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Newsletter December 2022
Turning the Corner I’m not big on Best of The Year Lists, End of Year Highlights or Retrospectives, New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day. I have never felt true New Year’s Eve gaiety, and although I love kitsch, have never enjoyed the Rose Parade’s hokey, expired-futurist, aspirational themes or floats. This year’s theme is “Dream. Believe. Achieve” which “celebrat[es] that childhood dreams can become careers that make the world a better place.” Next year’s theme will be “Turning The Corner,” which reminds me of how often an overambitious float festooned entirely in vegetable products glued on by volunteer labor have gotten stuck turning a corner. I’m sort of relieved that this “Dream, Believe, Achieve.” year is almost over. I didn’t finish my book, I believe less than I did at the start, and most of my dreams disturbed me. And 2022 has been mixed for the family. It was The Year Of The Great Headache (benign), The Surprise (benign—don’t worry) Brain Thing, The Year Of Planning The Wedding And Then The Wedding (wonderful), The Year Of The Almost-Fifteen Year-Old Dogs Really Slowing Down (longer walks that cover less ground––no problem), The Year Of Not Writing Fast Enough (me, ugh), The Year of Seeing My Husband’s Novel Become A Terrific Television Series Finally (wonderful), and The Year When The Little Dog Began To Limp. Dream. Believe. Achieve. was also an accidentally reclusive year, a rut year really, the Year When Many Neighbors Moved Away, and when I learned that benign is not exactly benign. I can’t make this blob of a year stop shimmering and shivering long enough to look at it clearly enough to diagnose it. But 2022 was like living inside a moving smudge halted for short periods of clarity that is concluding with the knowledge that one dog––maybe two––yesterday the vet didn’t like the look of a suddenly discovered growth on dog two—will be dying soon. I spent the days before and after Hanukkah and Christmas learning about canine osteosarcoma––always detected-too-late, always painful and aggressive––and checking out friends’ recommended home pet euthanasia companies. I discovered from their websites and videos that all these places employ the paw print to signify The Dead Pet, all promise peace and comfort for the dying-become-deceased and for the people they leave behind, plus a respectful removal via basket or cart, and for various additional charges, some offer clay paw impressions, scattering of individual cremated or aquafied pet-ashes (there’s a big extra fee for that) or a communal scattering in gardens or at sea, or, for a chunk of dough, an actual burial in a pet cemetery. There are also various ash containers are available to mourners that range from a rectangle with a pretty rice-paper exterior to small, pleasingly plump steel urn with paw prints engraved on them and also memorial plaques and paw-impressions. Maybe we are given all these choices because the only one that matters has already chosen us. The dogs do not aspire to be anything, yet they make the world a better place. Though I didn’t know them as puppies––one was dumped at a Home Depot, the other dumped in the alley behind our house––they never strive to inhabit an imaginary future or to improve, nor do they––despite what many dog experts say about dogs and jobs––yearn to move away or have careers. Who they are is not an invention or a construct or a surface thing––they are who they are all the way through––like agates. Their selves are their best selves. Routine-addicts, they would not resolve to overhaul anything if they could except to wish for more of the same. Tons more. In their honor I will follow their examples and will not in the new year embark on a step-by-step program of big, fat, ambitious structural and psychic changes involving carbs, fine-tuning my moods and ginning up my motivation. Next year I just hope to maintain my dignity, to do what I have to without bitching about it, to learn something, to go places and to finish what I’ve started. By the way, Old English meaning of “mood” signifies something deep––not transient––mind, heart, spirit, courage, zeal, will, temper and anger, too. Moods are who we are––hunger, fear, sadness, joy, and pain, anger, love. Right now as I watch the tail end of a winter rain storm and contemplate the limping dog’s forthcoming peaceful, comfortable death and she and her sister-dog sleep and dream-breathe pressed against each other on the dog bed right next to me––I’m grief. Sick or well, young or old, the dogs I love so much are fully here and with me in their full, unfolding moments. I’m here with them––grateful for their peaceful, loving, doting, sincere, funny presences and already mourning the absences waiting for me when I turn the corner and this moment has evaporated like rain. Wishing you and yours a very good new year. Newsletter November, 2022 What was November 24, 2022 like in your world? Thanksgiving here was a little disjointed—no pun here—but nothing caught fire and the best things besides being with our kids and dogs (both will be fifteen on Valentine’s Day) was the salad of bitter greens, candied pecans, and ripe Fuyu persimmons from our neighbor’s tree and having finally arrived at peak southern California fall. The chilly nights pull the stars close and turn Mars into a fat canary diamond. The days shimmer. And, if we’re fortunate enough to receive some winter storms, snow-topped violet mountains will float in blue air heavy with the ghost-scent of blossoming orange groves bulldozed long ago. The coolness and clarity will evaporate fast. So, it feels like a good time to be ending the first part of my new book, RED. RED will feature two female characters named in honor of winning bidders in the Georgia Loves Mystery auction and centers on the murder of an unlikely victim killed in a shocking way. In the first part the murder is discovered, love is professed, a dog is in danger and huge risks are undertaken. Next comes securing the safety of the dog, the consequences of uncovering truth, and the buildup of pressure that love and identifying the murderer will bring. This novel, like Pure and all but one of the Dead series, will be gun-free. Not free of violence––I write crime fiction. I read this morning in The Guardian that, “An estimated 6 million American adults carried a loaded handgun with them daily in 2019, double the number who said they carried a gun every day in 2015.” The number of Americans routinely carrying loaded guns while picking up their kids at school, shopping, walking their dogs or mowing their lawns must be even higher now. Gun violence is a staple of American entertainment, especially mysteries; I thought I’d do without them in mine. Onward to a peaceful month of paper catalogues, fattening TBR piles, string lights, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa candles, gingerbread, fruitcake, latkes and a fresh new year. |