Coaching My Inner Critic

“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it.”

― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

As I struggle to produce even the first step per Lamott (a shitty first draft), a friend advises me:  "Lose the inner critic."  My sister teaches creativity workshops in which she strongly encourages her students to "dare to suck."  I was once in an improv jam session with her in which the primary theme, sung and danced with a blues motif, was all about daring to suck.

All the self help books in the world tell you to be aware of the voice of your inner critic so you won't inadvertently censor your every move.  In fact, that's not enough.  I think you have to be acutely aware, and then write down every word verbatim for awhile, every word that nasty little bastard is whispering in your ear. 

"No sense in even starting to write that blog/novel/poem--you know it won't be any good."

"No one will read it"

"You have nothing interesting to say."

"It's a waste of time!"

Then close your eyes and perhaps imagine that a school teacher has said those things to your kid. Now do you feel your talons unsheathing, ready to fight back?

Since the inner critic is really a part of me and probably does have some useful insights, I'm wondering if I can coach him to be more constructive.  If I model the constructive approach for him, next time the negativity sets in, it might go something like this:

My inner critic:  You're just not creative enough to come up with new ideas.

Me:  You know, we need to talk.  You're not helping.

IC:  Hey, it's tough love.  Somebody has to keep you honest.

Me:  All this negative talk just shuts me down creatively and I can't even muster up the guts to suck.

IC:  Well, as I was telling another one of my clients...

Me:  Clients?!  You harangue other people this way too?

IC:  Sure--my genius is relevant everywhere.  This other client is in an African dance class.  She just loves this class and has gotten some compliments about her dancing. At the end of each session, the drummers drum wildly and a dance circle forms where one dancer at a time can prance to the center and show her best moves.  My client would just love to enter the dance circle.  So far I've protected her from making a fool out of herself by sucking. She goes home each week after class sad, but safe and sound, unembarrassed.

 Me:  But she's miserable.  Each week she regrets not having the courage to enter the circle, you bozo!

IC:  Not worth the risk.  She's not perfect, you know.  She'd just disappoint herself and everybody else and we can't have that happen.

Me:  Look, I don't know about the dancer, but I need a change.  From now on, if you can't say something constructive, don't say anything at all.  Otherwise I'm going to switch channels and stop listening to you altogether, got it?

IC:  You're a coward!  You can't take the truth. If you're that sensitive, you'll never get anywhere anyway.

Me:  There you go again!  I'm shutting you down.  Every time you say something negative I'm going to block it, and think of trees instead, since I'm quite fond of trees.  They're beautiful and they produce oxygen, essential for breathing...

IC:  Trees!  What a stupid...

Me:  ...Oak.  Pine.

If:  ...stupid...

Me:  Sycamore.  Sassafras.  Breathe.

IC:

Me:  You know, I'll take constructive criticism...

IC:  You wouldn't know constructive criticism if it bit you in the...mmf.  Bmf.

Me:  Look, since you're part of me, we both have my best interests at heart, right?

IC:  Right, but you don't want your blog to suck, right?

Me:  True.  But right now I'm working on what Anne Lamott calls a "shitty first draft" for my blog. Just getting my ideas down in some form, knowing nobody will ever read it in this form.  It doesn't have to be perfect.  Really.  If you have something helpful to say, I might let you help me edit it later.

IC:   You know you get wordy.

Me:  I know.  We can polish it together.  Later.  Once the first draft is done.

IC:  Okay, if you ever conquer your laziness long enough to finish the boring first dr...   Mmf.  Bmf.

Me:  ....Maple.  Boab.  Eucalyptus.  Ginkgo.  Boojum.  Avoid using words like lazy and boring.

IC:  You said shitty. 

Me:  I'm allowed to call it a shitty first draft--you're not.

IC:  Looks like you've got a good start.  As soon as you finish the first draft, which I'm confident you will, I'm convinced it'll meet your shitty standards and I'll be right here, ready to help.

Me:  Better.   You can do this.  Meanwhile, go tell that other client of yours that she's a beautiful dancer who deserves her spot in the sun, and in the dance circle. 

The Wisdom of Uncertainty and "The Circle"

Happily, my recent retirement frees me to do some things I've always wanted to do, like attending last week's Conference on World Affairs (CWA) at CU in Boulder, the renowned “conference on everything conceivable.”

I was inspired by one standing room only session entitled "The Wisdom of Uncertainty."  The panelists did a great job of outlining the human dilemma in which we dislike uncertainty and take Herculean measures to avoid it, even though "not knowing" and questioning the basic assumptions we’re constantly making can be the very best path to renewed creativity, innovation, and growth.  They also pointed out that every amazing new breakthrough in science occurs when someone decides that they don’t know something, tosses out assumptions, and sets out to learn the truth.  One panelist asked the audience who had seen a sunset – and then explained that none of us had, since the sun doesn’t set, although the phenomenon that looks like the sun setting was only recently understood correctly after the "certainty" that the sun revolves around the earth was questioned.

The panelists also pointed out that there's a difference between confidence and absolute certainty.  For example, you can be confident that your efforts to write a blog will bear fruit, despite a case of writer's block from hell, even though you're not certain exactly what you'll come up with or whether the topic will remotely match your initial concept.  Uncertainty can pave the way toward new connections and ideas.

Speaking of “not knowing,” I just finished an unsettling novel by David Eggers called "The Circle" about a social media company in Silicon Valley that has absorbed all its relatively feeble predecessors (Facebook, Google) and metastasized into a behemoth organization with leaders Quite Certain that their innovations can solve all the problems of the world once they are able to “close the circle” by collecting and tying together all information and making it fully available and transparent to everyone for the greater good of humanity.  Thus, employees are encouraged and ultimately coerced where necessary to constantly share their perceptions and feelings. In fact, privacy is considered insubordinate since it robs everyone of the information and transparency needed to resolve problems and prevent wrong doing.

The novel’s protagonist is new hire Mae, a young woman the company immediately sets out to indoctrinate and who at one point is even led during a company-wide meeting to publicly utter the 1984-style maxims of The Circle:

SECRETS ARE LIES

SHARING IS CARING

PRIVACY IS THEFT

Mae is relentlessly pressured to share more and more of her most private thoughts and experiences, from intimate encounters to medical data.  At a couple of points I felt claustrophobic enough to put the book down and get a breath of fresh air, wishing Mae could do the same.

Kayaking on the bay, Mae escapes a couple of times to that most precious source of centering, solitude and peace, nature.  She paddles to an island, climbs a tree, wonders about the content of a bird’s nest and decides she cannot know this information without disturbing the nest and its inhabitants and so foregoes the knowledge. For a short while she remembers to breathe and acknowledges the value in "not knowing" what's in the nest or below her in the dark depths of the bay as she kayaks back to shore.

But she quickly gets in trouble at work for this, since being alone and not sharing information about her experience are viewed to be willful and selfish acts, unsupportive of the world view The Circle's leadership is so certain is correct.

I can recall a few times in my own career when I saw the same level of arrogant, absolute certainty from leaders, feeling both amazed and disquieted by it.  There is a wisdom in uncertainty, in seeing the world from constantly fresh perspectives and questioning self-limiting assumptions. In the end I would rather lean that way than walk around absolutely certain about life, the universe and everything. 

Also, it occurs to me that perhaps I’ve been way too lackadaisical up to this point about the question of privacy.  When carried to the extreme where it's socially unacceptable not to constantly share, the value of what is shared seems diminished--better to live with a greater degree of uncertainty.

How I Stay Sane, Part V: Monkey Mind

I just finished Daniel Smith’s short book “Monkey Mind:  A Memoir of Anxiety.”   It’s a vivid and often hilarious account of how one man has dealt with the challenges of severe anxiety for most of his life.  Since I have loved ones who struggle with anxiety and I myself have had a few alarming bouts with it, the book was illuminating in that it explored the actual thought progressions fanning the flames of anxiety as well as the particular approach, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), that the author found most helpful after many adventures in the land of counseling and psychotherapy.

I’ve also found that CBT is the best bet for squelching that series of unfortunate thoughts that gets irrational anxiety going.  When you’re in the grips of it, though, it is a huge effort to swim toward the surface, struggling against the riptide, and break through to the air, and BREATHE. And then offer logical counter-arguments to the thoughts attacking you, finding at least momentarily that holy grail of equilibrium that every anxious person seeks.

On the Friday morning before my February vacation as I drove down the last big hill to work, I went beyond my usual smile therapy (“fake it ‘til you make it” – simply smiling makes you feel better).  I went further and applied a little laughter yoga as I coasted down the hill:  “Hee hee hee, ho ho ho and a couple of ah hah hahs; that’s how we pass the day away in the merry old Land of Oz…”  Surprisingly, it felt really good.  Laughing at that moment was what my sister calls “the next right thing.”

Taking care of yourself in small ways, taking a break when you have to go to the bathroom (everybody who delays that to get “one more thing done” at work raise their hands), making yourself a cup of tea, breathing, having a piece of dark chocolate or a glass of wine, sitting by the ocean all day long in the cool breeze and eating green grapes and writing in your journal and reading junk fiction:  all next right things.

The voice in your head shrieks, “No time!  That’s selfish.  You don’t really need to do that.  What will people think?  What have you done with your life, you miserable, boring person?”  Oh my, that voice should be argued with and laughed at and ridiculed into submission because it is truly quite absurd.  Pushing back when you hear that voice is the next right thing.

Since I have been suffering from severe writer’s block for months and I also find that often my worst anxiety is about failing at work, I was interested to read Daniel Smith’s take on writing, work, and anxiety: 

Writers like to believe their job is tougher on the nerves than other jobs.  They like to pass around cool, pithy statements to this effect, like this one, from the screenwriter Gene Fowler:  ‘Writing is easy.  All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.’    Or this suspiciously similar one, from the sportswriter Red Smith:  ‘There’s nothing to writing.  All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.’  Or this one, from the poet Graycie Harmon:  ‘Being an author is like being in charge of your own personal insane asylum.’  I don’t subscribe to the exceptionalist school of writing, however.  It’s true that writing has psychological pitfalls—oppressive deadlines, poor pay, baring one’s soul to an indifferent world—but so do all jobs.  Even the imperative to make choice after choice without clear guidance—allegedly the most nerve-wracking part of the profession—isn’t exclusive to writing.  What is probably true is that, for reasons having to do with solitude and a high allowance for self-obsession, writing attracts a greater percentage of anxious people than other professions.  What is definitely true is that writers are better than other people at articulating their neuroses, and more dedicated to the task.

If you want to understand anxiety better, in yourself or somebody else, read “Monkey Mind,” but think carefully about recommending it to that anxious friend.    You may find that a chronically anxious person can’t bear to read it—because it just stirs up way too much (you guessed it) anxiety.  

"I'll Have What She's Having..."

We have lost the sophisticated and enlightened humor of the great Nora Ephron at the young age of 71.  She wrote the classic "When Harry Met Sally."   Who is not familiar with Meg Ryan's fake orgasm scene and the middle-aged woman at the next table (played by Rob Reiner’s mom) telling the waiter "I'll have what she’s having."  She also wrote and directed "Sleepless in Seattle" and "You've Got Mail" among others.  Her last film was “Julie and Julia.”  She was great friends with Meryl Streep, who said at her memorial service “she was a breathtaking original.”  

Nora Ephron’s writing is a sure-fire recipe for laughter, in my book.  She was devoted to Manhattan, cooking and her family including the wonderful husband she finally found after a disastrous marriage to a philandering Carl Bernstein. She was also a strong feminist.  I knew very little about her until now, after she’s gone.  The more I read the more I admire her humor, her courage and her love of both reading and writing.

Newsweek and the New York Times both had good articles about her.  She came from a family of writers, both parents eventually ended up alcoholics.  Her mother famously told her, "Everything is copy." She turned many of her experiences from a bad marriage to the disappointments of aging into highly amusing scenes in her books and movies.  (I loved her hilarious book of essays from 2006 called "I Feel Bad About My Neck.") 

A life well-lived, ending too soon with a terminal illness.  Here are a few quotes attributed to her that I found interesting.

"I try to write parts for women that are as complicated and interesting as women really are."

"Reading is one of the main things I do.  Reading is everything.  Reading makes me feel I've accomplished something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter."

Some quotes from a 1996 commencement address to the young women at Wellesley:

"Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim."

"One of the things people always say to you if you get upset is don't take it personally.  Understand:  every attack on Hillary Clinton for not knowing her place is an attack on you.  Underneath all attacks are the words:  get back, get back, get back to where you once belonged.  When Elizabeth Dole pretends that she isn't serious about her career, that is an attack on you.  Any move to limit abortion rights is an attack on you--whether or not you believe in abortion.  The fact that Clarence Thomas is sitting on the Supreme Court today is an attack on you."

How refreshing--the idea that it might actually be appropriate to take it personally, to get angry and fight back. 

Farewell to Nora, an inspiration to women and particularly to those who know how to write and to laugh out loud.

Ribe Tuchus (Sit Still)

According to the Observation Deck, the literal Yiddish translation of ribe tuchus is "rub your bottom on the chair."

Flannery O'Connor had a rule that she would sit at her writing desk for three hours each day. If she had nothing to write she would stare at the wall, but she often did have something interesting to say as we know. I also find that by sitting still with my notebook I often surprise myself by having something to say after all--sometimes I get a jump start by observing my immediate surroundings and describing them. 

Right now I see a slender young woman sitting immediately on the other side of the coffee shop window on the patio, feet up on one of the black wrought iron chairs, typing on her laptop. It's hard to imagine how she can see anything on the computer screen in the bright sunlight, but she continues to continue. She's dressed in a green-toned camouflage tank top, extremely short faded denim cutoffs, a two-inch wide belt beaded in orange and turquoise, many silver bracelets on both wrists with one pulled up past her elbow, and large silver hoop earrings--but she wears no rings at all. Her long, dark hair is piled high on her head with a few strands artfully coiling down to frame her face. She wears woven ankle-high sandals. She chews gum furiously as she finally decides to move herself to the shady half of the table where there is some hope she might be able to view the computer screen and opens two books on her lap, pen in hand, a page of notes peaking out from underneath the laptop and flapping gently in the breeze. She takes a brief call on her cell phone and then turns back to her work.

I'm guessing she's a CU student and I once again feel that surge of envy I often have for those whose entire focus in life is learning. I didn't appreciate it as much as I could have in my youth. Of course if asked, this young woman might assure me that her life is far more complicated than simply learning, and a far cry from the bliss I imagine. In any case, I remind myself that I also continue to learn at my work, through my experiences with people and technology and in brief furious spates of research, for example each time I hear yet another technical acronym that is new to me. One of the best things in life is that we continue to learn until the very end; all that's required is that we remain open and curious.

Create a Sacred Space

Since I've had quite a dry spell in my writing, I decided to pull out The Observation Deck--a deck of cards with creative writing ideas to give myself a jumpstart.  The point is to make your self write something about the idea on the card no matter what; there's a little booklet with a few paragraphs about each card to help get the juices flowing.

The first card I pulled read:  "Create a Sacred Space"

I was reminded of my small efforts over the last several months to create a more welcoming spiritual place for myself in my office at work. It's a small corner office many would envy:  huge windows facing west the a clear view of the Front Range. In one corner of my desk I've placed a small cascading fountain and I've arranged my five little ivory laughing buddhas around the fountain and up its steps.  Nearby stands a small white statue of a guardian angel given to me by a friend during some very dark days a couple of years ago.

Next to the fountain is a meditation chime--a metal cylinder cradled on a wooden base with a small wooden mallet which can be used to strike the chime, issuing an extremely clear, bell-like tone that fades ever so slowly back into silence again.  The chime helps me remember to breath and be present.

Also on the desk is a daily Zen calendar with a new quotation for each day; I've saved some of my favorite quotes which are arranged somewhat haphazardly on the desk for repeated reference, including:

"Always stay in your own movie." - Ken Kesey

"Only the madman is absolutely sure." - Robert Anton Wilson

"My father considered a walk among the mountains the equivalent of church-going." - Aldous Huxley

"Awareness is therapy per se." - Fritz Perl

A weekly calendar is on another corner of the desk with beautiful photographs of nature and wild animals;  I look forward to turning the page each Monday morning.  A monthly wall calendar has nature photographs and quotes by that master of the here and now, Eckhart Tolle.  A carved wooden bowl sits nearby which I keep filled with tangerines and apples.  

On the wall opposite the windows is a framed panoramic photo of Boulder's Flatirons glowing pink and orange at dawn.

I spend a lot of time at work and I'm glad I've succeeded in creating a welcoming and spiritual space there.

My bedroom at home is a restful place, with a huge picture over the bed of the ocean viewed through a window with thin white curtains stirring gently in the sea breeze.  Deep blue glass bottles filter the light from the window, pictures of my family grace the walls, a big white goosedown comforter covers the bed.  On the wall by the door is a photograph given to me by my true love of a tree-lined Parisian walkway, the sun filtering down through the leaf canopy.  Perched on one corner of the picture frame is a yellow and purple feathered Mardi Gras mask.

So I think I know how to create sacred spaces for myself.  But when it comes to my writing, I lean toward extreme portability. I like to load my backpack for long walks, carrying with me everything I'll need to write anywhere.  In this case I carry my sacred space inside my head by staying aware and noticing the vastness of the world around me.

Do you have a sacred space?

The Bug

How to describe my fascination with Ellen Ullman's 2003 novel The Bug? The scene is Silicon Valley in 1984 when the mouse as an input device is still an innovative new technology. The story is told from the perspective of software developer Ethan and a tester Berta--both doing battle (often at cross purposes) to track down an insidiously elusive bug they end up calling "The Jester." The bug takes on a personality of its own, appearing only intermittently at the worst possible times, sabotaging important demos, and ultimately becoming a haunting nemesis for both of them. In the end, Ethan's efforts to debug his code become intertwined with his efforts to debug his life, which is rapidly unravelling all around him as he loses his wife, colleague, and the manager who appreciated him and lured him into the project to begin with despite Ethan's self doubt.

Ethan's real passion is an artificial intelligence program he calls the simulation in which he tries to program his cyber creatures to socialize and thrive. Survival in the simulation depends on whether a cell is surrounded with other healthy cells, but Ethan's creations are not thriving, despite his efforts. The novel's structure is divided into four parts, each preceded with a diagram from the simulation, showing the progression as a hapless cell is deprived of each of its neighbors in turn, paralleling Ethan's own life of increasing isolation.

The author was an English major before she got into high tech (I can relate to that) and weaves a number of literary allusions into the novel including Eliot's Middlemarch, Kafka's The Metamorphosis and Shelley's Frankenstein (the tester's name is Roberta Walton and the name of the narrator in Frankenstein was Robert Walton).

Ullman's descriptions of software engineers and their quirks absolutely rang true from my own experiences in the industry of the 80's--from the relentless fascination with puns to the office collections of toys like squirt guns and boffo swords, to the hilarious description of Ethan's attempts to answer pointed questions from the bean counters about The Schedule while balanced precariously on the only seat remaining in his manager's office--a bouncy ball.

The toys and puns take on a vaguely hostile air as the intense pressure from the venture capitalists to deliver on the impossible schedule increases. Ullman vividly describes the 7x24 obsession with churning out and debugging huge quantities of code and the challenges many technically brilliant engineers have with emotional intelligence and deciphering what is really going on in their bewildering social interactions. She also does a great job of depicting the challenges of management, aka herding the cats--both what an excellent manager can mean to the productivity and sanity of technical people as well as what havoc can be wrought by a terrible manager. She shows rather than tells us these things--with dark humor and clarity. The story does take a very bleak turn at the end, but she has lined up all the events that lead to this so thoroughly that the ending is logical and inevitable.

Ullman also penned a 1997 autobiography called "Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents," about her Silicon Valley years as a software developer--she mentions that she was the first engineer to be hired at Sybase to work on the client side of groundbreaking client-server architecture. In "The Bug" the company is called "Intelligentsia" but includes an eerily accurate portrayal of one of Sybase's founders and his habit of nodding and smiling during every conversation regardless of the content.

Other novels have explored the computer world and its sometimes cutthroat ruthlessness. There aren't many novels that delve into the complexity of a coder's brain, motivations and inner life with this level of depth and empathy. To unambiguously tell the machine what it is you want it to do, you often must become part machine yourself--sometimes at great cost.

On Songwriting

If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine
And my tunes were played on the harp unstrung 
Would you hear my voice come through the music? 
Would you hold it near, as it were your own?
It's a hand-me-down. The thoughts are broken.
Perhaps they're better left unsung 
I don't know, don't really care 
Let there be songs to fill the air.

Ripple in still water
When there is no pebble tossed 
Nor wind to blow

"Ripple" - Robert Hunter/Jerry Garcia - The Grateful Dead

I’ve been thinking about the experience of writing songs--which I have only done a few times in my life a long time ago.  One friend I know launched passionately into a major period of songwriting recenty, inspired to go actually arrange and make a recording in Nashville.  I’ve seen M launch into lengthy, intricate guitar riffs that are completely improvisational.  I’ve known many friends through the years who have written music.  The other night my brother-in-law played a Beatlesque tune on my back porch that was so good I was trying to dredge up the memory that would tell me which 60’s band recorded it when, only to learn that it was an original.

I myself wrote three songs (that I remember) earlier in my life.  They came to me out of the blue and almost fully formed with only some lyric tweaking needed, and it was like a small miracle each time.  Writing songs is magical.

I just finished reading an autobiography called “Life” by Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones.  The book was aptly named since it is remarkable that Keith is still among the living after his colorful career immersed in blues, rock and roll, and every drug you can name.  The book is surprisingly detailed and insightful and has some special treats for guitarists since he talks about his discovery of open G tuning as well as his early and electrifying (literally) experiences with amps and sound systems.

Keith has this to say about song writing:  “What is it that makes you want to write songs.    In a way you want to stretch yourself into other people’s hearts.  You want to plant yourself there, or at least get a resonance, where other people become a bigger instrument than the one you’re playing.  It becomes almost an obsession to touch other people.  To write a song that is remembered and taken to heart is a connection, a touching of bases.  A thread that runs through all of us.  A stab to the heart.  Sometimes I think songwriting is about tightening the heartstrings as much as possible without bringing on a heart attack.”

Keith talks at one point in the book about the search for the holy grail of the lost chord--many songs have been sung about that one.  Especially interesting to me are the great songs about songwriting, like The Grateful Dead’s “Ripple” quoted above, and of course, Leonard Cohen’s oft-covered “Hallelujah” which also speaks of that elusive chord:

I've heard there was a secret chord

That David played and it pleased the Lord

But you don’t really care for music, do you?

Well it goes like this, the fourth, the fifth

The minor fall, the major lift,

The baffled King composing Hallelujah.

Hallelujah indeed to all the great songwriters of the world, known and unknown but all appreciated.

24

Today I have a son who is 24 years old.  He’s many things including a mountain climber and a risk-taker—and he loves Boulder.  I know well that he also has a growing wanderlust and I would predict road trips and other adventures in the not so distant future.  Neil Young really had it right:

Old man, look at my life

Twenty-four and there’s so much more

Live alone in a paradise

That makes me think of two.

Love lost, such a cost.

Give me things that don’t get lost

Like a coin that won’t get tossed

Rolling home to you…

                              Neil Young

When I was 24 it was 1977.  Just a few months before my September birthday, M and I had packed everything we owned (mainly books, a typewriter and two guitars) into a tan square-backed VW and moved ourselves from Bloomington, Indiana (where at the time both cheap housing and jobs were in scarce supply) to Boulder, Colorado, mainly to follow our dream of living near the mountains.  I had graduated two years before.  We left everything behind in Indiana—all our friends, our family, our low-paying jobs, the abundant green of Hoosier woods, the orange-red of the Indiana fall.  I am surprised now that we had the courage to make such a monumental change, but at the time it seemed like exactly the right move.  We did have each other, after all.

It was May.  We were blessed with warm, summery weather and we had no idea how lucky we were about that—we camped in a tent for a week at the Wagon Wheel Campground up Four-Mile Canyon, and then we found rooms in a house on the corner of Arapahoe and Lincoln, right across from the public library.

Our housemate was a very strange ex-Californian named Peter, who was older than he wanted us to think, and who had been writing a screenplay for many years.  He was short, blond and tanned, and looked like a misplaced stubby little surfer.  His mother was wealthy and he seemed to have a limited but steady income from his mother to follow whatever dreams he might have.  He had once been a member of a cult on the West Coast, the subject of the screenplay.

We weren’t in Indiana anymore.

The year we came to Boulder a lot of construction was going on along a street called Pearl; they were building some kind of new-fangled outdoors mall where the street would be closed off for a few blocks and only pedestrians would be allowed. 

We were both writing a lot—M in longhand, I with my trusty little electric typewriter that my grandfather had given me when I started college.  We’d saved up enough money to not have to work for at least a couple of months.  It was a time of shining hope and vast optimism.  Ten years, later, Shannon, you were already one year old.  Happy 24th ! 

May your hands always be busy

May your feet always be swift

May you have a strong foundation

When the winds of changes shift

May your heart always be joyful

And may your song always be sung

May you stay forever young

                              Bob Dylan