Tag: writing

Cozy Posts · Nostalgic Posts

My Desk

Beth DeFriesLeave a comment

Well hello there, you! This morning, I am sitting at my desk in what we call “The Big Room”. The desk, a scuffed up IKEA dining table bought by Mike’s roommate sometime in 2011, has served many functions over the years and has more than a few scars to show for it. It is imbued with the soul that comes from years of multipurpose use. It has served as a dining table, a catch-all for clutter, a boardgame and puzzle surface, an art studio, an interview office, a Friendsgiving buffet, a Christmas tree stand, and a TV stand, among other things I can’t recall. I am sure it is embedded with heat stains and maybe even a little grease from Williamsburg Pizza boxes and the condensation of water rings from ice cold bottles of Lagunitas IPA and Bell’s Two Hearted, fresh from the bodega down the street on Union Avenue.

When we first moved back to New Jersey, we used it as our dining table for a little while until my parents visited briefly during the pandemic to drop off some essential supplies and my mom laughed at how small it looked in the space. And so, our little, old table was retired from high traffic use and replaced by a newer, bigger, blander model from Amazon. I squirrelled the old one away in the laundry room for a while until its current purpose dawned on me. Afterall, every writer needs a desk. Wasn’t I a writer once?

Nestled in the corner of the Big Room, topped with a jar displaying two Harry Potter wands that my cousin and her husband made for me, a rock my sister brought back from Ireland, some 40-watt soft-white lamplight, and a pink, paper box of my nana’s that contains my writing books, this space is my main access to creation. It is rare that I sit at my desk and feel any sort of writer’s block. It has helped me through blog posts, fiction projects, plot holes, a play, poems, greeting cards, resumes, cover letters, emails, and even text messages. When I’m feeling unmotivated and uninspired, the awareness to sit down at my desk weighs on me and pressures productivity. And, like the drunk, scarred, slob that it is, it isn’t quiet about it.

My Desk

I like writing in the Big Room with the curtains drawn and the table lamps on. It’s cozy and dark and when I turn the heat up or bundle up in chunky-knit sweaters and sweatpants with a mug of tea near at hand, it’s even warm. Perhaps the best characteristics about the room however, for the purpose of writing, are that we don’t sleep in here for much of the year and that I can close the door to distraction.

In his memoir, “On Writing”, Stephen King mentions the importance of writing a first draft with the door closed. I am easily distracted and when my focus is interrupted, it starfishes onto something new and the suction can be a force to be reckoned with. If I am sitting up in the main area of our home, my closed door is represented by a large pair of headphones. That being said, being able to close a physical door comes in handy for me.

The Big Room is usually where we put guests when they come to visit. It has more space for luggage, kids, and pets. It even has a desk and a comfortable chair. I originally intended for the Big Room to be “our room” and hung our two framed wedding pictures on the wall, but by the time it got really cold our first year of living here, we learned pretty quickly that the little room holds heat in much better and so we make an annual migration in the fall and spring between the two. And so, our guests are stuck with us looking all glammed up when they stay in the Big Room. I guess I’ll just apologize for our not looking quite that pretty all the time!

Anyway, I’m using this post as a warm-up to jump back into a fiction project and I feel like it’s time to switch gears now. I’ll take a little break and make some tea and then come right back and get to work. Old Pizza Stains McDenty Face has me on the clock and my attention’s good and starfished.

Health & Lifestyle · Mental Health · Music · Reviews & Reflections

Light

Beth DeFries2 Comments

This one might stay just for me. I don’t know yet. If you are reading now, then that’s obviously not the case.

Yesterday was an anxious, distracted day, for no reason in particular. Bombarded with cravings to snack, drink coffee, and to shop for a new winter coat (despite not knowing what my current size is, let alone what it will be- come the actual colder months) while I was meant to be editing an unfinished piece introduced weighty doubt into the morning that carried on until I drifted off to sleep last night. I acknowledge that I am not even in the same time zone as the realm of perfection and some days are just bound to be spent lost in struggle city without a map. Maybe I should have given in to one of those cravings and the day wouldn’t have been such a write-off, but I resisted whether that was the right call or not. Take that as you will.

Yesterday evening I was on my own while Mike was out and I decided to revisit Beyonce’s “II Most Wanted” having enjoyed it while listening to her full album “Cowboy Carter” a week ago. The song features Miley Cyrus. The sound of Miley’s soothing, silky rasp reminded me of lyrics for one of her own songs so I queued up the “Used to Be Young” video next. 

I watched a bleary eyed Miley play her vulnerability to the camera and I got chills from the top of my head down to my elbows. The video reminded me of those times when you catch yourself in the mirror when you are feeling low and suddenly see your struggle magnified. It felt like Miley was singing to herself in a mirror, guiding herself back up from the bottom of the spiral. It was inspirational and today I’m going to guide myself back up from my own depths.

My lack of productivity yesterday feels like a setback going into today and I’m just as stuck as I was when I sat down with my lap desk and laptop yesterday morning. Today, I chose a different spot. Sometimes you have to follow the inspiration to find motivation and my tiny desk looked inspiring in the filtered morning light beneath the windows in the living room. So, I am writing this sitting on the floor with my keyboard on my tiny desk and my laptop propped up on a stand atop one of our living room end tables. When my hips start to scream and my feet go numb, I’ll move. After that, there’s no telling if the magic of the location will wear off or if I simply need to wait for the pins and needles to subside to resume my work for the day in the correct place. It’s always a mystery. Setting goals is cute when it comes to making art, but art isn’t always cooperative when it comes to following the rules. 

Remember to be kind to yourself. Your flaws are part of you. Your flaws give you dimension. Balance. They make the sparkly moments more dazzling by comparison. 

Maybe this won’t be just for me, after all. I can’t be the only one who feels like this some days. I mean, Miley feels like this some days. If you needed this today, we’re in this together, my friend. If you didn’t and you’re thinking man, what a wackadoodle, don’t worry; I’m alright. Where there are shadows, there’s always light.

Cozy Posts

October Postcard

Beth DeFriesLeave a comment

It’s October-proper October, with its changing colors, crunchy leaves, and clouds that paint a gray scale on the sky like an art class assignment with splashes of periwinkle where the colors got too mixed. The heat’s still off, but there’s a chill inside that calls for tea and so, I’ll put the kettle on. This morning feels Darjeeling-y to me or “Darling”-y as my friend Kelsey might say, so a darling morning it shall be.

I’m drowning in an old sweater, but it’s a favorite so it still felt right to choose it from the drawer this morning and pull it on, familiar in its soft feel and deep orange hue. Today needs to be an editing day for a second draft of a play that I don’t know what to do with once it’s finished which is why it is not finished and such a day calls for being cozy. The writing is the part that I understand. The rest is a learning process that feels like school on a day there’s a test I didn’t study for. The words are out of my head and that was the point. Any other points that follow are just gifts as far as I am concerned.

I’ve always loved October. October is for reading and Crock-Pot dinners and long hikes along crisp trails. It’s for writing about color and family and mysterious goings-on. It’s for sweatshirts on the beach and cold sand under bare feet. And this particular October, I turn thirty-three, a number I have no notions about whatsoever, a number that just is, and that’s alright with me.

Thirty-two was good and great and fine, challenging and interesting, awkward and confident, revelatory and strong. It was a year for change and writing, for spontaneous adventure and wanderlust, for mindset shifts, new wheels, and a new reflection.

There were strengthened ties with acquaintances that became friends, dinners and drinks and walks, belly laughs, and little smiles. And now it’s October again, another year around the thermonuclear reactor nearly complete and only life to show for it.

It’s hard to keep up with everyone and that’s part of why I write posts like this here. For the ones who have kept up, you’ve kept me from the lonely side of writing and there are not enough thank yous for that. For the ones who haven’t so much, I hope you are all well and I’d love to hear from you sometime, no matter how long it’s been.

My friend, Katherine, sends me postcards from her travels and last week I found Edinburgh sitting right there in the mailbox. I read her words in her handwriting and enjoyed the little excerpts of her trip. To me, it doesn’t really matter what picture adorns a postcard; recent ones always go on the fridge- words out. Handwritten mail is special and is protected from minimalism in my house. A friend’s handwriting and their carefully chosen words are connections to be valued; they are love and thoughtfulness in written form. It has me thinking it’s been a while since I’ve written a card just because and, who knows, maybe October will be a month for some snail mail.

Poetry

Abandoned Character

Beth DeFriesLeave a comment

I walked by the bay and disposed of treasure

Without taking care to measure

The value at the time,

What I held as mine-

Now gone,

A passing thought,

A character erased,

The plot debased,

Left on the porch of History House

In a rocker beside the door-

The words no more,

Retained only in memory.

Characters suited to different tales,

Creative concept – doomed to fail,

Flightless birds,

Deleted words,

Debris of fate,

A breath exhaled,

Destruction mode on,

Eliminated pawns,

The Queen- exposed, unknowing.

Protect the protector-

That little defender

Who fell asleep on the job.

Poetry

Dream on the Cusp

Beth DeFriesLeave a comment

Woke up today feeling small-

Not weak or defeated,

Just not much at all,

A speck on a marble that spins round and round,

In a bed, in a house, on the ground.

You couldn’t see me from space,

Head up in the clouds

Of fog fallen from grace,

Looking up towards the gray to peel and reveal,

And wonder why Earth’s a big deal.

Dreams circle black holes

Drawn to depths un-suspect,

Stretched like melted shoe soles,

Till I can’t recognize, translate, or surmise,

Stars extinguished from sparkling skies.

Wake to reason sipped on the porch-

Ground elixir of addicts

That can’t hold a torch

To the infinite warps of spacetime, sublime

That inspired this wandering rhyme.

Poetry

Baby Bear’s Porridge

Beth DeFriesLeave a comment

I taste a sense of possibility and capability that is new to me today.

It’s the most delicious thing I’ve tasted so far

And I wonder why I put off making it for so long.

Perhaps the steps of the recipe were too daunting.

Perhaps it required a long list of ingredients from a hundred different places

Or the kitchen was too cluttered to get to the cabinets, sink, and stove.

Perhaps the recipe looked very long on the page

Or parts of it were torn from the cookbook

Or stuck together with once-edible, mystery adhesive.

I peeled apart the pages with an unfamiliar determination

And wiped away the weakened cement of grime so they wouldn’t stick together again.

I read the recipe through for the first time.

I let the overwhelm sink in and chose to ignore it

Then sourced the called-for ingredients –

Turns out I had most of them on hand already.

I prepared them at my own pace and came to realize

That I craved exactly this at many points in life:

All those times when I was ravenous

And snacked on something else that didn’t satisfy.

The recipe always seemed too difficult to attempt,

The estimated cook time-too long.

And once I got going, I was overzealous

And some of the magic splashed out of the pot,

But I’ve adjusted the heat and thrown in some spices.

It’s simmering now- just needs a little longer-

A few more spices here and there, maybe.

I want to get it just right.

Cozy Posts · Nostalgic Posts

Home of the Great

Beth DeFriesLeave a comment

I remember being small at the house on Neptune Avenue,

The kitchen’s brown and white floor tiles – cold on bare, little, pink toes in the early morning,

Gray light filtering through embroidered curtains,

Casting an emerald jewel over the sink where the shamrock stained glass hung.

I remember the table under the windows topped with a lamp, pristine cloth, and occupied, melamine ashtray

And fearing the swipe of Inkspot’s front claws as he perched on the table with prideful defiance,

A gleaming panther in the cold sun, daring enough to live a little in spite of the photos displayed on the wall beside him-

An homage to pets long gone.

Shannon the Great Pyrenees liked to sleep in the walkway between the kitchen and dining room,

Our languid polar bear babysitter.

We’d climb over her, she- a mountain of white fur and a waggling pink tongue,

But she never seemed to mind us when we buried our little hands in her fluff,

Or scaled over her one chubby leg at a time, running in circles around the first floor.

We’d sneak slices of yellow American cheese from the refrigerator in the laundry room

And watch cartoons in Brepa’s old chair,

Presided over by the oil painting of the Madonna and child,

But we never let them choose the show,

Their gazes clouded with many decades worth of nicotine stains.

I wonder what they liked best on Nickelodeon.

We knew how to turn the silver dials on the brown TV set

Because there were limited options that we could wrap our molding brains around.

We bounced on the squashy, springy seat cushion of the arm chair,

A pile of giggles and twirled pigtails,

If we were lucky enough for Aunt Arlene to curl our hair the night before.

I remember the hi-fi along the back wall of the dining room,

The one with my mom’s baby teeth marks in it

And the concealed Ouija board beneath.

I remember studying the countless framed photographs up the wall along the staircase

And Aunt Arlene telling me not to complain about getting my tangled hair brushed

Because Natalie didn’t complain about getting her hair brushed.

There was a mirror by the front door,

But I’d have to jump to see anything other than the reflection of the ceiling in it.

Shadow was a stray tabby who’d visit from time to time for a snack.

“She made her way around the block”, the parents would say,

Whatever that meant, I’d think, trying to decipher the mysteries of adult conversation.

Shadow had kittens in a box on the porch one time.

“Mine” was gray and had six toes on his paws, but he died quick,

I forget his name.

I never thought about death before that,

But I guess Jersey City’s a tough enough place,

Let alone for a fresh feline.

At the time, I thought it had something to do with his extra toes and was relieved to have the normal amount.

The living room had the quilted, Irish hanging tapestry, embroidered with names of family and friends.

It was also where we named Sunshine,

The orange tabby who replaced Inkspot once his photo was added to the display in the kitchen.

We were four little girls laying on the floor, swinging our feet back and forth in the air,

Deep in thought in a matter of such importance,

Round cheeks propped up on plump palms.

I remember watching Sister Act and My Fair Lady a lot

Because those were the only VHS tapes available in the house.

I remember Katherine, Janice, Carol, and the McGinns.

I remember holding my breath when the Marlboros announced their presence on the porch,

Tom’s banana toothpaste in the morning and at night,

And squeaky clean hair.

There were St. Patrick’s Day Birthday parties

And the train set beneath the Christmas tree –

The shelf in the second floor bathroom- overflowing with haircare products,

Car rides with no seatbelt in the middle,

The tiny American Flag on the antenna, flapping in the wind,

The Garden Song on a loop-

We are made of dreams and bones.

The greatest of the Greats

Had patience for us beyond what she had for our parents.

She curled our hair

And loved us to pieces finer than the scrambledest eggs you’ve ever eaten.

I remember being small at the house on Neptune Avenue

With a life so much bigger than I could see.

The view was higher than I could jump.

I’d have to grow to appreciate it.

I’m tall enough now to look in the mirror and look the past straight on in the present,

Able to recognize the magic of a moment,

The lasting quality of the fleeting,

The memory of the lost.

The feel of cold tiles,

The scent of cigarette smoke and hairspray,

And ringlet curls-

Links to a past, present life that seems so far away now.

Health & Lifestyle · Music · Reviews & Reflections

Standing on [the] Bleachers

Beth DeFriesLeave a comment

Good Morning. I’ve been hooked on an album for the past few days, filling the quiet with constant sound because it makes my brain feel good. It’s distracting in the best way and has had me dance writing in giant headphones for a few days now. If you’re feeling like you could use a little more head bobbing, leg bouncing, and shoulder dancing or just a healthy distraction in your week, join me in a listen.

I know it’s been a lot of posts lately. The reason for this is procrastination and overwhelm on my longer writing project. It’s getting there, but it can get there later for right now. I write here because if I don’t, I won’t write there. My type-A personality would have me organize my creative distractions in a spreadsheet and address them in a reasonable order, but that’s not how reality works and recently, I feel a little like a lamb searching for grass on a construction site. Huh– where did I get turned around? How long have I been gone from the pasture? This music is leading me back though. Isn’t “Dream of Mickey Mantle” great?

I went for a run along the beach trail the other day, going a little too fast because adrenaline allowed and it felt good to focus on the pleasant pain of blood pumping in my legs and behind my ears instead of other things. The wind was loud and sharp and the air was salty and fresh. I was exhausted after two miles, but the stretch after was soothing and necessary. Stairs will be tough for a day or so, but that’s part of the fun, no?

I watched Mike run his first half marathon in October my senior year of college. I was amazed that people run that much for fun and actually look happy doing it. After the race, he jokingly asked me if I wanted to do one sometime. I was like, “You’re joking, right?”

He was joking, and yet, the itch to do something BIG crawled onto my skin, seeped into my pores, and sank into my veins. Could I run 13.1 miles? Yeah; I could.

My times weren’t amazing, but I ran the North Jersey Half Marathon twice and felt good for ten miles both times and then felt like my legs would fall off for the last three, which is weird because you need legs to finish the race, and I was determined to finish. I remember a sign that one of the spectators held. She sat in a wheelchair and held up a poster board that said, “Pain is temporary. Pride is forever.” It is what got me through my first race. It is the mantra I used for my second. I think about that sign all of the time because to this day, it urges me to accomplish things that are tough.

A friend of mine recommended an incredible book by Glennon Doyle called Untamed. It is a memoir by a woman who did hard things because she realized she could do hard things and that she needed to. I know I can do hard things too. I need to do them. I know because I’ve done them before. No obstacle is too big, no distraction too consuming. If life were easy all the time, the good parts wouldn’t be so good.

What song are you on now?

To reduce less healthy distractions this week, I started listening to music while I write. Normally, I’m horrible at this type of multitasking, but for some reason, this album is fueling me and my fingers are flying. I did make the mistake of watching the music video for one of Bleachers’ newer songs, Tiny Moves, and it is incredible. Don’t watch it unless you have a nice chunk of time, because it is beautiful and you will want to watch it more than once. The video features Margaret Qualley who choreographed, starred, and co-directed the video and Bleachers front man, Jack Antonoff, her husband. I feel a weird connection to Qualley since usually, when people ask me, “You know who you remind me of?”, I could now just answer yes, since the answer is more often than not Andie MacDowell, Qualley’s mother. I shared the link for the video with my friends to whom dance was a huge part of life at some point – it never was for me; I haven’t the talent, but I always wished I could. I’ll happily settle for the talents that I can call mine though.

I got my first “real” haircut since December 2018 yesterday and honestly, it’s just fine. I never was one for salon small talk, so when the pandemic was like, try cutting your own hair, I was all for it. My self-hair cuts were fine too, not to mention free, so maybe the salon and I will do battle in another six months to see who gets to hold the scissors.

The independence of certain skills can be very freeing. Cutting my own hair and doing my own sewing alterations were difficult skills to learn, but they allow me to minimize interactions that I find tedious and that makes the pin pricks and temporarily looking like Samara from The Ring a little more worth it. Making a story outline was similarly difficult to figure out, but I know I picked up the other skills well enough so I have high hopes for what I’ve put together.

I just realized that my head has been bopping the entire time writing this. The music’s getting in my blood, the words are singing in my head. I’ll go for a run in a little bit and the wind in my ears will join the symphony and it will be a brain pounding and body pumping with healthy distraction. I will write words. I will read words. I will stretch mentally and physically, escaping into Gone Now, because it just feels good.

Have a weird day; have a fun day; have the best day you can. Get up, get dressed, brush your teeth. Do something little, because lots of little somethings lead to something big.

Love,

Beth

Health & Lifestyle · Music · Nostalgic Posts · Reviews & Reflections

Vampire Word Salad

Beth DeFriesLeave a comment

I’m a nervous highway driver, on occasion. Weirdly, singing seems to help with that. So, sometimes, I sing when I drive. I sing when I drive when I’m nervous, that is.

When I was new to driving as a teenager, my dad would passenger seat “drive”. He had an imaginary brake pedal on the ceiling of the car and when he’d hold his breath in silence and reach for it with his hand, my confidence would waver. I remember thinking that a very real passenger-side clutch pedal would have been much more practical because no matter how many times my dad told me at first, “G’head; ease up on the clutch. You’ll feel it,” he seemed only to be all sorts of crazy at the time and me – all sorts of confused. Of course, he was right, and if you know how to drive a manual transmission, you know what I’m talking about. For the rest of you, there is no other way I have found to explain it; so you’ll just have to trust me on this one, okay?

Before moving back to New Jersey, I was out of practice with driving, having lived in New York City for seven years where cars are things that you sometimes forget exist as modes of transportation rather than simply as perpetual enemies to face at crosswalks and invisible crosswalks, alike. I decided to ease my way back into highway driving with a nice little “test drive” by following behind the U-Haul that Mike drove during our move. White knuckled and singing, with a nice big U-Haul to tail (and the U-Haul’s being restricted from going on the Parkway), we made it, somehow. Mike was proud of me, I was proud of me, and I think it’s accurate to say we were both sort of in disbelief. Turns out I could do it all along, like the whole time probably, you guys. Who’d have even thought?

Driving and music just sort of go together for me. My sister did most of the driving when we were in high school. She knew the radio stations to preset and had taste in music that I’d not yet honed for myself. I trusted her musical prowess and learned to like the emo pop and rock bands that were so popular in my school days. In middle school or high school (I can’t remember – help me out if you know, dad!), my dad showed me how to use his and my mom’s record player and my musical knowledge expanded to include Van Morrison, the Beatles, The Who, Cream, and Emmitt Rhodes, among others, heard as originally intended. The soft thud and crackle of a needle dropped in a vinyl groove has been a very comforting sound ever since. I’ve not touched a record or a record player for years now, but I can recall that sound as easily as I can hear my neighbor’s music playing next door right now. Unexplainable, yet simultaneously explainable – you know, magic.

Nowadays, I have an included music subscription through Amazon Prime, built on a Prime Music Unlimited subscription that I paid for (and got very limited use out of if I’m being honest), for over a year. It’s basically the same as the paid version, except that I can no longer pick the exact song I want to listen to at the exact moment I think to listen to it. The song’ll come on eventually, I have learned, and I’ll hear new stuff that I’d otherwise not have known about while waiting for it to do so. I use this music subscription, almost solely for car-based purposes and it has been my co-pilot (cough – karaoke machine) for many a long drive.

My taste has since evolved into something with an identity of its own that I’m proud of and that I don’t care whether or not other people share in. My go to for driving is almost always something by Vampire Weekend (or something similar now, by the unpredictable nature of the Amazon Music roulette wheel). Before I got rid of my paid music subscription, I mourned the final days of still having the ability to play the entire Father of the Bride album in its intended order, getting lost in songs like Bambina, Sunflower, and Flower Moon. I’d like to say I sing along to Vampire Weekend, but what I actually do is try to sing along to Vampire Weekend, as, at least for me, many of the songs would take a gazillion driving listens to get the words right (as you must remember; I cannot look at the lyrics because – driving). No, I sing whatever words fit the pleasant Koenigean warbles and “my audience” is not displeased.

I think of the Beatles writing Yesterday and Paul McCartney using the original placeholder lyrics of, “Scrambled Eggs. Oh my baby how I love your legs,” and I think it’s totally reasonable to change the words to something like Diane Young, Don’t Lie, or Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa for my own listening (and driving) pleasure. Someday I’ll look up the words, though I’m happy enough with my own versions for the time being.

Perhaps my nervous reaction to driving was born from that invisible ceiling brake. Maybe it was the watching for the opposing traffic’s yellow lights while I was stopped at a red at intersections (you know – to leave sufficient time to feel the clutch). Maybe it was how fifth gear liked to keep me on my toes by sticking every once in a while when downshifting to fourth. At some point in time, specific origin unknown, it came to be, and here I live to tell the tale, much improved thanks to uninhibited car singing and an affinity for Vampire Word Salad.

I’ll end it here before this last track skips, but feel free to set the needle down at the beginning again if you so choose.

Poetry

Two-Way Mirror

Beth DeFriesLeave a comment

I want to know you.

I want you to know me too.

But on my side, I’ve a mirror,

You – a window to see through.

Do you enjoy what you see?

This self portrait of me?

Is your nose pressed to the glass?

Am I who you thought I would be?

Sometimes lengthy, sometimes brief,

Sometimes lost in the grief,

Tongue tangled with words

Typed with ease for relief.

But I ache for your stories,

Your low points, your glories.

It makes me so curious,

Diamonds – hidden in quarries.

And where do you read

All the words that I’ve keyed,

All the soul that’s been spilled

For your pleasure, your need?

And how long will you stay

To read what I’ve to say

To eyes voiceless and faceless,

Some – so far away?

Perhaps I’ll never know

How your stories all go.

I’ll continue to wonder.

I’ll continue to show.

Diamonds, so mined –

Some lustrous and shined,

Some clouded and rough,

Some polished – refined.

I’ll churn out more prose,

Hope the poetry flows,

Envelop your interest,

Press mirror to nose.

I’ll squint through the glass,

Hoping your stories pass,

But it’s tough to see through

In this mirror so vast.