DOCTOR DERBY

Free Clinic Fridays!

2012-02-17T12:20:00.001-08:00

What’s up, kiddies? Enjoying the weather? After a week of waxing poetic for short stories, bios, letters, websites, Valentine’s gifts, and why the mail should be sent on Sunday, I am ready for a break. I think some sort of crafty art project is in order. Or just eating more brownie batter.

But first I am proud to present my finds from another week of trolling the internet!

Free Clinic Friday

What do you need to do?

LAUGH

Image courtesy of Hyperbole and a Half.

The creative folks at NaNoWriMo have teamed up with The Book Doctors to offer this year’s WriMo paticipants a lottery of sorts: anybody who submits a book pitch has a 1 in x thousand chance of being drawn, randomly, for a free consult with professional book polishers. It’s sort of like The Hunger Games except everybody wants to die.

Anyway, I plan to use this lottery as motivation to undertake the Writing of My Book Pitch. Since I’ve written something of Ye Olde Adventure Storye, I might just take the tone of this epic literary work by Mr. Mike Lacher:

"In Which I Fix my Girlfriend’s Grandparents’ WiFi and Am Hailed as a Conquering Hero”

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/in-which-i-fix-my-girlfriends-grandparents-wifi-and-am-hailed-as-a-conquering-hero

PANIC

Stop it, you weirdo designers!

Christian Louboutin created these 8" ballerina-inspired heels for the English National Ballet’s summer party last year. They were auctioned off to the craziest person in the house.

Now I’m going to have rosin-fueled nightmares about those two years I took pointe classes. To say nothing of the four or five times I actually made it onto my toes.

ESCAPE

Image courtesy of the Cool Hunter.

I could spend the next week of my life writing the story of that man on the steps.

IMAGINE

Images from Design Seeds.

As Boyfriend and I have been painting the bedroom, I’ve found myself lost in a sea of paint samples. Colorful chicklets on the walls. I’m not sure if this site helps or hinders my natural obsession, but if you share my affinity for mixed media art, moods boards or color, you’re going to love Design Seeds.

Seriously, go there, like, now.

Image from A Boy In Mid Air.

Not to get all Mindfulness Project on you, but article from Zen Habits is simple, sane advice for everybody on the planet. Myself included.

“Learning to Sit Alone, in a Quiet Empty Room”

Have a great weekend everybody!

How to Make the Worst Gnocchi Ever

2012-02-08T13:32:00.000-08:00

Did you ever notice how many cooking blogs are out there?

There are, like, a lot.

All these millennial Renaissance multi-taskers, with their home grown tomatoes and backyard chicken eggs and do-it-yourself cheeseries, they author these incredible posts with gorgeous pictures and make it all look, if you'll pardon the pun, easy as pie.

Cue my grandiose, ill-advised homemaking fantasies.

So I've been cooking a lot lately. OK, not a lot. And not cooking, really. Mostly I've been mixing frozen spinach with egg, flour and cheese and hoping for the best. These delusory efforts began when I found a seemingly simple recipe for spinach gnocchi. I imagined the result comme ça:

Image courtesy of The Tasteful Life. Tasteful indeed.

Mine didn't quite turn out like that.

As a result, I can proudly offer today's tutorial:

How to Make the Worst Gnocchi Ever

Step 1. Get a bunch of spinach and dry it out.

How does this happen? Where is my industrial-sized sink? JEEVES!

Step 2. Get a bunch of other ingredients.

You will use them to make the spinach stick to itself. They can include flour, dry bread, eggs, cheese, Elmer's glue, whatever. You're not going to eat it anyway.

Looking good so far. On a side note:

Visitors welcome!

Step 3. Mix the ingredients together.

Form this mixture into small, gnocchi-shaped lumps. Be sure to flour the countertop on which you work, so once you’ve ruined dinner, you have a significant mess to clean up.

Mine did not look like this.

Step 4. Bring a pot of water to a boil.

This is not a picture of boiling water. You should know how to boil water, for Godssakes.

Step 5. Carefully drop the gnocchi into the boiling water. Watch the lumps burst apart like kamakazie foodstuffs, et voila!

Enjoy the bitter taste of dissatisfaction as you wash your pot, cutting board, mixing bowl, countertop, and proceed to cry yourself to sleep.

...

But wait!

What’s that I see? That brilliant flash at the back of the fridge? Is that…could it be…

A TUBE OF PILLSBURY CRESCENT RECIPE CREATIONS® SEAMLESS DOUGH?

Thank God. OK, I'm pretty sure we can just stretch it across a pan of spinach goo and bake it. Thus our terrible, terrible gnocchi becomes...

surprisingly delicious spanikopita!

I realize this picture looks terrible and not at all delicious. Let's try again:

OK, this is a bad picture too. Whatever. I think the moral of the story is that with a little creativity, time, effort, prepackaged dough, shredded cheese and a very forgiving stomach, you, too, can become a culinary mastermind.

Godspeed!

Right, Meet Left

2012-01-31T09:30:00.000-08:00

It's a gorgeous day in Charlottesville, and I'm sitting in front of the window worrying about the future. The conversation in my head goes like this:

RIGHT BRAIN: Let's go skip in the sunshine!
LEFT BRAIN: What will that accomplish, exactly?

RB: Fun!

LB: How is that going to further your career as a writer?

RB: Sun!

LB: …

RB: Yaaaaaaaaay!

LB: No one wants to read babble about daylight. Let's think about how you can build a name for yourself.

RB: ...

LB: What if you wrote something fun and amusing? Something people would want to tell other people about? Then you could justify your existence for another day.

RB: …

LB: What?

RB: : (

LB: Come on. Careers are about working hard and proving yourself over and over and over again.

RB: : ( : (

LB: Oh, it’s not so bad. We just need to set some goals and eventually be louder and smarter and faster and more creative than everyone else on the internet.

RB: : ( : ( : (
LB: Look, we're not going to have a pity party about it. You knew this would be hard.

RB: I want a nap.

LB: You can’t. We have things to do.

RB: : (

LB: OK, we aren’t getting anywhere. Look, maybe we just need to get the blood flowing. Move around a little bit.

RB: Can we go for a walk?

LB: Sure.

RB: And skip in the sunshine???

In other words, when it comes to malaise and the quarter-life crisis, Raffi had all the answers.

Thanks, Mom, for the trip down memory lane!

Once Upon a Time

2012-01-30T09:29:00.000-08:00

via If I Had a Boat

Happy Australia Day!

2012-01-26T10:29:00.000-08:00

Dear Southern Hemisphere,

I miss you. I miss the backward seasons and hilarious fauna. Australia, my darling landmass, I miss you most of all. Somehow, Outback Steakhouse just doesn't cut it.

Love from the past,

Thanks to my high school friends for loving me through college, so much so that they made these incredibly realistic portraits for my triumphant return from Sydney in 2005.

Halp!

2012-01-24T20:41:00.000-08:00

Wave if you can’t do it alone!

Dear Reader:

I dream a lot. This isn’t news.

Lately I’ve been dreaming of all the ways I can improve Doctor Derby. More poetry! More music! A wash of 3-D glitter!

But the truth is that I just don’t know.

YOU do!

Dear Reader, will you help me by taking a three-question survey? Two minutes of your time will provide the guiding light I need.

Super-Simple Three-Question Survey

I can make this dream come true, but not without your help!

The Rainbow Collection

2012-01-24T13:39:00.000-08:00

Y’all know I love me some rainbows, but I also have a quiet obsession with tiny things. Like doll house accessories and newborns. Does anyone else remember those little toy cars you could pull backward and send whizzing out of the room (or off the coffee table or back of the couch, depending on where your imaginary racetrack began)? Those were my favorite.

BAHHHHHH.

David T. Waller’s Toy Atlas Rainbow, a painstaking installation made from over 2,500 toy cars, won the People’s Award at the UK’s Arts Open Depot in 2010. I assume this is because the exhibit makes every spectator want to crawl around it and drool.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to eat a jar of sprinkles.

Yay adulthood!

The Grapes of Wreath

2012-01-23T08:17:00.000-08:00

Today is my sister’s birthday, so yesterday I surprised her: I left Charlottesville at the crack of dawn and drove six hours to the Dunkin Donuts where she works.

Her reaction was basically this, at which point I collapsed on the counter and had an emergency Dunkin Turbo shot directly into my veins.

Later we took a walk through my hometown and admired the wintery landscape, the lacy tree limbs and frosty porch lights and drunken Giants fans falling into the snow. Despite these simple pleasures, a thought kept tugging on the back of my mind:

TAKE DOWN YOUR CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS, PEOPLE!

Now, I realize 95% of suburbanites follow basic human protocol and remove their sh*t by January 1^st. It can be sad, taking down the pretty bows and bells and heirloom ornaments; it can be downright depressing, tossing that poor, used-up tree into the street. But if you or your loved ones have trouble letting go—or just want some festivity back in your life—Doctor Derby has your fix.

Make a wreath!

Yes, the solution is a ring of stuff hung from your front door. Nix the pine and ditch the orbs; there are a bazillion different ways you can celebrate the season—like, every season OTHER than Christmas.

Make it happy:

From blog.tiffanyzajas.com

Or hopeful:

From centsationalgirl.com
Or pretentious:

From hgtv.com

Just make it appealing to you. I would kill to mush around a neighborhood spotted with personalized dashes of color; it would help me feel like I knew my fellow townspeople.

Can’t you just imagine the difference between these people?

Person A:

From thepaintedhive.blogspot.com

Person B:

From kk.org
Clearly A is a farmer and B is a toddler. Nice neighborhood!

Seriously, I can’t overstate how easy it is to make a wreath. (You can also make it super-complicated, in which case you should read someone else’s blog.) Here is my three-step guide to wreathing:

1. Go to the Dollar Store and buy what appeals to you.

2. Go to a craft store and buy a glue gun and a foam ring. (You could also bend a wire

hanger into a circle.)

3. Arrange your frou-frou and glue it in place. Don’t forget to attach a loop or hook to

hang that baby.

That's it! So easy, so much fun.

I'm speaking from personal experience here. I decided to make a Valentine’s wreath last week, and look at how perfect it (I) is (am):

Bedford Falls, here we come!

Free Clinic Fridays!

2012-01-20T10:51:00.000-08:00

Today’s clinic is brought to you by the power of SONG. Enjoy the videos!

Free Clinic Friday

What do you need to do?

LAUGH
“Threw It On the Ground”
The Lonely Island

PANIC
“Pressure (Alesso Edit)”
Nadia Ali, Starkillers and Alex Kenji

ESCAPE

“Magra”

Lenine

IMAGINE

“Dawn”
The Cinematic Orchestra

“She Just Likes to Fight”
Four Tet

Happy weekend everybody!

Devil's In the Details

2012-01-19T05:52:00.000-08:00

You’ve heard of Yulia Brodskaya, right?

Your brands have.

These stunning images are a few highlights from the Moscow-born paper artist’s quilling portfolio. Quilling, also called paper filigree, uses thin strips of paper or cardstock that are rolled, traditionally around a quill, then shaped and glued into particular designs. Brodskaya’s work refreshes what was once called a “lost art” and brings its energy and playful poetry to contemporary audiences worldwide.

This piece is the first in a series which the artist herself describes on her website as “a declaration of love to the material and the technique. It is also an attempt to raise a profile of this paper craft, which has been previously regarded with some disdain, and to bring this type of artwork on a new level in terms of its ability to convey meaning and emotions.”

The image above, along with a swirling canopy of verdant foliage, is available as a web face on Google Chrome.

Brodskaya sculpts all of her work by hand. Her dedication to detail is astounding; combined with furling color, tidal lines, and multi-dimensional structure, her art represents the mystery of human touch. In a world where mass production profits and cheap facsimiles are standard fare, the independent artist stands like a lighthouse. Given wholly to the careful construction of what amounts to love itself, their efforts remind us that authenticity matters, that passion radiates, and when open our hearts in the pursuit of dogged creation, our work will sing for all who listen.

Snowflakes and Sunshine

2012-01-18T07:06:00.000-08:00

We'll learn fear might not mean 'stop'; I've come to believe fear usually means 'go.'
— Frances Moore Lappé

Tuesday morning opens with snowfall.

I sit at my desk and watch little flurries salt the trees, scraggly branches reaching incredulously upward. Yesterday the air was balmy, a tropical 60 in our mountainous suburbs. Now white sweeps down like a stage-length curtain, paving the backyard with pixilated ice.

A fresh start.

Isn’t that what we expect when we vow to change our lives? We gaze onto a barren landscape and imagine a future that’s wild, invigorating and white as a page. Blood churns and fingers tingle at the thought of phantom frost.

I stare into the gathering cold and hum Bon Iver in the back of my throat. I can’t find my snowshoes; I can’t seem to mush. With every useless moment passing, I sink deeper into drifts of lassitude, soaked with muddy self-loathing. I’ve become a shifting weather pattern, confused and confusing, scattering Canadian geese to all points of the compass.

Our dog meanders into the room and sits heavily at my feet. Her brown eyes ask me to make it stop snowing.

Out there in the great big world, I know other people are complaining. They’re sucking their teeth and refueling with coffee and lamenting another day in the office. Not long ago I was one of them, anxious to flee the press and grind, propelled by my conviction that I would suffocate without new air. Now I envy their routine, certain endings to certain days, and fear the vastness stretched before me.

Maybe this is the truth of change, the thing our fallible minds reject. Excitement is a cresting wave, the rush of cumulus toward the heart of the storm. All this energy, this certainty and power, serves to push us just so far. We ride high enough the see the shore, the sunshine above the clouds; then we are unceremoniously dumped to earth, falling like snowflakes or sea foam toward the earth.

The aftermath crushes. We must learn to breathe again.

Now we stand up shakily, slowly. The tundra looks different from here; the cold and damp are real. We lack much of the proper training, and we have needy dogs in tow. It’s a long hike to our dreamed-of fields.

But even the fearful body remembers that once we rode high as kings, alight like stars burning across the sky. Once in those highest, clearest moments, we saw where our lives were waiting.

I sit at my desk and open my computer. Outside, bits of white fall more thickly. Then something heavenward shifts, parting the pockets of gray, and the air is pierced by golden angles, shafts of smoking light. In the sudden illumination, I find my blank page and lift my fingers to the keys. I will write of all these changes, the lift and the crash and halcyon dreams. I will venture forward and carry my fear, leaving footfalls on the face of the world, wearing skin brightened by snowflakes and sunshine.

Writing: A Whiner's Defense

2012-01-17T14:04:00.000-08:00

I've been reading a lot about writing lately, and one theme that comes up a lot is how writing is really hard and how normal people with normal goals don't appreciate how hard writing is, even when writers tell them about it over and over and over again. As a neighbor points out to critic/novelist Annie Dillard in her book The Writing Life, "That's like a factory employee going to work every day even though he hates it. Why do you do it?"

Dear reader, this is the worst question you could ever ask a writer. If you yourself are a writer, you're nodding. If you're not, please heed my advice and do not ask it ever (or ever again). It's like pouring salt on a slug and expecting the poor thing to dance.

Anywho. Haphazard gastropod analogies notwithstanding, I'm glad that other writers feel the same way I do. For many years I assumed I was a big baby with my "poor me"s and "mental anguish"es and "oh, the trials of the mind simply fell me!"isms. While this may still be true, I feel vindicated by this funny, insightful article from author Michael Cunningham.

As a novelist, I learned long ago that my interest in talking about how very difficult it is to write fiction exceeds almost everybody's interest in hearing about it. I rarely bring the subject up, any more than I expect, in old age, to go on at length about my joint pains or the fact that everything and everyone used to be better than they are now. Every writer I know, however, is obsessed by the subject, and often when we're alone together we do, in fact, with a sense of guilty abandon, spend a certain amount of time buzzing about how unbelievably, monumentally difficult writing actually is; what fools we are for having taken it up in the first place; and how often we contemplate abandoning the pursuit altogether and going into another line of work, though most of us are too old for go-go dancing and too inept for carpentry.

To learn more about the writing underground or revel in how justified your whining is, click here. Happy reading!

Free Clinic Fridays!

2012-01-13T13:55:00.000-08:00

Happy Friday the 13th! Unluckily for me and luckily for you, this was a fruitful week in terms of internet exploration (a direct correlation exists in terms of real-life productivity and new material for these clinics). Before you bid good riddance to this ill-fated day, enjoy another…

Free Clinic Friday

What do you need to do?

LAUGH: The (Mis)Adventures of Awkward Black Girl

Are you passive-aggressive? Hung up on your ex? Fantasizing hard-core about a cubicle mate or stabbing your nearest frenemy? Then you’re gonna totally relate…

The (Mis)Adventures of Awkward Black Girl is a web mini-series discovered by my good friend at Naturally Beautiful Me. As she explains, AWB is “almost 30 Rock funny and stars Black people. I am addicted." Ditto!

PANIC: Digital Tattoos

Here’s a concept to thoroughly freak you out:

The Digital Tattoo Interface concept, developed by Jim Mielke, is an electronic interface that can be implanted beneath the skin (but above the muscle) in the forearm, thereby turning a boring ol’ patch of tissue into a display screen for videos, phone calls, internet pages, or even a (virtual) image of a tattoo.

Agh.

The interface would by powered by the very energy that fuels actual human movement: the conversion of oxygen and glucose in the bloodstream. So, in essence, your blood would course through the technology buried in your flesh, powering “smart-ink pixels” that change colors. The device would act as a touch screen if necessary (for answering phone calls!) or even a 3G video screen (for FaceTime!). Here is the device:

Here is the device IN YOUR BODY.

Today, the Digital Tattoo is just a concept, but doesn’t it get under your skin?

Hahahahaha. But seriously, I’m totally weirded out. Thanks a bunch, Gizmodo.

ESCAPE: Castello di Vicarello

Grab Diane Lane; we’re going to Tuscany.

And we’re staying in a castle.

Visit the Cool Hunter article for more drool-worthy images.

IMAGINE: Becca Gilmartin Body Art

Becca Gilmartin is an Australian makeup artist whose work explores all the potentials of a human canvas. From explosions of traditional beauty themes…

to trompe d’oeuil…

to humor…

To philosophy…

to stunning transformations...

Gilmartin reminds us that our bodies speak louder than any sandwich board. (Even without embedded technology.)

On a related note, check out this video by another Australian artist, musician Goyte. In addition to being the sort of song I actually download on iTunes (as opposed to listen on loop via Spotify or YouTube), ”Somebody that I Used to Know” (spotted by my uber-hip artist friend Brian) uses body paint to express the connection and slow dissolution of ex-lovers. Just gorgeous.

OM: Honey & the Trees

I just got back from yoga class, the first I’ve attended in a very long time. Thank goodness I went. It reminded me to embrace the present moment, to calm the heck down about career and money and dog-guilt and grout mold.

As I lay down on the studio floor, my eyes closed and my heart opened. I guided my mind away from the chaos of a busy day toward the self-sustaining simplicity of my body. Suddenly grateful for my skin and breath and blood flow, I left the classroom convinced that the cure for stress is not better organization, a clarified job or pristine home front—it’s a thankful awareness of every moment. The feel of the ground beneath my feet, the shift of joints as I walk, the smell and feel of changing air on my skin. Intention imbues every action with meaning, with virtue and worthiness. If I can learn to focus on each distinct task I undertake—give it entirety of my attention—I will not only validate my choices, I will feel time swell and mellow out, each minute ripe with its own weight in honey. I can learn to taste every one.

Alternatively, I can re-read this lovely passage by Geoff Thompson on the philosophy of trees.

Technology Gloves (No, Not the Kind You Use with Your iPhone)

2012-01-12T18:52:00.000-08:00

Full disclosure: I don't play a musical instrument.

Yes, it's true, I'm OBSESSED with music but don't make it myself, ever. Well, sometimes at stoplights if I think the radio's vocalist needs more backup. Oh, I can also whistle. And drum my steering wheel. And play the spoons, and rock a serious air guitar.

But true art it ain't.

Luckily for me, Imogen Heap is finding a way to make our hands the instruments of the future.

As you may already know, I LOVE Ms. Heap. I am very happy (and admittedly belated) to plug the ethereal songstress for her work in any case. I had the chance to see Heap in concert, and I was blown away by her freestyle technique—merging technology and talent to build a song layer by layer for her waiting audience. By recording a strain of melody and a breathy rhythm, then looping them with an on-stage computer, she effectively stitched a song from silence, a veil of beauty across empty air.

Last July, Heap debuted a new way to harness musical intuition: musical gloves. This Mashable article describes the technology behind the performance Heap first demonstrated first on a TED stage in Scotland:

Using a pair of gloves equipped with wireless mics, an accelerometer, a magnetometer, a gyroscope and a variety of other sensors, Heap created a song on the fly — complete with sounds from a multitude of instruments and effects — using only her body movements and hand gestures.

When Heap saw the beginning of this technology at MIT, she became interested in the project; two and a half years later, the artist revealed a pair of knit fingerless gloves illuminated by enough neon wires to merit their own 80s music video. Using simple hand movements, Heap could filter, record, loop, pan, and even control volume with intuitive gestures (shhh to indicate “quieter” and a horn sign to indicate “louder”).

The author of the article notes that Heap “wanted to use body movement to create music so she could ‘communicate the hidden 50% of the performance.’” By circumventing the traditional path between artist and instrument, this innovation can link an artist directly to the music itself. Remove the middlemen—those pesky pipes and reeds and strings and hammers—and the translation becomes one of the human spirit, artistic passion made audible.

If you have a few minutes, I would highly recommend watching the video below. It arrives from an audience member in the TED room that night, and though the film itself is a little blurry, the music radiates, hanging delicately in the air of the room, luminous as a conjured cloud.

Mustache Thursday

2012-01-12T13:38:00.000-08:00

Get it?

You Say You Want a Resolution

2012-01-11T14:10:00.000-08:00

You know it’s a new year when you’re already failing resolutions.

Shut up, skinny obsessive motivated people. You aren’t helping.

Interestingly enough, I didn’t make any resolutions this year. Sure, I want to finish my novel and post to my blog every day and become a better cook and make new friends and meet local artists and get involved with volunteering and start freelancing, but I didn’t “resolve” to do any of those things. If I had, my head would have exploded.

Instead, I opted for the Plug-and-Chug-to-Git-‘Er-Dun Method. Like, just do something every day or whatever.

Imagine my chagrin when I realized this wasn't working. For the 11th day this month, it's 3PM and I still haven't written a lick. Didn’t I quit my job to write, like, every day? Didn’t I vow to get on some sort of schedule so that I could accomplish work-y things like writing AND submitting said writing to contests? But here it is, 3PM , and I still haven’t written anything. Seriously, how did this happen?

::slap::

Haha, sorry Brain. You're right; I know exactly how I got here. Allow me to recount in excruciating detail how “this” happens:

(NOTE: Names have been changed to protect the innocent.[1])

7:30AM: Wake up.

7:35AM: Iron Boyfriend’s work shirt because you promised to do so for three days running and now he actually needs it. Clumsy with the weight of so much domesticity, you take approximately half an hour to press six buttonholes.

8:05AM: Start a pot of coffee. When Boyfriend appears downstairs—already fully clothed—hand him a travel mug.

8:10AM: Wave goodbye to Boyfriend as he skips into the world of professional productivity. Fold the ironing board, hang up his shirt, and shake your head.

8:10:30AM: Suffer the first many mournful gazes from the dog.

8:11AM: Swap hobo sweatshirt for gym clothes.

8:20AM: Brush teeth. (Whoops.)

8:25AM: Read a fiction story in a three-month-old Washington Post Magazine. Because, you know, you’ve earned a break.

8:40AM: Face another surge of accusatory pet-eyes, feel the wash of misery suck your feet out from under you and succumb to the strength of your animal's emotions. In other words, grab the leash and a bunch of poop bags because you no longer control your own life.

8:55AM: Realize that a) Dog is on a Mission to Point at Squirrels, not necessarily answer Calls of Nature; b) it is beginning to rain; and c) your gym class starts in fifteen minutes.

9:00AM: Suck wind while chasing Dog back up the hill to the house. Usher Dog back inside while panting heavily; hand her a treat to compensate for your imminent absence. This does not prevent a reproachful glare.

9:15AM: Pound away at your stationary bike. From beneath a blanket of sweat, confirm your self-declared truism: the perkier the instructor, the more psychotic the gym class.

10:20AM: Stagger out of the spin room and swear you’ll never eat another piece of junk again. Angle for the showers (assuming you can still walk).

11AM: Arrive home showered, polished, and primed for another heavy dose of guilt.

11:01AM: Eat a cookie.

11:05AM: Take Dog for a real walk this time. Get squawked at by some chickens in a driveway.

11:20AM: While passing the gas station, some dude holding a brown-bagged forty starts yelling and waving his free hand. He asks if you are trying to kill your dog by walking past cars. Sagely, you refrain from throwing a bag of poop at him.

11:45AM: Boyfriend calls to make lunch date. You offer to cook like the fool that you are.

12:30AM: You decide to make chili: simple recipe, ingredients on-hand, the perfect antidote on a day of drizzle and misery. Miraculously, chopping onions and opening cans only takes you 45 minutes.

1PM: Boyfriend comes home and you both eat a surprisingly delicious lunch. Victory!

1:45PM: After noticing a tick and some fleas (AUGH) on Dog, Boyfriend applies some flea-and-tick medicine to her coat. Pavlov here has trained your dog to associate Frontline with a long walk. She gives him big sad puppy eyes as he puts on his coat; when the door swings shut, she turns them on you.

2PM: Donning a hat and mittens this time, you schlep back into the cold. Dog vaults down the hill with glee and you scuffle through the rain, calves burning, in an attempt to keep up.

2:30PM: Wet and tired, you collapse into a chair so you can keep an eye on Dog and make sure she doesn’t do anything foolish, like lick her medicine or demonstrate affection. She climbs onto her bed, curls into a ball and sneaks a look in your direction. Gratitude shines in her wet doggy visage. (Or maybe she wants a treat. Let’s not go there.)

2:33PM: You finally turn on your laptop and spend a very necessary half-hour trolling other people’s blogs. You laugh and laugh, delighting in the wit and frivolity of this bizarre universe before resolving that you, too, must be a part of it.

So here we are. It’s now nearly 6PM. Why? Because I took a break to Google the new Britney Spears song? (Surely you understand, skinny running girls.)

Actually, Self, I do know why: time flies when I write for this blog. It's how I know I'm doing the right thing, a thing I will never regret. The minutes aren't boring; they don't even register. I dive into words and emerge from the deep with no sense of loss, no confusion or argument. I am refreshed, excited, a brave new girl. Exactly the person I resolved to be.

[1] Technically, pronouns have been changed. “I” became “you” and “my” became “your”. Let me disassociate if I need to.

Happy New Year!

2011-12-31T17:03:00.000-08:00

As the last hour of 2011 approaches, I decided I had better stop painting my skin with glitter to say HAPPY NEW YEAR from the blogosphere.

Through mindfulness and business trips, bidding adieu to full-time fragrance and hello to full-time writing, through cohabitation and overstuffed suitcases and 50,000 words, you, dear reader, have stood by my side for the glory and grief and manifold musings of another big, beautiful year. I cannot thank you enough.

Whether you read this from the future-summer of Sydney...

the romantic glamour of Paris...

the colorful confetti-fest of New York City...

...or anywhere else in this wide wonderful world, I hope you cross the cusp of 2012 surrounded by laughter, love and the excitement of the vast, sparkling future that awaits you.

CHEERS!

three cheers for the human spirit!

2011-12-05T13:45:00.000-08:00

This video is proof that you don't have to cut off your arm to demonstrate larger-than-life courage.

God bless this young man and anyone who uses their voice to stand up for themselves or the well-being of others. I'm in the midst of writing my personal statement for graduate school applications, and this reaffirms why I need to spend my life supporting creative thought, encouraging and celebrating anyone with the guts to live outside the box.

Free Clinic Fridays!

2011-12-02T14:10:00.000-08:00

Happy Friday!

After a few weeks spent pounding the keyboard in the name of novels or grad school applications, I have to say my internet trolling has decreased considerably. Damn you, productivity!

Despite these hang-ups, I think it’s time for another…

Free Clinic Friday

What do you need to do?

LAUGH: Hommemaker (Orlando Soria)

Orlando Soria is a design/fashion/whimsy blogger with great personal style and hilarious style style, if you get my drift. (It’s been a long week and I’m running out of euphemisms.) For proof/elucidation, check out the HG’s Secrets from a Stylist assistant’s post about men’s haircuts. Or his entire blog.

PANIC: Dance vs. PowerPoint: A Modest Proposal

This video blends speech, movement and experiments in molecular biology to make a modest proposal: that PowerPoints, PhDs, or any complicated subject matter can most simply be described through dance. According to Dr. John Bohannon, “the fewer words the better.” I nearly had an aneurism, but I have to agree the man makes a good point.

ESCAPE: Portugal

Thank you to the Cool Hunter for this image.

IMAGINE: Inkjet Transfer Table Settings

Make these quirky linens using the easy instructions from Kate at Design*Sponge. It looks like a totally sweet way to customize your dinner table for the holidays. If I had a color printer, I would take pictures of my face and paste it all over Boyfriend’s dinner napkins as a fun surprise!

OM: Shirk (So You Think You Can Dance)

In the pits of burnout a few weeks ago I got really obsessed with So You Think You Can Dance videos. There are so many incredibly talented artists on that show, but this video shows one dance I particularly like, choreographed to an intensely beautiful song by a woman named Me’Shell Ndegeocello.

The Novel Project: 50,000 WORDS!

2011-12-01T14:36:00.000-08:00

This is totally going on my sidebar.

November 30^th, Day of Reckoning.

When I pulled up to Writer House last night, I clicked into warrior mode. Like a samurai poised for battle, I wore black; like Rocky, Eye of the Tiger played in my head. I kicked open the front door and laid fierce claim to a desk chair and table, arming myself with my 2009 Mac WhiteBook and four tracks of Death Cab for Cutie.

I was so ready to type my last 1700 words. At that point, 2K felt like child’s play, easier to destroy than a box of double-chocolate Milanos labeled ‘Fair Game’. Over the course of this month, I learned that it really ain’t that hard to churn out epic word counts, provided you have the pressure of the internet and no day job to distract you. I was gonna crush it.

Inside, the enthusiasm was contagious, verbosity flooding the House like the scent of fresh Papa John’s. Incidentally, the kitchen was full of pizza, but I, not to be deterred, stuck to my tried-and-true regimen of Coke and Cheez-balls. Settling back in my thinly-padded chair, I began pounding at the keyboard.

The hour flew by. I’d finished a monster battle scene the day before, and now the living was easy; in moments of distress, I simply employed the handy ‘glib dialogue’ technique. Plot propulsion, here we come!

As I wrote I knew I was drawing toward the end. My characters laughed, my characters cried. My characters taunted me with the fact that even though I’d written 1/20^th of a million words, they still had so much more to say. Before I knew it, the threshold was crossed, and a beam of brilliant light shot down through the ceiling as the crowd burst into cheers.

So thank you, thank you, and let me just say that I was so impressed by everyone else who did this project. From apartment foreclosures to hospital trips to Thanksgiving dinners, these writers endured almost everything during their 30 days. Two people finished 50K by November 15^th, and someone wrote their entire word count in just 11 days. I even heard the story of a stay-at-home mom who, despite the presence of small, presumably screaming tots, wrote 100,000 words in our allotted time.

Whaaaaaaaaaat.

Despite the absence of insurmountable roadblocks in my path to verbose glory, I am proud of my 50,000 words. (Or if you want to Times New Roman and double-space and it, 171 pages!!) Way back in April, when I took a novel writing course at NYU, I vowed to finish a draft of my book by the end of 2011. A very busy spring, summer and fall had my unspoken goal looking less and less attainable, but now I see how truly possible it is.

I might not be finished with my story yet, but this experience allowed me to see that I can do anything if I just stick with it. It gives me hope, it renews my faith, and it reminds me, as I hope it can remind you, that no matter what we do or where we are, any moment can be the one to start something big.

So 30 days later, the Novel Project continues. I’ll keep you posted from time to time, but allow me to stress, for both you and for me: the best is yet to come.

The Novel Project: Day 29

2011-11-29T13:52:00.000-08:00

Twilight falls outside my window, no doubt trying to get a peek of the next great American novel.

Greetings, earthlings! It’s November 29^th, or Day (you guessed it!) 29 of National Novel Writing Month. Writers all over the world have recovered from Thanksgiving (or weekend) hangovers and are sprinting all-out to hit the 50,000-word mark by 11:59PM tomorrow.

I am oh-so-proud to say that I played some serious catch-up in over the last week. I wrote thousands words on my birthday, aided in large part by epic rainfall, a banker’s dozen donuts, and so much caffeine I couldn’t sleep until 3AM. I maintained a mildly acceptable word count during my holiday visit to NJ; this credit must go to the dog, whose fearful presence in the house caused my cat to flee the county, thereby depriving me of hours upon wordless hours of cuddling. As we round the final bend in this crazy race, I hover at just over 48,000 words. The rest will come tomorrow!

Lest my current success fool you, I’d like to explain that it’s not all cookie consumption and musing brilliance. NaNoWriMo, the group that manages this annual event, provides some pretty excellent tools to keep motivation high. These include motivational essays, funny videos, access to a thousands-wide database of participants, and two resources that I particularly enjoy:

Word Sprints. These challenges are issued by volunteers who use a Twitter account to set the start time and duration to anyone following; for example, you might log in at 5:26 and see that a word sprint will start at :30 and last for :20 minutes. Four minutes later, the imaginary gun goes off (because we do know how to use our imaginations, believe it or not), and for 20 minutes, everybody writes like crazy. Then you can share the number of words you’ve written, get a coffee, cry into your cereal, or whatever practice prepares you for your next sprint. I can attribute 50% of my novel to these sprints. (And yes, the writing may be garbage, but I have sworn not to edit or re-read until the dust settles on this whole psychotic undertaking.)

My NaNoWriMo. This is a personal profile page on which you describe yourself, your interests, genre, synopsis and excerpt. You can also upload a picture and find writing buddies, and honestly if online dating profiles were half this interesting I might have actually enjoyed that brief depressing foray into Match.com. Anywho, my favorite part of the site is where we get to check our stats—update word counts, track progress, etc. etc. Here is a picture of my stats so you can see how truly inconsistent I am. It’s not you, blogosphere, it’s definitely me.

So now you know the dirty truth: it doesn’t take a wizard to write a novel in 30 days. It takes a lot of encouragement, time and commitment, but mostly the excitement of knowing you can accomplish something you once thought was impossible. I can’t wait to wake up tomorrow, when the moment know of truth is at hand.

The Novel Project: Days of Chaos

2011-11-21T13:11:00.000-08:00

Photo thanks to Christina Perri via Instagram.

Greetings from beyond! I apologize for my recent absence on the interwebs. (I mean, I've been here, digesting such inspirations as David Guetta remixes, Thomas Newman scores and the soundtrack from Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1 AKA The Most Talked-About Story Involving Creepy Alien Babies since 1979.) Before jumping back in the ring for a fistfight with verbosity, I felt the need to check in with my readership.

How are you?

I'm feeling a little loopy, thanks.

Last week I hit NaNoWriMo at a nice clip, cranking the word count and nearly hitting my halfway count by November 15. At 22,000 words, however, I had a sudden, multi-layered crisis: conquering a series of plot holes to stitch together old chapters (that I won’t include in the word count) and the fact that grad school applications were due in ONE MONTH. In a flurry of deadline-fear, I began requesting transcripts, test scores, researching programs for personal statements and whittling portfolio works.

The crescendo of MFA prep flared on Saturday night, when I finished Draft One of a 20-page piece for my portfolio. Here is a picture, taken at approximately midnight, in the midst of a 5-hour sprint at Writer House:

Cheez Balls, Coke and silver nail polish. Because somewhere in my verse-addled brain I decided “I must become a writing machine.”

Pray for me.

So now I’m back on the NaNoWriMo horse with a scary deficit of 12.000 words and plenty of grad work to boot. This is no time to rest on my laurels. So my blog posts may not be as frequent—especially with Thanksgiving and a homecoming on the horizon—but as my 26^th year on this earth dwindles to a close, just know I am doing exactly what fires and fuels and freaks me out, what I love as much as nearly anything, and the lesson for tonight may just be that success is only worth what it takes from us, only as powerful as the challenge to be overcome.

A Whale of a Time

2011-11-14T08:22:00.001-08:00

Having recently upgraded to an iPhone, this secret from PostSecret made me laugh so hard I snorted. Twice.

Whether you're a voyeur, artist, or lover of people, this doctor recommends you buy the PostSecret app IMMEDIATELY. If you doubt how captivating and ultimately comforting others' secrets can be, check this out.

Don't say I didn't warn you!

111111111111111111111

2011-11-11T09:25:00.000-08:00

Happy 11/11/11!

Ever since I was the sort of inquisitive child who asked such delightful questions as "what's the best color?" and "what's your favorite number?", I have been obsessed with 11. Love the symmetry, love the fact that it's just a composition of 1s (arguably every ego-maniacal writer's favorite digit), love the fact that if numbers were people, 1 would be the tall, skinny underdog who always comes out on top (and probably wears glasses, right?). LOVE IT!

To celebrate this single-century 1 day, make a wish.

Credit to Matt Higgins at Six Word Story Every Day.

And thank you to every veteran and current member of the U.S. Armed Services. I'm glad you're getting celebrated on such a sweet day.

Missing Summer? Here's Your Dose!

2011-11-08T10:29:00.000-08:00

The home of Lightning Jar.

Even though I am busy writing a novel, I’m never too busy to appreciate good music. Lightning Jar is a New Jersey-based band; like all great musicians, they began performing in and around Asbury Park. Amidst the run-down casinos, crumbling thoroughfares, and a renaissance convention hall, these guys are quiet superstars. An album is coming, a single already on iTunes, and if you're starting to mourn the passage of summer, you need them in your life.

A year ago, on a frosty November Friday, I saw Lightning Jar perform at a coffeehouse. It was my introduction to their style, a mix of acoustic and folk and hints of country. Graceful fingers thrumming strings, the cheerful slap of tiny gold cymbals against a tambourine—their music was melancholy and playful, beguiling. It beckoned the audience to a different place, somewhere forgotten or possibly imagined, a flat red brush land, an endless road, the blue of wide-open sky.

As the song continued, I felt the roof shift in its straights. Cold and snow dissolved overhead; a chorus exploded and the building collapsed, brick and mortar transformed. Following Lightning Jar’s meandering voice, we left our winters for the summer inside us, standing now in a plane of sunshine.

When the song finished, the room erupted: applause and whistles, a sudden kinship. For a minute, our dark roasts and half-dreams became something more. For a minute, every one of us was there.

The Novel Project: Day 4

2011-11-04T20:59:00.000-07:00

Made it to 6318 words!

Please ignore the fact that that I should be up to 6668 words by now; I will make up for it. I spent the bulk of my day finishing my resume and writing a CV, a personal statement, and a summary of my novel. THAT’s RIGHT! Prolific professional writerly-ness!

See you tomorrow!

The Novel Project: Day 3

2011-11-03T19:50:00.000-07:00

Yargh! Onward we sail!

Yesterday someone suggested I do a daily “blogress report” (and yes, gato, I am calling you out in front of the WORLD for that pun), and I agree! What better way to hold myself accountable than to you, darling reader of mine.

Well, good news: today I wrote the recommended word count AND THEN SOME. I actually paid two separate visits to the local writer’s haunt, WriterHouse. The first was at lunchtime, when the halls were eerily empty and a lone receptionist shrugged for me to take my pick of four open rooms and a dozen unoccupied chairs. The second was just a few hours ago, during an official NaNoWriMo Open House. By contrast, this stint was much livelier—crowded rooms, open chatter about word counts and stumbling blocks. I even got a cookie when I walked through the door.

So yes, I’m happy to say that this day was successful, I’m making good blogress, and I’m even (almost) done with my resume. (Except for that whole formatting thing. And major details about every position. And the exact titles of certain pieces I’ve published. And adding links. You know what? I’ll get there.)

LinkedIn: A Protest or Day 2 of The Novel Project

2011-11-02T13:05:00.000-07:00

BAM! I DID IT! I WROTE MORE WORDS TODAY!

I am very happy. After two days I can say definitively that novel writing is EASY provided you have a) all the time in the world; b) a room specifically designed to encourage writing; c) a sweet playlist; d) a nation of encouragement; e) a full evening of inspiration in the form of open mic readings from local MFA candidates; f) a totally open plotline thus far; and g) a pan of homemade brownies to keep you motivated. Easy-peasy!

(Dear Karma, if you are listening:

Please understand the sarcasm and enthusiasm with which I write this,

and take it easy on me in the days and weeks to come.

Sincerely yours,

Elizabeth Derby)

Now that my most major goal for the day is complete, I am about to launch into a much hairier project: updating my resume. This has been on my to-do list for quite a while, motivated by largely by my awareness that I am a GOOBER with an inaccurate LinkedIn profile. I’ve even been contacted by recruiters, which would be totally sweet if I were still in the industry or even the state, but since neither is true I’m inclined to think my social network needs accuracy for successful self-promotion.

Can you imagine?

To be honest, I shudder at the thought of updating my resume. Yes, I have the typical worries—are my keywords correct, do I use the right language, am I a schmuck if I reference Bush-era accomplishments—but my CV is complicated by a sticky psychological wicket. Here I will attempt, for the first time ever, to define myself as a writer, someone with the professional know-how to do authorly things and such.

It reminds me of the Seuss circus act where a guy dives from a platform into a cup of water.

See, writers don’t share the usual corporate-speak. Our whole shtick is that we use our unique-as-snowflakes voices to describe things in a way general readers can actually comprehend. There are no widgets or platforms or cost-benefit analyses, just situational literary aplomb. We either fly or we fail, we connect or we don’t, but every reaction is different, every outcome is personal, and the traditional barometers of success—money, fame, fancy cocktails—are limited largely to our imaginations.

I realize that many writers describe their careers in terms of publications and by-lines. That makes sense. Magazines and newspapers and digital content can be measured with certain numbers. Subscribers, readers, ad-click sales: these are a playground of the quantifiable. But without these particular numbers, sans years of effort to publish any and everywhere, where is the selling point for someone like me? I could try to describe, in hit-prone common terms, the distinction my voice might bring to a product or service. But now we’re getting into the sort of nebulous theory rejected by search engines and Human Resources alike.

So help me, friends, help me understand. What about those of us who didn’t spend four years with six jobs, who dedicated a solid effort to climbing a single corporate ladder and now lack the most rudimentary of ‘Featured In’ lists? I can talk about writing for Marketing projects, but it rings a little hollow to say that my most bankable skill is describing the subtle nuances of a vanilla-scented candle.

In the end I suppose what must be will be. I’ll probably wind up with a personal statement that includes a bevy of odds and ends, pipe dreams and half-truths, a metaphysical kitchen sink. I’m also aware there are worse places to start, for I’m lucky, dear reader, that you stand here with me. After nearly two years spent waxing poetic about the odd, always colorful quarter-life crisis, I’ve amassed enough musings to feel self-important. And you, bless your heart, are totally quantifiable.

Viking Horns, or The Novel Project

2011-11-01T13:47:00.000-07:00

CHAAARRRRRRGE!

Welcome to November, or as I like to call it, “My Birthday Month.”

Speaking of birthdays, my brain decided it was time to take a little spin through the past. Specifically, it decided to revisit the feeling of unproductive ineptitude that comes with too much relaxation/not enough creative achievements. Since moving to Charlottesville six weeks ago, I’ve done a ton of arts and crafts, and I am happy to say that my office décor is nearly complete. But my writing has been limited almost entirely to this blog, and so my creativity feels under-utilized, subpar in terms of literary volume and value.

DOCTOR’S NOTE: If you decide to quit your day job in order to follow your dreams, don’t be surprised if you need a month or so to decompress, adjust, and generally chill out. Only after you have caught up on your sleep, your reading, and your internet addictions, after you have learned to cook, to spackle, to walk a dog and assemble a bookcase, will you begin to recall the feeling that caused you to leap in the first place. Catch your breath, because until you do you aren’t going anywhere. You need to miss working, to actually crave the great slog of artistic and intellectual effort. Only when you reach this low point, the doldrums of a mind less complacent, will you have both the energy and impetus to challenge yourself again.

So that’s where I’m standing: in the drainage ditch of run-off goals, up to my knees in murky half-efforts. In quiet moments I explored these bits and pieces, held each up to the light. I’ve selected a handful of bright, achievable tasks, and after six weeks of careful examination, of heart-rumblings and glorious peace, I’m ready to move on.

Today, November 1, is the start of my birthday month, but it’s also NaNoWriMo. It’s an acronym that’s hilarious to pronounce and relatively difficult to decode, but it’s also the key to the beginning of my biggest project yet.

November 1: National Novel Writing Month.

Every year, writers all over the country band together for what the NaNoWriMo organization calls “thirty days and nights of literary abandon.” The goal is intense: to produce a 50,000-word novel in the span of one month. This translates to 1,667 words or 10-12 pages a day. There are national forums, listservs, videos and countless resources for all the tears/angst/joy this process invariably creates, and luckily for me, Charlottesville has its own NaNoWriMo community.

After the Mindfulness Project, I realized that I could do anything for just 30 days. After a month of studying for the GREs, I realized I could do hard stuff, too. So this will be tough—like running a marathon when you revel in wind sprints—but I’ve had an idea for a novel for almost two years now, and I am thrilled to finally, for the first time ever, take seriously the phrase “Elizabeth Derby, Novelist”. I might not finish 50,000 words, and it might not be poetry, but if I can bust my brain every day for 30 days my dream will be underway.

The best part? My life is primed for this perfect opportunity, and I’m rested for the first time in four years. I plan to give this thing hell. Hell and Viking horns.

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T13:22:00.000-07:00

Image from A Nostalgic Halloween

Greetings on this very spooky holiday! May your buckets brim with candy and your stoops overflow with children who still say “trick or treat!”

I am pleased to say that Boyfriend and I managed to pull off our Boris & Natasha costumes this year:

And I still have my real eyebrows!

Tonight, however, I won’t scare the children with skin-tight clothes and ill-applied face paint. No, tonight I plan to be something far scarier…

A housewife! Augh!!!

I will make a festive wreath for the door (like so):

And an orange-themed meal:

Check out the sweet recipe for this pumpkin monkey bread here.

Finally, I plan to imbibe copious amounts of “witches brew”, if you catch my drift.

Do YOU have any creepy plans?

Enjoy the night!

Free Clinic Fridays!

2011-10-28T13:54:00.000-07:00

Happy Friday!

I recently noticed a trend that you bloggers “in the know” probably recognized circa 1999. Referred to as weekly wrap-ups, Friday obsessions, or bits and pieces, these posts are just lists of other blogs, websites, or real-time hashtags that interest the writer.

Genuis! my brain squealed. A way to validate my countless hours of interweb trolling!

Yes, dear reader, I have decided to establish Free Clinic Fridays (a title to further emphasize my unjustified medical claims). Think of it as a weekly shortlist of cures. There’s bound to be relief for something that ails you.

So without further ado, I present my first:

Free Clinic Friday

What do you need to do?

LAUGH: Wannabe Hipster Shoes
(The Lawrence/Julie/Julia Project)

I’ve been holding out on this one. If you didn’t already know, Lawrence is a college kid who sits in his dorm room and watches the movie Julie & Julia every day. Like, every single day for a year, and today is the 333^rd day. The best part? He doesn’t even like the movie. His blistering hatred for Julie Powell is one of the funniest things Northwestern University has ever produced.

PANIC: Halloween Makeup

Guess what, kids? Halloween is almost here, and in addition to sugar highs and binge drinking, you’re probably donning a costume. If you are the type of person who bothers to dress up, you had better go all-out. If you aren’t, shame on you.

This year, Boyfriend and I are going as Boris and Natasha, the dastardly no-goodniks from my favorite childhood VHS, Rocky & Bullwinkle. I can’t wait to butcher a Russian accent, but I’m a bit nervous about the makeup part:

Check out her eyebrows!

Actually, drawing the curvy lines will be easy, but covering my real eyebrows will be a bit more unnerving. Did you know that the best method for concealing forehead caterpillars is Elmer’s?

Apparently I’m supposed to rub glue sticks on my forehead and pray I don’t wind up hairless. No joke. Even drag queens approve.

Depending on how it goes, I will post some pictures of us in costume next week. In the meantime, here is a photo of my current brows (in case we never meet again). I'm sentimental already.

ESCAPE: Vintage Surf Photos

Hurricane season is beginning to wane, and that represents a last hurrah for some surf buffs. Though I no longer live beside the ocean, I still close my eyes and pretend sometimes. Thanks to the ever-hilarious Orlando Soria for these photos.

IMAGINE: Mosaic Art Project

I made this!

My family came to visit this week, and being a crafty bunch of women we undertook a number of projects. My favorite was this one, developed and described in detail at the delightful blog Salvage Savvy. It’s actually really easy to make artwork like this for your home in whatever colors and textures you choose. Check out the how-to to get crafting!

OM: Sliding Down (Instrumental)

Last summer I saw a thrilling trio in concert: Zakir Hussain, Bela Fleck & Edgar Meyer.

I was especially captivated by Edgar Meyer, a American bassist and composer whose fingers moved so fast they became a blur. (That being said, Bela Fleck and Zakir Hussain were equally mind-blowing!) Here, Meyer comes together with Fleck once more, teaming this time with Mike Marshall in the song Sliding Down. Let this piece of aural poetry move you, lay its masterful hands on your spirit, and I promise you’ll sink into the weekend imbued with peace.

The Body at Work

2011-10-20T14:08:00.000-07:00

Image from Kellie Petersen on Pintrest.

Blind with sweat, I grind my jaw against the pain and puff like a woman in labor. A combination of resistance, repetition, and cardio short-windedness has caused my kettlebell to swell from ten to five hundred pounds, and as my triceps flex and elbows bow I swear muscle fibers will lash out of my skin.

Then it’s over. I drop the bell and head between my knees. Breathing. Hard.

My heart rate subsides. In the time it takes to position for lunges, that chipper fistful of muscle is ready for more. When the music starts, my heart leaps with glee, sprinting after the challenge like a dog chasing squirrels. Surfing waves of cortisol complex, my body tenses and bends and eventually trembles, building fortitude as well as heat, humming with effort, buzzing with joy.

What the hell? my mind mutters. What does this look like, a picnic?

As brain and body bicker and struggle, I sneak a bilateral grin. Every moment longer is one moment less, and when we get to the end of this one hour class we will be red-faced, victorious, a perfect union of self and physical sphere.

This, for me, is the single best reason to work out. Diabetes and heart attacks and insidious marbling of organs aside, the acts of walking or running or rhythmic air-punching prevent the loss of history, the unraveling of self.

Here’s the thing: we spend hours and days avoiding our bodies, absorbed by LCD screens and flavor chemicals. If you over-think as much as I do, you know that our minds are incredibly selfish, egomanical with wolfish appetites. Attention, diversions, feed me, Seymour—demanding it all is what the mind does.

It’s easy to forget our bodies are here. Their language is different, a sort of incomprehensible Esperanto. Our mistranslations cause us to eat fast food when we’re thirsty, to drink while hungry for touch. If we take the time to listen closely, we begin to understand bits and pieces; we feel the difference between right and wrong, yes and no, good and bad. Body-speak requires attention, but through it we can link to our genetic landscape, the scope of our primitive bodies.

So I stretch and squat despite myself. I flood my limbs with air and blood like the princess spinning gold. My body responds; my body speaks up, and lo and behold, my mind starts to think in concert. A witness to oneness of the whole, she encourages instead of antagonizes, and now my brain gives way. A self determined, just a few seconds more, followed by rocketing pleasure: my primeval connection to every human that ever stalked an animal, that fled across a plain, and once again I feel Darwin's great chain settle inside me.

So when I leave, flushed and shining, I won’t forget what I am: body and mind woven as one, indebted to everything, to everywhere we come from. I am kettlebells and verdant plains, cackling monkeys and yoga instructors, too many thoughts and too many expletives and so much sweat and still, for many days, I will feel the ache in my muscle fibers and remember it all.

* * *

Now, for your viewing pleasure, I present a TED talk from Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues. I was floored by her power, the grace of her poetry, and her description of new connection with her body—once alien, isolated, lost—now stronger than a thousand currents of mind.

Indian Summer (or Fruit Flies' Revenge)

2011-10-18T07:59:00.000-07:00

Things I hate: fruit flies, the cold.

Things I love: triumphing over fruit flies, Indian summer.

All photos courtesy of The Cool Hunter's "Getting Back to Nature."

I’m working on the former while in the midst of the latter, and I can’t shake the desire to run through the sun-spangled streets to some wide park where I will lie on the grass and read and give myself to dreaming.

My desire is urgent for two reasons: our local weatherwoman warned us that tomorrow will bring cold fronts and windy rains, and the system may well sweep the last traces of summer from this mountain town.

Charlottesville is known for it’s gorgeous autumn foliage, and I’ve noticed the sleepy-headed maples turning shades of ochre and gold. I am livid with the injustice that passing years will turn my hair the color of dull dimes instead of this fiery swan song.

Now I’ll have to dye my hair this color.

When Nature steps up her game, we have an obligation to admire it. She’s shooting off every aesthetic firework she can manage, and in a year of natural disasters, we owe it to ourselves to appreciate her wild beauty. If you can, get out there, even for a 5-minute stint between coffees. If you can’t, maybe this video will help.

In the meantime, I think I’ll take my own advice. Summer doesn’t last forever; nor will this spectacular fall; nor, indeed, will the fruit flies.

ASK DOCTOR DERBY: The Interminable Quarter-Life Crisis

2011-10-14T12:35:00.000-07:00

Yeah, it's all fun and games now. Just give it 23 years.

Today’s question comes from Ryan the Girl, a friend with whom I studied Ye Olde English at the College of Knowledge, and as a musician and fellow blogger she is well qualified to ask it.

QUESTION: How long does this Quarter-Life Crisis last??? Does it stick around until the dreaded 3-0 comes around? And how are we Quarter Lifers supposed to deal with this kind of crisis when we're too poor to buy sports cars?

ANSWER (in two parts)

How long does the QLC last? As long as you need it to.

I realize that’s a tad counterintuitive, what with the whole “please-make-it-go-away-I-just-want-the-answers-and-maybe-a-ham-sandwich” mentality that accompanies these crises. And oh yeah, I’ve felt this way. When you’re balled up on the couch, eating Doritos and crying over poetry or Glee, it’s easy to hate the questions, to wonder when, dear God please, the wondering will stop.

But here’s the thing. If you love life, if you are commanded by the vibrant pulse in your veins, if you are engaged and curious and open you will always have questions. You’re not dead, not you or me or anyone reading this post (presumably), and this is the best thing that’s happened to any of us since the day we were born.

Since uncertainty has its roots in true living, if wonder is the flame of human spirit, what is up with all this angst? To that, the heart of the quarter-life crisis, I answer: don’t fight it!

This is not a phase; it’s not an illness. It’s not a 20-something scourge. It’s a part of yourself that cries out for attention, that demands you bear deep into the fog and mire. Use every compass, use all your endurance, and when the time comes you will run aground on new truths.

We want to know what tomorrow will bring because we want to avoid the fears, the worries, to raise battlements against life’s plans. Impossible, and worse, stilting—even if we could know, we shouldn’t; you can’t win without a fight, and you can’t survive without deserving to. So give into the storm, to the hurricane winds, and unclap your hands from your shivering ears. There’s a sound beneath the thunder and drumming rain: that same voice, yours, repeating the truths of itself over and over again. The words are a song and a triumphant message, and it will loop until you listen or are driven mad.

* * *

My personal experience:

I’m currently 26, rounding on 27, and I’ve been having self-awareness conniptions since I turned 25. These fevers—the head-splitting, tooth-grinding sweats about what to do with the rest of my life—broke after about a year and a half.

Sometime in the late spring, I began to fret less about the myriad outcomes of any particular action and resolved myself to one of them. For a long time, I worried that if I shut myself off to any opportunity that came my way, I would lose the best thing that (n)ever happened to me. This habit led to a lot of question marks on calendars, last-minute resolutions, and the sort of psychological ellipses that drove me insane. Rather than preserve life choices, I’d failed to capitalize and truly enjoy any of them.

For me, then, a quarter-life crisis acted as the catalyst for a new mode of living. I stopped hedging my bets and began taking risks. I resolved myself to the big, scary things I knew I truly wanted to do, and when I talked about achieving them I uncrossed the fingers behind my back.

Despite my long-term fear of closing doors, I discovered a new kind of peace, an excitement for the future I’d never felt before. A The fog and clouds obscuring the horizon were no longer fearsome; they were curtains to be drawn apart, challenges to be conquered, and beyond them waited the great shining stage of my life.

That’s not to say I no longer freak out about debt, politics, global warming, and chipping nail polish. I just don’t classify these bottomless worries as a true QLC. Uncertainty is the flint of living; my fear means I’m alive. When I started to listen, the loop of my voice told me to tell stories, to write them and read them and sing them out. I quit my job, I left the grind, and of all the risks in this big, bright life, I’m taking the one I’ve always longed for.

* * *

And how should you deal in the meantime?

If you’re dying for a sports car, lease one for the day! (The 17 year olds who worked at the pizza place downstairs used to do that all the time. At least I think they did, since there was a different exposed-engine Mazarati, Merc or Porsche parked curbside most weekends. Slices weren’t that good.)

Alternately, you could start robbing banks and then do whatever you want. Just don't mention my name.

Let's Hear It for Less

2011-10-11T10:23:00.000-07:00

My apartment. If I lived in Ikea and played numerous stringed instruments.

When I was growing up, I learned that every toy had a home. When my sister and I took toys out to play, we had to return them to their houses when we were finished. In a world of anthropomorphic teddy bears and multi-generational stuffed seals, this made perfect sense.

“Here you go,” I’d whisper to my baby doll. “Enjoy your nap in this cozy second drawer of the entertainment center.”

This philosophy—that every thing has a place in which it ultimately belongs there—has informed my entire adult existence. I can’t think when I’m surrounded by stuff; things on shelves or countertops make my brain squirm. Unless, of course, that thing is a basket, box or sleek storage unit designed expressly as a home for other stuff. Anything visible should be beautiful, and the chaos can nest inside the beauty.

When I lived alone, I kept a very neat apartment. Dishes were washed and put away ASAP; clothes never lingered on the floor. Sure, if you opened a desk or bedroom chest drawer you’d find an explosion of chaos—unsorted papers, balled-up shirts, etc.—but that didn’t bother me. Out of sight, out of mind!

With my recent multiple moves, I got even more aggressive. I had one closet in my old apartment, which necessitated a certain minimalism, but I soon discovered that I didn’t need half of what I was hanging onto. I gave away three giant boxes of books, bags of clothes, bins of dishes. It felt great to purge and it made moving pretty easy.

Then I moved to Charlottesville, and I discovered that—gasp!—Boyfriend is not the same way. He’s neat and clean, but he doesn’t have the slice of genetic code that forces him, robot-like, to eliminate and refine and scrutinize the size-to-worth ratio of every object in his home. (Interestingly, his digital files are 1000x neater than mine. Maybe it’s a gender thing.)

At first he thought I was being condescending. “Every object has a ‘home’? Elizabeth, I’m not a child. You could just tell me to put things away.” But truly, this language is embedded in me, and now that we’re together he’s come to see the light. Maybe it’s just loving indulgence, but he’s worked with me as I’ve purged and cleaned, making Craigslist ads and Goodwill runs, and every day I breathe easier. Soon all the stuff will be put away—his and mine and even the pup’s—and we will all live happily ever after.

You can imagine my delight when last night, after a day spent building bookshelves, I discovered a talk on TED about doing more with less. The speaker was Graham Hill, founder of TreeHugger and the recent Life Edited project, explaining in six pared-down minutes the power of bare minimums. How refreshing, how creative, how totally apropos. I hope you are as inspired by Graham’s message as I was.

Mom, this one’s for you.

The Needle

2011-10-10T12:27:00.000-07:00

Monday morning is a beggar for my heart. “Pay attention,” she pleads. “I’m giving you another week.” She looks at me with big, dewy eyes. “A fresh day. A blank slate. Go make something great.”

So I bend to her supplication, begin mining thoughts and unraveled tasks. Sunday let me off the hook, but here comes Monday, bright and soulful, and her beauty is impossible to resist.

On this Monday, I’d like to share a poem by Jennifer Grotz. The Needle is an account of the small moments that forge a day, a minute, a life. The poet’s delicate images loop and scroll like pen-strokes, and as we watch the whole take shape it grows even lovelier than its parts.

The Needle

by Jennifer Grotz

"When your eyes have done their part,

Thought must length it in the heart."

—Samuel Daniel

. . . Thought lengths it, pulls

an invisible world through

a needle's eye

one detail at a time,

beginning with

the glint of blond down

on his knuckle as he

crushed a spent cigarette—

I can see that last strand of smoke

escaping in a tiny gasp—above the table where

a bee fed thoughtfully

from a bowl of sugar.

World of shadows! where

his thumb lodged into

the belly of an apple,

then split it in two,

releasing the scent that exists

only in late summer’s apples

as we bit into

rough halves flooded with juice.

Memory meticulously stitches

the market square

where stalls of fruit

ripened in the heat.

Stitches the shadows stretched and

pulled across the ground by

the crowds pigeons

seemed to mimic

in their self-important

but not quite purposeful

strutting,

singly and in droves.

Stitches the unraveling

world where

only vendors and policemen

stood in place.

My New Office

2011-10-05T09:34:00.000-07:00

Sup y’all?

Greetings from another sunny morning in Charlottesville, where I sip my coffee and ponder the next step in decorating my home office.

Before I moved in, Boyfriend very generously agreed to let me take the small third bedroom and convert it into an office. He’d been using it as a combination workspace/storage room with intentions to paint eventually, but like most people with jobs and real hobbies, he hadn’t yet found the time.

That’s my desk, which I intend to keep. That’s also my stuffed seal.

Fortunately, Yours Truly is currently unencumbered by things like mortgages and stock portfolios and office-bound careers. Cue the obsessive fantasizing!

When I see this room, I see a canvas hungry for love. The dimensions are lovely, the ratio of window-walls-doors evenly balanced. I envision an enclave with bright white walls and buckets of sunlight, Imagine the colors! The textures! Now wakened, my creative impulse rears like a flesh-eating giant, frenzied and starving, panting with anticipation.

When I lumber onto the internet, my blood-lust roars. So many possibilities! So many gorgeous ideas! I could do something like this:

Or this:

OK, maybe not the tree house. But I do love me some botany:

Wall prints, perhaps?

Or paper birds on a minimalist wall-scape:

Searching design blogs on the internet is mind-blowing. It’s an a la carte menu where every item makes me salivate. Take, for example, these views into photographer Aaron Delesie and his wife Jennifer’s Santa Monica home:

ARGHHHH. WANT IT SO BAD. Thank you, Design*Sponge, for the full Sneak Peek; I am now committed to robbing a barn for this project.

Another infinitely covetable space? Designer Orlando Soria’s first apartment, as featured on his endlessly amusing blog, Hommemaker.

JUST LOOK AT THOSE ANTLERS. Am I getting more country by the minute? Or is that the coolest use of animalia you’ve ever seen? The cacti are beyond perfect. And oh, how I love this doorway:

As Soria explains in his post,

From 2005-2008 I was a constant “Yay” sayer. So much so that I thought it was appropriate to put a “YAY!” decal on my window. It seems dorky but it was a nice reminder to be appreciative for what I saw out that window (the lovely Hollywood Hills).

Sigh. So inspiring. Maybe I’ll graffti JERSEY across my window as a reminder of where I come from. I’m sure the squirrels will be impressed.

Fueled by the endless machinations of the internet, I am completely obsessed with my new office. Based on the un-scientific sampling above, it would appear my style oscillates between 1800s farmhouse, industrial minimalism, and librarian chic. After two weeks of digestion, commitment to a few key pieces, and 17 trips to Lowes, I’m ready to begin.

So wish me luck on this adventure, friends. I’m on the hunt for the perfect design, and when the time comes for my celebratory feast I’ll be sure to share the pictures.

Welcome to Virginia

2011-10-04T07:17:00.000-07:00

"Where we love is home - home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts."

~Oliver Wendell Holmes

From my vantage point on the couch, looking past the dog’s guilt-inducing stare and the maples that frame our living room windows, I see sunshine. I also see rain, which is weird, but weirder things have happened, I guess.

Like that time I moved to Virginia!!!

Yes, dear reader, it’s true: I have officially bid adieu to New Jersey. Like the brave settlers of yore, I packed my car with a few belongings (400 magazine clippings, 12 sundresses and a stapler) and forged a path down Interstate 95, fording rivers, climbing hills, staving off the hazards of speed limits and too little caffeine.

Wide-eyed and wired, I crossed the Mason-Dixon line and began this adventure just over two weeks ago. (OK, it’s been 16 days, 10 hours, and 8 minutes, but who’s counting?) I moved into a townhouse on the outskirts of Charlottesville, a small city nestled beside the Blue Ridge Mountains two hours south of D.C. Though the area is known for academia and American history, my personal attraction to this place was far less intellectual.

I did it for a boy.

The good news, for those of you about to lose your lunch or suggest I’ve lost my mind, is that he wants me here, too. Unlike Keri Russell’s Felicity, I was invited. Even more than that, really; over the last year, he and I discussed it enough that Verizon owes us sponsorships. Our phone calls, interspersed with more 7-hour road trips than two people should ever suffer, went like this:

I could come to you.

I want to come to you.

Darling, I’d leave my friends for you.

I’d sell my house for you!

I’d sell a kidney!

I’d quit my job!

I’d slap my boss!

Et cetera.

While both of us ached to ruin our lives for love, it made the most sense for me. I am an artist, after all, so I left my job, shucking security like a pair of sweatpants, and packed my bags. On a rainy Saturday, with everything I knew slipping from my rearview, I tasted freedom on a sweet Southern highway and roared toward this unique chance to become the writer I’ve always wanted to be.

When I finally pulled into the darkening driveway, I saw balloons. (‘Welcome home’, they said, a burst of Comic Sans surrounded by playful camouflage print. For the veteran in all of us!) Riddled with kisses and happy exhaustion, I fell into my new bed and slept as deeply as a fur trader on the banks of the Mississippi. Or something.

I spent the next days like a yo-yo, weeping thunderclouds of homesickness or laughing with blue-sky excitement. I churned, am still churning, as my heart stretched hundreds of miles, flooding from mountains to foam-flecked ocean. My family, my friends, my man and his dog—all feel so close, a hands-breadth away, sitting beside me or just out of sight.

So things are different—very different—but things are still the same. These unfamiliar altitudes, the heavy humidity and broken sidewalks, are punctured by the jet noise of Jersey, leaves in shades of green so sweet and certain they nearly break my heart. I look out the window and see a river, though no river passes by. I hear my sister’s laughter, though she could be nine or nineteen. I move in a body born many times, between the shadows of overlapped lives, and vow to honor them all.

Today I am a bright new world; my destiny is manifest. I begin the work with this boy at my side, excavating my heart and making calculations, raising the best of what has been. These memories will be the materials, these dreams my paintbrush and spade. From a quiet townhouse I build a home, one with hopeful walls and joyful windows. I will carve and shape and make the beds, opening doors and widening hallways. I will prepare these spaces, from closets to bathrooms, for the bulk of all my love, and in the guest room I’ll leave extra pillows, just in case.