If you're a fan of her writing and blog, you will love the podcast where JEM has conversations with some of her favorite writers! Always conversationally engaging and intimate, JEM tries to really get to know these writers and their books! Check it out
See https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/life-of-jem/id1700562573?i=1000728484744
I'm at Lowe's. It's ironic that I'm writing this here because a piece just got accepted to a literary journal about a trip to Home Depot that I wrote during the Christmas season last year.
It's late September, and it's not even Halloween yet, but the Christmas decor is already being put out on the floor. So there's huge seven foot werewolves and witches alongside the snowmen and Santas. The contrast is striking.
I've always been a Halloween type of gal myself. I am dark. Gothic. In literature, in movies, in clothing, and in my mind. Although I do consider myself an optimist, I am a realist too and reality is dark, especially right now.
Everything seems to be spiraling in the world. I try to find solace in my writing, in music and in helping the least fortunate and most vulnerable in my day job as a deputy public defender. But even that's been darker than usual lately. It's gotten harder and is getting harder.
There are days that I yearn for a positive job where I could go to work and not have to see people in chains. Yet, what I also know in my bones is that my clients need me. I think now the issue is that I don't know if their need outweighs the vicarious trauma I take in daily. It's harming me. The stress can be extreme, especially because I care.
I'm just learning I need to put myself first.
So back to the home improvement store. There's a metaphor here I'm searching for because recently, I have been working on improving myself. You see, I need a remodel. My body can't handle everything it used to. Hitting my fifties has been a wake up call for me to practice self care, improvement and fulfillment. So I'm trying. Day by day. Minute by minute. I'm trying really hard to do better and be better. That's all we can each do. Live in the moment. Realize that life is fleeting and we must do the best we can.
A few nights ago, I read from a literary anthology I am a part of. The event was at the Ugly Mug coffee shop in Orange. I had a lot of coffee beforehand because the event started at 8 pm and I had to drive myself and my friend Gina (who was also reading from the anthology, which she edited and curated) for the event after a full work day in Riverside.
I started getting ready at work about five and muttered under my breath, "why do I do this to myself"? A nine hour work day was turning into a fourteen or fifteen hour day. But I consoled myself by thoughts of good food beforehand, poetry and more coffee of course.
We got there quick, despite taking the 91 freeway, and after a circuitous and ultimately successful search for parking, we ate friend chicken and waffles at Bruxie in Orange. Then we ambled over to the Ugly Mug which is in a craftsman style house.
The proprietor is notoriously grumpy and he did not disappoint. It took my friend Gina four tries to find a coffee drink from their menu that was available. I ordered my usual espresso which he replaced with an Americano. When I brought out my credit card to pay, he smirked and pointed to a sign that said CASH ONLY. I looked back at him with a raised brow and said, "Am I in a Seinfeld episode?" He said, "Yep" and directed me to the ATM down the street.
I got my steps in, got growled at by a dog (which was ironic considering I was reading a story about a dog that bit my twin sister when we were little) and made my way back to the Ugly "cash only" Mug of a coffee shop.
Despite all that, the poetry was superb. An open mic bookended our readings and I was very impressed. The poets could perform and did and were super talented. Gina and I did our readings, which went down well, and then there was another open mic. At the end, the poet slash host read a poem about Gleek (the monkey from the justice league cartoon) he had in homage to my piece about wonder twins.
I got home after eleven and fell into bed to sleep and perchance to dream. To dream of writing full-time one day...
I've always thought I had it all together. That I was put together. I had a good life, a nice house and family, and a fulfilling job. But recently, I've come to know one thing. I don't know shit, and I'm a mess. Everything I thought I knew is now being questioned because I'm shedding the light of truth and self awareness on it. I know I'm being opaque. For now, I have to be. I have to make sure that my perception is true. I am trying to honestly figure it all out.
My goal in the next few months is to just take each day as it comes, and to work on myself, in whatever way I can. I want a peaceful and serene life. I deserve it. I know I can have it. I need to quiet my mind and find myself again.
For years, essentially a decade now, I have been a spinning top. And I have finally stopped the spinning and am looking at myself in the mirror.
Ultimately, this self reflection is just about me. It's not about anyone else. And I need to do this because everything I've created, all my reactions, over reactions, compromises, and complications have been self imposed. I am the only one who can find myself again. I need to find the person I am meant to be. For me and only me.
I won't call this a mid life crisis, it's a mid life creation. A new me. And a new day. My way, as Sid once sang, I'm gonna do it my way.
Life of JEM talks with poet and essayist Elizabeth Galoozis about her beautiful new poetry book "Law of the Letter" published recently by the Inlandia Institute. They discuss craft, process, how to blend music and pop culture into a collection and why poetry is always personal for Elizabeth. Winner of the regional Hillary Gravendyk prize, this intimate conversation will illuminate and inspire! Listen in!!
Just go to:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/life-of-jem/id1700562573?i=1000726769117
Mom taught me and my identical twin sister Jackie to read when we were four. I remember Mom sitting with us at our tiny kitchen table in the kitchen in our house in Montclair, California, a suburb about sixty miles from Los Angeles. She was probably wearing a house dress, her skin browner than usual from tanning that summer.
It was early of course, 7 am or so. Mom was always an early riser and passed it down to me by always waking us up early, To this day, no matter how hard I try, I can't sleep past six am.
We were set to start school that September. The era was the mid 1970s, a time of Ditto flared jeans which mom had already bought for us with her stash of waitressing tips. We would soon be attending Mariposa Elementary where they had two kindergarten classrooms so we could each have our own separate classroom and teacher, which Mom said was the ideal situation for twins.
Mom was determined that we would start kindergarten already knowing how to read. Mom had always valued education, and her mantra was that us twins were going to go to college. She would always say that she didn't want us to be a waitress like her. My mom was wicked smart, and a skilled reader.
Flash forward an unlucky thirteen years later and I would indeed be a waitress just like her after having thrown away my straight A report card and my dreams of Claremont McKenna down the drain. But back then, when we were kids, Mom was optimistic, and so most mornings, she sat with us and she tutored us in reading. She used Beverly Clearly books and eventually even her beloved, slightly salacious "True Story" magazine, which I learned to love as well.
Our modest kitchen was small and painted a bright yellow like the summer sun in the sky. Covering the windows of the kitchen were scalloped curtains my mom had saved her tips to buy from Montgomery Ward's. They had lemons on them.
Mom must have had a cup of coffee by her side. Sipping from it constantly like she always did. Much like how my dad always had a Budweiser in hand.
Mom was probably bone tired those early Saturday mornings. She would have waitressed the night before, and gotten home late, close to midnight. Dad would have watched us while she worked the closing shift.
Dad usually got home by 5 pm on Fridays and was on time so Mom could be on time for her shift. He was slowly, but surely breaking his back and legs moving furniture at Mayflower moving company. Us kids loved Dad's big moving truck. It was green and yellow with a big ship painted on the side. When Dad drove the truck home, me and Jackie would chortle with delight and beg Dad to let us sit with him in the truck's front seat. Our little sister Annie would clap when one of us pulled the horn which made a loud oooga like noise which combined fittingly with the sound of Johnny Cash on the 8 track.
My dad was a nurturing babysitter and father. As we got older, my memories of those Friday and Saturday nights when my mom had to work, would be filled to the brim with rummy card games and trips to the Drive In movie theater where we watched Star Trek and Richard Pryor movies.
My mom taught us to read, but my dad taught us card games (canasta, big casino little casino and so on) and how to watch movies in silence until after they were over when we could finally discuss the merits of Superman 1 versus 2. Dad liked hanging out with us kids and was jolly, even after a long day of hard work. Maybe the Budweiser made it easier.
Back to the kitchen table, in our light filled kitchen, Mom was patient, giving me and my wonder twin the ultimate gift. In moments like those at the kitchen table, when my mom was sweet, kind and encouraging, I saw my mom as a Carol, the mom on The Brady Bunch. I remember Mom whispering to me in a kind voice, "Cmon Jenny, sound the words out. You can do it, you're so smart."
That first reading summer, Mom took her time with us at the table and it paid off.
By four years of age, Jackie and I were reading Judy Blume. By seven, I was obsessed with my mom's collection of Harlequin romance novels, having read all the Wizard of Oz Books, the Little House on the Prairie series, Gone with the Wind (which my dad was gifted from someone cleaning out their library on a move), SE Hinton and Little Women. Then at ten or eleven, I found F. Scott Fitzgerald in the adult section of the Ontario library and never left the stacks.
Later, I would squint into books while laying on our roof, a place that I escaped to when my mom and dad would argue. All my troubles would fade away as I lost myself in my books.
Perhaps Mom taught me to read so young because she knew, down deep inside, as both a keen reader herself, and a woman who knew exactly how hard life could be, that in my life, I would need books like most need air to breathe.
I am laying on a leopard couch trying to write. I play music to inspire me, some Iggy Pop, Sonic Youth, Pink Floyd, Flaming Lips, and then some Beatles. A bit eclectic. But inspiring like I said. My dogs are playing with a stick from outside. I take it away. I decide to go feed them and then take them out.
A bird screeches in the sky above us. We all look up.
That's how the world feels. As if something is startling us. Screeching by on a daily basis. All while we are just trying to get through the day. But as Iggy sings, "all of this is yours and mine", and it's being incinerated.
I've been trying to work on my novel about a truck stop waitress in the high desert. I like this character. She's not me, but like me she's into music, although mostly country music, and similarly, she used to be a lawyer. Yet, her world is crumbling or has crumbled. It's a realistic novel about getting through the day however you can, especially when the personal and political are both in shambles. How would you get through?
Somehow, I don't think any of us thought this could happen. That our lives would be this upended. That we would be truly afraid.
Afraid of the now and what is to come.
