Permutations

First the DVD player was broken, but then it wasn't. Then the (good) camera was broken, and then it wasn't. I took the laptop to the library and lost the piece to the universal adapter that lets you plug it in. Two return trips, several hours and many hairs pulled out later, a man found it on a window sill.

For the first time in my volunteering experience, one of our regular seniors has left us forever. His wife put a bag on the chair he used to sit in to occupy his empty seat.

Yesterday, I applied for an hourly job...but think they will feel I am too old, too experienced, too inexperienced, too something. Last night I dreamed I was offered a a position in my former profession, 60 miles and an appalling commute away. This was fine because in the dream we lived closer. I woke up remembering we don’t.

Giving thanks for all that is good; I’m taking a big breath here and calling it a week.

Happy Weekend.

2009 Revisited

One of the benefits of anniversary-ing yourself over the course of authoring a blog, is you can read back over time to assess if your writing has improved. I’ve been doing that periodically, which helps this week because a goal lurks in front of me and I need to focus on it rather than Middle Passage today. Therefore please understand as I link to a post from a year ago, which happens to be one I enjoyed writing then, and like reading now. Since it was written back in the days when I wrote to myself, oops, um, I mean in my days of limited readership, I’m hoping to you all, this will read like new.

With no further ado, please enjoy: Eat These Words.

If you find things you’d change in this old post, I’d love to hear your suggestions. How about you? Do you re-read your blog posts?

A Second Chance

On Tuesday, I discovered our good, two-year-old Nikon D-40 is broken. A four-hour visit to the camera shop the next day suggested it may require a costly repair. “Costly” these days means, “Wait until the funds are in the bank account,” so I’m off for a second opinion today. For the moment we are down to one camera. Our daughter’s Cannon PowerShot takes a decent photo, if you know how to select the settings. I don’t.

Last night, before the sun went down, the wind shifted and the warm Jello air we slogged through all weekend disappeared. Earlier in the day my husband and I were sure we’d have to christen the second-hand air-conditioner we appropriated for our bedroom, but by nighttime, the breeze wafting through the open windows led to a cool change and an easy sleep.

The upshot of that meant I was up walking early this morning, having jumped out of bed to clear skies and a gut conviction that a perfect photo could be had on a day like today. Bolting out the door at 6:45, I grabbed the Cannon. My instinct was correct. Under a sun that still felt the brush of the treetops, a flock of white egrets stood knobby-kneed in the low-tide marsh across the road from where my favorite two boats are anchored. Hiding behind a bush and holding my breath, I waited until one elegant bird stood long enough to form his reflection on still water, then released the shutter. I caught another bird hunching its shoulders prior to cracking the surface with a needle-beak. He emerged shaking his head, with a silver minnow flapping.

Already delighted by the morning’s digital offerings, I rounded a corner where another stunning water view pans out. More egrets assembled there, long necks reaching and plucking at the mud flats in front of the sleek lines of a sixteen-foot wooden dory, a boat that wasn’t there last week. This time I crept through the long grass by the water, edging closer, taking picture after picture of the birds feeding in the foreground with the graceful boat bobbing behind; thrilled by this new subject—and the award-winning shots I was convinced would be the result. Ah, photography. It is almost as humbling as writing.

When I grabbed the camera earlier, I assumed the function button was set to “Auto.” Since I’m unfamiliar with how to change things, I left it that way. In spite of a growing compulsion to record my surroundings over the last few years, I’ve never taken a photography class. After today, my guess is that the first lesson would be to “check your equipment." I didn’t, and as I downloaded 27 pictures later this morning, all those beautiful birds appeared over-exposed, cut off, blurry or missing completely. The sloped necks and Ed Sullivan walks, the jerk-kneed tiptoes as they picked through the shallows, that clean new boat swinging behind them on a light breeze—none of it came out—a disappointment that brought me close to tears before offering up today’s Middle Passages exercise—

Take a seat at the computer Liza. Using the software located inside your brain, build language to describe the scenes in those failed pictures for your blog readers. Attempt to Photoshop these images from your real life into words.

Then idiot, locate the instruction book and learn how to use the damn camera.

This Week in Review

I haven’t written a week in review in a looong time, and I’ll be honest. Today I do so because a few bits and pieces on which I feel the need to report continue to pinball across my brain, but I lack the energy to start a full-blown blog post at 3:19 on a Friday afternoon. So as they say, you get what you get.

For those of you who have been wondering about Gladys and the Call of the Wild, the mystery is no closer to being solved. Every day, at one minute and twenty second intervals, from 5:15 a.m. to 8:15 p.m., recorded bird sounds emanate from our mysterious neighbor’s open window. The man who lives there has not turned up at all. It's been going on for close to a month now and we are trying to ignore the repetitive noise, meeting with fair success other than that first predawn blurt through our open windows. Demonstrating keen restraint, I continue to bite down on the, err, vocabulary, that is wont to crop up upon being awakened with such cruel disregard, but tomorrow is Saturday. All bets are off.

When you finally devise a little plan that might make good use of your photography/boat obsession, you can guarantee that something computer-related inside the camera will malfunction. Badly.

Further, if you acquiesce to an offer of a second-hand air conditioner for the bedroom…the first you’ve deigned to own in your entire life, you can be sure that about the time you go to bed, a cool wind will blow in.

If you go to the post office to mail the books to the winners of Wednesday's “not contest” and the clerk asks: “Did you write a book?” and you answer “Not yet” without giving it a thought, the word “yet” is lush and full and drips with promise and optimism.

There is nothing, I repeat nothing, more heartwarming than lolling back to sleep after that first annoying wake up, to be surprised at 6:20 by breakfast in bed, an idea conceived and executed the teenager who usually doesn’t rise until noon, and served to you 10 seconds before you remember it is your birthday.

And the Winners Are...

What? You didn’t know? You haven’t seen it tweeted, FaceBooked, haven't read a blog about it, or or caught it flashing in multiple sidebars? Where have you been? Just kidding. The information I’m about to unveil doesn’t exist out there. The great “not contest” of 2010 resides right here on Middle Passages Lane.

Call the following a demonstration of gratitude, though the term “not contest” has more pizzazz than a boring old “thank you”--and seeing by the time most of you read this, it will be my birthday, na, na, na, na, na, na, I get to name this particular celebration in blog-land whatever I want. So there.

Hmmm. Confused? Don’t blame you. Need me to elucidate? Sure, I can do that.

Look at my sidebar. Believe it or not, the feet-dragging tortoise that is the number of Middle Passages followers, finally managed to lumber over 100 before the author stiffened from arthritis and was forced to check into a nursing home. I know, as I write this, the number is actually 101, but one of those followers is me. Don’t bother asking how I managed to follow my own blog because I’m clueless and since I don’t know how I did it in the first place, I sure as heck don’t know how to undo it. If you do, please share. Anyway, I digress.

Apparently it’s de rigueur to hold a contest now that I’ve reached 100 followers, or have written my 368th post, or tapped three times on the window, and, in so doing, I should ask my current readers to blog, FaceBook and Tweet about said contest, so that by this time next week, Middle Passages will have 200 followers all eying "the prize.” Most times, I’m all about conformity, but here I demur, cuz folks, slow and steady and all that, ey wot? And besides, I like readers who aren’t in it for the give-aways. You know, the ones that actually stick around and, um, read?

Don’t get me wrong; I’m grateful for every Middle Passage follower and commenter, but the bulk of the credit for my forward momentum over the last year goes to several loyal, helpful and inspiring individuals through whose caring comments, I continue to grow as a writer.

Thus my “not contest”--structured to reward any three readers who meet simple guidelines, but statistically weighted toward those who have been commenting since the beginning, or, ahem, since last August, which was when I finally began to receive comments on a regular basis.

As such, behold the “not selection process” which, since I get to make the rules, has already occurred:

• I tallied up every Middle Passages comment since August 1, 2009 and July 21, 2010 (Here is where you are invited to say: “Get a life, Liza.”)

• and, entered anyone who commented over five times during that period.

• Every comment equaled one chance. For example, if you commented 27 times over the specified time period, imagine 27 raffle tickets with your name on them, added to a drawing.

Three “not winners” were selected in an unscientific process today--i.e., my daughter shook up a container filled with white slips of paper with names printed on them, closed her eyes and pulled out three.

Now, we get to the fun part.

What is a “not contest” if it doesn’t offer “not prizes?” Not much, right?

So here’s the deal. Each “not winner” will not receive...just kidding again, they will receive one of the following three books, all of which by the way, I have not read.

1) The Pocket Muse. Ideas & Inspirations for Writing, by Monica Wood
2) The Faith of a Writer. Life, Craft, Art, by Joyce Carol Oats
3) The Courage to Write (How Writers Transcend Fear), by Ralph Keyes

The first prize winner will select their choice of books. The second prize winner chooses next, and the third prize winner will receive the remaining book. Clear enough?

Now, a drum roll, please.

The winners are:

First Prize: Jody Hedlund of Author Jody Hedlund.

Second Prize: Glenn from Differences with the Same Likeness

Third Prize: Tabitha Bird from Through My Eyes.

Jody, may I ask you to please email me with your book selection and an address where you would like it sent? Tabitha and Glenn, please email me your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd preferences in books. Depending on which book Jody chooses, I’ll do my best to honor your choices and if you also, would send addresses to my email, I’ll mail your books off to you. Tab, I’m fine with the overseas deal.

I hope this “not contest” helps in some way to convey my appreciation to all of you who read Middle Passages. Aside from the three folks above, there are 32 other readers who have offered consistent feedback; some over long months and some more recently. I know too, there is a quiet group in the background cheering me on. You all know who you are. In my mind, every one of you is a first place winner.

Monday, 7:18 a.m.

As many of you know, I am obsessed with the view of these boats and suffer from a compulsion to take their pictures--which ratcheted up a few degrees once I discovered that a house near where they are moored has gone on the market. I have no idea who owns these pretty dinghies, so have visited them more lately, understanding that if someday I stroll down the hill and they've disappeared, my little world will be a less pretty place. In light of this, you get a sampling from today, taken with my daughter's Cannon PowerShot pocket camera during a 3.2 mile walk.

I promised myself that I'd focus (no pun intended) on a project other than Middle Passages this week, which come to think of it, hovers dangerously close to the obsession line too. So today, in place of a full MP post, you get these.

As it were—As it is

On the train again, forward-facing this time, clad in flip-flops and Capri’s, though shadowed by a former self, blazers with mother-of-pearl buttons, sneakers to navigate the city—this one knew block-by-block shortcuts, charging through revolving doors and marble lobbies—long before security guards monitored every skyscraper, she could turn a ten-minute walk into five.

She accompanied me across the inlaid floors of a rehabbed rail station—pounding down cement steps, folding her arms in the hot subway while waiting to switch lines—then appeared again in the woman who stood with one hooked finger circling the railing, swaying as she read her library book, oblivious to the train’s bucks and squeals.

Above ground a few minutes later, she peered through the door of a pub (still in business!) grinning at the reminder of a late night spent mocking a fake accent—he claimed New Zealand—she maintained New Jersey and toasted victory at last call when he confessed: “Philadelphia.”

Exiting the memory, I slowed the pace, peering up to immaculate brownstones—at the flowering impatience, the trailing vinca tumbling from wrought iron window boxes—dogwoods and pink hydrangeas crowding tiny garden squares enclosed in ornate fences. Up ahead, she looked back at me—keep up, hurry, hurry, but I didn't.

Instead I climbed the stairs, buzzed at the entrance and watched her fade away—striding down the street with all the other young professionals, fingers fondling I-phones and Blackberries, ear buds planted, cutting across traffic—her glazed eyes seeing nothing but the destination—the place at the end of the journey.