• Home
  • She Taught Me Everything
  • Blog
  • Publications
  • Me. Me. Me.
  • More!
  • Contact
  • Signed Copies for sale
  • Get a Book
  • Reviews & Awards
AMY SMITH LINTON

Bloggetty Blog, life Blog...

Advice from nearby

5/28/2013

1 Comment

 
Picture
I was dreaming the other night about doing various lawn chores naked. It was not an anxiety or shame-filled dream -- I had a lot to get done and being naked was not the central issue. But there was a point where someone said, “Hey, let’s take it inside. Not everybody needs to see this.”

I take this as a fairly clear message from my subconscious.  Just a little reminder about having a bit of decorum and some reasonable boundaries.  

I think because my father was prone to offering cryptic statements in lieu of actual advice -- when I learned about the prophetic sibyls of ancient Greece, I felt a zing of recognition -- it's second nature to translate this message into suggestions to live by.  

For instance, tidy the yard, but don't make the neighbors suffer.

Or, maybe: attend to that mountain of chores (the weed-whacking and hedge-trimming of a big story, for example), by all means, but (and this is something I snarl in general impatience) keep your damn pants on! 




1 Comment

It's all a bunch of stories

5/28/2013

0 Comments

 
Telling Stories

I was born poor to a story-telling family. I was born to an extravagant wealth of untruths. (Q.E.D.) 
I was born in the ordinary way to normal-enough fam-- that can’t be it. 

I was not born at all, but hatched. I was not hatched but hacked out of a migraine headache. Or hack-sawed from a barred window. Not hack-sawed -- haver-sacked. Hacky-sacked. Halleluiah.

Belay all that. I was born all right. I’ll show you born. There’s evidence in white orthopedic booties, and ill-formed rubber bottle tips, plus that whole hair-shirt with kindergarten and the nuns. I’ve seen the photos: Pete the party pony led by a young man who resembles my father; the series of gradational pastel Easter outfits, one white glove of which cameos on another page with someone who could be me at age seven or five, if I wore a red bathing suit and held a jessed sparrow-hawk on a cotton-gloved hand. 

Picture

But pictures only suggest a thousand stories. It’s not their job to nail down the tone, firm up the details, calculate the exact twirl to put on the facts. And in my family, it was all playing to the crowd and fighting for the stage, and telling the best story.

Well anyway, hardships, scholarships, sailing ships. I ended up in Manhattan, walking to save subway fare. And it was snowing uphill both ways. But there was Susan Sontag and her son David Rieff striding off to lunch and Scott Turow presuming Innocent at Farrar Straus Giroux. And that Tom Wolfe, wraithing around in a white suit trying to finish Bonfire, looking all “what can ail thee knight at arms, alone and paley loitering”. 

Time flapped on. Like it does. What with the weird mono, and the no money, and the student loans and all, the whole New York City thing didn’t work out as I had hoped. 

So it came to pass that I packed my worldly goods into a rusted white Ford Fiesta and drove to St. Pete Beach, Florida to connect with my reconstructed, unconnected, soi-dis family.  Most notably, to take my turn looking after my grandmother Mimi as she shuffled off this mortal coil. 

The last of the family money and an excellent shopper, Mimi had Parkinson’s and a bright, colorless head of hair. She tended to tip, tilt, list, lilt, like one of those Weebles who wobble but won't fall down. 

She lunched at the yacht club with three college chums: sixty-plus years of chat, bridge, powdered cheeks, and someone else driving. She liked to file her fingernails and re-apply perfume while riding shotgun in the car. Downshifting my Fiesta on the corner, avoiding that big gold Caddy with its turn-indicator flashing pointlessly for an entire presidential era and -- tsst! I got it. A cloud of condensed scent dark as espresso, a spritz of pre-Socratic Shalimar, right in the eye. Seems like a piss-poor silly way to go, I was thinking while making the dramatic steering correction across traffic and elbowing Mimi back upright, and then, as we emerged unscathed: but it might make an okay story. 

Of course, not as funny as the story of cousin K leaving that girl, making a hobo sack of his entire wardrobe from a flowery sheet and then santa-clausing it over his shoulder, stopping at the car dealership for his paycheck on his way out of town, wearing just long-johns and boots under his coat, pointing explanation for his boss at the mattress tied inadequately to the roof of the car. 

Not nearly as fun as the story of Dad and the uncles crashing my sister’s Halloween party, rattling chains down the chimney, appearing up-lit and remarkably ghoulish at the windows, resulting in an incident involving one of the grade-school party-goers, piddle, and a rather nice Turkish rug. 

Not in the same realm of the story as the night of the bat invasion, or the time Cousin D won the coin-toss to light the black-powder-laden model schooner. It’s not sweet, like the one about Nana being kidnapped and rescued as a toddler in Albany, or the time Aunt P shouted from the porch, “All right, you little bastards, it’s lunchtime,” because her father suggested that the word “guys” was vulgar. 

Maybe not even my own story, come right to it. But it might do for now. There, I’m connected. 

Picture
0 Comments

Collapse or just go find some shoes?

5/24/2013

4 Comments

 
Sent the latest draft to the agent this afternoon. 

Okay: first, there's a draft. Finished. 
And second: an agent?! 

Never mind the auto-heave reaction of my guts and how my brain currently riddled with buzzing nanobots of doubt. Forget that. 
And also let's try to forget anything I said this month that started with, "I don't mean to be defensive, but..." 

Brag-complain:
to appear to complain while actually bragging. Also, when someone attempts to brag about an aspect of her life which is, in fact, undeniably awesome.  
(from The Urban Dictionary http://www.urbandictionary.com)

So now, back to my other life.... 
Which means unpacking books, packing clothes, and trying to remember how to sail a Lightning. 
4 Comments

    About the Blog

    A lot of ground gets covered on this blog -- from sailboat racing to book suggestions to plain old piffle. 

    To narrow the focus, select one of the  Categories below.

    Follow

    Trying to keep track? Follow me on Facebook or Twitter or if you use an aggregator, click the RSS option below.

    RSS Feed

    Old school? Sign up for the newsletter and I'll shoot you a short e-mail when there's something new.

      Newsletter

    Subscribe to Newsletter

    Archives

    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    December 2023
    September 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013

    Categories

    All
    Beauty Products
    Big Parks Trip
    Birds
    Boatbuilding
    Books
    Brains
    Contest & Prize
    Dogs
    Everglades Challenge
    Family Stories
    Farming
    Fashion
    Feminism
    Fiction
    Fish
    Flowers
    Flying Scot Sailboat
    Food
    Genealogy
    Handwork
    Health
    History
    Horses
    I
    International Lightning Class
    Mechanical Toys
    Migraine
    Movie References
    Music
    Piffle
    Pigs And Pork
    Poems
    Sailboat Racing
    Sculpture
    Social Media
    Song
    Subconscious Messages And Dream
    Travel
    Wildlife
    Writing

Picture
© COPYRIGHT 2023. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • Home
  • She Taught Me Everything
  • Blog
  • Publications
  • Me. Me. Me.
  • More!
  • Contact
  • Signed Copies for sale
  • Get a Book
  • Reviews & Awards