If you know me well...

...you likely also know I am treading mysterious waters right now. Interesting waters.


But I have not yet figured out how deep they are.


I will let you know when I figure out...


If they are oceans...


Or puddles.


(though regarding "depth" one might do well to remember how, at the end of "Dawn Treader", Reepicheep found his destiny in the shallowest waters. That they were shallow was not limiting for Reepicheep; rather, the shallows forced him to move on alone... into a whole new world...)


Who determines depth anyway?


**


In other news, ands speaking of new waters, I'm teaching now at Georgia Perimeter College. And really having fun. I wonder if my students have found this blog yet... Hmm...?


**


In still other news, I like the looks of THIS!

Unintended rant...

You know...


When Mose was born, I got a lot of advice about parenting....


But nobody said this...


It's really just a lot of fun.


It is. It so totally is.


Work too, of course, but so much fun. So many laughs every day. I don't mean to be a cheeseball, but it's nice to hang out all afternoon in your diaper, making fart noises and giggling, and eating avocado and dancing in the kitchen, and chewing on the dog.


**


In other news, I have been thinking about how little scenester-life helps your art. About how most of the people I know who spend lots of energy (and/or money)on appearance are too absorbed with their highlights and their shoes to write or paint or anything.


(this does not mean all cool people are lame. Some people are just cool... and I'm a little jealous of them, but that's not a reflection on them. Some folks just look good. And some people really LOVE to get dressed, have fun with it, don't judge others ot take it too seriously. I'm not talking about them. Or about people who make clothing as art. It's the stress-heads who only like other fashionistas... ugh.)


I have also been thinking about how little passive agression helps your sanity. About how the most miserable people I know are "controlled" but also controlling. People who think they can manipulate the world around them through means besides direct communication. Careful plotting/plodding.


Sometimes, they're right, and often they're successful... but they're almost always unhappy.


Yep. Some people are totally lame. If you are passive agressive, and it takes you a really long time to get dressed to go to the grocery store, we probably shouldn't be friends.


**


There is a relationship, now that I consider it, between these two posts, which I thought unconnected at first.


This (frustration with "the scene") has always been true for me, but now the intensity of my feelings has ballooned. As a mom, I REALLY have no time for hipsters, and I really have no patience for people who don't say what they mean.


However dumb I thought passive agressive hipsters were before, now they just seem WAY worse. Dangerous, petty, bullshit.


If you think your drippy vintage earrings are an important issue for the world, and your laughs are guarded, nervous... if you can't tell me what you really feel... I wish you well.


BUT...


You might just want to stay away from me (and my baby).

The loveliest thing...

I made a new friend, a really good new friend. I can already tell. Lindy!


She writes, and lives a block from me!!!


Now, Atlanta is a lot smaller than it was.


And check this out! Lindy knows John, someone I knew in Chattanooga, many years back. They went to summer camp together!


Well yeah, of course they did.


Thank you, universe. You've outdone yourself once again.

Tonight in NY!!!

There will be much rocking, and rolling. Not to mention some slow-jam, acoustic-ish murder ballads. Some organ, some accordian.


That's right, my husband is playing tonight!!!


8 PM at the Ace of Clubs, with his band, No River City.


Mine's the bass player. Always the bass player. Bass players are best. Front men have egos, and solo dudes are fussy, and drummers are... well, ok, drummers are pretty cool too.


I dig the rhythm section. I've only dated the rhythm section, ever.


But get yourself down to the bar, and I promise you won't be sorry. They're so so so good, so GOOD. For real, yo...they totally rock.


And if you go, tell Chris I say hi. Tell him I wish I could be there.

A morbid month...

Between my Pop-Pop's death, and reading The Year of Magical Thinking... I'm in a morbid mind.


So tonight I wrote this, a picture book no press would ever publish. *I* would not publish it. I cannot imagine anyone would read this to a child.


But here it is, and here I am, morbid, in the wee hours...


THE BOY WHO CAUGHT HIS DEATH


Once there was a death,a small one. It looked like a tiny smudge, a whisper.


Tim saw it while he was eating his cereal, but quick it went around the corner.


It ran…


Into the den, where it disappeared.


By the time Tim got there, the smudge was gone, but so was Swimmy, his goldfish.


Tim was sad…


Tim was very sad.


He liked Swimmy a lot.


The next day, Tim saw the death again. It jumped into the shed, where Tim’s dog liked to sleep, but this time Tim had on his running shoes… and he ran…


And he ran…


Through the yard, and into the shed, where the little death was scampering through a scatter of crickets.


“I’ve got you!” shouted Tim, as the death wisped and wiggled. It made a sound like a tiny wind.


“AHA!” said Tim, as he grabbed at the death.


The death was caught. The crickets jumped away.


Tim put the death in his terrarium, but first he took out his gecko.


He clamped the lid down tight. “See how you like THAT!” said Tim.


The death was MAD. It made Tim feel better.


That night, Tim showed his mother the little death he’d caught. “Where?” asked his mother.


“Right there,” answered Tim. But his mother couldn’t see the death.


“Oh Tim,” she said, “I know you miss Swimmy. Would you like to get another fish?”


Tim would NOT.


He showed his father too, but “See here, Tim. You can’t catch a death.”


The death tried to hide, but Tim wasn’t fooled. He saw the death wisping at him from behind a rock. He made a face at it.


All summer, Tim kept the death in the glass cage. But it was a lot of work, keeping his eye on the death. It made Tim tired. He rarely went out to play.


So finally, he thought of a plan.


He put the terrarium in the freezer, until the little smudge turned into an ice cube.


Then he took the ice cube, and he put it in a plastic bag.


He sealed the bag up tight.


On his way to the swimming pool the next day, he took the bag with the little death in it down to where some workmen were building a wall.


And after they left, he dropped the bag into the wall.


The death melted, and wisped, but it did no good. The death was stuck. Tim poked it deeper into the wall with a long stick.


And then he went home to dinner.


The very next day, Tim got a new goldfish.


He named him Swimmy.

Oh, Antoine, remember...

Is that us?


Is that really us? Tanya, Brian, and me... could it really be that we were 8 years younger, that it was 8 years ago...


Sigh.


We dressed up as a team of generic (albeit superfly) superheroes, and Antoine was our evil villain (not to mention photographer), in a silver jumpsuit and afro-wig. Halloween '98! We got all gussied up at Brian's house. Hairdye and spray paint and black eyeliner and gogo boots. Then we went to the grocery store to take pictures, becasue OBVIOUSLY that's the place to take Halloween pictures, when you are dressed as a superfly supergalactic hero!


I hadn't thought of it in years, but then Antoine sent me this pic the other day, posted it on myspace. And suddenly I was 24 again.


I was striding through the frozen foods in silver boots, the paint rubbing off as I walked. I was standing in a farmhouse with a Makers in my hand. I was dancing in a smoky room. I was wandering through the corn, drunk, as a small group of people stood on a piece of wood in the field beyond, pretending to be shipwrecked in the stubble of corn stalks. Floating in the sea.


I was sleeping late and dreaming in poems, but never writing them down. I was snowbound. I was broke. I was living alone. I was in love with a very young boy. I was listening to Linda Ronstadt. I was waiting tables, showing my ass, cutting my bangs, living...


on a long wild ride... that wasn't quite long enough, it seems now.


Halloween '98. Where are you?


Halloween '98. Where were you?

Nonfiction writing....

I've always thought of nonfiction as "easy" writing. Personal essay in particular.


(Though readers should consider that I'm a ridiculous extrovert with no shame, and that maybe it would be fair to accuse me of sometimes "skimming the surface.")


But still, it has always felt a little easy to me, nonfiction, personal essay writing. Like, "Oh, hey... some shit happened to me, and here it is, and because life is complicated and interesteing, now that I've told you something about life, I get credit for being complcated and interesting."


There's no work of creation, invention, nothing but decorating the cake, sculpting the surface of the narrative.


Poetry is harder, in that the work is 99% in the craft. It doesn't matter what it's "about" hardly at all.


BUT fiction is HARD in that you have to create an entire world, invent rules of logic, a universe, hearts and minds. Fiction is what God does. And you have to pace it right, which is SO HARD, and which God does less well I think.


So I've always figured I'd steer clear of fiction, and just write my little essays, and maybe put them in a book someday...


But then recently I read an interview with Jane Smiley, and they asked her if she ever thought about doing nonfiction and her response was a gentle version of "Fuck no!"


She explained that if you put yourself into fiction, there are limitless paths, endless options, but that if you tell you own story, eventually you hit a dead end. She said it better than that, but that was the gist.


Which makes sense. Recently, I was asked to share the story of my Vegas wedding with an anthology, but I said no, because I want to "use that" myself. And in nonfiction, you have to tell it the "true" way (or mostly, at any rate), so you're limited in how many times people will listen, or read.


There's a reason people lie when they tell personal narratives. Uphill both ways. 5 ound bass. "Dear Penthouse..." It gets boring after you tell it the same way too much. We lie to make it interesting....


Which brings me to fiction. I'm thinking about fiction today. Reading Didion, I have that same feeling I had reading Karr, and yes, Frey too. That it was much needed, the telling of it.


But so many memoirs are just like, "Hey, some shit happened to me, and isn't life funny as hell, and sad too, or hard, or utterly ridiculous?"


Which I'm thinking now, God gets the credit for.... not me. Which makes me feel like chickenshit. And makes me want to invent something...


(BIG DISCLAIMER: I am NOT meaning to put down nonfiction, or suggest we shouldn't write it. I'm just feeling the limitations of my own process, and pondering my own inclination to ignore fiction thus far...)

Reading...

Joan Didion. The Year of Magical Thinking.


I'm wondering how one might feel, reading this, if they never had a partner. If they lived a lonely life, felt unconnected, isolated. If they never felt so close to someone that the loss was a cavern. It might be hard to read this book, and know what life *could* have been.


In other news, I'm back from Florida. Good to see my grandparents, and most of all to know Grandma is feeling better.


I had a great time going through old pictures, especially Poppy's snapshots from Okinawa, where he was a PEDIATRICIAN!!! In OKINAWA!!!


A novel is brewing... (which is not to say I'll write it, just that I'll think of writing it)

Updates...

IN the (somewhat) recent past, I've painted some stuff. My office. My door.


Anything to keep from cleaning...


In other news, Mose and I are leaving for Florida tomorrow, to visit with Grandma and Poppy, Mose's great-grandparents. He is very very excited!

Has anyone ever heard???

Of an artists' colony or retreat that will allow a writer with children to bring her children?


I mean, just hypothetically...


Anyone???


(echo-o-o-o)

Tired...

But...


I finished it, finished it, finished it, finished it, finished it. At 4 AM I finished it, and then I read it and then I went to bed. For 2 hours, until Mose woke up.


But I finished it.


Or at least a draft.

It was fun...

It was very very fun.

Some things...

REALLY don't ever change...


Truly. Ocean City, MD looks exactly the way I remember it. Dirty T shirts (no, pop *my* cherry!), Thrasher's french fries with vinegar, Kohr Bros frozen custard, mullets, houses coated in peeling paint and silk kites and mini-golf and salt in my hair and the taste of sunscreen and hot sand on my feet and and and... It was a good thing to see. A good thing to feel like there is still a world out there made of things and people.


Jimmy Buffet will always be cool Downey "Ocean." There is no irony in the world.


I feel reassured.

Tragedy: a story where...

the lesson comes too late...


And in other news, I'll see my sister tonight!


And in still other news, we are going "downey-ocean" which it Baltimoronic for "to the beach." Just for a day, but YIP!


And also, I think I figured out something.

Laurel Snyder is...

A middle-age/middle-class mom, a panelist, a mourner.


Three events this week.


1. I took Mose to the JCC (THAT MEANS WE JOINED THE JCC!!! so I'm officially kind of old as hell, and lame to boot) for babysitting while I had a meeting at Georgia Perimeter, where I'll be teaching a comp class. A comp class that involves reading Berryman, Bishop, and a lot of contemporary short fiction. Poor kids'll never know what hit em.... And MOSE! He has officially been left at babysitting now. A momentous occasion.


2. My panel was accepted, about which I'm THRILLED. It's called "Losing our Linebreaks (and cashing the cow). We'll be talking about why poets turn to prose/nonfiction. And we'll talk some about aesthetics, the relationship of content to form... but we'll also be addressing MONEY! and the search for a WIDER AUDIENCE. Which, if I'm not mistaken, is agaisnt the laws of poetry. So come for the fireworks!


3. My step-mom's father passed away this week, and I'm heading to Baltimore to help out, and for the funeral, and to generally be respectful and caring. Pop Pop died at home in his bed, asleep, after a nice long week at the beach with his grandchildren. It makes me happy to think of that, that such deaths still happen. Resting in peace. Peace. Home. Love.


As opposed to the medical deaths, the drawn out hospital deaths that are becoming more and more common.


Raise a glass for Pop Pop, okay? You should be so lucky as to raise a family, live to 81, and die with a smile on your sleeping face.