Angela Amman

stories of choices and consequences

Angela

welcome July, part two

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I wanted to crash into July like a tidal wave, keyboard blazing and goals falling like dominos. Instead, I’ve done laundry and made dinner, closed my rings but missed my step goal, read too late and played too many games of solitaire. I don’t know why I can’t manage to piece together all of the pieces of my life into a puzzle that makes sense. Instead, it’s like the one on my dining room table: worked on in spurts and interfered with by a curious cat.

I’m not giving up, of course, because giving up on life is ridiculous when you’re not even fifty. I just sometimes wish I had a crystal ball to show me some options, like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, the kind I used to read with my fingers firmly trapped between pages when I wasn’t exactly sure which adventure seemed like the right one. At this point in my life, the choices seem smaller, but bigger, all at the same time. I want so badly for the puzzle pieces to make sense, not just for my own life but for the lives of our kids, even though their lives are filled with their own potential adventures, not mine.

This in-between-ness isn’t for the faint of heart, which my friends with older teens already told me. But my in-between-ness is weighing on my heart right now, too. I want to write, but I’m scared to write, not because of the writing but of what comes after the writing. The promoting and wondering and wishing I would have made different choices along this twisty way of mine.

July hasn’t been a tidal wave, but I’m still going to do my best to ride it out to a better place than it began.

welcome july

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When a new month begins on a Monday, a world of possibilities awaits. Yet, when that month is July, my heart clenches a bit with the knowledge that the year is halfway done. My goals, as always, seem to be in tatters in the notes of my journal, in unfinished to-do lists that I have stopped moving forward to the next page. I’m not sure if the problem lies (lays?) in the way I set goals or in the way I fail to execute the necessary steps, but it’s definitely a problem.

I’m working to change things. Butt in the seat more frequently and shoes on my feet to make sure I’m moving my body, not just for the physical results but also to quiet my thoughts. Part of my problem, I know, sits in the space between lofty, book-writing goals and mundane, fix-up-this-house goals, because for some reason I am terrible at working on both the practical and the ideal at the same time. If I could balance the two a bit better, I would get more done, but I am tiptoeing toward fifty and don’t seem to be any better at it than when I was leaving unfinished “novels” next to my typewriter in my childhood bedroom.

I’m rambling, which is my prerogative here, in this corner of the internet I’m not sure anyone other than me (and a few bots) even knows exists anymore. It’s something, though, to be sitting and rambling instead of letting the words fester in my head until I can’t untangle them any longer.

Maybe, in the second half of the year, I can untangle the undergrowth.

Maybe, in the second half of the year, my writing will be able to breathe again.

wearing jeans

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Talking about the weather in Michigan is a cliche. It changes all the time and gets stickier than people think but also changes all the time. I never even look at my weather apps anymore, because it’s always just enough off to annoy me.

Today, however, I’m wearing jeans and a sweater. J Crew Factory describes it as a beach sweater, which basically means it’s not warm enough to wear during the winter, and it’s a little too loosely woven to wear without some sort of camisole, but it’s still a sweater. Yesterday, I was not wearing anywhere close to this many clothes, and I don’t mean that in a euphemistic way.

I’m still struggling to find my footing this summer. I have so much free time, and I’m not using it correctly. I realize there’s no correct or incorrect way to use time when you’re on a summer break from work, but believe me when I say I’m not using my time correctly. My short story isn’t finished, and my running endurance isn’t improving, and I haven’t done any home improvements.

I’ve done laundry and cooked dinner and those kind of basic domestic tasks; I’m not feeling depressed or incapable of forward motion. I just need a little more motivation and maybe a little direction.

Jeans aren’t helping.

books or kindle or phones or…

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As I was writing my book review yesterday, I almost went on a tangent about how I’d read the book. I didn’t, because I called it a mini book review and still kept rambling. Still, I wanted to talk about it, because it’s something I struggle with and not in an existential way.

I used to only read books in their physical form. I like the way they feel, the ability to slide back up and over sentences from earlier on the page, the weight of the remaining pages in my right hand balanced out by the read pages in my left. At one point I tried audiobooks, possibly while training for some sort of race I could never run anymore. I didn’t have the patience to train my brain to actually listen to the story. It became background noise, and I would have to stop and restart so many times I gave up on that type of reading.

The concept of a Kindle didn’t appeal, until I realized it literally changed the way I could read while traveling. I didn’t have to rush to finish something before we left or decide between books to pack or leave a book behind because my bag got too heavy. I loved the idea that I could have more than enough books queued up for an entire vacation. I’m an overpacked and want options for my clothes, and a Kindle meant I could have them for my books, too.

I still read paper books most of the time, though I went through phases of Kindle worship, when there were so many unread books on it, and it was so easy to carry, that I rarely left home without it. All of that use, though, means it’s not working as well as it used to. Sometimes it won’t charge. Other times it seems like it should be charged, and it won’t turn on.

These are not actual problems in life, and I’m getting better about not hyper focusing on those, especially since my Kindle is…aged, and I don’t want to budget for one right now.

Consequently, I started reading on my phone. Like so many people, I have a hard time separating myself from the social media scroll, and I thought having my books in my already occupied hand would help me use my time in better ways. In some ways, it has made a difference. My Kindle was working for part of my recent trip to Boston, and then it wasn’t, so I finished The Waters on my phone.

The covers look better (I have a Paperwhite, so everything is black and white and gray), but the screen does tire my eyes in a way the Kindle doesn’t. Also, and this is what led to my almost-tangent yesterday and this musing of a post today, I didn’t get the normal feeling of being “finished” with the book when I was, indeed, finished. I didn’t immediately click on Instagram or check texts, but I did eventually pick up my phone and do something on it that wasn’t reading. With a book, I set it aside, the cover reminding me of what I liked or didn’t like and that I really, truly should add it to my reading log so I don’t forget to do that. Even with my Kindle, the device is only used for reading, so when I’m done, I let it go. My phone, we all know, doesn’t truly get let go.

I’m not really sure what I meant to accomplish by thinking so much about these different ways of consuming the words I’m reading. I do know it’s part of the reason I bought a bigger purse for the summer, now that I’m not using my work bag frequently. I like having a book with me, a paper one whose pages I can turn and sometimes write on if we’re talking about something I own. A Kindle is an acceptable substitute, but I’m not sure my phone is. I mean, I’m going on read on it again. Sometimes it’s the only option I have.

I’m glad, though, that I have a big purse.

mini book review – The Waters

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The Waters (Bonnie Jo Campbell) takes place in Michigan, written by a Michigan author. It’s not the Michigan where I grew up, amidst the sprawling suburban tangle branching outward from Detroit. Growing up in the suburbs of a city much-maligned during my youth felt strange, a safe cushion outside of a city known at the time for its murder rate more than Motown. Strip malls and bike rides and schools stocked with current textbooks and programs like Clue-Me-In (book Jeopardy! at its finest) and Science Olympiads and Krypto tournaments, a math game so fun even I liked it.

Campbell’s Michigan isn’t that, nor is it the crumbling majesty of Detroit, nor the careful rejuvenation that still feels tentative, like if you look too closely the sports stadiums and grocery stores will retreat back to the suburbs. Campbell writes of small town Michigan, where a Native American medicine woman can be both frequented and feared by the community, where men throw rifles in their truck beds and farm the crops that make the most profit rather than the ones that may be best for the earth.

The Waters centers on a starkly matriarchal family, mainly told by the youngest Zook daughter. Dorothy, called Donkey in all the ways that matter, lives on a swampy island with Hermine Zook, called Herself. Herself’s three daughters lives in various states, both geographically and figuratively, from California to Nowhere, Michigan, the land surrounding the tiny island. Donkey’s mother, Rose Thorn, stretches between California and Nowhere, though we know little of herself in California, where she sometimes lives with the eldest Zook daughter, Primrose. Molly, the middle child, works as a nurse and desperately wants her mother and niece to get off the island and into the boarded up home of Herself’s long-banished husband, Wild Will.

Herself simply wants to be where she has always been, finding healing medicine in the plants around her, both the innocent ones and the poisonous ones, and the animals around her, milk from her cow and donkeys and venom from the state-protected Muck Rattlers hiding around the island. Unfortunately, the town’s acceptance of Herself teeters back and forth, depending on whether the people around her consider her a healer or an abortionist.

Rose Thorn holds the town’s acceptance of her mother to her heart, shaping it with an innate ability to create community where despair might otherwise grow. Unfortunately, her own secrets and the way they pull at both her daughter and her long-time lover, don’t always fit with what the town needs or wants from the Zook women.

Her daughter, Donkey, mostly wants to go to school to learn math, a subject she’s discovering deeply without any formal schooling at all.

If this sounds a bit like a fairy tale, that feels necessary, because it reads like one, too.

I wasn’t sure what I expected from The Waters, a book with a beautiful cover hiding terrible truths — and beautiful ones, too. I loved it, though, this look at the magic found in the wildlife around us, even when the wildlife wears human forms. The appeal of Campbell’s Michigan isn’t lost on me entirely, though I appreciate it more in book form than the actuality of heating washing water on the stove. I loved the references to Frank Baum’s Oz books, and not just the most familiar story of Dorothy and her friends. It feels lucky that I read this so close to my re-watch of Return to Oz, or some of the allusions would have been lost to the part of my brain that remembers the 80s in fits and starts.

I would definitely recommend this to all sorts of readers, especially my Michigan friends who appreciate the quiet unfolding of women’s fiction and complicated family stories, but also those who yearn for a moving plot and quirky characters. It’s not necessarily a happy story, but small towns aren’t necessarily happy places, and Campbell finds beauty in that as well.

drafting

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Writing partner demonstrating how we both feel

I began drafting a new short story the other day. Like all beginnings, it felt exciting. I opened Scrivener, opened a relaxing playlist, and began working. Prior to starting, I made a few notes on an index card (hot pink), and I truly meant to pound out a great amount of words between then and now.

I haven’t.

I did draft that day, and I might have a character or two, though I’m not sure about names and definitely don’t feel all that attached to anyone right now, and whose idea was it to draft a Christmas story in the midst of a Midwestern heat wave? (It was my idea. And honestly? I should have started this project well before any heatwave could have even thought about happening.)

My writing brain might be broken.

It’s a tough thing to admit, when I used to have ideas tumbling over ideas in my head, some of them even scribbled on note cards or in notebooks or in draft folders that fester away in the depths of my Dropbox files. I see it here, where my thoughts are in tiny spurts instead of actual paragraphs. I see it in my journal, where most days I can only muster up the energy and concentration to write a gratitude list. I see it here (again), as I open up my blog instead of the new project folder I started for my Christmas short.

My writing brain might be broken, but my writing muscles definitely are. I don’t remember how to shut off my thoughts and listen to the whispers of characters and, maybe more importantly for the type of writer I am, the flow and rhythm of the words I want to use. Even when I do put together words, they sound choppy and stilted, bullet points masquerading as sentences, dialogue never overheard during an eavesdropped conversation, exposition upon exposition instead of action.

Guilt creeps in if I even think about sitting and staring out the window, if I try to relax my mind enough to hear what’s going on inside. This is the first time I’ve attempted to write since Ryan began working from home. Not to sound icky, but some of the guilt comes from the feeling that he might judge how unproductive a lot of writing actually looks. In the past, it’s been maybe invisible to him, and now it feels bare and exposed, especially since I am so out of practice and so unsure of how the words are even going to make it from the ether to my mind to the page.

I don’t remember it feeling so hard in the past, though I’m sure it did, the way I don’t remember the hardest edges of having little kids around the house. I don’t remember the way I fought exhaustion after a restless night of sleep and a refusal of naps; I remember the fun of refilling the bottomless Diet Coke at the zoo and letting the kids pick more animals to see as we wandered around. Similarly, I don’t remember the drafting process for the stories I’ve written. I remember the back and forth banter of working with Cam and Mandy, the process of determining cover images and front matter quotations.

Now it’s time to build up those unremembered muscles again, to pull the words out from somewhere, even as they hide away in the shadows. I know it’s possible. I’m just not sure how to get started. (OK, I AM aware of how to do it; it’s just easier to ponder existence here instead of sitting down and getting to work.)