I am making some updates to my blogrolls, here and on my home page. It’s tedious, but it’s been on my to do list for a long time. That’s because I really LOVE to read other friends and writers blogs and share their great ideas too.

However, since I’ve/we’ve started morphing to Facebook and readers and Twitter, I’ve gotten out of the habit of adding my friends on my blogroll here. I think I keep waiting for some kind of miracle of technology to tell me it has some kind of Google Search shortcut to find out all my favorite sites and dropping links to them on my blogroll.

Let’s face it: I am sure that widget exists, but I haven’t found it yet.

–

So anyway, as I was doing that today, I realized I’d broken my blog. If you are one of those people who reads it at the actual site you might have notice the formatting has changed. I had to dismantle it entirely because a plugin I installed started chomping away at its insides. Yes, that is the technical term.

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Which is fine. I really want to update the theme here, but I haven’t been able to decide what I like yet. All of this has made me forget — ARGH! — what I meant to start by telling you which is that I stopped by Amy Oscar’s blog today. I’d been away from her for awhile, and the minute I returned I was in love again.

The design isn’t all that fancy. It’s just her VOICE I love to hear. She sounds so comfortable and regular. It’s very hard to achieve that in writing. You have to practice being yourself ALOT in everyday life. Another friend of mine — Alma Schenider, who has the great cooking blog “Take Back the Kitchen” — also has this sort of easy voice on her blog. Makes you feel very at home. When you meet Alma in real life, she very at home in her own skin too. I haven’t met Amy in real life, but I bet she’s cool like that too.

–

Which is just to say that I keep on forgetting to just chill out in my writing. The month of small stones, though, helped. (Thanks Fiona) And the poetry is helping too.

-

Oh, and in case you are curious what’s a favorite topic of conversation at the dinner table around here, I can tell you: it’s llamas.

All llamas, all the time.

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At the post office, the hated post office, where lines greet me
and awful racks of greeting cards
Line walls, ignored.
The post office and its
Perfume of desperation.
The place where scales and stamps sit in dusty corners
Like aristocrats awaiting their bloody fate.
The post office, doomed, because
It is about
PLACE
and we have no
PLACE anymore. We are no longer
PHYSICAL beings
we are no longer
ACTUAL.

We are
e-people, shoving our lives and our
words
(same thing)
around in
Formless
cyber worlds.

The mailbox
Has no shape
Anymore. It’s
A percentage
Full or
empty.
P.O. stands for
Pissed off, that the
WiFi doesn’t work.

Now’s the time to
Collect the actual.
Postcards from
A storied past.
It will be memorabilia
Hot on the auction block
Soon.

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The following is part of my September BIG QUESTION series, asking “What Does America Want?”. Thanks for thinking, asking, answering, and reading.
–
The therapist tells me that I shout because I want to be heard.

I don’t feel heard.

Therapists are good like that: noticing the target painted on our chests.

Communal Shouting

But isn’t that therapist saying something which is true of all of us? (I’m not trying to deflect here, really. Well, maybe… that’s for another session.)

The pioneers and pilgrims — those white Americans we tend to identify as our “ancestors” — weren’t getting heard. Their needs weren’t getting met. So they pushed on to the next destination. To places wider and opener and “freer”.

Maybe they thought the wide open space around them would cure the angst and desires of their hearts.

Maybe they thought their problems and anxieties of finding a home for their beliefs would blow out in the prairie winds.

Maybe they thought being “new in town” would erase them of their old attachments and labels. In their new country, they’d be cleared of old ideas people had about them, of an identity crisis they carried around. They could sing once again.

Tweet Tweet
Time passes. We are pioneers of the new, virtual frontier and it is endless and empty and ripe for filling up with our voices. No one knows us. No one has any idea who we are. We are brand new. Our brand is new.

At first, aren’t we are the chickadee singing mindlessly? Singing because we’re happy and because the sun came out and warmed us and because we feel unfettered?

But, like always, the awareness seeps in. We see others courting others and followers creeping up like cult-love. Everyone has some advice for someone on something to make us better, faster, and more.  So, we feel our tiny size again. The noise and the chaos deflates us.

Suddenly we are Buzz Lightyear, turning the corner in the toy aisle to face thousands of faces exactly like our own. And maybe even better versions of ourselves.

We Want to Be Heard

Once upon a time, we journaled on a piece of paper, in a book that never left our side. Just a journal to keep track of the day and its mundanity. Friends seen, dinners eaten, seasons changing.

Then, we wrote letters to friends and family faraway, just to keep their memory firm. They replied, a long time later.

Then the electricity came and made our lives “easier.” It moved everything and everyone around faster. In the noise, we spotted everything we desired and chased it. Meanwhile, friends rushed away with time. No one stopped to hear anything anymore.

Between all the new conversations, we wait alone. We wait alone, in the company of our passions and fears. It’s the alone we are interested in sharing, eradicating, comprehending. It’s the alone we notice and try not to notice.

So, then we shout or drink and then shout. Because want to be heard. We are pilgrims in a wild frontier, uncertain of the path into the forest of tomorrow.

I wish others would hear me. I shout imperfectly, because I am unsure of my footing and myself.

I think I am not alone.

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Today on “House Hunters International,” a family of four from near-Toledo were seeking a vacation home in St. Croix. They were a nice family: he an ER doc. She a nurse (now SAHM of a 9 and 14 y.o). They needed an escape from their designer, 5400 sq ft. home in the most wealthy (ish) nation in the world.

What does America Want?

Less.

It doesn’t actually know this.

It doesn’t actually believe this when told.

But it is true. America wants less.

It Desires More. 

But that Desire for “something more” is a bottomless pit of dissatisfaction.

Less.

Less: work, stuff, noise.

(The family from Ohio wants that too. They have everything in the U.S. they could dream of, but now that they’ve fulfilled their desires, they still hear the siren call of less: to something quieter. Simpler. Where they can hear the waves, they can walk to the market, and where their sons can share a room. And with a few less throw pillows.)

Question: What would you like less of?

–
This post is From September’s BIG QUESTION series, asking: “What does America want?” Please feel free to answer at will, here, there and anywhere!

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Google+ is now a part of my life. I am mostly thrilled to add it to my collection of ways to communicate with people I know and don’t know online. These also include:

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Picasa
• Flickr
• WordPress
• Blogger
• Facebook
• Gmail
• Digg

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This heat has
No name at all until
You remind yourself
He. Is. There.
Exit the climate-controlled
Iceblock
Bedroom
Only to hit
The Wall.

Day 11, A River of Stones

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small squares hold
together life
tiny reminders
in brilliant hues–
one thin strip of
sticky
soon wears
away

Day 3, A River of Stones

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I admit it. I have a serious Life-Crush on Tara.

It’s Ok. I am sure she doesn’t mind. I mean, after all, her business is to make people want to feel that gorgeous feeling of love… not just for her, but for ourselves.

There are just those certain kinds of people in the world, aren’t there? The ones in our lives who make us feel lovely.

They walk into the room, and all the self-consciousness, all the questions about who we are or who we SHOULD be just disappear.

In fact, what I like best about People I Love is how perfectly “out” of myself I feel. I turn toward the love between us, which shines like a beautiful ever-changing star wherever we go together.

That’s why I tweet, actually. I love to pop over to Twitter, just to get a glimpse of what the lightmakers are mumbling about today. What zen light is AmyOscar up to? Tara, have you had your coffee and your revelation yet today? Will ImtheQ ever find happiness or the perfect taco? What small stones have Fiona and Kaspalita skipped today?

I walk the line between what is healthy injection of light in my day, and what is distraction. But in those moments when I’ve forgotten myself and feel wonderful, I know I’m doing OK.

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I was thrilled that Fiona Robyn and Kaspalita selected one of my small stones to be published in their beautiful anthology… and here it is!

pay attention: a river of stones is available is three formats:

• a stunning collectible hardcover (of course, I willsign your copy for you!);
• lusciously affordable paperback;
• and easy-peasy, ultra-portable, great-for-the-subway and tube e-reader download.

What is a Small Stone, anyway?

According to writer Fiona Robyn, it’s “a polished moment of paying proper attention. Writing them helps people to engage with the world around them.”

And the book?

Every day throughout January 2011, hundreds of writers joined writer/editors Fiona and Kaspa in the challenge to write a daily piece, a very small piece – think haiku/tweet/small poem – each one an observation from their day, a moment in time.

More than 350 established and complete-beginner writers created thousands of stones. About 320 of them are included in this book, along with other wonderful pieces of writing on the practice of writing with attention.

You can read more about how to write a small stone here.

“Details create the big picture.”
– Sanford I. Weill

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I’ll be the first to say that I love James Franco. His mute performances on SNL skit “What Up With That?” always tickle me.

But let’s be real. He wasn’t the REAL star of the Oscar duo last night.

There’s going to be all sorts of mumbling and grumbling about the Oscar hosting duo in the news today. The producers want to keep the prestige of the penultimate awards show, but the keep glancing over at all the fun everyone is having at the Golden Globes and think: I want to be the funny guy!

They tried too hard this year, trying to bow to Oscar greats like Kirk Douglas while roping in the youth. Big surprise. The split personality didn’t work.

What did work?

Anne Hathaway.

Although it was hard to tell because of the many flubs and blunders of the producers who were  very busy trying to make everyone — including themselves — the star of the show. (Did you you see one of those producers? That weird little guy that ABC’s anchor Robin Roberts interviewed right before the beginning of the show? Spielberg mopped his brow. That should have been cut.)

Rule of writing: write for your audience. Which I suppose is a tough one, when your audience is, well 1 billion people worldwide.

Except that this audience does have something in common. The audience of the Oscars is people of ALL ages who love Hollywood.

They love the established stars, and they love the glamour, and they love to see the up-and-comers getting their foot in the game.

They loved it when Cuba Gooding Jr went madly insane and won his place in the establishment, they love it when perennial nominee Randy Newman sings — again — and when old standbys like Jeff Bridges make career comebacks.

They love that Justin Timberlake made his move to the screen and that there always seems to be one young ingenue amazing us every year.  In 1999 is was Natalie Portman… look where she is now! We can hardly wait to follow the careers of Jennifer Lawrence and Hallie Steinfeld.

They love Hollywood so much, they sat through YEARS of Debbie Allen’s choreography without a mutiny.

Why is it so hard for the producers to write a beautiful, fun evening with this in mind?

The evening would have worked better if they didn’t try so hard to “appeal” to people, because that never works. Anyone who has every TRIED to impress a girl or boy they like knows just who well that works. (Hollywood should know that too since it’s the plot of several trillion romance and teen films).

It’s the Host, Stupid

The reason Ricky Gervais works, the reason that Billy Crystal worked (and Steve Martin too, though in a different way) and Bob Hope in his time, is they are truly great at what they do. Funny people who took their job — to entertain for the evening– seriously, and who contributed to writing an evening that isn’t about apps and Twitter, but about great showmanship.

Get a performer — young or old — who connects with the audience through humor and a flaying love of film and Hollywood– and you  have your host.

Why were they flying the obviously pre-occupied Yale phD student James Franco across the country when Anne Hathway, clearly, had the job covered?

On stage by herself, she looked comfortable, she ad-libbed with finesse, and she had the beauty and the charm of Gracie Allen. Next to James Franco, the chemistry we expected (of Burns and Allen) was empty and absent.

Anne Hathaway filled the spotlight just fine. Next year, the Academy should do what they should have this year: give her a solo gig and leave the lame iPhone app jokes out. But they probably won’t, which will be their loss.

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