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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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Some days I feel so at peace with the world, and other days every last thing seems to make me want to put up my dukes against Unfairness, Injustice, or General Wrongheadedness.  And once I get riled up, it's amazing how the most random things become evidence of the current conspiracy.

This time, it was aprons that set me off. Aprons seem pretty non-confrontational.  In fact, aprons--be they the June Cleaver type or even the racier French maid style-- are the picture of submissive femininity. Not confrontation. 

It was the Chronicle Style Section that got me worked up. They did a nice story, dateline Shiner, Texas, about aprons. How they are so simultaneously retro-nouveau-oh-so-chic these days. And they went on to talk about Virginia Helweg, a lovely lady with a  large collection. A collection that she just started because she likes aprons, not because anyone else told her that they were cool. Then they brought in the big guns--the Apron Expert, EllynAnne.

What entitles the Apron Expert to her capital letters? Her collection and knowledge, of course, and her published book. This is when my hackles started rising up, like hungry villi after a home-cooked meal. Because experience has predisposed me to think that when the Houston paper mentions a book, quotes an expert, or has something they feel is worth mentioning either above the fold or in the back 40, chances are it's something or somebody from somewhere else.

H'town rocks. My favorite tune to sing or dance to is that this town has got  an open, can-do, creative, no-brow, deep-in-the-heart spirit that can't be found anywhere else.  It really chaps me when people who say they love this place feel they need to start out with the disclaimer: "well, its so ugly, but..."; or, "well, it's not Aspen, or the East Coast, or Paris/London/Biarritz, but...."  

But nothing. It is enough for it to be Houston. And those of us who claim to love it need to embrace it for how it is, not in spite of what it is not. We can admire other towns' windswept beaches, miracle miles and neon lights and remain non-apologetically enthusiastic about what we have right here, right now, in this fun, funky, funny, fab Bayou City.

I'm by no means advocating provincialism, jingoism, or even Houstonism. I'm patently anti-ism. I just think it's time for this awesome town to stop with the Marx Brothers "I'd never be in a club that would have me" attitude. It is time for Houston to say it rocks--in a completely straightforward, unaffected, but powerful way that would be so appropriate to its unique charm.  It is time for the Houston paper to stop thinking that all the culture news that's fit to print--be it about aprons or art shows, books or bands--comes from Somewhere Else. We're in the throes of an eat/pray/love/buy local movement, and it's not just a Central Market marketing campaign: Houston is totally worth it.

So why did an innocent, and actually interesting apron article get me up on my Houston soapbox? I felt left out, of course. We have a perfectly darling cookbook author, Marie Hejl, who happens to make beautiful aprons.  In fact, Marie  was making and selling them on little backwater shows like Martha Stewart long before aprons went mainstream chic. And there was no mention of her beautiful cookbook or her aprons in this article. And it would have been such a good fit. So local. So 2010.

If you build it, they will come. I believe that. If you publish books in Houston--instead of in standard places like New York or Boston or California--they will come. And, they have: the reception our homegrown books have received has been exciting and rewarding, for us at Bright Sky and for our wonderful authors.

But like the girl next door waiting for the phone to ring, I keep opening the hometown news, waiting for them to be excited about the books being published right here--Texas voices, H'town voices, local voices. And every time, it's the book from somewhere else that turns their eye. It's such a Taylor Swift song.

So the apron article just hit a nerve. You want aprons? Cutting edge social media? Nationally renown wellness experts? Baseball heroes? More barbecue than you ever dreamed of? Look no further. It's all in H'town. Right here, right now.

And chances are, if it's here, we're publishing a book about it. We'd be happy to tell you about it, or introduce you to the author, or send you a review copy.

Just give us a call.

Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are.
~Malcolm Forbes

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I'm desperately trying to manage all my communications resources. When to email, when to call, when to meet, when to tweet, when to blog and when to throw my hands up and sob. And then there's Facebook.  Not to mention submissions. I want to be accessible, but I also want to be productive.

Friends have offered lots of well meaning advice: keep your responses short, use different mailboxes, have multiple accounts, have one account, face west and stand on one foot when you are answering emails. Of course, I also have a book about how to handle this quintessentially modern problem. And, of course, I haven't had time to read it yet.

But even when I am in danger of being overwhelmed by emails, I still like them. It's like a Go Fish game. Clicking on that little stamp at the bottom of my screen still conjures faint feelings of this-could-be-the-lottery-winner excitement. Something really wonderful could be just one click away.

I've improved my odds a little on having a happy surprise in my inbox.  Our author, Dwight Edwards, who wrote A Tale of Three Ships, a concise and useful parable about charting your course through life, has an email blast. Every so often--and it seems to always be just when I need it most--a short inspirational story pops up in my mail. Here is today's, just when I am tearing my hair out over time-management questions.

                                                        Spending Time Well
"Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for it is the stuff life is made of."  Benjamin Franklin

Time. It is the one of the few things we all share in common. And we all do something with it - for better or worse. It strikes me that one of the great difficulties in using our time most effectively is maintaining a proper perspective on its market value. In the push and shove of our daily lives, it becomes desperately easy to lose sight of the preciousness of these things called minutes, hours, and days. Arnold Bennett puts it well,

Time is the inexplicable raw material of everything. With it, all is possible; without it, nothing. The supply of time is truly a daily miracle, an affair genuinely astonishing when one examines it. You wake up in the morning, and lo! your purse is magically filled with twenty-four hours of the unmanufactured tissue of the universe of your life! It is yours. It is the most precious of possessions... No one can take it from you. It is not something that can be stolen. And no one receives either more or less than you receive. Moreover, you cannot draw on its future. Impossible to get into debt! You can only waste the passing moment. You cannot waste tomorrow; it is kept for you. You cannot waste the next hour; it is kept for you.

Franklin is right. Time is indeed "the stuff life is made of". We all are entrusted with the same amount. The only question is where and how we will spend it.                   ~Dwight Edwards

Flashpoint: Well-spent lives are the result of well-utilized time.
Visit Dwight  at HighOctanefortheMind.com
Copyright © 2010 High Octane for the Mind. All Rights Reserved.

And with that much needed perspective, I think I'll get off-line and go back to editing.

The clock talked loud. I threw it away, it scared me what it talked.
~Tillie Olsen

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I just love holidays. I love any reason to celebrate. One of my all-time favorite books is a children's book by Byrd Baylor called I'm in Charge of Celebrations. It's basically a call to note and celebrate the rich variety of moments that life brings us. It's a testament to both mindfulness and thankfulness, two nesses that make everything better.

So, today is a holiday, and after a quick turn around the lake in Hermann Park, a stroll through the Japanese Garden, and a truly scrumptious picnic, I turned it into a busman's holiday and headed straight for the bookstore. With coffee in hand, I got so lost in the stacks that my family had to call me on the phone to find me. It was heavenly.

But not to get sappy on you: it wasn't perfect. The fly in the ointment of my perfectly lovely holiday is that I wasn't at the bookstore I really wanted to visit. The deep satisfaction of my day was really a classic case of love the one you're with.

The one I really love is in Denver. And I didn't have a plane ticket today. If I could have gone anywhere this afternoon to drink my coffee and get lost in the stacks, I would have gone to The Tattered Cover. If you've been there, you get it. If you haven't, go as soon as you can. And if you, like me, have no plane tickets in your immediate future, check out their blog. You'll get lots of great ideas for things to read, if you're not busy reading manuscripts all the time. Or if you're on holidays.

When it comes to bookstores, I'm a Big Love kind of girl. I'll tell you about the one I've got tucked away in Asheville another time. And there's another I fancy in Austin.  But for today, my heart belongs to the Tattered Cover.

Don't worry. I know how people in Colorado feel about Texans, and that's OK. Love conquers all.

I come here with no expectations, only to profess, now I am at the liberty to do so, that my heart is and will always be yours.
~Jane Austen

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I went to a marathon watching party this weekend, and I ran into my friend Katherine Center.  Not literally, because I was eating donuts, not running.  She wasn't running either, she was returning home from a literary event in Dallas, something that sounded sort of like an Iron Chefs for writers, although as she said, "Writers are so sensitive, they couldn't really judge us too harshly." Picture writers in the hands of Simon Cowell.

She said the people who put the event on thought that readings could be a little iffy sometimes, and they wanted to spice up the medium.  They had Nerf footballs and stuff. They had a ball, literary-ly.

Katherine's main job is writing books and doing literary stuff. My main job is editing books and doing publishing stuff. Net net, she goes to infinitely more readings than I do, so I hadn't exactly gotten the news that readings could be iffy.  I still put them in the category of the word from Mt. Sinai

Here in H'town we have a wonderful reading series put on by Inprint called The Margarett Root Brown Reading series. It brings amazing authors to town. Between my responsibilities at Bright Sky and my responsibilities at home, I don't get to go to these readings as often as my fancy Editorial Director title might insinuate, but when I do go, I am always transported.

I read with great delight in the New York Times that Zadie Smith has a new collection of essays just published. Stop everything and google Amazon. Like Katherine, maybe a little more famous, Zadie Smith is an amazing author.  I was first introduced to her at an Inprint reading. She is beautiful--in a completely Beauty of Different way--and smart, and as clever with words as any writer I have ever admired or analyzed for a grade.

Having stumbled into the reading that night at the invitation of a friend, I hadn't done any due diligence on who Zadie Smith was or what she wrote about. I vaguely remembered an unread copy of White Teeth on my shelf. As I listened to her in the velvet-seated darkness of the Wortham, I was blown away by her eloquence and her story's similarity to one of my all-time favorites, E.M. Forster.

Well, go figure. On Beauty, the book from which she read that night, was a reworking of Howard's End. Only so modern and so insightful it made me think that there was no time or space between me and not only Forster, but any great writer I have read. Hearing her read in her sexy Anglo tones from her gorgeous prose was an experience far beyond iffy, by anybody's definition. I've never been able to think of glee clubs the same way since.

So today, when my old friend Zadie popped up on my screen-saving NYT. I was delighted.  Her essays sound so fine to me, although of course our Overtly Intellectual Friends to the North had to rake them over the coals. In them, she talks about David Foster Wallace, and Zora Neale Hurston, of course Forster, and so many other people who have given us gifts of prose beyond panel--or New York Times-- judging.

I can't wait to get the book. And when I read it, I'll hear her beautiful voice in my mind. Just like I hear Katherine's lovely voice when we eat donuts and cheer for runners or when I read her books. It will be like Zadie is my friend, too.

Thanks to that iffy, old-school reading.

This is a beautiful novel about soulfulness. That it should be so is a tribute to Hurston's skill. She makes "culture" — that slow and particular and artificial accretion of habit and circumstance — seem as natural and organic and beautiful as the sunrise. She allows me to indulge in what Philip Roth once called "the romance of oneself," a literary value I dislike and yet, confronted with this beguiling book, cannot resist. She makes "black woman-ness" appear a real, tangible quality, an essence I can almost believe I share, however improbably, with millions of complex individuals across centuries and continents and languages and religions...
Almost — but not quite. That is to say, when I'm reading this book, I believe it, with my whole soul. It allows me to say things I wouldn't normally. Things like "She is my sister and I love her."

~Zadie Smith on Their Eyes Were Watching God

What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.
~E. M. Forster

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We're all searching for something. I know lots of people who are searching for God. Or meaning. or inner-peace. And, recently, I began working on a book by a profoundly wise Buddhist abbot who lived alone in the mountains for three years, searching for the Truth.

Those are all Big Questions. I decided a long time ago that I'd settle for just trying to understand people. Figuring that there was bound to be a book somewhere that would explain these mysterious creatures--including myself--to me, I dove headfirst into reading and eventually washed to shore in publishing.

Being a reader has provided me with thousands of bibles, hundreds of gurus, and an occasional piranha in my search for understanding. Over the years, I've vacillated wildly between fiction and non-fiction, reading about people and hanging out with them, thinking hard and just experiencing, and editing-and-or-teaching and learning from others, published and unpublished.

After all these years on this Amazonian quest, I still can't tell you any more than the original God-is-Love definition I was given when I was four, any more about the meaning of life than Monty Python can, or any sure-fire way to obtain inner-peace 24/7.  But my seeking has kept me bobbing down the river with my head generally above water. Most importantly, it's carried me to amazing people, many who seem much closer than I am to having answers to the Biggies. And I enjoy these people tremendously.

A few years ago, my husband and I were trying to figure out just what it was we liked about people we liked. How much wood can a wood chuck chuck, anyway? We've both been teachers for many years, so we're familiar with the labels that get put on people and both truly, madly, deeply opposed to labeling. Parenting two strong individuals has brought that resistance even closer to home. But there are times when a handy semaphore is so nice: That movie is so Adam Sandler; he's the Michael Jordan of lacrosse players, I'm so ADD, that dress is so '80s.

When "so cool" came up short, we realized it wasn't that easy. Many of the positive labels that the world wants to put on people have connotations of smugness, clubby-ness and self-satisfaction that left us thinking we'd really rather not hang out with those people, even if they were so cool. And some of the terms we rejected made us realize that we couldn't dislike people for being that way, because, to some degree, we were that way, too. Or perhaps we shouldn't be. Aggh.

It was becoming a ridiculous exercise in splitting hairs, navel-gazing and wasting time when we finally decided that what we really liked were people who didn't take the world's word for anything. People who were willing to make their own decisions about other people. People who were open, people who were seekers--with a small s--and people who didn't perceive their own pursuits to be the be-all-and- end-all of existence.  People who understood that life is not a mountain with one summit, but a vast majestic range with many peaks to be bagged by many different explorers.

One of the words we thought might be appropriate was "creative." But there are so many people who would rush to tell you--and to believe--that they are not creative. Or tell you that they would have been creative, but their second grade art teacher told them that their angel looked like a sheep or their English teacher crumpled up their story because the commas were wrong. Even if their creativity is locked so deep in their double helix that they'll never reach it, these people still rock.

We never came up with a good label for this kind of person we like (PWL), and I'm glad. It's a Y-weh kind of thing. That deep curiosity and love that these particular individuals seem to have is a definite divine spark. And the spark that makes these Un-namables so appealing exists not just the ones who are lucky enough to have it close to the surface, or the ones who have worked hard to mine it so we can marvel at the way it refracts life, or even the ones who just make us want to say joie-de-vivre without quotation marks. We can find it in everybody, if we look hard enough.

In pursuit of a concise definition, and the easy label that might emerge from it, I remain in a state of dynamic tension worthy of Charles Atlas. And that's OK. Whatever this je ne sais quoi that I see so frequently in the authors I work with every day, that I sense so strongly in the people I love, and that I catch glimpses of in nearly every one I encounter is--I am grateful for its beckoning glow.

The world out there has been labeled as cold and cruel. Sometimes, when I'm tired, I want to take the easy route and accept that definition. And right when I'm about to give in and say, "Oh, you're right, life sucks and then you die" or dis Raffi or buy a decal that has Calvin peeing on something beautiful or that horrible bunny on it, someone will sparkle or shimmer or downright glow with this quality and I am completely re-energized.

I'll never give up looking for a definition, some terminology, the perfect word to explain PWL. I get a kick out of words. But if I ever find the right label, I know it still won't be all-encompassing enough to describe the wonders that lurk inside all the lovely enigmatic people who are bobbing along beside me on this adventure down the river of books, through the publishing jungle, in the direction of Answers. I just know I like them.

Here's one thing I have learned: truth is stranger than fiction, but fiction can be truer than truth.

If a wood chuck could chuck wood.

In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
From the mountains of faith
To the river so deep
I must be lookin' for something
Something sacred I lost
But the river is wide
And it's too hard to cross
even though I know the river is wide
I walk down every evening and stand on the shore
I try to cross to the opposite side
So I can finally find what I've been looking for
In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
Through the valley of fear
To a river so deep
I've been searching for something
Taken out of my soul
Something I'd never lose
Something somebody stole
I don't know why I go walking at night
But now I'm tired and I don't want to walk anymore
I hope it doesn't take the rest of my life
Until I find what it is I've been looking for
In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
Through the jungle of doubt
To the river so deep
I know I'm searching for something
Something so undefined
That it can only be seen
By the eyes of the blind
In the middle of the night
I’m not sure about a life after this
God knows I've never been a spiritual man
Baptized by the fire, I wade into the river
That is runnin' through the promised land
In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
Through the desert of truth
To the river so deep
We all end in the ocean
We all start in the streams
We're all carried along
By the river of dreams
In the middle of the night

~Billy Joel

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The New Year is such a funny time.  Half the people are bragging about how they were the only people they knew who weren't hungover on New Year's Day, and the other half are going on about how clean they have gotten their closets.  Whole Foods has a big giveaway featuring Cleanse Kits, which is no where near as exciting as the promos they had going with their Thanksgiving turkeys and holiday roast beefs. And everyone seems to be filled with a New Resolve worthy of a Ben Franklin maxim.

In a highly contrarian way, perhaps linked to the fact that I'm working on a zen book and trying to go to yoga as often as my emails allow, I am resolving not to touch my closet more than necessary, to hold off on Whole Foods' specials until something tasty--like truffled walnuts--gets offered again, and to just enjoy the journey.

Sometimes enjoying the journey means holding off on the purges and the self-improvement.  Sometimes it means marshmallows in the hot chocolate and reading magazines instead of manuscripts. And sometimes it means that if we can't take care of ourselves, how can we possibly take care of others?

There is a season for everything. As arctic air blasts around H'town, cutting my palm trees and irises down despite the lacrosse jackets my husband lovingly wrapped around them, I declare that January is not the season of fasting and contrition for holiday sins, it's the season of hunkering down. We don't get winter often here, so like a Leap Day that can only be appreciated every four years, I plan on making the most of it.

Seasons come, and seasons go.  And, of course, there is a book for all seasons. Now there is even a cookbook for all seasons, aptly named Seasonal Favorites. Here is the deal:

Seasonal Favorites is a collection of favorite festive foods from the Garden Club of Houston. Organized around the calendar year, it includes standard and more special holidays—like Veteran's Day and Day of the Dead. Anecdotes about special parties with all the details are included in each season, along with seasonal fare, party fare and planting tips. An inclusive way of looking at the year at home with family and friends, it features special recipes handed down for generations and flower arranging and gardening tips that will bring the beauty of the reader's own garden into the home; and it shares successful ideas for throwing warm and wonderful parties with friends and family—without having to hire a caterer.

Chock full of delicious and easy-to-prepare recipes, this inspired little book encourages us to create special times throughout the year by celebrating the cycle of life that is reflected in the garden. Many cookbooks promote holiday food, but most are based on standard holidays and only contain recipes. Seasonal Favorites offers proof that in our busy world, gracious living need not be a lost art.

Whether this collection augments your repertoire of holiday entertaining favorites or begins a new phase in your enjoyment of life, Seasonal Favorites promotes living life in a way that every sense can savor.

I wholeheartedly welcome a new phase of enjoyment into my life. 2009 is so over. To celebrate this official season of hunkering down, we are hitting the kitchen hard at our house. Corn chowder, apple pie, chili, hello dollies, and gallons of hot chocolate to wash it down.  Will we run out of inspiration for our cozy comforts? With this little book around, no way.

Come spring, when bright green buds peek out of the branch tips, we'll be ready for a change of season. And perhaps we'll do some penance and some push ups for all these good eats. But for now, it's all about the comforts of the hearth.

There's only one word for this behavior, and it's not self-discipline. Nor is it restraint. Or spartan or belt-tightening or shaping-up or anything with even the vaguest connotation of gymnasium. The radio says this word is officially "out" for 2010.  But I'll keep it. In fact, I'm making it my new mantra for January: Chillaxin'.

I hope this new, blue month finds you chillaxin' by the fire, with peace in your heart, pie on your plate, and a cup that runs over with the beverage of your choice.

Winter must be cold for those with no warm memories.
~An Affair to Remember

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One of my favorite sections of a bookstore is Writing Reference. As much as I like novels, quirky non-fiction, children's books and big pretty picture books, the Writing Reference section holds mysterious sway over me. It gives me that Container Store feeling of infinite possibilities that my friend Laura Mayes defines so well.

Perhaps that is why I am an editor.  If I were an adventurer at heart, my favorite section would be the travel section. If I defined myself as a cook, I'd be in the Barnes & Noble armchair with Bobby Flay or some other Iron Chef's book. 

But it's thesauruses--dare me to say thesauri--and big dictionaries, Annie Lamott's Bird by Bird, Stephen King's On Writing and of course Natalie Goldberg that send shivers  of excitement down my bones. And Writing on Alligators? Delightful.

I actually have two versions of the OED. Although I can't read any of the writing without a powerful magnifying glass, and I spend more time than I'd like to admit Googling definitions of words,  one day I'll have a hard core library stand to open them up on. They'll dominate the room, casually turned to some incredible word, fraught with delicious connotations and fascinating history.

I could go on about how cute I think my Chicago Manual is, and how I am not as enamored of Strunk and White as others are. It's interesting that reading about writing isn't really reading, and it certainly isn't writing. But I feel so cozy when I do it. Language creates havens within the narrative,  little secret nooks within books.

Like the Know-It-All who read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica in search of facts, I am in search of words and phrases. Not necessarily to use--lots are too flowery or show-offy for everyday use--but to know, to play with, and to examine. Words about words, or words on how writers put words together, or even words on the feelings created by putting words together, the deeper into them I go, the more zenny it becomes.

Editorial thrills. Not blockbuster material in any medium, but powerful enough to warm the cockles of my heart. There are lots of book lovers out there, most far more well-read than I. But when I think about the way I love books--from the fetching little headband on the top to the first cracking spine and the frisson that occurs when an actual printed endpaper apprears, through the design and the content all the way into the deepest recesses of vocabulary choices and grammatical quirks--I realize that this goes perhaps beyond healthy normal bibliophilia.

Book Obsessive? Book Addict? Book Luster? Volume-ivore? Hard-Core Hard-Cover Junkie? I'm sure there's a term for the condition.

And, even better, I'm sure there's a book about it.

A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words.
~Samuel Butler
 

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