK WILL DO WELL. Some books get tons of coverage and nevertheless tank. Some books get almost no media attention and sell well through word of mouth. It's an alchemy no one can measure or quantify or dissect, and I realize I'm glad there is an element of magic and mystery to it.

When I evict my Oprah/NYT best-seller list fantasy, then I start to see how cool this has all been. First, like I said, I had an amazing launch. Then the book was selected by the American Booksellers Association as a June Notable Book, putting me in the company of talented writers like Walter Mosely, Andrew Sean Greer, Mary Roach, and Rick Atkinson. I did my first radio show, Mornings With Jeff Schechtman, KVON's public affairs show, (kind of a FORUM/Michael Krasny for the wine country. You can listen to it on my News & Events page. I've hit the blogosphere with a feature in Slate's new women's magazine, Double X and a blog post in MilitaryOneSource's BlogBrigade. And more exciting things are around the corner: appearances on KRON TV on June 21st, on West Coast LIVE on July 4th and a feature in the SF Chronicle Magazine on July 5th.

The wierdest twist is when I do get media coverage I can't say it makes me "happy" like it's supposed to in the fantasy. It makes me excited, for sure, but also kind of scared and nervous. I guess that's why they call these fantasies fantasies. They ain't real! The real thing is a whole hodgepodge of emotions. Like life.

What I try to focus on are the wonderful, supportive comments and encouragement of my family, friends, and readers, who relate to the book in so many different ways: A Marine dad came up to me at the launch and thanked me for disspelling stereotypes about servicemembers. He says his son is a Marine, and also a meditating vegan! Civilian women have written me about how they relate to overcoming differences in their marriages and families that have nothing to do with the military, but they related to the book. There was a comment attached to my last blog post (you can read the Literary Mama Q&A she is referring to on my site here) from someone who lives in a muslim country and found my ideas relevant. That's the real joy of this experience, connecting to other people who are sharing ideas and working to overcome differences. So thank you to all of you for keeping me grounded!

Alley Oop!

It’s time to really blog. Actually, with Love in Condition Yellow coming out this May, it’s actually past time. I’m late. So I’m going to start. ANY MINUTE NOW. I am on the very BRINK of blogging. I am putting my toe over the edge. I am doing what skiers do before sliding over the lip of a cornice into a steep chute. I am taking off my skis, venturing toward the edge and whacking my ski pole over, to see if the edge will hold or crack.

Thwack. Thwack.

It’s just that… that… I’m not sure what will happen. Even though my writing group has given me no less than THREE MILLION good ideas on what to blog about, something is stopping me. One expert blogger said, “It’s simple. You blog three times a week. Monday about your marriage and family, Wednesday about politics, and Friday about the process of writing and publishing a book.

Sounds great. In theory.

Here’s all I think about lately: my son’s teacher, the fact that she hurt his feelings on a Thursday back in late January when she questioned the proportions in a drawing of his father. The next day, when I phoned the school office to ask for an appointment, I learned she’d gotten rear-ended on the freeway. I squelched my decidedly unchristian feeling of relief, when I heard she would be out for at least four weeks. This week I heard she will be back, definitely, in two weeks. And while I am glad to hear she is doing better, I am TERRIFIED. Because this means I am going to have to follow through on the appointment and talk to her. What if she gets angry and hostile? What if she can’t see my son the way I do? What if I have to transfer him to a new class? What if I have to take him out of school, start a letter-writing campaign, give speeches in front of the School Board? I’m looking over the edge, What if it’s icy? What if people don’t like my blog? What if people don’t like my book? What if people don’t like ME?

So you stand there while the wind comes up the ridge in swirls and you yell something to your buddy, “are you going?” and he nods and yells “just about” in a garble and takes a turn at Thwack, Thwack. This is supposedly checking for avalanche but really it’s just a cool way to stall. To be honest, I feel a confidence and freedom on skis that I have never felt stating an unpopular opinion to another person. The fear at the edge of a cornice is not nearly the shaky gut-sick feeling I have imagining telling someone something that might make them angry.

Maybe that’s why I married a police officer/soldier with whom I hardly agree about anything. So I can practice. Also because I love the way he is not afraid of interpersonal conflict, the way he stands up and says, “STOP! Or you’re going to have to deal with ME.”

Through our marriage, I’ve come to see that it’s not differences that are the problem but rather, the way we express them. We don’t have to agree. We both just need to be heard. I got a neat email today from Kidpower, about communicating with integrity, about overcoming the tendency to speak badly to other people about the person you are in conflict with, instead of confronting the problem directly. So I’m not the only one who finds this difficult! My husband is kind overall about my fears, but occasionally gets frustrated. “Troop!“ he steamed today, “That meeting’s going to be fine. And if it’s not, we’ll handle it. For godsakes, wrap your shit tight!”

Another way to say, “Wrap your shit tight!” might be the way Ambrose Redmoon put it, "Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear."

I have a memory that sparkles around the edges: a bluebird day, sunny skies, fresh dusting of snow. My friend Ethan and I tucked off the Alpine Bowl chair, stayed high along the ridge, and hiked up the knoll to where we could drop into Keyhole. Two young men were standing at the edge just below us, skis off, thwack thwacking. I’d seen the conditions when I traversed the ridge, and everything looked perfect to me. I saw the beautiful run I was going to have, pictured it in my mind. And I didn’t even take my skis off. I didn’t even stop. I just launched right over.

When Ethan caught up, I pulsed with calm exhilaration. “What about the landing?” he asked. “Weren’t you worried you’d miss that first turn and hit the rock?” I told him what for that split second I had understood: that I could make a conscious choice to look toward the possibilities, instead of toward my fears.

I talked to the principal on the phone today, and she is arranging the meeting. Here’s to embracing it as an opportunity. Who knows, maybe the book thing will go well too. Maybe I can even blog. Two, even three times a week. So no more thwacking. I’m walking back to my skis and clicking in. I’m giving the thumbs-up sign to my buddy as I re-arrange my goggles. Deep breath, the snow is perfect wind-blown, a push and a half-skate to get some momentum, and here I go, flying over the edge.

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