When I first started editing other people's writing, I never wrote on their manuscripts. It wasn't because manuscripts were harder to come by then--because they were: they had to be typed, corrections required the use of maddeningly tricky white tapes and sticky bottles of goo, and multiple copies were only birthed after someone's patient labor at the Xerox machine.

I didn't write on their manuscripts because it wasn't my job.  My job was to make suggestions--better words, better connotations of words, better sounding words; to identify what must go--redundancies, non-sequiters, and passages that didn't measure up; and to point out where I thought things were missing--plot, character development, description. Their job was to do it.

If I had a beautifully organized mind and could have conveyed all that in a conversation, I would have rather done it that way.  If they could have understood just what my vision for their manuscript was from that conversation and carried it out, we would have created great books in an ideal manner: writer and engaged critical responder. Two very separate roles. Two sides of good writing.

Needless to say, it didn't work that way.  Being young and having infinitely more ideals and time than I am allowed to enjoy now, I developed an elaborate system of note taking: Page 14, para 3, line 2: use plural possessive rather than singular. Page 14, para 4, line 1, main character doesn't seem like the type to have a doberman.  I would suggest something more friendly, like a spaniel or a red bone hound.Unless you think a cat would be better, or unless you feel that it is important for this aggressive pet to be here to suggest latent anger in your seemingly benevolent character.

It took a long, long time to get any books edited. And with the infinite time of my pre-motherhood days, I might still be editing that way. There is something very right about being so respectful of the author's primacy in a novel that the editor merely points out what works and doesn't work and makes suggestions for improvement.

But no one has infinite time, and many authors don't want sole responsibility for making the decisions about how to improve the parts that aren't working. So, over time, I began to gently write notes--small copyeditor type marks, and marginalia that would go on and on to the backs of several pages. Still suggestions, still to be taken at the writer's discretion.

Some writers respond very well to that approach, and some would beg for the insertion of the word or phrase that would do the trick I was asking them to perform. Eventually, I began showing what I meant, rather than only telling, and actually suggesting language.  I would usually give several choices so that they could choose the one that had connotations most similar to what they were trying to convey.

And of course, the time came when, with no compunction, I would freely edit text, rewrite and insert my own interpretation onto the manuscript. And I don't think that this evolution was due to any slipping standards on my part, or any lack of respect for the author. It just became apparent that every book and every author are different and having different approaches to the editing process were very important.

Now, I talk with authors before I start: These are the ways I can edit your work.  What supports your creative/writing process and time frame best? Do we need to plan for two passes, or three? Do we need to call in another editor or writer in addition to the two of us and the copy editor? Making the decisions about what process the material will go through to be shaped is an important part of the collaboration. Some writers welcome a "bleeding manuscript," dripping with red ink (although I rarely use red because I still don't want my comments to be interpreted as corrections, but rather as suggestions for a collaborative polishing.) Others are loathe to part with a favorite sentence. Every time, it's different.

If I have to, I will use track changes, but I far prefer not to. Track changes have no connotation of conversation to me. In fact, I see them as being quite dictatorial. I'm fine with Kindles, I'm fine with the printed word appearing in any medium it sees fit. But when it comes to editing, I find I'm quite old-fashioned.

Give me ink on paper. Give me the time to debate a word choice. Give me the ability to give an author the time their hard, soul-spilling work deserves. Give me the clear blue infinity-pool my mind floated in in my twenties.

And then I'll show you some real editing.

A true friend knows your weaknesses but shows you your strengths; feels your fears but fortifies your faith; sees your anxieties but frees your spirit; recognizes your disabilities but emphasizes your possibilities.
~William Arthur Ward

The wonderful image above is actually a tee shirt that you can get at Imaginary Foundation!

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April is not the cruelest month: March is. For two weeks now, we have been suffering in the name of daylight savings time, that government mandated messing with mother nature. Friends have been debating its relative merits and sins on social media soapboxes, but what any of us thinks about it just doesn't matter. Our protests are borne away in the ever rolling Twitter stream.

For the past fortnight, my family has been cursing the morning. It's dark, breakfast is cold, and carpool is late.  We have struggled unsuccessfully with alarms and good intentions, recriminations fly over the breakfast table and dark circles deepen under our eyes. Finally, this weekend, in some sort of grand homeopathy, nature provided her own cure for what's been ailing us.

Last summer, we did some work on our house. it pretty much destroyed our back yard. As we saw the contractor ride off into the sunset with our daughters' patrimony, we resigned ourselves that it would be quite some time before we could put in sprinklers, beds and all the other niceties of the modern garden.

In the meantime, we have big dirt. We had thought to put in wildflower seeds to see us through the summer, but somehow we missed that window.  I considered pouring sand and raking it in geometric patterns, like a zen garden or an alien cornfield, but our house is pretty traditional. Our taste in gardens runs more towards Edith Wharton meets the Orange Show.

My sister, who is a talented and sometime professional gardener, suggested that we put in zinnias.  Just like Fetlock's mother in Mrs. Piggle Wiggle's Farm. Her loving description of her zinnias has stayed with me since I was a little girl, and visions of zinnias began dancing in my head.

My husband and our younger daughter went out to get the seeds. The best laid plans: they came home with a riotous mix of flower seeds, all pink and purple. So what happened to my zinnias? I asked, trying not to let my attachment to the Piggle Wiggle plan show. He: What are zinnias? She: I thought pink and purple would be prettier. Me: Oh.

We set out weeding and hoeing, and my daughter invited two preschoolers from across the street to help plant. With silver teaspoons, until I noticed, they planted some of the seeds in conventional holes. Then, in a fit of springtime exuberance, or maybe boredom, they broadcast the rest across the dirt.

We now have a Darwinian experiment for a back yard.  We'll see where fertile ground lies, and  what pink and purple vision erupts in our little Eden after April showers have had their way with our random seeds.

Next year, or maybe this fall if I'm frugal, I'll have sprinklers and beds.  I can study the Texas Garden Resource book we just published and put in native plants that might actually go together in a more orderly way. By then my gardeners will be a little older, and I'll pay closer attention to the procurement phase of the project.

But, today, I have no complaints. The weekend in the sun has left us all with rosy cheeks, sore muscles, and happy spirits. We have planted good seeds, and something joyful is bound to sprout. It will still be dark in the morning, but this evening, we sat outside with the dogs relaxing in the late sun. Sure, we've lost an hour, and it took a while to reconcile our body clocks to the the theft.  But before too long, we'll fall back again.

And on that October Sunday morning, as we linger over pancakes and bacon and look out on our garden, we won't even remember how grumpy we all were when we sprang forward.

Flowers make up for a multitude of sins.

If we are not able to  keep our garden, if we are not able to take care of our mortal human world, heaven and salvation are vain.

~Robert Pogue Harrision in Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition

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A priest friend recently brought me a copy of a book he published about a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Like all good pilgrimages since Canterbury days, his trip was full of good food, good fellowship and life-changing insight. 

As he described his overly busy life and his need for this insight, one phrase caught my attention:" I was self-medicating." He didn't elaborate, so of course, my imagination went as wild as coeds springbreaking in Daytona Beach. How do priests self-medicate? Rather than ask him and risk a mundane answer, I envisioned a range of options much more interesting than I assume the vodka tonic truth to be. Hair shirts, cilices and visions of other Dan Brown-y practices danced through my head.

Running out of grisly options and shaking my head in the daylight, I started thinking more secularly and reasonably. We all have our ways to seek grace, joy or just deal with life's challenges. And many of these elixirs or coping mechanisms pass in the world as valued behaviors. It just depends on how we label it (do I drink too much or am I a wine connoisseur?) or if we own it (like that old job interview trick when they ask for your worst fault, and you tell them you're just what they want: perfectionist, detail freak, workaholic).

Whether or not we own it, label it, or even realize it, the vast majority of us are searching for something to take the edge off, something to help us deal with the stress of life 2.0. Beyond the bottle and illegal substance, there are healthy, endorphin-releasing practices that can help deal with the duality in every day. Jogging, yoga, pumping iron: the list goes on, but they all provide the same comfort. Seems like everybody--down to the  educated fleas--has a favorite poison, or a favorite antidote.

So I wondered, what's mine?  Beyond the standard issue one-more-splash-of-that-vino-tinto, what do I do when the path before me seems dark, difficult or just plain over-crowded? What lets me leave my worries behind? What makes me feel safe when troubled waters are swirling and dogs, kids, and co-workers are all barking at the same time?

The question wandered in and out of my mind all day. Then I took a bath. I poured  lavender Dead Sea bath salts into the steaming tub with a heavy hand. I folded a towel with a faded monogram at the end. Next to it I put my reading glasses and my current non-manuscript, non-self-help, non-educational book. And I hopped in.

An hour later, out of the Twitter stream and fully immersed in Tudor England, more concerned with Thomas Cromwell's problems than my own--and quite prune-y--I emerged with my answer.How could I have even wondered?

My major coping mechanism is not as romantic or wild as Gertrude Stein's absinthe,  Bill Faulkner's bourbon or Carlos Casteneda's mushrooms, not  as sophisticated as the average hipster's custom cocktail. In fact, although I've dabbled in other means to the same end, my habit hasn't changed since second grade.

Hands down, fiction and water is my drug of choice. I've been self-medicating since Dick and Jane turned me on when I was a kid . Since I chose Narnia and Oz over real life. In my mind, when the going gets tough, the tough get reading. Checking out doesn't just mean getting date-stamped by the librarian, it means going into the "Library" and opening up the taps.

So if you see me and I seem particularly fresh and lavender-scented, understand that I'm not a clean freak;  I've been using. Haven't gotten to the Holy Land recently, haven't been hanging at Anvil, but I have been on a real bender. It's been quite a trip.

My tub runneth over.

When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.

~Erasmus

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I've been thinking alot about figurative language recently. I can't tell you if this is because I'm an editor or because the fifth grade has a laser focus on it this year. At our house we tend to go from one person's project to another's pretty seamlessly. Call it a lack of boundaries.

Our most recent study seems to be cliche. I am a cliche, you are a cliche, he, she, it is...no, that's my other daughter's Latin. Those other numbers and genders are not the cliches, I am.

The multi-tasking mother. You know the one. Carpool, groceries, business meetings, lunches, dog poop, dinner, school meetings, out of town trips: is this week the editorial trip or the choir trip? And who will take care of the puppy while I'm away?

The minivan ads make it all look so beautiful, and at it's core, it is: how fine for a woman to have a strong family life and fulfilling work. And if it's a little chaotic sometimes, well that's where Folger's in your cup can just smooth out all the rough edges.

Last week I went to the Mom 2.0 Summit, a conference of bloggers and marketers, all focused on the power inherent in this mom life, rather than its potential for frazzle. Several of our authors were participating--Joanne Bamberger the wise PunditMom from D.C.; Karen Walrond, author of the blog Chookooloonks and The Beauty of Different; Mimi Vance, whose wonderful Words by the Handful books are coming out later this year; Jennifer Randall, one of the four teachers who have created  Answer Keys for parents;  Elizabeth Irvine, whose books on wellness are just what I need to pay heed to right now; and conference organizer,  Laura Mayes, Kirtsy.com co-founder who is responsible for our amazing Kirtsy Takes a Bow book. That crowd alone was enough to get my teeth off the motherhood cliche bone I've been working and get me on to some more nutritious fare.

Beyond the Bright Sky crowd, the conference was filled with even more women who were putting all the pieces of motherhood--of womanhood--together in ways that worked--for them. Isabel Kallman, the  AlphaMom; Tracey Clark, one of the visionary ShutterSisters; Kristen Chase, the Mominatrix; and of course, Jenny the indomitable Bloggess. Nurturing, sexy, sweet, wild, virgin, crone, whore, madonna: everybody was there; everybody was inspiring.

I noticed strong commonalities: motherhood, creative drive, authenticity, But more importantly, I noticed uniqueness. It was visible in the outfilts--everything from flowy maxi skirts to FM gladiator pumps, wicked witch striped leggings to Mad Men cocktail attire. But, more importantly than in the trappings, the spirit of individuality was tangible in the conversations.

The theme of the Mom 2.0 Summit this year was "Defining a Movement." As Katherine Center's powerful video proclaimed: What you're doing matters. I dare any mother to watch it without crying.

And it's hard to think back on my experience last week without some of the same emotion: the Summit (interesting word choice, but the view was indeed clearer) , the photography exhibit at Fotofest, the three day coalition of women refusing to be bound by cliche--no matter how appropriate some aspects of it might be.

Today, I'm a little off my game: the antibiotics haven't kicked in yet, the sink is full of dishes, the email in-box is screaming at me, it's supposed to snow and no one could find her jacket this morning. I'm tempted to say, Calgon, take me away. As if it could. But, instead, I'll take Katherine's words to heart: What you're doing matters.

As for the motherhood cliche? I think I'll throw out the figurative language and write my own definition.

If evolution really works, how come mothers only have two hands?
~Milton Berle
 

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Love is the language of poets. It lends itself to figures of speech and flowery language. How do I love thee?

I love thee with similes. I love thee with hyperbole, and I love thee with metaphors. My favorite simile about love the answer to a riddle I learned when I was a very little girl: Love is like a hole.

Q: What gets bigger, the more you give it away?

Happy Valentine's Day, to you, to yours. I hope your day is filled with chocolates, doilies, and delight. And I hope you share the love: leave your favorite book in a coffee shop for the next java junkie, carry someone else's burden for a while, throw out the trash without grinching, be nice when you're feeling crabby. Ask yourself: could I go so far as to let my sister have the caramel-filled chocolate from the Godiva box?

However you answer that question, keep digging at the hole; keep throwing good seeds in. Good things will sprout.

Not just a rose, but a whole rose garden.

That's the dirt on love.

Love is a rose but you better not pick it
Only grows when it's on the vine
Handful of thorns and you'll know you've missed it
Lose your love when you say the word mine

I wanna see what's never been seen
I wanna live that age-old dream
Come on boy let's go together
Let's take the best right now

I wanna go to an old hoedown
Long ago in a western town
Pick me up 'cause my feet are dragging
Give me a lift and I'll hay your wagon

Love is a rose but you better not pick it
Only grows when it's on the vine
Handful of thorns and you'll know you've missed it
Lose your love when you say the word mine
~Neil Young

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Everyone has a favorite place to read. Mine is a large, overstuffed chintz arm chair in my office. I was looking at a lovely shelter magazine not too long ago that featured style saving tips about how to fix your furniture faux pas, presented in the classic buy/keep/toss format. The most egregious upholstery sin in this article was tacky '80s black chintz. Toss it! With tongs!

Horrors. What not to sit in. Right in my own home. But here's where I'm drawing the line with well meaning decorators: I am not tossing my chair. Although it's faded considerably--not so much that a well placed throw doesn't hide the gray--it is my throne, my prime reading spot. I'm not even reupholstering it. It's a happy chair, a reading chair, an editing chair, a napping chair. If my chair could talk, it would tell tales of books, manuscripts, magazines and dreams from as far back as the '80s, when it's chintz still had a bright sheen, and it was a definite "Buy."

Everyone has a different reading throne. Some people like to read in bed. Others like a park bench on a spring day.  I have one daughter who particularly likes to read at the dinner table, a habit that we are trying to discourage without throwing the baby out. 

I have one friend who admitted to book club one night that she only read when she was drying her hair-- the only time she got to herself. Of course we were curious. Here's the trick: She shut the toilet seat and opened the book on it. She dried her hair upside down, so she used one hand for the hairdryer and one for fluffing and page turning. Fluff, turn. Fluff, turn. Good volume. Before you criticize her methodology, let me just say: this was one well read woman. Her hair was perfect.

I'd venture to guess that were the Pew folks to take a random sampling of where people read, a high percentage would admit that even if they don't publicly celebrate National Bathroom Reading Week, they have a magazine, a mystery, or some self-help book or another tucked away in their bathroom, for that peaceful moment when they might actually get to read. Or dry their hair.

But who's asking? The written word has the power to transport us to another world. When we return we bring souvenirs, picture postcards and, most importantly, memories of our adventures. Setting off on a mind trip, it doesn't matter if we're sitting on white porcelain or black chintz when we depart.

The reading throne deserves respect.

I once saw a piece of lavatory graffiti I think I'll spend the rest of life pondering. "There are no metaphors," some malcontent had written. Carried to it's ultimate reduction, that assertion means that no word or act can represent anything more than itself. A world without metaphor is a hermetic nightmare, utterly incomprehensible, without possibility of humor or insight. Everything would happen once. No individual or event could be interpreted in the light of another.

There are metaphors, though. language exists, though its connection to reality is an ongoing open question. Literature exists. We are able to entertain narratives about other people's lives, even imaginary people's lives, and recognize elements familiar tot us from our own hopes, fears and dreams. Past ives, imaginary lives, are seen to contain messages for us, metaphorically speaking. Our understanding may draw upon them. This is the importance of fiction, that it offers meaning.

~Robert Stone
from "The Reconquest of Reality" in Writers Workshop in a Book: the Squaw Valley Community of Writers on the Art of Fiction, edited by Alan Cheuse and Lisa Alvarez (Chronicle Books, 2007)

Reading requires task lighting that comes from behind the reader's shoulder. This can be accomplished by placing a floor lamp either at the right or the left of the reading chair. The bottom of the shade should be located at eye level to avoid glare.

You have to draw the line somewhere.

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When I was a little girl, my brother told me I couldn't carry a tune in a U-Haul. So I hit him.

When I was in my twenties, a good friend told me I was not allowed to sing in front of his child, in case she caught my tune.

When I was a Girl Scout leader in Harlem, I invited some friends to come to my girls' "fly up ceremony." Before these girls became scouts, they had never had the opportunity to swim, to do organized craft projects, or to sing Kum-bay-yah. I taught them every song that had ever moved me in the North Carolina mountains when I was a camper. After the ceremony my friends said, "We can tell you were the one who taught them the songs."

Guess what? I still love to sing. Unapologetically.

When I sing, I get endorphins.  If there were a Richter scale of endorphins, and you measured the seismic affect of various things--sex, drugs, rock and roll--it's a no brainer: the music tops the list. There is something about singing your heart out, never mind the tune, that just makes you wiggle and jiggle and tickle inside. It's cathartic: it's spiritual: it's fun.

The good news for me is that I'm not trying to make living from my singing. I'd be pretty thin. I'm a book person. I should still be pretty thin, all things considered, but carbo-lading and Whole Foods' truffled walnuts will get you through the worst of times.

I have an ongoing discussion with a few important people in my life: music or lyrics? Of course, I am a card-carrying member of the lyrics camp. But I think I'm adulterated.  I think the music influences my vote more than I'd like to admit.

Sunday was the anniversary of the day the music died. In honor of that, and in honor of all the times I said goodbye to Miss American Pie at my wild French cousins' house and sang along in my notable voice, I just want to say "Let's hear it for the band." It's never just about the lyrics. It's a synergy.

Synergy, synchronicity, serendipity, singing. "S"es abounding in my personal dictionary these days. And the beautiful thing about a dictionary is: you sing it to your own tune. There's no soundtrack. No one's done an orchestration of it. No glee clubs sing it. The words in my heart have a score that only I know.

I keep my tune in a U-Haul. Some--many--have been critical of it. But it keeps my toes tapping.

The beat goes on.

A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.
~A wise person who forgot to get a good IP lawyer

And, two more thoughts on music: if you are a friend of Bright Sky and you know Patrick, you have to check out his band, the Journey Agents. If you are at all funk based. And, if you have your own band and need to book some gigs in Texas, check out Matthew Wettergreen's free ebook. And if you need anyone to edit your songs, remember that there are lots of lyrics people who go both ways.

Words. Music. Wow. La dee da de dee. La dee da de da.

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I've been contemplating the concept of the edge. The leading edge, the bleeding edge, the edge of darkness. And there's always the possibility of going over the edge--being pushed, losing my grip or aligning too closely with the crowd and rushing off terra firma into the abyss. Like the Gadarene swine.

I'm captivated with the idea of using those doomed piggies as an adjective or a morality metaphor, rather than just as a biblical tale. Ever since I started looking into that trough of meaning, I have found so many circumstances where it fits. "No, you may not have an iphone just because all of your friends have one." 

I've been editing our Zen book. It touches on the idea that as cultures spin and change faster and faster, our inner equilibrium--our strong grip on what has value and what matters--is upset. That disequilibrium leads to all kinds of negativity and unrest--personally and culturally. Of course the Abbott explains these concepts far more profoundly than I can, but the book will be out this fall, so no worries; no one will have to rely on me to be their Zen master.

The books I am currently working on create a lens through which I see my own life--shades of meaning. Sometimes I see through a barbecue lens, sometimes a motherhood lens, and sometimes Sam Houston's spectacles. So right now, I'm looking at cultural change through a Zen lens--not just the aspects of change that suggest I need to be social media savvy or get all of our books digitized or answer emails 24/7 from one device or another, but also the ones that make it apparent that I need to master some new definitions about how the world works. 

There is rich vocabulary associated with this new world order: explorer, pioneer, settler, squatter,  claim-jumper, guru, shaman, messiah, Luddite, philistine, early adapter, hold-out...the list goes on, sounding suspiciously similar to the language in every history text I ever read about  any revolution, any era of change.

For so long, cultural change was accompanied by the cry, "Go west!." Once we smacked up against that shining sea that crashes so majestically against the California coast, that cry diverged; with some people looking up, and others looking further in. And whether people identified with the NASA types saying "Go to the Moon!",  the psychologists saying ""Go to the couch!" or the Lit majors saying "Look Homeward, Angel!" it was pretty much agreed that there were still new frontiers to conquer and to settle.

Now there's a new cry.  I'm not sure just what it is: "Go Digital?" "Go 2.0?" I'm trying to make sense of this new world that has evolved around my ink on paper self, doing a little exploring and trying to figure out what my role is in it. I don't have the full answer yet, but I know it's based on helping people bring their stories into the world; I know it's based on words.

I also know that I'm not on the bleeding edge or even the leading edge of this revolution. But I want to be a part of it. I'm ready to move beyond the inland amber waves of grain and the old gray factories further east, towards an energetic coastline, with a great unknown sea in front of it.

Where am I now on my digital journey? Not in the water, not even on the rocky beach with the crashing waves. I'm still up on the cliffs overlooking this sea change. The powerful possibilities look beautiful from up here. Through my various lenses I can watch the brave explorers map the territory ahead. I have so much respect for them, but explorer is not the best role for me. Watching and learning, I'm preparing for the next leg of the adventure. And as soon as I figure out my best course into this unknown, I'll set out.

In the meantime, I'll try not to get so close to the edge that I lose my balance.

Passionate Living
 
"Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion."  Hegel
 
by Dwight Edwards
 
Passion normally arises from two separate but united fronts. One is being on the edge. The other is being in the center. Today we will look at being on the edge. What I mean by this is the high adventure of being on the cutting edge of a new endeavor. Or it can be the excitement of infusing an old endeavor with brand new possibilities.
 
There is something innately exhilarating about going where no man has gone before, of blazing a brand new path, or risking reputation for the sake of a radically new venture. Ask Galileo, Michelangelo, Edison, Einstein, Gates, and a host of lesser lights about the internal ignition of "on the edge" living. Certainly it will be frightening, certainly it will be risky; but it will also be exhilarating. As Mark Twain put it, "To do something, say something, see something, before anybody else - these are things that confer a pleasure compared with which other pleasures are tame and commonplace, other cheap and trivial." How true!
 
It is on the edge that life upgrades to the point of true exhilaration. And this exhilaration helps fuel the passion to make something extraordinary of our lives. Hegel is exactly right - "Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion." And passion normally blossoms most bountifully along the ridges of innovation.
Flashpoint: Passion is often found at the edges.
Visit us at HighOctanefortheMind.com
Copyright © 2010 High Octane for the Mind. All Rights Reserved.

FYI: If you like that magical picture of the California coast, you can get a poster of it at All Posters. I might just do that myself.

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syn·chro·nic·i·ty : \ˌsiŋ-krə-ˈni-sə-tē, ˌsin-\ noun : circa 1889
1 : the quality or fact of being synchronous
2 : the coincidental occurrence of events and especially psychic events (as similar thoughts in widely separated persons or a mental image of an unexpected event before it happens) that seem related but are not explained by conventional mechanisms of causality —used especially in the psychology of C. G. Jung
ser·en·dip·i·ty: \-ˈdi-pə-tē\ : noun
Etymology: from its possession by the heroes of the Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip: Date: 1754
: the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for; also : an instance of this

My life is filled with lovely words. These two seem particularly pertinent. Every day it seems some  occasion arises--I meet a certain author, or I find a meaningful manuscript--that could not have manifested without one of these magical nouns.

And these happy accidents all seem to be woven together in a larger web of intention. Not like a spider's sticky web trying to trap unsuspecting insects, but like a reassuring net under an acrobat. Or an elaborate rope ladder reaching to unknown places in the clouds.

Here's an example, a tale of three sisters: Years ago on a volunteer project I met Lizzie, a notably  intelligent, creative and kind young woman. I loved her energy and her ideas, and we became friends. She eventually went off to law school; our opportunities to get together and really visit became rare, but always a pleasure. Then I met her sister, Katherine, who was getting ready to publish her first novel. Katherine was just as wonderful as Lizzie, only different. Both were gifts from the universe.

But there was a third sister.  In any fairy tale, things happen in important numbers, three, of course, being one of the biggies. When Shelley, sister #3, moved back to Houston, 1 and 2 asked me if I would talk to her about editing. I wondered if she would be like Lizzie, or like Katherine, and if it would be possible for me to enjoy her as much.

Silly worries, quite unfounded. Number 3--actually the oldest-- is equally delightful, equally unique. A writer, an editor, a linguist and a mom, she was the perfect person to edit a book that had just come in through another serendipitous connection in New Orleans.  I was quite excited about the manuscript, but it needed an editor with a certain combination of skills to transform it from an amazing curriculum to an amazing book.

That book, now published as Oobleck, Slime, and Dancing Spaghetti, is filled with at home science experiments based on children's literature. The author, Jennifer Williams, has won the Presidential Award for teaching.  It's an inspired, cross-curricular approach to getting children interested in science through literature and Shelley's sensibilities were just what was needed to take it from the academic realm to the bookshelf in the family room.  Synchronicity. Serendipity. Or the next logical step in the path. Whatever you call it, the book won a NAPPA award, and we are quite proud of it.

Last weekend, I had an old song on my mind, the theme from the Thomas Crowne Affair.  Every time it spun through my head, it took me somewhere: the first time I saw the original movie with my parents; the album I played endlessly, picking up the needle at the end of the song and carefully moving it back to the starting groove; battalions of men in bowlers;  Renee Russo and Pierce Brosnan strolling Lexington Avenue. And through it all, russet leaves swirling, back and forth, from endings to beginnings.

Humming that tune, I went to a party where I ran into my old friend Lizzie. I came out of my reverie to realize that she had an autumn leaf tucked in her ponytail, and it was just the color of her hair. A tiny thing, but it spoke volumes. Coincidence. Synchronicity. Serendipity.

Lovely.

Round, like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel.
Never ending or beginning,
On an ever spinning wheel
Like a snowball down a mountain
Or a carnival balloon
Like a carousel that's turning
Running rings around the moon

Like a clock whose hands are sweeping
Past the minutes on it's face
And the world is like an apple
Whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind

Like a tunnel that you follow
To a tunnel of it's own
Down a hollow to a cavern
Where the sun has never shone
Like a door that keeps revolving
In a half forgotten dream
Or the ripples from a pebble
Someone tosses in a stream.

Like a clock whose hands are sweeping
Past the minutes on it's face
And the world is like an apple
Whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind

Keys that jingle in your pocket
Words that jangle your head
Why did summer go so quickly
Was it something that I said
Lovers walking along the shore,
Leave their footprints in the sand
Was the sound of distant drumming
Just the fingers of your hand

Pictures hanging in a hallway
And a fragment of this song
Half remembered names and faces
But to whom do they belong
When you knew that it was over
Were you suddenly aware
That the autumn leaves were turning
To the color of her hair

Like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning,
On an ever spinning wheel
As the images unwind
Like the circle that you find
In the windmills of your mind

Pictures hanging in a hallway
And the fragment of this song
Half remembered names and faces
But to whom do they belong
When you knew that it was over
Were you suddenly aware
That the autumn leaves were turning
To the color of her hair

The Windmills of Your Mind
~Alan Bergman

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