Devouring ‘The Glass Castle’
Somehow I knew that when I got sucked in by the first line of Jeannette Walls’ memoir, The Glass Castle, just this morning to the point where I blogged about it (see two entries below this one), I wouldn’t be sleeping again until it was finished.
Voila.
I don’t even know what to say about this book that hasn’t already been said. It completely lives up to the hype. It’s incredible, a combination of a mind-blowing story and a compelling voice. How Jeannette Walls overcame her life circumstances is beyond my comprehension.
As a writer, I must say I appreciated the choice of opening the book in New York, because had I not known it was going to end up there I might have had to put it down. Page after page I couldn’t believe what I was reading. It was overwhelming, really, and I wasn’t even living it.
I can’t recall the last time I read a book in a day. That speaks for itself.
Making peace with the boob tube
Anyone who knows me knows I love to watch TV, but don’t always feel great about it. A guilty pleasure, and all that. A few weeks ago, when Cablevision and Scripps (Food Network and HGTV) were in a contract stalemate, I wrote about how it was a sign to watch TV less.
Well, this week the common cold took me down a few notches in energy and it’s been a TV extravaganza over here — NFL playoffs, Big Love, Yes Man, Rosie O’Donnell on Oprah, What Not To Wear, MTV’s The Buried Life.
That’s why today’s Game Plan is all about Making Peace With the Boob Tube.
Love at first line
I just began reading The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls — on my must-read list for a while now — and I couldn’t help but think of a writing workshop I attended a while back. We learned about the importance of the first line in a book, the kind that draws the reader in.
I think Walls has it down:
“I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a Dumpster.”
Yeah, you have me.
Leno on Oprah
Interesting to watch Jay Leno being interviewed by Oprah. She really got in there, as she is wont to do, but I think both of them are in the dark about why people are down on Leno.
As I said in yesterday’s Game Plan column about Conan, I don’t watch any of the late-night talk shows. At least not that genre. I’m all over Comedy Central or sitcom reruns late at night.
However, as an objective outsider, when the story broke about the whole NBC maneuver it seemed to me it was already a debacle. There was little or no mention of Conan’s poor ratings on The Tonight Show and the new scenario was presented as something that originated from Leno’s demise in prime time. Simple, really, why people took sides. By the time the news of Conan’s ratings seeped out, the frenzy was well under way and there was no way to get the genie back in the bottle.
That said, Oprah’s interview with Leno went a long way in explaining what TV folks in-the-know already seemed to get — that it came down to a business decision. And a poorly handled one at that.
Conan’s American Dream
I have never watched Conan O’Brien or Jay Leno. I caught David Letterman a few times back in the ’90s. No Jimmy, either Kimmel or Fallon, graces my TV after midnight. I’m more likely to be watching a Seinfeld rerun at that hour.
So what I’m about to write has nothing to do with allegiances or who’s to blame for the talk show debacle that unfolded over at NBC.
But as a life coach I am compelled to pause for a moment and reflect on the parting words of Conan O’Brien on his last show. After reading an article about it I became intrigued, so I watched the clip online and here’s my takeaway: The next time I have a client who wants to know what it means to have perspective, like big-picture, healthy, adult perspective, I’ll tell him to view that clip.
Read the rest of today’s Game Plan: Conan’s American Dream
Banning Merriam-Webster?
So happy to see cooler heads prevailed in a school district in Southern California. It seems Menifee Union banned Webster’s Dictionary in fourth and fifth grade classrooms after a parent complained of a child reading the definition of ‘oral sex.’ Apparently the ban has already been lifted after much outcry.
Geez, the dictionary? Isn’t that a really good place for a kid to go for information?
Somewhere D.H. Lawrence and Henry Miller had to be laughing their butts off.
Channeling art
Saw my friend and poet, James Nave, on Friday and he “channeled” this poem right on the spot from a necklace I was wearing, a treasure I picked up in a flea market in Rome.
Tears do not know their names. They fall because they must.
Dreams swallow air, become mist, then vapor, then swamp.
Inside all of this, angles tumble like dominos, add nothing
to everything. Why can’t you march around in a circle forever?
Possible? Impossible?
True? Untrue?
Forced? Released?
Dreams are desires wrapped up in bundles of cotton.
I wipe the field clean; brown earth spreads to the horizon.
These are the days when the sun knows my skin and my skin is wet
and oily, back bare to the air that breathes 24 hours a day.
It is, after all a circle. My tears do not know their names.
The angles stand up again. The dominos are right.
The ivory keys play long night songs. It’s blues time along
the Mississippi. We’re going to walk that river hand in hand.
When we say Amen, somebody will say Amen back.
And the river takes us to the sea.
Life’s wreckage
Somehow, as I watched George Clooney’s character in Up in the Air do his work laying off people, images of the disaster in Haiti flashed into my mind. It all came pouring out in today’s Game Plan — Emerging from Life’s Wreckage.
Against Hesitation
The beginning part of this poem by Charles Rafferty is in the February issue of O, The Oprah Magazine. Loved it enough to find the whole thing:
AGAINST HESITATION
If you stare at it long enough
the mountain becomes unclimbable.
Tally it up. How much time have you spent
waiting for the soup to cool?
Icicles hang from January gutters
only as long as they can. Fingers pause
above piano keys for the chord
that will not form. Slam them down
I say. Make music of what you can.
Some people stop at the wrong corner
and waste a dozen years hoping
for directions. I can’t be them.
Tell every girl I’ve ever known
I’m coming to break her door down,
that my teeth will clench
the simple flower I only knew
not to give . . . Ah, how long did I stand
beneath the eaves believing the storm
would stop? It never did.
And there is lightning in me still.
Working my way to hopeful
A multi-lingual friend who has been watching international news coverage of the earthquake in Haiti glowed with optimism about humanity when I saw him at a recent social occasion.
“It makes me hopeful,” he said.
I think I’m jealous.
Most who know me would agree I can be an almost sickeningly persistent glass half-full person. My life coaching clients bank on it. And yet, despite the fact that so many of my fellow citizens have stepped up and that there is a steady stream of sweet stories coming from Haiti, I can’t shake the handful of disturbing reactions I’ve heard and read.
Read the rest of today’s Game Plan column: Working My Way to Hopeful.
