The Former Anne Spollen's Author Blog Is Being Retitled to "Notes from Living Upghetto": Thanks

Sunday, November 30, 2008

Thanks

Over Thanksgiving, we went on a long car ride where I found out my daughter believes the ghost of a little girl is living in our house, that my middle son knows an endless number of jokes involving butt lint, and that my oldest guy absolutely can never again eat five Fiber One bars before getting into a car on a cold day when the windows cannot be opened. Absolutely never.

The night before, we had watched the Duggar family, all seven thousand of them, going on a car trip. (They're that family somewhere in a place like Arkansas or Omaha who have seventeen kids and one on the way) The older girls took care of the younger kids. They sang songs about Jesus. No one shouted or swore or fought over not sitting in the middle or whether or not doughnuts are as toxic as Mom claims they are. I really like the Duggar family, even if they wear prairie clothes and have scary hair. They're sort of our family in the anti matter world.

There are only five of us, and five animals, and we listened to Pink Floyd in the car, then Bing Crosby Christmas carols for Emma. Bing didn't last too long with this crowd. My daughter, who is the only ten year old on the planet (and possibly on other planets) who dislikes Hannah Montana, finally decided on Evanescence.

When that ended, we argued for a few miles. Philip kept snapping pictures of us in the car (we took none at the holiday table) with his phone. Our memory stick on the camera is full, and we forgot to buy a new one. So here we are, candid and ragged.

Sixteen Year Old in Thirty Mile Electronic Trance:

Philip and Emma After Agreeing on Music:

Sneak Shot of Mom:

And an image I found on my phone today that I'll bet you Mrs. Duggar would never find on hers:

That image is from Pink Floyd, a band I listened to at least twenty years ago, and that my two boys now really like. I think it's kind of a teen's way of saying hi, or maybe something along the lines of thanks for telling me the stories behind songs like Shine On You Crazy Diamond (and not making it sound like English class, though I did sneak in a bit of symbolism once I had their attention)

I'll bet Mrs. Duggar's kids give her things like this too, only they probably use words. That's fine by me; symbols work just fine here with our little anti matter family.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...: This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.; Sunday, 30 November, 2008
Anonymous said...: Hey Anne -- I jsut finished The Shape of Water and loved it! What an amazing read! One of my top fav YA books so far.

Enjoy your blog. Did anyone tell you that you look like that actress Julianne Moore?
And r u working on a new book?; Tuesday, 02 December, 2008
Anne Spollen said...: Thanks, Kelly. I'm glad you liked reading it.

And thanks for saying I look like an actress -- generally, I'm frazzled and unable to even find ChapStick, so I'm a pretty far cry from someone that glamourous.

And yes, I just finished a new YA book. It's coming out from Flux I think early in 2010. I'll probably talk about it here (why not since I talk about everything else here) as the release date gets closer.; Tuesday, 02 December, 2008
Elizabeth said...: Hey nice to meet you and thanks for stopping by my place. I have a confession the Duggar family rubs me the wrong way. I must change the channel when I see them.
But Bing Cosby and Pink Floyd?
That is a car ride I can get on board with... got to go my 2 year old has found me...; Tuesday, 02 December, 2008
Anne Spollen said...: Bing is kind of a form of torture for my bickering teens. Perry Como is reserved for when they are really aggravating.

I can't figure the Duggars out. When I watch them, sometimes I think they're medicated, other times I think maybe I should be because I CAN'T turn the channel - why don't they ever argue? Curse? Get nuts with each other? I don't want to be with that many people at a a meeting, let alone a house.

Anyway, thanks for the visit, Elizabeth.; Tuesday, 02 December, 2008
Mary Witzl said...: Wow -- the Dugger family -- another bit of Americana I'm missing out on. Are they like the Waltons, only even better? Do their kids really behave that well? Part of me smells a rat. And part of me is just plain envious.

That shot of you the kids snuck is great. The ones my kids sneak of me are always awful: my eyes, beady-bright red, are half closed, one finger is suspiciously close to my nose, and they invariably make me resolve to go on a diet.; Thursday, 04 December, 2008
Anne Spollen said...: I can't get my boys to pick up their skanky towels off the floor, yet the Duggars can travel around the country seamlessly with 17 1/2 kids - she's pregnant (again) - so I have to assume she drugs them. Or beats them. Something's up with that.

Yeah, I think candid shots are better than the posed kind. They also took the one on the blog where I'm watching them out of the front window. I like it because it reminds me that they are watching me right back.; Friday, 05 December, 2008

Books

Light Beneath Ferns

"I have this strange sense that my silence is preparing me for something I can't name . ."

Elizah Rayne is nothing like other fourteen-year-old girls. More interested in bird bones than people, she wraps herself in silence. Trying to escape the shadow of her gambler father, Elizah and her mother move into an old house that borders a cemetery. All her mother wants is for them to have "normal" lives. But that becomes impossible for Elizah when she finds a human jawbone by the river and meets Nathaniel, a strangely hypnotic boy who draws Elizah into his dreamlike and mysterious world.

Only by forgetting everything she knows can Elizah understand the truth about Nathaniel—and discover an unimaginable secret.

Teen made trailer for Light Beneath Ferns.

Order Light Beneath Ferns here.

Foreword Magazine's Review of Light Beneath Ferns

Excerpt from THE SHAPE OF WATER

CHAPTER ONE
I discovered windows one afternoon and after that, nothing was ever the same. They had always been there, of course, glass panes shimmering in the color of rain, but that spring for the first time, I was able to open the windows in my room. For years, the locks had been painted stuck, and during the winter, heat from the radiator beneath my windows finally steamed off enough paint off the metal wings of the locks could be twirled open. Knowing that I could open the windows attracted me to them, and I began sitting under the windows, staring through the glass at the sky. From that position, on a chair in my room, the sky did not seem real; it seemed a place I was making up, so I watched it.
The white wood of the window panes acted as frames so the sky came to me slowly, and the huge openness of its space did not touch me. All the window glass in our old house had wavers and bubbles inside it, so at times the clouds moved like water, melting and blurring until they passed outside of the warp. After a few afternoons of sitting, the heavens seemed too quiet to keep watching so I began watching a small patch of woods next to our yard that housed little more than trees and a scatter of bony, mean-looking rabbits.
I started gazing at the sky and the woods in March when the branches were still wet and it was then, with nothing outside my window but trees and rain, that I noticed a shine inside darkness, I noticed colors glimmering within the darkness of the wood. I watched birds come and go, I watched rain nipple down from buds to the grass. The water dripping from branch edges and leaves created optical tricks; I could see that as I watched leaves melt.
Then one day I ventured into the space outside. I did not think about doing this much beforehand. I simply opened the window and dropped to the ground below, uncertain as to why this should be such a more satisfying exit than simply using the door; my father worked until seven o’clock and I could do whatever I wanted until then. But I liked the solid sound my legs made when I landed. Leaving via a five foot drop seemed so much more a decision than just using a door. The sense of escape made my heart pound, though all I escaped was the soundless spread of moss-colored light inside my house and the silence.
I had come to know silence well during those months after my mother died. When you sit in silence long enough, you learn that silence has a motion. It glides over you without shape or form, but with weight, exactly like water. Its color is silver. And silence has a sound you hear only after hours of wading inside it. The sound is soft, flute notes rising up like the words of glass speaking. There comes a point when you must shatter the silence, when you must shatter the blindness of its words, the blindness of its light. I did this by going into the yard. Once I stood there, in the grass next to the trees I had been watching, I found silence outside as well. But I was happier outside than I had been in the house, so I stayed for a bit. I stood beneath my bedroom window for a few minutes, looking up at the branches and the crooked pieces of sky colliding between the branches. I believed I could identify the scent of the sky as I stood there, a blue menthol fragrance similar to the scent of seawater that sprayed into my face when I first dove into the ocean. That initial scent smelled much more subtle than the ocean’s heavy, fishy aroma, a whiff of salt and mint that warned a more powerful scent would enter my nose just as I approached the water on a dive. It was the scent I dreamed in. And it was the scent of that spring sky as I stood in my yard.

***